IS PAUL THE FATHER OF
MISOGYNY AND ANTISEMITISM?
by Pamela Eisenbaum
What was Paul talking
about, anyway? Not what you might think.
PAMELA EISENBAUM is
Associate Professor of Biblical Studies and Christian Origins at the
Iliff School of Theology. Her book The Jewish Heroes of Christian
History: Hebrews 11 in Literary Context was published in 1997 by
Scholars Press. She is currently writing two books, one on the apostle
Paul and one on the Epistle to the Hebrews. This article is a revised
form of a paper delivered in November 1999 at Temple Emanu-El in New
York City, under the auspices of the Women's Interfaith Planning
Committee of Auburn Seminary.
I have a passionate interest in the apostle Paul. Many people think
this passion is unusual because I am a Jew not a Christian. What's more,
I like to think of myself as a feminist. What's a nice Jewish feminist
doing studying the apostle Paul? After all, from a Jewish perspective,
Paul is a heretic who had a demented view of Judaism. From a feminist
perspective, Paul is an ally of Christian conservatives who wish to keep
women in a subordinate position to men.
Nevertheless, my interest derives naturally from my professional
commitments. I am a Jewish New Testament scholar who teaches in a
Christian seminary,(1) and, after
some years of studying and teaching Paul, I have come to the conclusion
that Paul was a committed, well-intentioned Jew, even if the subsequent
uses of his teachings were abominable where Jews and women are
concerned. Moreover, I believe Paul was largely driven by the fact that
he was both a Jew and a citizen of the wider Hellenistic world that
encompassed the ancient Mediterranean in his day. These two components
of his identity caused him to realize that the world is a diverse and
complex place. In my view, Paul is one of the first people in the
history of Western civilization to deal directly with the problem of
multiculturalism. As a modern American Jew, I do not end up in the same
place Paul ends up (with Christ), but I appreciate how he wrestled with
life in its multitudinous complexity and how boldly and constructively
he faced questions about human diversity. In my view, Paul's theological
vision can be summed up by Galatians 3:28: "There is no longer Jew
or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and
female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."(2)
Exploring the essence of this dictum, particularly the implications for
gender and intercultural relations, is the driving force behind my
passion for Paul. Because my understanding of Paul deviates rather
significantly from traditional as well as au courant scholarly
views, I will begin by briefly describing the typical understanding of
Paul and his writings.
Old and New in the Study of Paul
Under the influence of Augustine and Luther, Christians have
traditionally viewed Paul as the exemplary convert, the one who was
transformed by a vision of the resurrected Jesus on the road to
Damascus, who went from being an unbeliever and vicious persecutor of
Christians to recognizing Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior; in other
words, Paul converted to Christianity and left his Judaism behind.
Furthermore, Paul's newfound religious commitment is evident in that he
traveled the world preaching Christ, establishing churches, and
"making disciples of all nations." Thus, he became the
quintessential Christian believer, leader, and teacher, and the writings
attributed to him, which attest to the superiority of Christianity over
Judaism, make up a substantial portion of the New Testament.
From a Jewish perspective, Paul has traditionally been viewed as an
apostate from Judaism, a self-hating Jew, and a master manipulator of
others. Jews have often used Paul as their primary target in
anti-Christian polemics, claiming that while Jesus was a good Jew who
never meant to found a new religion, Paul manipulated Jesus's message
for his own gain and glory. Paul deceived Gentiles who did not know any
better and undertook to start a new religion that was antithetical to
Judaism (as well as Jesus).(3)
This view of Paul holds him single-handedly responsible for two thousand
years of antisemitism and Christian brutality toward Jews.
At first these two views may look mutually exclusive, but in fact
they are mirror images of one another. They both assume Paul left his
Judaism behind once he "found Christ" and consequently turned
toward communities of gentiles, where he became a leader and made large
numbers of converts. From the Christian perspective, Paul's experience
is true and he is sincere; he simply found something better and wanted
to share it with the rest of the world. Christians view Paul's work
positively, since it resulted in the salvation of the Gentiles. From the
Jewish perspective, Paul is a manipulative fake, or at least seriously
misguided. What he did resulted not in the salvation of the world, but
in the condemnation of millions of Jews. (Interestingly, some mainline
Christians of a liberal ilk have taken up a version of this view. They
tend to revere Jesus and see him as a teacher of love, while feeling
skeptical about Paul and viewing his teachings as intolerant, divisive,
and unforgiving.)
Over the last twenty-five years many scholars have begun to view Paul
differently. Commonly designated "the new perspective on
Paul," this wave of scholarship signifies a rejection of the
traditional Christian portrait of Paul and the reconstruction of Paul as
a Jew.(4) Scholars who align
themselves with the new perspective pride themselves on having liberated
Paul from the dominant interpretive lens created by Augustine and
Luther. They have benefited from dialogue with Jewish scholars and by an
honest engagement with ancient Jewish literature that has resulted in a
vision of first-century Judaism that makes it impossible to see Paul as
completely alienated from his Judaism. It is clear from the way Paul
speaks that he thinks of himself as a Jew, not just before his
experience of the risen Jesus, but throughout his life (see, for
example, Rom. 9:3; Gal. 2:15; Phil. 3:5). Moreover, in the middle of the
first century when Paul is writing his letters, "Christianity"
does not yet exist. Jews who believe in Jesus do not yet understand
themselves as members of a distinct religion -- they are simply
followers of Jesus. Not all scholars, of course, accept this new view.
Critics of the new perspective claim that it is motivated more by
contemporary Jewish-Christian relations in light of the holocaust than
by an accurate reading of Paul.(5)
In addition to the new perspective on Paul, another trend in
scholarship has impacted the study of Paul within the Christian
community -- feminism. Some feminist scholars claim that Paul represents
a kind of proto-feminist who preached radical egalitarianism.(6)
Such a claim depends primarily upon Gal. 3:28, since there Paul
proclaims "no longer male and female" (in older translations,
this phrase was commonly rendered "neither male nor female").
Paul is still a favorite of conservative Christians, however, who think
Paul teaches that women are inferior to men and thus wives should
"obey their husbands."(7)
While in my view these recent interpretive trends are welcome, they
have also complicated the issues that surround the study of Paul.
Indeed, neither feminism nor the new perspective have displaced the old
way of reading Paul; conservative interpreters who defend the old view
abound. Although a multiplicity of interpretations may give readers of
Paul's letters interpretive options, commentators are simultaneously
making diametrically opposed claims, creating serious confusion for
readers of Paul's letters, specialists and nonspecialists alike.
Why is it that some people can believe fervently in Paul's commitment
to egalitarianism among the sexes while others believe just as
passionately that Paul puts men above women? Why is it that Paul is
viewed by some as the quintessential Christian in a world in which
Christianity trumps Judaism, while others argue passionately for seeing
Paul as a Jew who has been misunderstood by subsequent Christian
readers? While diverse interests often lead readers to draw differing
conclusions, the whims of readers are not solely to blame for such
widely divergent views of Paul.
Paul himself is partly to blame. He seems to speak out of both sides
of his mouth; he has good as well as bad things to say about women and
Jews. Ambiguity plagues both subjects in the writings of Paul (a good
reason to look at both issues together). For example, compare the verses
in each of the following sets:
·
A. Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value
of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews are
entrusted with the oracles of God. (Rom. 3:1-2)
·
B. For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse;
for it is written, "Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all
things written in the book of the law, and do them." (Gal. 3:10).
·
A. They are Israelites, and to them belong the sonship,
the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the
promises; and to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race,
according to the flesh, is the Christ. (Rom. 9:4-5)
·
B. I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification
comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing. (Gal. 2:21)
·
A. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal
rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not rule
over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not
rule over his own body, but the wife does. (1 Cor. 7:3-4)
·
B. For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the
image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. (1 Cor. 11:7)
In each of these sets, the verse labeled "A" coheres with
more recent views of Paul as someone who felt positively toward Jews and
Judaism and promoted egalitarianism. The verse labeled "B"
reflects the traditional perspective, which sees Paul as rejecting
Judaism in favor of Christ and upholding a hierarchical relationship
between men and women. Although we can debate the subtleties of any or
all of these statements, the point is that they are all authentically
Pauline, even though they appear -- at least on the surface -- to
express contradictory points of view.
Liberal interpreters of Paul who prefer to view him as inclusive,
fair-minded, and egalitarian must either ignore any statements that
controvert their point of view or explain them away. Conservative
interpreters who view him as a Christian triumphalist who upheld the
superior position of men must explain away his inclusivist/egalitarian
statements. A few argue that we should give up trying to figure Paul
out, that he is hopelessly inconsistent or insane or an idiot or a
rhetorically self-serving chameleon.(8)
But the problem is not merely one of inconsistency among various
passages. Like many biblical texts, the same Pauline passages can be
interpreted in varying ways. Take, for instance, Gal. 3:10, quoted
above, which includes a quotation of Deut. 27:26. Traditionally,
commentators have assumed that Paul believes that Jews ("all those
who rely on works of the law") are cursed because nobody can do
"all things written in the book of the law" -- the emphasis
being on the "all."(9)
Unless one keeps every single commandment perfectly, one is irredeemably
condemned. Therefore, as Paul seemingly goes on to argue in Gal.
3:11-14, Christ was needed to redeem people from this otherwise
inescapable curse created by the law. This interpretation assumes a
negative view of Jewish law, in keeping with the traditional portrait of
Paul.(10) But some Pauline
scholars influenced by the new perspective point out that Paul's
argument in Galatians (or elsewhere, for that matter) never articulates
the impossibility of keeping the law perfectly. In fact, in Phil. 3:6,
Paul claims that he was "blameless as to the law." To ascribe
to Paul the belief that God gave Israel a law the people were incapable
of living up to is to ascribe a very perverse view of God to the
apostle. It seems more probable that Paul understood the verse from
Deuteronomy that he quotes in Gal. 3:10 as other Jews would have
understood it: the curse applies to people who do not observe
Jewish law, i.e., either deviant Jews or Gentiles. The emphasis, then,
is not on "all things written in the book of the law"
but on "everyone who does not abide." According to
this interpretation, Paul's concern is not with the law itself, but with
people who have not had the benefit of God's law, and are, therefore,
under a curse. The reason Christ is needed to redeem the so-called
"curse of the law" is to make possible the righteousness of
the Gentiles before God, not the Jews.
Galatians 3:28 and the Problem of Human Difference
Not only can Paul's statements be interpreted in diverse ways, they
can be interpreted in opposite ways. When Paul says in Gal. 3:28,
"There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free,
there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ
Jesus," does he mean to suggest that these distinctions between
people should be eradicated -- and thus Christians should work to break
down these barriers in society? Or does he mean that these distinctions
are irrelevant as far as God and the church are concerned and thus
Christians need not bother about them? This text has been used
throughout history with equal vehemence by both those who seek political
liberation for all peoples and those who wish to maintain the status
quo.(11)
Interpreting Gal. 3:28 has become even more complicated in our modern
context. Modern liberal commentators, particularly those influenced by
recent scholarly trends, see in Gal. 3:28 three primary categories of
human classification -- race, class, and gender -- and understand it as
a call to break down the barriers that divide and exclude people.
Enacting such a call would mean the liberation of peoples of color, poor
people, and women. This liberal tradition goes back at least as far as
the abolitionists, but it recently has been bolstered by the work of
new-perspective scholars. Many new-perspective scholars claim that the
issue fundamentally preoccupying Paul is the seemingly impenetrable
boundaries human beings erect between themselves, and that Torah
("law") constitutes one of these boundaries. In other words,
Paul's problem with Jewish law is that it limited interaction between
Jews and Gentiles; the observance of dietary laws, for example, meant
that Jews would not or could not eat with Gentiles. There is nothing
inherently wrong with Torah, as the Lutheran interpretation advocated,
but it is applicable only to Jews and as such creates barriers between
Jews and others. Thus, it gets in the way of building the kind of
inclusive community Paul desires.
Although I generally position myself with liberal commentators and am
profoundly influenced by the new perspective in my reading of Paul, I am
troubled by the inclusive reading of Gal. 3:28. At the turn of the
twenty-first century, I imagine that most Americans would agree that the
elimination of slavery and the obliteration of all master-slave
distinctions between people is a social good, such that we feel no
ambiguity about proclaiming "no longer slave or free" and
meaning it literally. But how about "no longer male and
female"? Do we feel the same unambiguous enthusiasm for collapsing
those distinctions? Can such a claim function as part of the utopian
vision for modern Americans, even those of liberal leanings? If by
"no longer male and female" we mean equal political, social,
and vocational opportunity for all women and men, then perhaps we might
find it easy to subscribe to the dictum. But Paul does not use the
language of equality; rather, he issues a call for erasing the
distinguishing marks between people (if one accepts the liberal
reading). Some liberal intellectuals, many who identify themselves as
feminist, believe there are essential differences between men and women,
differences which may or may not be complementary but which in any case
cannot be transcended.(12) In
other words, erasing the distinction between women and men is neither
attainable nor desirable.
The problem is even more acute when it comes to "no longer Jew
or Greek." Do we really want a world in which there is neither Jew
nor Greek? Certainly not from a Jewish perspective! But even, I imagine,
from a Christian one. It seems to me that the value of the slogan
"no longer Jew or Greek" as a broad universalist claim has
become compromised. While perhaps at an earlier time people desired
human homogeneity, most Americans have now come to embrace
multiculturalism. We recognize there are profound differences between
people, and furthermore we do not lament these differences but celebrate
them. But if we follow the liberal reading of Gal. 3:28, which calls for
the breaking down of barriers as a precondition for liberation, then,
ironically, Gal. 3:28 undermines the goal of liberation, insofar as our
contemporary understanding of liberation includes an appreciation of
cultural difference, rather than a desire to eradicate it.
One may object that I am pushing the liberal interpretation of Gal.
3:28 to absurdity, or taking it too literally, that by "no longer
Jew or Greek" Paul does not mean the obliteration of cultural
difference, but rather the establishment of an equitable human community
based on our common humanness. But therein lies the problem: What
exactly is our common humanness? Does it not imply that deep down we are
all the same? If so, then reading Paul's proclamation in Gal. 3:28
necessarily implies that human equality is predicated upon human
sameness. (Compare the prelude to the declaration of independence!)
Daniel Boyarin, a Jewish scholar influenced by the new perspective,
has provided the most incisive critique of this problem in his book, A
Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity.(13)
According to Boyarin, Paul's theological project aimed primarily at
overcoming human difference. Human difference became a problem for Paul
because, as a Hellenistic Jew, he believed in a fundamental distinction
between spiritual reality and material reality and, more importantly, he
valued the spiritual over the material. He assumed human beings must
share some common essence, but it must be a spiritual essence because
actual embodied human beings come in a variety of shapes and sizes and
colors and genders. One's primary goal, therefore, must be to transcend
human difference by aspiring to the universal human essence, and Paul
thought this could be achieved by being "one in Christ."
According to Boyarin, Paul was
motivated by a
Hellenistic desire for the One, which among other things produced an
ideal of a universal human essence, beyond difference and hierarchy.
This universal humanity, however, was predicated (and still is) on the
dualism of the flesh and the spirit, such that while the body is
particular, marked through practice as Jew or Greek, and through anatomy
as male or female, the spirit is universal.(14)
Boyarin does not think the quest for a universal human essence is
necessarily bad; part of Paul's motivation was to equalize the standing
of all human beings before God. Boyarin thinks, however, that Paul
confused equality with sameness. Because there is no such thing as a
generic person or culture, sameness has meant the imposition of the
dominant culture or gender upon everybody else. Because human difference
is manifest in embodiment, in the concrete delimitation of people and
things, Paul's message relegates these very real differences between
people to a low order of significance -- so low, in fact, that they
become irrelevant to the true spiritual nature of human beings. Once
irrelevant, human differences become devalued. The Pauline gospel then,
for Boyarin, encourages sameness rather than celebrating diversity.
Furthermore, since the spiritual essence of the supposed generic human
ends up looking male and Christian, women and Jews become the devalued other.
For Boyarin, Paul's flaw -- the confusion of equality with sameness
best expressed in Gal. 3:28 -- becomes a pathology in Christianity.
Christianity came to understand religiousness as faith in Christ which
was not concretized in the kinds of prescriptions Jews followed. In
other words, Christianity began to see itself as a purely spiritual
religion able to encompass all the diverse peoples of the world, while
it saw Judaism as inordinately preoccupied with its peculiar ways of
doing things and thus devoid of the spirit. Similarly, women became
associated with the material body, and men with the transcendent spirit.
Thus, Boyarin argues, Paul marks the beginning of the dominant male,
Christian perspective of Western culture. This perspective imagined
human essence as the white civilized Christian male and viewed both
women and Jews as, at best, limited kinds of persons farther removed
from the ideal human essence and, at worst, as the particularized
"other" in relation to the universal human being (in other
words, the opposite of the ideal). Thus, Boyarin thinks Paul is the
father of misogyny and antisemitism.
While I have been profoundly influenced by Boyarin, his reading of
Paul appears to me to be aimed at countering a tradition of Pauline
interpretation in the Christian West more than it addresses Paul's own
biases. When Paul says "There is no longer Jew or Greek,. . .
no longer slave or free,. . . no longer male and female,. . ."
the ideal human being is indeed not somewhere halfway between each of
these conditions. Paul is not simply mentioning complementary pairs of
equals. One term in each pair represents the ideal, the desired status
for the believer (from Paul's perspective): Jew, free, and male (which,
by the way, equals Paul!). Boyarin is absolutely right that there is no
such thing as a human essence that is truly universal, because such
essences are always envisioned with some particular template of what
constitutes a human being, but he projects back upon Paul the wrong
template. Boyarin works with essentialized notions of "Jews"
and "Christians" that are anachronistic. For Paul, the
prototypical human ideal is best represented by the free Jewish man.
When Paul juxtaposes "Jew" and "Greek," he means
that the Jew possesses the preferred condition. As Paul says in
Rom. 3:1-2, "What advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of
circumcision? Much in every way." It is the Greeks who are
underprivileged. Being "in Christ" allows Gentiles to be part
of the people of God, a privilege Jews already hold.
Paul did not relegate Jewishness to a lower order of being; it is his
interpreters who do that. Boyarin's contribution, however, lies in his
having highlighted a major flaw in the new perspective on Paul by
following that perspective to its logical conclusion. Even for
new-perspective scholars, Jewish law is still seen as an obstacle to the
goals that Paul is trying to promote. And if law remains the fundamental
problem for the apostle, then when he says "no longer Jew or
Greek," he must mean the eradication of Jewish law as the primary
means of eradicating difference.
Having taken seriously the new-perspective critique of the old
reading of the "law" in Paul, I think it implausible that
Paul's "problem" is with Jewish law. Rather, his problem is
what to do about the people who do not have it, i.e., the Gentiles. I do
not think Paul preaches the collapse of all human difference; this
interpretation is simply a more benign expression of Christian
imperialism, and Boyarin is right in his critique of it, even if I do
not think he is right to ascribe this view to Paul. I think, rather,
that Paul assumed human difference is a God-given part of creation, and
more importantly, that it is an essential aspect of Paul's utopian
vision.
My first piece of evidence for this claim comes from 1 Corinthians:
Let each of you lead
the life that the Lord has assigned, to which God called you. This is my
rule in all the churches. Was anyone at the time of his call already
circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was
anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek
circumcision. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing;
but obeying the commandments of God is everything. Let each of you
remain in the condition in which you were called. (Similar comments
about slaves follow; 1 Cor. 7:17-20)
This text would seem to militate against the reading of Gal. 3:28
that claims Paul was trying to change the social order by literally
eradicating distinctions among people. Rather, these comments support
the conservative interpretation I discussed earlier, that Paul never
meant to reorder society at large; he simply meant that "in
Christ," in the Church community, these distinctions are
irrelevant. Such distinctions will continue to exist in this world -- as
Paul says, "Let each of you remain in the condition in which you
were called" -- but they are of no consequence to God and have no
bearing on one's salvation.
While distinctions between persons may be irrelevant before God, it
is a mistake to assume, as conservative interpreters have throughout
history, that these distinctions are irrelevant for Paul's mission.
Perhaps one cannot or should not change one's social or ethnic status,
but Paul strongly advocates changing the relationships between
people of different status. Such a change in relationships is only
significant if people are, in fact, different. A perusal of the Pauline
corpus would quickly confirm that ameliorating relationships between
different kinds of people is one of Paul's top priorities.(15)
Human difference is an essential part of Paul's worldview. As a Jew,
Paul assumes some differences exist because that is the way God made the
world. We live in a time when we have become increasingly aware of our
human social constructions, how what looks and seems natural may, in
fact, not be natural at all, but a product of our culture and social
habit. The different clothes people wear, for example, would not
typically be deemed "natural" by modern Americans. With the
possible exception of a few extremists, who today would claim that the
clothes we wear or our hairstyles are somehow "natural" or
biologically determined? We recognize that fashion derives from social
convention. Furthermore, we operate with a notion of the difference
between nature and nurture (even if we cannot always agree on what is
the result of "nature" and what depends on
"nurture"), between what we carry with us in our genes and
what is environmentally and socially variable. I believe Paul, too,
would have seen some distinctions among people as essentially determined
by nature and others as culturally arbitrary and changeable, but,
typical of a person in antiquity, Paul classified many more things as
natural than modern people would.
The best example of this comes from 1 Corinthians 11, where
Paul's teaching about women's veils demonstrates his belief that
clothing and hair are determined by natural gender distinctions:
Judge for yourselves:
is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head unveiled? Does not
nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is
degrading to him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her
hair is given to her for a covering. If anyone is disposed to be
contentious -- we have no such custom, nor do the churches of God. (1 Cor.
11:13-16; emphasis added)
I would paraphrase Paul's teaching here as follows:
"Cross-dressing is a sin, because it is a violation of God's
created order. There are no exceptions to this rule." In other
words, Paul does not ascribe fashion to social convention. What men do
they do because they are men; what women do they do because they are
women. This same logic applies, mutatis mutandis, to Paul's
teachings about Jews and Gentiles. In Gal. 2:15, Paul refers to himself
as a Jew "by birth and not a gentile sinner." The
phrase "by birth" (phusei) can also be translated
"by nature" and is the same expression Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 11
(v. 14) to validate first-century hairstyles.
Paul believes Jews and Gentiles, like men and women, are
fundamentally different kinds of people. Paul recognizes the
inevitability of peoples' differences and even shows genuine respect for
those who are different from him. Paul's teachings about circumcision
confirm that he perceives a fundamental distinction between Jew and
Gentile. As is commonly known, Paul often speaks negatively of
circumcision, as, for example, in Gal. 5:2: "Listen, I Paul say to
you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to
you." At best, he seems to say it is irrelevant; "Neither
circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything" (Gal. 5:6).
Understandably, comments like these have led interpreters to believe
that Paul denies the importance of cultural or religious practices. But
that is why it is important to remember that Paul writes as a Jew, more
specifically a Jewish man, addressing Gentiles. Paul calls himself the
apostle to the Gentiles (Gal. 1:16; 2:9), because he founded Gentile
congregations; Gentiles are consistently Paul's primary concern.
As was surely typical of Jewish men in the first century,
circumcision was the central symbol of Judaism, so central that Paul
sometimes uses the word to denote the entire Jewish community. In Gal.
2:7, where Paul compares his mission to Peter's, he says that, while
Peter's mission is to the "circumcised," Paul's mission is to
the "uncircumcised."(16)
In spite of the fact that such designations are exclusively male, they
presumably stand as equivalents to Jews and Gentiles.
Paul thinks of circumcision as the natural condition of Jews. This
claim may initially sound strange, since circumcision is not a natural
state. One is not born circumcised; it is a religious practice that
reflects particular religious commitments. But I do not think Paul
thinks of circumcision in these terms; this is how we think of it. In
Paul's day, being Jewish, or being pagan for that matter, was not
thought of as a question of personal choice. It is only in this very
period, the first few centuries of the common era, that one's religious
orientation comes to be seen as something distinct from one's ethnic,
political, and geographic identity, as something one can choose to
become. But Paul still thinks there are essentially two species of
people, the circumcised and the uncircumcised. Jews are circumcised;
Gentiles are not.(17)
As Paul writes his letter to the Galatians, he addresses a particular
problem. Missionaries of whom Paul did not approve visited Galatia
sometime after Paul founded churches there. These missionaries argued
that the Galatians had to be circumcised, that this was an essential
part of their Christian salvation. Paul is adamantly against it; in Gal.
5:2 he states, "if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no
advantage to you." Such a comment suggests that Paul's position
about circumcision is so negative that he thinks circumcision is not
only of no help in one's salvation, it is a hindrance. It undoes the
good that has already been accomplished. It is no wonder that Christian
readers of Paul in later centuries had such a negative view of Jewish
religious observances like circumcision. But Paul's comments on
circumcision in this letter were originally directed to Gentiles only.
Paul objects to Gentiles' having to be circumcised; he does not condemn
circumcision per se. In other words, Paul's message to the Galatians
advocates the inclusion of Gentiles as Gentiles into the
community of the people of God; he does not think Gentiles should first
have to become like Jews by being circumcised in order to become members
of God's people.
Nothing suggests that Paul condemned Jews for being circumcised or
for circumcising their sons. Indeed, circumcision is an honor and a
privilege for Jews. As Paul says in Rom. 3:1, "What advantage has
the Jew? What is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. . ."
Paul takes for granted that Jews are circumcised. The rejection of
circumcision for which Paul is so well known derives from Paul's respect
for Gentiles, not his disrespect for Judaism. He does not condemn Jews
for circumcision; he condemns Jews who want to condemn Gentiles for
their uncircumcision. His seemingly nasty comments about circumcision,
which are implicitly directed at other Jewish teachers who may have even
tried to coerce the Galatians into circumcision, indicate his
willingness to accept Gentiles, uncircumcised as they are, into the
community of God's people alongside Jews. Circumcising Gentiles would
have made Jews and Gentiles all the same. Paul's vehement rejection of
circumcision demonstrates his commitment to maintaining Jews and
Gentiles as different and distinct, and militates strongly against
seeing Paul's goal as creating human homogeneity. Thus, the purpose of
Paul's argument against the Galatians' becoming circumcised remains the
amelioration of the relationship between two different peoples,
Jews and Gentiles, a relationship not marked by the same status -- for
the Jews have been granted privileges by God such as the covenant
symbolized by circumcision -- but by generosity on the part of the
privileged party, which, by bringing the less privileged into their
family, enable them to become children of God.
The Metaphor of Family
The standard liberal interpretation of Gal. 3:28 -- that Paul wanted
to break down barriers or erase human differences -- is not a helpful
way to understand Paul's vision. "Neither Jew nor Greek" ought
not be read as Paul's attempt to transcend ethnic and cultural
difference so that we might all live in one equal but homogenous
society. Paul does not think in terms of "society" or
"community," at least not as we moderns do anyway. The
alternative metaphor I would like to put forth for describing Paul's
vision in Gal. 3:28 is the building of family. Actually it is God's
family, but it is a family nonetheless. While people, both ancient and
modern, think of families as biologically related groups of people who
are, in fact, alike or at least similar, families generally are made up
of people who are by some measure different. Families sustain themselves
or grow larger by having children, to be sure, but conventional social
wisdom usually first requires that two people not currently related (or
at least not closely related) marry. Although marital custom varies
widely from one culture to another, anthropologists have long noted the
taboo against marrying members of one's immediate family. Many cultures
require marriage outside of one's own clan. Why did medieval kings and
queens of Europe marry their children off to royalty of other countries?
The simple answer is that they needed to construct political alliances
in the hope of avoiding war. The principle that underlies the answer is
that royal medieval marriages were attempts to construct families that
would transform relationships between different and potentially warring
peoples into related groups of people committed to each other's well being.
The language of family construction is so ubiquitous in Paul's
writings that readers scarcely notice it. Not only does he frequently
address his fellow believers as "brothers and sisters," Paul
calls himself "father" (rather than "teacher" or
"master" as might have been expected, and as Jesus apparently
was called), while calling his congregants "children."(18)
Because commentators tend to think Paul uses family terminology
metaphorically, they do not see it as significant and often overlook
some important details, including one very important detail present in
Gal. 3:28.
I have been quoting the NRSV translation of Gal. 3:28: "There is
no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no
longer male and female, for all of you one in Christ Jesus." But
this translation differs in an important way from older English
translations, which tend to translate the verse as follows: "There
is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor
female. . ." The NRSV provides the more literal
translation, the significance of which resides in the last phrase,
"no longer male and female." This phrase is awkward in both
Greek and English because of the switch from the disjunctive
"neither/nor" to the conjunctive "and." Because of
this mismatching and the fact that Paul does not normally use the words
"male" (arsen) and "female" (thelu),
it seems that the last clause constitutes a not-so-subtle allusion to
God's creation of the first human beings in Genesis 1. The Genesis text
from which the phrase is taken reads as follows:
So God created
humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and
female he created them. God blessed them and God said to them, "Be
fruitful and multiply. . ." (Gen. 1:27-28)
God creates man and woman and then commands them to reproduce. These
verses reflect the first of two stories found in Genesis concerning the
origins of the human family. In the first story, God creates an
originary human being, called adam in Hebrew, and then divides adam
into two genders. The second story of human origins appears in the next
chapter of Genesis where a similar event is described as the two
becoming "one flesh." While "one flesh" has
sometimes been interpreted in the modern context as a romantic vision of
two people uniting sexually, it most likely refers to children, or, more
broadly, to the creation of a new human family resulting from marriage.
Since the final pair of the saying in Gal. 3:28, "male and
female," constitutes an allusion to the story of creation in
Genesis, "male and female" serves as the paradigm through
which we may interpret the other two pairs. In other words, what Paul
means by "no longer Jew or Greek" ought to be interpreted in
terms of what he means by "male and female." And since the
latter refers to the Genesis passage cited above, it is reasonable to
think that Paul envisions the same sort of family inauguration for
"Jew or Greek" as he does for "male and female."
Although Paul speaks in the negative ("no longer male and
female") his point is not to deny the reality or importance of
sexual differentiation, neither is it to negate the practice of
marriage.(19) Rather, Paul uses
the negative formulations to express how different kinds of people can
be brought together into a unity. It is not two identical creatures who
come together to create family, but two different ones. "Male and
female" means difference is required at a fundamental level for the
construction of family. Of course, part of the point is that although
men and women are different, they are interdependent. Paul puts it
nicely in 1 Cor. 11:11: "in the Lord, woman is not independent
of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man, so man is now
born of woman."
When Gal. 3:28 is read within its context in Galatians, it becomes
easier to see it in terms of family construction:
For in Christ Jesus
you are all children of God through faith. As many of you were baptized
into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew
or Greek, slave or free, male and female; for all of you are one in
Christ Jesus.(20) And if you
belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to
the promise.
Paul, who is already a member of Abraham's family, is attempting to
make his Gentile followers members of Abraham's family, which
essentially means they would become members of God's family, with all
the rights and privileges thereof. Notice that, while verse 28 ends with
"for you are all one in Christ Jesus," it is not the end of
the story. Being "in Christ" is only the penultimate goal as
Paul states it here. The purpose of being "in Christ" is that
one then belongs to Abraham's family. Christ is the means by which one
becomes a member of the Abraham family.
In Genesis 17, God promised Abraham that he would be the father of
many nations. But in Paul's time, Abraham was known as the patriarch of
the Jews only. Like many of the Jews of Paul's day, Paul sometimes
understood scriptural texts as adumbrations of later events. Since God
had promised to make Abraham the father of many nations, at some point
that promise had to be fulfilled, otherwise the promises of God would
have failed. Paul, believing he lived at the dawn of a new age (see, for
example, Romans 8:18-25), understood the coming of Christ as the ritual
event that allowed for members of other nations to become part of
Abraham's family.
Just as in marriage, where people come together ritually in order to
create a new family, Christ's sacrifice inaugurated the unity of Jew and
Greek. "No longer Jew or Greek" does not, however, mean that
Jew and Greek are no longer distinct from one another, so long as the
paradigm of "male and female" operates in our reading of this
text. The enactment of marriage does not deny the essential difference
between woman and man; on the contrary, their complementarity has
traditionally been viewed as essential to the creation of the family.(21)
Marriage binds the man and woman in a new kind of relationship that
entails a reprioritizing of loyalties so that they can build a common life.
Similarly, Jew and Gentile coming together in harmony while remaining
distinct is the goal of Paul's mission.(22)
Paul's vision encompasses Jew and Gentile because, as a monotheist, Paul
understands all peoples as part of God's creation. If Gentiles become
circumcised and thus become like Jews, that implies that God's
sovereignty does not extend to other peoples, which would be a
theological contradiction for Paul. As Paul himself says, "Is God
the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of
Gentiles also" (Rom. 3:29). Christ has enabled Jews and Gentiles to
become related to each other as children of Abraham, but they do not
cease to be Jews and Gentiles. As Paul himself says,
Let us therefore no
longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a
stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another. . . . Welcome
one another, therefore, as Christ welcomed you, for the glory of God.
For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on
behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises
given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify
God for his mercy. (Rom. 14:12-13; 15:7-9)
In sum, I do not believe the dictum in Gal. 3:28 as used by Paul was
meant to articulate the destruction of human categories of existence so
that people might share the same human essence. Rather, he articulated
the construction of new human social relations based on the model of
family. Gal. 3:28 encapsulates the message that people who are different
can, if they so choose, come to understand themselves as meaningfully
related to each other, committed to their well being, and part of a
shared world.
Notes
1. [Back to text] The
Iliff School of Theology, a seminary of the United Methodist Church in
Denver, Colorado.
2. [Back to text] All
biblical translations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV),
unless otherwise indicated.
3. [Back to text] This
is essentially the view of Hyam Maccoby, The Mythmaker: Paul and the
Invention of Christianity (New York: Harper & Row, 1986).
4. [Back to text] The
new perspective on Paul has many representatives, see, for example, the
works of J. D. Dunn, J. Gager, L. Gaston, W. D.
Davies, and F. Theilman, to name just a few. The credit for
inaugurating this paradigm shift goes above all to two men: E. P.
Sanders who wrote a magisterial volume entitled Paul and Palestinian
Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977) and Krister Stendahl for Paul
Among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976).
Interestingly, the new perspective cuts across theological lines; one
finds both evangelical and mainline Christians advocating readings of
Paul consistent with the new perspective. In spite of its over-reaching
title, a recent, readable, and solid overview of Paul written by an
evangelical influenced by the new perspective can be found in N. T.
Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1997). Another excellent, accessible, new-perspective introduction to
Paul from the mainline perspective is the recent book by J. G.
Gager, Reinventing Paul (New York: Oxford, 2000). See also the
website maintained by Mark M. Mattison, "The Paul Page:
Dedicated to the New Perspective on Paul" (www.angelfire.com/mi2/paulpage/).
5. [Back to text] The
most thoughtful critique of the new perspective is given by Stephen
Westerholm in Israel's Law and the Church's Faith: Paul and His
Recent Interpreters (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988).
6. [Back to text] E. Schüssler
Fiorenza takes this position in In Memory of Her (Boston:
Beacon, 1983). Not all feminist biblical scholars concur with Fiorenza.
Some of them agree with conservatives that Paul believed in the validity
of gender hierarchies, but they also argue that Paul cannot be the
ultimate authority for modern Christianity regarding the liberation of
women, because he lived in a different time with different views of the
role of women.
7. [Back to text] This
phrase comes from Eph. 5:22 and Col. 3:18, texts that many scholars (who
are often, though not always, theologically liberal) do not think are
written by Paul. If one accepts Ephesians and Colossians as
pseudonymous, as does Fiorenza, then Paul never made any comments about
wives obeying husbands.
8. [Back to text] The
scholar best known for this view of Paul is Heikki Raisanen, Paul
and the Law (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986)
9. [Back to text]
Interestingly, the Hebrew of Deut. 27:26 does not contain the word
"all." Thus, the NRSV, because it translates directly from the
Hebrew, reads as follows: "Cursed be anyone who does not uphold the
words of this law by observing them. . ." However, the
Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, seems to have
added the word "all," and that is the version Paul quotes.
10. [Back to text] The
traditional understanding of this verse, as the impossibility of keeping
the law perfectly, is found commonly among many liberal commentators
(including some who would align themselves with the new perspective) not
just among premodern exegetes. See, for example, the notes to this verse
in a modern, sophisticated study Bible recently produced by Oxford: The
Access Bible (New York: Oxford, 1999).
11. [Back to text]
Denials that Gal. 3:28 has real political and social implications can be
found strewn throughout the pages of nineteenth- and twentieth-century
commentaries. For a notable exception, see H. D. Betz, Galatians:
A Commentary on Paul's Letter to the Churches in Galatia, Hermenia
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 189-95.
12. [Back to text]
Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and
Women's Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1982).
13. [Back to text]
Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity
(Berkeley: University of California, 1994).
14. [Back to text]
Ibid., 7.
15. [Back to text] In
many, if not most, of his letters, Paul's ethical exhortations are
focused on counseling the members of his congregations, which seem to
have been made up of diverse and often conflicted people, to behave
better toward one another. See, for example, Rom. 14:1-15:7 (part of
which is quoted at the end of this article); 1 Corinthians 6, 7,
and 12; and Philemon.
16. [Back to text] In
Greek, the words are literally the "circumcision" and the
"uncircumcision."
17. [Back to text] The
distinction is similar to the way ancient Greeks (Romans, too, though to
a lesser extent) distinguished themselves from "barbarians."
18. [Back to text]
See, e.g., Gal. 1:2; 4:19, 28; 1 Cor. 4:14-15.
19. [Back to text] It
is important that I distinguish my interpretation here from the work of
other scholars who have argued compellingly that Gal. 3:28 is indeed a
proclamation of the eradication of all human differences. Most of these
scholars, however, interpret Gal. 3:28 in its pre-Pauline context,
because it is commonly recognized that Paul is quoting a baptismal
formula. See, for example, the work of W. Meeks, "The Image of
the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity," HR
): 165-208; and D. MacDonald, There Is No Male and
Female: The Fate of a Dominical Saying in Paul and Gnosticism
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987). I do not wish to argue against the
position that Paul is quoting an earlier baptismal saying here, and that
in its liturgical context it may have been used to proclaim the
transformed state of the baptized individual which was now devoid of
sex, social status, and other identities based on the earthly world. In
this essay I am addressing the rhetorical use Paul makes of
this saying, and, in my view, his focus in Galatians is on relations
between people and their collective identity, not the existential human
condition after baptism.
20. [Back to text]
Interestingly, the word "one" does not appear in the oldest,
most important manuscript of Paul's letters that survives, commonly
called The Chester Beatty Papyrus, or P46. The end of Gal.
3:28 in P46 reads "for you are all in Christ." I
suspect that this reading of the verse could be more authentic,
especially since the following verse continues with "And if you
belong to Christ," which is literally "And if you are in
Christ. . ." Paul's point is not that people are
"one," but that they are "in Christ," which enables
them to become children of Abraham.
21. [Back to text]
However, I would not want this observation to be used to deny the
validity of unions between people of the same sex.
22. [Back to text]
When Paul says in Rom. 3:22 "there is no distinction" between
Jew and Greek, he is not claiming that the two are or should be
identical to one another. Rather, he means there is no distinction in
terms of God's grace. Paul also wavers on this very question at times,
revealing his Jewish perspective. As he says in Rom. 2:10-11:
"Glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew
first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality." Some have
tried to reconcile the implicit contradiction by claiming that Paul is
referring to a temporal distinction; chronologically speaking, Jews come
first. But this is too wooden an interpretation. I think, rather, that
Paul means simply that the Jews are instrumental in bringing salvation
to the Gentiles. In other words, Jews are not just another one of God's
peoples (in this sense, then, they are privileged), they are God's
emissaries in accomplishing God's purpose. Ultimately, however, all
stand equal before God.
