Paul Was Not a Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood Apostle | Dr. Pamela Eisenbaum

Hello everybody, welcome to another video fish by podcast. Today I am joined by professor Pamila Eisenbomb. Pamila Eisenbomb is the associate professor of biblical studies and Christian origins at I live school of theology in Denver Colorado and affiliate faculty of the center of Judeaic studies at the University of Denver. Galden masters of theological studies from Harvard Divinity School and a PhD from Columbia University. Eisenbomb is a national media expert on early Christianity and as a practicing Jew teaching in a Christian seminary has a unique perspective on the origins of Christianity. She is the author of

Paul Was not a Christian which has enjoyed a wide readership. Other books include the Jewish Heroes of Christian History, Hebrews 11 literary context and invitation to Romans. She is a contributor to the highly touted Jewish annotated New Testament and many essays on the Bible, ancient Judaism and the origins of Christianity. The video below. So go check it out. Recommended you too. So welcome to history podcast. Thanks. It's great to be with you. So, I want to start us off with this. When you say Paul wasn't a Christian, what do you mean by this? Do you

mean Paul's epistles never utilized the Greek word Christianos, i.e. Christian, or do you mean something more than that? Uh, that's already a very sophisticated uh question. So um uh but the answer at one level is very simple and the um it's essentially yes or no depending on how you started that question. Paul never uses the word Christianos. Nobody that we know of. Of course, we don't really have other uh sources um any sources as early as Paul of people who report being followers of Jesus. He would be the earliest. But so that term probably comes

into being around um the end of the first century, something of a guess, but um appears in the book of Acts. But um yes, he obviously was a follower of Jesus and there was some debate between myself and the publisher over the title of my book um because of possible confusion about that. But yes, I am not in denial that he was a follower of um Jesus, but that there's no religion called Christianity. And I thought um thinking of Paul as a Christian, it had caused a lot of confusion as a result of that language

connection. When do you think um before I get to other questions, when do you think that the term Cristianos emerged? Well, okay. So, there's a few different theories about that and the one or two that are the most concrete are the ones I don't think are very convincing. Um so I don't know how much time you want to spend on that but um so Um there is a Roman name Crestus often transliterated into English um as C reus common Roman name um we have a later Roman source um a basically a second early second century

Roman historian we're talking about Sutonius right yes Sutonius thanks right who reports on a rebellion. So you already know about this sounds like um under the reign of um Claudius by a figure named Crest. So some people think that that refers to Christ. So I think um it's not impossible. I think it unlikely for a few different reasons that are kind of technical. I think it's likely that since people often um in Latin and Greek can um call themselves a follower of something or someone who behaves in a certain way using someone else's using a

name of who that figure is, it's not that peculiar. Um so once people start understanding Christos, right? And so, as you know, that's the Greek word, just the simple Greek word meaning anointed. It wasn't originally Jesus last name. Um, but um at some point people do begin to kind of understand it almost as the equivalent of we understand a last name. So um so that has to happen for people to start calling other people Christristianos Because if they hear Yesus Christos like a lot of names I think that they get named that is those who

follow Jesus probably initially get that name from other people and then they I they appropriate the name for themselves. Um it happens a lot kind of like um you know those who understand themselves as gay that's initially a derogatory term that people um appropriate. So it it's likely it could have come from the outside and then just been appropriated. Um it's it could have been possible they could have just called themselves I don't know what would be um um yazianus um followers of Jesus um as I haven't called them in English but um I think

it presupposes a misunderstanding of the Greek word Christos which for me means that it's probably I can't imagine it being for Paul's time. I I would put it and I'm I'm guesstimating. I have to be honest, Jacob, because I don't have a source to point to, but it it has something to do with when you date the book of Acts. And there's a big debate about that now. I'm more of an observer um than um integral to that. But let's say I'd put it right around the year 100, but it's a guesstimate um because I

don't have a dated source I can point you to. So how does Paul become a Christian? So well I suppose the first answer is right he himself never has the word and so in his own lifetime he never does become one but he's a follower of Jesus. He becomes a Christian because obviously other followers of Jesus read his works and they first become I would almost say followers of Paul because there's lots of different people who understand Jesus in different sorts of ways. So eventually the Christianity that we know becomes Pauline Christianity. Pauline Christianity wins

the day. But before Paul and the way Paul thinks about Jesus accomplishes that extraordinary feat, we know from sources um um I'm sure you know this. I don't know if your listeners would know what I'll refer to as Q or the Gospel of Thomas or what I'd rather call a proto Gospel of Thomas. these early sayings gospels, they seem to understand Jesus in a way that's different than our canonical gospels and in a way that doesn't reflect Pauline Christianity. So if I by Pauline Christianity I mean something like that for Paul the most important thing

you need to know about Jesus is that he Um died for a reason um for our sake to use one of Paul's formulas and that he and that God raised him from the dead and that's the most important thing you know there's only a couple of times Paul refers to anything the historical Jesus said. So it's Paul's Paul as Paul becomes appropriated by others who now come more and more to understand themselves as those we'd call Christians. Paul is transformed into a Christian. Maybe a good parallel here and I do talk about it in some

version in my uh book is Luther. So you can think of Luther as a Protestant, right? And um the language of protesting the Christian church is already in play at the time of Luther, but there's not a branch of Christianity called Protestantism. But people often think of Luther as the first Protestant. But it's those after Luther who make him into such a figure, not Luther himself. What was August Augustine's perspective on Paul? So here I'm really influenced influenced by several people, but first and foremost by Paula Frederickson. And if you haven't had her on your

podcast, you should. Um but um She's both a scholar of Paul and a great scholar of Augustine. Um and Augustine has this he has the first narrated experience of a conversion that's something like that resembles what modern religious people feel and experience when they report relig conversions. So Augustine writes this book which many if they've heard of one if listeners have heard of one writing of Augustine it's probably a work called the confessions maybe the city of God but usually if you get assigned something in college it's usually the confessions and um this is a

sort of autobiographical sort of kind of an autobiographical work that St. Augustine wrote and he describes he's a spiritual seeker. He tried on a few different religions including manachianism and pl neoplatonism which is a religion at the time of Augustine not a philosophy and and then he comes to narrate his own embrace of Christianity and that transformation as he narrates it happens when he hears a voice calling to him. um from a tree which and under this tree is a book and the book is open Um to a page in Romans and it's this it

it has to do with um resisting the flesh and and for Augustine this becomes a kind of since Augustine wrestled profoundly with what polite British authors call concupisence and what Americans would call lust. Um, but here I'm just actually going to grab my sorry for leaning forward like that, my Greek Bible. Um, which has seen better days. Um, I might have to resort to buying a new one. Uh in any case, Augustine then becomes a very intense student of Paul before he becomes an intense student of the gospels. Because Augustine's a complicated thinker and if

you think about it, the stories of Jesus, the stories and incidents of Jesus, Jesus is not um one who pontificates a deep philosophy, right? Jesus speaks in parables uh at least in the synoptic gospels. In John he speaks in sort of obtuse discourses and metaphors. And whereas Paul um Paul's not a philosopher in the sense that um say Plutarch would be or Pho those are other um philosophers of the first century that would be contemporaries of Paul. But he Does in writing Paul in writing to the congregations that he writes to he has to explain

certain things and that involves him thinking through certain issues and because his letters are preserved early Christian intellectuals spend much more time fighting over Paul than they do over anything else. So Augustine comes to understand his own transformative experience through reading Paul's letters together with the narrative about Paul's own conversion as it's narrated in Acts. And so Augustine thinks that's what happened that what has happened to him in moving from basically at that time neoplatonism to Christianity is analogous to Paul moving from Judaism to Christianity. Augustine's not quite thinking through historically in the way that

I have about whether there's an institutional church or not at the time. Paul Augustine thinks that Paul leaves his Judaism behind for something else that Jesus represents. And um and and by the way, since Paul is the least of the apostles and we know that the first apostles know the historical Jesus from Augustine's point of view, Peter, James, Andrew, these guys are sort of representing the early church already. So there is a kind of institution that Augustine thinks exists that when Paul leaves behind his Judaism, he can move to some other kind of institutional structure.

So, how did how did Henistic Jews characterize Ptora? And how does 4Q MMT help us understand this reccharacterization? And did Paul reccharacterize the Torah the same way that they did? Okay, start with the beginning of your question. We're we're going to have to explain. I'm going to assume all your listeners don't know what 4QMT is, but I'd love to talk about it. Um, did you say explain what the Torah is to hellistic Jews first? Was that the first part? How do Hellenistic Jews recaracterize the Torah? Recaracterize the Torah. Okay. Okay. So, first let me say

that I think and maybe this was behind your question, but just to be sure, um that all Jews of Paul's era and all the Jews at least for a century or really more before the time of Paul, I would label Hellenistic Jews, even if they're not fluent in Greek. Um, by that I mean they're already under the influence of Greek ideas. So Paul and all these other Jews who never followed Jesus, who never have heard of Jesus in many cases, um are also henistic Jews and even if they never wrote in Greek. So that's an

important label. I I I want to because In older scholarship um scholars would sometimes only refer to Hellenistic Jews in Judaism um to refer to Jews who wrote in Greek. can others would not be hellistic Jews. So I just wanted to clarify that. So how do they reccharacterize the Torah? Um I would say although nobody says this explicitly until the Mishna. So now I'm jumping maybe a little bit forward. So the Mishna' be the first kind of canonical book rabbitic um book. Um so um by the way I I can't remember if I talk about

in this book but I sort of think of the Mishna and the New Testament as parallel. They're both responses to the literature of Israel and the religion of Israel and transformations of that religious tradition and literature in the Henistic era. Okay, I hope that isn't too much of um a mouthful or a distraction. But so one of the things that the rabbis say in the Mishna I think is already in evidence before that saying is recorded. And the saying is this that um that there are no more prophets. Uh the age of prophecy is dead.

And what the rabbis meant by that is there's no more scripture. There's the divine voice doesn't speak directly through humans anymore. The divine voice only speaks through the existing scripture we have first and foremost is the Torah. The what Christians sometimes call the pentetuk or the first five books of Moses or whatever you want to call it. So it is um it's now the Torah in particular is fixed um a fixed body a fixed set of books even though the the actual text within the books might have varied some. So in a work like 4QMT

that you asked me about which is an important text found among the Dead Sea Scrolls allegedly written by a figure called the teacher of righteousness who's thought to be either the founder of the Kuman community. The Kuman community being where the dead as a place name Kuman where the Dead Sea Scrolls are found. um or at least someone who um became a charismatic leader after some people fled to the desert. There's some debates about the role of the teacher of righteousness. Um he's a major figure, for example, in um another really important Dead Sea Scroll

text called often called the Covenant of Damascus or The Damascus Document. And you're very well informed, Jacob, so I'm sure you know what that is. Uh but there's another set uh well another really important document that tells us about that community as well called the cerak uh team called the serak called um the community rule I think is usually its English title and um the teacher of righteousness isn't mentioned in the cerak at all so that's why there's some debate about teacher of righteousness but in 4qmt the author of 4qmmt if I'll say just say

it's a teacher of righteousness um is arguing with some others about how to interpret the Torah, particularly not about matters of belief, the way Christians might think now and the way Christians came to argue so much about, but rather about um legal practices. And so 4QMT has advocates certain interpretations of the Torah that would match um what we know about the Sadducees who are mentioned in the New Testament and how they interpreted the Torah. So earliest debates among Jews in general. So here I'm going to include most followers of Jesus who are well within the

spectrum of Jewish identity worry about interpreting the Torah when they argue about it. They argue about what it means for practice. So they don't argue about um whether or not the Garden of Eden was real or whether or not Adam was a historical person or whether or not I mean they're taking a lot of that for granted. So they don't argue in this early first few generations of followers of Jesus and in this early henistic Jewish period. They don't argue about things like that. They argue about how you interpret how you follow God's will by

following the Torah. So the Torah becomes understood as having been given by God to Moses and Moses through Moses to the people. And along with this for the Pharisees including Paul I think certain traditions came down with this written Torah. But the written Torah is divine. Writ is the preserved word of God. And nobody nobody um in the time of let's just to make this simple in the time of Jesus forward according to Pharisees and subsequently rabbis the age of prophecy is dead. Nobody gets to be the voice of God anymore. We only get to

be the interpreters of God's word as preserved in the Torah. I'm sorry that was a long-winded kind of a long-winded answer. Oh, no, it's fine. Um, so how so how does Paul reccharacterize the Torah? Does he reccharacterize it The same way that typical Henessic Jews in his time did or was there a difference? I think Paul represents for for Paul. Paul uses the term scripture which in Greek is the word graphe where we you know get the word graphic or graphite or um graphical uh which just means writings and scriptor is the Latin word just

means writings which just means a written text comes to mean a written holy text. And Paul often introduces a line or a section of scripture by saying scripture says, by the way, it's often I think there are a few times where he says it's written, but normally scripture speaks. He uses oral verbs of the text, which is interesting in and of itself. Um, but Paul essentially he's similar to all other Jews in that he thinks of the Torah as absolutely God's word sacred. He doesn't question any of that. He thinks that he he would also

call scripture uses the phrase scripture to refer to when he introduces prophetic literature. So quotations from Isaiah, Jeremiah, Things like that and sometimes of the Psalms as well. So So the Torah sometimes we can use that term very precisely and sometimes imprecisely. The Torah typically to use it in its precise sense means the first five books of Moses. Sometimes by extension comes to mean what we might call the Bible, the the Jewish Bible, the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh. Um, right? Because we don't have a New Testament uh till well after the time of Paul because

Paul's letters aren't initially scripture. I can't imagine Paul ever imagined his writings being on par with the Torah. So yes, he thinks it's absolutely his job to interpret scripture. And so here I'll include other writings um with the Torah, even if the boundaries of those other writings are a little more fuzzy than the five books of the Torah. But Paul will sometimes use that material to justify who Jesus is. But more often than not, he invokes quotations from scripture or appeals to it to help his communities figure out what to do in a situation. So

again, it's about doing and not about thinking. I don't want to overstate that too much because there are passages in which he's arguing a more subtle point about how to understand a passage. Um but he um can I give an example or do you want more? Okay. So in a very famous example and what I've um written about in in the book and in other articles and essays is Romans 4 where Paul has a discussion about who Abraham was and he invokes some of the he invokes the story of Abraham, God's call of Abraham, God's

promises to Abraham. Sometimes he paraphrases and sometimes he uses direct quotations. And Paul, excuse me, Paul wants to make the point in Romans 4 that Abraham is the father of Gentiles, that is to say non-Jews who follow Jesus as much as he is the father of Jews. So Paul has to appeal to certain promises God made to Abraham in Genesis starting in Genesis 12 that and the promise is actually repeated several times that Abraham would be the father of many nations. Sometimes it said that way and sometimes it said Paul would be excuse me Abraham

would all the nations would be blessed through Abra Abraham. And so Paul understands this to mean that non-Jews Can be integrated into the lineage of Abraham and therefore become part of the covenant that God has with Jews. And so he has to appeal to this the story of Abraham and when God makes God's promises and certain other critical verses that appear in the story in order to argue his case that Abraham is is not just the father of the Jews to use a Pauline phrase um according to the flesh cartasarka that that Abraham, if you'll

give me another minute to explain this. So, um, for those who know their Hebrew Bible, there their stories in Genesis, Abraham has, um, a few different sons. And, um, in addition to Isaac, there's also Ishmael, but only Isaac um, inherits the blessing and the the legacy of Abraham. Not Ishmael. is Hagar's cast in the desert and Ishmael is promised he'll be the father of the Arab nations. Right? So Paul's point partly in reading this when when he's arguing his case in Romans 4 is that in Genesis um look just because you're born of Abraham doesn't

make you part of the covenant. You can be born according to the flesh and it doesn't mean anything. You become a child of Abraham by both God choosing you and you choosing God back. You're behaving in a faithful way. And so Paul has to engage the story of Abraham whether he started with that theology. Okay, we're going to incorporate Gentiles and then he went looking for something in the Torah to justify that or he started with reading the Torah and came to that conclusion. I don't know. But we know that he Paul by his Paul

claims in his letter to the Philippians he was a Pharisee and I think there's no reason to disbelieve him on that. He shows a high level of sophisticated engagement with scripture and that's evidenced in Romans 4. And I think it shows him to have a lot in common with other henistic Jews and the way they interpret the Torah. How does Paul understand the relationship between Greeks and Jews in synagogue when he discusses them in Galatians 3:28 and Romans 1:16? Okay, 3:28 116. Okay, those are those are really both important passages. I wouldn't immediately um put

them in conversation. Oh, I I guess you're thinking about the Jew and Greek um mention of Jew and Greek. Okay. So, the first thing to understand is this is confusing. The word that always gets translated Gentiles in English Um is the Greek word ethnne which in a non-religious context if we were just translating I don't know Plato or Pluto or any other Greek author it would be translated nations or peoples or something like that. When Jewish authors write in Greek and they use the word ethnne, they pretty much mean all the peoples of the world

except Jews when they're contrasting them with Jews. They'd use the word ethnne. And sometimes the word ethnne is inclusive of Jews. It just means everybody in the whole world. But there's no such thing as an individual gentile. Ethne, the Greek word gentiles that we get translated gentiles, nations, peoples. The singular of that is a singular nation, not an individual. So an ethnos is a people group, not a person. So when Paul wants to contrast a Jew with anyone who's not a Jew, he uses the word Greek. So people debate whether he meant literally Greeks in

particular or anyone who's not a Jew. That's a little bit debated. I think he probably just uses it as a um there's a linguistic term for this that I'm forgetting as a standin for all non-Jews. So you're right that here I see now you're thinking about these two. So in in Romans 1:16 Paul talks about how um how faith has come or the power of God has come first To the Jews. the UI and to the Jew and then to the Greek. And in Romans 3:28, Paul says there's neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free,

male nor female, uh male and female. Actually, the last pairing is a little different. I think there is and there isn't a difference between the status of Jews and Greeks. for Paul. It's sort of like um in the US everybody's equal but some people are more equal um if if you know what I mean. We can have certain ideals that we aspire to and then other ways in which um we live them out differently. So Paul both thinks and says in indicates in a place like Galatians 3:28 but not only there when one to put

it in sort of religious I don't know majestic religious apocalyptic terms when one stands before God it doesn't matter whether one is say what your ethnic background is it's just irrelevant on the other hand Paul thinks that Jews um are special because God gave Jews the Torah and um that Jews are learned in the Torah and Jews have had a privileged position. You notice in the in the pairings in Galatians 3:28 Um you know neither Jew nor Greek, excuse me, neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female. Notice that the first one of

each of those is really um a superior position. In other words, in Paul's mind, I think it's preferable to be a Jew, a free person, and a man compared to being a non-Jew, a female, and a slave. So that while so the two pairs aren't um exactly symmetrical I guess I want to say so I think Paul really aspires genuinely seriously aspires to a profound form of egalitarianism but he also thinks Jews have played a critical mission I look at it this way um having been um I've been traveling I was um I think I

told you this I was had the good fortune of being in New Zealand for at least part of the women's World Cup um till they uh lost and got booted out. And um my family watches women's World Cup soccer. Just in case the audience thinks I've completely gone off track, I haven't. My point is this is that Americans did not invent democracy. But Americans do invent a particular kind of democracy which they think is superior. We think is superior to all other forms of democracy. And we think of ourselves as Um sort of the great

missionaries for democracy while also trying to respect other people and there and and that all people should be free to do what they want and what they think. But America, this has been debated through American political history. But that for many, America has, the US has played um a special role in the world of being a missionary for democracy. I think Jew, excuse me, Paul thinks of Jews and Judaism in this mode. He evokes the language of being a light to the nations which he gets from prophetic literature and I think that's what he thinks

Jews are. So, they do play a special role, but in the end, that doesn't isn't going to get them a special prize that's better than the prize that everybody else gets. Um, who's a non-Jew. That's a little bit oversimplified, but I don't want to make it. We'll see where your questions go if I need to nuance that more. But good question. It took me a second. I don't know why it took me a second to put those two things in context because normally um issues around those p Romans 1:16 and 17 revolve around Lutheran theology

and I guess when I speak to Lutheran congregations and other things their head their heads are in a different place. So thank you for that question Jacob coming from a different angle. Oh, Thank you. I'm touched by that. What was the conflict that Paul was having with James and Peter as he recounts in Galatians? What what was the big deal? Cuz it it seems to get heated in Galatians 1 and it gets to go into Galatians 2 and Paul says, "I confronted Peter to the face." Like, what is going on here? Um, your question is

perfect and I can't tell you how much ink, well, there's so much scholarly ink spel spent on fall. Um, more than we could ever account for. Uh but this passage is wildly still debated even even by those who you might think of myself and a few other scholars as having a similar being of a similar school of thought about Paul sometimes um um called the radical new perspective or Paul within Judaism perspective. We ourselves uh disagree about what happens here. But let me state a few facts that I think wouldn't be disputed. There's been some

previous agreement that Paul has Paul and perhaps his companions like Barnabas have made with Peter and James. And Paul when he recounts a subsequent meeting, so now we're talking about two meetings. An earlier meeting in which he thinks there's been some arrangement made and that arrangement has something to do with Paul does has his mission that he's empowered as a apostle and he's given a certain kind of authority and he understands that Peter and James recognize his authority. Then there's a subsequent meeting where um um it sounds like James and some others have come to

Galatia or somewhere near there and Paul feels betrayed by what they've done. There's this um description of what sounds like what's interpreted as being James is um refuses to eat right with um non-Jews. Um and Paul thinks this is hypocritical. So we could get into a few different details. So I I don't want to get into which which would probably bore the audience um silly, but so essentially there's an issue. We know that Paul feels betrayed that there was an original agreement. Paul thinks James has um um reiged on the agreement. It has something to

do with food. It may also have something to do with circumcision because Paul calls them the circumcision people. By the way, this is Paul a couple of times refers to Jews as the circumcision. This is a very peculiar thing to do. It's it's not entirely clear to me whether he's intentionally Being derogatory. So, that would already be something of an issue. But he feels betrayed. He first, by the way, he has to begin he begins Galatians by sort of recounting all his um credentials, right? All these credentials because he clearly thinks his authority has been

undermined um by this incident with um with James and the circumcision. So, one of the issues, Jacob, that's so complicated in Galatians 2 is scholars debate as Paul's recounting the story um that's got him so mad. People don't know when the story ends that he's recounting and when he turns back to talking to the Galatians. So for anybody who might have a Bible in front of them um it's not clear whether when Paul evokes by the way it's assumed that Peter and Cphus are the same person that Cphus Peter means rock in Greek Cphus means

rock in Aramaic and so that these are the same people. So Paul recounts Paul refers to his conversation with um I'll just call him Peter for now to keep things simple. And he he says he he says you know we we are Jews by birth. We Could also talk we're sort of by nature is literally what it says. We're Jews by birth and we're not Gentile sinners. And we presume there the we means Peter and me. But he's writing to the Galatians. You see the complexity there. So at what point? So when we get to

um the end of uh Galatians um he's recounting the story at the um in Galatians 2. And when he gets to verse 15 is he well so from 11 to whatever 14 it's pretty clear that he's recounting Peter and I had this conversation and I told him this i.e. Um, let me turn. If if you um even though you're a Jew, you act like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force Gentiles to live like Jews? So, um then Paul starts in verse 15 what I mentioned before. We we um ourselves are

Jews and we're not gentile sinners. Does is he still recounting the event with Peter or is he now turned to talking Kind of to any Jews who might be or we we Jews meaning Paul and company talking to the Galatians and therefore reasserting his authority. So if I were to simplify maybe this is where I should have started. I think let me give you a more general answer because it um yeah a more general answer that some of my colleagues would disagree with but it makes things a little simpler. I think that Paul thinks that

the dietary laws are things that Jews observe by God's law, but that what trumps that law for Paul is when he's among non-Jews, I don't think, or let me put it this way, he can eat with non-Jews and still obey dietary laws. There was this notion that you can't even have dinner with a non-Jew without compromising the dietary laws. But that comes down to an interpretation of scripture. If I don't eat meat sacrificed to idols, if I don't eat pork, if I don't do those things, I can still sit down at a meal with non-Jews.

So I think Paul that it's a question of severity and it's a question the incident that's being recounted by Paul is a leadin to the bigger issue at Galatians which Is not so much about food but about whether non-Jews who now follow Jesus need not only to be baptized but need to be circumcised. I should say male non-Jews who follow Jesus whether or not they need to be circumcised. And it sounds like some followers of Jesus, i.e. James and company and perhaps others thought they did. Paul and others thought they didn't. And not only that,

they didn't need to, they absolutely should not be circumcised. And so the food discussion is a prelude or an undercurrent to the real issue about whether or not one should be a man should be circumcised. And Paul is adamantly adamantly adamantly opposed to non-Jewish men being circumcised. Ask me why before you go on this question. I mean, yeah. Why? Why do you think he was so opposed to it? right? Which is why in first Corinthians he says it doesn't matter if you're a Jew or Greek. It doesn't matter if you're circumcised or uncircumcised. As long

as you, you know, put your faith uh have faith in Jesus as Lord and believed he was raised from the dead. Doesn't matter. But in Galatians, it matters a whole lot. At the end of Galatians, he says, "If you get you non-Jews get circumcised, it's like you rejected Christ." Like Christ like this gift from God, you've rejected It. And I think the reason Paul thinks that and I do discuss this at the end of my book. I think the reason Paul thinks that is that um if you um is that just as God created humans

and animals and wool versus flax and various different kinds of things in creation. There are among the humans of the world, there are different kinds of humans. And Jews, what's characteristic of Jews, it came to be believed, is that God commanded them to be circumcised. God did not command non-Jews to be circumcised. And Paul infers from that therefore they should not be circumcised. So at the end of time when everybody stands before God, the gentile or the non-Jew, the Greek needs to still be a Greek, not a Greek who turned himself into a Jew. That

would be a violation. That would be like a rejection of what God does through Jesus Christ to reconcile the non-Jews. So that's why Paul adamantly opposes non-Jews, Jewish men being circumcised. What did Paul mean when he says that he's the Pharisee of Pharisees and Hebrew of Hebrews in the epistle to the Philippians? Yeah, I think they're a little bit like in Galatians. Um, some scholars link together the Corinthian correspondence, Galatians and Philippians, Excuse me, because in all those letters, Paul seems to have opponents um or or or let's just say rival influencers to use modern

language. And I think in Philippians he touts his credentials in that passage in case anyone should infer or um see him as less than Jewish. Um he wants to overstate his case. He mentions the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew uh born of Hebrews, a Pharisee, which means he's a wellstudied Jew. I think I say in my books for him to say he's a Pharisee is like saying, "And I went to Harvard for Jews." Um, I know more um than any other teachers that may be um kind of traveling through Philippi who might say otherwise. And

I think this is where again Paul thinks that in God's eyes whether you're Jew or not Jew doesn't matter. At another level, he does think it matters in terms of authority and influence to be a Jew because Jews know the Torah and Jews were given the covenant first, etc. So, I think he's just really really got to emphasize those things. Um to to prove his credibility, to ensure he has continuing primacy over um an influence over the community at Philippi of which he is the founder. He's the founder of all the communities he writes to.

He's the Paul founded all of them except in Rome. And the founding of the church of Rome is something of a mystery. But um yeah, what does Paul think of his Jewish credentials and privileges? Let me rephrase that. Why does Paul think of his Jewish credentials and privileges as a loss? Yeah. Okay. I almost went there and then I thought, h my answers are so long-winded. I want to um so right right after he goes through all these wonderful credentials he has he then goes on to say but I regard these um I regard these

as rubbish. Um so even though I accomplished all these things um I I I count them as meaningless um Whoops. I think we lost a signal. No, I'm still I'm still here. My camera's Okay. Okay. Um uh So he he basically says I I think what he means in this passage is um these things this was often interpreted by someone like Augustine and almost all readers after that is that Paul no longer subscribes to these identities that he's not uh a part of Israel that he's not of the tribe of Benj Benjamin, he doesn't really

identify this way anymore because he's rejected all these things when when he says, "I've counted all these things as um just um worthless um basically for the sake of Christ." I think what Paul is actually saying is simply that that none of these things matter so much as my devotion to Jesus Christ. None of these things count as much. Just like a person today might say, um, I'm a father, I'm a professor, I'm an American, I'm a this, I'm a that, but I'm first and foremost a human being. Or I added father in there. They

might say my primary identity is as a father and everything else um, pales in comparison to that. I think that's all Paul is saying. He first has to ram home his credentials. Then he has to humble himself and saying, "But, you know, these aren't that important." And I I think it's also A way rhetorically of undercutting his the rival teachers that he's kind of saying, you know, these people if they brag about their credentials, they're just full of themselves. And I'm not full. I have those same credentials and more, but those things aren't important. Um,

I think it's not that complicated to execute this particular to to interpret this particular passage. Was Paul in general an atypical or typical Jew? That's a great great question. Um, especially when you put it so bluntly. I don't know that anyone's suppose I've been asked that but maybe maybe not so bluntly. So I would say that in so many ways and this has been part of my work and the work of other scholars not uniquely me um that there are so many ways in which Paul is a very typical Jew. Uh I think that might

even be the title of one of my chapters. I can't remember exactly now. Something like that. Um, so he he values the Torah. He um he studied the Torah. He tells us over and over again he's a Jew. He's proud of that identity. It's a primary identity for him. Um so e even his following of Jesus remember he thinks Jesus is Christos. Jesus has been an anointed one. Jesus. Um, so Christos, the Greek word for Christ is also the Hebrew word Messiach. It's a common Hebrew word. We could use it of David the king as

it was used of kings as well as priests of the one specially appointed or set apart. So that's a very Jewish way of thinking. So all those are very typical of Paul. What makes Paul stand out is the way in which he wants to reach out to non-Jews with a very um um powerful message and the way he wants to make Jews and non-Jews part of one family and together be children of God. I don't think most Jews thought about that in in in or thought the if they did take the trouble to think about

it, they would have said, "No, we Jews, we're special. We have a special relationship with God." But Paul recognized a particular problem in Judaism. He wasn't the only one to recognize this problem. There's another a Jewish philosopher named Pho who lives in Alexandria who was not a follower of Jesus and who wrote very different sorts of writings. But many of those writings address the same problem that I think Paul addresses and and explain why Paul becomes a follower of Jesus. And that is that there was an inherent tension in Henistic Judaism, a theological tension that

was very difficult to reconcile. On the one hand, God was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God is the God of Israel who gave Moses the covenant. Israel's in a special covenant with Israel. Um God, the Lord God is the God is Israel's God. At the same time, this same God created the whole world. So there's a there's a profound tension between the particular and the universal in that conception. If God created the whole world, the logical inference then is God would have a relationship to the whole rest of the world, humans and all

of creation, um even beyond humans. So I think that for some deep thinkers like Paul, like the Jewish philosopher I mentioned, Pho, they're trying to reconcile um that. And a lot of Jews implicitly might have been aware of this tension, but they just don't think about it. A lot of us are that way with a lot of things that are paradoxical in our own world that we just sort of live with. um the contradictions and hypocrisies we all Live with. Um I I want to help stop climate change, but if there's not a recycle bin

nearby with that I can put my cup in, I'm going to do the easy thing and throw it in the trash. So for Paul and just a handful of others, Paul thinks that the coming that Jesus life on earth and most importantly most importantly the fact that he died he's human. He dies a human's death and is resurrected and that this is the beginning of the end. This this is um um the beginning of the messianic age that this is the time in which Jews and Gentiles are going to come together. This is that that

Jesus reconciles non-Jews to God. And by definition, if you're going to reconcile non-Jews to God, you have to reconcile them to Jews or to Israel because they're all now children of God. And so this is a a theology, I guess, a theology and what theologians would call an esquetology, meaning a sort of vision of what the end of time looks like. And that Paul thought that through. And he didn't just think it through. So I think Pho kind of thinks about it too as a problem. But Paul acted on it. Paul Acted on telling Gentiles,

you know, the world's going to end soon and you worship other gods. And worshiping other gods is the sin of all sins for a Jew. By the way, that's another way in which Paul's very typical. Idol worshiping any other god other than the one true living God is the sin of sins. And Gentiles need to turn from those gods to the one true living God before the end of the world basically. And that makes Paul he's very unusual in those in that theology not absolutely unique but very unusual. But what makes him really unique is

he acts upon that theology. when when my students say um a lot of students because I teach at a very progressive seminary, a lot of students start my class hating Paul. They think Jesus is good and Paul's the one who kind of screwed up Christianity. He's a misogynist. He hated Jews. He was an imperialist. He, you know, he he had a triumphalist view of Christianity and not the humble form of Christianity that Jesus had. So, it's my personal mission in these classes to get my Christian students as a Jew. This is a great irony um

um when looked at from the outside is to a personal mission to get them to appreciate Paul. And I in many cases, but not all, make a lot of headway in that. But there's one stopping point and that a lot of students say, "Okay, I can get on board with this reading of Paul in a lot of ways." But I the whole apocalyptic thing, the thing that the World's going to end and all that, I can't relate to that. I think the sun's coming up tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that.

And and there's two ways I push back on this. One is more and more I invoke climate change. Maybe the world isn't here forever and human extinction is a real possibility. But more often I say I Paul is my favorite kind of apocalypticist in this sense that throughout Christian history and in a few rare cases Jewish history um Christian uh new movements often get started because somebody dates a calendar thinking the apocalypse is going to come and they check out from society um get up on the rooftop and wait for Jesus to come. They stop

work. They start off stop all normal life, wait for Jesus to come for God's intervention. They don't do anything. It's an overstatement, but that's effectively what happens in many apocalyptic movements. They check out of society. For Paul, Paul's anticipation of the end of the world creates an urgency in him to get busy. It has the opposite effect. It's sort of like, I'm going to help God realize God's promise of a messianic age Where we beat our swords into plowshares and the lion lies down with the lamb and I'm going to help God achieve this purpose.

And there's a deadline. We all know that none of us would get anything done without a deadline. And so I think Paul thinks that the end of the world is kind of like a really important deadline and you're up against time and you've only got this much time to make yourself and the world better to do the right thing. So I it's kind of corny the way I say it that way. But if I were to try to make Paul's apocalyptic theology relevant for my students or students who want to be theologians or religious um

leaders of some sort. Um that's the message I have for them. How does Paul deal with the differences between his radical Jewish monotheistic views with Torah or Torah Orthodox views? Okay, ask me that one more time. How does Paul reconcile How does Paul deal with the differences between his radical Jewish monotheistic views with Torah Orthodox views? Well, I'm not I may not be fully grasping the heart of your question because I don't think Paul thinks that his interpretation of Torah is out of sync. So, we don't have the category of orthodox yet. The Sadducees would

be more conservative readers of Torah. The Sadducees are sort of more literalists and the Pharisees more. I know this isn't how they're portrayed in the Gospels, but the Pharisees are more progressive um in many ways. And I think Paul would put himself in that camp. Oh, maybe what you're getting at is how does Paul become put Jesus on such a high pedestal, if you will, and still be a complete monotheist. Okay. So, great. So, that's a great question. So um the chapters I would send a an interested listener to would be probably chapters 8 through10

in first Corinthians um to kind of work through this where Paul even invokes the shama at the beginning. um the shama being, you know, a prayer. It's really not a prayer, but um it's a line from Deuteronomy 6 that Jews still say today is the most famous um um the Lord is our God. Um um the Lord is one, the Lord alone. So um so where was I going with this? Um, this is what happens when you don't turn your phone over and your messages distract you. So, I think Paul thinks uh I'm not going

to finish that sentence. Let me back up. Paul never uses the language of worship or devotion or he never talks about Jesus as an object of devotion the way Paul would talk about God. And Paul never calls Jesus a god. theos, you know, the Greek word theos um never calls Jesus that. There's one kind of weird little passage where one scholar has argued maybe kind of sort of he does, but I think it's a stretch and most people don't accept it anyway. So, so, so in that sense, Paul never confuses Jesus and God. He does

call he uses all sorts of superlative titles of Jesus besides Christos anointed. He calls Jesus um most frequently the Lord. He calls Jesus a savior. So, and I think the title Lord Curios is Maybe where those who think that Paul thought of Jesus as a god is the title where they get the most traction because the word Lord curios which in Greek is the ordinary word for lore. It it would be like like anybody any human um man in a household who has slaves slaves would call him curios lord. It's like saying sir or like

someone who's been kned or something like that. Not even that lofty. So it can be used in a very lofty way you know in that sense. And it can be used as everyday language of a polite address to a a gentleman air quotes there for anybody who's listening. So So it's also the case that in the Hebrew Bible in the Torah Paul, excuse me, God is frequently called curios Lord. In English you can see it all over the place. Now, sometimes when you're reading an English Bible, in many of them, you'll see sometimes the word

Lord appears in small caps. Um, I can't remember if all if most English translations do this. That is something I should really know as a Bible scholar, but I I I can't honestly remember. I think in the NRSV they still do that. But when you see the Lord in Small caps, what that really is is God's name. what scholars have often pronounced you the like God's you know personal name like I'm Pamela and you're Jacob um and um sort of rec the Hebrew pronunciation reconstructed as Yahweh um but spelled in Hebrew um yud vave and

we sometimes called the tetra grammaton which just means four letters and we know we know, and this we know as a fact can state without reservation um for reasons if you're interested I can explain but um that Jews at some point um understand God's name as so sacred they won't pronounce it. And so instead of pronouncing it when they read the Torah aloud ritually, they would say the word Lord or my Lord, Adonai, Adon or Adonai. And Jews today still do this. Or some Jews will call God Hashem whenever they see the which just means

the name um those four letters and they're reading Torah because it's so sacred. So um in Bibles You don't ever see Yahweh you well maybe there's some English Bibles where they publish that but most of the time you'll see the word Lord because that became a tradition of pronunciation in many cases instead of using God's actual name and pronouncing it. So the fact that Paul calls Jesus curios over and over again, a lot of people have said, "Well, that's like calling him God since that's an airsat's name for God. God is the Lord, the one

and only." I think that it's much easier and more straightforward and more likely to understand that when Paul calls Jesus Lord, it's simply a way of saying this uh this is the person to whom I pledge my allegiance. this Lord, not Caesar, not um my Phariseeic teacher Gamaliel or who whoever that is, not some priest, not some local governor, but my Lord is is Jesus the Messiah. And so I think it's a just a form of reverence. It doesn't mean that Paul thinks of Jesus as a god. Jesus is unique, but he's not a divine

being. And in in fact, Paul said Jes calls Jesus son, Sen over and over again, God's son. And because everybody is ultimately sons of God. Yes. which Paul says he calls Jesus the first fruits of the new age, the first resurrected, the first transformed being of all of us. So he's the sort of first among equals. So I don't think it undercuts a monotheistic view at all really. and the way it came to later in Christianity with a complex trinitarian theology which you may know from your um maternal influence. I'm still interested to hear more

about you, but you may be reluctant to talk about it online. But um yeah, how was the son of God revealed in Paul? Are you thinking of a particular passage or do you mean that in a general? In a general sense. Okay. So, so the okay I'm immediately going to a particular passage where Paul refers to Jesus being revealed or appearing to him. Um, and that's in Galatians 1. And it's a it it's an am one of those things that's Ambiguous and could be translated a few different ways. But I I think it's an interesting

question because Paul doesn't have anything to do with the historical Jesus. So he doesn't have a he doesn't sit at Jesus' feet and hear the wisdom of Jesus the way the apostles the other apostles would and become inspired and see Jesus as a prophet. So Paul has some kind of trans to to Paul particularly he has some kind of personal experience um and Paul describes this experience himself in Galatians 1 and it's described by the author of Acts three different times actually. Um, and I don't, it's unclear if we just take Paul's um, account in

Galatians 1, it's unclear if Paul means like a visual experience or he has like an internal mystical experience, but he does have, so this is where when Paul say like how can you say Paul didn't convert or didn't like he didn't convert because there's no religion for him to convert to, but he certainly had some kind of mystical ical religious experience. Um I don't think historians can describe p people's personal religious experiences as if they know them um intimately. So, but Paul in terms of revealing Jesus to others thinks that that message and it is

a message. This the word gospel this this is good news. This message it gets Revealed by preaching Jesus to other people. And that when people come to be to put their faith in Jesus, and by the way, I would say that's not faith in terms of belief, but in terms of trust or allegiance. That that's what I think Paul means by faith. When they put their faith in Jesus and they come together as a group, Paul does talk about the spirit being present. And I think that he thinks that that experience of the spirit that

groups of followers have is a way in which Jesus can be revealed to them directly and not just by hearing Paul preach about Jesus to them. What made Paul think that the end was near? Ah, a good question for which I have hopefully a more succinct answer. Um Paul thought the end was near precisely because he has that mystical experience. And in that mystical experience somehow he either sees or knows through a dream or whatever the case is that Jesus has been raised from the dead that Jesus is has some kind of post-mortem existence. And

because uh at the time of Paul, the idea of resurrection from the dead was a very well-known idea. The Pharisees in general thought there was a resurrection From the dead. So Jews in general knew about this idea, but they didn't all agree that it was like for real. The Sadducees believe when you died, you died. Bum done. Finished. Um um but other Jews like the Pharisees believed in res in life after death and typically in a resurrection of the body. So Paul already has that notion that that's what's going to happen. But that the resurrection

of the dead doesn't happen willy-nilly one person at a time like you die and three days later you you get raised. That that'd mean a bunch of zombies are walking around on Earth. So the resurrection of the dead is associated with the end of time. It's something that happens in anticipation of the final judgment. That's the purpose of getting of coming up out of your grave is so that you can be judged by God. And then if you make it through that stage, you have eternal life. Um, and so when Paul sees Jesus transformed, that's

why the reason Paul calls Jesus the first fruits of the new age is he thinks, "Oh my gosh, the resurrection has begun." And the resurrection beginning means it's the end of time. And that's why Paul becomes an apocalyptic thinker. And that's why he has this urgent need to go tell everybody, all these non-Jews, to stop worshiping other gods because they've got limited time um if they want to have Eternal life with the one true living God, the God who created the world. So yeah, how did Paul view Abraham and was his view of him shared

by the later gospels or do they defer? Okay, I'm gonna have to ask you that one more time. I wasn't distracted. I don't have the excuse of the text message, but I'm sorry. I'm gonna have to ask you to say that one more time. How did Paul view Abraham and was his view of him shared by the later gospels or do they defer? Uh okay. So a very artic early article I wrote is called Paul as the new Abraham. And I think Abraham is the most important biblical figure for Paul that informs his theology and

helps him understand who Jesus is. And I mentioned before Romans 4 and there's also a long discussion in um Galatians 3 and 4 about Abraham. Um that Paul understands the promises God made to Abraham as to be promises that have to be fulfilled. that um through Abraham all the nations will be blessed and Abraham put another way the promise is sometimes stated as Abraham will be the father of many nations. So, so Abraham Is absolutely critical in that Paul thinks those promises have yet to be fully fulfilled because he sees a bunch of non-Jews still

worshiping other gods. And if the end of time is coming and Jesus is going to come because Jesus is the one who's going to lead the final judgment um once so the end of time is coming uh the beginning of the me the final judgment the beginning of the messianic age and God always fulfills God's promises. So the promises to Abraham have to be fulfilled somehow before the end of time because God's a reliable promise maker. So, so I think Paul sees himself as someone who is like Abraham in that if you remember Abraham was

also he's promised this new land but he has to wander around before he really gets the promises God promises him. Um, and that Paul's preaching is a way of helping God fulfill God's promises to the nations. God pro God's promises to Abraham that he made about the nations. So um so I think Abraham is absolutely central in Paul's thinking whether it he always was from the beginning or he came after He has this experience of Jesus to make sense of his experience by through the Abraham story and the promises to Abraham. I can't say which

came first but Abraham is central. What was Paul doing out there with the diaspora? So in this case diaspora, you would mean other Jewish communities um around the Mediterranean basin. So we know there are lots of Jews who live in diaspora at the time of Paul and uh because you don't have um commercial hotels generally to speak of in the first century when you travel you you stay uh ideally you stay with someone you know but more often since you're maybe traveling to a place you haven't been you you stay with someone who knows someone

who knows someone who can vouch or know someone who knows someone or know someone who can vouch for you and sometimes you carry with you letters of reference actually from a person who may know the person you want to stay with. So, uh there are ins there are people who also sort of you know there's the ancient form of I don't know an Airbnb might be the best um modern analogy where you can sort of rent out rooms but generally speaking you have to stay with people you have some connection to. So, communities of Jews

who would have had local synagogues, they may not always have been called synagogues, but they were functionally synagogues. In Egypt, they're called prayer houses, for example. Um, you would have Paul as a traveler would have likely stayed with these Jews. So I think in in one very mundane sense he needs a place to stay when he lands in Philippi or a lot of these places and the most likely way he would know somebody is through a fellow or not know them personally but have a connection with someone who would give him hospitality is likely to

be a fellow Jew. Um, of course, in the book of Acts, Paul is portrayed as someone who preaches first to Jews before he kind of makes his message to non-Jews, preaches to Jews. Um, and that he fails with most of them and then sort of um by accident or by virtue of that failure starts preaching to non-Jews. I don't think that that portrait in Acts is an accurate portrait of Paul. I think Paul, he from the beginning calls himself the apostle to the Gentiles. And I think that Paul thinks that was always his mission is

to spread the word among Non Jews. So I think the writer of Acts, actually there's a new book that's going to come out that's going to argue the exact opposite of what I just said. um or some version of that that Paul did probably um that that the portrait of Paul in Acts is more historically valid than we've given it than some of us have given it um credit for. But I'm not yet convinced of that. mainly because Paul's self-identity he selfidentifies as apostle not to the udio the Jews um but to the Gentiles uh

to non-Jews. So so yeah I think he just but he would have he he wants his fellow Jews to support him in his mission and to understand what's going on but that his preaching his personal mission was to non-Jews. What is the problem with the Gentiles since Paul cannot be speaking for all of humanity inclusive of Jews and Gentiles? Oh, you mean because he himself is a Jew, so he can't speak on behalf of everyone. I don't think Paul thinks of it that way. It's a great question. I think Paul thinks he's entitled to speak.

Um that he knows in spite of his proclamations of humility that Paul knows Paul thinks Paul knows more than most other people. I've used the analogy earlier of Americans. We Americans think we have um the best form of democracy. We tried to spread this form of democracy and um we think of it as superior. So I think that he thinks Gentiles are ignorant that they're not so much e they're not evil or wrong in that sense. At one point in the beginning of Romans he says there are Jews who steal and lie and cheat and

there are Gentiles who are honest and good and decent and you know all that kind of stuff. He he he doesn't see that Luther is has a similar attitude. People are people and you can have, you know, good Jews and bad Jews and good Gentiles and bad Gentiles. But the Gentiles are are wholly misguided about the most important thing and that is they don't know who the one true living God is. So I think Paul doesn't have a problem. He doesn't so he doesn't really speak for them, but he speaks to them. I'm not so

sure. I don't know how good of a listener Paul was. Um, and I have a more sympathetic view of Paul's personality than some people do, but I think that Paul thinks he knows best. So, I don't think he would have struggled with that as much as some of us in modernity struggle in terms of cultural sensitivity about speaking for other people in their experience. So, how did Lofer understand Paul? Oh my gosh, are we really going to talk about that at this point? Um, so, um, well, to simplify, Luther is so important in the history

of interpreting Paul, perhaps more important than Augustine, certainly as important. So like Augustine, Luther thinks Luther understood his own religious transformation through Paul. In other words, Luther thinks the and Luther does think he's had a kind of um mystical experience or revelation. And for him, the critical verse isn't in Romans 13. It's in Romans 1 11 1:16 and 17 about the righteous living by faith. So Luther already has issues and other people did too with the Catholic Church with which um to legitimate Luther he had or to affirm Luther from for me personally I can

affirm that Luther had a very legitimate gripe with the Catholic Church. Um at at the time the Catholic Church went through periods of being very noble and other periods of being very corrupt like most institutions and uh we're kind of in a period of corruption at the time of Luther. The Catholic Church is trying to raise money to build St. Peter's at this time. And one of the ways it raises money is it sells indulgences. And indulgences are simply a way like let's say I'm a duke Um in Saxony and I massacre a whole bunch

of people unjustly I'm just making up not that these things didn't happen but I'm just making up a generic example um and I want forgiveness or let's say I've just cheated on my wife and I want forgiveness. One way I can get forgiveness is instead of doing penance myself, I can just make a big donation to the church. So Luther thinks and I would agree this is really corruption that one first one should be responsible for one's own sins and then also one doesn't need the church to intercede for God. that we all have to

put it in language I often hear from my students one can have one's own relationship with God apart from any priest or any bishop or religious figure so um so I think um okay so for Luther Paul has had this private personal revelatory experience of Jesus and Luther interprets what Paul has to say very much against the background of a Judaism that's just kind of a Christian stereotype construction of what Judaism is which that Judaism is like a merit System like a point system if you if you get enough points because you've done enough good

things, then you get to go to heaven. And if you have don't have enough points at the end of your life, you go to hell. That's not really what Judaism is about, but that's what Luther thinks. And Paul and Luther thinks Paul rebelled against that. And that essentially Paul was someone who said that that faith is everything. Again, this is not my reading. This is Luther's reading that faith is everything. If you put your faith in Jesus Christ, God again to use modern language, but I think it captures Luther loves you just as you are.

Is capable of you don't need to do anything else. You don't get merit points. And this was that Luther sees God as a gracious God. Um, not a judgmental God. Um, that's at least what Luther says, even if it didn't quite pan out in all his teachings, but that's what he says. And so therefore, Paul for Luther has this message of the great gracious God for whom you don't have to that you can have confidence that God is with you in spite of all your failings, in spite of all your sins. You're you're a sinner

and a child of God at the same time. You're a sinner and a Saint at the same time. at least if you're um um a Christian. Um so um that's why the language of justification by faith is so important to Luther. It's so important to Luther. For those of us who read Paul as a Jew, that phrase means something very different. Um but for Luther, Luther once said that justification by faith is the gospel, not what Jesus preached, not preach, you know, not um for for Paul, the gospel is the death and resurrection of Christ.

For Luther, the gospel is just the doctrine of the justification by faith. Meaning, one is saved by grace through faith and not by works. Um, we haven't talked a lot about that, but that's who Paul was uh for Luther. How you doing there? I'm doing pretty good. You sure? Okay. How does Paul contrast faith and works to demonstrate Gentiles are off the hook? Yeah. Okay. So um that comes back to Abraham in Romans 4 essentially when Paul says I myself will so I don't um do a you know a hash job of paraphrasing Um at

the beginning of chapter 4, Paul um evokes the story of Abraham and he quotes from Genesis 15. He quotes this particular verse. Um Abraham um Abraham, it's usually translated Abraham believed God or had faith in God and uh it was reckoned to him as righteousness. That's how it's usually translated. And the word reckoned is maybe an ambiguous term for a lot of people, but essentially just means counted for righteousness. In other words, that just because Abraham believed God's promises, that was enough to make Abraham righteous. Okay. So now in the Luther in Luther's reading of

Paul, Luther takes this to mean that anybody who just believes in Jesus and pretty much all you have to do is believe and that presumes you get baptized and become a member of the church that you may go through other Christian practices And whatnot. Um but essentially it's your faith that saves you. So that's why it doesn't matter if you're a Jew or a Gentile. Um it just doesn't doesn't matter. Um in Luther's mind, Jews were all about works or deeds that um I have to keep the Sabbath. I I have to abstain from certain

foods and eat other foods. I have to light the candles on Friday. I have to do all these things otherwise boom, I'm going to hell. Um so that's of course the stereotype of Judaism, but that that's what Luther thinks. That's Luther's reading of Paul in my own reading here is that what Paul means by he he does think that Abraham's faith in God was reckoned to him as righteousness means that Abraham believed in God's promises that if Abraham left his home and followed God, he would inherit this land. And and if you remember, Abraham doesn't

have a lot to go on. It's sort of I I think if I were to define faith for Paul, like if I had to make a dictionary definition in Paul's mind, faith is more like hope for us that that I I have um confidence that something's going to happen in the future even when all the evidence is to the contrary. So um and that I will have confidence in someone or something or a promise um in an unwavering way. So I think that what Gentiles and by the way I what we forget is in this

verse in Genesis it says Abraham had faith in God not in Jesus. Let's remember this in God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. So in my own reading of Paul, I think what Paul thinks non-Jews have to do to again to use somewhat simple and contemporary language to to achieve salvation or be redeemed to God is is is simply renounce. Faith in the God of Israel means you renounce all your other gods. Your loyalty is exclusively to the one God. And the reason all that idolatry gets to be forgiven is because the death

of Jesus Christ is sort of this shortcut form of atonement that sort of washes the gentile clean. So by works here it means to go back to Galatians, a non-Jew doesn't have to be circumcised to to recognize um to be recognized by God. I would say This that Romans makes clear that what kind of human being you are um so in a general sense following God's law is imperative for everybody to have to have done when you stand at the final judgment. It's just that God's law requires different things of different people. So, Gentiles don't

have to be circumcised because the Torah says only Jews have to be circumcised. By the way, most laws in the Torah don't apply to everybody. They some laws apply just to women, some just to men, some just to priests, some to just to Israelites, some just to So, so it's not as if everybody has to do the same thing. the same thing. Some Jews, some laws apply just to Israel and Gentiles are exempt from that. So that they don't observe dietary laws. They don't get circumcised. They don't need to. They were never required to. So

that's a different understanding than Luther would have. What is the two-way salvation critique of Romans chapters 9 to 11? uh critique. I thought you'd maybe since very very few of us I'm one um advocate that Paul had this idea of two-way salvation. Um most people don't accept it. So, two-way Salvation is usually um a handy often derogatory way of saying that some of us have argued in our reading of Paul that Paul believed there were two ways of salvation. One for Jews, namely the Torah, they don't have to worry about Jesus and that the Torah,

their faithfulness to Torah earns them eternal life, i.e. salvation. Non-Jews, their way to salvation is Jesus. their faith in Jesus that earns them salvation. So most scholars, even those in my own school of thought, would say, "No, Paul thinks ultimately everybody needs to have faith in Jesus, though they often don't define what that means. but that Jews are still Jews at the end of time ethnically speaking and Gentiles or or whatever ethnicity they are. I would argue that Jesus plays a different role for Jews than Gentiles. And this is what sometimes gets labeled again in

derogative terms two-way salvation. I think there's only one salvation, but Jews and Gentiles play a different part in it. So Paul obviously wants Jews to understand Jesus as the anointed one Who's bringing a who's the instrument of God who's bringing the messianic age. That's for Paul like a fact that everybody Jew, Gentile, everybody should accept. What's different for non-Jews in my this is the two-way salvation reading. What's different for non-Jews in Paul's reading is that um Jesus death has an atoning significance that absolves them of the sin of idolatry. Jews do not need absolution from

the sin of idolatry because they've already been given a covenant and exclusively worshiping the one God of Israel. So idolatry is a non-issue for Jews. So I think all Paul wants of Jews is for them to recognize the role Jesus plays. these are you gentiles and that's the argument I and a very small number of others have made which then I think yeah Christopher Stendall m might have made a s he never so a scholar that's influenced me quite a lot named Chris Stendall sort of kind of said something like this Torah for Jews Jesus

for Gentiles and then it got labeled two ways salvation and ridiculed Stendall never worked out a Pauline theology of this kind of thing, but I myself um and one or two others have tried to Take that seriously. And I I just articulated what I think that looks like that it's all one sort of path to salvation, but Jesus plays a different role for Jews than for Gentiles. But others would say, and we'd have to get down to the nitty-gritty of passages, and I'm sure we don't have time for that. Um, uh, that no, Jesus is

absolutely, um, central, that everybody has to confess. That when Paul says in Romans 10 that everyone needs to confess um, Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, Paul means everyone. And that includes Jews and that Jesus is what brings salvation. And so therefore um scholars with whom I agree on, you know, with whom we agree on so many things would diverge on this question of whether Jews play a different role or have a different means of salvation than Gentiles. When did Paul think the world was going to end? Did he think it was going to

end uh during his lifetime or shortly thereafter? Um I think he changes his mind. I think in First Thessalonians he believes Whoops. Um I still see you. I Okay. I think he believes that the end of time is coming very soon, but that um That that by the time you get to Romans, he has um he has changed his mind. I mean, he pretty much says that um he pretty much says that to paraphrase, I thought Jesus kind of would be coming back already, but um he hasn't shown up yet. You'll find this in basically

in Romans 13. He hasn't shown up yet. And therefore um I need to re-evaluate my thinking about this. And he basically says that um time is lag. actually says this, it starts talking about this in Romans 11, I should say, that time is sort of lagging, that God has extended time um for the Jews to come to realization about the significance of Jesus in order that I might have more time to preach the gospel to all of you Gentiles. So I think if you read first Thessalonians, Paul definitely thinks Jesus is coming back in his

own lifetime. I think by the time you get to Romans, you can see you can you can hear or feel whatever a little disappointment that Jesus hasn't already shown up and the second coming hasn't already happened and the messianic age hasn't begun for everyone. But he also says salvation is as amazing grace I think says salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. So he doesn't give up hope um that it's going to take 2,000 years. I still think it's he thinks it's coming very soon. I don't know if he still thinks

it's coming in his lifetime but he hasn't given hope that it's a short span of time. I think Paul would be very surprised to learn that um we're all still here today. I just got this question and one more and it's um what does First Clement say about Paul's death? What does First Clement say about Paul? Oh, you mean about um um being martyed in Rome is what I think you're thinking of, right? So, because in Romans Paul Yes. Right. It's rather brief, but there first Clement uh roots this traditional belief that Paul died in

Rome as a martyr. Peter also dies in Rome as a martyr. Neither of those things are narrated in the New Testament, but First Clement is the first text and it's a very early text. Um, First Clement dates comparable to some documents in the New Testament and First Clement, there's an early codeex of the Christian Bible in which first clement is seems to be part of the New Testament. So, so it does have this, but it later canonically is is out. Um, so at the end of Paul's letter to the Romans, he says that he's um

planning to go to come see the Romans in Rome because he's going to go to on a mission to Spain, right? Paul, most of Paul's mission happens in the um eastern Mediterranean. So, Italy, you know, from Greece to basically Israel and that that eastern edge. He's now got plans to go to the western Mediterranean as far as Spain. Um, so the the assumption is that Paul would have gone to Rome and that he got in big trouble in Rome and he died. It's not an implausible thing that could have happened to Paul. And the last

letter we do have of Paul's is his letter to the Romans. and then we never hear from them again. The the only kink in that theory in in that historical recount which again traditional traditional Christian thinking has it that way and some historians would say yeah Paul died in Rome. I think it's just as likely that Paul died in Judea or the Galilee during the Jewish war because at the end of Romans, Paul says, "Before I come to see you in Rome, I'm going to Jerusalem to drop off the collection." Right? He's been collecting charity

or tribute or something to bring to the pillars that apostles of Peter, James, and company in Jerusalem. And that is the last we hear of Paul. And if Paul's letters are dated um those that last letter of Romans say to about the year 60, the Jewish war gets uh really gets into full force in the year 66, but there are riots and things happening in the years, bad riots, things leading up to that. So it's not and a lot of people die in that war. A lot of Jews die. So it's likely the most likely

and this is nothing more than plausible speculation is that Paul died there. But that what you refer to in Clement becomes the dominant sort of biographical end to Paul's life. And my closing question is Acts reliable at all or would you prefer to separate Acts from any attempt to reconstruct the historical Paul? Um, in my own book, Paul was not a Christian, I and I explained this at the beginning, I just kind of bracket Acts. And I think I say it's not that there's nothing historical in Acts, but there's enough that I question that it's

hard for me to parse out what's reliable history from what's not reliable history. So, I just bracket it. There's some scholars recently that are persuading me we should work more with Acts in reconstructing Paul's life. By the way, traditionally, Acts was 100% relied on to construct a chronology of Paul's life, using the letters to sort of fill in what happened along the way. Then as people got more skeptical of Acts because Acts has a certain theological agenda and a way of telling a story um then people got very cynical about Acts and so at the

time I'm writing my book I just don't want to deal with the problem so I just put it aside. Um, I think if I were to write another book on Paul, I would have to deal with Acts in a little with a little more I don't know if the right word is sympathy, but give it more care and credence. I do think the writer of Acts takes himself very seriously as a historian. So, in other words, he's someone, as he tells us at the beginning, he cares about accuracy. Accuracy for an ancient historian means something

different than it does for the New York Times. We have to remember that the writer of Acts, he has no um videographers with him. He has no audio tape. He has no podcast. He has no has None of the way to record things the way we do now. So, for example, someone listening to this podcast, if they later write a paper uh for their seminary professor and they want to quote something I said or a question you asked me and they put it in quotation marks, all the words in those quotation marks must be exactly

what you or I said, right? Otherwise, it's a misrepresentation. If the New York Times says Joe Biden says X and he said mostly X, but they got two words wrong, they print a correction the next day, even if it's of no consequence. That standard of accuracy doesn't ex exist in antiquity. But nevertheless, historians did care about accuracy in terms of getting the essence of things right. So if I don't know whether I'll write another book on Paul, but if I did, I think I would have to take Axe I'd have to integrate Axe in some

way or another. Well, thank you for joining me today, Pamila. Thank you for the conversation. It's always a pleasure to talk about Paul and you're obviously a studied um person. So, may your studies continue. Thank you. Hello viewers, thanks for watching this video from the History Valley YouTube channel. Please don't forget to subscribe and hit the notification bell. And if any of you wish to fur or support this channel, please consider checking out this channel's Patreon page and becoming a patron and or donate through PayPal or through Super Chat during your live stream. Thank you.