The following is distilled from an essay by Emmanuel Nathan, "Two Pauls, Three Opinions: The Jewish Paul between Law and Love", in "Is there a Judeo-Christian Tradition?" (ed. Nathan and Topolski, De Gruyter, 2016).
The Apostle Paul is the earliest of Christian writers, if Christian indeed he was.
Pamela Eisenbaum, a Jewish scholar of Paul’s letters, is quite adamant that he was not (“Paul Was Not A Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood Apostle" HarperCollins, 2009). Her position reflects the current scholarly consensus, an emphasis on Paul’s essential Jewishness, an emerging trend in Pauline studies since the 1950s.
The current landscape covers a broad spectrum of ideas, from a 'Torah observant' Paul clinging resolutely to Judaism and its commandments on the one hand, to a 'liberal' Paul whose mysticism breaks free of religious constraint on the other.
Scholars have argued the clash between the Jewish-centered Petrine and Gentile-centered Pauline parties represents the crucible from which Christianity was born. Paulinism gave Christianity a universal dimension, contrasting Petrine Christianity’s attachment to the formal, external and the particular, which was why Jewish Christianity ultimately disappeared. When the gospel spread among the Gentiles, it was because Pauline Christianity had broken free of the constraints of an ethnically particular mission targeted only at Jews.
In the latter half of the last century, Paul went from being a Christian to a Jew. There is now, rather than talk of his 'conversion', talk of his 'calling'. What had always been seen as Paul’s problem with Judaism was its legalism is now seen as its ethnocentrism. How can the Law and the Prophets speak of God bringing the whole world unto Himself if the Gentile world is not ethnically Jewish?
(This 'problem' is more vexing to the sole fide Reformation denominations, and Luther especially, and their need to break with Roman Catholicism. The Catholic and Orthodox denominations.)
The question is no longer of Paul and Judaism, rather of Paul’s Judaism after his encounter with Christ. To cite Pamela Eisenbaum, "belief in Jesus does not make Paul a Christian", precisely because Jesus was Jewish.
Paul has been accused as the great Hellenizer of Judaism – a Diaspora Jew deeply influenced by the Hellenistic world, who 'invented' Christianity in order to assimilate the Jewish Jesus and, by extension Judaism, into the Greek mainstream.
Contemporary scholarship has overthrown this assumption. A complete reversal has taken place: Paul never intended to universalise Judaism. It is worth mentioning that among the advocates of this new vision of Paul are Jewish scholars of early Christianity – Mark Nanos, Pamela Eisenbaum and Paula Fredriksen, to name just a few.
First of all, and positively, this indicates how much the field of Pauline studies has opened up to accommodate scholars from different backgrounds, particularly from the Jewish fold that previous scholarship was only too happy to shun, and secondly, the whole study throws new light not only on Paul in particular, but Second Temple Judaism in general, to the point where one scholar remarks:
"While Paul’s Jewish background might be well established, he has been associated with almost every type of ancient Judaism, from Hellenistic to Qumranic to Pharasaic, Hellenistic or otherwise, and to later rabbinic. Based on our discussion above on Jewish identity, we might perhaps suggest that he be located in 'Second Temple Judaism', although from our discussion above it should also be clear that there really was no such thing. We can then suggest perhaps that it would be better to place him within the array of Second Temple Judaisms"
(Joshua Schwartz, "Methodological Remarks on ‘Jewish’ Identity: Jews, Jewish Christians and Prolegomena on Pauline Judaism” in 'Second Corinthians in the Perspective of Late Second Temple Judaism, Brill, 2014, emphasis his).
The Apostle Paul is the earliest of Christian writers, if Christian indeed he was.
Pamela Eisenbaum, a Jewish scholar of Paul’s letters, is quite adamant that he was not (“Paul Was Not A Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood Apostle" HarperCollins, 2009). Her position reflects the current scholarly consensus, an emphasis on Paul’s essential Jewishness, an emerging trend in Pauline studies since the 1950s.
The current landscape covers a broad spectrum of ideas, from a 'Torah observant' Paul clinging resolutely to Judaism and its commandments on the one hand, to a 'liberal' Paul whose mysticism breaks free of religious constraint on the other.
Scholars have argued the clash between the Jewish-centered Petrine and Gentile-centered Pauline parties represents the crucible from which Christianity was born. Paulinism gave Christianity a universal dimension, contrasting Petrine Christianity’s attachment to the formal, external and the particular, which was why Jewish Christianity ultimately disappeared. When the gospel spread among the Gentiles, it was because Pauline Christianity had broken free of the constraints of an ethnically particular mission targeted only at Jews.
In the latter half of the last century, Paul went from being a Christian to a Jew. There is now, rather than talk of his 'conversion', talk of his 'calling'. What had always been seen as Paul’s problem with Judaism was its legalism is now seen as its ethnocentrism. How can the Law and the Prophets speak of God bringing the whole world unto Himself if the Gentile world is not ethnically Jewish?
(This 'problem' is more vexing to the sole fide Reformation denominations, and Luther especially, and their need to break with Roman Catholicism. The Catholic and Orthodox denominations.)
The question is no longer of Paul and Judaism, rather of Paul’s Judaism after his encounter with Christ. To cite Pamela Eisenbaum, "belief in Jesus does not make Paul a Christian", precisely because Jesus was Jewish.
Paul has been accused as the great Hellenizer of Judaism – a Diaspora Jew deeply influenced by the Hellenistic world, who 'invented' Christianity in order to assimilate the Jewish Jesus and, by extension Judaism, into the Greek mainstream.
Contemporary scholarship has overthrown this assumption. A complete reversal has taken place: Paul never intended to universalise Judaism. It is worth mentioning that among the advocates of this new vision of Paul are Jewish scholars of early Christianity – Mark Nanos, Pamela Eisenbaum and Paula Fredriksen, to name just a few.
First of all, and positively, this indicates how much the field of Pauline studies has opened up to accommodate scholars from different backgrounds, particularly from the Jewish fold that previous scholarship was only too happy to shun, and secondly, the whole study throws new light not only on Paul in particular, but Second Temple Judaism in general, to the point where one scholar remarks:
"While Paul’s Jewish background might be well established, he has been associated with almost every type of ancient Judaism, from Hellenistic to Qumranic to Pharasaic, Hellenistic or otherwise, and to later rabbinic. Based on our discussion above on Jewish identity, we might perhaps suggest that he be located in 'Second Temple Judaism', although from our discussion above it should also be clear that there really was no such thing. We can then suggest perhaps that it would be better to place him within the array of Second Temple Judaisms"
(Joshua Schwartz, "Methodological Remarks on ‘Jewish’ Identity: Jews, Jewish Christians and Prolegomena on Pauline Judaism” in 'Second Corinthians in the Perspective of Late Second Temple Judaism, Brill, 2014, emphasis his).
