Playdough Locomotives and the Study of Paul

My graduate seminar, "Paul and Early Judaism," has just about reached the mid-point of the semester and we have also just now finished reading the first volume of N. T. Wright's two-volume Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Fortress Press, 2013). Among our more serious discussions of Wright's book, my students and I have also taken time to appreciate the many metaphors that Wright uses to illuminate his views and the views of others. Whether it is tracking the path of insects in the bark of a particular tree instead of appreciating the forest, or carrying water a long distance in a leaky bucket to water a garden that lies next to a stream, Wright's prose is punctuated by picturesque language and imagery. Today, I came across Wright's depiction of a "Playdough locomotive," and for some inexplicable reason (childhood nostalgia?) this image tipped the scale for me to the point where I needed to note it here.

In his introduction to Part III (pp. 609-618), Wright introduces a diagram of a box that incorporates Wright's conception of three major themes of Jewish "theology" (monotheism, election, eschatology) on one side, includes the notion that these are redefined and reworked in light of the Messiah and the Spirit (on another side), has its base on the "Jewish Bible," and has as its top, the “pagan world." I am not sure I love the box diagram (maybe I'm just not really a diagram kind of person), but I do appreciate the attempt to bring together this wide range of perspectives--theological, historical, cultural, scriptural--and keep them together as part of our understanding of Paul.

Wright then explains: “All of this is complex, but necessarily so. Attempts to reduce that complexity in the pursuit of an easier comprehensibility are the equivalent of trying to make a model railway locomotive out of Playdough. Some parts may look familiar, but the train won’t run down the track.” (616)

Well, for my part, I've invested my fair share of time playing with Playdough and I can say with confidence that here is a point on which Wright and I strongly agree. But the point of the metaphor is a warning against oversimplifying what is, in reality, a complex picture. Nothing against Playdough, I take it, but without the gears, motor, screws, wires, wheels, and small plastic and metal parts--and all of these in the right place--one does not end up with a working model. Fun to create? Yes. Non-toxic? Maybe. Working? No. Wright continues:

The necessary complexity in question corresponds to the complexity of (a) the world(s) in which Paul lived, (b) the vocation he believed himself to have and particularly (c) the beliefs about the creator God and his purposes that formed the central material of his thinking. When we get these more or less right, the model locomotive will now work. We will find that Paul’s various letters, our primary material, can be located comprehensibly and coherently somewhere in this box. (616-617)

Having read this far in the book, it is clear to me that Wright has very many of the right pieces in place. He is certainly working with the right components and not simply playing with Playdough. Knowing Wright's earlier work, I expect his locomotive will run, in the end. But I also suspect that, given the complexity of Paul's worlds, his self-understanding, and his beliefs, some fine tuning of the parts that Wright has assembled will certainly be helpful.

Paul in the eyes of the Greeks and Romans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Apostle

My graduate seminar on Paul and Early Judaism has just worked through three important chapters from N. T. Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of God on the philosophical, religious, and imperial contexts of the Greco-Roman world. Students were impressed (and rightly so) with the way in which Wright presented this material in an engaging style which provided both an overview as well as some more detailed analysis of themes and issues relevant for the study of Paul. For my part, I was very pleased with these chapters as well as with the discussion they engendered in class. Students were brought face to face with problems of terminology and anachronism in discussing these ancient cultural phenomena with modern categories, and were challenged to grapple with ancient texts and practices on their own terms.

For example, the generic and seemingly straightforward term "religion" means something quite different today than when we consider the religious world of antiquity. Wright takes pains to show that religion penetrated every aspect of ancient life: home, city, calendar, affairs of state, architecture, art, and so on. Wright explains, “We cannot begin to understand how ordinary people in the first century thought, imagined, reasoned, believed, prayed and acted unless we try to get inside their myth-soaked culture” (255). And while Wright notes that "religion was everywhere because the gods were everywhere” (274), nevertheless this level of understanding about the omnipresence of the gods did not lead to a great concern about morality, doctrine, or even belief (as we might expect of religions today); rather ancient religion was primarily about proper performance of sacrifice or other rituals for the sake of the welfare of the polis. Fulfilling obligations to the gods through sacrifice and ritual was the way to ensure divine favor and to avoid divine displeasure for the sake of the well-being of the city. This is something far different than modern conceptions of religion, particularly in the West. And just as importing our notions of "religion" into the study of ancient religious practices is problematic, so it is with our notion of "philosophy" as well. Rather than being an exercise in academic reflection and theoretical speculation, philosophy in the first-century CE was much more of a "street-level" activity that was concerned with promoting a particular way of life, the good life. Philosophy also had a good deal to say about the nature of the gods and appropriate human responses to them, as well as offering a critique of some religious practices. By raising these kinds of issues, and inviting readers to consider the beliefs, practices, cultures, and customs of the ancients on their own terms, Wright has gone a long way toward setting the stage for a richer understanding of Paul and how he fit into his world. 

One question which this material raises is, "How would Paul and his work of forming communities of disciples have appeared to outside observers? What would your average Corinthian or Ephesian (assuming for a moment there was such an average person) have thought Paul was up to?"

As the comments above about the religious and cultural context of the Greco-Roman world suggest, whatever such a person might have thought, they would probably not have thought that Paul was introducing a new religion. He founded no temple, initiated no sacrificial rites, and was just not concerned with the kinds of things that Greco-Roman religious practice was concerned with. Rather, by traveling throughout the large cities of the mediterranean world, gathering students about himself, gaining the support of wealthy patrons, writing letters of teaching and instruction to his students, exhorting his communities to live their lives in a particular way based on a particular view of ultimate reality, refuting opposing views, critiquing pagan religious practices, and spending his time expounding the meaning of ancient writings and the teachings of Jesus, Paul might have looked much more like a popular philosopher.

Taking this line of thought, E. A. Judge, in a classic essay from 1961, articulated the thesis that Paul may be viewed as a "sophist," not in the pejorative sense of the term as a pseudo-intellectual windbag but in the sense that he adopted the practices of the intellectual, sophistic teachers of the first and second centuries. He explains that he considers Paul a sophist “without prejudice to the value or sincerity of his thought, nor to its independence of other philosophical schools” (539) and that "the term ‘sophist’ has been chosen for lack of a better, and is meant to include many scholars (quite apart from St. Paul!) who would have hotly rejected it” (539). These individuals were learned in rhetoric and also philosophy more broadly, and, because of their influence among the wealthy, and even among the Caesars, at their best “they were intellectual leaders of great eminence, not only in preserving the classical heritage but in guiding public policy and private morality in their own day” (540). Based on his adopting many of the practices of the sophists (by his own reporting in his letters with regard to sponsorship by wealthy patrons; development of a retinue of followers; and so forth) as well as with his emphasis on logos, reason, revealed secrets, gnosis, and his concern for ethics, Judge argues that “the Christian faith, therefore, as Paul expounds it, belongs with the doctrines of the philosophical schools rather than with the esoteric rituals of the mystery religions” (551).

Whether one accepts Judge's view or not, looking at Paul from this perspective of what his practices would have communicated to outside observers can help us to view Paul and his letters in fresh ways, and even open up aspects of Paul's teaching and practice that may otherwise be obscured by our modern reading lenses.

For anyone interested in exploring this issue further, Judge's essay has been reprinted in a collection of his essays, The First Christians in the Roman World (2008), many of which are excellent in their contribution to understanding the Greco-Roman world on its own terms.

Happy Septuagint Day!

Thanks to Jim Davila for pointing out on his blog that today, Feb 8, is International Septuagint day. As anyone reading this blog probably knows, the Septuagint (LXX) is the term for a collection of Greek translations of the Hebrew Scriptures made in the early centuries BCE as a result of the spread of Greek language and culture, as well as of the settlement of Jews throughout the Mediterranean world. This particular date has been designated by the International Association for Septuagint and Cognate Studies as a day to promote and encourage the study of these texts. On their site they have posted a number of very good introductory resources about the LXX in honor of this day. Studies of the LXX have important implications for the study of Paul, early Judaism, the New Testament, the textual history of the Hebrew Bible, and early Christianity more broadly. Check out the links here. To my not very great surprise I did not see a large selection of "International Septuagint Day" cards at Hallmark this year, so my students, colleagues, and  wife should not expect a card this year. Maybe next year?

Kugel on early Jewish biblical interpretation, with help from Jesus and Paul

Since reading his Traditions of the Bible, I have been fascinated by Kugel's articulation of the four assumptions about the Bible made by Second Temple Jewish interpreters. Part of what shook me initially was the extent to which such assumptions were part of the Christian tradition in which I was raised. These assumptions were, to greater or lesser degrees, taken for granted without any critical examination. But what surprised me was that I was reading the Bible through the same lens as the ancients. Yet their assumptions were based on some perceptions about the Bible that did not necessarily hold up for me given the richer and fuller understanding of the nature and origins of Scripture as understood by contemporary theologians. In fact, the uncritical embrace of some of these assumptions has led to some rather unhealthy, even harmful, ways of reading the Bible today. For example, seeing the Bible merely as a handbook or instruction manual for life. While the impulse behind this way of reading can be defended (Christians do indeed believe that God's word is relevant in all times and places, and it has something to say to us today), the extension of that to reading the Bible as a handbook-for-living-today has the potential to set up the well-intentioned reader for some exegetical and hermeneutical disasters. Especially so when one seeks to discern the 5 biblical steps to financial independence or 7 Bible secrets to a happy marriage or the biblical way to eat healthy. Sadly, such an approach not only goes off track but it can end up missing the point of what the Bible actually does have to say about what it means to live a good and whole life in the world today.

So here are the four assumptions Kugel lists (taken from his chapter in Early Judaism: A Comprehensive Overview). These are assumptions that seem to be made by ancient interpreters as they read and interpreted what came to be known as the Hebrew Bible or TaNaK (the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings).

1. Scriptural texts were basically cryptic; while the text may say A, often what it really means is B.
2. The basic purpose of Scripture was to guide people nowadays; although it talked about the past, it was really aimed at the present.
3. Scripture contained a single, unitary message; it was altogether harmonious in all its details and altogether true. Everything was perfect.
4. All of Scripture was of divine origin: God had caused the ancient sages or historians or psalmists to write what they wrote. Therefore all of it was sacred. (Kugel, "Early Jewish Biblical Interpretation," pp. 151-178 in Early Judaism: A Comprehensive Overview [Collins and Harlow, eds; Eerdmans, 2012], here pp. 165-166)

Once one is attuned to such assumptions, it becomes an engaging exercise to begin to spot when they are at play in the New Testament as people like Jesus and Paul provide their interpretation of the Scriptures of Israel. Two examples:

In Mt 22:23-33 Jesus is described as giving a striking instance of the assumption that the Scriptures do not just describe the works and words of God in the past, but that they can be understood as God's words spoken directly to the reader or hearer. In this instance, the Sadducees sought to paint Jesus into a corner where he must either deny the resurrection or the relevance of the commands of the Torah (their assumption even in coming to him is that the laws of the Torah applied in their day and forever). They brought to him what I imagine was their stock example: seven ill-fated brothers who, in sequence, marry one woman, then die, leaving the next brother to obey the law of Moses and marry the woman. The issue then is, in the resurrection, if indeed there is a resurrection (the Sadduccees denied it), whose wife will she be. The response of Jesus is itself rich with exciting interpretive challenges (in short, no marriage in heaven, "they will be like the angels"...) Jesus went on to address the real point of their question, the reality of the resurrection. He cited Exod 3:6 where God was speaking directly to Moses. And here is where it gets VERY interesting for our purposes of looking at assumptions about Scripture. In citing this verse, Jesus says, "Have you not read what was said to you by God?" Here Jesus explicitly states that what God said to Moses, and what was later written down as part of the book of Exodus, is in reality a word that God spoke directly "to you" the contemporary listener or reader. And thus here are several of Kugel's assumptions, illustrated for us in one passage. God's words in the past have contemporary relevance, and often communicate something more than just the surface meaning.

The second example is from Paul. In 1 Cor 10:1-11 Paul discusses the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites and draws an interesting conclusion: "These things happened to them to serve as an example (Greek: tupos; German: ein Vorbild), and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come" (v. 11). Clear as day, the historical account given in Exodus is history, yes, but it is also more than history: it has contemporary relevance as an example. In fact, it was written down "for us." Further, this passage contains the interesting extra-biblical tradition that the rock (from which the Israelites drew water) followed the Israelites around the wilderness. And Paul's interpretation is that this was a spiritual rock, and that that rock was Christ. This illustrates the notion that the meaning of the Bible is below the surface, cryptic, but that it can be discovered with the right reading lens. For Paul this lens was christological, and the Scriptures were now to be read in light of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, as pointing to the redemptive work that God would accomplish through him.

Jesus and Paul shared a set of interpretive assumptions with their fellow Jews of antiquity. First, in speaking and acting among the Israelites of old as recorded in the Scriptures, God was speaking a message to them. Second, this message was relevant for their day and so should be heeded. Third, that message was, to a certain extent, cryptic: it was hidden below the surface until the right teacher with the right tools could bring it to light.

The New Testament thus includes and holds up a way of reading Scripture that was strongly culturally and historically conditioned but one that would become normative for Christians of all times, taking root in and even shaping the reading practices of later times and subsequent cultures. Contemporary readers of Scripture do well to examine these ancient assumptions about reading the Bible, and to consider how they contribute to our own assumptions about reading the Bible.