A Jewish Paul: The Messiah’s Herald to the Gentiles, by Matthew Thiessen

Review by Rich Robinson

 

At several levels, in his recent book A Jewish Paul (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2023), Matt Thiessen shows himself to be an innovative, creative, and stimulating conversation partner. Thiessen is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The aim of his book is “to familiarize a wide range of people to one way of reading Paul that is growing in popularity due to an effort to depict a more historically plausible reading of Paul and one that might just be more theologically fruitful, especially with regard to the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, Jews and Christians” (pp. xi–xii). Therefore Paul can “be read intelligibly but without the common anti-Jewish baggage that attends most interpretations of his letters” (p. xi). As we will see, the book’s chapters are wide-ranging and not all are concerned with the principal stated aims.

Thiessen’s Introduction sets the stage by noting the difficulty attending our understanding of Paul (as per 2 Pet 3:16) and the proliferation of scholarly writing on the apostle. Helpfully, he summarizes four ways of relating Paul to Judaism: “the ‘Lutheran,’ ‘new perspective,’ ‘apocalyptic,’ and ‘radical new perspective’ (or ‘Paul within Judaism’) readings” (p. 4). Thiessen himself prefers the term “anti-legalistic” or “anti-works-righteousness” (p. 4) in place of the unhelpful “Lutheran.” I myself would also label it the “traditional” view. The New Perspective view sees Paul’s “problem” with Judaism — note that these views assume Judaism poses a “problem” — as lying not in earning one’s salvation but in being ethnocentric. Or as Thiessen puts it, this view condemns “race versus grace” (p. 7; italics original). The third approach, the apocalyptic view, thinks the apostle had a radical break from anything in his life that came before, including his Jewishness/Judaism.1

Thiessen finds points of agreement with each of these positions, but rejects the idea that Paul had “problems” with Judaism.2 He shares much, but not all, in common with the fourth, wide-ranging movement of “Paul within Judaism,” and tells us he will rely on the book of Acts as a primary piece of evidence — which Pamela Eisenbaum, in her endorsement at the front of the book, calls a “notable twist” (p. i).

Chapter 1, “Making Paul Weird Again,” sets some parameters regarding terminology and method. Thiessen notes that the term Christian did not exist for Paul, who divided the world into Jews (and Jewish Jesus followers) and Gentiles3 (and gentile Jesus followers). Here he affirms the reality of messianic Jews, and references works by Mark Kinzer and Dan Cohn-Sherbok.)4 Likewise he avoids the term church, which too often contrasts today with synagogue, as well as Christ (generally replaced by Messiah) and apostle (replaced by envoy or ambassador). The idea is to shake up the way people think about Paul; though this may make Paul “weird” for many Christians, it rather normalizes Paul for messianic Jews. Thiessen then talks about his methodology and the need to situate Paul in his cultural, historical, and rhetorical contexts. Where we remain uncertain on what Paul meant, “we have a moral obligation to choose against readings that harm others . . . [or] denigrate modern Jews and Judaism” (p. 21).5

Chapter 2 is “A Radically New or a Long-Lost Reading of Paul?” and situates Paul within his Jewish context through both the book of Acts and Paul’s own statements. Acts in fact identifies areas of Paul’s teaching that, à la 2 Pet, confused people even in the apostle’s own lifetime, such as the rumor that Paul spoke against the Torah. And the report of Paul’s paying for the completion of vows in Acts 21 (cf. Acts 18:18) undercuts the reading of Paul in which he stands against ethnic distinctions. In the end, “Luke’s Paul insists on law observance both for himself and for other Jewish followers of Jesus” (p. 26). But does Luke’s Paul vis-à-vis the Law contradict the Paul of the epistles? Thiessen suggests that the canonical placement of Acts before Paul’s letters is deliberate and allows Acts to function as the authoritative reading of Paul, controlling how we understand the letters.6 In particular, Thiessen draws our attention to Paul’s admonition for believers to remain “as they are” (see 1 Cor 7:17, 20). The problematic 1 Cor 7:19 means — in light of other Pauline passages mentioned above — that being Jewish or Gentile does not matter for salvation, but it does matter for behavior. So, we have two clues to reading Paul: his depiction in Acts, and his rule in 1 Cor 7:19. Then, with a friendly riposte at other writers on Paul, he says that the apostle is “not an anomalous Jew, not a radical Jew, not a marginal Jew” (p. 35), referencing titles of works by Michael Bird, Daniel Boyarin, and John Meier.

Chapter 3 is entitled, “Judaism Doesn’t Believe Anything” and further situates Paul in his Jewish context, this time by arguing that the Jewish context was pluriform. The chapter title underscores that only “Jews” believe things; in other words, Judaism was not monolithic (nor for that matter is it so now, despite numerous pronouncements even today on what “Judaism believes”). Thiessen notes, as has often been said, that Judaism has no pope. What then of Gal 1:13–14? Did Paul leave Judaism? Again, given all the larger context, Thiessen takes it to mean that Paul left one form of Judaism for another. “What Paul had undergone is much closer to what modern religious people might see as changing denominations, not changing religions. It’s more like a Reform Jew becoming an Orthodox Jew, or a Baptist becoming a Roman Catholic” (p. 42). After all, Paul received the 39 lashes — a punishment meted out by the Jewish community — showing that he was still within Judaism. Of special relevance, Jews held a variety of views on how Gentiles should or could relate to the God of Israel and to the Torah.

Chapter 4 — “Paul, an End-Time Jew” — further clarifies the nature of Paul’s thinking as a Jew. In 1 Thess 4:15–17 Paul shows that he expected that the end was imminent, as he does in 1 Cor 7:29–31. In these passages, Paul shows himself to be thinking apocalyptically.7 Furthermore, Paul was an “essentialist” (p. 53) in his understanding of Jewish identity. That is, for Paul Jewishness is fixed and inherited through one’s genealogy. As such, Paul always lived as one faithful to his Jewish status. In fact, writes Thiessen, Paul formerly advocated Jewish practice among Gentiles, promoting circumcision to them (Gal 5:11). In this connection, following Schwemer and Hengel, Thiessen suggests that Paul first went to Arabia in the belief that Arabians were of Abrahamic descent, and found them to be circumcised. The entire circumcision issue would not have come to the fore until he later met uncircumcised Gentiles.

The subtitle of the book is, The Messiah’s Herald to the Gentiles, and so in chapter 5 Thiessen explores “The Gentile Problem.” Here the overriding question is why did Gentiles need to hear Paul’s message? “What was the gentile problem or condition that Jesus the resurrected Messiah addressed?” (p. 61).8 Here Thiessen differs from the common way of reading Rom 1:18–32 as referring to the universal human condition. Rather, he says, it’s about Gentiles and gentile idolatry (Rom 1:23), and he draws on both Jewish and Roman sources to reach this conclusion. Even Roman writers accused their countrymen of having descended from aniconic to iconic worship, while Paul claims that idolatry leads to homoerotic activity (Rom 1:24–27), something found in Jewish sources as a particularly gentile behavior. Further evidence is found in Eph 4:17–19 with its use of parallel language. Thiessen adduces numerous other sources to argue for the audience of Rom 1. While many Gentiles would reject Paul’s characterization of themselves, those who accepted it were ready to hear Paul. And so: the reason Gentiles needed to hear Paul’s message was that, unlike Jews, they were idolaters.

Chapter 6 is “Jesus the Messiah.” Here Thiessen reviews Paul’s thinking regarding the preexistence of God’s son, Jesus’ relation to King David, and the connection of both the Davidic Messiah and Abraham to the Gentiles. The question is then how Gentiles may access the divine promises. The next two chapters unpack the answer.

So far Thiessen’s book does not provide much that would surprise messianic Jews, though non-Jewish readers used to certain approaches to Paul may find many points that challenge their views. Starting in chapter 7, though, we come to the most creative, compelling, and yet potentially fraught chapters in the book. Here both Jewish and Gentile readers may find themselves in new and unusual territory.

Ch. 7 is “The Gentile Problem and Cosmetic Surgery.” Some Gentiles were attracted to the Jewish way of life, and so naturally the question of circumcision for Gentiles comes up. For Paul, Gentile circumcision is not simply unnecessary but is absolutely prohibited. Thiessen pays particular attention to Gal 4:21–33, one of the “most poorly understood passages in Paul’s letters.” Thiessen’s first big creative move: Paul is not saying he is allegorizing the text; the narrative itself is an allegory. To summarize the conclusion of Thiessen’s reading here: since Ishmael did not inherit from Abraham, those who “imitate his circumcision” (p. 98) do not either. Moreover, Ishmael was expelled from Abraham’s family, rather than joining it. Circumcision, for Gentiles, is then the “cosmetic surgery” of the chapter’s title; it does nothing to incorporate Gentiles into Abraham’s family. (In all this, note that Paul is not dismissing circumcision for Jews.) Well, how then do Gentiles get incorporated into the family of Abraham?

This is answered in Ch. 8, “Pneumatic Gene Therapy.” Here we find the second creative move, and it will be rather startling to those used to reading Paul along more traditional lines. “Gentiles, in short, need to undergo pneumatic gene therapy in order to inherit the many things God promised to Abraham” (p. 101). Here Thiessen draws on material conceptions drawn from Stoic philosophy. Paul’s “statements encourage us to think in very spatial categories. The Messiah is a location or a container or a sphere into which gentiles must enter in order to be related to Abraham” (p. 104). And, “faith brings the pneuma, and it is the pneuma that creates a connection between Abraham and the gentile believer. Why? Because of the identity of the pneuma that these gentiles receive” (p. 104). (Thiessen consistently refers not to the spirit or Spirit but to the pneuma.) We are not dealing with a metaphor; Gentiles receiving the pneuma literally are “infused with the stuff of the Messiah” (p. 105). Here, Thiessen maintains, Paul is depending on ancient science, in particular something the Stoics called krasis, a mixture of the material pneuma with other material. “I have been convinced by other scholars that the pneuma, God’s pneuma, the Messiah’s pneuma, in Paul’s mind is not something immaterial but the finest, most perfect form of matter” (p. 107). In defense of this thesis, he states that Tarsus was a “hotbed” (p. 108) of Stoic philosophy; Platonic and Stoic thinking were part of the Greco-Roman conceptual world. And so “modern readers should take this [the idea of the pneuma] as materially as possible” (p. 108). “By infusing gentiles with the Messiah’s pneuma, God has intervened in the gentile condition by editing their genetic code, modifying gentile DNA, so to speak. The pneuma is a vector inserted into the bodies of gentiles so that they now contain the Messiah’s genetic code: anyone united to the Lord is one pneuma with him (1 Cor 6:17)” (p. 109). This is highly creative, and will also undoubtedly invite pushback from other Pauline scholars: the pneuma — others would say the Spirit — quite literally enters gentile bodies and materially “inserts” the Messiah into them, thereby relating them to Abraham!

The third big creative move comes in chapter 9, “The Bodies of the Messiah.” The major takeaway here concerns 1 Cor 10:4, rendered in the ESV as “For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.” Much commentary has accrued over what Paul is doing and saying in this passage, relying in many instances on various midrashim that speak of a rock that followed the Israelites in the wilderness and related ideas. According to Thiessen, Paul is not allegorizing here, for we do not read that the rock is Messiah but that it was Messiah. In a memorable turn of phrase, Thiessen writes that “the Messiah’s petrification preceded his incarnation.” He here relies on the book The Bodies of God by Benjamin Sommer (of Jewish Theological Seminary).9 Sommer shows that in Israel as well as the surrounding culture, divinities could take on multiple bodies.10 And so Thiessen writes that, “At a critical point in Israel’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt, the Messiah had become embodied in rock” (p. 114). And he again references the Stoics who “could use body language for numerous types of things” (p. 120).

Let me pass more quickly over the final three chapters, highlighting some further creative approaches by Thiessen. Ch. 10, “Living the Resurrected Life,” includes the thought that “Israel’s God has infused [gentiles] with the equivalent of moral steroids” (p. 128). Ch. 11, “Resurrection as the Culmination of the Messiah’s Coming,” is where Thiessen takes issue with N.T. Wright over the nature of the resurrection. Paul’s view “fundamentally depends on his use of the common scientific beliefs of his day” (p. 146). The pneuma does not animate the resurrection body; rather, the resurrection body consists of the material of pneuma. Finally, Ch. 12 is “The Messiah and the Jews,” in which the Sonderweg reading of Paul is not plausible. (Sonderweg means “special way” and refers to a theology according to which Jews have a separate path to salvation that does not involve faith in Yeshua.) In fact, “Paul’s only accusation against his fellow Jews who do not believe that Jesus is Israel’s Messiah is just that: they do not believe that Jesus is Israel’s Messiah” (p. 155).

A Jewish Paul reinforces the increasingly accepted view that Paul’s approach to Judaism, and to his own Jewishness, is a positive one. Though one stated intention of the book is to encourage readings that enhance Jewish-Christian relationships, not all the chapters lead in that direction. While Messianic Jews and those sympathetic will find much to agree with, Thiessen’s creative moves have more to do with exegetical issues than interfaith relationships. In particular, he relies on Stoic ideas of materiality, while also drawing from the work of Benjamin Sommer. As to the first, it is not prima facie apparent that Stoicism and ancient ideas of science occupy such a central place in Paul. In this, Thiessen is reminiscent of the time when Greco-Roman elements rather than Jewish ones took center stage in discussions of Paul’s ideas. As to the second, it is not clear to me that Paul’s treatment of the rock in the wilderness meshes as easily with Sommer’s work as he proposes. Thiessen does not interact at all with midrashim on the rock in the wilderness,11 while to my mind Sommer can be more readily applied to such passages as Gen 18 (the three angels/men/the Lord) or Gen 32 (the man/god/God who wrestled with Jacob).

When I was in seminary, I was assigned a psalm to exegete. The professor marked me down but wrote in the margin, “But it’s creative!” I am not “marking down” Thiessen’s book. I rather want to commend its creative and often compelling treatment of some difficulties in Paul, which as Thiessen points out, even Peter remarked about. For now the jury is out, and we await their verdict. Meantime, read this book, for it is delightful, stimulating, and thought-provoking!

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1. 1 For another helpful survey of various schools of thought on Paul, see Michael Bird, “An Introduction to the Paul within Judaism Debate,” Paul within Judaism: Perspectives on Paul and Jewish Identity, eds. Michael Bird, Ruben A. Bühner, Jörg Frey, and Brian Rosner (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2023).

2. 2 In modern times, and in entirely different contexts, it was common to speak of the Jewish “problem,” or the Jewish “question,” i.e. how the Jewish people should be thought about / dealt with / handled in the context of various bodies politic. The uniqueness of Jewish existence has been problematized in one way or another throughout history.

3. 3 Thiessen lowercases gentile throughout.

4. 4 Messianic Jewish realities are also affirmed in his footnote 3.

5. 5 Though this methodology is stated with high moral intentions, one could reasonably push back on it: what if what Paul originally meant does end up being harmful to Jews? Of course Thiessen is assuming at the outset that Paul could not mean any such thing, an assumption that I agree with. My point is that “harming” someone is not a good criterion for choosing a particular reading of an ancient document, for it skirts the issues of intention and original meaning (which have themselves been problematized in academic discussions).

6. 6 Thiessen’s footnote 6 in chapter 2 is fascinating: “For a late medieval Jewish reading of Acts that is in line with my reading here, see Profiat Duran’s Shame of the Gentiles, which has been translated into English and analyzed in Berlin, ‘Shame of the Gentiles of Profiat Duran.’ ” I have not yet been able to consult it.

7. 7 This chapter also notes that Thiessen does not believe Paul to be author of the Pastorals; and he is uncertain regarding the authorship of Eph, Col, and 2 Thess.

8. 8 I like that here Thiessen speaks of the gentile “problem,” perhaps deliberately in contrast to those who problematize Jewishness.

9. 9 Benjamin D. Sommer, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

10. 10 It is noteworthy that Sommer concludes that what separates Judaism and Christianity is neither the Incarnation nor the Trinity, but other factors.

11. 11 Though later in date than Paul, many midrashim can reflect earlier motifs.