{"title":"J. L. Martyn and Apocalyptic Discontinuity: The Trinitarian, Christological Ground of Galatians in Galatians 4:1–11","authors":"D. Harink","doi":"10.5325/jstudpaullett.7.1-2.0101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jstudpaullett.7.1-2.0101","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Louis Martyn is well-known for his “apocalyptic” interpretation of Paul. This interpretation emphasizes divine priority and agency in God’s liberation of humanity, through Christ and the Spirit, from enslaving cosmic powers Sin and Death, the στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου, the Mosaic law. Martyn’s emphasis on divine priority makes the theological aspect of Paul’s letters front, center, and determinative. In this essay, I embrace and deepen Martyn’s theological insight by examining the Trinitarian and Christological ground of Paul’s theology in Gal 4:1–11. By analyzing several theological “moments” in the movement of that text, I clarify two distinct but not separate aspects of apocalyptic discontinuity: (1) discontinuity as the fundamental and absolute distinction between divine and creaturely being, revealed when God at the appointed time sends forth his Son, “born of a woman”; (2) discontinuity as the apocalyptic-messianic “invasion” of the enslaved world (“born under law”), conflict with the powers, and liberation of humanity in the crucifixion/resurrection of Christ. By distinguishing these two forms of apocalyptic discontinuity, I show that in Paul “apocalyptic” is not originally and essentially “invasion” but the peaceable union of divine and human reality in the incarnation. “Invasion” rightly characterizes the entry of this union into an enslaved cosmos, as God liberates humanity for participation in the triune divine life.","PeriodicalId":29841,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41867297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"1 Timothy 2:13–15 as an Analogy","authors":"Timothy D. Foster","doi":"10.5325/jstudpaullett.7.1-2.0053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jstudpaullett.7.1-2.0053","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 While 1 Tim 2:13–15 is often treated as providing three points in support of the paraeneses in vv. 11–12, this article argues that 1 Tim 2:13–15 forms an analogy that draws on the narrative sequence of Gen 2–3 to ground the commands of the preceding verses. The analogy draws a parallel between the events of the garden and the experience of the Ephesian church. It alerts them to the next step in the sequence following the transgression of Eve, which was the temptation and fall of Adam. The analogy is extended in v. 15 to show an alternative outcome whereby the Ephesian women, like Eve, may be saved from the consequences of their sin by embracing “faith, love, and holiness with propriety” as opposed to the rigors demanded by the false teachers. Rather than complete the pattern of the garden in which Eve persuaded Adam to sin, the Ephesian women are to learn peaceably, refrain from teaching the men, and submit themselves to duly appointed authorities. If the preceding verses, especially the demands of vv. 11–12, are grounded in this analogy, then it cannot be claimed that they are based on a “creation mandate,” which permanently subordinates women or forever prevents them from teaching men.","PeriodicalId":29841,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43453803","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"God and Paul (in Christ) on Three Visits as the “Two or Three Witnesses” of 2 Corinthians 13:1","authors":"Kenneth Berding","doi":"10.5325/jstudpaullett.7.1-2.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jstudpaullett.7.1-2.0005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 There is no current consensus on how Paul employs his citation of the two-or- three-witness injunction in 2 Cor 13:1. After reviewing recent proposals, it will be argued that the most satisfactory solution to Paul’s problematic use of Deut 19:15 in 2 Cor 13:1 must include three elements: (1) God as witness, (2) Paul himself (in Christ) as witness, and (3) Paul’s three visits to Corinth (two past and one upcoming) as the three occasions when the testimony is given. Combining the witnesses of God and Paul-in-Christ with the three visits satisfies the demands of the literary context, avoids the weaknesses of other views, and offers real (nonmetaphorical) witnesses who validate the truth of Paul’s ministry against the accusations of the Corinthians.","PeriodicalId":29841,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42048604","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Lou Martyn, Paul, and Judaism","authors":"J. Marcus","doi":"10.5325/jstudpaullett.7.1-2.0112","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jstudpaullett.7.1-2.0112","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 J. Louis Martyn was not anti-Judaic but a lover of Jews and Judaism. But his passion for Paul, especially for Galatians, transcended his love for Judaism and may have caused him to downplay some of the difficulties in that letter. This article focuses on Martyn’s exegesis of the Sarah/Hagar allegory in Gal 4:21–5:1, which interprets the opposition not as Christianity versus Judaism but as the Torah-free Christian mission to Gentiles versus the Torah-observant mission—an interpretation that this article finds indefensible. The article concludes with some reflections on Martyn’s attitude toward Rom 9–11.","PeriodicalId":29841,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48316413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reading the Antioch Incident (Gal 2:11–21) as a Subversive Banquet Narrative","authors":"M. Nanos","doi":"10.5325/jstudpaullett.7.1-2.0026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jstudpaullett.7.1-2.0026","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 My previous essay in Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters on the Antioch Incident, on which this essay builds, discussed why the nature of the food or its service were not likely objectionable according to prevailing local Jewish dietary norms. Their Jewish subgroup banquets ate normal Jewish food but did not mix with participants who were not Jews according to prevailing norms. This countercultural practice was likely intended to signify that the non-Jews joining these Jews in their subgroup assemblies were equal members of the righteous ones already and that they must remain non-Jews to demonstrate their subgroup’s “chronometrical” conviction that the awaited end-of-the-ages experience of shalom had begun among themselves. Several questions naturally follow: for example, how was equality specifically performed at these banquets so that the ones who objected could observe it? How was Paul’s confrontation of Peter observed by the non-Jews left behind, for whom it was performed, and at the same time by “the rest of the Jews” who had withdrawn with Peter? In search of the most probable answers, this essay explores Greco-Roman banquet behavioral norms, including the narrative genre devoted to presenting the discussions at symposiums, especially within the philosophical tradition. A common and central topic in banquet practices and in the literary traditions discussing them involved the arrangement of the diners’ places for reclining (or sitting) at the triclinium or adjacent triclinia in order to reflect their relative social ranking properly. This essay will argue that the way they assigned their placement to demonstrate indiscriminate equality among the righteous ones subverted those norms in an easily observable way, from which Peter withdrew to temporarily avoid resistance rather than to retract their Jewish subgroup’s new norms.","PeriodicalId":29841,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46743077","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Legacy of J. Louis Martyn: The Interpreter and His Legacy","authors":"B. Gaventa","doi":"10.5325/jstudpaullett.7.1-2.0094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jstudpaullett.7.1-2.0094","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This essay on the legacy of J. Louis Martyn first considers influences on his work beyond that of Ernst Käsemann. It then turns to three elements of his legacy: his concern for maintaining the distinctiveness of Paul’s thought, his pivotal identification of apocalyptic epistemology in the Corinthian correspondence, and his own character as an example for biblical scholars.","PeriodicalId":29841,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43461241","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Paul, Essentialism, and the Jewish Law: In Conversation with Christine Hayes","authors":"M. Thiessen","doi":"10.5325/jstudpaullett.7.1-2.0080","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jstudpaullett.7.1-2.0080","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Although Christine Hayes’s work shows that legal essentialism and legal nominalism are helpful categories for situating the Apostle Paul, it is vital to distinguish between the way that Paul himself viewed ethnicity (he was an ethnic essentialist) and the way that scholars today describe Paul’s handling of ethnicity (he was in practice an ethnic constructivist). In this connection, the invisible quality of Christ’s pneuma is highly significant, as it makes pneumatic descent rather difficult to prove and hence opened up Paul to the charge of ethnic instrumentalism. Although he really seems to have believed that Israel’s God had forged a new path to Abrahamic descent via Christ’s pneuma, Paul quite predictably had a hard time convincing most of his contemporaries.","PeriodicalId":29841,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42052643","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Enemy Love in Paul: Probing the Engberg-Pedersen and Thorsteinsson Thesis","authors":"M. Hubbard","doi":"10.2307/jstudpaullett.6.1.0115","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/jstudpaullett.6.1.0115","url":null,"abstract":"This article summarizes and critically appraises the proposals by Troels Engberg-Pedersen and Runar Thorsteinsson—in numerous publications—that Paul's love ethic was not universal in scope but was restricted to Christ-followers only. Specifically, these authors contend that, while Paul encouraged believers to be kind to everyone, he did not expect them to extend love to everyone, in particular not to their enemies. Paul's love-commands, they claim, constitute an “in-group” code of conduct, and stand in marked contrast to Stoic ethics, where love is universal in scope, extending to all humanity. This article argues that this sort of restriction of Paul's love ethic is not supported by a careful examination of the key Pauline texts, and runs against the grain of the apostle's theology, ethics, and practice. Finally, a close comparison of Paul and Musonius Rufus, one of Paul's Stoic contemporaries, on this topic will demonstrate the importance of correctly assessing the relative priorities of each ethical system for a proper evaluation of the tradition as a whole.","PeriodicalId":29841,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68867302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tablets of Fleshly Hearts: Paul and Ezekiel in Concert","authors":"Jeffrey W. Aernie","doi":"10.2307/jstudpaullett.6.1.0055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/jstudpaullett.6.1.0055","url":null,"abstract":"The multiplicity of scriptural allusions that Paul develops in 2 Corinthians provides a window through which to consider Paul's rhetoric and apostolic self-presentation. The present essay seeks to develop the contours of the relationship that develops between Paul and Ezekiel in 2 Corinthians. The primary argument is that Paul's introduction of the prophetic material in Ezekiel, with his specific reference to Ezek 36:26 in 2 Cor 3:3, does not play merely a cursory role in the development of the letter. In contrast, Paul's use of the Ezekiel tradition shapes both the development of his argument and the presentation of his own apostolic identity.","PeriodicalId":29841,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68867602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Antioch Incident Revisited","authors":"Magnus Zetterholm","doi":"10.2307/jstudpaullett.6.2.0249","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/jstudpaullett.6.2.0249","url":null,"abstract":"The prevailing readings of the Antioch incident depend upon a number of assumptions about the relevant context, including more than a few that remain unexamined, on which several central interpretive decisions about Paul's language depend. These include a fundamental conflict between Pauline and Jerusalem- or Jewish-based Christ-following groups and, following from this, that the mixed meal-time gathering Paul discussed was not conducted according to Jewish dietary norms, but instead according to Pauline and thus presumably non-Jewish standards: that is, when Paul accused Peter and the other Jews involved of “living like Gentiles,” Paul not only thought that they should do so, but that this consisted of behavior like eating without regard for Jewish dietary halakhah. Such traditional as well as New Perspective approaches might be classified as based on and leading to “Paul, not Judaism” readings. This essay challenges these and similar assumptions and related decisions by conducting a close review of Paul's language and the assumptions from which Paul seems to work (as well as the others to whom he refers or writes), and offers a reading based upon a very different set of assumptions and decisions that results in a “Paul within Judaism” alternative.","PeriodicalId":29841,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68867757","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}