NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF BAPTIST PROFESSORS OF RELIGION

TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT?:

AN EXAMINATION OF WHICH RITUAL TRADITIONS FROM JUDAISM PAUL KEPT,

WHICH ONES HE DISCARDED, AND WHY

PRESENTATED DURING THE

NEW TESTAMENT I SECTION

BY

THOMAS J. WHITLEY

26 MAY 2009

Thirty years ago E. P. Sanders helped launch a new chapter in the study of Pauline

theology, particularly concerning Paul's relationship with Judaism. Sanders, and an increasing

number of scholars after him, rightly insists that Paul's own experience and subsequent writings

do not permit the traditional, straightforward conclusion that Paul rejected the Judaisms of his

day. More precisely, while Paul did reject certain traditions and teachings of Judaism; he

retained others. This paper examines two specific ritual traditions; one retained, one rejected,

so as to examine both sides of the issue. After Paul's Damascus Road experience, Paul clearly

upholds the tradition that women must be veiled for prayer (1 Cor. 11) and clearly rejects the

ritual tradition of circumcision for Gentiles who come to God through faith in Jesus and the

breaking of table-fellowship that resulted in Antioch (Gal.).

This paper builds off the understanding that Paul did not fully reject Judaism, as theories

about him converting from Judaism to Christianity purport, but rather reevaluated it in light of a

transformation. Further, this paper argues that Paul's reorientation of his understanding of the

past and the future becomes apparent when examining his preservation and rejection of ritual

traditions from Judaism. This paper holds that Paul chose to keep and discard ritual traditions

from Judaism as a direct result of his belief that Gentiles were now eligible for inclusion in the

gospel he was preaching. This view is at odds with the common interpretation of Sanders’ idea

of covenantal nomism,1 which asserts that the issue is not “getting in,” but “staying in.” It is not,

however, completely at odds with Sanders, as I will show later. Further, Paul's experience at

Antioch of Jewish and Gentile believers eating together was the impetus for defining just what

1 Sanders defines “covenantal nomism” in Paul and Palestinian Judaism as “is the view that one’s place in God’s plan is established on the basis of the covenant and that the covenant requires as the proper response of man his obedience to its commandments, while providing means of atonement for transgression” (E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 420.).

Paul's transformation and reorientation would look like. It was from this event and Paul's

subsequent insistence that Gentiles be included in the gospel, that he decided which traditions

to jettison, so as to open the door wider for Gentiles, and which traditions to preserve.

It is certainly no secret that the most prevalent interpretation of Paul’s relationship with

Judaism is that he broke completely with the religion of his former life. The new perspective on

Paul, especially as carried out by James Dunn, effectively shattered this misconception. Dunn’s

work, self-admittedly, relied heavily on the work of Sanders who essentially gave us a new

perspective on Second Temple Judaism. Sanders, Dunn, and many others have shown that Paul

was much more a product of the Judaisms of his day than had previously been acknowledged,

but they have left room for error on the other end of the spectrum; namely, by opening up the

door to the view that Paul was simply a product of Second Temple Judaism; nothing more,

nothing less. This view is misguided because it does not acknowledge the areas that Paul broke

with Judaism including, but certainly not limited to, the non-necessity of circumcision and his

insistence that the “true Israel” did not inevitably consist of all who were Jews. Moreover, this

view often wrongly interprets Sanders as saying that since the covenantal nomism of Second

Temple Judaism was not about “getting in” but “staying in,” that Paul’s view was the same.

Sanders, however, rightly recognizes that “Paul's mind did not run entirely in ways

familiar from the Bible or from most forms of Jewish thought known to us.”2 For indeed,

Sanders notes that “there are important ways in which [Paul’s] thought about Christian life and

experience does not stay within the categories which are familiar in Jewish covenantal thought.

Many things essential there are absent, and some of Paul's key concepts move into a different

2 E. P. Sanders, Paul, the Law and the Jewish People, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1983), 209.

realm of thinking and discourse.”3 Thus, to use a phrase of Sanders that has become a favorite

of mine: “Not all his mental furniture is from the same workshop.”4 John Barclay understands

this when he says that “One cannot conclude that Paul has simply adopted Jewish covenant

notions or that he has rejected them altogether; his radical interpretation defies any such

univocal conclusion.”5 Simply knowing that Paul did not fully accept or reject covenant notions

and ritual traditions from Judaism, however, still leaves the water muddied, for it may offer the

what, but makes no attempt to offer the why. While I surely recognize that the ground ahead is

notoriously shaky, I will offer a why.

For most Second Temple Jews it may have been about “staying in” and not “getting in,”

as Sanders states, but for Paul both were important. John Barclay makes this clear when he

highlights the “getting in” nature of the first section of Galatians and the “staying in” nature of

the ethical section of Galatians. Language like that which is included in Romans 2:28-29 helps to

paint the picture that while Paul may not have been only concerned with “getting in,” he was at

least partially concerned with it: “For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true

circumcision something external and physical. Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly,

and real circumcision is a matter of the heart-- it is spiritual and not literal. Such a person

receives praise not from others but from God.”6 Paul’s redefinition of what classifies one as a

Jew is not vastly important in the bigger picture, for he continues to use the Jew/Gentile

3 Ibid.4

Ibid.5

John M. G. Barclay, Obeying the Truth: Paul's Ethics in Galatians (Vancourver: Regent College Publishing, 1988), 97.

6 Quoted from the New Revised Standard Version. All biblical quotations will be taken from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.

dichotomy elsewhere, but it is important in that it shows his concern with just how someone

comes to “receive praise … from God” or to be accepted by God. Paul is very concerned that

Gentiles are also able to receive salvation. Thus, Romans 1:16-17: “For I am not ashamed of the

gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also

to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is

written, ‘The one who is righteous will live by faith.’”

Simply stating that Paul was very concerned that Gentiles be included in his gospel

message is not overly helpful, so now I will turn to the two test cases mentioned earlier. In 1

Corinthians 11 Paul upholds the tradition that women must be veiled for prayer and in

Galatians he rejects the ritual tradition of circumcision for Gentiles who come to God through

faith in Jesus. There has been much discussion in numerous circles as to the meaning and

implications of 1 Corinthians 11 for the modern church. Those are not the discussions I am

interested in; for many of them are motivated by agendas that insist that they do interpretive

and exegetical gymnastics to try to get the text to say something other than what it says. The

text, however, clearly says that women must be veiled during prayer and prophecy.

But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the husband is the head of his wife, and God is the head of Christ. Any man who prays or prophesies with something on his head disgraces his head, but any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled disgraces her head-- it is one and the same thing as having her head shaved. For if a woman will not veil herself, then she should cut off her hair; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or to be shaved, she should wear a veil. For a man ought not to have his head veiled, since he is the image and reflection of God; but woman is the reflection of man.7

7 1 Corinthians 11:3-7.

The first question from some may be: “How do we know that this actually was a tradition in

Judaism and not something new implemented by Paul?” However asinine the question may be,

I will still answer it briefly. Art that has survived from Egypt and Dura-Europos shows that

Jewish women “ordinarily covered their hair with a net, sometimes with a cloth.”8 Furthermore,

Sanders, in his book Judaism: Practice and Belief 63BCE – 66CE, shows that the view that Jews

would have been vastly different from the bulk of the population around them in dress and hair

styles should be dismissed.9 So, while we know that Jews are contained in the art from Dura-

Europos, but are not necessarily contained in every piece of artwork from this era depicting

dress and hair styles, we will not be far off base to assume that the style of dress and hair was

similar to what is commonly depicted. To this regard, Sanders comments: “Graeco-Roman

styles in both clothes and hair were pervasive: they penetrated even beyond the borders of the

empire, and … they changed slowly. First-century Egypt, second-century Palestine, and third-

century Mesopotamia (Dura-Europos) show the same styles of clothes.”10 Thus, it is safe to say

that when Paul commands women to be veiled in 1 Corinthians 11, he is asking them to do

something that was not uncommon.

The next natural question seems to be if Paul has had a radical new vision, then why

does he not reject all of the old traditions. Many answers to this question seem to also be

“jumping through hoops,” so to speak, to arrive at conclusions that suit their dearly held

predilections. Constance Parvey, for instance, speaks about the passage in question and

contends that Paul is stating that the Corinthian church should indeed maintain this traditional

8 E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice & Belief 63BCE - 66CE (London: SCM Press, 1992), 123.9

Ibid., 124.10

Ibid.

Jewish custom, but only as a theoretical “sign of subordination to men,” claiming that Paul is

“arguing against the influence of radical Gnostic ecstatics, who were said to have an aversion to

women covering their heads.”11 This stance not only lacks support, but is also quite

anachronistic in asserting that Paul, who is writing during the middle of the first century, is

combating a group whom we have no evidence of until at least a century later, at the earliest.

The more interesting argument that Parvey makes is that Paul “found it difficult to adapt his

social thought to conform with his radically new theology.”12 This view, however, seems to have

as its foundation the view that Paul desires to make a more drastic break with Judaism, even if

he was not able to just yet when he wrote 1 Corinthians. Rosemary Radford Ruether is more

correct when she notes that no matter how astonishing the new vision, “it must always be

communicated and made meaningful through some transformation of ideas and symbols

already current.”13 For, it goes without saying that no new theology or vision, no matter how

radical it may be, is written on a “cultural tabula rasa.”14

The sociology of sectarian ideology is very helpful in explaining the continuity and

discontinuity with Second Temple Judaism contained in Paul’s writings. “Any sect in the

process of breaking away from the parent religion will endeavour to justify its existence as the

sole legitimate heir of the religious tradition while also introducing a host of reinterpretations

11 Constance F. Parvey, “The Theology and Leadership of Women in the New Testament,” in Religion and Sexism: Images of Woman in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 125.

12

Ibid., 123.13

Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983), 14.

14

Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, 14.

which define its differences from the rest of the religious community.”15 To be sure, maintaining

that women should be veiled for prayer and prophecy does not work to show Paul’s gospel

message is the “sole legitimate heir of the religious tradition,” but it does work to preserve

continuity not just with Second Temple Judaism, but also with the larger society. Showing

continuity with the ancient world was important in the Greco-Roman world, for the society was

suspicious of so-called “mystery religions” because they did not have any connections with

anything before them. That Judaism did have this continuity made it at least a tolerable religion

in the Greco-Roman world and Paul certainly would have wanted to keep as much continuity as

was possible with his new message. Thus, Paul maintained that women should cover their

heads when praying and prophesying because it was not at odds with the essence of his

message; that is, that the gospel was for “everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to

the Greek” (Rom. 1:17).

Circumcision, conversely, was at odds with the essence of Paul’s gospel. Making Gentiles

be circumcised before they can be members of the covenant group only works to enforce the

understanding that one must be a Jew to be accepted by God. Paul’s account of his dispute

with Peter in Galatians 2 makes unambiguous his view that making circumcision necessary and

breaking table fellowship with Gentiles because they were not circumcised were in complete

opposition with the gospel message he was preaching. For Paul, the gospel had to break down

barriers. He makes this clear in Galatians 3:28: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no

longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Circumcision maintained a barrier between Jews and Gentiles. Further, Peter’s action and the

15 Barclay, Obeying the Truth, 98.

action of the “men from James” in Galatians 2 also maintains this barrier. Prior to Peter’s

withdrawal, however, Jews and Gentiles seem to have had no issue with table-fellowship in

Antioch, a scene which surely influenced Paul and his own statement against such barriers.

Moreover, we should note that the power of the gospel to break down barriers is not a

periphery concern for Paul. Rather, he accuses Peter and the “men from James” of not “acting

consistently with the truth of the gospel” or not walking straight in line with the gospel when

they abandon the Gentile believers at the table. The barrier created by requiring circumcision

and by withdrawing from the table-fellowship at Antioch and the message that Paul preached

were mutually exclusive in Paul’s mind. John Barclay correctly identifies the central concerns as

being about behavior and identity. The message that Paul preached was supposed to result in a

change in behavior and identity. The behavior of certain Jewish believers, especially Peter and

the “agitators” in Galatians, showed no change and thus Paul was obligated to say that they

were not walking straight in line with the gospel. Additionally, the gospel gave its believers a

new identity. The sticking point for Paul, though, was that it gave everyone the same identity,

hence Galatians 3:28. This new, shared identity, then, meant “fully accepting the other believer

who is different from you, who disagrees with you.”16 In Paul’s thought two dimensions seem to

be “inextricably interlocked – the vertical and the horizontal”, acceptance by God and valuing

and accepting the other.17

The situation at Antioch seems to have been both extremely positive and extremely

negative for Paul. On the one hand, Paul witnessed Jews and Gentiles eating together, which

meant that the Jews in Antioch had technically become “sinners” from the Jewish perspective,

16 Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul, 32-33.17

Ibid.

but had apparently decided that the gospel “establishe[d] a new pattern and standard of life,”

as Barclay put it.18 On the other hand, then, Paul’s message was heavily opposed by the

agitators in Galatia. Thus, Antioch tested Paul from multiple angles. Viewing the situation in

Antioch this way led James Dunn to state that “it was because Paul was so challenged that he

was forced to make explicit formulation of what his gospel involved for Jewish as well as Gentile

believers.”19 Dunn then expands on this statement:

…it was the insistence on the laws of clean and unclean at Antioch which raised the issue whether faith needed to be complemented by works of the law, any works of the law. In other words, Paul's formulation in Gal. 2.16 was, as the context suggests, formulated in response to the crisis at Antioch ... The events at Antioch showed Paul that the teaching had to be sharpened -faith and not works.20

Paul’s experience at Antioch was certainly a formative one for him and his message. It must be

understood, though, that for Paul “the quality and character of Judaism” are not in question.

The question is not about “how many good deeds an individual must present before God to be

declared righteous at the judgment, but … whether or not Paul's Gentile converts must accept

the Jewish law in order to enter the people of God or to be counted truly members.”21 The

question that Paul is responding to in both Galatians and Romans 9-11 is about whether one

had to be Jewish.22

To further highlight that Paul was indeed concerned with “getting in” and not just

“staying in” one need only examine Paul’s use of Abraham in Galatians 3 and Romans 4. Paul

18 Barclay, Obeying the Truth, 80-81.

19 James D. G. Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 39.20

Ibid., 41.21

Sanders, Paul, the Law and the Jewish People, 19-20.22

Ibid., 159.

was concerned not with Abraham’s actions, but rather by his “initial acceptance by God”, the

fact that he was already considered righteous in Genesis 15:6, that is, prior to his subsequent

circumcision in Genesis 17.23 James Dunn put it this way: “To include consideration of

Abraham's subsequent obedience (Gen. 26.5), as Jewish tradition did, was to confuse the key

issue so central to the key question of whether Gentiles could be regarded as also and equally

acceptable to God.”24

The point should be clear by now that Paul did not simply uphold all of the traditions

that he previously observed because he was a regular Second Temple Jew. In addition, it should

be equally as clear that Paul did not endorse jettisoning all of the Jewish traditions because he

had a revelation on his way to Damascus. The answer is no longer as uncomplicated as many

have previously thought. Just as most versions of the old or Lutheran perspective are

inadequate because they fail to recognize just how Jewish Paul was, so many manifestations of

the new perspective are insufficient because they see Paul as merely a Second Temple Jew and

do not acknowledge the areas of his thought and theology that clearly diverge from the

Judaisms of his day.

Though the time and space has not allowed for an exhaustive look at which traditions

from Judaism Paul retained and which ones he rejected, it has attempted to offer an

introduction to the question. I am convinced, though, that the succinct nature of this paper

does not diminish the conclusion that I am positing. For as Paul’s thought is further examined,

especially concerning how he answers the question of just who the “true Israel” is and how he

redefines what it means to be a child of Abraham, there appears to be one concern that

23 Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul, 48.24

Ibid.

becomes more and more central for Paul; how can Gentiles be included as members of the

covenant. No tradition passed by Paul without having this criterion applied to it. Whenever Paul

asked, “take it or leave it” the answer was simple; does it allow Gentiles to be included in the

gospel? This issue was “at the heart of Paul’s theology,” for his conviction was that “the gospel

of God’s righteousness is for all who believe, Gentile as well as Jew.”25

25 Ibid., 30. See also Romans 1: 16-17.