Ep 26: A Jewish Paul with Matthew Thiessen

00:00I'm going to give a really brief analogy, someone recently on social media posted a

00:06picture of you know those little tacky plaques you can get at craft stores and it said be

00:10sure to lick the bowl and it's sort of like you know really enjoy your food. Well, that's

00:15one thing when it's in the kitchen, this picture was taken right with it sitting on top of

00:19the toilet. The message becomes a very different message, a much more odious message, disgusting

00:26message and I think that's not actually really, it's not bad for thinking about Paul and

00:31James, if we get their audiences wrong or we get the location wrong, we're going to

00:35misunderstand.

00:38Hey everybody, my name is Dan McClellan and I'm Dan Beacher and you are listening to the

00:45Data Over Dogma podcast where we try to increase the public's access to the academic study

00:50of the Bible and religion and also combat the spread of misinformation about the same.

00:56How are things today, Dan? Oh, I'm excited. We got we got a great guest today. It's a

01:01beautiful day. Life is good. Yeah. And speaking of that guest we have with us today, a friend

01:09of mine, Matthew Theason, who is the associate professor of religious studies at McMaster

01:15University and off confused for ReliantK Singer. Matthew is the author of a couple years ago,

01:24Jesus and the Forces of Death, a wonderful book, subtitled as the gospel's portrayal

01:29of ritual impurity within first century Judaism. But more recently, a Jewish Paul, the Messiah's

01:36herald to the Gentiles and that's what we're here to talk about today. How are things going

01:40apart from your recent haircut, Matt? It's a gorgeous early fall day here in Ontario. So

01:47the leaves are slowly turning colors and it's awesome. Yeah, I bet it's very nice. A little

01:54briskness in the air. Yes, a little bit. Yep. All right. Well, we're going to get close

01:59to that soon. It's in the mid 60s today here, which is, which is novel. It's been in the

02:0480s or the 70s for the last little while. That's like, I don't know, 20 or 11 D. I don't know

02:10what that is for you. I don't know how to translate that to. It's either 112 or six.

02:16It's hard to know with centipede something stone, right? Or shorts. I don't know. All

02:23right. Well, we've, we've asked you here to discuss your new book. It's fascinating.

02:29It's a super interesting dive into this, this cat, Paul, who seems to have been wandering

02:35around saying some stuff, writing epistles left and right. You never know what that guy

02:41was going to do. Tell us a little bit about, about your book about what the impetus was

02:45for you to write it and, and, and, and give us a jumping off point for it. Yeah. Um, you

02:52know, this, this really started about three and a half years ago, right when COVID hit,

02:56uh, our semester here in Canada was ending. And, um, I had taken over a whole bunch of

03:03books at the library was going to do a new research project and realize I don't have

03:06any of the right books into the library to get the books I needed. So I thought, well,

03:11I've had a couple of people suggest we need a book on Paul that sort of gives, um, a new

03:19take on Paul, but that's accessible to, whether it's undergrads or seminarians or clergy or

03:24just lay people who are interested in Paul. And so this really springs out of, of that

03:28time and, and a couple of people making the suggestion that this sort of school that gets

03:34called the Paul within Judaism school, trying to make some of the, the work that these people

03:39have done, um, more accessible, um, to a broader audience. Talk about that. I don't know, uh,

03:46the Paul within Judaism idea. Like, uh, I assume that he considered himself a Jew, but I don't

03:52know what that means. So talk about what that is and, and, and, uh,

03:57pretty much every scholar would say, Oh, Paul, Paul was a Jew. Um, and you hear it over and

04:01over again. You'll hear it on social media. And then often what happens is someone will

04:05come along and say, Paul was a Jew, but then he rejected this and this and this and this

04:09and this about Judaism. And it turns out to be sort of all the things. Well, frankly,

04:14all the things that modern Christians generally reject about ancient Judaism themselves. And

04:18so for instance, a very popular, uh, writer, um, biblical scholar and sort of theologian,

04:25Tom Wright, NT Wright frequently says Paul was Jewish. He just radically redefines, you

04:31know, circumcision, temple, what it means to be a Jew, et cetera, et cetera. And all you

04:35get is sort of, um, 20th or 21st century Anglican Christianity at the end of it. Um, and I,

04:43and others have said, well, that's convenient, but it sure doesn't seem historically plausible.

04:51And so a number of people, uh, already in the eighties really coming out of the work

04:56of, of E.P. Sanders, who used to teach here at McMaster, um, have tried to rewrite and

05:03rethink, uh, who Paul was with a sort of firm conviction that he never abandoned Judaism.

05:10And so how do we talk about him? How do we talk about all the things he says in his letters

05:15in a more sort of historically plausible, um, insensitive way?

05:19Now I recall hearing, uh, when I was at Trinity Western University, uh, in British Columbia,

05:25uh, 12, 13 years ago, I recall hearing, uh, about the, the NPP, the new perspective on

05:33Paul. And we, we actually had NT Wright visiting the campus a couple of times. And so I heard

05:38from him a little bit, but my, my focus wasn't on Paul. Could you, um, yeah, possibly talk

05:44a little bit about what this new perspective is and, uh, what makes it better than the

05:48classic perspective, uh, Paul, if it is better than the classic perspective.

05:53Yep. As a, as a fellow grad of Trinity Western, uh, I remember some of that, although I was

05:57there a few years older than you, Dan. Um, so this new perspective on Paul, this so-called

06:04new perspective on Paul really goes back to the early eighties and it's coming out of,

06:07uh, reacting to Ed Sanders's work saying Judaism contrary to so much, especially Protestant

06:14theologizing Judaism wasn't a religion of works righteousness. You didn't have to earn God's

06:20favor. You didn't have to live a perfect life to, to be saved or anything else that Judaism

06:27had a very rich, thick understanding of God's graciousness. And it was sort of a bombshell

06:33in Pauline studies in 1977. Uh, well, in the early eighties, a couple of scholars, Tom

06:40Wright, who you just mentioned and James done, uh, sort of leading two scholars said, okay,

06:44if Judaism wasn't a religion of works righteousness, well, what was Paul's problem with it? And

06:51their answer was, and a few others have joined them. All many others have joined this sort

06:55of school of reading Paul. Um, they argued that, well, it wasn't about works righteousness.

07:00It was that Jews were, uh, early or ancient Jews were ethnocentric and particularistic.

07:08And so the problem with, for Paul, the problem with Judaism wasn't, they thought you had

07:12to earn your salvation. It was that they were ethnocentric and thought Jews and Jews only

07:17were God's people. And so if you wanted to be saved, you had to be a Jew. And, uh, their

07:23take on Paul was that Paul came to realize this ethnocentricity in particularism was

07:29bad. God is the God of the universe. Something that apparently Jews hadn't noticed before

07:34in this take. And so he is now preaching a message of universalism for Jews and non-Jews.

07:42And it's apart from the sort of, um, the ethnic specificities, uh, of the Jewish law, like

07:48circumcision, Sabbath, dietary laws. And so on the one hand, it's great. You're no longer

07:54talking about Judaism as this religion, arrogant religion or people group of arrogant and,

08:01um, well, arrogant and misled people who think they are perfect or can be perfect and are

08:07doing it. But on the other hand, it's also very insidious in its way. And I think much

08:12more insidious given our current cultural values, ethnocentrism and particularism are

08:20bad. Uh, we talk this way. And so to code Judaism as this very big, bad thing now is

08:29no better and arguably potentially worse than, than this sort of old, what's been called

08:35the Lutheran reading of Paul. And so, and I should say they're both structured very similarly.

08:41There has to be something wrong with Judaism and Paul solves it, Paul fixes. And the Paul

08:48within Judaism school would say very strongly that Paul didn't see anything wrong with Judaism.

08:56So there's a structural difference there between those schools in the Paul within Judaism school.

09:02Now in your book, one of the things you talk about pretty early on is that Paul is very

09:05difficult to interpret and you bring up a great point that actually resonates with, uh, with

09:11some of the work that I do within cognitive linguistics. Uh, where you talk about the

09:15fact that, um, let's see words on the papyrus place constraints on readers, but they are

09:20weak and loose constraints. Interpretive possibilities are not infinite, but they are also not singular.

09:26And, and the way I kind of put a very similar idea is that we have to negotiate with the

09:31text. We do not, we are not able to just access the, uh, pristine and, uh, adulterated truth

09:42or data. We are, um, kind of constructing the meaning, uh, ourselves and frequently we,

09:48we read some of ourselves into this construction. And so it, it, uh, strikes me that a lot of

09:55these ideas about Paul are primarily serving the interests of Christian scholars today,

10:02who are trying to make Paul fit the way they see the world and their relationship to Judaism

10:07and the scriptures. Is that, is that something you, uh, is that something you'd agree with?

10:12Totally. Uh, no, no one sits. I mean, not no one, almost no one sits down with Paul's

10:18letters because they think they're a good time. Most of us come with some sort of, you know,

10:24whether it's theological engagement or interest or ecumenical interests. Sometimes it's,

10:29it's antiquarian or merely antiquarian. And that's fine. All of that's great. Um, it's

10:34important to know what you're coming with and why you're coming. And I think that's

10:37really important. And like you say, we're trying to, we're trying to sort of provide

10:42coherence to these letters. These are not even if they, they're not a systematic theology.

10:47They're nothing, you know, here's Paul's mind. Boom. It's these seven to, well, 13 letters

10:54he wrote in very specific situations and we're trying to give sort of a larger coherence

11:00to them. And how we do that, um, no, there are multiple ways to do it, but how we do it

11:07sort of tells a little bit about what, what we're up to and who we are, I think. Give

11:12some examples, if you will, of, uh, of some of the ways that people have traditionally

11:17looked at Paul, uh, and, and some, and maybe some of the way, the ways that you'd like

11:23that to sort of, to be redone or ways that you enjoy seeing reading, Paul, that might

11:31run, uh, a foul of sort of more traditional readings.

11:35Yeah. That's such a, is that fair? Is that a fair, I don't even know if that's a fair

11:41question to ask. I'm the non scholar in the room. It's a random question and I want to

11:45give it its due. Um, so I don't just want to rush in the answer. I want to think a bit

11:49about it, but, um, you know, so part of it is we do, we, we come with our own interests.

11:55We come with our own questions. And I think one of the first things we have to do is say,

12:00Paul isn't writing to answer our questions. It's just not. He wrote 2000 years ago and

12:08I have my doubts that he could ever have imagined that 2000 years later, some three

12:14guys are talking on a podcast about his letters in North America, right? There's no chance

12:20he could think that far ahead in that far out. And so that sort of, it takes humility

12:26to realize he's not centering us. So if we have questions, great, but we have to first

12:33wrestle with Paul in his world. And so, you know, um, Catholic Protestant debates about,

12:41about the precise role of works and salvation, for instance, that's a very important question

12:48for Protestants and Catholics. Nothing wrong with asking that, but knowing that's not where

12:52Paul's like, that is not the heart of Paul's thinking actually. And then that's not the

12:57heart of his letters. And so backing up and first asking, okay, what, what can we know?

13:03Why is Paul doing writing this here to like these people in Galatia is really important.

13:09And I think the other key thing in this, this goes in tandem. There's a really great New

13:15Testament article by Neal's doll with some Scandinavian scholar about the problem of

13:21particularity in Paul's letters. As soon as they become scripture, they're universal.

13:27They're for everybody, but they weren't for everybody. And so there's a, there's a gap

13:32that needs to be leapt there in the sort of hermeneutical process of trying to use Paul's

13:37letters for theology as soon as they're outside of the sort of initial communities they were

13:42written to. And I think one thing that is really important to remember is the ethnic

13:49specificity of the addresses of this letter. So everybody wants to say these are for people

13:54all across the world everywhere and all time. Well, okay, that's maybe how they function

13:59as Christian scripture and as a canon. But these were also letters written to very specific

14:05people, almost always and almost exclusively, if not exclusively, to non Jewish readers.

14:14And that's I think one of the really important components to this Paul within Judaism perspective

14:19is that Paul's a Jew. But he's writing to non Jews almost exclusively, if not exclusively,

14:26and trying to navigate this thoroughly Jewish mesh Jewish message to non Jewish audiences.

14:34And that's that takes a lot of work to pick that apart for what that means.

14:41Would you say you mentioned earlier that we're trying to kind of impose a coherence on this

14:46corpus? But do you think even that is perhaps a little misguided? If this is text that are

14:54being written to different groups for different reasons responding to different circumstances

14:58and also written at different time periods and in Paul's life, would you say even even

15:02that kind of misses the mark a little bit? It could, you know, I'm I'm I think I'm maybe

15:11more optimistic than others that there's still something that can be done here. Yeah. And

15:16I tried to do that in the book to some degree, right? I haven't given up as Paul's mind from

15:21A to Z or Z. Right. But I'm trying to give some of it. And I'm

15:26I think picking from the Sanders did that, didn't he? Yeah, with Paul is in his life. And all

15:33the kinds of right. So I think I don't want to say we shouldn't try to do it, but there

15:39has to be so much care taken in doing it and knowing you're always trying to do something

15:47that the text themselves are sort of resisting to. Yeah. And I want to bring up one potential

15:55example of this, something that I think is interesting. We had our mutual friend David

16:02Burnett on the show a little bit ago talk about resurrection. You have a chapter in here where

16:06you talk about resurrection. And and I think an important qualification of how we think

16:11about Paul's notion of resurrection where you talk about the difference between, well

16:18in the text, it talks about different types of bodies. And you make an important point

16:22about the kind of philosophical frameworks that were in circulation at the time regarding

16:29the difference between a body of flesh and blood and a body of spirit or pneuma or pnevma.

16:38Can you talk a little bit about what people might not understand about the way Paul is

16:41distinguishing these different types of bodies? Yeah. Yeah, this is one of those things again,

16:48where you sort of pick up an ancient text and you don't realize that you don't know what

16:51you don't know. We were bringing in your own understanding. So Paul talks about stars

16:57in first Corinthians 15 this resurrection chapter. Well, we didn't bring our modern conceptions

17:03of stars, not ancient conceptions of stars to the text. And the same goes with the word

17:08spirit that you use the English translation for the Greek pneuma. When we think spirit,

17:13I think almost all of us if not all of us think something non-material, non-physical, a ghost.

17:22Yeah, I mean, I think this raises questions of what are for those people who conceptualize

17:27and think about ghosts, what are these things? Right. Are they non-material? Like air is material.

17:34So I think it gets into some of this and ancient people thought about spirit generally in materialistic

17:43terms. And so you already hear from Aristotle on a discussion of not just the four traditional

17:49elements we hear about in ancient science, air, fire, earth, and water. But you hear about

17:56a fifth element, ether. And it's this celestial heavenly element. And it is perfect. It's the

18:03best. It doesn't corrupt. It doesn't decay. Unlike all the other ones, it's just perfect.

18:11And Aristotle, and then later the Stoics frequently seem to equate or connect very closely at

18:17least ether to pneuma spirit. And so, you know, when they say things like God is pneuma, which

18:24they do, they're not saying God is this non-material being out there. They're saying God is this

18:32perfect material that's out there. And it permeates the entire cosmos because God is just everywhere.

18:39And so, you know, when we hear about spiritual bodies and flesh and blood bodies, we think

18:45it's easy to think material versus non-material. And I don't think Paul thinks that way. Both

18:51are material bodies. But only one is the kind of body you want to have if you get to heaven.

18:56Otherwise, you're the equivalent of a fish out of water and you're going to die. You're

19:00going to your body's not going to be able to sort of bear the systemic pressures of this

19:05new ecosystem. And with that, we're going to pause for a brief ad break. We'll be right

19:10back. And we're back. And Dan, you were going to you had a question that you wanted to ask.

19:15Yeah, there's probably one of the more famous parts of the Pauline Epistles for folks who

19:22approached the text as as authoritative as as scriptural. First Corinthians, particularly

19:29first Corinthians 15, a lot of discussion of the body stuff. But this is focused on resurrection.

19:35This is one of Paul's big points in first Corinthians 15. And you got a chapter on resurrection

19:40as the culmination of the Messiah's coming, which sounds like a fairly different take

19:47on resurrection from how most people think about it today. Could you talk us through

19:53how resurrection represents the culmination of the Messiah's coming?

19:58Yeah, so let me try to answer that a couple of different ways. I guess I can speak mostly

20:06to Protestant theologizing here in Protestant readings of Paul, which I think are the predominant

20:12ones because Paul's like the the central saint of what essential Protestant. Yeah, you know,

20:20the sort of load bearing aspects of Paul's theology and Protestant theology are really

20:26justification by faith and this atonement view of Jesus dying on the cross for one's sins.

20:34And so that in that system, the culmination of the Messiah's coming is really his death.

20:39That's where these sins that have alienated people from God get paid off and everything's

20:45good. And it's not like that's not in Paul, but even in first Corinthians 15, Paul claims

20:51actually you're you're still dead in your sins unless something else happens. It's actually

20:57resurrection that's for Paul, the culmination of the Messiah's coming. The death is necessary,

21:03but it's insufficient to do the sort of salvific work that Paul thinks needs to get done.

21:09And so I mean, I think you see it in Romans four as well, that that justification gets

21:15closely connected not to not to Jesus's death, but to his resurrection. And so there's sort of an odd not

21:21that Protestants reject Jesus's resurrection as a rule. They don't. But I think there's a very

21:26different emphasis in Paul than there is in a lot of more contemporary theology. And so I think

21:32that's really important when talking about Paul to think of it that way. And then of course,

21:37there's just this like really weird thing in Paul that the Messiah gets raised from the dead

21:42and nobody else does. And that's just unexpected. And so Paul is, you know, he thinks it's coming

21:51very soon, quite clearly. And this is, you know, maybe a little bit embarrassing, but Paul thinks,

21:57okay, there's some sort of weird gap between the Messiah's resurrection and the resurrection of

22:02those in the Messiah, but it's going to happen. It's going to happen very soon. And you can even

22:07see in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul thinks some of the people he's writing to and possibly himself are

22:13going to be pulled up into this resurrection narrative even before they die. So this is this,

22:21you know, Paul's viewing the Messiah's coming as not just paying off for sins, but also dealing

22:27with a mortality problem and bringing humanity out of the vice grip of death.

22:32And it seems like a lot of Paul's writings, there's kind of an urgency. For instance, he talks about

22:38how a rule that he sets down in every single congregation is whatever state you were in when

22:45God called you stay in that state. If you're unmarried, don't get married. If you're married,

22:50don't get divorced. If you don't have kids, don't have kids. If you're a slave, unless you can buy

22:55your freedom or something like that, stay a slave. The expectation is that this is imminent. This is

23:01going to happen really, really soon. Do you think this changes? Well, do you think that this, this

23:09urgency has a lot to do with the way Paul is structuring his, his ethics, his, how he's doing

23:17things, because he's expecting this to be like, you know, we don't have a whole 2000 years of

23:23Christianity saying, Hey, everybody, don't have kids. If you don't already have kids. I mean,

23:28that kind of counsel is something that works in, you know, in a very short time period, but not in

23:35a long time period. Have we, have we misread a lot of Paul because we're not seeing him checking his

23:41watch going, okay, any day now, everybody be ready? Yeah. So either we've missed. Well, I think we

23:47have misread him. And it's either we misread him by sort of domesticating him. And so we sort of

23:53avoid those ethical components in Paul or those claims that we don't like that don't

23:58quite match, don't fit or a little bit embarrassing, whatever. So there is some of that going on. And

24:03I think, you know, knowing the, the urgency for him, he's not trying to set up the church as, you

24:10know, people think about it now. He's not trying to set, he's not a community organizer in any

24:15real sense of the term, or at least not like, it's more like, we've had a massive catastrophe or

24:21something massive has happened. We're responding to that right now. But this isn't about sort of, you

24:28know, city bylaws, he's trying to put down for the next 100 years, he thinks it's over. And so it's,

24:35it's, what do we do in the meantime? And we're not going to think too much beyond that, because we're

24:41not going to have to think beyond that. Do you think that the pastoral epistles give people an

24:47excuse to reread those, those other passages? As, as kind of writing a constitution, setting a

24:56foundation for a church that is going to extend far into the future. And before you answer that,

25:02yeah, maybe talk a bit about what the pastoral epistles are as opposed to the because, you know,

25:08some of us don't know all of the, that's all these things. That's a, that's a good reminder.

25:14You don't all spend your lives reading Paul. What do you do with your free time people, right?

25:18Yeah, so the pastoral epistles are first and second Timothy and Titus. And I would say the majority of,

25:27well, the majority of critical scholars on Paul would argue Paul didn't write these letters. They're

25:34written by a later hand in, in Paul's name, which was a very common practice in antiquity,

25:39and in Christian antiquity, Christians accuse each other of doing this. It's clear it was happening.

25:44And Bart Ehrman has a really good book called Forgeries on it, on this, this phenomenon.

25:50And so I'd like most critical scholars would say Paul didn't write these letters there later. And I

25:56think, you know, the further you get out from Paul, but you even see it in Paul, as is if if we can,

26:03you know, he doesn't give us the dates, they're not, they're not postmarked, unfortunately. But it

26:07seems like, seems like the further you get out from Paul's earliest letters, the more you see

26:14efforts to sort of, A, explain this delay in Jesus' return, and B, maybe start back filling in some,

26:24okay, let me give some more guidelines now. And so pastoral epistles give a much more structured

26:29account of what, you know, church life ought to look like, and what church leadership ought to

26:35look like. If the world's going to end very soon, you don't need a whole lot of structure,

26:38but the longer it goes on, you need more structure. And you begin seeing that in the pastoral

26:43epistles. And then obviously later, Christian literature, Harold Camping can identify with that.

26:49Well, I don't know if you all remember, but yesterday was supposed to be the rapture.

26:55That's right. That's right. This is being recorded on September 21st. And for the last few weeks,

27:00because of signs in the heavens, so to speak, there have been claims that the rapture was going to

27:08take place. Very disappointing that it didn't happen. Very, very frustrating. Who could have,

27:13who could have seen this, or not? There have been, there have been so many great disappointments

27:18throughout, throughout the centuries, but does seem that Paul kind of paved the way on that

27:24particular front. Yeah. And I mean, I think you already have comments in the gospels. It's an

27:29optic gospels that that go back to Jesus most likely about, you know, this generation will not

27:35pass away. And so you get these claims. And I think there was this really heightened apocalyptic

27:42sense that the end is near. And the, you know, the world will be transformed and it's going to be

27:48phenomenal. And then whatever happens, it's certainly not phenomenal. This isn't hitting the front

27:55page of the Roman times. What's going on? And so then there's just this anxiety around

28:01and effort to theologize why it hasn't happened yet. Yeah.

28:05I wanted to talk a little bit about the Gentile problem, which you also address here. And I think

28:11a wonderful way to approach it is your discussion of Romans one, which is something that I deal in

28:20in my public scholarship a lot with particularly Romans one 26 and 27. But you talk a little more

28:25broadly about what Paul is doing with this vise list and with what he is saying about the Gentiles.

28:32Can you talk a little bit about how that fits into the Gentile problem as you understand it?

28:38Yeah. So if you open up a Bible to Romans one 18 through 32, almost always you're going to see

28:46the sinfulness of humanity or something like that, wickedness of people. And it's very generic.

28:53This thing, this passage codes so clearly to anybody who knows first century Jewish literature

29:02code so clearly as actually addressed or not addressed to, but describing not the non-Jewish

29:08world. Oh, wow. We see things very similar to this, especially in the wisdom of Solomon,

29:14but other texts as well that the problem with it, the non-Jewish world is that these are people

29:20who abandoned God. And because they abandoned God, God has now handed them over into ever-increasing

29:27well, sin or vice. And so there's this cyclical pattern that keeps happening in Romans one 18

29:34through 32. If I can interrupt real briefly, I think it's interesting to know that the word

29:39there God handed them over. This is the same verb that's used to refer to Judas handing over

29:44Jesus. And I think it kind of gestures in the direction of this idea that there is kind of a

29:50governor or a limiter placed on human behavior and desire and that God kind of curates

29:57that limit. And then here God is just saying, all right, I'm pulling the chocks out and y'all

30:05are just going to run wild. And a lot of what Paul is talking about is the Gentiles

30:11don't worship God appropriately. Therefore, God is allowing them to just overflow and bubble over

30:17in all that they're doing wrong. And what he's listing is this is how far gone those people are.

30:23That's right. Yeah. It's very similar to sort of like consequence-based parenting.

30:28And the whole point is if you worship dead idols, guess what happens to you? You become what you

30:33worship. And so you're going to become dead and you're going to become morally and sort of intellectually

30:38dead doing dead things. And so it's it's so this is I think really important for a couple of reasons.

30:44One, you get so much rejection that this is about Gentiles. And I think partly because it's

30:50ethnic stereotyping. And we all know that's bad. Yeah. And the new perspective would say, well,

30:55that's what Jews do. Paul would reject that. Well, Paul's doing it in Romans 1. And so, you know,

31:01there's sort of a backlash against wanting to see Paul do this because it's not we know it's not

31:04nice behavior, but Paul's doing it. But he's doing it to set up the situation of look,

31:10your Gentile situation, he's writing to Gentiles in Rome, he said, and he says it over and over in

31:14Romans, especially Romans 1 in Romans 15. And the whole point is to sort of set up this like stark,

31:21you guys are in deep trouble. The problem is so severe that you think applying the Jewish law

31:31to your Gentile problem is going to solve it. You're nuts. You're just it's a banana solution.

31:36It doesn't fit. You need something bigger than that. And Paul thinks he's got that in his gospel

31:41about Jesus. So when you say the subtitle of your book, the Messiah's Herald to the Gentiles,

31:48you're suggesting that Paul feels he's got a special calling to act as God's herald to the

31:56Gentiles. Can you talk a little bit about why that might be necessary? And also what Paul thinks

32:02the best approach is? Yeah, so, you know, we all know what Paul gets called the Apostle, right? And

32:08it's that's just a transliteration of the Greek apostolos. And so that's one reason I tried to

32:14avoid some of this sort of Christianese language. And so I went with Harold, I wasn't sure Envoy

32:20Harold, whatever, but messenger of some sort on behalf of a sort of political or public figure,

32:25the Messiah. Repeatedly, Paul says in Romans 1, Robert, Robert Jewett. Yeah, Robert Jewett

32:31has argued that Romans 1, what the first 13 or 14 verses, I think, are an ambassadorial letter.

32:39And there's sort of, he doesn't know people and these people in Rome that he didn't found this

32:44community. And he's trying to assert his authority. You don't know me. I don't know you. You know

32:50of me, I'm writing to you. And here's why, because God appointed me specifically to non-Jews. And

32:57in Galatians, he does the same thing. He talks about having the gospel to the foreskin is the

33:02actual Greek. And it's very clear. Paul thinks he's not supposed to bring the gospel to non or

33:10sorry, to his fellow Jews, he's supposed to bring it to the non-Jewish world. And he's this divinely

33:15appointed instrument who can do this. And so that is, I think, a key, real interpretive key to

33:23unlocking Paul's letters and the arguments he makes within them. Now in, you say this is an ambassadorial

33:30or at least Jewett does, I believe that's a hermenea commentary on Romans, or he says that.

33:34And then immediately pivots to, you all can't recognize God in nature, even though everybody else

33:42can, and you are worshiping the created and not the, the creator, you are all deserving of death.

33:50And an odd choice when, when trying to win over the audience. So what is he, is he trying to set up

34:03folks who are followers of Jesus as already departing from that world? Is he, or is he trying

34:11to say you need to depart from that world? Yeah. So, right, Romans, this is not something Paul

34:18saying on the street corner, right? He's not a street preacher, at least in Romans, he may be,

34:22it may have been in real life. I don't know. Although I imagine he was mostly at synagogues,

34:26we started there, but he is already speaking to the in crowd here. And so when he's talking

34:34about Romans one 18 through 32, these Gentiles have already been shaped and formed to think of

34:40themselves as deeply sinful. They're seeing it. And so they're probably agreeing all the way through,

34:46but thinking in their heads, well, we're better than that now.

34:50Or we have a different solution. And so part of it is Paul is trying to build common ground.

34:58I know it sounds really odd. Hi, I'm the puzzle of the Gentiles. You all suck.

35:01But then he's going to say it's okay. The Jewish folks suck too. Yeah, more or less.

35:10Right. So that's how he gets taken. But he's really trying to trap especially Gentiles who think

35:16there's a different solution here to our problem. And the solution is if we apply the Jewish law

35:22to ourselves, it becomes this liberative thing that gives us now the power, the moral power,

35:30really, to do the things we weren't doing before. And Paul is, so this is, I think, and it's not

35:37that they've come up with this on their own necessarily. There are other people who've taught

35:41them this. And we see things like this in some Jewish literature of the time, like fourth Maccabees

35:47in Philo very much talk about the Jewish law in sort of a disciplinary, educated sort of role

35:54that allows you to transcend the vices and desires that are natural to flesh and blood humans,

36:02which was a very common question in antiquity. And that's what a lot of philosophical schools

36:06addressed. How do you transcend these things to live a virtuous life? And some Jews at least

36:11thought the Jewish law did that for them. And some Jews, Philo, for instance, mentions this,

36:18maybe Gentiles who are so vice ridden, if they take the Jewish law, they immediately become

36:23virtuous. And so I think this is sort of lurking in the background for Paul. And so when he sees

36:30Gentiles who have already believed in Jesus, he's the Messiah. And now they're saying, let's throw

36:37some Jewish law or throw the Jewish law on top of this. That's where he starts getting very,

36:43very upset, because it seems to suggest in his mind, at least, that what they've received in

36:48the Messiah is sort of like the start, but they need to top up or perfect it with the Jewish law.

36:54And that's where he really starts sort of losing things and starts writing pretty strongly worded

37:02letters. Well, let's take another ad break. We'll be right back with more Matt Thiesen.

37:09All right. Welcome back, everybody. I hope you've been enjoying the show so far, something that

37:14I've been thinking about, something that comes up a lot on my own content when I'm talking about,

37:19particularly the way that some of the different New Testament authors and biblical authors are

37:23maybe disagreeing with each other is the epistle of James, which in chapter two, we have James

37:32saying that we see that talking about Abraham, we see that a man is justified not only by faith,

37:42but by works as well. And it seems to me that James is going so far as to quote Paul and more

37:51or less refute Paul's comments in Romans where he says the opposite uses Abraham as an example

37:58of how we see that a person is justified by faith alone. Could you talk a little bit about what's

38:05going on here with with Abraham? And do you think James is on the other side of this? Or

38:10or do you think the two are just sharing the same perspective with different words?

38:17I mean, surely this whole faith slash works thing can't be that big a deal, right?

38:21See, we've gotten to it. We've gotten back to the Protestant Catholic that well, caricatured

38:28Protestant state. So let me let me answer this a few different, a few different angles of this.

38:38I so I definitely think James knows Paul's argument. And I think he's alluding to it in James too.

38:46So there's some push back there. And it's a really, really nice example of how difficult Paul was,

38:54well, potentially how difficult Paul was to understand in even in his own day. It's possible

38:59that James is is responding to misunderstandings of Paul. It's possible he disagrees with Paul.

39:04I think at the very least he's responding to a misunderstanding and maybe maybe more.

39:10I think another really key factor in talking about James versus Paul is again, the audience.

39:19And I think my take at least I'm not alone. I know it's not, you know, it's not a unanimous

39:24agreement among scholars is that James is actually written to Jewish believers in Jesus.

39:30That would be my take. And so already there's a difference in audience and how those words

39:37are sort of playing out, even though there's very similar words is really important.

39:42I'm going to give a really brief analogy. This isn't about audience. Someone recently on social

39:47media posted a picture of a little, you know, those little tacky plaques you can get at

39:52craft stores and it said, be sure to lick the bowl. And it's sort of like, you know, really

39:58enjoy your food. Yeah. Well, that's one thing when it's in the kitchen, this picture was taken right

40:03with it sitting on top of the toilet. Well, the message becomes a very different message,

40:09a much more odious message message message. And I think that's not actually really, it's not

40:15bad for thinking about Paul and James. If we get their audiences wrong or we get the location wrong,

40:21we're going to misunderstand. That reminds me, if I may interject,

40:25somebody puts, they wanted to create an AI image and said, Jesus flipping over the

40:32tables of the temple. And the image is Jesus doing a backflip over the tables of the temple.

40:39This was a reader, a less than informed reader didn't have all the context.

40:45But in fairness, that is a better Jesus. I think we can we can say just without question

40:52that that that Cirque de Soleil Jesus is the best of all the Jesus is.

40:56Little closer to the buddy Christ that that we all know and love. Sorry, I interrupted.

41:03It's okay. I'm I guess I'm probably a person who looks more for for coherence than one who looks

41:09to break things up. And so I will acknowledge that bias in my own mind. My own take would be

41:16that I think James doesn't disagree with Paul per se, or at least he doesn't think he does.

41:23He's trying to correct misunderstandings. If you read through Paul and you come away thinking,

41:28there's no place for good works. I don't know what you've been reading. There's tons of

41:33place for good works. But I don't think that's what Paul's debate is. And so when he talks about

41:38works, he's really talking, especially about the sort of distinctive aspects of the Jewish law

41:44that that distinguished Jews from non-Jews. And that is the markers. Yeah, and that's not what

41:49James is talking about. So it's a very different debate about you've got Jesus now add the Jewish

41:55law, because Jesus didn't give you everything you needed in Paul with Gentiles. And James,

42:01who seems to be suggesting, you know, you just if you're not living

42:08righteously, and it's not, you know, circumcision, Sabbath, not that those aren't important. They're

42:12just not on the table. It's actually how you treat the poor. It's actually socioeconomic,

42:18social justice, we would say, James is a social justice warrior. And you can yak on about faith

42:25all you want. But if you're not treating the marginalized and oppressed in your world,

42:32justly and fairly and kindly, your faith is not very good. I was going to say something.

42:42Yeah, James says dead. Yeah, there we go. Dead. That's a good one. I wanted to pick on something

42:50that that Dan said in his comment, or in his question earlier, which was about the deployment

42:56of Abraham in both of those two arguments, because it occurs to me that using the name

43:03of Abraham to a Jewish audience would have had a much different effect than using it on a Gentile

43:10audience. Yeah, so Paul talks about Abraham in both Galatians and in Romans, and especially in

43:18Galatians, it's clearly in the context of Gentiles who believe in Jesus who think we need to follow

43:26Abraham's footsteps, specifically as it relates to the right of circumcision, which is a perfectly

43:33intelligent position. Abraham was not a Jew. He was right. Well, potentially idol worshiping

43:41non Jew. And so what did he have to do? Or what did he do? What is this? What does scriptures

43:48tell us? He believed in God in Genesis 15. In two chapters later, he gets circumcised.

43:54And so it could easily be used as evidence. Okay, Gentiles, you've believed in Jesus,

44:01your faith is like Abraham's, but now here's the next step in Genesis 17, get circumcised.

44:06And so I think that's what's happening from Paul's opponents or competition or whatever it is in

44:12the background in Galatia. And Paul is adamant in saying, well, you're right, Abraham, we have to

44:19follow Abraham, but you're doing it wrongly. And so there he makes a really dense argument

44:26in Galatians three and four, it's very complicated. But it's also very interesting because he doesn't

44:33say you don't need Abraham as your father. He actually says, yeah, you need to have Abraham

44:39as your father, because God made a whole series of promises to Abraham into his seed. And if you

44:44want those promises, you have to become Abrahamic seed in Abrahamic sons to inherit them. And so

44:49there's a very, again, ethnocentric, if we want to use that word, I think it's a dangerous word to

44:54use, but I don't mind using it about Paul. There's an ethnocentric component that Abraham and decent

45:00descent still matter for Paul and genealogy matter. And so the way that Paul gets, well,

45:06creatively gets around it or creatively, you know, thinks through it is Jesus is Abraham's seed

45:14through David. And if the Messiah's pneuma, his spirit, his stuff gets into you and you are placed

45:22in the Messiah, then you have also taken on a messianic identity. So you've become messianic

45:30and you've become sons and seed of Abraham to and not in sort of like a wishy, washy,

45:36spiritual way the way we mean it, but spiritual in the way the ancients meant it. This pneuma has been

45:42inserted into you. I there's a chapter where I talk about it as some pneumatic gene therapy.

45:51And so I think in a sense, Paul's really thinking your genealogy, your whole DNA structure has

45:58changed radically because the spirit of the Messiah has invaded your body quite physically.

46:04And I've got this connection and you get everything, including resurrection.

46:09That's that's interesting. I see some resonances with with some of my own work on the idea of

46:16divine agency as something communicable that is closely tied with how divine images function,

46:24that they are able to presence the deity because they've been endowed with some kind of vehicle

46:30for divine agency, usually the name very ancient. But it seems to be kind of a take on this.

46:37That's interesting. I think that's I'll have to read that chapter again because I didn't come

46:44away with it thinking about that the the first time around. So we've talked a lot about a Jewish

46:52Paul messianism, how he function as a herald to the Gentiles. What are you hoping to accomplish

47:00with this book? What are the next steps? How do you think? How would you like to see

47:04folks respond and react to this? Yeah. So I think there are sort of two basic reactions to pull.

47:12People either love them or they hate them. I mean, there are some indifferent people and they're

47:16probably not going to pick this book up. And I'm not interested. You're not interested. But either

47:20love them or you hate them. And for the people who hate him, I want them to to maybe say, well,

47:25let me give him a different try and maybe the way I've been taught to read Paul is what sucks so bad.

47:30I'm not saying Paul is without problems regardless. I'm not trying to turn him into, you know, a perfect

47:36ancient figure who fits beautifully into our world. And for the people who love him,

47:41I want to I want to complicate him a bit. But I mean, connecting connecting both of those,

47:46it's really Paul gets used so easily in Christian discourse, especially as evidence for sort of

47:56anti Jewish theologizing and super sessionistic theology. And you know, Paul's not here, but I

48:05have a feeling he would be a part in the very bad pun. He would be appalled at how he can't

48:13that awful. I try not to pun, but there it is. A poll of how his letters have been used to do

48:19things, I think well beyond to say things. And also, I mean, obviously, to do things. Christians

48:25have have harmed Jews for almost 2000 years now. And so ultimately, you know, I guess I have the

48:34small ambition of changing the world and reading it. Christian anti semitism and anti Judaism.

48:40So are you are you hoping to forward the Paul within Judaism school so that it can kind of take

48:50responsibility for the the implications and the effects of what it's doing, presenting a specific

48:56idea of Paul? Or are you hoping to create a new school the way that Paul created a new religion?

49:04I don't love the category Paul within Judaism because everybody says Paul's within Judaism. So it's

49:10sort of, it's a little bit unhelpful, but people within the biblical studies world know what that

49:16means generally. And so it's okay. I'm not trying to create a new school per se, but I'm trying to

49:21create help create a new group of readers who will do their own things with Paul beyond what

49:27sort of feels like natural when reading Paul, whether it's sort of Lutheran reading or the new

49:34perspective reading. And I think once you get stuck in those ways of reading, it's really hard to get

49:40out. And maybe maybe a book like this will get to people earlier before they're too embedded in those

49:47interpretive paths. Yeah, and it's easy to get embedded to them into them when they're so central

49:54to your social identity. And when they're so helpful in structuring values and power.

49:59Exactly. And I see a lot of resonances between this book and your previous book,

50:05Jesus and the Forces of Death, particularly in the way you suggest there that it's common to think

50:11of Jesus as coming to overturn all these ideas about ritual purity and things like that. But you

50:16offer readings that present Jesus not as overturning things, but suggesting that the frameworks are

50:24still the same. But Jesus is there to fulfill or to be the intended solution to the problems that

50:31arise within those, those frameworks. So there's strikes me there's a bit of a trend that we within

50:39Christianity, we have set up Judaism as kind of this foe that Jesus is there to defeat. And even

50:49Paul is there to defeat. But we need to rethink that it's it's not so much a revolution as it is

50:54just kind of incremental elaborations and innovations on shared themes.

50:58Yep. Yeah. And why do we need? And it says something very bad about Christianity, I think,

51:05if we need Judaism as a foil or anything as a foil. And of course, foils their caricatures.

51:11So as soon as we have to caricature something in very negative terms, what does that actually

51:17say about how attractive or positive or beneficial what what Christians hold to is if it's only good

51:22in light of something very, very bad. I think that's a sort of a rhetorical problem there,

51:28but it's much deeper than that. Yeah, I think we all kind of understand ourselves and define

51:34ourselves in terms of of others. I think that's inescapable as as the social creatures that we are.

51:39But but I think when we dig down and say, all I'm going to do is define myself as not the other or

51:48by suggesting that the other is all wrong. And I'm here to to correct that. I think that creates a

51:54pretty stagnant identity and a pretty stagnant approach. So here's to hoping that that this these

52:01ideas gain some purchase and that we have some more serious and some more kind of public facing

52:07discussions on this as well, because I think this is a remedy to a lot of the socials that arise from

52:16Christianity, I think treating itself, thinking about itself in very ethnocentric

52:19terms, if we can think of it as as an ethnos, which is stretching things a little bit.

52:28Well, Matthew, and thank you so much for joining us on the show today. Where can people find your

52:35book? Where can people find your scholarship? Yeah, guide us to you. Yeah, the you know, Baker

52:42academic is the publisher of my last two books, but everything's on Amazon or wherever, you know,

52:48books of whatever quality you're sold. And I'm on social media. I'm on primarily on still on Twitter,

52:55which is where I spend half my day now, changing the future. But for now, I'm still in there if

53:00anybody looks for random silly comments during the day. Love it. Love it. Well, thank you so much

53:06for joining us today. Friends at home, thank you for joining us as well. If you'd like to become a

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53:33everybody. Bye, everybody.