A Jewish Paul

Book of the Week by Matthew Thiessen

Matthew Thiessen
A Jewish Paul: The Messiah’s Herald to the Gentiles
Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2023.

Matthew Thiessen’s book on Paul is from the “Paul within Judaism” (PwJ) school/cohort of scholars with a specific approach to Pauline studies. Thiessen’s book is a good summary of PwJ, it is readable, offers some important insights into Paul, and a few challenging interpretations of Paul.

Look, I don’t agree with everything in the PwJ camp (see here), but … there is some good stuff that people should take note of!

Let me explain my own journey of developing some sympathy for the PwJ project.

Growing in Sympathy for Paul within Judaism

Many years ago, I presented the a paper in Brisbane where Markus Bockmuehl was present (a scholar who specializes in the Jewish origins of Christianity) and I asked him what he thought. He politely replied, “It was very Harnackian” (Adolf von Harnack was a German liberal Protestant scholar of the 19th/20th century who thought Judaism was an inferior religion replaced by Christianity), which made me cringe, as I had obviously accented Paul’s beef with his Jewish contemporaries more than I was intending. At that point, I realized I had to think beyond my Protestant and New Perspective on Paul synthesis and really check out the PwJ thing (though back then it was known as the “radical Paul”).

Bockmuehl told me something that sat with me, which was to use Acts 21:17-26 as a barrier test for any treatment of Paul, Torah, and Judaism. In that episode, James tells Paul that he has a reputation for urging Jews to abandon Jewish customs and that he himself is non-Torah observant. The solution, James suggested, was for Paul to sponsor a Nazirite vow for four men as they go for their rites of purification in the temple. Does that sound like an anti-Torah or anti-Judaism Paul? No!

Mattew Thiessen’s Project - Make Paul Weird Again … Jewishly Weird!

Matthew Thiessen’s book uses the same passage from Acts to challenge the standard reading of Paul as anti-Judaism and anti-Torah and on that I think he’s successful. That said, I’d point out that the anti-legalism Paul makes sense of Acts 15:1-5, the anti-ethnocentrism Paul is believable in light of Acts 10:18, the anti-imperial Paul finds traction in Acts 17:7, and the apocalyptic Paul resonates with Acts 26:18 - so Acts has something for everyone!

For Thiessen, ethnicity and behavior are two sides of the same coin, ethnicity does not matter for deliverance but it does matter for behaviour (Jews should obey the Torah, the Gentiles should not obey certain parts of the Torah). I’d sum that up as, “Come as you are, but stay for the ethnically bespoke halakhah!”

Overly Defensive Sidebar

I should note that Thiessen does fire one shot across my bow. I wrote a book called An Anomalous Jew: Paul among Jews, Greeks, and Romans, where I argued that Paul was a Jew, but an anomalous one because of his messianic eschatology. John Barclay also calls Paul “anomalous” because of his particular negotiation of Hellenism as a Jew. Thiessen writes: “In short, a Jewish Paul. Not an anomalous Jew, not a radical Jew, not a marginal Jew. Just one Jew living his life and following his perceived calling amid the diversity and richness of first-century Judaism” (35). I think the affirmation holds, but the denial is a little problematic. Thiessen is riffing off Fredriksen’s critique of me that Paul was a Jew. Period. No adjectives are required. Yes, Paul was idiosyncratic, but he was idiosyncratic as a Jew. Game, set, match.

I’d say to Thiessen what I’d say to Fredriksen. First, Judaism was diverse, so Paul’s Judaism needs an adjective, whether that is messianic, apostolic, or whatever. If you put the Hellenistic Jewish author Philo, Qumran’s Teacher of Righteousness, rabbi Hillel, and the apostle Paul at the same dinner table, there will be arguments and differences. They are all Jewish, but they are not the same. Second, how Paul relates to other Jews, including to “common Judaism” as E.P. Sanders called it, is perhaps worth including in that adjective. If “Jew” is the common denominator, what is the differentiator? Because, you know, Paul was kind of doing his own Jesus-thing and occasionally was given a hostile reception from fellow Jews. Third, if someone can explain to me how “anomalous” is different from “weird” (Thiessen’s term) or “idiosyncratic” (Fredriksen’s term) I would love to know!

Takeaways from Matthew Thiessen

Thiessen is doing a good job of challenging people to see past their theological and religious dispositions in how they read Paul. In particular, he wants people to consider Paul’s positive relationship to Jewish ethnicity and customs, Paul’s messianic Christology, his imminent eschatology, how Gentiles converted to Judaism and the paucity of a Jewish mission to Gentiles, and Paul’s materialist view of pneuma (Spirit), angelic-like holiness, and more.

There is one line that sums up the main tenets of the book which I think rings true: “Let Paul be Paul no matter how weird he gets” (118). Even if you disagree with Thiessen in places, his aim is noble on this point.

This book is a good entree to anyone wanting to get a grip on the PwJ school!

People who like this book might also like Matthew Novenson’s Paul, Then and Now which is collected essays on very similar topics, though for a slightly more advanced audience. Also, I wrote an introduction to a book on Paul within Judaism with Mohr-Siebeck, covering various topics of Paul vis-a-vis Judaism, which contains my mapping of the PwJ and a pro and con evaluation of the various tenets of PwJ (free access!).