Paul and Palestinian Judaism

E.P. Sanders is the rarest of Biblical critics I have encountered, and this is perhaps his most poignant, imaginative, yet erudite account of the world's best known Christian, St. Paul. Paul and Palestinian Judaism is the first of what would later become "A New Perspective" on the question of Paul and the nature of his relationship with his opponents, those early Christians who perhaps were more Jewish and less Christian.

I have spent my adult lifetime being mystified by Paul, and I highly welcome Sander's scholarship on this subject, which does not begin with Paul, but on Judaism in an exhaustive survey of nearly all the relevant documents and facts we now posses. The question begins with how does one get in and stay in the Jewish Covenant? Though Jewish thought in the first century proves to be highly diverse, Sanders introduces the concept of "Covenantal Nomism." All Jews were part of the covenant and believed themselves accessible to God, his forgiveness, atonement and salvation. From this formulation, Sanders concludes that Paul did not start from the weakness of Judaism to formulate his doctrine, but rather the person of Christ. Paul's conviction of Jesus led him to the conclusion that salvation could only come through him. It is difficult to argue with Sanders, and perhaps only a true Bible Scholar can formulate the kinds of arguments necessary to combat this highly exhaustive study. The Book's value to me was its survey of Judaism, and the respect Sanders--a Christian--gives it becomes a formidable argument to the common Calvinistic or Lutheran theological assumptions of Jewish legalism as the understood practice for Hebrew salvation. "Legalism" is hardly descriptive of the complexity of first century Jewish ideology, and Christians (and secularists) have generally been slow to realize the sophistication of Jewish theology in comparison to its heretical offspring.

Christianity would not have been understood as the only answer for God's atonement and forgiveness by any observant Covenantal Jew, unless they somehow were presented with Christ. Christians may agree with this, but Sanders introduces us to the depths of Judaism, long argued by Jewish and agnostic scholars as a highly motivated, diverse, sophisticated, and theologically formidable religion. My observation (going further than Sanders) is that Christianity is a Jewish Heresy that replaces the covenant with the person of Christ, succeeding via a dramatic and highly successful creative misreading of the Hebrew Bible. Paul's line of reasoning, his ingenious (and not so ingenious) revisions of the Hebrew Bible, and his audaciousness become more explainable when one considers Paul as less Jewish and more Christian. Sanders is a welcome addition to any Library as well as to anyone who would know more about this extremely touchy subject.