I have just noticed that the SBL session reviewing “Jewish Christianity” (S19-116) is available for free audio download (HT: JC Baker). I will be reflecting on the exchange between Hagner and Nanos a little later (as has Matt Barnes on his blog), but I thought that I would share Hagner’s response to Nanos’ critique here for anyone who might be interested. You should note that this is a transcription of what was spoken, so pretend you’re hearing it:
I thank the chair for the privilege of having a few minutes to respond even though I’m not on the program. My good friend, Mark–my former good friend, Mark [laughter], is as usual always interesting, always stimulating, but, at least for me, not always persuasive. He accuses me of prejudging the issues and I have to say that I think Mark has at least as much of an a priori as I have. And I think he has more of an a priori than I have, if that’s okay. Mark tends to dismiss my view as the “traditional view.” I’d like to say that because an interpretation is “traditional” does not mean it is necessarily true, but it also does not mean it is necessarily false. I think it’s interesting to ponder the fact that so many have understood Paul in the traditional way. It doesn’t mean it’s right; it’s just an interesting observation.
Next, I’d like to say that the challenge for both of us is to make some coherent sense not just of a few texts, but of all of the texts… together. And I think that leads us to the necessity of affirming tensions, nuances, subtleties, things that you tend to refer to as “contradictions,” I’m afraid. It’s also not a matter of either/or; it’s a matter of both/and. It’s not whether Paul is a Jew or a Christian. He is both: a Jew and a Christian. But these subtleties, I think, sometimes seem to escape Mark. Somehow Mark has missed my affirmation that Paul is a Jew… that Paul is a Jewish believer in Jesus, that Paul has not changed his religion, that Paul upholds the righteousness of the law, but with a new dynamic, in a new way. I emphatically deny something that he has in his written statement, namely (this is a quote from him), he says that I think Paul “is engaged in a new religion that stands against his former religion” [pg 15]. No, no, no! I do not think that. Not at all. It’s the absolute opposite of what I think, in fact. Paul is affirming the true Judaism in his own mind.
Mark wants to push me into a simple “discontinuity” between Paul and Judaism in contrast to his simple “continuity.” But again, the issue is not that easy. We have to deal with both/and, both continuity and discontinuity in this matter. Mark’s view is just a little too simplistic for me. Galatians 1:13, Paul speaks of his Ἰουδαϊσμός as something of the past and I don’t think I can read it in the way Mark does, just moving from one form of Judaism to another. The Ἰουδαϊσμός is behind him, I think. And his Philippians 3:4 and following, Paul counts his Jewish pedigree, including his blamelessness as a Pharisee as worthless. What matters is Χριστὸς.
And it’s ludicrous, by the way, I think, Mark, to say that he would have to include his apostleship in that list [see pg 8]. That’s not giving him a fair chance to say what he means to say, what he wants to say. Because Paul doesn’t use the word “Christian” does not mean that he can’t be described or shouldn’t be described as a Christian. I fail to see how Mark can deny my two nonnegotiables. Are these two statements really questionable on a reading of the authentic Pauline letters? First, that Christians are no longer under the law. Second, that righteousness remains for Paul an indispensable priority. Can we really challenge either of those statements on the basis of the Pauline letters? I don’t think so. Mark’s Paul, for me, is not the Paul of the letters. I would ask him to make better sense of the texts than I have. And I think so far, he hasn’t. Thank you.
9 Comments
December 29, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Patrick,
Thanks for the heads up and the audio transcriptions!
December 30, 2007 at 12:37 am
Because the Bible comes to us as a written text and not a spoken word, it’s easy to miss such nuances as hyperbole. When Paul writes that he counts his former “Jewishness” worthless, I think he’s just trying to highlight the comparative value of his new life in Christ with his former life. No way was Paul’s training as a Pharisee actually worthless. I doubt he would have come to Christ otherwise. He certainly would not have been as effective an apostle as he would become.
I would say the same for former fundamentalists like you and I. I could say those days were “worthless” when compared to my relationship with Christ now, but the Scriptural training and commitment to prayer I learned then are invaluable now.
December 30, 2007 at 2:31 am
Thanks Pat for the post and the link!
Hagner’s comments are interesting and I hope to post about them on my blog in the future.
December 30, 2007 at 9:10 am
You’re welcome, y’all. I look forward to reading your thoughts, Matt.
I agree with you about the hyperbole, Pistol. I’d also like to read what Matt says about hyperbole and Philippians 3, since he’s working on that passage for his dissertation (under Hagner, I should add).
Hagner’s comments are not as well organized as his chapter in Jewish Believers in Jesus and I think they should probably be considered together. It seems like Hagner does want to affirm tensions and nuances, the “both/and” as he says, but he is responding to what he feels is a “trend” to see Paul as simply and only Jewish. The emphasis of his argument makes him seem like he is in the “discontinuity” camp, but I think he is just trying to (as he sees it) balance the argument.
On the other hand, it would be helpful if he would be a little more clear on the nuance and balance when he mentioned the specific Pauline passages.
December 31, 2007 at 12:49 am
Pat and Pete: the hyperbole is certainly there. The word for “worthless” is skubalon which (to put it kindly) means “crap.” Clearly Paul was overstating his case to make his rhetoric strong. The fact that he could make his rhetoric THAT strong is indicative of the radical nature of new religious experience as a believer in Jesus. Therein lies the problem, was his new religious experience radical enough to cause some sort of separation with what came before or was it not quite that radical?
I have mused a bit more on this Nanos/Hagner stuff at my blog as well. Here’s the latest: http://inthecornerwithmatt.blogspot.com/2007/12/hagner-on-nanos-on-hagner.html.
December 31, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Pat:
About Hagner’s axiom, “First, that Christians are no longer under the law,” it seems that Hagner is unwilling to consider another reading. That reading would say that, writing to non-Jews, Paul emphasized freedom from the identity badges of Torah. Paul wrote no letters to Jewish communities in the Jesus-movement. If he had, there is reason to think he would have assumed continuing Torah observance. I contend it is hard to read Acts 15 and not see that Jews were assumed to be in continuing observance of Moses.
Derek Leman
derek4messiah.wordpress.com
December 31, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Thanks for your comment, Derek. Glad to have a Messianic Jewish perspective on the blog. It sounds like you would agree with the interpretations of the New Perspective on Paul (especially given your mention of “identity badges”). I lean more in that direction myself. But I have to admit that it is a very complicated topic. I’d be interested to hear how you interpret, for example, Paul’s use of παιδαγωγός in Galatians 3:23:-26.
January 1, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Patrick:
Regarding Galatians 3:23-26, I believe the pedagogue was one who taught manners and ensured the boys went to school. He was able to apply discipline to get the boys to behave.
Paul’s point about the law here is true for Jews and Gentiles. We are not under the pedagogue. Even for Jews something changed about the law. It is no longer a condemning code. It no longer disciplines with the curses of the law (Deut 28-29).
However, though we are not under the pedagogue’s cane anymore, that does not mean we forget the manners he taught.
Derek Leman
derek4messiah.wordpress.com
December 14, 2008 at 2:42 pm
[...] as is a PDF of Nanos’ paper (which was not read in its entirety), and I have transcribed Don Hagner’s response to Nanos here. My friend Matt Barnes also did a few blog posts about the Nanos paper. Having said that, my [...]