In his essay, The Three Paths to Salvation of Paul the Jew, Gabriele Boccaccini unpacks the implications of Paul’s “belonging” simultaneously to Judaism and Christianity to arrive at the surprising and provocative conclusion that there are in fact three means of salvation:
For Jews, adherence to Torah.
For gentiles, good works according to conscience and natural law.
For all sinners, forgiveness through faith in Jesus Christ.
This essay was originally published in Paul the Jew: Rereading the Apostle as a Figure of Second Temple Judaism.
The Three Paths to Salvation of Paul the Jew
by Gabriele Boccaccini
For centuries, Paul has been praised by Christians, and blamed by Jews, for separating Christianity from Judaism. Paul appeared to Christians as the convert who unmasked and denounced the “weakness” (if not the wickedness) of Judaism, and to Jews as the traitor who made a mockery of the faith of his ancestors.1 Paul was, at the same time, the advocate of Christian universalism and the major proponent of Christian exclusiveness—everybody is called and welcomed, but there is only one way of salvation in Christ for all humankind.
The New Perspective has tried hard to get rid of the most derogatory aspects of the traditional (Lutheran) reading of Paul (claiming that Judaism also should be regarded as a “respectable” religion based on grace), but has not challenged the view of Paul as the critic of Judaism and the advocate of a new supersessionist model of relations between God and humankind—God’s grace “in Christ” superseded the Jewish covenant for both Jews and gentiles by creating a third separate “race.”
A new paradigm is emerging today with the Radical New Perspective—a paradigm that aims to fully rediscover the Jewishness of Paul. Paradoxically, “Paul was not a Christian,”2 since Christianity, at the time of Paul, was nothing else than a Jewish messianic movement, and therefore, Paul should be regarded as nothing other than a Second Temple Jew. What else should he have been? Paul was born a Jew, of Jewish parents, was circumcised, and nothing in his work supports (or even suggests) the idea that he became (or regarded himself as) an apostate.3 On the contrary, Paul was a member of the early Jesus movement, and with strength and unmistakable clarity, proudly claimed his Jewishness, declaring that God also did not reject God’s covenant with the chosen people: “Has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin” (Rom. 11:1; cf. Phil. 3:5).
The goal of this volume is fully to embrace the paradigm of the Radical New Perspective not as the conclusion, but as the starting point of our conversation about Paul. The following chapters, based on papers first presented at the Third Nangeroni Meeting in Rome, share that perspective.
In my opinion, the potential of such an approach has just begun to be manifested. We have still a long way to go before fully understanding all its monumental implications. In order to properly locate Paul the Jew in the context of the diverse world of Second Temple Judaism, we need, first of all, to establish a better communication between New Testament scholars and Second Temple specialists—two fields of studies that, to date, have remained too distant and deaf to each other. This is what our meeting in Rome was about; this is the future of Pauline studies.
Three Caveats about the Jewishness of Paul
Since my remarks focus on the Jewishness of Paul, it is important to clarify, as a premise, what we should not imply by that, in order to avoid common misunderstandings.
1. In order to reclaim the Jewishness of Paul, we do not have to prove that he was a Jew like everybody else, or that he was not an original thinker. It is important not to apply to Paul a different standard than to any other Jew of his time. To claim that finding any idea in Paul that is unparalleled in other Jewish authors makes Paul “non-Jewish” would lead to the paradox that no original thinker of Second Temple Judaism should be considered “Jewish”—certainly not Philo or Josephus or Hillel or the Teacher of Righteousness, all of whom also formulated “original” answers to the common questions of their age. Why should only Paul be considered “non-Jewish” or “no longer Jewish” simply because he developed some original thinking? The very notion of making a distinction within Paul between his Jewish and “non-Jewish” (or “Christian”) ideas does not make any sense. Paul was Jewish in his “traditional” ideas and remained such even in his “originality.”
Paul was a Jewish thinker and all his ideas (even the most nonconformist) were Jewish.
In order to reclaim the Jewishness of Paul, we do not have to downplay the fact that he was a very controversial figure, not only within Second Temple Judaism, but also within the early Jesus movement. The classical interpretation that the controversial nature of Paul (both within and outside his movement) relied on his attempt to separate Christianity from Judaism does not take into consideration the diversity of Second Temple Jewish thought. There was never a monolithic Judaism versus an equally monolithic Christianity. There were many diverse varieties of Judaism (including the early Jesus movement, which, in turn, was also very diverse in its internal components).
In order to reclaim the Jewishness of Paul, we do not have to prove that he had nothing to say to Jews and that his mission was aimed only at the inclusion of gentiles. As Daniel Boyarin has reminded us in his work on Paul, a Jew is a Jew, and remains a Jew, even when he or she expresses radical self-criticism toward his or her own religious tradition or against other competitive forms of Judaism.4 Limiting the entire Pauline theological discourse to the sole issue of the inclusion of gentiles would once again confine Paul the Jew to the fringes of Judaism and overshadow the many implications of his theology in the broader context of Second Temple Jewish thought.
As in the case of Jesus, the problem of Paul is not whether he was a Jew or not, but what kind of Jew he was, because in the diverse world of Second Temple Judaism, there were many different ways of being a Jew.5 According to his own words, Paul was educated as a Pharisee. The idea that he abandoned Judaism when he “converted” to the Jesus movement is simply anachronistic.
Conversion as an experience of radical abandonment of one’s religious and ethical identity was indeed known in antiquity (as attested in Joseph and Aseneth, and in the works of Philo). But this was not the experience of Paul. Christianity at his time was a Jewish messianic movement, not a separate religion. Paul, who was born and raised a Jew, remained such after his “conversion”; nothing changed in his religious and ethical identity. What changed, however, was his view of Judaism. In describing his experience not as a “prophetic call,” but as a “heavenly revelation,” Paul himself indicated the radicalness of the event. Paul did not abandon Judaism, but “converted” from one variety of Judaism to another. With Alan Segal, I would agree that “Paul was a Pharisaic Jew who converted to a new apocalyptic, Jewish sect.”
In no way should we downplay the relevance of the event. It was a move within Judaism, and yet, a radical move that reoriented Paul’s entire life and worldview. If, today, a Reform Rabbi became an ultraorthodox Jew, or vice versa, we would also describe such an experience in terms of “conversion.” Likewise, Paul’s conversion should be understood not as a chapter in the parting of the ways between Christianity and Judaism, but as an occurrence in the context of the diversity of Second Temple Judaism.
Paul the Jesus Follower
Paul was a Pharisee who joined the early Jesus movement. Before being known as the apostle of the gentiles, Paul became a member of the Jesus movement, and then, characterized his apostolate within the Jesus movement as having a particular emphasis on the mission to gentiles. Before Paul the apostle of the gentiles, there was Paul “the Jesus follower.” Any inquiry about Paul cannot, therefore, avoid the question of what the early Jesus movement was about in the context of Second Temple Judaism.
We all agree that, at its inception, Christianity was a Jewish messianic movement, but what does that mean exactly? It would be simplistic to reduce the early “Christian” message to a generic announcement about the imminent coming of the kingdom of God and about Jesus as the expected Messiah. And it would be simplistic to imagine Paul as simply a Pharisee to whom the name of the future
Messiah was revealed and who believed himself to be living at the end of times.
As a result of his “conversion,” Paul fully embraced the Christian apocalyptic worldview and the claim that Jesus the Messiah had already come (and would return at the end of times). This included the explanation of why the Messiah had come before the end. The early Christians had an answer: Jesus did not come simply to reveal his name and identity. Jesus came as the Son of Man who had “authority on earth to forgive sins” (Mark 2 and parallels).
A Second Temple Jewish Debate
The idea of the Messiah as the forgiver on earth makes perfect sense as a development of the ancient Enochic apocalyptic tradition. The apocalyptic “counternarrative” of 1 Enoch centered on the collapse of the creative order by a cosmic rebellion (the oath and the actions of the fallen angels): “The whole earth has been corrupted by Azazel’s teaching of his [own] actions; and write upon him all sin” (1 En. 10:8). It was this cosmic rebellion that produced the catastrophe of the flood, but also the need for a new creation.
The Enochic view of the origin of evil had profound implications in the development of Second Temple Jewish thought. The idea of the “end of times” is today so much ingrained in the Jewish and Christian traditions to make it difficult even to imagine a time when it was not, and to fully comprehend its revolutionary impact when it first emerged. In the words of Genesis, nothing is more perfect than the perfect world, which God himself saw and praised as “very good” (Gen. 1:31). Nobody would change something that “works,” unless something went terribly wrong. In apocalyptic thought, eschatology is always the product of protology.
The problem of Enochic Judaism with the Mosaic law was also the product of protology. It did not come from a direct criticism of the law, but from the recognition that the angelic rebellion had made it difficult for people to follow any laws (including the Mosaic Torah) in a universe now disrupted by the presence of superhuman evil. The problem was not the Torah itself, but the incapability of human beings to do good deeds, which affects the human relationship with the Mosaic Torah. The shift of focus was not primarily from Moses to Enoch, but from the trust in human responsibility to the drama of human culpability. While at the center of the Mosaic Torah was the human responsibility to follow God’s laws, at the center of Enochic Judaism was now a paradigm of the victimization of all humankind.
This is the reason it would be incorrect to talk of Enochic Judaism as a form of Judaism “against” or “without” the Torah. Enochic Judaism was not “competing wisdom,” but more properly, a “theology of complaint.” There was no alternative Enochic halakah for this world, no Enochic purity code, no Enochic Torah: every hope of redemption was postponed to the end of times. The Enochians were not competing with Moses—they were merely complaining. In the Enochic Book of Dreams, the chosen people of Israel are promised a future redemption in the world to come, but in this world, Israel is affected by the spread of evil with no divine protection, as are all other nations.
The Enochic view had disturbing implications for the self- understanding of the Jewish people as the people of the covenant. It generated a heated debate within Judaism about the origin and nature of evil.7 Many (like the Pharisees and the Sadducees) rejected the very idea of the superhuman origin of evil; some explored other paths in order to save human freedom and God’s omnipotence—paths that led to alternative solutions, from the cor malignum of 4 Ezra to the rabbinic yetzer hara‘. Even within apocalyptic circles, there were competing theologies. In the mid-second century BCE, the book of Jubilees reacted against this demise of the covenantal relation with God by creating an effective synthesis between Enoch and Moses that most scholars see as the foundation of the Essene movement. While maintaining the Enochic frame of corruption and decay, Jubilees reinterpreted the covenant as the “medicine” provided by God to spare the chosen people from the power of evil. The merging of Mosaic and Enochic traditions redefined a space where the people of Israel could now live, protected from the evilness of the world under the boundaries of an alternative halakah as long as they remained faithful to the imposed rules. The covenant was restored as the prerequisite for salvation. In this respect, as Collins says, “Jubilees, which retells the stories of Genesis from a distinctly Mosaic perspective, with explicit halachic interests,” stood “in striking contrast” to Enochic tradition.8 Even more radically, the Community Rule would explore predestination as a way to neutralize God’s loss of control of the created world and restore God’s omnipotence.
Enochic Judaism remained faithful to its own premises (Jews and gentiles are equally affected by evil), but was not insensitive to the criticism of having given too much power to evil, thereby dramatically reducing humanity’s chances of being saved. The later Enochic tradition tried to solve the problem by following a different path. In the Parables of Enoch, we read that at the end of times in the last judgment, as expected, God and his Messiah Son of Man will save the righteous and condemn the unrighteous. The righteous have “honor” (merit, good works) and will be victorious in the name of God, while “the sinners” have no honor (no good works) and will not be saved in the name of God. But quite unexpectedly, in chapter 50, a third group emerges at the moment of the judgment. They are called “the others”: they are sinners who repent and abandon the works of their hands. “They will have no honor in the presence of the Lord of Spirits, yet through His name they will be saved, and the Lord of Spirits will have mercy on them, for great is His mercy.”10
In other words, the text explores the relation between the justice and the mercy of God and the role played by these two attributes of God in the judgment. According to the book of Parables, the righteous are saved according to God’s justice and mercy, the sinners are condemned according to God’s justice and mercy, but those who repent will be saved by God’s mercy even though they should not be saved according to God’s justice. Repentance makes God’s mercy prevail over God’s justice.
The Christian idea of the first coming of the Messiah as forgiver is a radical, yet very logical, variant of the Enochic system. The concept of the existence of a time of repentance immediately before the judgment and the prophecy that, at that point, “the sinners” will be divided between “the repentant” (the others) and “the unrepentant,” is the necessary “premise” of the missions of John and Jesus, as narrated in the Synoptics.
The imminent coming of the last judgment, when the earth will be cleansed with fire, means urgent repentance and “forgiveness of sins” for those who in this world have “no honor.” “Be baptized with water; otherwise, you will be baptized with the fire of judgment by the Son of Man”: this seems to be, in essence, the original message of John the Baptist as understood by the Synoptics, an interpretation that does not contradict the interest of the Christian authors to present it as a prophecy of Christian Baptism (by the Holy Spirit).
Similar ideas find an echo also in the Life of Adam and Eve—a text generally dated to the first century CE—where the sinner Adam does penance for forty days, immersed in the waters of the Jordan (and it is not by accident that John baptized in the living water of the Jordan). The first man (and first sinner) is driven by one steadfast hope: “Maybe God will have mercy on me” (L. A.E. 4:3). His plea to be allowed back in the Garden of Eden will not be accepted, but at the time of his death, his soul will not be handed over to the devil, as his crime deserved, but carried off to heaven; so, God decided in his mercy, despite the complaints of Satan.
In the Christian interpretation, John the Baptist, as the precursor, could only announce the urgency of repentance and express hope in God’s mercy. But with Jesus, it was another matter: he was the Son of Man who had authority on earth to forgive sins, who left to his disciples the power of forgiveness through Baptism “with the Holy Spirit,” and who will return with the angels to perform the judgment with fire. After all, who can have more authority to forgive than the one whom God has delegated as the eschatological judge?
As the forgiver, Jesus was not sent to “the righteous,” but to “sinners,” so that they might repent. There is no evidence in the Synoptics of a universal mission of Jesus to every person: Jesus was sent
to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 10:6); the righteous do not need the doctor. Jesus was the doctor sent to heal sinners (Mark 2:17; Matt. 9:13), as Luke makes explicit: “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32).
Reading the Synoptics in light of the book of Parables of Enoch sheds light also on some parables that the Christian tradition attributed to Jesus. The parable of the lost sheep (Matt. 18:10–14; Luke 15:1–7) defines the relationship between God and “the others”; Luke’s parable of the prodigal son (15:11–32) reiterates the theme, but also adds a teaching about the relationship between “the righteous” and “the others”—between those who have honor and are saved because they have never abandoned the house of the Father and those who have no honor, and yet, are saved as well since they have repented and abandoned the works of their hands. The examples could be numerous, but no parable seems more enlightening to me than the one narrated by Matthew on the workers in the vineyard (Matt. 20:1–16). The householder who pays the same salary for different “measures” of work gives the full reward (salvation) to the “righteous” and to the “others,” just as chapter 50 of the Parables claim that God will do in the last judgment. God’s mercy (“Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?”) bests God’s justice, or, as the letter of James will say, “Mercy triumphs over the judgment [κατακαυχᾶται ἔλεος κρίσεως]” (James 2:13).
The contrast with the traditions developed in the rabbinic movement could not be stronger. The rabbis freely discuss the relation between the two middot—God’s measures of justice and mercy—providing flexible answers to the issue. Mishnah Sotah (1:7–9) sticks to the principle “with what measure a man metes it shall be measured to him again,” and affirms that “with the same measure,” God gives justice when punishing evil deeds and mercy when rewarding good deeds. On the contrary, the parallel text in Tosefta Sotah (3:1–4:19) claims that “the measure of Mercy is five hundred times greater than the measure of Justice.” But the two divine attributes are never opposed as in the book of Parables and in the early Christian tradition; on the contrary, their necessarily complementary nature is emphasized. Not accidentally, the “rabbinic” version of the parables will end with different words in which God’s mercy is praised, but God’s justice is not denied: “This one did more work in two hours than the rest of you did working all day long” (y. Ber. 2:8).
For Jews, adherence to Torah.
For gentiles, good works according to conscience and natural law.
For all sinners, forgiveness through faith in Jesus Christ.
This essay was originally published in Paul the Jew: Rereading the Apostle as a Figure of Second Temple Judaism.
The Three Paths to Salvation of Paul the Jew
by Gabriele Boccaccini
For centuries, Paul has been praised by Christians, and blamed by Jews, for separating Christianity from Judaism. Paul appeared to Christians as the convert who unmasked and denounced the “weakness” (if not the wickedness) of Judaism, and to Jews as the traitor who made a mockery of the faith of his ancestors.1 Paul was, at the same time, the advocate of Christian universalism and the major proponent of Christian exclusiveness—everybody is called and welcomed, but there is only one way of salvation in Christ for all humankind.
The New Perspective has tried hard to get rid of the most derogatory aspects of the traditional (Lutheran) reading of Paul (claiming that Judaism also should be regarded as a “respectable” religion based on grace), but has not challenged the view of Paul as the critic of Judaism and the advocate of a new supersessionist model of relations between God and humankind—God’s grace “in Christ” superseded the Jewish covenant for both Jews and gentiles by creating a third separate “race.”
A new paradigm is emerging today with the Radical New Perspective—a paradigm that aims to fully rediscover the Jewishness of Paul. Paradoxically, “Paul was not a Christian,”2 since Christianity, at the time of Paul, was nothing else than a Jewish messianic movement, and therefore, Paul should be regarded as nothing other than a Second Temple Jew. What else should he have been? Paul was born a Jew, of Jewish parents, was circumcised, and nothing in his work supports (or even suggests) the idea that he became (or regarded himself as) an apostate.3 On the contrary, Paul was a member of the early Jesus movement, and with strength and unmistakable clarity, proudly claimed his Jewishness, declaring that God also did not reject God’s covenant with the chosen people: “Has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin” (Rom. 11:1; cf. Phil. 3:5).
The goal of this volume is fully to embrace the paradigm of the Radical New Perspective not as the conclusion, but as the starting point of our conversation about Paul. The following chapters, based on papers first presented at the Third Nangeroni Meeting in Rome, share that perspective.
In my opinion, the potential of such an approach has just begun to be manifested. We have still a long way to go before fully understanding all its monumental implications. In order to properly locate Paul the Jew in the context of the diverse world of Second Temple Judaism, we need, first of all, to establish a better communication between New Testament scholars and Second Temple specialists—two fields of studies that, to date, have remained too distant and deaf to each other. This is what our meeting in Rome was about; this is the future of Pauline studies.
Three Caveats about the Jewishness of Paul
Since my remarks focus on the Jewishness of Paul, it is important to clarify, as a premise, what we should not imply by that, in order to avoid common misunderstandings.
1. In order to reclaim the Jewishness of Paul, we do not have to prove that he was a Jew like everybody else, or that he was not an original thinker. It is important not to apply to Paul a different standard than to any other Jew of his time. To claim that finding any idea in Paul that is unparalleled in other Jewish authors makes Paul “non-Jewish” would lead to the paradox that no original thinker of Second Temple Judaism should be considered “Jewish”—certainly not Philo or Josephus or Hillel or the Teacher of Righteousness, all of whom also formulated “original” answers to the common questions of their age. Why should only Paul be considered “non-Jewish” or “no longer Jewish” simply because he developed some original thinking? The very notion of making a distinction within Paul between his Jewish and “non-Jewish” (or “Christian”) ideas does not make any sense. Paul was Jewish in his “traditional” ideas and remained such even in his “originality.”
Paul was a Jewish thinker and all his ideas (even the most nonconformist) were Jewish.
In order to reclaim the Jewishness of Paul, we do not have to downplay the fact that he was a very controversial figure, not only within Second Temple Judaism, but also within the early Jesus movement. The classical interpretation that the controversial nature of Paul (both within and outside his movement) relied on his attempt to separate Christianity from Judaism does not take into consideration the diversity of Second Temple Jewish thought. There was never a monolithic Judaism versus an equally monolithic Christianity. There were many diverse varieties of Judaism (including the early Jesus movement, which, in turn, was also very diverse in its internal components).
In order to reclaim the Jewishness of Paul, we do not have to prove that he had nothing to say to Jews and that his mission was aimed only at the inclusion of gentiles. As Daniel Boyarin has reminded us in his work on Paul, a Jew is a Jew, and remains a Jew, even when he or she expresses radical self-criticism toward his or her own religious tradition or against other competitive forms of Judaism.4 Limiting the entire Pauline theological discourse to the sole issue of the inclusion of gentiles would once again confine Paul the Jew to the fringes of Judaism and overshadow the many implications of his theology in the broader context of Second Temple Jewish thought.
As in the case of Jesus, the problem of Paul is not whether he was a Jew or not, but what kind of Jew he was, because in the diverse world of Second Temple Judaism, there were many different ways of being a Jew.5 According to his own words, Paul was educated as a Pharisee. The idea that he abandoned Judaism when he “converted” to the Jesus movement is simply anachronistic.
Conversion as an experience of radical abandonment of one’s religious and ethical identity was indeed known in antiquity (as attested in Joseph and Aseneth, and in the works of Philo). But this was not the experience of Paul. Christianity at his time was a Jewish messianic movement, not a separate religion. Paul, who was born and raised a Jew, remained such after his “conversion”; nothing changed in his religious and ethical identity. What changed, however, was his view of Judaism. In describing his experience not as a “prophetic call,” but as a “heavenly revelation,” Paul himself indicated the radicalness of the event. Paul did not abandon Judaism, but “converted” from one variety of Judaism to another. With Alan Segal, I would agree that “Paul was a Pharisaic Jew who converted to a new apocalyptic, Jewish sect.”
In no way should we downplay the relevance of the event. It was a move within Judaism, and yet, a radical move that reoriented Paul’s entire life and worldview. If, today, a Reform Rabbi became an ultraorthodox Jew, or vice versa, we would also describe such an experience in terms of “conversion.” Likewise, Paul’s conversion should be understood not as a chapter in the parting of the ways between Christianity and Judaism, but as an occurrence in the context of the diversity of Second Temple Judaism.
Paul the Jesus Follower
Paul was a Pharisee who joined the early Jesus movement. Before being known as the apostle of the gentiles, Paul became a member of the Jesus movement, and then, characterized his apostolate within the Jesus movement as having a particular emphasis on the mission to gentiles. Before Paul the apostle of the gentiles, there was Paul “the Jesus follower.” Any inquiry about Paul cannot, therefore, avoid the question of what the early Jesus movement was about in the context of Second Temple Judaism.
We all agree that, at its inception, Christianity was a Jewish messianic movement, but what does that mean exactly? It would be simplistic to reduce the early “Christian” message to a generic announcement about the imminent coming of the kingdom of God and about Jesus as the expected Messiah. And it would be simplistic to imagine Paul as simply a Pharisee to whom the name of the future
Messiah was revealed and who believed himself to be living at the end of times.
As a result of his “conversion,” Paul fully embraced the Christian apocalyptic worldview and the claim that Jesus the Messiah had already come (and would return at the end of times). This included the explanation of why the Messiah had come before the end. The early Christians had an answer: Jesus did not come simply to reveal his name and identity. Jesus came as the Son of Man who had “authority on earth to forgive sins” (Mark 2 and parallels).
A Second Temple Jewish Debate
The idea of the Messiah as the forgiver on earth makes perfect sense as a development of the ancient Enochic apocalyptic tradition. The apocalyptic “counternarrative” of 1 Enoch centered on the collapse of the creative order by a cosmic rebellion (the oath and the actions of the fallen angels): “The whole earth has been corrupted by Azazel’s teaching of his [own] actions; and write upon him all sin” (1 En. 10:8). It was this cosmic rebellion that produced the catastrophe of the flood, but also the need for a new creation.
The Enochic view of the origin of evil had profound implications in the development of Second Temple Jewish thought. The idea of the “end of times” is today so much ingrained in the Jewish and Christian traditions to make it difficult even to imagine a time when it was not, and to fully comprehend its revolutionary impact when it first emerged. In the words of Genesis, nothing is more perfect than the perfect world, which God himself saw and praised as “very good” (Gen. 1:31). Nobody would change something that “works,” unless something went terribly wrong. In apocalyptic thought, eschatology is always the product of protology.
The problem of Enochic Judaism with the Mosaic law was also the product of protology. It did not come from a direct criticism of the law, but from the recognition that the angelic rebellion had made it difficult for people to follow any laws (including the Mosaic Torah) in a universe now disrupted by the presence of superhuman evil. The problem was not the Torah itself, but the incapability of human beings to do good deeds, which affects the human relationship with the Mosaic Torah. The shift of focus was not primarily from Moses to Enoch, but from the trust in human responsibility to the drama of human culpability. While at the center of the Mosaic Torah was the human responsibility to follow God’s laws, at the center of Enochic Judaism was now a paradigm of the victimization of all humankind.
This is the reason it would be incorrect to talk of Enochic Judaism as a form of Judaism “against” or “without” the Torah. Enochic Judaism was not “competing wisdom,” but more properly, a “theology of complaint.” There was no alternative Enochic halakah for this world, no Enochic purity code, no Enochic Torah: every hope of redemption was postponed to the end of times. The Enochians were not competing with Moses—they were merely complaining. In the Enochic Book of Dreams, the chosen people of Israel are promised a future redemption in the world to come, but in this world, Israel is affected by the spread of evil with no divine protection, as are all other nations.
The Enochic view had disturbing implications for the self- understanding of the Jewish people as the people of the covenant. It generated a heated debate within Judaism about the origin and nature of evil.7 Many (like the Pharisees and the Sadducees) rejected the very idea of the superhuman origin of evil; some explored other paths in order to save human freedom and God’s omnipotence—paths that led to alternative solutions, from the cor malignum of 4 Ezra to the rabbinic yetzer hara‘. Even within apocalyptic circles, there were competing theologies. In the mid-second century BCE, the book of Jubilees reacted against this demise of the covenantal relation with God by creating an effective synthesis between Enoch and Moses that most scholars see as the foundation of the Essene movement. While maintaining the Enochic frame of corruption and decay, Jubilees reinterpreted the covenant as the “medicine” provided by God to spare the chosen people from the power of evil. The merging of Mosaic and Enochic traditions redefined a space where the people of Israel could now live, protected from the evilness of the world under the boundaries of an alternative halakah as long as they remained faithful to the imposed rules. The covenant was restored as the prerequisite for salvation. In this respect, as Collins says, “Jubilees, which retells the stories of Genesis from a distinctly Mosaic perspective, with explicit halachic interests,” stood “in striking contrast” to Enochic tradition.8 Even more radically, the Community Rule would explore predestination as a way to neutralize God’s loss of control of the created world and restore God’s omnipotence.
Enochic Judaism remained faithful to its own premises (Jews and gentiles are equally affected by evil), but was not insensitive to the criticism of having given too much power to evil, thereby dramatically reducing humanity’s chances of being saved. The later Enochic tradition tried to solve the problem by following a different path. In the Parables of Enoch, we read that at the end of times in the last judgment, as expected, God and his Messiah Son of Man will save the righteous and condemn the unrighteous. The righteous have “honor” (merit, good works) and will be victorious in the name of God, while “the sinners” have no honor (no good works) and will not be saved in the name of God. But quite unexpectedly, in chapter 50, a third group emerges at the moment of the judgment. They are called “the others”: they are sinners who repent and abandon the works of their hands. “They will have no honor in the presence of the Lord of Spirits, yet through His name they will be saved, and the Lord of Spirits will have mercy on them, for great is His mercy.”10
In other words, the text explores the relation between the justice and the mercy of God and the role played by these two attributes of God in the judgment. According to the book of Parables, the righteous are saved according to God’s justice and mercy, the sinners are condemned according to God’s justice and mercy, but those who repent will be saved by God’s mercy even though they should not be saved according to God’s justice. Repentance makes God’s mercy prevail over God’s justice.
The Christian idea of the first coming of the Messiah as forgiver is a radical, yet very logical, variant of the Enochic system. The concept of the existence of a time of repentance immediately before the judgment and the prophecy that, at that point, “the sinners” will be divided between “the repentant” (the others) and “the unrepentant,” is the necessary “premise” of the missions of John and Jesus, as narrated in the Synoptics.
The imminent coming of the last judgment, when the earth will be cleansed with fire, means urgent repentance and “forgiveness of sins” for those who in this world have “no honor.” “Be baptized with water; otherwise, you will be baptized with the fire of judgment by the Son of Man”: this seems to be, in essence, the original message of John the Baptist as understood by the Synoptics, an interpretation that does not contradict the interest of the Christian authors to present it as a prophecy of Christian Baptism (by the Holy Spirit).
Similar ideas find an echo also in the Life of Adam and Eve—a text generally dated to the first century CE—where the sinner Adam does penance for forty days, immersed in the waters of the Jordan (and it is not by accident that John baptized in the living water of the Jordan). The first man (and first sinner) is driven by one steadfast hope: “Maybe God will have mercy on me” (L. A.E. 4:3). His plea to be allowed back in the Garden of Eden will not be accepted, but at the time of his death, his soul will not be handed over to the devil, as his crime deserved, but carried off to heaven; so, God decided in his mercy, despite the complaints of Satan.
In the Christian interpretation, John the Baptist, as the precursor, could only announce the urgency of repentance and express hope in God’s mercy. But with Jesus, it was another matter: he was the Son of Man who had authority on earth to forgive sins, who left to his disciples the power of forgiveness through Baptism “with the Holy Spirit,” and who will return with the angels to perform the judgment with fire. After all, who can have more authority to forgive than the one whom God has delegated as the eschatological judge?
As the forgiver, Jesus was not sent to “the righteous,” but to “sinners,” so that they might repent. There is no evidence in the Synoptics of a universal mission of Jesus to every person: Jesus was sent
to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 10:6); the righteous do not need the doctor. Jesus was the doctor sent to heal sinners (Mark 2:17; Matt. 9:13), as Luke makes explicit: “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32).
Reading the Synoptics in light of the book of Parables of Enoch sheds light also on some parables that the Christian tradition attributed to Jesus. The parable of the lost sheep (Matt. 18:10–14; Luke 15:1–7) defines the relationship between God and “the others”; Luke’s parable of the prodigal son (15:11–32) reiterates the theme, but also adds a teaching about the relationship between “the righteous” and “the others”—between those who have honor and are saved because they have never abandoned the house of the Father and those who have no honor, and yet, are saved as well since they have repented and abandoned the works of their hands. The examples could be numerous, but no parable seems more enlightening to me than the one narrated by Matthew on the workers in the vineyard (Matt. 20:1–16). The householder who pays the same salary for different “measures” of work gives the full reward (salvation) to the “righteous” and to the “others,” just as chapter 50 of the Parables claim that God will do in the last judgment. God’s mercy (“Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?”) bests God’s justice, or, as the letter of James will say, “Mercy triumphs over the judgment [κατακαυχᾶται ἔλεος κρίσεως]” (James 2:13).
The contrast with the traditions developed in the rabbinic movement could not be stronger. The rabbis freely discuss the relation between the two middot—God’s measures of justice and mercy—providing flexible answers to the issue. Mishnah Sotah (1:7–9) sticks to the principle “with what measure a man metes it shall be measured to him again,” and affirms that “with the same measure,” God gives justice when punishing evil deeds and mercy when rewarding good deeds. On the contrary, the parallel text in Tosefta Sotah (3:1–4:19) claims that “the measure of Mercy is five hundred times greater than the measure of Justice.” But the two divine attributes are never opposed as in the book of Parables and in the early Christian tradition; on the contrary, their necessarily complementary nature is emphasized. Not accidentally, the “rabbinic” version of the parables will end with different words in which God’s mercy is praised, but God’s justice is not denied: “This one did more work in two hours than the rest of you did working all day long” (y. Ber. 2:8).
Paul the Apocalyptic Thinker
The problems of the origin of evil, the freedom of human will, and the forgiveness of sins are at the center of Paul’s thought. As we have seen, these were not Pauline problems, but Second Temple Jewish problems. The originality of Paul was not in the questions, but in the answers.
In the letter to the Romans, Paul wrote to the Christian community of Rome: a Christian community of people—Jews and gentiles—who were former sinners, but who believed that they had received forgiveness of sins through Jesus’ death. First of all, Paul reminds his readers that according to God’s plan, the moral life of Jews is regulated by the Torah, while the moral life of gentiles is regulated by their own conscience (or the natural law of the universe—an idea that Paul borrowed from Hellenistic Judaism and its emphasis on the creative order as the main means of revelation of God’s will). Then, Paul repeats the undisputed Second Temple belief that on the day of judgment, God “will repay according to each one’s deeds” (Rom. 2:8). In no way did Paul dispute that if Jews and gentiles follow the Torah and their own conscience, respectively, they will obtain salvation. The problem is not the Mosaic law or the natural law; the problem is sin. With all Second Temple Jews, Paul acknowledges the presence of evil, and he quotes a passage of Scripture (Eccles. 7:2) to stress that evil is a universal problem. Every Second Temple Jew would have agreed. The problems are the implications and the remedies to this situation.
Paul sides with the apocalyptic tradition of a superhuman origin of evil. With the Enochic traditions, he shares a similar context of cosmic battle between the Prince of Light and the Prince of Darkness—“What fellowship is there between light and darkness? What agreement has Christ with Belial?” (2 Cor. 6:15)—as well as the hope for future redemption from the power of the devil: “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Rom. 16:20). What we can notice, however, is a certain—more pessimistic—view of the power of evil. In the Pauline system, the sin of Adam takes the place of the sin of the fallen angels: “Sin came into the world through one man [Adam], and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). Adam’s sin is counterbalanced by the obedience of the “new Adam,” Jesus. In order to create the conditions that made necessary the sacrifice of the heavenly Savior, Paul exploits the Enochic view of evil by radicalizing its power. While in Enoch, people (Jews and gentiles alike) are struggling against the influence of evil forces, Paul envisions a postwar scenario where “all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin” (Rom. 3:9). Adam and Eve have lost the battle against the devil, and as a result, all their descendants have been “enslaved to sin” (Rom. 6:6).
Slavery was an established social institution in the Roman Empire. When Paul was talking of people defeated and enslaved as a result of war, everybody knew exactly what the implications were for them and their children. Once the fight was over, the slaves were expected to resign themselves to their condition. Josephus voices the common sense of his time when he addresses the inhabitants of besieged Jerusalem and reminds them that:
. . . [F]ighting for liberty is a right thing, but ought to have been done at first . . . To pretend now to shake off the yoke [of the Romans] was the work of such as had a mind to die miserably, not of such as were lovers of liberty . . . It is a strong and fixed law, even among brute beasts, as well as among men, to yield to those that are too strong for them. (J. W. 5.365–67)
The Romans admired and honored those who fought bravely for liberty, but despised rebellious slaves and condemned them to the cross. No one could expect the devil to be weaker than the Romans. Freedom could be regained only through the payment of a ransom.
Does that mean that all “slaves” are evil? Not necessarily. Once again, this was a matter of common experience. Being a slave does not necessarily equate to being “unrighteous.” However, slaves are in a very precarious situation since they are not free, and at any moment, they could be commanded by their master to do evil things. Paul never questions the holiness and effectiveness of the Mosaic Torah or implies its failure. On the contrary, he reiterates the “superiority” of the Mosaic Torah and the Jewish covenant that has given to Jews a “a full awareness of the fall” (Rom. 3:10) and the “prophecies” about the coming of the Messiah. It is sin that must be blamed, not the Torah:
The law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good. Did what is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, working death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. . . . For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (Rom. 7:12–17, 22–24)
It is this situation of total enslavement, not an intrinsic weakness of the “good” Torah, that leads Paul to do what the book of the Parables of Enoch had already done: that is, to seek hope for sinners not only in an heroic attachment to the law (according to God’s justice), but also in an intervention of God’s mercy, a gracious offer of forgiveness of sins “apart from the Law” (and God’s justice). The evilness of human nature under the power of sin determines that “no human being will be justified by deeds prescribed by the law” (Rom. 3:20), but only by a gracious act of “justification by God’s grace as gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood” (Rom. 3:24–25). God had to react to an extreme situation of distress and counterbalance the action of the devil with an extreme act of mercy:
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. (Rom. 5:6–9)
The entire debate about “justification” and “salvation” in Paul is still too much affected by the framework of Christian theology. As an apocalyptic Jew and a follower of Jesus, Paul claimed that forgiveness of sins was the major accomplishment of Jesus the Messiah for Jews and gentiles alike in the cosmic battle that Jesus fought against demonic forces. Justification provides to sinners (Jews and gentiles alike) an antidote, or at least, much-needed relief, to the overwhelming power of evil—a second chance given to people without hope. They were “enemies,” and yet, Christ died for them. In the language of the Parables of Enoch, those Jewish and gentile sinners who have received Baptism have put themselves among the “others” who are neither “righteous” nor “unrighteous,” but are now “repented sinners.” They have no merits to claim, according to God’s justice, but have received justification by the mercy of God.
Paul is confident that those who are justified will also be “saved” in the judgment, but justification does not equal salvation.11 Being forgiven of their sins is, for the sinners, an important step on the way to salvation, but it is not a guarantee of future salvation at the judgment where only deeds will be assessed. Hence, Paul continually reminds his readers of the necessity of remaining “blameless” after receiving Baptism. Having equated “justification by faith” (which Paul preached) with “(eternal) salvation by faith” (which Paul never preached) is one of the major distortions of the Christian reinterpretation of Paul.
Paul the Controversial Christian vs. James and Peter
Paul was just one voice in a debate that involved and divided the many components of Second Temple Judaism, and his position reflects the general position of the early Jesus movement. We may understand why Paul was viewed with suspicion by other Jews who did not share the apocalyptic idea of the superhuman origin of evil and rejected the Christian emphasis on the mission of forgiveness accomplished by Jesus the Messiah. So, why was Paul also a controversial figure within the early Jesus movement? The answer cannot be attributed only to a natural suspicion toward a person who was long regarded as an “enemy,” and, by his own admission, persecuted the church.
There is something in the theology of Paul that differentiated him from other Christian leaders (such as Peter and James). While other members of the early Jesus movement seem more interested in a perspective of restoration of the twelve tribes of Israel (see the incipit of the letter of James), in Paul, there is a special emphasis on the inclusion of gentiles. It was not a new problem: long before Paul, Jewish-Hellenistic communities had already developed models of inclusion of gentiles into their communities as “God-fearers.” Paul, instead, did it in an apocalyptic fashion, along the lines of texts such as the Enochic Book of Dreams, where we read that, in the world to come, the “white sheep” (the righteous Jews) will be united with the “birds of the sky” (the righteous gentiles) to form the new people of God. In the Parables of Enoch, also, the Messiah Son of Man is indicated as the “light” of the gentiles.
Paul never claimed to have been the first to baptize gentiles. What is distinctive is the enthusiasm with which Paul devoted his life to preaching to gentiles. But there is something that is far more controversial. Paul seemed to have pushed for an equal status of gentiles within the new community.
The apparent unanimity reached at the so-called Council of Jerusalem did not solve all the problems related to the presence of gentiles in the church. Despite the fact that baptized gentiles were not required to be circumcised or to keep the Law of Moses, the controversy exploded over the relationship between Jews and gentiles within the community, especially during communal meals. Were they to sit at separate tables or might they join the same table—Jew and gentile, male and female, free and slave?
Paul exploited his pessimistic view about the sinfulness of human nature in order to affirm the “equality in sin” of Jews and gentiles within the church. The parting of Christianity from its Jewish
apocalyptic roots would lead later Christian theology to wonder whether justification and forgiveness of sins are the same thing; but in the first-century apocalyptic worldview the two terms are synonymous. The most controversial aspect of Paul’s preaching was rather his statement that justification—that is, the gift of forgiveness of sins by the Christ—comes into effect “by faith only.”While most of the first Jewish followers of Jesus would talk of sin as a temptation (allowing a larger role to the freedom of human will), the metaphor of slavery leaves room only for a personal “yes” (and makes meaningless the idea of any prerequisites or any claim of “superiority” of the Jews over the gentiles, and therefore, any rationale for a distinction between the two groups within the new community). If only a “yes” is asked of the sinners, there is no room for “works” and justification is “by faith only.” If, instead, sin is a temptation and sinners maintain a certain degree of freedom, then they can, and should, be asked to “prove” their faith with some “works.” This is the move the letter of James makes by claiming that “a person is justified by works and not by faith alone,” and that “faith apart from works is dead” (James 2:19–26). Justification is the result of a synergy between humans and God:
[God] gives all the more grace; therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. (James 4:6–10)
Not accidentally, the letter of James does not even mention the death of Jesus; the preaching of Jesus, the “law of liberty” he taught, is the prerequisite for justification. For Paul, instead, the death and sacrifice of Jesus is the only thing that counts as a unilateral and gracious act of mercy: “I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing” (Gal. 2:21).
The theological dispute had profound practical implications in the life of the church. The incident at Antioch shows that Paul and James had opposite views of how Jews and gentiles should coexist in the church. James opposed the sharing of tables among Jews and gentiles, while Paul favored it. Peter was caught in between. At the beginning, Peter conformed to the practice of the church of Antioch, but after “certain people came from James,” he “drew back.” Paul reacted vehemently, confronting Peter and accusing him of “hypocrisy.” For Paul, there is no distinction between Jewish and gentile church members because they were equally sinners and were equally justified by the grace of God through Jesus. Concerning justification, Jews cannot claim any superiority, unless they deny the grace of God: “I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing” (Gal. 2:21).
Does that mean that Paul “abolished” the distinction between Jews and gentiles in this world tout court? This does not seem to be the case. Very interestingly, Paul’s famous saying about the equality between Jews and gentiles comes in a broader context that included “male and female” and “slave and free”: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). In Paul’s view, these categories are somehow altered in this world; there is no longer enmity and opposition in Christ. Yet, none of these categories is abolished. Paul asks Philemon to welcome his fugitive slave Onesimus as a brother in Christ, and yet, does not tell Philemon to free all his slaves, using the argument that in Jesus Christ, there is no longer slave or free. Paul mentions Priscilla before her husband, Aquila, in the ministry of Christ (Rom. 16:3–4), and yet, reiterates that “the head of the woman is the man” (1 Cor. 11:3) when he could have claimed that in Jesus Christ, there is no longer male and female. Paul proclaims the end of any enmity between Jews and gentiles in Christ, and yet . . . Why should he have claimed only in this case that such a distinction is no longer valid? Ironically, traditional Christian theology has stressed the definitive “end” of the distinction between Jews and gentiles as a divine decree and has never taken an equally strong stance about the “abolishment” of any distinction of gender and social status. Either Paul abolished all three categories or he did not abolish any of them.
Summary and Conclusion
Paul was a Second Temple Jew, a former Pharisee who became a member and a leader of the early Jesus movement. Like many Second Temple Jews (also outside the Jesus movement), as a result of his “conversion,” Paul embraced the apocalyptic view of the superhuman origin of evil and looked at the sinners not only as people responsible for their own actions, but also as victims of a supernatural evil. Like others, he wished for, and expected, some help from heaven to counterbalance the power of evil.
With the other members of the Christian group, Paul shared the idea that Jesus the Messiah had come to earth as the Son of Man to bring forgiveness to sinners, and he believed that Jesus would soon return to carry out a judgment. More than other members of the early Jesus movement, Paul strongly believed that this message of forgiveness included gentile sinners as well, and he decided to devote his life to preaching to the gentiles. Contrary to other members of the Jesus movement, he refused to accept that baptized gentiles had a different or inferior status within the church, as he could not see any distinction between a Jewish sinner and a gentile sinner: they had both been forgiven “by faith only.” This does not mean that he advocated the abolishment of the distinction between Jews and gentiles in this world; on the contrary, as in the case of gender and social distinctions, he accepted it as an inevitable (and perhaps, even providential) reality until the end of times, when these distinctions would eventually disappear.
As a Second Temple Jew, Paul never questioned the validity of the Torah; his only concern was the inability of people to obey the Torah. Paul was a Torah-observant Jew who believed that “justification by faith” was a gift offered through Jesus the Messiah to all “sinners” (not only to gentiles). Does that mean that he believed that Jews should abandon the obedience of the Torah and that no Jew could be saved without Baptism? Not at all. While repeating the common Jewish teaching that “all people are sinners,” Paul shared the apocalyptic idea that the judgment will be according to deeds and that humankind is divided between the “righteous” and the “unrighteous.” But now that the time of the end has come, the unrighteous have been offered the possibility to repent and receive justification through forgiveness. Paul preached to gentiles, but his message was neither addressed to gentiles only nor uniquely pertinent to them. Exactly the same gospel was announced to Jews and gentiles—the good news of the gift of forgiveness: “I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised” (Gal. 2:7).
Paul had a much more pessimistic view of the power of evil. He compared the situation of humankind to a population defeated and enslaved by the devil, but he would have shared the principle that only the sick need a doctor. The sick include Jews and gentiles alike, although not all of them. The righteous do not need a doctor.
To say that the Jews have the Torah while the gentiles have Christ does not faithfully represent the position of Paul. In Paul’s view, Christ is God’s gift not to gentiles, but to sinners. The righteous (Jews and gentiles) will be saved if they have done good deeds. But Paul is conscious of the fact that the power of evil makes it incredibly difficult for all humankind to be righteous: for the Jews to follow the Torah and for the gentiles to follow their own conscience. He preaches the good news that, at the end of times, sinners (Jews and Gentiles alike) are offered the extraordinary possibility to repent and be justified in Christ by God’s mercy apart from God’s justice. Paul was not Lutheran: he never taught “salvation by faith only” to humankind, but announced to sinners, “justification (that is, forgiveness of past sins) by faith.” Paul did not preach only two ways of salvation, but rather three: righteous Jews have the Torah, righteous gentiles have their own conscience, and sinners—Jews and gentiles alike, who have fallen without hope under the power of evil—have Christ the forgiver.
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This just gave me a major brain explosion, and my Christian universalism has entered overdrive.
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