Reinventing Paul

"Reinventing Paul" is John Gager's attempt to solve one of the most vexing problems of New Testament scholarship: Saint Paul's seeming anti-Judaism, if not outright anti-Semitism. The view that Paul (and God!) turned against his own people had been considered self-evident to a long line of scholars and theologians stretching back at least to St. Augustine. But the history of the 20th century, soaked copiously with the blood of innocent Jews, made many New Testament scholars hope that a less Jew-hating Paul could be salvaged from Paul's writing. Gager reviews the roots of traditional view of Paul -- the "obvious" view discerned by the casual modern reader of the New Testament. Saul/Paul in this view is an observant Jew who is converted to Christianity by a miraculous experience of the Risen Christ, and who then proceeds to condemn his own people based on their "rejection" of Jesus as the promised Messiah. Gager re-examines this view in the light of new scholarship and new attitudes since the Shoah. How can Paul, he asks, "convert" to a faith that does not yet exist? Paul's conversion is an event that is "read back" into his story based on the post-70 CE split of Judaism and Christianity. Paul, whose Damascus Road experience dates to the years immediately following Christ's crucifixion in 30 CE, would not have thought of his experience as a conversion *from* Judaism, but at most from one expression of Judaism to another. But what of Paul's seeming citations against Jews and Judaism? Gager's thesis is that Paul's enemies were not Christ-denying Jews, but Christ-*affirming* Jews within the Jesus movement. To Paul, these Jewish-born Christians misunderstood the meaning of Christ's death, which to Paul was the way that God extended salvation from the Jews to the Gentiles. Read in this light, a citation like "The Jew has no advantage and circumcision is of no value" (Romans 3:1) does not signal God's rejection of Jews, but that Gentiles need not become Jews to gain salvation. Gager's thesis is sound and based on a sensible reading of the New Testament. However, Gager works too hard to show how much better his thesis is than that of his predecessors. The book is also much too long, repeating the same points ad nauseum. In spite of these faults, I found "Reinventing Paul" to be a valuable contribution that makes Paul's thinking not only tolerable but even laudatory.

Gager could perhaps be starting a quest similar in intent if not in form to that of the Jesus Seminar, namely, the search for the 'real' Paul, or at least the 'real meaning' of Paul. Paul has been reinterpreted and recast in many ways over the past 2000 years, for denominational and sociological reasons. To build upon Schweitzer's observations about the changing images of Jesus, just as each age reinterprets Jesus to, in one way or another, recast Jesus in the image of that age, so too does Paul undergo a similar change. What Gager is doing, however, is not merely reinterpreting the meaning of Paul -- he is offering a new way of asking the interpretative questions, offering a paradigm shift that casts doubts upon traditional interpretations and offers a new way of thinking about the texts. Once we begin to question not just specific texts or issues within that paradigm, but the paradigm itself, nothing in the old model makes sense. (Gager, p. 145)The Traditional ViewGager specifically does not want to start a 'Quest for the Historical Paul' a la the Jesus Seminar model, but does feel that re-examination is necessary to shift emphasis away from traditionally-held views of Paul. Even if such a search for the 'real' Paul is not undertaken, due to the lack of 'reality' in such a search, this does not mean that there are not bad interpretations, even wrong ones when it comes to examining Pauline literature for intent, background, and context. (Gager, pp. vii-viii) Traditionally, Paul is turned into a sort of universal preacher; the particular advice and conversations he has in his letters to specific communities made into universally applicable principles and precepts. Gager disputes the authority of each of these assumptions, and puts forward arguments against each of these assumptions within the framework of his new paradigm.The New ViewGager sees the fundamental mis-understanding of Paul (a mis-understanding of centuries-long standing) to be primarily focussed upon the context of audience of Paul. Working from scholars who in various ways began to challenge basic assumptions (albeit, incompletely, Gager would argue) such as Kirster Stendahl, Lloyd Gaston, and E.P. Sanders, Gager sets up criteria which must be kept in mind when examining any passage or writing of Paul's. These include the realisation that Paul remained a Jew throughout his life, adhering to the context of traditional Jewish thought; Paul's 'conversion' was not from one religion to another (for, arguably, Christianity as a separate religion could be said not to have existed at this point) but rather a transformation of thought fully within the framework of the same religion (namely, Judaism); and primarily, that Paul must be seen as the apostle to the Gentiles, with specific intent to speak to the Gentiles in a way that would make sense to them. Paul was not concerned with Jews or Jewish-Jesus movement people (except insofar as they impacted and/or interfered with his own ministries)

Gager's text, "Reinventing Paul" is perhaps mislabeled, as he does less re-inventing than "recovering." With the sort of exasperation characteristic of E.P. Sanders' in "Paul and Palestinian Judaism" Gager dismantles, by way of a thorough review of recent Pauline scholarship, the age-old distortions of Paul and first century Judaism that have plagued Christianity from the outset.His dismay is easily understood as he makes plain the way that Paul, the "Apostle to the Gentiles" was forced into the role of "Paul, critic of all that is Jewish." (my phrase) Indeed, the only regret that I had as I read his book was that he seemed unaware of the groundbreaking work of Mark Nanos' "The Mystery of Romans." Nanos' work would only have bolstered Gager's conclusions, but from a Jewish perspective.It is no longer excusable for Christian students of the New Testament to set Paul up as an opponent of the "straw man" of Pharisaic Judaism created in the late 19th century and utterly discredited by Sanders, George Foote Moore, and Charlotte Klein. In concise form, Gager has catalogued the breaches in the dam of tradition that will, one hopes, lead to its imminent collapse. The hope, however, falters briefly when one reads critiques of Gager's book that seek to cite brief passages from Romans or Galatians once again as support for Paul's rejection of the meaningfulness of Torah for Jews of his day. Still the misrepresentations of the Judaism of that day raise their misshapen heads to perpetuate the abuses of the past.His analysis of Romans and Galatians, while hardly exhaustive, give us an exciting taste of the benefits of real rhetorical analysis of Paul's letters, without weighing the reader down with excessive jargon. Perhaps the most wonderful bits of the whole book are the footnotes, which lead the reader from his tight digest to a variety of authors whose works explore the questions in much greater detail.One hopes that Gager's text will become a staple in the teaching establishments of the Church. It would be a shame if any student graduated from a seminary in the next ten years without having read it.

John Gager's book "Reinventing Paul" is a long overdue summation of the latest insights into Paul's beliefs and his mission to the Gentiles. Gager and the others are helping to clear away 2,000 years of Christian perversion of Paul's thinking and activity. Here Gager shows that Paul was very much a Jew and remained anchored within the Jewish tradition. He did not repudiate the law of Moses, he did not argue that God had rejected Israel, his enemies were not Jews outside his movement, but opponents within, and he did not expect Jews to abandon the Law and find salvation through Jesus the Christ. Gager goes to great lengths to show that the debate over circumcision, or whether Gentiles needed to "become" Jewish and themselves followers of the Law, was at the center of the great controversy. Ultimately, of course, Paul said, "No." Paul believed that a spiritual Christ had arrived and could be experienced through faith as the End Time was near. This has happened as a result of God's promise to Abraham that the Gentiles will also be saved. Faith in Christ is the Gentile's way to salvation, while the Jews retain their Law and covenant with God. Paul's doctrine, in other words, is one of inclusion, not exclusion. Gager does a solid job of proving his points and his reinventing of Paul is long overdue, but the author leaves a few loose ends. He does not go into Paul's vision of the Son and what implications this has for Christianity. If Paul held that the saving experience is "faith" in God's righteousness and justice as manifest through a spiritual Christ, and that Jews can be saved even without the belief in Christ, what does this say of the Christian belief that a living Jesus walked the earth and performed a redemptive act to save mankind? Paul obviously never believed in it! Yet, Gager is silent on these issues. A sound book, in other words, as far as it goes, but it answers only half the questions concerning Paul and his vision. But, this is an important book that needs to be read.