There is some debate about whether Paul is addressing a Jewish hypocrite or a gentile moralist in Rom. 2.1–16. I have historically held to the former option, though in my current reading of Romans I must admit that I'm seeing less and less that suggests a Jewish audience, either actually or rhetorically, encoded in Romans.
The situation seems to be clearer once we get to Rom. 2.17. In v. 17 Paul resumes the second-person singular address to an imaginary interlocutor, which he had first taken up in 2.1–6. The difficulties regarding Paul’s rhetorical audience in Romans 2 takes a significant turn in 2.17–20, where Paul offers an elaborate and extensive description of his interlocutor. First, Paul:
Εἰ δὲ σὺ Ἰουδαῖος ἐπονομάζῃ καὶ ἐπαναπαύῃ νόμῳ καὶ
καυχᾶσαι ἐν θεῷ . . .
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Ei de sy Ioudaios eponomazē kai epanapauē
nomō kai kauchasai en theō . . .
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But if you
call yourself a Jew, and you find comfort in Torah, and you boast in God . .
.
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Paul says clearly
that the rhetorical dialogue partner he to whom he pretends to be speaking
calls himself [ἐπονομάζῃ;
eponomazē] a Jew. According to Hans
Bietenhard, eponomazō in Classical
literature meant to “apply a
word as a name, denominate, give a second name or surname, nickname.”[1]
When he turns to Rom. 2.17, Bietenhard rightly explains, “Here Jew is a title
of honour, the heir to the legacy described in vv. 17–20. Paul attacks the
inconsistency of claiming to be a Jew and at the same time countenancing sin.”[2]
However, in the very next sentence Bietenhard makes clear that he thinks the
interlocutor in 2.17 does not simply claim
to be a Jew but actually is one.[3]
Stanley Stowers agrees; Stowers imagines Paul, speaking as a Jewish missionary to interested gentiles,
espying a fellow Jewish missionary in the audience and deciding to engage him
in front of the letter’s gentile hearers.[4]
While the specific rhetorical strategy varies among commentators, most (if not
all) agree that in 2.17 Paul imagines and addresses an actually Jewish
interlocutor.[5]
Given the
weight of this consensus among commentators, I hesitate to offer my dissent.
But I wonder if Paul might still be imagining a gentile moralist in 2.17, only
now this gentile has taken on the yoke of Torah and, in contrast to the
moralist of 2.1–6, worships the Creator God of Israel. If so, this gentile has
taken on the name [eponomazē (2.17)] “Jew” and gone on to assume the signs of the
Mosaic covenant, including circumcision (see 2.25–29). What is more, this
gentile proselyte apparently has taken it upon himself to proselytize other
gentiles within his sphere of influence (2.19–21). If this reading is right,
the imagined interlocutor in 2.17–24 might be a Jew religiously but is a gentile ethnically.
If so, then Paul has moved along a spectrum from morally depraved gentiles
(1.18–32) through a morally elitist gentile (2.1–16) to a gentile who has not
only assumed a more rigorous moral standard but has explicitly adopted a Torah-observant
lifestyle.
As I said
already, I offer this proposal cautiously and in full awareness that the
breadth of insight and careful exegesis that belongs to Romans scholarship as a
whole reads 2.17 at face value (i.e., that Paul addresses an ethnic Jewish
interlocutor). Contrary to this impressive insight and exegesis, I suggest that
the logical progression from 1.18–32 through 2.1–16 and on into 2.17–29 suggests
that Paul tilts at a gentile proselyte who has assumed the name [eponomazō] “Jew.”[6]
The difference might not seem significant, but I think some interpretive
problems arising from the rest of this paragraph (2.17–24) find some resolution
if we take this exegetical option (I will flesh out this claim elsewhere).
But first, we need to take a moment
to determine whether a gentile who commits himself to Torah-observance might
“call himself a Jew.” Here the Stoic philosopher Epictetus provides a very
interesting passage that may be relevant. As a
Stoic philosopher, Epictetus is especially concerned that people claim the
title philosopher without living out
a philosophic way of life: “He is sharply critical of those who lightly call
themselves philosophers but continue to ‘eat in the same fashion, drink in the
same fashion, give way to anger and irritation’ (Discourses 3.15.10)—that is, to continue in a self-indulgent style
of life totally at odds with the philosophical teaching they espouse.”[7]
In the context of critiquing those who call themselves one thing but live as
another, Epictetus writes:
Why then do you call yourself a Stoic? Why do you deceive the many?
Why do you act the part of a Jew, when you are a Greek? Do you not see how
(why) each is called a Jew, or a Syrian or an Egyptian? And when we see a man
inclining to two sides, we are accustomed to say, This man is not a Jew, but he
acts as one. But when he has assumed the affects of one who has been imbued
with Jewish doctrine and has adopted that sect, then he is in fact and he is
named a Jew. Thus we too being falsely imbued (baptized), are in name Jews, but
in fact we are something else. Our affects (feelings) are inconsistent with our
words; we are far from practising what we say, and that of which we are proud,
as if we knew it.[8]
Admittedly, the
key term, the verb eponomazō, does
not appear here. When Epictetus speaks of “calling yourself” a Stoic, or people
“being called” a Jew or a Syrian or an Egyptian he uses the more common verb λέγω [legō].
Later in this passage, when he refers to the genuine proselyte to Judaism, he uses
the verb καλέω: “then he is in fact
and he is named [καλεῖται; kaleitai] a Jew.” Though Epictetus does
not prove that Paul has a gentile convert to Judaism in mind in Rom. 2.17 when
he speaks of/to a person who “calls himself a Jew,” this text does raise the
possibility that earning and exhibiting the epithet Jew was an issue for gentile converts to Judaism. “[T]he most
significant aspect of the passage is that once they have taken this decisive
second step and have fully adopted the Jewish frame of mind and way of life,
the convert is seen, by Gentile outsiders at least, as fully a Jew, in fact as
well as in name.”[9]
[1]
Hans Bietenhard, “ὄνομα”
(part), NIDNTT 2.648. He carries this
nuance forward into his discussion of eponomazō
in the nt (see NIDNTT 2.655).
[2]
Bietenhard, NIDNTT 2.655.
[3]
“The Jews stand under the divine judgment like the Gentiles” (Bietenhard, NIDNTT 2.655).
[4]
Stowers, Rereading, 142.
[5]
Dunn, Romans, 1.109; Moo, Romans, 157–58; Schreiner, Romans, 127–30; Witherington, Romans, 85; Wright, “Romans,” 445–46. Jewett (Romans,
221–22) is ambiguous, but seems to agree.
[6]
Pace BDAG (s.v.), which considers the compound verbal form equivalent with the
simple ὀνομάζω (“ἐπι- without special mng.”).
[7]
Terence L. Donaldson, Judaism and the
Gentiles: Jewish Patterns of Universalism (to 135 ce) (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2007), 389.
