How Jewish do Jewish people think Paul was?

with Professor Daniel Langton

In this episode we think about Paul, famous for his conversion from Judaism to Christianity, and his identity from a Jewish perspective.

Additional Resources

Topic Recap

  • Historically, Jews have not been very interested in Paul until the modern period. 

  • In the modern period, after the Jewish reclamation of Jesus the Jew, Paul became the new face of the Gentile Church. A good way to defend against Christian criticisms of Judaism and the Law was to argue that Paul was not Jewish or had misunderstood the Law. 

  • Different Jewish commentators have criticised Paul's view of the law or his sense of faith in different ways, usually by focusing on his background or origins. Paul was born pagan and converted to Judaism; or he belonged to Hellenistic Judaism which was regarded as an inauthentic kind of Judaism; he believed that the messiah had come and that the Law could be transcended in the new messianic age, his background had been in Jewish mysticism. 

  • Popular Jewish views of Paul remain negative: as a self-hating Jew, the inventor of the Gentile Church, and/or as missionary. 

  • No Jews accepted that Paul's negative comments about the Law were correct. 

 

Key Biblical Texts

 

Glossary of Key Terms

  • Antinomianism - The belief that grace relieves Christians of the responsibility to adhere to the Law.

  • Emancipation - The rolling out of the political freedoms of citizenship to Jews throughout Europe and the USA in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

  • Epiphanius - Bishop of Salamis at the end of the fourth century who wrote a compendium of heresises. Often the quotations he used are the only remaining fragments we have of lost texts.

  • Gentile - A person who is not Jewish.

  • Gnosticism - An umbrella term used to describe the beliefs of a range of Jewish and Christian sects in the late first century, which may have little in common other than the emphasis on the pursuit of personal, spiritual knowledge, or gnosis.

  • Hellenistic Judaism - A form of Judaism in classical antiquity that combined Jewish religious tradition with elements of Greek culture.

  • Jewish Mysticism - A diverse tradition which attempts to understand God and God's world, and ultimately affect and change the divine realm, which may include experiential approaches such as chanting and meditation.

  • The Law - The Law, or Halakha, is the collective body of Jewish religous laws derived from the written and oral Torah. It is based on biblical commandments or mitzvot, Talmudic and Rabbinic laws which developed from them, and customs and traditions.

  • Legalism - Excessive adherence to law.

  • Messianic Age - The future period of time on Earth in which the messiah will reign and bring universal peace, justice and righteousness.

  • Pharisee - A member of the ancient Jewish group who were the forerunners of Rabbinic Judaism. Their focus on adherence to the oral Torah influenced their broader interpretation of the Law and Scripture.

  • Progressive Judaism - A variety of Jewish religious groups and movements which, since the nineteenth century, have sought to reconcile their faith with modernity. 

  • Rabbinic Judaism - The mainstream form of Judaism since the 6th Century, rooted in the belief that Moses recieved both the Written Torah and the Oral Torah from God. After the destruction of the Second Temple, the Oral Torah was recorded in the Talmud and other rabbinic texts.

  • Self-hating Jew - A term which is used to describe Jews whose own views are percieved to be antisemitic. It was brought into popular useage after Theodor Lessing's 1930 book Der jüdische Selbsthaß (Jewish Self-hatred).

  • Toldot Yeshu - An early Jewish text taken to be an alternative biography of Jesus of Nazareth.

  • Torah - The law of God as revealed to Moses and recorded in the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures.

 

Suggestions for Group Discussion

  • How important are the apostle Paul's' Jewish origins and context for understanding Christianity? 

  • Can Jewish views of the Torah be reconciled with Christian views of the Law? If not, how should Christians regard Judaism? 

  • Is talking about Paul a bridge or a barrier for improving interfaith relations?

 

Suggestions for Further Reading

  • ‘Paul in Modern Jewish Thought’, by Donald Hagner, in D. A. Hagner and M.J. Harris, eds, Pauline Studies; Essays Presented to F.F. Bruce

  • The Apostle Paul in the Jewish Imagination, by Daniel R. Langton

  •  ‘The Faith of Paul’, by Leo Baeck, in Journal of Jewish Studies (vol. III, 1952)

  • Two Types of Faith: A Study of the Interpenetration of Judaism and Christianity, by Martin Buber

  • Judaism and St. Paul; Two Essays, by  C.G. Montefiore 

  • ‘Saul of Tarsus,’ by Kaufmann Kohler, in Isadore Singer, ed, Jewish Encyclopaedia 

  • The Mythmaker; Paul and the Invention of Christianity, by Hyam Maccoby

  • Paul the Convert; the Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee, by Alan F. Segal

 

Other Resources