Rethinking Paul’s Relationship to Judaism

In the nearly 2,000 years since a zealous Pharisee named Saul met the risen Christ in a bright light on the road to Damascus, debate has circled about this Pharisee’s relationship to the Jewish traditions in which he was raised. At first the Jerusalem church, composed of circumcised Jewish believers in Christ, feared him, questioning if this was little more than a ruse for infiltrating their movement (Acts 9:26). Saul, known to us as the Apostle Paul, was too zealously Jewish to be trusted. Later, “certain people from James,” the leader of that same group in Jerusalem, cast aspersions on elements of Paul’s mission to Gentiles. The Gentile believers Paul and Cephas served were threatening Jewish purity norms with their table fellowship. Paul, it seems, is both all too Jewish and sometimes not Jewish enough.

Matthew Thiessen’s new introduction to Paul’s thought, A Jewish Paul: The Messiah’s Herald to the Gentiles (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2023), written from the perspective that Paul’s epistles can be understood within the diverse beliefs and practices of first-century Judaism, provides an accessible, and largely compelling, account of Paul’s relationship to Judaism. Anyone interested in Christian origins, the New Testament, early Judaism, and even Christian-Jewish relations would do well to consider its claims. Thiessen writes in clear, easy-to-read prose that is full of wit and folksy charm. As associate professor of religious studies at McMaster University in Ontario, Thiessen has made a career of challenging long-held stereotypes about early Christianity’s relationship to Judaism in scholarly works such as Contesting Conversion: Genealogy, Circumcision, and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Christianity (Oxford, 2011), and Paul and the Gentile Problem (Oxford, 2016). In A Jewish Paul, Thiessen presents the fruits of these prior studies, along with some updated ideas, in punchy, short chapters, describing Paul’s relationship to the Jewish traditions of the first century.

In the almost 50 years since E.P. Sanders published Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Fortress, 1977), much ink has been spilled about the degree to which Paul’s gospel was consistent with, or a sharp break from, his Jewish contemporaries’ thoughts on the law, grace, and the role of Gentiles in God’s plan. Readers familiar with the work of N.T. Wright will recognize his role in the New Perspective on Paul, alongside “apocalyptic” approaches to Paul, and their challenge to traditional “Lutheran,” anti-legalistic readings of Paul. The literature on these topics is immense, and even professional New Testament scholars can struggle to keep up. Moreover, pastors, church leaders, and scholars alike vehemently defend the boundaries between various views. For some, it seems as though nothing less than the nature of salvation itself is at stake!

Does Paul see himself as a Christian who “converted” “out” of Judaism, as a Christ-believing Jew who can be flexible with the Law to be “all things to all people” (1 Cor. 9:22) in order to reach some, or does Paul remain firmly within the bounds of a diverse first-century Judaism as the Messiah of Israel’s prophet to the goyim, the nations God calls to reconciliation?

Thiessen makes a case for situating Paul’s thinking “within and not against the Jewish world that was part of the larger ancient Mediterranean world” (A Jewish Paul, p. 9). In so doing, Thiessen is closest to some of the “Paul within Judaism” approaches, also known as the radical new perspective on Paul, articulated by Pamela Eisenbaum, Paula Fredriksen, and Mark Nanos. Yet he differs from the Sonderweg approach, describing the “special way” of salvation for Jews (Torah faithfulness) and Gentiles (Christ faithfulness) scholars such as Lloyd Gaston see in Paul’s thinking.

Thiessen highlights how “ancient Jews held different views on almost everything,” such that Paul can be seen as “one ancient Jew living and thinking and acting within a diverse Jewish world that sought to be faithful to Israel’s God and Israel’s law” (p. 10). This approach has strong explanatory value for some of Paul’s more difficult, seemingly contradictory statements regarding circumcision (compare Gal. 5:2; Gal. 6:15; Rom. 3:1–2; 1 Cor. 7:19) and the salvation of Israel (compare Rom. 9:30–31 with Rom. 11:26; Gal 4:21–26). Furthermore, as a general introduction to Paul, Thiessen updates readers on major trends of Pauline scholarship quickly, without flattening the distinct views. Overall, he presents an altogether fresh look at Paul that that avoids bogging down in the justification debates.

Most salient in Thiessen’s argument is his straightforward articulation of Paul’s focus on the work of the Spirit to transform Gentiles into sons and heirs of God through Christ, a change Thiessen likens to Stoic thinking about spirit contemporary to Paul. In this view, thoroughly articulated in Thiessen’s Paul and the Gentile Problem and the work of Troels Engberg-Pedersen and Stanley Stowers, the Spirit, as a material entity, infuses believers with the risen Christ in a material union that transforms Gentiles into the Jewish flesh of Jesus, the seed of Abraham (see Gal. 3:1–4:7; Rom. 8:9–17). Thiessen cleverly refers to this in A Jewish Paul as “Pneumatic Gene Therapy,” a transformation that in which the Spirit does what circumcision, a mere removal of flesh, cannot do: make Gentiles and Jews alike into sons and daughters of God through union with Christ, with the added effect of infusing Gentiles into genealogical descent from Abraham through Christ, Abraham’s seed (Gal. 3:16).

In a book about Paul’s Jewishness, Thiessen’s extended argument for the influence of Stoic and other Greco-Roman philosophical ideas on Paul’s discussions of the Spirit and the inclusion of Gentiles — non-Jewish, Greek-speaking Romans — may seem to veer from the main topic. Indeed, one chapter discussing Paul’s views on the Spirit cites Plutarch and Aristotle more than any strictly “Jewish” source. It is helpful to remember, however, that Paul’s closest Jewish contemporary, Philo of Alexandria, articulated aspects of Jewish life and faith from a Platonic viewpoint heavily influenced by Stoicism. Thiessen’s more academic works, especially Paul and the Gentile Problem, connect these ideas more intimately to intra-Jewish discussions within Second Temple Judaism, but even if the arguments are more succinct, the links are less clear in A Jewish Paul.

Sure, Thiessen’s Spirit talk focuses on Paul’s similarity to Greco-Roman thinkers, but he rounds out his sketch of Paul’s theological framework by considering how such a view of the Spirit in Paul influences interpretation of his views about holiness, resurrection, and deification in conversation with Second-Temple Jewish eschatological views. The moral life, and indeed the work of being transformed into the image of Christ the Son of God as Spirit-indwelled sons and daughters of God in Christ, in Thiessen’s reading of Paul, is the process of bodily transformation of believers into the glorified state of Christ’s resurrected “spiritual body” of holiness (1 Cor. 15:44; see 1 Cor. 15:35–58). This reading of Paul has potential for rethinking aspects of sacramental theology that Thiessen, an Anabaptist, does not consider, but readers may find this ripe for development.

Similarly, Thiessen can read Paul’s statements about Israel’s unbelief in light of his specifically Gentile-oriented message of adoption by the Spirit into fraternal relationship with Israel’s Messiah Jesus by emphasizing how Israel has a special place in God’s plan, but that this plan involves faith in Jesus the Messiah (cf. Rom. 9:4–5, “They are Israelites, to whom belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the Law, the worship, and the promises […] and from whom, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah”; my translation). The “partial hardening” (Rom. 11:25) of Israel does not, in Thiessen’s reading, indicate that there is anything wrong with Judaism, just that many Jews, like many Gentiles, do not believe in Jesus as Israel’s Messiah.

Recently, several contributors to Covenant have debated questions regarding Judaism, Christianity, modern Israel, and the evergreen threat of antisemitism and supersessionism. Thiessen’s book doesn’t solve those intractable problems, but he provides a way of thinking about Paul’s writings that doesn’t cast him as underwriting present-day Christian anti-Judaism. By situating Paul within the Judaism of his day, Thiessen lays groundwork for helpful ways to think in the present about Christianity in dialogue with Judaism based on its origins and existence in its early days within Judaism. Seminary students, pastors, and informed laypeople alike would find in Thiessen’s arguments, footnotes, and bibliography plenty of food for discussion and further study.