Who Made Early Christianity?

The Jewish Lives of the Apostle Paul

John Gager, Jr.

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780231539371
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Christianity

In this historical and theological study, John G. Gager undermines the myth of the Apostle Paul's rejection of Judaism, conversion to Christianity, and founding of Christian anti-Judaism. He finds that the rise of Christianity occurred well after Paul's death and attributes the distortion of the Apostle's views to early and later Christians.

Though Christian clerical elites ascribed a rejection-replacement theology to Paul's legend, Gager shows that the Apostle was considered a loyal Jew by many of his Jesus-believing contemporaries and that later Jewish and Muslim thinkers held the same view. He holds that one of the earliest misinterpretations of Paul was to name him the founder of Christianity, and in recent times numerous Jewish and Christian readers of Paul have moved beyond this understanding.

Gager also finds that Judaism did not fade away after Paul's death but continued to appeal to both Christians and pagans for centuries. Jewish synagogues remained important religious and social institutions throughout the Mediterranean world. Making use of all possible literary and archaeological sources, including Muslim texts, Gager helps recover the long pre-history of a Jewish Paul, obscured by recent, negative portrayals of the Apostle, and recognizes the enduring bond between Jews and Christians that has influenced all aspects of Christianity.

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WAS THE APOSTLE TO THE GENTILES THE FATHER OF CHRISTIAN ANTI-JUDAISM?

It was Paul who delivered the Christian religion from Judaism…

It was he who confidently regarded the Gospel as a new force abolishing the religion of the Law.

—ADOLF HARNACK, WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY?

FEW figures in Western history have been the subject of greater controversy than Saint Paul. Few have caused more dissension and hatred. None has suffered more misunderstanding at the hands of both friends and enemies. None has produced more animosity between Jews and Christians.¹

We know more about Paul—by far—than about any other figure in the first 150 years of the early Jesus-movement. And yet there remains a host of unanswered questions. One of these questions is how this hugely controversial figure wound up at the very center of the New Testament, where, of the twenty-seven writings, more than one-half are either by him or attributed to him or about him. How did the “apostle of the heretics” become the heart and soul of the Christian Bible?² How did this zealous Pharisee, who by his own admission had been an active persecutor of the early Jesus-movement, suddenly emerge as a fervent follower of the risen Christ? How are we to understand his role as the apostle to the Gentiles, for this is how he always refers to himself? Should we think of this dramatic transformation as a religious conversion? If so, from what to what? Did he, for example, turn his back on his former life as a Jew and become the spokesman, even the creator, of early Christian anti-Judaism?

Not surprisingly, given his enormous impact on later Christian history, it has proved exceedingly difficult to pin down the “real” Paul. Only one set of issues has yielded anything like a lasting consensus. Lloyd Gaston has written that “it is Paul who has provided the theoretical structure for Christian anti-Judaism from Marcion through Luther and F. C. Baur down to Bultmann.”³ In short, Paul was the father of Christian anti-Judaism. And, I should add, for Harnack and many others this was a good thing! For them, Judaism had in fact been abandoned both by God and by history, because it was, in a word, a bad religion. And it had been replaced by a good religion, the only true faith—Christianity.

A brief outline of the traditional view of Paul as the father of anti-Judaism would look like this:

• Paul was a convert from Judaism to Christianity.

• His role as apostle to the Gentiles caused him to turn against his former life as a Jew.

• Underlying his new calling as an apostle to the Gentiles lies his belief that the Jews, having turned their back on Jesus as their Messiah, have been rejected by God as a disobedient people and replaced by Christians as the new people of God.

• Paul thus stands as the father of Christian anti-Judaism, the theologian of the rejection-replacement view. He also stands as the true founder of Christianity. These two stances are intimately connected.

• Paul was installed at the center of the New Testament precisely because he, like the later Christian communities that shaped these Christian scriptures and produced the New Testament, shared the rejection-replacement view of Judaism.

• As a Christian apostle, he repudiated the Law of Moses, the Torah, not just for Gentiles but for Jews as well.

• All of this is clearly laid out in his letters.

Despite the reigning consensus on these issues, it has long been recognized that it contains major difficulties. On every one of the preceding statements, Paul’s letters offer up totally contradictory evidence. To illustrate these contradictions, consider two sets of texts, drawn from his letters: one set (A) anti-Israel, or anti-circumcision, or anti-Law; the other (B) pro-Israel, pro-circumcision, or pro-Law set.

A. THE ANTI-ISRAEL SET

“For all who rely on works of the Law (= Torah of Moses) are under a curse.” (Gal 3:10)

“Now it is evident that no man is justified before God by the Law.” (Gal 3:11)

“For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.” (Gal 6:15)

“For no human being will be justified in his sight by works of the Law, since through the Law comes knowledge of sin.” (Rom 3:20)

“Israel who pursued righteousness which is based on the Law did not succeed in fulfilling that Law.” (Rom 9:31)

“As regards the gospel, they are enemies of God, for your sake.” (Rom 9:31)

“But their minds were hardened; for to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day, whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their mind; but when a man turns to the Lord the veil is removed.” (2 Cor 3:14–15)

B. THE PRO-ISRAEL SET

“What is the advantage of the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way.” (Rom 3:1)

“Do we overthrow the Law through faith? By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the Law.” (Rom 3:31)

“What shall we say? That the Law is sin? By no means.” (Rom 7:7)

“Thus the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.” (Rom 7:12)

“To the Israelites belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the Law, worship in the Temple, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ/Messiah.” (Rom 9:4)

“Has God rejected his people? By no means.” (Rom 11:1)

“All Israel will be saved.” (Rom 11:26)

“Is the Law then against the promises of God. Certainly not!” (Gal 3:21)

Now the problem emerges. Point by point, the two sets contradict each other:

Circumcision is of great value; it counts for nothing.

The Law is holy; it places its followers under a curse and cannot justify them before God.

All Israel will be saved; they are the enemies of God and have failed to fulfill their own Law.

Here is a major dilemma for pious readers of Paul. No one wants an apostle riddled with contradictions. While many readers, including many New Testament scholars, simply ignore the problem, most fall into the category of what I call the “contradictionists,” that is, those who recognize the tensions between the two sets of passages and set out to reconcile them. Among contradictionist readers, one finds four basic techniques for resolving these tensions—psychology, resignation, elimination, and subordination.

The psychological technique holds that Paul was lost in a hopeless quagmire of intellectual and emotional inconsistency. The converted ex-Pharisee sought to have it both ways. He had abandoned the Law and Judaism, but could not bring himself to admit it. He was simply unwilling to face the radical consequences of his new commitments, namely, that the Law really was obsolete, that circumcision really was of no value, and that being a Jew no longer counted for anything. The contradictory passages are thus assigned to opposite poles of his anguished psyche—the anti-Israel statements reflecting his “real” views as a Christian convert, the pro-Israel statements preserving his unresolved and yet-to-be-discarded loyalties as a Jew. Robert Hamerton-Kelly has written that Paul held on to Israel’s role in the divine plan of salvation “due to personal factors” and “a case of nostalgia overcoming his judgment.”⁴

The resigned technique simply leaves the contradictions as they stand, a position adopted by the Finnish scholar Heikki Räisänen.⁵ Paul was simply incapable of straightforward, logical, consistent thinking. One consequence of this technique, and thus a significant handicap for many Christian readers, is that his thought is held to be of little theological value for Christians in their relations to Jews. Paul’s thinking is such a muddle that it yields no useful guidelines for modern Christians.

By far the most radical technique is to remove the offending passages altogether. Typical of this approach is the Australian scholar J. C. O’Neill’s treatment of Romans and Galatians. His basic view is that both of these letters were expanded and corrupted by later editors who profoundly misunderstood the apostle. Of Romans, O’Neill writes that its thought is “so obscure, so complicated, so disjointed, that it is hard to see how Paul could have exerted such an influence on his contemporaries if we assume that its preserved form represents his real thinking.”⁶ And so he proceeds to eliminate extensive passages on the grounds that they originated among post-Pauline, even un-Pauline, commentators: “If the choice lies between supposing that Paul was confused and contradictory and supposing that his text has been commented on and enlarged, I have no hesitation in choosing the second.”⁷

The fourth technique, by far the most common, has been to subordinate the pro-Israel set, leaving the anti-Israel version as the true Paul. And for those who subscribe to the view of Paul as the father of Christian anti-Judaism, this means that the pro-Israel passages must somehow be explained away or just plain forgotten.

Until recently, few readers have bothered to consider an even more radical solution to these difficulties. Until recent times, few have entertained the possibility that the apparent inconsistencies of Paul’s letters might be located not in him but in his later readers, in us. Why is it, I have often asked myself, that few have ever bothered—even as an experiment—to begin with the pro-Israel texts and to see whether the anti-Israel passages can be made to fit in? Put differently, almost no one has wondered whether it might be possible to construct a uniform and clear picture of Paul’s teachings about the Law and Israel without convicting him of contradictory thinking, without subjecting his letters to radical excisions or pop psychology, while at the same time doing full justice to both sets of passages.

Following in the footsteps of Krister Stendahl and Lloyd Gaston, I argue here not only that such a picture is possible but that it is the only picture that makes sense of everything we know about Paul, his letters, and his times.⁸ Beginning with the pro-Israel passages, I insist that Paul need not, indeed cannot, be read according to the contradictionists and that he is entirely innocent of all charges lodged against him by his anti-Jewish interpreters:

• He was not the father of Christian anti-Judaism.

• He was not the inventor of the rejection-replacement theory.

• He did not repudiate the Law of Moses for Israel.

• He did not argue that God had rejected Israel.

• His enemies and his audience were not Jews outside the Jesus-movement.

• He did not expect Jews to find their salvation through Jesus Christ.

• He was not a convert from Judaism…or to Christianity.

Obviously this will not be an easy task. Standing against me are not merely the obvious tensions between the two sets of texts but more than twenty centuries of reading Paul as the father of Christian anti-Judaism.

Standing with me are a number of recent readers, among them Jewish readers, who have set out to achieve the seemingly impossible—to reclaim Paul as a Jew and to reject the view of him as the father of Christian anti-Judaism.

WHERE DID WE GO WRONG?

By placing him at the heart of the New Testament, the churches established Paul—entirely against his own view of history—as the central figure in the subsequent history of Christianity and in its Bible, the New Testament. Entirely against his own expectations, he became the apostle, the supreme theological authority for every conceivable brand of Christianity, from then till now. But on one issue, virtually everyone agreed: he had rejected the Law and repudiated Israel. Of course there were exceptions. Jewish Christians, as we will see, took a different path. This made them heretics. And they took a negative view of Paul.

The dynamic at work here is a classic example of anachronistic reasoning. Since the recurrent message of the Christian communities that created the New Testament was the rejection-replacement view of Judaism, it stood to reason that Paul himself had to have been the spokesman, indeed, the originator of that view. From that time on, Christians and non-Christians alike have read Christian ant...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents 
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Was the Apostle to the Gentiles the Father of Christian Anti-Judaism?
• 2. The Apostle Paul in Jewish Eyes: Heretic or Hero?
• 3. Let’s Meet Downtown in the Synagogue: Four Case Studies
• 4. Two Stories of How Early Christianity Came To Be
• 5. Turning The World Upside Down: An Ancient Jewish Life of Jesus
• 6. Epilogue
• Notes
• Index