Paul the ‘Convert’? Paul the ‘Convert’? Paula Fredriksen The Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies Edited by Matthew V. Novenson and R. Barry Matlock Subject: Religion, Christianity, Ancient Religions Online Publication Date: Nov 2014 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199600489.013.22 Abstract and Keywords ‘Paul the “Convert”?’ has three goals: to track the history of this construction of Paul from its origins in antiquity through to the present; to examine scholarly assessments of its utility; and to offer a synthetic historical account of how and why Paul acted as he did to either side of his affiliation with the Jesus movement. In various sections the chapter ex­ amines the fundamental contributions of Munck, Stendahl, and Dahl and those of E. P. Sanders and James Dunn; the work of Alan Segal, Daniel Boyarin, and N. T. Wright; and the proposals of Gaston, Gager, and Stowers. Finally, the chapter explores newer work ar­ guing that both the content and the context of Paul’s mission to pagans continued to be Second Temple Judaism, inflected through the peculiar eschatology of the Jesus move­ ment. For this reason, the essay concludes, Paul’s transformative moment is best concep­ tualized as his ‘call’. Keywords: Jesus movement, mission, Judaism, eschatology, call, conversion ‘Paul’s conversion is to Pauline scholarship what the Big Bang is to physics: the thing itself is an enigma, but somehow it is supposedly the explanation for every­ thing else.’ Eisenbaum (2009: 133) Paul has long figured in church tradition as the prototype of the Christian convert, a great sinner redeemed from the error of his earlier life by a single, dramatic moment of conver­ sion. Support for this image derives first of all from his own letters, which emphasize his initial, and zealous, persecution of the ekklēsia (Gal 1:13; Phil 3:6; 1 Cor 15:9) and a di­ vine moment of reversal, which Paul himself understands within the larger context of his mission to the Gentiles (Gal 1:15‒16). Acts amplifies these elements, luridly expanding upon Paul’s persecuting activities (7:58 and 8:1, Paul is present at Stephen’s lynching and consents to it; 9.1‒2 ‘breathing threats and murder’, he seeks to extend the persecution Page 1 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021 Paul the ‘Convert’? from Jerusalem to Damascus), and repeating in three iterations the divine transformation of Saul into Paul (9:1‒19; 22:3‒16; 26:4‒18). Some three centuries later, Augustine read these New Testament texts together with the canon’s deutero-Pauline letters, wherein ‘Paul’ describes himself as ‘once foolish, disobe­ dient, led astray, slavishly serving various passions and pleasures’ (Titus 3:3). Meditating on these passages, identifying with Saul the sinner, the bishop of Hippo shaped his fa­ mous account of his own conversion from Manichaeism to Roman Christianity by appeal to his construction of Paul’s (Confessions VII‒VIII, cf. ad Simplicianum I.2, 22; Stendahl 1963; Fredriksen 1986 and 1988). More portentously, Augustine eventually came to un­ derstand the conflicted ‘I’ of Romans 7:5‒25 as Paul’s own self-description (contra ii epis­ tolas Pelagianorum 1.8.13‒14; de praedestinatione sanctorum 1.2.4; 1.4.8; Fredriksen 1988: 110‒111). This exegetical legacy transformed a now-confessional Romans 7 into the letter’s centre of gravity. It defined Paul’s ‘conversion’ as his abrupt transfer from sin­ fulness ‘under the Law’ (i.e., Judaism) to justification through faith in Christ. And it cast a long shadow, passing from Augustine through Luther to Reformation Protestant theology, and thence to modern NT scholarship (Kümmel 1929: 139–160; Munck 1959: 11 and n. 2). Understanding Paul as a ‘convert’ thus did double duty. The construct provided (or gener­ ated) biographical detail about Paul and religious detail about his environment. (For a re­ view of early twentieth-century scholarship on this issue, see Pfaff 1942; for later, Betz 1979: 64 n. 82.) Before his conversion to Christ, zealously enmeshed in Judaism, Paul had experienced guilt, anxiety, and turmoil: the Law could only articulate sin, but it could not help him to stop sinning. (Here Augustine’s reading of Romans 7 was pressed into ser­ vice.) Encountering Jewish Christian Hellenists—that group in Acts represented by Stephen—thought to have already relinquished the Law, Paul the Pharisee had lashed out, ‘zealous for the traditions of the fathers’ (Gal 1:14). ‘Conversion’ therefore also helped fill in the blanks about Paul’s motivation for persecution, about the practices of those (Jew­ ish) Christians whom he accordingly persecuted, and about Paul’s own practices once, as a Christian, he himself was persecuted: to be Christian meant to abandon Jewish law. Finally, ‘conversion’ provided content for both of Paul’s religious options, which were seen as mirror-images of each other. The religion that he left behind, Judaism, was both deadening and dead. The Torah only entangled a person in self-righteousness, inducing him to think that he could earn salvation through the accumulation of good works (‘legal­ ism’; see Sanders 2002: 48–54). The spiritual result was hypocrisy (doing good for the wrong reason, that is, for one’s own benefit), complacency (‘Since I did these works, I am righteous’), or anxiety (‘How can I ever do enough?’). Indeed, zeal for the Law, motivated by this desire to earn salvation, led (and leads) to sin. (For critiques of this Christian de­ scription of Judaism, see Moore 1921; Sanders 1977: 33–59, 434–442, and passim.) At­ tempting to fulfil the commands of the Torah through one’s own efforts brings sin and death; righteousness, thus salvation, comes only through the unmerited gift of God’s grace—the position that Paul, in becoming Christian, embraced, championed, and (espe­ cially against the circumcisers in Galatia) heatedly defended. For Paul, the ‘Israel of God’ (Gal 6:16) was no longer the Jews, but the church. When he asserted that ‘all Israel Page 2 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021 Paul the ‘Convert’? will be saved’ (Rom 11:26), Paul did not mean ‘Israel according to the flesh’, ethnic Israel, but rather that unified collectivity of Gentiles and Jews who together were now constitut­ ed ‘in Christ’. Paul’s Commission and Call Three Scandinavian scholars, mid-twentieth century, significantly challenged this recon­ struction of Christian origins, thus its centrepiece construct, the convert Paul. Johannes Munck, in Paulus und die Heilsgeschichte (1954; E.T. 1959) argued against the high-con­ trast picture of ‘Hebrews’ versus (Law-free) ‘Hellenists’ (Acts 6:1‒8:3); against seeing Paul as opposed to a conservative, Law-observant ‘Jewish Christianity’ (as represented by James and Peter); and against viewing Paul’s ‘Christianity’ as somehow over-against Ju­ daism, all of which views had been promulgated especially by Baur and the Tübingen School (1959: 69–86). Munck emphasized, rather, the continuities between these differ­ ent groups and the ideas and behaviours that they represented (1959: esp. 247‒281). And against a then-prevailing academic consensus that saw Hellenistic Judaism itself as a mis­ sionary religion (hence in fierce competition with the Christian Paul), Munck insisted that no such missions had ever existed (1959: 264‒271; cf. Parkes 1961 [1934]; Simon 1986 [1948]). The effort to turn Gentiles to the god of Israel, Munck urged, originated uniquely within Christianity, and even then only because it was linked there, from the beginning, to the over-arching faith of these early Christians as Jews in the biblical promises of (Jewish) Israel’s redemption (1959: 264–271). The apostles’ conviction that they stood at the edge of the end of time, between Christ’s resurrection and his imminent parousia, said Munck, fuelled their missions, and Paul’s as well (‘Christ will return soon’, 1959: 276). Thus ‘Paul is in many respects at one with the first disciples. For him too Israel and Jerusalem are the centre of the world; and Israel’s salvation is therefore the most important aim in the short interval between Resurrection and return’ (1959: 275; cf. 36‒68). In this reading, in other words, the centre of gravity for the epistle to the Romans shifted from the portrait of individual torment and turmoil of chapter 7 to the eschatological clarion call of chap­ ters 9‒11, ending as they do with the full incoming of the Gentiles (plērōma tōn ethnōn) and the redemption of all Israel (pas Israēl). ‘Jesus, earliest Christianity, and Paul know no limits to God’s love of the chosen people. For God, the salvation of the Gentiles is bound up with the salvation of Israel, just as Israel’s salvation is of importance to all the Gentiles’ (1959: 259; further developed in Munck 1967). What then of ‘Paul the convert’? Insisting that Paul saw Christianity as entirely within and consonant with his native religion (Munck 1959: 279), reconfiguring the imagined rela­ tionships between Jews, Jewish Christians, and Paul as contiguous rather than contrast­ ing, Munck urged as well that Paul’s ‘Damascus experience’ be seen not as a ‘conversion’ but as Paul’s reception of his prophetic ‘call’. (Indeed, Munck’s chapter, ‘The Call’, opens his book, 11‒35; see too Roetzel 1998: 44–68.) Paul’s own description of his experience in Gal 1:15—‘God&. set me apart in my mother’s womb and called me [kalesas] through his Page 3 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021 Paul the ‘Convert’? grace&. [revealing] his son in me so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles’— echoes the language of Isaiah 49:1‒6, when the prophet received his call to preach salva­ tion to the Gentiles, and the language of Jeremiah 1:4, whom God also knew ‘before I formed you in the womb&. and I appointed you a prophet to the Gentiles’ (Munck 1959: 24–26; enriched by further consideration of traditions in Ezekiel and in Enoch, 31‒33). Paul’s apostleship in his own view, insisted Munck, began with this commission, not with a ‘conversion’. The work of Nils Dahl and of Krister Stendahl variously reinforced Munck’s arguments. While Dahl held that ‘conversion’ was the term appropriate to Paul’s life-changing experi­ ence, he also emphasized that it should not connote a ‘change of religion’ (1977 [orig. pub. 1956]: 72 n. 6). Paul and his fellow apostles, Dahl insisted, remained committed to the eschatological redemption of Israel, and it was to this end that Paul engaged in his mission to Gentiles (1991 [orig. pub. 1953]: 22). In this reading, no less than in Munck’s, Romans 9‒11, with its conviction that ‘all Israel will be saved’ (Rom 11:26), set a plumb line for Pauline interpretation. Stendahl, meanwhile, building upon Munck, championed ‘call’ over ‘conversion’ in his important essay, ‘Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West’ (1963; orig. Swedish 1960). Paul, observed Stendahl, pointing to Philippians 3:6 (‘as to righteousness under the Law I was flawless’), did not suffer from pangs of anxiety or guilt (1963: 200; also 210‒214, for consideration of other Pauline verses). That picture was Luther’s contribution, drawing on Augustine’s (mis)interpretation of Romans 7. On the contrary: ‘Paul was equipped with what&. must be called a “robust” con­ science’ (1963: 200). ‘We look in vain for a statement in which Paul would speak about himself as an actual sinner’ (1963: 210). Paul’s call was itself his moment of dramatic re­ versal, his transition from persecutor to apostle. And Paul saw his mission, and the mes­ sage of the gospel, as finding a place for the nations within Israel’s coming redemption. Thus, Stendahl concluded, ‘Romans 9‒11 is not an appendix to chs. 1‒8, but the climax of the letter’ (1963: 205). In sum, these three scholars relocated Romans’ exegetical vanishing point from the Au­ gustinian‒Lutheran understanding of Romans 7 (with its emphasis on conflicted personal sinfulness) to an eschatological understanding of Romans 9‒11 (with its emphasis on the impending resolution of history and on the redemption of Gentiles together with all Is­ rael). More particularly, they understood the salvation of ‘all Israel’ in Rom 11:26 to mean not the church, but the Jews. (‘There ought to be no doubt’, Dahl opined, ‘that the state­ ment in Romans 11.26, that all Israel will be saved, applies to the people of Israel, and not to the church as a new Israel’, 1977 [1972: 138.) This exegetical refocusing had the effect of diminishing the high contrast between Paul’s original religious commitments and his newer ones: the redemption of Jewish Israel remained his priority, and his mission to the Gentiles—to turn them, through Christ, to the god of Israel—was his way to effect that goal. Using ‘conversion’ to describe Paul’s turning point (so Dahl) emphasized the radical change in Paul’s life, when he moved from persecuting outsider to committed, in­ deed missionizing, insider. Using ‘call’, however, had the virtue of drawing on Paul’s own vocabulary and his own conceptualization of his transformation (Munck, Stendahl): Paul placed himself upon the trajectory of Israel’s continuing prophetic role vis-à-vis the na­ Page 4 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021 Paul the ‘Convert’? tions. And ‘call’, unlike ‘conversion’, implied no absolute break with Paul’s patrikai para­ doseis (‘ancestral customs’; cf. Gal 1:14). Neither in c.50 CE, when Paul wrote about his call, nor in c.34, when he experienced it, did the movement ‘in Christ’ stand outside of, much less over-against, Judaism. The three salient points made by these scholars were these: 1. Paul constructed his mission within, not against, Judaism. For that reason, ‘conver­ sion’, if used to describe his transition from persecutor to apostle, should not be un­ derstood as his move from one religion to another; better, Paul’s experience should be described as his ‘call’. 2. Paul’s transformation had nothing to do with a sense of personal sinfulness and frustration with the Law. Rather, its focus was his receiving his commission to be an apostle to pagans. 3. Paul’s time-frame was utterly eschatological. He lived and worked, he was con­ vinced, within history’s final hours. The New Perspective on Paul In 1977, E. P. Sanders published Paul and Palestinian Judaism. The book’s effect on the study of Christian origins generally, and on Pauline studies in particular, cannot be over­ stated. Reading broadly and deeply in late Second Temple Jewish literature (1977: 1– 428), unabashedly exposing the deep and defining anti-Judaism of so much of Christian scholarship, especially on Paul (1977: esp. 33‒59 and 434‒442), Sanders radically under­ mined the old, theologically generated caricature of Judaism as a ‘legalistic’ system of works-righteousness. In its place Sanders proposed ‘covenantal nomism’, a pattern of re­ ligion resting on grace, faith, and obedience (1977: 75, 81‒85). God graciously chose Is­ rael from among the nations, binding Israel to himself in a covenanted relationship. Israel’s grateful response to God’s gracious election is to live faithfully according to the covenant’s commands. ‘Obedience maintains one’s position in the covenant, but it does not earn God’s grace as such’ (1977: 420). Sanders’s new perspective on Second Temple Judaism revitalized the study of Paul’s his­ torical context. Its effect on reconstructions of Paul himself, however, and of Paul’s trans­ formation from persecutor to apostle, was more complicated. If Judaism was not a legalis­ tic religion of works-righteousness, then whence all of Paul’s negative remarks about Torah, and his tendentious contrasts of the works of the Law to grace and faith? In be­ coming the new movement’s champion, did Paul not then repudiate the Law? Designating Paul’s transformation a ‘conversion’, Sanders focused for explanation on Paul’s experience of the risen Christ. This experience, Sanders claimed, charged and changed everything for him. Paul indeed condemns Judaism, but not because he misun­ derstood it (as Sanders’s careful reconstruction of Second Temple Judaism might imply; cf. Schoeps 1961: 213–218). Rather, after encountering the risen Christ, Paul condemned Page 5 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021 Paul the ‘Convert’? as useless for salvation anything other than being ‘in Christ’. The attempt to find histori­ cal antecedents in Judaism itself to explain Paul’s position are thus doomed to frustration, because there is none. Paul never held that the Law was inherently bad or inherently im­ possible to fulfil (Phil 3:6; this point gives the measure especially of Stendahl’s influence); but, said Sanders, after the revelation of Christ, Paul was convinced that the Law was ir­ relevant to salvation, and that therefore it should be abandoned. The Law indeed, Paul readily admits, has many advantages (Rom 3:9), but not with respect to salvation. In turn­ ing to Christ, Paul in effect turned from the Law, at least as an entrance requirement into the community of the saved (1977: 500; see too Sanders 1983). Paul thus reasoned from solution (his encounter with Christ as universal redeemer) to plight (all humanity, indeed the universe, stands in need of redemption; 1977: 443), a plight that Torah could not as­ suage. ‘This is what Paul finds wrong in Judaism: it is not Christianity’ (1977: 552, origi­ nal emphasis). Sanders’s reconstruction of Paul thus worked at cross-purposes to his great contribution to Pauline studies. To hold that Paul’s ‘conversion’ resulted in an unprecedented and oth­ erwise unexplainable position vis-à-vis Judaism is to render Paul’s historical context—the great achievement of Paul and Palestinian Judaism—essentially irrelevant to his theology. Other scholars, positively influenced by Sanders’s reconstruction of Judaism, cast about for other objects for Paul’s opprobrium. Perhaps Paul condemned not the Law itself, but rather his fellow Jews’ ethnic pride, their insistence on their own ‘covenant distinctive­ ness’ (Dunn 1998: 350 and passim; Dunn 2008; Hill 2008: 311–318). Thus Paul targeted not the Law itself but the ‘works of the Law’, which articulated and preserved this ethnic distinctiveness: circumcision, Sabbath observance, food laws, Temple sacrifice, and so on. (Dunn seems not to notice that this list of mitzvoth essentially defines the content of the Law.) Or perhaps Paul’s theology, despite his best efforts, was irreconcilably riddled with inconsistencies (Räisänen 1983; Gager 2002: 68–69). ‘There can surely be no possibility of scholarship in the Christian tradition going back to the old portrayal of Judaism, either now or in the first century, as an arid, sterile and nar­ rowly legalistic religion’, Dunn optatively opines. ‘Likewise there can surely be no going back to an interpretation of Paul’s doctrine of justification which depends upon sharp an­ titheses between Judaism and Christianity, between law and grace, between obedience and faith, and which feeds on and perpetuates the shameful tradition of Christian anti-Ju­ daism’ (Dunn 2008: 96). To the degree that Dunn’s statement is true, it is in no small way due to Sanders’s 1977 publication. The so-called New Perspective on Paul has gone far in ridding Pauline scholarship of much of its traditional, virtually constitutive anti-Judaism. Much, unfortunately, still remains (Johnson Hodge 2007: 6–7). Is it possible, then, to hold a strong understanding of Paul’s transformation from persecutor to apostle without imag­ ining that it entailed a repudiation of Torah? Can ‘Paul the convert’ not be anti-Judaic? Page 6 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021 Paul the ‘Convert’? Paul the Supersessionist Christian For some scholars, the answer to this question is ‘No’. Paul’s new allegiance to the gospel meant that he repudiated the observance of the Law in principle—for himself, for all oth­ er Jews, and for those Gentiles whom he brought into the new movement. ‘Judaism’ tradi­ tionally conceived had no place in the redemption worked by Christ: Paul worked, in fact, for the suppression of difference within the new community, thus for the suppression of Jewish particularity. The title and subtitle of Alan Segal’s important book well summarize the orientation of this view: Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (1990; see Hurtado 1993). Paul repudiated the Law because it worked against the central vision of his mission: the eradication of difference between groups. Galatians 3:28 in this construction (‘there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Je­ sus’) stands as a sort of policy statement. (So too Boyarin 1994 and Wright 1993: while mobilizing different details, both authors, like Segal, argue that Paul’s new vision of a uni­ fied community, granted in his conversion experience, propelled his personal and princi­ pled repudiation of distinctive Jewish practices.) To achieve this new unity, the Law had to be dropped, and Paul himself no longer observed it. ‘By proclaiming his new idea of com­ munity, [Paul] alerted the Jewish community to what they could see as a potential new apostasy’ (Segal 1990: 205). Paul had come to this radically new idea through his conversion, which was ‘a wrenching and decisive change’: ‘from the viewpoint of mission Paul is commissioned, but from the viewpoint of religious experience Paul is a convert’ (Segal 1990: 6; cf. 21, on ‘conversion’ as an etic term). Segal enriches this concept of conversion—and thereby increases the number of places where he takes Paul to refer to this experience—by placing it within the context of ‘Jewish apocalyptic mysticism’ (Segal 1990: ch. 2 passim, entitled ‘Paul’s Ecsta­ sy’, focusing especially on 2 Cor 12:1‒9). Paul’s conversion was just the beginning of a se­ ries of visions and mystical experiences (Segal 1990: 37‒38), similar to those described in Enochic literature. Like the Merkevah mystics, Paul apprehended the enigmatic human appearance of God (1990: 41), whom he identified as Christ (cf. 1990: 47, on God’s kavod). It was the radical effect of this ecstatic experience that utterly changed Paul’s previous, Pharisaic disposition towards Torah (1990: 71). Why? How? Because Paul the former Pharisee had moved from one community—Pharisaic and Jewish—to another—Gentile and Law-free. Paul’s ‘education in Christianity comes from a gentile community’ (1990: xii), where he lived ‘during his formative years as a con­ vert’ (1990: 26). ‘The influence of the gentile community on Paul’s understanding of the content of his religious vision is crucial to explaining his religious vision’ (1990: 117). From that point on, for Paul ‘faith, not Torah observance, defines the Christian communi­ ty’ (1990: 128). In this formulation, in other words, Paul as an apostle of Gentile Chris­ tianity essentially converts to it. His radically new position thus puts him at odds not only with the Jewish world in general, but also with the Jewish Christian world (which, unlike the gentile Christian world, still observed Torah; e.g., 1990: 143). Both of these groups Page 7 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021 Paul the ‘Convert’? considered Paul an apostate (1990: 223). Taking a stand against circumcision (1990: 187‒ 223) and against Jewish food laws (1990: 224‒253), Paul articulated ‘his belief that all Jews must convert to become truly faithful Christians’ (1990: 166), bound together with Gentiles into a single, unitary, Law-free community (1990: 264). When Paul asserts that ‘all Israel’ will be saved in the End (Rom 11:26), he hopes that ‘the remaining Jews will come to Christ as he did’ (1990: 280), though he prescinds from guessing how God will bring about this final salvation. (Cf. Wright 1993: 249–251: ‘all Israel’ means the Christian church, comprised of believing Jews as well as Gentiles.) Paul the convert, recipient of ec­ static visions, apostate malgré lui, was first of all a convert from something (namely strict, Torah-focused Pharisaism) to something else, Torah-free, which ‘he spent the rest of his life trying to express’ (1990: 283). While ‘his mystical vision of metamorphosis left much unexplained’ (1990: 283), it did crystallize around a particular and firmly held conviction: outside of the community in Christ, nulla salus (see too Zoccali 2008). The Sonderweg Paul If ideas can have opposites, then the Sonderweg or ‘two covenant’ approach to Paul rep­ resents the opposite of the sort of neo-traditionalism offered by Segal, Wright, and Bo­ yarin (as well as that of the New Perspective). This interpretation is associated primarily with the work of Lloyd Gaston (1987), John Gager (1983, 2000), and Stanley Stowers (1994; Stendahl, initially identified with this position, distinguished his own views from it, 1995: x, cf. 7). ‘If the three pillars on which Judaism stands are God, Torah and Israel, then a fundamental attack on any of the three would be anti-Judaism, a denial of the right of Jews to exist in terms of their own self-understanding’, Gaston observes, and then asks: ‘Is Paul guilty?’ (1987 [1979]: 17). Drawing their interpretive principles in part from the pioneering work of Munck, Dahl, and Stendahl, these scholars answer, No. They do not deny that Paul says as many negative things about the Law as positive ones (Gager 2002: 68–69); but by focusing resolutely on Gentiles as the sole addressees of Paul’s remarks, these scholars hold that when Paul speaks of the Law’s negative effects—that it cannot make alive; that it can only bring knowledge of sin—he is speaking to its effects only for Gentiles, not for Jews. Paul himself did not have a problem with the Law (Phil 3:6; Stendahl’s influence, again), so some supposed dissatisfaction or frustration with the Law cannot provide an explana­ tion for his transition from persecutor to apostle. Rather, Paul thought that Gentiles have a problem with the Law. But God, graciously, through Christ, has brought Gentiles a way to salvation apart from the Law, though the Law and the prophets bear witness to it (cf. Rom 3:21), namely salvation through faith in Christ. In other words, Paul’s letters express a vision of two separate paths to salvation: Torah for Jews, and Christ for Gentiles (Gaston 1987 [1979]: 33; cf. Donaldson 2006). To explain how Paul arrived at his negative views about Torah for Gentiles, and about Gentiles alone as saved in Christ, Gager in particular appeals to a high-contrast model of Paul’s conversion. ‘This much seems certain: both before his conversion and after, follow­ Page 8 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021 Paul the ‘Convert’? ing Christ and obedience to the Torah stood as mutually exclusive values in Paul’s heart and mind’ (2002: 64). Paul himself, Gager explains (mobilizing the older idea of Hellenis­ tic Jewish missions to Gentiles) had as a Pharisee been engaged in such missions, requir­ ing that Gentiles convert fully to Judaism and thus, for men, receive circumcision. Per­ haps Paul persecuted the early (Jewish Christian) ekklēsia because it admitted Gentiles without requiring that they observe Torah (2002: 62‒63). And then, abruptly, Paul’s vision of the risen Christ changed everything—and not. The conversion reversed the valences of Paul’s thinking, so that what he once held to be right he now regarded as wrong and vice versa. But the structure of Paul’s thought remained the same: Torah‒Gentiles‒Christ. ‘After his conversion, Christ and Torah remained polar opposites and the pivotal issue remained Gentiles. The center of his new gospel was the redemption of Gentiles by Christ—not by its polar opposite, observance of the Torah. Once the axis rotated 180 degrees, Christ replaced Torah as the gateway to salvation, not for Jews, but for Gentiles’ (2002: 62‒63; for more on this so-called ‘transvaluation’ model of conversion, see Gager 1981). ‘There is no doubt that Paul’s conversion was a dramatic turning point in his life’ (2002: 65). Paul’s conversion/transformation, which convinced him to take a Law-free message to Gentiles, ‘led to persistent and bitter opposition to him from within the Jesus movement itself’ (Gager 2002: 66). Those who opposed Paul were other Jews within the movement who retained the position—unlike, evidently, those Jews-in-Christ whom Paul may have earlier persecuted—that Gentiles, to join the ekklēsia, had first to convert fully to Judaism (2002: 66). This situation of argument internal to the Jesus movement about how to inte­ grate Gentiles gives the actual context for most of the negative remarks that Paul makes about circumcision and Torah (2002: 66‒73). Paul is against Gentiles-in-Christ Judaizing— voluntarily assuming some but not all of the commandments. (Hence his warning in Gal 5:3: ‘Every man who receives circumcision is bound to keep the whole law.’) Though because of his work among Gentiles—the direct result of his conversion—Paul himself ceases to observe Jewish law (1 Cor 9:20; Gaston 1987: 76–79; Stowers 1994: 156, 329; Gager 2000: 86), Paul did not, as later Christian tradition will hold, teach against Judaism per se. Rather, he saw the redemption of Gentiles through faith in Christ as the End-time realization of God’s promise to Abraham, ‘the father of many nations’ (Gen 17:4; Rom 4:17; Stowers 1994: 176–193; Gaston 1987: 45–63). The redemp­ tion of Israel, on the other hand, rests securely and irrevocably on the promises to the fa­ thers, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and so on (epangeliai, Rom 9:4; irrevocable gifts, 11:29; promises to the patriarchs, 15:8; Stowers 1994: 132–133). Paul thus ‘does not say, “All Israel will have faith in Christ” or “All Israel will become Christian”&. Paul never speaks of Israel’s redemption in terms of Christ’ (Gager 2002: 74–75). The fullness of the nations, through Christ, will enter into Israel’s redemption; and it is all of Jewish Israel that will be saved (Rom 11:26; cf. Staples 2011). Page 9 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021 Paul the ‘Convert’? Ethnicity, Eschatology, and ‘Conversion’ Their differences notwithstanding, these four modern interpretive positions—Call/Com­ mission, Supersessionist, New Perspective, and Sonderweg—all triangulate between the same three points of orientation available in Paul’s letters in order to define Paul’s ‘con­ version’. (A) Why did Paul persecute the early ekklēsia, why was Paul himself later perse­ cuted, and what is the relation between the two persecutions (2 Cor 11:23‒27; Gal 5:11, cf. 6.12)? (B) How did Paul’s experience of the risen Christ affect his subsequent beliefs and behaviour? (C) What, in light of this defining experience and his later mission, did Paul mean when he taught that ‘all Israel will be saved’ (Rom 11:26)? With few exceptions (notably Wright, who redefines the term), most of these scholars take Paul to be an apocalyptic thinker, expecting the return of Christ within his own lifetime (1 Thes 1:9‒10, 4:14‒17; 1 Cor 10:11, 15:51‒52; Rom 13:11‒12; Gager describes Paul’s es­ chatological commitment as ‘intense’ and ‘all-consuming’, 2000: 61–62). Especially after Stendahl, scholars by and large no longer focus on Paul’s supposed personal sense of sin­ fulness, frustration, and failure as read into Romans 7 to explain his turning to Christ. Es­ pecially after Sanders, scholars by and large avoid deploying gross caricatures of Second Temple Judaism to focus their explanations. (A strong tendency to imagine Judaism as Christianity’s diminished spiritual and moral opposite, however—particular rather than universal; ritually oriented rather than faith-oriented; exclusive rather than inclusive; fo­ cused on race, not grace [Wright again, 1993: 194, 240, 247]—still affects too much of the discourse.) Despite these commonalities, scholarly reconstructions, as we have seen, remain dis­ parate. Some of the confusion seems to be the historiographical consequence—embed­ ded, perhaps, in the very term ‘conversion’ itself—of thinking in terms of two distinct, even oppositional religious choices, ‘Judaism’ and ‘Christianity’, already available to Paul in the early 30s of the first century. ‘Conversion’ necessarily implies something about a person’s environment as much as about his mental state: a convert goes from something to something else. Thus we can say that in 386 Augustine converts from Manichaeism to Catholicism: both systems of religion are fully up and running. But can we say that Luther in 1516 converts from Roman Catholicism to Protestantism? Paul’s case is more like Luther’s than like Augustine’s: in c.34, when he experienced the risen Christ, there was no ‘Christianity’ (so too Gager 2002: 66; Stowers 1994: 23–26; Boyarin agrees, but his concept of Paul’s supposed ‘universalism’ retrojects a paradigmatic construction of later Christianity back into the mid-first-century context). And given that the first generation of the Jesus movement expected to be the only generation of the Jesus movement, how likely is it in any case that Paul went about establishing a radically new, absolutely unprece­ dented Gentile biblical community in opposition (or at least in contradistinction) to Ju­ Page 10 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021 Paul the ‘Convert’? daism? (Wright, who does hold that Paul did this, seems to see the problem, and so stretches out Paul’s timeframe, 1993: 251; 2001: 691–93.) On this point—the conceptual framework imported by using ‘Christianity’ for the period of the first generation—John Marshall notes: Using a category of ‘Christianity’ is fundamentally erroneous when interpreting Paul. It exercises a transformative influence&. By reading Paul’s writings as in­ stances of ‘Christianity’, the new, but later, religion is already retrojected onto the letters, the force of Paul’s eschatological conviction is blunted, and the specificity of his address to Gentiles is effaced. These effects of the term ‘Christianity’ are largely distorting in the way it takes over and transforms, christianizes, or simply eradicates Paul’s conviction at Rom 11.26 that ‘all Israel’ would be saved. (Marshall 2012: 6) Thinking with the term ‘religion’ risks anachronism no less. In antiquity, gods ran in the blood. Relations between heaven and earth, for Jews as for all other peoples, were com­ monly configured along ethnic lines: cult was an ethnic designation, and ethnicity was a cult designation (2010a: 235–40; Johnson Hodge 2007: 49–50; Stowers 1994: 23–29, 227– 250; Runesson 2008: 62–77). Gods typically revealed the protocols by which they were to be honoured (latreia), and their humans inherited these protocols across generations. In short, what moderns think of as ‘religion’ ancient people designated ‘ancestral custom’: paradosis tōn paterōn (cf. hoi patrikōn mou paradoseis, Gal 1:14), ta patria ethē, mos maiorum, hoi patrioi nomoi. ‘Piety’—the respectful preservation and enactment of offer­ ings prescribed by ancestral custom—went far towards ensuring the well-being of the city and of the empire no less than of the individual (e.g. Cicero, de legibus 1.12.30; Isaac 2004: 467 and nn. 121‒127). Proper cult pleased gods, and inclined them to be gracious. Improper cult made gods angry, and as a group gods did not hesitate to let their displea­ sure be known (Lane Fox 1987: 39). In other words, in antiquity—unlike in modernity—one’s ‘religion’, like one’s ethnicity, was considered ‘natural’, innate, given (Esler 2003: 40–76; Matlock 2012; Isaac 2004; Johnson Hodge 2007). For this reason, the idea of ‘conversion’ (as well as of ‘mission’) al­ so fits poorly in the ancient world: one could ‘change’ one’s gods no more easily than one could change one’s own blood or (a version of the same issue) one’s own ancestors (Fredriksen 2006). What we think of as ‘conversion’ (from paganism to Judaism, and vice versa) was articulated in antiquity as a person’s assuming allegiance to foreign customs, laws, and ancestors, and ‘abandoning’ one’s own family and patria (Tacitus, Hist. 5.1‒2; Schäfer 1997). Two legal events represent the closest analogies to such voluntary chang­ ing of pantheons: marriage (when the wife assumed allegiance to the gods and ancestors of the husband’s family, Plutarch Moralia 140D) and adoption (when the adopted son as­ sumed similar responsibilities; Johnson Hodge 2007: 29–31; Fredriksen 2010a: 243–244; Paul makes extensive use of this idea of adoption—not of ‘conversion’—to depict the inte­ gration of Gentiles into the community of the saved, hence his use of adelphos-language; see too Fredriksen 2010a: 242 and n. 24). But such committed, in principle permanent Page 11 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021 Paul the ‘Convert’? changes of allegiance between Jewish and other ancestral practices were relatively rare. For the most part, different peoples showed respect and courtesy to the gods of others without compromising their loyalty to their own gods. If ‘religion’ imports distortion when considering Paul’s letters, ‘monotheism’ does so no less. In antiquity, all gods were assumed to exist. This is so even for people—like ancient Jews and Christians—whom we habitually designate ‘monotheists’. Such people might designate their own god the highest or most powerful or best; but they knew that many other gods, lesser in power, ranged closer to hand. These lower gods, often designated by both pagans and Jews as daimonia (cf. Ps 95:5 LXX; 1 Cor 10:18‒21), typically associated and identified with particular places and ethnic groups; they also savoured blood sacri­ fices. (For this reason, non-Jews might designate the Jewish god a ‘demon’, e.g., Augus­ tine, c. Faustum 18.2.) Lines of kinship diplomacy between cities and peoples—such as the syngeneia created by Second Temple Jews between Jerusalem and Sparta (Josephus, AJ 1.240‒241, 12.226; 1 Macc 12:21; 2 Macc 5:9)—could be established by appealing to these gods as common ancestors to the parties of a treaty. (For the Sparta‒Jerusalem con­ nection, Heracles and a granddaughter of Abraham were mobilized; Jones 1999: 72–80.) Displays of courtesy to gods not one’s own went far in establishing good relations be­ tween heaven and earth, and between one human group and another. Thus Jews, living in the cities of the diaspora, showed respect (but not full cult) to foreign gods (Barclay 2015); and pagans, whether in diaspora synagogues or at Jerusalem’s temple, showed re­ spect to the Jewish god (Fredriksen 2010a: 237–238 and nn. 11‒14). Ancient people lived and moved within a god-congested universe, and they knew it. This is the social world, numinous as well as human, in which Paul lived, both as a ‘perse­ cutor’ of the ekklēsia and later as its champion. When Paul took his mission in partibus gentium, he encountered these lesser gods as he encountered their people. And since he told their people to stop honouring the gods’ images and to cease participating in sacri­ fices to them, Paul (naturally) got on the gods’ bad side. It was a cost of discipleship. These lower cosmic gods, the archontes tou aiōnos toutou, had crucified the son of Paul’s god (1 Cor 2:8); now they persecuted Paul and Paul’s Christ-following Gentiles, all of whom thereby shared in the sufferings of Christ. The theos tou aiōnos toutou had blinded the minds of those who refused Paul’s message (2 Cor 4:4). The deities formerly wor­ shipped by his congregations in Galatia, he says, are not ‘gods by nature’ but simply cos­ mic light-weights, stoicheia unworthy of fear or worship (Gal 4:8‒9). Such gods in fact are mere daimonia, subordinate deities, ‘demons’ (1 Cor 10:20‒21). ‘Indeed, there are many theoi and many lords’, he tells his Corinthians (8:5‒6); but soon, these lower powers— every archē and every exousia and every dynamis—will themselves acknowledge the god of Israel when Christ defeats them and establishes the Kingdom of his father (15:24‒27; for lexicography, see BDAG; cf. the ‘principalities and powers’ of Eph 6:12). In the End, these beings, wherever they are—above the earth or upon the earth or below the earth— will acknowledge the returning Jesus (Phil 2:10). The parousia of Christ, in short, besides raising the dead and transforming the living (1 Cor 15:23, 51‒54), would bring about a Götterdämmerung for the Hellenistic cosmos. Page 12 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021 Paul the ‘Convert’? How had Paul come to his conviction that the gods of the nations were about to submit to the son of his god? He inferred it, he says, from his witness to the risen Christ: [Christ] appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve&. then to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all&. he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the ekklēsia of God & Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?&. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins&. But Christ has in fact been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep&. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his [second] coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the End, when he delivers the Kingdom to God the Father after destroying every archē and every exousia and every dynamis. For he must reign until he has put all his ene­ mies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is Death&. Lo, I tell you a mystery! We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall all be changed&. Marana tha! (1 Cor 15:5‒ 21, emphasis added) This is the experience that scholars variously designate Paul’s ‘conversion’ or his ‘call’. We cannot know what it was that Paul saw. And his language when he speaks of this event in Galatians—that ‘God revealed his son in me (en emoi)’—might be taken to imply a men­ tal rather than a visual apprehension. But the cognitive content of Paul’s vision is clear. He realized what time it was on God’s clock: the End of the ages was at hand. Paul’s vision, and the apocalyptic conviction that it conveyed, united him with those Christ-following Jews in Damascus whom he had originally ‘persecuted’: indeed, they would have been its source. The ‘persecution’ Paul gave was probably the same as what he eventually got, namely, disciplinary flogging, up to the maximum allowed, thirty-nine lashes (2 Cor 11:24; cf. Hultgren 1976; Fredriksen 1991: 548–550). This means as well that the objects of his actions could only have been other Jews who still associated with the synagogue: as Sanders famously observed on this issue, ‘punishment implies inclusion’ (1983: 192, emphasis original). As both agent and recipient of such discipline, Paul stood within synagogue communities. What had motivated Paul, and the diaspora synagogue community on whose behalf he acted, to subject Jewish Christ-followers to such punitive discipline? As we have seen, scholars speculate either that these Christ-following Jews were themselves no longer Law-observant, or that they affronted and alarmed the larger synagogue community by accepting Gentiles into the ekklēsia without requiring that these Gentiles be Law-obser­ vant. But the normal, widespread, and long-lived synagogue practice of receiving inter­ ested pagans as god-fearers makes this second explanation extremely implausible: Why object to the ekklēsia’s following the same practice as did the synagogue itself (not to mention, mutatis mutandis, the temple in Jerusalem)? Page 13 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021 Paul the ‘Convert’? We are left then with the first speculation: Paul and his synagogue flogged these Christfollowing Jews because they were no longer living according to Torah. But this answer is generated by circular reasoning, the widespread scholarly conviction that Paul himself, after his experience of the risen Christ, also ceased to observe Torah; and by the even more widespread conviction that Law-observance is, precisely, what distinguishes Chris­ tianity from Judaism. If we bracket out this speculation—unwarranted, as we shall shortly see—much of the warrant for thinking that the Jews in the ekklēsiai that he persecuted were likewise ‘Law-free’ also dissolves. We should focus for explanation on what we know, not on what we do not know. And what we know beyond doubting from Paul’s letters is that Christ-fearing Gentiles had to re­ nounce the worship of their native gods, and that in so doing they were not to assume Jewish ancestral practices. How would he, and those who were apostles before him, have come to such a concept? From long-standing Jewish traditions about the fate of Gentiles at the End of the Age. These traditions were mixed, some negative and exclusive, some positive and inclusive; both sometimes appearing within the same texts. But the tradition that mattered to the new movement—as to later rabbinic Judaism—was the one that fore­ told the nations’ inclusion, together with a redeemed Israel, once God’s Kingdom dawned (Fredriksen 1991: 543–548 with many references; Donaldson 2007: esp. 499‒512). This inclusive eschatological Jewish tradition about receiving pagans into the Kingdom might seem little different from the inclusive non-eschatological Jewish practice of receiv­ ing pagans into diaspora synagogues. But there was a crucial difference, one that throws the diaspora Jesus movement with its apocalyptic message into sharper relief. The synagogue’s prosēlytoi were no longer pagans: as ‘converts’, they were Jews of a special kind. The synagogue’s god-fearers or Judaizers, on the other hand, were ‘active’ pagans: they worshipped the gods native to them, however many other gods (including Israel’s god) they might add on. But the Kingdom’s pagans were a special and a purely theoretical category: they were ex-pagan pagans or (to use the wiggle-room made available by our two English words for the single Greek ethnē), they were ex-pagan Gentiles. When the Lord of the Universe revealed himself in glory, say these Jewish apocalyptic texts, the na­ tions would destroy their idols, repudiate their gods, and worship Israel’s god together with Israel (e.g., Isa 2:2‒4; Ps Sol 7:31‒41; 1 Enoch 91:14; Tob 14:5‒6; Fredriksen 1991: 544–546; Donaldson 2007: 499–506). Such ‘ex-pagan pagans’ originally had had only a literary life: embedded in these prophet­ ic texts, they were an apocalyptic trope, and an apocalyptic hope. They do not appear as a social reality until the Jesus movement began to encounter significant numbers of inter­ ested Gentiles, which is to say, once the movement established itself in the diaspora. This is the apocalyptic tradition that informs the first generation’s ‘Gentile policy’, which was operative even in those communities not founded by Paul (Damascus; Antioch; Rome). Knowing what time it was on history’s clock, racing in the (for all they knew) brief wrin­ kle in time between Christ’s resurrection and his parousia, seeing in the pneumatic be­ haviour of their new Gentile members confirmation of their own eschatological convic­ tions, these Jewish apostles (as, eventually, Paul) welcomed these ex-pagan Gentiles as Page 14 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021 Paul the ‘Convert’? adelphoi—brothers adopted into God’s people kata pneuma, still distinct and different ka­ ta sarka (such adelphoi were not circumcised). Three important inferences from this observation: (1) What does the Gentiles’ ‘Law-free’ inclusion in the mission tell us about the Jew­ ish observance of these Jewish apostles, and eventually of Paul? Absolutely nothing. The source of the Gentiles’ ‘Law-free-ness’ was Jewish apocalyptic expectation, not apostolic apostasy. To make the same point slightly differently: to hold that Jewish ancestral traditions were not incumbent upon non-Jews would have been a tautology in antiquity (and remains so today): only Israel is responsible for Israel’s law (Rom 9:4). And this position held true even when—or especially when—the non-Jews who joined the Jesus movement were viewed from the perspective of Jewish apocalyptic expectation. (2) What does the Gentiles’ ‘Law-free’ inclusion in the mission tell us about Paul ver­ sus his circumcising apostolic opponents in Galatia? In light of these prophetic tradi­ tions about the Gentiles’ eschatological inclusion in God’s Kingdom, Paul the apostle emerges as a Jewishly traditional figure. He too preserves the ethnic distinctions be­ tween Israel and the nations: no circumcision for Gentiles. He too holds that Gentiles do not need to join Israel (via conversion), only to join with Israel (by eschewing their native gods and disavowing their idols; Rom 15:8‒12). It is Paul’s anonymous compe­ tition, those who seek to evangelize via circumcision, who are the innovators; their mission to Gentiles to convert them to Judaism is the novum. Paul and the others like him (James, Peter, John, Barnabas) hew to a traditional line. (3) What does the Gentiles’ ‘Law-free’ inclusion, via pneumatic adoption, tell us about Paul as an ancient religious thinker? Paul’s Jewish apocalyptic convictions, even in their ‘Christian’ iteration, were also traditional in terms of the broader Mediterranean construction of divine/human relations: gods and their humans form family groups. If the nations, through an eschatological miracle, now worship Israel’s god alone, then even though they remain ethnically distinct, they are spiritually adopted; they now, like Israel, can also call God ‘Abba, Father’. Paul’s discourse of ethnicity allows for difference as well as for integration, diversity as well as unity (Johnson Hodge 2007: 149–153). If it is indeed the case, as I have argued here, that a ‘Law-free’ mission to Gentiles, since based in and on Jewish apocalyptic traditions, implies nothing about the level of Jewish observance on the part of those apostles bringing the message—if indeed the Gentiles’ in­ clusion in itself gives us no reason to speculate that these apostles were not Jewishly ob­ servant—then we still have to answer our question: Why then did Paul initially persecute the ekklēsia? And why, later, did the synagogue persecute Paul? We return to our earlier observation about the relation between gods and humans in an­ tiquity: the fact that ancient gods ran in the blood meant that people were born into their obligations to particular deities. Pagans who joined the Jesus movement in principle had to cease honouring their native gods with cult—which would make the god(s) angry. Be­ Page 15 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021 Paul the ‘Convert’? cause these non-sacrificing pagans refused to honour their gods, the Tiber might over­ flow or the Nile might not, the earth might move or the sky might not (Tertullian, Apol. 40.2). ‘No rain, because of the Christians!’ (Augustine, civ. Dei 2.3). The problem with Christ-fearing Gentiles, in the eyes of the pagan majority, was not that these people were ‘Christian’, but that they were still Gentiles. That is to say, the problem was that, whatev­ er the new religious practices that these people chose to assume, they were nonetheless, in the eyes of their neighbours, still obligated to their native gods as well. Conversion to Judaism—which had the same effect in terms of neglect of sacrifice to na­ tive gods—was tolerated, if resented, because Judaism itself was familiar, and widely rec­ ognized as ancient and ancestral, the two criteria of respectable cult. By these same cri­ teria, however—especially early on, in the middle decades of the first century—what would become Gentile Christianity was, precisely, nothing (see too Sanders 2010: 67 and n. 26). In the first generation, there is no term for these anomalous pagans: by century’s end, they will be identified by a Latin-root term, Christianoi (Townsend 2008). For this same reason, we have no Jewish term for these people either: since they were neither proselytes nor god-fearers, they fit no previously known social category. Paul, who calls them hagioi (a Temple referent, Fredriksen 2010a: 244–249; Horn 2007), also uses the same term for them as for their idol-worshipping kinsmen: ethnē. Not requiring complete affiliation with Judaism via circumcision, insisting nonetheless that native cult be renounced, the early apostles walked these Christ-fearing pagans into a social and religious no-man’s land. These apostles themselves as well as their Gentiles may not have been too worried: after all, Christ was on the verge of returning, of glori­ ously summing up the ages, and of submitting all to the Kingdom of his father. But the pa­ gan majority was worried. The anger of their gods would affect everyone. The problem with the ekklēsia’s Gentiles, in the eyes of the Gentile majority, was that they were de­ viant pagans. Their impious behaviour put the whole larger community at risk (Fredrik­ sen 2010b: 25–39, 88–98; Goodman 2005: 376–387). Jews who were Christians in later centuries are invisible in the evidence for pagan antiChristian persecutions: Jews had long had the option not to sacrifice to the gods of the majority. (For this reason, reports Eusebius, a Gentile Christian during a period of pagan persecution had considered converting to Judaism, in order to be spared harassment as a Gentile, HE 6.12, 1.) But in the early decades of the new movement, Jewish apostles were targeted—hence Paul’s being beaten with rods three times (2 Cor 11:25), a Roman pun­ ishment—precisely because they were raising pagan anxieties by drawing pagans away from their ancestral practices, something that the synagogues with their god-fearers had never done. For this same reason diaspora synagogues subjected Jewish apostles to disci­ plinary flogging, up to ‘thirty-nine lashes’. Such a destabilizing and inflammatory message —no more latreia to the gods!—radiating from the synagogue could make the larger Jew­ ish urban community itself the target of local anxieties and resentments. Alienating the gods put the city at risk; alienating the pagan majority put the synagogue at risk, espe­ cially when the behaviour occasioning that risk—urging affiliated Gentiles to eschew tra­ Page 16 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021 Paul the ‘Convert’? ditional cult for exclusive devotion to the god of Israel—was so universally associated with Jews themselves. This real and serious threat—aggressive pagan anxieties caused by fear of divine anger— was the reason both for Paul’s giving this synagogue discipline and for his getting this synagogue discipline. And the social situation that called forth these persecutions—the committed response of the ekklēsia’s pagans to the apocalyptic demand that they re­ nounce the worship of their own gods—had everything to do with the early apostles’ vi­ sion of the risen Christ, which served for them as a vindication of Jesus of Nazareth’s core message: the Kingdom of God was at hand. Jewish apocalyptic convictions, not some imagined apostasy, stand to either side of Paul’s Damascus experience, provide its con­ tent, and contextualize his own subsequent activity as an apostle to Gentiles. To speak of Paul’s advocacy of these convictions as his ‘conversion’ rather than as his ‘call’ introduces a level of high contrast that inevitably ends up refracted through the is­ sue of ‘Judaism’/‘Christianity’ or (its coded form) ‘particularism’ vs. ‘universality’ (Brakke 2001; Johnson Hodge 2007: 149–153; Eisenbaum 2009: 142). Paul the itinerant Jewish apocalyptic visionary thus becomes Paul the Christian theologian. His own highly charged statements about the Law—that he has ‘died’ to the Law (Gal 2:19), or that he lives ‘as a Jew’ in order to win Jews (1 Cor 9:20), or that he regards his former achievements in liv­ ing Jewishly as ‘refuse’ (skubala) compared with the value of knowing Christ (Phil 3:8)— are wrested out of their context of addressing pagans about his mission to pagans, and taken as his personal repudiation of Law observance (Fredriksen 2014). His insistence that Gentiles-in-Christ not circumcise is seen as his commitment to universalism and uni­ ty, instead of what it is, the preservation kata sarka of Gentile/Jewish difference. (Paul thinks in terms of a single generation, and he does not preach epispasm.) The core mes­ sage of his Gentile mission transforms from ‘No more latreia to daimonia!’ to ‘Do not do the works of the Law!’ And Paul the apostle himself becomes Law-free, which in turn be­ comes the reason why synagogues go after him. Because of this habitual high contrast between Law and Gospel, we overemphasize the degree to which Paul felt (or actually was) persecuted by diaspora synagogues. Often, that overemphasis leads us to overstate or to construct a much greater degree of differ­ ence between Paul’s Jewish practice and that of (his host?) synagogue communities. We need to take Paul at his word, and so widen our view of his ‘persecutors’. He feels no less oppressed by Gentiles, he says in 2 Corinthians 11. Wind, weather, and water also ‘perse­ cute’ him: these are the domain of lower gods. And he feels much more persecuted by his superhuman cosmic opposition, all of those divine entities whose active existence our at­ tachment to the idea of modern monotheism makes harder to see. The issue, for Paul, is not the Law, but Christ’s impending victory over these gods. Paul’s worst enemies, in short, are also the chief enemies of Christ. Victory is assured, though salvation is not yet. Christ will return in triumph, the plērōma of the Gentiles will come in, and God will stop his providential hardening of the majority of Israel, so that all Israel will be saved (Rom 11:25‒26). (On this summary reference to all humanity in terms of the seventy Gentile na­ tions descended from Noah (Gen 10) and the twelve tribes of ‘all Israel,' long traditional Page 17 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021 Paul the ‘Convert’? by the time Paul uses it, see Scott 1995; Fredriksen 2017: 159-166.) True to his promises, God redeems his people Israel; true to the euangelion, he redeems those who were not his people through his son (Eisenbaum 2009: 250–255). Over the past several decades, and particularly within the past ten years, another way of looking at Paul has emerged. Sometimes referred to as ‘radical New Perspective schol­ ars’, or as the ‘Paul within Judaism’ school (Johnson Hodge 2007: 6–9; Eisenbaum 2009: 216–249; cf. Zetterholm 2009: 161–163), those scholars associated with this view com­ bine some of the signature elements prominent in several of the other interpretive ap­ proaches that we have looked at. (Beyond the work of Eisenbaum, Fredriksen, and John­ son Hodge mentioned here see, e.g., Nanos 1996; Elliott 1990, 1994; Runesson 2008.) Like the mid-twentieth-century Scandinavian scholars, they see Paul’s transformative ex­ perience not as his ‘conversion’, but as his commission and call. Like the Sonderweg scholars, they emphasize the Gentile audience of Paul’s letters, and his focus on the ques­ tion of how Gentiles relate to Jewish law. They see Paul as thinking in terms of ethnicities rather than as attempting to somehow transcend, evade, or undo them. But the particular commitment of the ‘radicals’ is to the thoroughgoing Jewish interpretive context and content of Paul’s message and mission. In this respect they take their cue from Paul himself. In his own view, Paul was always a Jew, in both phases of his life. In fact—and again in his own view—Paul was always an excellent Jew in both phases of his life. Before receiving his call, ‘I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people’ (Gal 1:14); ‘As to righteousness under the Law, I was blameless’ (Phil 3:6). And given his own understanding of the message of Christ, Paul was also convinced that he was a superior Jew: chosen before birth by God himself to be an apostle to the Gentiles (Gal 1:15‒16); empowered by God’s own spirit to prophesy and to teach (1 Cor 14 passim); superior to other missionaries to an extraordinary degree on account of his fortitude in suffering (2 Cor 11 passim) and on account of his elevated visions and revela­ tions (2 Cor 12:1‒5). ‘By the grace of God I am what I am’, Paul proclaimed, adding (with no false modestly) ‘and God’s grace toward me was not in vain’ (1 Cor 15:10). Paul saw the message of Christ as absolutely synonymous with his native traditions and scriptures, thus with God’s ‘irrevocable’ promises to Israel, his ‘kinsmen by race’ (Rom 11:19; 9:3; cf. 15:8). Thinking of Paul as a ‘convert’ thus obscures the very perspective that he saw himself in. Whatever its putative utility as an etic term, ‘convert’ pulls Paul out of his own cultural, historical, and religious context. What changed most fundamentally for him in the wake of his experience of the risen Christ were not his religious convictions, but his sense of time, or rather his sense of the times. Was Paul called or converted, then, to the Gentile mis­ sion? To avoid anachronism and false contrasts, the better assessment is ‘called’. Suggested Reading E. P. Sanders, Paul: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) provides a good quick overview. Page 18 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021 Paul the ‘Convert’? P. Fredriksen, SIN: The Early History of an Idea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 22–56 , places Paul both in his apocalyptic context and in his Hellenistic urban one. K. Stendahl’s article, ‘Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West’, Harvard Theo­ logical Review 56 (1963): 199–215, remains fundamental. Bibliography Barclay, J. M. G. (2015). Paul and the Gift (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans). Betz, H. D. (1979). Galatians (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress). Boyarin, D. (1994). A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press). Brakke, D. (2001). ‘Jewish Flesh and Christian Spirit in Athanasius of Alexandria’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 9: 453–481. Dahl, N. A. (1977 [1956]). ‘The Missionary Theology in the Epistle to the Romans’, in Studies in Paul (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers), 70‒90. —— (1977 [1972]). ‘The Future of Israel’, in Studies in Paul (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers), 137–158. —— (1991 [1953]). ‘The Messiahship of Jesus in Paul’, in D. H. Juel (ed.), Jesus the Christ: The Historical Origins of Christological Doctrine (Minneapolis: Fortress Press), 15‒25. Donaldson, T. L. (2006). ‘Jewish Christianity, Israel’s Stumbling and the Sonderweg Read­ ing of Paul’, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 29: 27–54. —— (2007). Judaism and the Gentiles: Jewish Patterns of Universalism (to 135 CE) (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press). Dunn, J. D. G. (1998). The Theology of the Apostle Paul (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans). —— (2008). The New Perspective on Paul, revised edn. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans). Eisenbaum, P. (2009). Paul Was Not a Christian (New York: HarperCollins). Elliott, N. (1990). The Rhetoric of Romans (Sheffield: JSOT Press). —— (1994). Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books). Esler, P.F. (2003). Conflict and Identity in Romans: The Social Setting of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis: Fortress Press). Fredriksen, P. (1986). ‘Paul and Augustine: Conversion Narratives, Orthodox Traditions, and the Retrospective Self’, Journal of Theological Studies 37: 3–34. Page 19 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021 Paul the ‘Convert’? —— (1988). ‘Beyond the Body/Soul Dichotomy: Augustine on Paul against the Manichees and Pelagians’, Recherches augustiniennes 23: 87–114. —— (1991). ‘Judaism, the Circumcision of Gentiles, and Apocalyptic Hope: Another Look at Galatians 1 and 2’, Journal of Theological Studies 42: 532–564. —— (2006). ‘Mandatory Retirement: Ideas in the Study of Christian Origins whose Time has Come to Go’, Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 35: 231–246. —— (2010a). ‘Judaizing the Nations: The Ritual Demands of Paul’s Gospel’, New Testa­ ment Studies 56: 232–252. —— (2010b). Augustine and the Jews (New Haven: Yale University Press). —— (2014). ‘How Later Contexts Affect Pauline Content, or, Retrospect is the Mother of Anachronism’, in J. Schwartz and P. Tomson (eds.), Jews and Christians in the First and Second Century: Historiographical Questions (CRINT; Leiden: Brill): 15-51. —— (2017). Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle (New Haven: Yale University Press). Gager, J. G. (1981). ‘Some Notes on Paul’s Conversion’, New Testament Studies 27: 697– 704. —— (1983). The Origins of Anti-Semitism (New York: Oxford University Press). —— (2000). Reinventing Paul (New York: Oxford University Press). —— (2002). ‘Paul, the Apostle of Judaism’, in P. Fredriksen and A. Reinhartz (eds.), Jesus, Judaism, and Christian Anti-Judaism (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press), 56‒76. Gaston, L. (1987). Paul and the Torah (Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press). Goodman, M. (2005). ‘The Persecution of Paul by Diaspora Jews’, in J. Pastor and M. Mohr (eds.), The Beginnings of Christianity (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi Press), 376‒387. Hill, C. E. (2008). ‘On the Source of Paul’s Problem with Judaism’, in F. Udoh and S. Hes­ chel (eds.), Redefining First-Century Jewish and Christian Identities (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press), 311‒318. Johnson Hodge, C. (2007). If Sons, Then Heirs: A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in Paul’s Letters (New York: Oxford University Press). Horn, F. W. (2007). ‘Paulus und der Herodianische Tempel’, New Testament Studies 53: 184–203. Hultgren, A. J. (1976), ‘Paul’s Pre-Christian Persecutions of the Church: Their Purpose, Locale, and Nature’, Journal of Biblical Literature 95: 97–111. Page 20 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021 Paul the ‘Convert’? Hurtado, L. W. (1993). ‘Convert, Apostate or Apostle to the Nations: The “Conversion” of Paul in Recent Scholarship’, Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses 22: 273–284. Isaac, B. H. (2004). The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (Princeton, NJ: Prince­ ton University Press). Jones, C. P. (1999). Kinship Diplomacy in the Ancient World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Kümmel, W. G. (1929). Römer 7 und die Bekehrung des Paulus (Leipzig: Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung). Lane Fox, R. (1987). Pagans and Christians (New York: Alfred I. Knopf). Marshall, J. W. (2012). ‘Misunderstanding the New Paul: Marcion’s Transformation of the Sonderzeit Paul’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 20: 1–29. Matlock, R. B. (2012). ‘“Jews by Nature”: Paul, Ethnicity and Galatians’, in D. Burns and J. W. Rogerson (eds.), Far from Minimal: Celebrating the Work and Influence of Philip R. Davies (LHB/OTS 484; London: T. & T. Clark), 304‒315. Moore, G. F. (1921). ‘Christian Writers on Judaism’, Harvard Theological Review 14: 197– 254. Munck, J. (1959). Paul and the Salvation of Mankind (Atlanta: John Knox Press). —— (1967). Christ and Israel: An Interpretation of Romans 9‒11 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press). Nanos, M. (1996). The Mystery of Romans: The Jewish Context of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis: Fortress Press). Parkes, J. (1961 [1934]). The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue: A Study in the Origins of Antisemitism. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America). Pfaff, E. (1942). Die Bekehrung des h. Paulus in der Exegese des 20. Jahrhunderts (Rome: Officium Libri Catholici). Räisänen, H. (1983). Paul and the Law. (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr). Roetzel, C. J. (1998). Paul: The Man and the Myth (Columbia, SC: University of South Car­ olina Press). Runesson, A. (2008). ‘Inventing Christian Identity: Paul, Ignatius, and Theodosius I’, in B. Holmberg (ed.), Exploring Early Christian Identity (WUNT 226; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck), 59‒92. Sanders, E. P. (1977). Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Minneapolis: Fortress Press). —— (1983). Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Minneapolis: Fortress Press). Page 21 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021 Paul the ‘Convert’? —— (2002). ‘Jesus, Ancient Judaism, and Modern Christianity: The Quest Continues’, in P. Fredriksen and A. Reinhartz (eds.), Jesus, Judaism, and Christian Anti-Judaism (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press), 31‒55. —— (2010). ‘Paul’s Jewishness’, in T. G. Casey and J. Taylor (eds.), Paul’s Jewish Matrix (Malwah, NJ: Paulist Press), 51‒73. Schäfer, P. (1997). Judeophobia: Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World. (Cam­ bridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Schoeps, H. J. (1961). Paul: The Theology of the Apostle in Light of Jewish Religious Histo­ ry (Philadelphia: Westminster Press). Scott, J. M. (1995). Paul and the Nations (WUNT 84; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck). Segal, A. 1990. Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven: Yale University Press). Simon, M. (1986 [1948]). Verus Israel (New York: Oxford University Press). Stendahl, K. (1963). ‘Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West’, Harvard Theo­ logical Review 56: 199–215. ——(1995). Final Account: Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Minneapolis: Fortress Press). Stowers, S. (1994). A Re-reading of Romans. (New Haven: Yale University Press). Townsend, P. (2008). “Who Were the First Christians? Jews, Gentiles, and the Chris­ tianoi,” in E. Iricinischi and H.M. Zelletin (eds), Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck): 212-230. Wright, N. T. (1993). The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press). —— (2001). The Letter to the Romans (Nashville: Abingdon Press). —— (2013). Paul and the Faithfulness of God. 2 vols. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press). Zetterholm, M. (2009). Approaches to Paul (Minneapolis: Fortress Press). Zoccali, C. (2008). ‘“And so all Israel will be saved”: Competing Interpretations of Romans 11.26 in Pauline Scholarship’, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 30: 289–311. Paula Fredriksen Paula Fredriksen, the Aurelio Professor of Scripture emerita at Boston University, since 2009 has been Distinguished Visiting Professor of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Page 22 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021 Paul the ‘Convert’? Sciences, she is the author, most recently, of Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle (Yale Universi­ ty Press, 2017), and When Christians Were Jews (Yale University Press, 2018). Page 23 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 15 October 2021