who is Paul addressing in Rom. 2.17?

Those of you who know Romans (and Paul) better than I, I would like to ask you a favor: Help me understand why my revisionist reading of Rom. 2.17, suggested below, isn't plausible.

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 . . .

Ei de sy Ioudaios eponomazē kai epanapauē nomō kai kauchasai en theō . . .

But if you call yourself a Jew, and you find comfort in Torah, and you boast in God . . .

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]

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[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.

[8] Epictetus, Discourses 2.9.19–21; Donaldson (Judaism, 388–91) discusses this passage in some detail.

[9] Donaldson, Judaism, 391.

re-oralizing written manuscripts

Martin Jaffee is probably one of my favorite scholars of oral tradition and the relation between orally transmitted and actualized material and the written texts in which such material exists today. Jaffee, in my opinion, has not only read John Miles Foley (something more people who cite him ought to do) but also understood him. Jaffee's most substantial work that I've read is his 2001 monograph, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE–400 CE (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press), but I've run across a number of his essays in edited volumes throughout the course of my own research.

Most recently, his essay, "Honi the Circler in Manuscript and Memory: An Experiment in 'Re-Oralizing' the Talmudic Text"—the fourth chapter in Jesus in Memory: Traditions in Oral and Scribal Perspectives (Werner Kelber and Samuel Byrskog; Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009; 87–111)—presents an excellent example of the kind of analysis Foley advocated in his 1995 monograph, The Singer of Tales in Performance (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press). That is, Jaffee balances the primary target of his analysis (viz., an orally mediated tradition) with a respect for the inevitable field of that analysis (viz., handwritten texts). This balance eludes much of media-critical scholarship; we seem to either forget the text-based nature of all our work or to underestimate the significance of the oral milieux contextualizing our written texts.

Jaffee's essay in the Gerhardsson Festschrift offers two presentations of the Honi tradition from the Munich manuscript of the Babylonian Talmud. The first represents in English the visual appearance of that tradition in the MS Munich, "attempting to represent in English what a reader of the manuscript finds in the published facsimile edition: line after undifferentiated line of text without any of the normal cues of punctuation that would signal to a reader how to vocalize the text" (91). The second presentation employs different typefaces (italics, plain text, BOLD ALL CAPS, etc.) in an attempt

to represent visually the various oral-performative sources of textual tradition that are manifest in the editorial shaping of the material but concealed by the scribal format of the manuscript. My goal is to permit the reader to grasp the fundamental ways in which the linear, scribal version of the Talmud neutralizes the oral-performative traces of the transmitted text even as it becomes the very condition of the recovery of the text's oral life. (91)

At this point many of us textually-trained practitioners of biblical scholarship will object that Jaffee does not—indeed cannot—provide any methodologically rigorous criteria to ensure that the "oral-performative" interpretation of the Honi pericope actually obtained, either in the original composition of the MS Munich that provides the text with which he works or in that manuscript's subsequent reception. And Jaffee recognizes this problem (see pp. 96–97). But Jaffee refuses to abandon the attempt to recover oral-performative dynamics that we know with near-certainty contextualized the written textual artifacts with which we work simply because we cannot know if, or how well, we have recovered those dynamics. As Foley would say, we already de-nature oral-derived texts when our interpretations take account of their strictly textual dynamics and neglect the performative and traditional cues embedded in and yet obscured by those textual dynamics.

As a result, we cannot know with any certainty the degree to which Jaffee's "re-oralization" of the Honi pericope accurately revivifies how that pericope would have been heard by its audiences in any given cultural or historical milieu. And yet we can appreciate the way his presentation of the text in discrete "breath-units" and highlighting the multiple "voices" comprising the talmudic text adds depth and texture to the flattened words on the page. Work still remains to be done, of course. But Jaffee advances our reading of oral-derived texts. Now to turn to the gospels . . .

What is a Ioudaios?

BDAG, the standard Greek-English lexicon for NT and early Christian scholarship, gives the following two extended definitions for Ἰουδαῖος, αία, αῖον:

• pert. to being Judean (Jewish), with focus on adherence to Mosaic tradition, Judean;


• one who is Judean (Jewish), with focus on adherence to Mosaic tradition, a Judean

The question of how to translate Ἰουδαῖος is a tricky one. Does it primarily delimit a set of religious and/or idealogical persuasions, and so mean Jew/Jewish? Or is it rather a geographical and/or ethnic marker, and so mean Judean? BDAG's extended definitions of Ἰουδαῖος recognize the difficulty inasmuch as give "Jewish" in parentheses, but in its glosses BDAG clearly prefers Judean to Jew (which it doesn't offer). This is, in my impression, in line with the current standard position among scholars of Second Temple Judaism, Christian origins, and the New Testament.

Even so, the preference for a geographical/ethnic referent cannot quite shake the religious/idealogical connotations. After the second definition, given above, BDAG offers the following:

Since Jerusalem sets the standard for fidelity to Israel's tradition, and since Jerusalem is located in Judea, Ἰ. frequently suggests conformity to Israel's ancestral belief and practice. in turn, the geographical name provided outsiders with a term that applied to all, including followers of Jesus, who practiced customs variously associated with Judea (note the Roman perception Ac 18:15 ['Judeans' at Corinth]; 23:28).

In his book Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), Daniel Boyarin argues that "Judaism," as a religion, didn't exist before it was invented by early Christian heresiologists (beginning with Justin Martyr) as a foil against which "Christianity" could be defined. In other words, "Christianity" ≠ "Judaism," but before there was a "Christianity" there was no "Judaism." In yet other words, whereas today we think of "Jew" [Ἰουδαῖος] as a belonging to the same class as words like "Christian," "Muslim," "Buddhist," "Hindu," etc. (all of these are examples of religious adherents), before the rise of Christianity "Jew" [Ἰουδαῖος] belonged to a different class, other examples of which include "Roman," "Greek," "Persian," "Egyptian," "Asian," "Syrian," etc.

There's a lot of insight here, but we still need to exercise an inordinate amount of caution. Whereas geographical/ethnic markers today don't necessarily connote religious identity (what do "Europeans" or "Asians" or "Africans" think about God/god/the transcendent?), they clearly did in the ancient world. Being "Roman" or "Egyptian" meant something about your religious beliefs in addition to your national/ethnic identity; if you were "Roman" ethnically but not religiously, that was something to comment on (cp. the complaint against Paul and Silas in Acts 16.20–21). For example, note the description of Dositheus in 3 Maccabees 1.3:

But Ptolemy was taken out of harm's way by Dositheus, called the son of Drimylus, a Judean by race [τὸ γένος Ἰουδαῖος] who later changed his customs [μεταβαλὼν τὰ νόμιμα] and became estranged from his ancestral beliefs [τῶν πατρίων δογμάτων ἀπηλλοτριωμένος].

Surely it's significant, given the questions we've been asking about Ἰουδαῖος for over two decades, that Dositheus's status as a Ἰουδαῖος required qualification (it was "by race" only) because he wasn't a Ἰουδαῖος as the term was normally understood. He may have been a Judean, but he was no longer a Jew.

Albert Baumgarten and sources of the gospels

In Albert Baumgarten's essay, "Pharisaic Authority: Prophecy and Power (Antiquities 17.41–45)" (Common Judaism: Explorations in Second-Temple Judaism, edited by Wayne O. McCready and Adele Reinhartz [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008], 81–96). Baumgarten presents a compelling analysis well worth the time it takes to read it, but it also betrays an assumption that is both (i) common among historians of Second Temple Judaism and (ii) badly in need of correction.

Baumgarten gathers Jewish sources and what they might reveal about Pharisaic practice of and reputation for trading in religious matters (esp. knowing the future). I was particularly impressed to read his intention to move outward from Josephus "to other ancient Jewish sources, notably the New Testament and Qumran" (85; my emphasis), as part of his analysis. First, the identification of the texts of the New Testament as "Jewish sources" (rather than, perhaps, anti-Jewish sources), and second, the realization that their relation to Second Temple Judaism is analogous to the DSS represent appropriate adjustments in our approach to the New Testament at least and perhaps all of first-century CE Christian texts.

But then when Baumgarten turns to consider Matt 12.22–9 (the Beelzebul controversy) and Jesus' interaction with Pharisaic opponents, he aligns Matthew alongside other written texts (and nonextant texts at that!) rather than positioning the evangelist within the world of interaction among Second-Temple Jews. When Jesus asks the Pharisees, "by whom do your own people drive [the demons] out?" (Matt 12.27), Baugarten says, "This passage suggests that the author of the Gospel of Matthew had access to a source that attributed to the Pharisees the ability to exorcise demons" (91; my emphasis).

Why does this passage suggest anything about the sources to which Matthew had access?! Why are we so uncomfortable with the notion that the evangelists (and other tradents of the early Jesus tradition) were themselves experienced participants in the world they inhabited, including their experience reading, performing, enacting, recalling, celebrating, transmitting, and teaching from the stories from and about the sacred scriptures and Jesus of Nazareth?

Most importantly, even if Baumgarten's heavily text-conversant model of the ancient world were appropriate, nothing about Matthew's text would actually suggest a source attributing exorcistic prowess to the Pharisees. As Baumgarten notes (253, n. 49), the Lukan parallel to this pericope (Luke 11.14–22) handles the identity of Jesus' opponents differently but contains the same question, "by whom do your own people drive them out?" Again, on the presumption that we should analyze the evidence in terms of written sources and textual manipulation, the most we could say is that Matthew appears to have had access to a source that attributed exorcistic abilities to Jesus' opponents, and someone—whether Matthew himself, Matthew's source, or someone else we cannot know—thought it made sense to attribute these abilities to Pharisees.

Of course, I don't see any justification for the immediate appeal to sources and especially to the view that, even if written sources are found behind our texts, our texts generate meaning vis-à-vis their sources. I realize the question of how an author manipulates his or her sources sheds light on their own writings, but in the hand of redaction critics comparative analysis has tyrannized any attempt to understand the gospels as autonomous expressions of the Jesus tradition.

more on Susan Haber on purity practices

In my previous post I took up Susan Haber's essay, "Common Judaism, Common Synagogue? Purity, Holiness, and Sacred Space at the Turn of the Common Era" in Common Judaism: Explorations in Second-Temple Judaism. My comments weren't particularly deep, but in the comments John Poirier has made a few very helpful comments, which I wanted to take up on the main page. Poirier wrote,

Yes, Haber's right, but she doesn't go far enough when she writes "Such holiness was associated not only with the temple but also with the biblical scrolls that were read on the Sabbath, and perhaps even the synagogue in which the Torah was read and studied." She left out other daily holy activities, like praying. (I haven't read her article. I'm just going by what you've quoted, Rafael.) The hemerobaptists had a problem with the Pharisees because they would say their morning blessings without first purifying themselves by immersion.

He then points out, in a later comment, that the Pharisees weren't advocating prayer without purification; the debate concerned precisely the means of purification (immersion vs. hand-washing).

Poirier's focus on prayer struck me as interesting, in part because I myself had never considered the purificatory requirements prior to prayer. Of course, it makes perfect sense to include prayer here; notice, at a very basic level, the way prayer and sacrifice (which happens in the Temple) are intimately linked in Isa 56.7 (cited by Jesus in the Temple incident) as well as in the phrase "hour of prayer" (see Acts 3.1). I think both of these uses of prayer (Heb. תפלה; tĕphillâ; Grk. προσευχή; proseuchē) equate this word with sacrifice, which should tell us something about an understanding of prayer in Second Temple Judaism.

If sacrifice in the Temple could be referred to as prayer, then it follows fairly naturally (though not automatically) that prayer in other venues (e.g., the synagogue) would require purificatory rites. So I was particularly interested to note that Haber does indeed move in the direction Poirier mentioned. In her discussion of Diaspora synagogues Haber suggests, "It is possible, however, that the water was used for ritual ablutions prior to prayer or the handling of the Torah" (71). Then, on the next page, she cites a passage from the Letter of Aristeas, which deserves mention here:

Following the custom of all the Jews, they washed their hands in the sea in the course of their prayers to God, and then proceeded to the reading and explication of each point. I asked this question: "What is their purpose in washing their hands while saying their prayers?" They explained that it is evidence that they have done no evil, for all activity takes place by means of the hands. (Aristeas 305–6)

Haber goes on to explain, "In this passage, hand washing is associated with both prayer and the handling of Scripture" (72). Given the frequent reference to synagogues as "[houses of] prayer" (προσευχή; proseuchē), and the evidence Haber evinces to suggest that "the synagogue building was regarded as sacred from an early period" (73), the link between purity, purity practices, and prayer seems especially secure.

One more question: Poirier, in his most recent comment, notes the Pauline exhortation to abstain from sex (only) for the sake of prayer (see 1 Cor 7.5). I'm not sure if I'd make anything of this particular gospel tradition, but in light of the connection between purity, space, and prayer, should we understand Jesus' instruction to pray in secret (see Matt 6.5–6) in terms of debates about purity? In other words, does the Matthean Jesus suggest prayer in the synagogue and on street corners, in the hands of "the hypocrites," suffers some sort of impurity?

Susan Haber on purity practices

I've assigned the edited volume, Common Judaism: Explorations in Second-Temple Judaism (Wayne O. McCready adn Adele Reinhartz, eds.; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008), for my graduate-level course, The World of the New Testament. I note the late Susan Haber's discussion of the widespread practice of purity rituals (whether immersion in the land of Israel, or sprinkling, splashing, and/or handwashing in the Diaspora) among Second Temple-era Jews in her essay, "Common Judaism, Common Synagogue? Purity, Holiness, and Sacred Space at the Turn of the Common Era" (63–77). She notes, "Jews everywhere performed these purificatory rites whether or not they approached the sacred precincts of the Jerusalem temple" (65). She then goes on to explain this practice in the following terms:

Two factors help to explain this widespread practice. First, Jews of the first century believed that the biblical laws, including the purity laws, were divine in origin and hence were a requirement. Their concern was not whether to keep the law but how to do so within their own social and cultural context. Second, according to the law, only those who were in a state of purity could have contact with the sacred. Such holiness was associated not only with the temple but also with the biblical scrolls that were read on the Sabbath, and perhaps even the synagogue in which the Torah was read and studied. Jews purified themselves so that they could draw near to that which was holy. (65)

Was Paul a Jew?

The Tablet has an essay entitled, "Was Paul a Jew?" which picks up the discussion of Pamela Eisenbaum's new book, Paul Was Not a Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood Apostle (New York: HarperOne, 2009). I'm sympathetic to Eisenbaum's larger program (which I've encountered in Gabriella Gelardini's edited volume on Hebrews [see my comments here]), though I think there are problems with some of her details. Nonetheless, Stanley Stowers's blurb is about as positive as I could ever hope to receive; Stowers says:

Eisenbaum shows the implausibility of the common interpretation of Paul that pits a Christian essence against a superficial or rejected Jewish hull. The book's great accomplishment is to show us a historically plausible picture of a fully Jewish Paul who was also fully committed to Christ.

So I'm interested. Even so, the Tablet's essay, linked above, reveals more about the ways of thinking about Paul (and other Western symbols) in popular media than it does about the historical Paul and those who knew and/or remembered him in the first century or so of Christian history. Here's a blurb which illustrates both the nuance that I hope to see more of in our own reflection of Paul and the over-simplification that persists on seeing Christianity and Judaism as separable (or worse, separate!) "things":

If all this is true, it follows that when Paul condemns Jews, he is aiming his barbs at my meddling fellow Jewish missionaries of Christ, not the Jews, a people I harshly reject. And when he speaks of Judaism having been superseded, he means Judaism as a lifestyle to be aspired to by pagans, not Judaism as practiced by Jews. (In Acts, Jews do persecute Paul for preaching the gospel. But Acts doesn’t count as a source for Paul, since the man who probably wrote it, Luke, came along nearly half a century after him, by which point the Jesus movement was busily suppressing its Jewish roots.) (original italics)

[HT: Bible and Interpretation]

The Talmud, brought to you by Oxfam

Leaving a friend's house yesterday I stopped at the local Oxfam to see if they had any interesting books. I'm glad I did, because they had a number of classics for just a couple quid. At one point I had four books under my arm, but, even though they were uber-cheap, I had to choose only two. So I bought an English translation (ca. 1905) of Plato's Republic, and H. Polano's English translation (1894) of selections from the Talmud.

The latter is truly fascinating, not just for being rabbinic literature but for representing a portion of Judaic scholarship from over one hundred years ago. (I presume Prof. Polano was a rather Orthodox Jewish scholar, though I am unable to defend such a presumption.) At any rate, I wanted to post the following from the myth of origins behind the oral tradition that was codified in the Talmud. I've run across this elsewhere, but the presentation as a [quasi- (?)]historical account is what is particularly interesting. For a current and stimulating discussion of ancient Jewish oral tradition, see M. Jaffee's Torah in the Mouth. Without further ado, the words of Prof. Polano:

During the last forty years of the life of Moses, the Lord gave to him six hundred and thirteen precepts, including the Decalogue, with full explanation of their meaning and intent, that he might be able to properly instruct the people. The manner in which Moses imparted these precepts to the chosen race is thus recorded in the treatise Erubim. First, he called his brother Aaron into his tent and spoke to him alone, all the words which God had commanded; the sons of Aaron were then admitted and the same words repeated to them; the seventy elders of the people were then called before Moses, and from his lips received the commandments and ordinances of their God, and then any of the people who so desired were allowed to enter the tent, and to them Moses spoke again the same words. Thus Aaron heard these precepts four times, his sons thrice, the elders twice, and the people once, from the lips of Moses. After this first course of instruction, the prophet retired and Aaron repeated the precepts; then his sons spoke the words which they had heard; the elders reiterated them, and thus were the commands delivered to Moses, impressed upon the minds of the people, who were authorised in turn to teach one another. The precepts themselves were written on rolls of parchment, but the explanations thereof became the basis of the oral law, the foundation and substance of the Talmud. These six hundred and thirteen precepts were given between the years 2448 and 2488 (1312 and 1272 B.C.E.).

Polano, H., trans. The Talmud. Selections from the Contents of that Ancient Book, its Commentaries, Teachings, Poetry, and Legends. London and New York: Frederick Warne and Co., 1894.