1. From my point of view the only seriously mistaken turn that Wright takes in the whole book is in his interpretation of Romans 7, and particularly of the parable in the beginning. Verse 4, “Likewise my brethren, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead,” clearly means that the Law was the first husband and not “The former husband is the παλαιὸς ἄνθρωπος, the old ‘you’ that died in baptism,” and then: “It is not, then, the Torah, but the ‘old man’ that died, leaving the self—who clearly plays the part of both husband and wife in the illustration—to be married to the new man, i.e. Christ” (196). This is an exceedingly clever, even brilliant, way to harmonize the parable and the application, but I am simply unconvinced by it. The fact that the “self”—a term which Paul could not have recognized—plays both husband and wife shows that in any case the interpretation will not be smooth. It is not atypical for parables and applications to show some slippage like this, and I am certain that the old interpretation in this case is better. [BACK]

2. According to Wright, “‘The problem of Romans 7,’ and for that matter Romans 8.1–8, is emphatically not that of ‘man under the law'…but of ‘the law under man,’ or, more specifically, under flesh” (1992a, 209), but this does not take into sufficient consideration the passages in which the Law is identified with flesh as the Law of sin at work in our members, of which Wright himself has correctly insisted that νόμος in them must mean the same Law, the Torah, as in the rest of the passage, or Paul's text becomes shallow and weak (199)! This can, of course, be retrieved if we understand “the Law under flesh” to mean the Law in its fleshly, that is, literal, interpretation in which physical procreation is commanded, but that, of course, is my reading, not Wright's. On my view, then, the Law of the spirit (ὁ νόμος τοῦ πνεύματος) in Romans 8:2 means the Law spiritually understood, and that is, indeed, the “Law of faith (νόμος πίστεως)” of Romans 3:27, in which the universality of this Law of faith is central (209n.23). [BACK]

3. Thus, for my interpretation, as in Wright's, the “Other Law” is the Torah as well, but the Torah has an Other within itself, which introduces an Other into the person, the Law of Sin (v. 25). [BACK]

4. Some of the material in this subsection is adapted from Boyarin (1993, 67–70). On the other hand, this should also be seen as a partial corrective to the views expressed in there, p. 3n.4. I now see Paul's discourse of sexuality as much closer to that of first-century Palestinian Judaism. [BACK]

5. Note here as well the notion of pure love, which is similar to Paul's agapic love in Galatians 5:22. [BACK]

6. For comparison of Romans 7 to the Jewish doctrine of the ערה רצי, see Schoeps (1961, 185). [BACK]

7. One could say that “law” sometimes functions for Paul semantically as הוצמ, commandment, does in rabbinic Hebrew. [BACK]

8. This obviates the sort of difficulty that Dunn runs into, because he does not understand “law” here to mean the Law given to Adam (1988, 292). Furthermore, if the interpretation of Watson that the speaker of Romans 7 is Adam be accepted (see below), then “I was once alive apart from the law” is also no problem (pace Dunn, 291), because Adam is speaking about the time before he was commanded not to eat of the tree of knowledge! Sin was in the world even then but it had not yet come into the world in the sense of being accounted. [BACK]

9. I wish to dispel one possible source of confusion here. I am not claiming that when Paul refers to Adam as the type of the one who is to come, that this means the Jew or humanity under the Law. As attractive as this interpretation would be for understanding v. 20, Dunn is clearly correct that it is excluded by v. 15, which seeks to draw a contrast between type and anti-type, such that it is obvious that the anti-type is Jesus and nothing else. Nevertheless, I am arguing, Adam is being used (if not mentioned) as the type of transgressor under the Law and thus of the Jews, a crucial point for interpreting Romans 7. Quite incidentally to my argument here but important to understanding Romans 5 is the realization that an argument of de minore ad maiore (רמוחו לוק [sic]) from sin to grace or from punishment to mercy is a very common one in rabbinic texts. Accordingly, I completely disagree with Dunn (293), who regards vv. 15–17 as a qualifying afterthought of the comparison of Adam to Christ. I think, given the constant use of this type of argument throughout the chapter, Paul is saying here exactly what he wants to say. If through Adam's sin all are punished (the quality of judgment), how much more so that through the free gift (the quality of mercy) will all be redeemed. Retroverted back into Hebrew and without the christology, this could be a sentence in any midrash! [BACK]

10. For the latter in rabbinic tradition compare the rabbinic dictum that “Anyone who is greater than his fellow [in Torah], has a greater desire to sin than his fellow,” discussed at length in Boyarin (1993, 64–67). [BACK]

11. For an assessment of the various views on the identity of “I” here, see Moo (1986, 122–23). [BACK]

12. See also Moo, who writes, “How could Paul feature Adam's experience in a discussion about a law which he presents as entering the historical arena only with Moses?” (124). I think his objection is, however, no objection, because Adam is certainly presented as having had at least one commandment, which he transgressed in chapter 5, and he is the type of Israel in this respect. We do not need to appeal to a putative Jewish notion (not attested anywhere that I know of) that Adam received the Torah, only to realize that, as Paul says explicitly, Adam's small set of commandments—Be fruitful, and Do not eat of the fruit—had the same function as the Torah. Moo also concedes “the great attraction of the Adamic interpretation. ‘Life’ and ‘death’ can be accorded their full theological meanings, referring, respectively, to Adam's state before and after his disastrous confrontation with the divine commandment, and the springing to life of the previous inactive sin can be regarded as a fitting description of the role of the serpent in the garden,” but claims, “However, we have seen that, whatever its virtues, the Adamic view cannot satisfactorily be reconciled with the central concern of the text—the Mosaic torah ” (125). I claim, however, that this Adamic interpretation is eminently reconcilable with the notion that Paul is talking about the Mosaic Torah, for the reason I have already exposed, namely, that Adam and his commands are treated in chapter 5 as the type of Israel and her Torah. If the objection is taken as answered, then the attractions of the Adamic interpretation remain. I am entirely unimpressed by the arguments of Robert H. Gundry (1980) in favor of the “autobiographical” interpretation. It is, on top of all the other inconsequentialities of its argument, dependent on the totally unsupportable assumption that the concept of Bar Mitzva was present in the first century! I do agree, of course, with his assumption that Paul is talking about sexual desire. Since we agree on the sexual content of the chapter, the question of whether this is Paul's autobiography or a midrash on Adamic man becomes quite crucial indeed. [BACK]

13. Pace, e.g., Moo (1986, 123). Cp. Lyonnet (1962). [BACK]

14. I am in complete agreement with Wright's insistence that νόμος must mean everywhere the same “Law,” both in Romans 7 and in Romans 3:27, if we are not to sap Paul's writing of any strength. I think, however, that my interpretation goes much further in establishing this than his does, because for him, this “Law of Sin” must be reduced to the Torah taken over and used by sin, whereas for my reading, the Torah understood literally is a Torah of sin, because it commands sexuality. I agree with Wright that “those who are ‘in the Spirit,’ do now submit to Torah, in the sense of its righteous decree coming true in them. They are not ‘under Torah'; they are not bound by ‘works of Torah'; but they ‘submit to it,’ in the sense of its deepest intention ” (213, emphasis added), and I agree even more that “This exegesis of νόμος in Rom. 8 would give a good viewpoint, were there time and space, from which to examine Rom. 2.13f., 2.25–29, and particularly 3.27.” It is this examination which I am attempting in this very book. [BACK]

15. This argument would be even stronger, of course, if the Septuagint used the word “fruit” in this verse, but it does not. Since, however, the Hebrew does use the verb from the root for fruit, ירפ, Paul could conceivably be either remembering the Hebrew or perhaps alluding to another, more literal Greek rendition of the verse. Even without the verbal echo, the thematic one of bearing fruit, i.e., procreating, is clear. [BACK]

16. As Westerholm already acutely observed, 7:5–6—“When we were in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit”—is an interpretative gloss on 6:12–14. In order, therefore, to understand the latter we must interpret the former (and vice versa of course) (Westerholm 1988, 54). [BACK]

17. The paradox that baptized Christians still have bodies of flesh has already been anticipated and answered by Paul in Galatians 2:19–20. [BACK]

18. Note that baptized converts into Judaism are not considered the children of their natural parents. [BACK]

20. For a reading of this passage almost directly opposed to mine, see Fiore (1990, 139–40). If Ephesians is Pauline (or even if it was written by someone very close to Pauline thinking), then 5:32, in which the writer explicitly calls this verse a “mystery [μυστήριον]” and interprets it allegorically as referring to Christ and the Church, is very significant. It is in that state of spiritual joining into one body, I am suggesting, that “there is no male and female.” See also Wire (1990, 77–78) and especially, “Paul's words would be most congenial to women who have used their freedom to live separately from men, although the next chapter shows that he has no intention of ruling out sexual union for those in union with Christ. But his use of the Genesis quotation, ‘the two will become one flesh,’ to build the stark antithesis of two kinds of union appeals to those whose union with Christ replaces sexual union.” [BACK]

21. Note that in this “concession” Paul is essentially simply reinstating the ethos of Palestinian (pre-rabbinic) Judaism, as illustrated, once again, by the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: “Be on guard against the spirit of promiscuity, for it is constantly active and through your descendants it is about to defile the sanctuary. Therefore take for yourself a wife while you are still young” (Kee 1983, 792). [BACK]

22. The second of these citations makes it quite clear that in 7:1 Paul is not merely quoting or reflecting the views of the Corinthians in order to dispute them, as some commentators have argued, but in fact agreeing with and then qualifying them. As in Galatians 5–6 (for which, see below), Paul is always concerned lest an overdisdain for the flesh lead paradoxically toward libertinism! [BACK]

23. The richest discussion of this passage that I know is Barclay 1991. Barclay discusses several strategies for interpreting the relation of the paranetic ending of Galatians to the rest of the letter. He refers to the common strategy (a version of which I hold here) whereby chapters 5 and 6 are read as corrective to the first part, as readings that perceive Paul as being “apologetic” or “defensive” (12–13). On my view, Paul is simply restoring a balance inherent to his two-tier system of thought and preventing a very plausible confusion that his “freedom” language could lead to. For Barclay himself, the paranesis contains an answer to a question that the Galatians have raised (95). They have been attracted to the Law, because it tells them how to live their lives ethically, and now Paul's task at the end of the letter is to convince them of the possibility of ethical life apart from the Law. The difference between the two interpretations is that while according to mine (following a long line of exegetes) Paul is warning the Galatians of a possible and dangerous misreading of his gospel, according to Barclay's he is reassuring them that his gospel does not have those negative consequences.

As rich and rigorous as Barclay's discussion is, I am ultimately unpersuaded by this aspect of his interpretation. I find the tone of this passage to be hortatory rather than reassuring. Barclay's reading, in my opinion, does not account for the warning implied in the exhortation not to let the freedom be an opportunity for the flesh, μόμον μὴ τὴν ἐλεθυερίαν εἰς ἀφορμὴν τῇ σαρκί (5:13), which seems strongly to suggest Pauline anxiety about possible consequences in the future and not an answer to the Galatians’ questions. The tone of this verse (and thus its meaning) is, in my view, comparable to 1 Corinthians 8:9: “Only take care lest this liberty of yours somehow become a stumbling block to the weak”—Paul was always alive to the dangers of his radical preaching. On Barclay's view, Galatians 5:13 should rather have been phrased something like: Have no fear, brothers, freedom in the Spirit will not be an opportunity for the flesh! (Barclay, of course, takes account of this verse; however, his claim that it “functions as an assurance that the Spirit can provide adequate moral constraints and directions ” [219] just doesn't seem to me to capture its tone at all. I think that this is the greatest weakness in his whole argument which otherwise is an enormous contribution. Barclay goes on to admit the sense of warning as an additional interpretation but does not seem to see how it contradicts [not logically, perhaps, but rhetorically] his main claim.) Second, the warning language of 5:21 seems less apt on Barclay's interpretation than on the one adopted here. Moreover, the assumption that the Galatians were drawn to the Law because it offered them an ethic seems, while possible, less than ineluctable. Barclay himself appropriately indicates its speculative nature, “One of the attractions in the agitators’ proposals for law-observance may have been the security of a written and authoritative code of law; in comparison, Paul's ethical policy may have appeared dangerously ill-defined” (106, emphases added). These are, indeed, possibilities. I cannot find anything in the text that indicates, however, that they were the case, while Paul's warning language does seem to support my construction. Finally, as Barclay himself notes, “if the Galatians were hoping for codifiable rules and regulations, they would not have been well satisfied by what Paul offers” (169).

On the other hand, Barclay's point that current interpretations entirely fail to account for the specificities of Paul's maxims and exhortations here seems well taken. He accordingly suggests—somewhat contradicting his general theory of a Galatian appeal for law and order—that these refer to and answer difficulties that had already arisen in the Galatian community. This, however, seems to me to be implausible (not impossible) in the light of the general tendency of the entire letter. I would like to make a quite speculative counter-suggestion. If, as one theory holds, Paul wrote to the Galatians from Corinth and was preaching to the Corinthians the gospel of freedom detailed in the first part of Galatians, it is clear (from 1 Corinthians) that his hypothesized concerns about being misunderstood were well placed. Indeed, it is remarkable how exactly the exhortations at the end of Galatians seem to speak to the situation of the Corinthian church (as Paul saw it), as can be reconstructed from 1 Corinthians. According to this construction, Paul already sensed at the time of writing Galatians the problems of internal strife and libertinism that were to develop into full bloom by the time he would write 1 Corinthians. A somewhat more conservative version of this suggestion would be that these problems were typical of Pauline churches, once the message of Christian freedom was fully taken in—Corinth being an example—and Paul is concerned lest his passionate call for Lawlessness be once more misunderstood as a call to lawlessness!

See also the highly illuminating discussion of this issue in Hays 1987. [BACK]

24. Note how neatly this solves the outstanding exegetical problem phrased most elegantly by Hays: “After a lengthy exposition of justification by faith, why does Paul move into a series of exhortations which sound more appropriate to the situation at Corinth than to the Galatian problem?” (1987, 289). Hays's own solution is also elegant but almost directly opposite to mine, in that for him “the flesh” refers primarily to civil strife rather than, as I claim, civil strife being a consequence of the flesh understood as eros. [BACK]

25. See also Colossians 2:20–23, which I would quote were I sure that Paul had written it. On the other hand, let me emphasize once more that Colossians and Ephesians may be the best commentaries on Pauline doctrine that we possess. I hope to return to this issue in a future work. [BACK]

26. Cp. the rather similar views of Fiore (1990, 136–38), and contrast Countryman (1988, 104–09, 296–314). [BACK]

27. Dead Sea Manual of Discipline, 4:10. [BACK]

28. Cp. the quite different view of Hays (1987, 286). My interpretation brings Paul somewhat closer to the Stoics, pace Hays, n.45. [BACK]

29. Philo (1929b, i, 121). [BACK]

30. Jewett's interpretation of this passage in Galatians is untenable, and he can make no sense of the warning about sowing, referring to it as “enigmatic” (Jewett 1971, 104). After his excellent insight that “flesh” for Paul means the literal flesh of circumcision (and I add procreation), he quickly reverts to Bultmannian conceptions: “The ‘flesh’ is Paul's term for everything aside from God in which one places his final trust. The Jew sought to gain life through the law which offers the obedient a secure future. This element of seeking the good is an essential part of the flesh idea, and may be seen likewise in the situation of the libertinist. The flesh presents to the libertinist objects of desire which man is to satisfy (Gal. 5:16). These objects lure man on because of the promise inherent in them. They seem to offer man exactly what the law and circumcision offered—life” (Jewett, 103). Jewett's interpretation is dependent on assuming that Paul is arguing that one who follows the Law is in danger of libertinism: “The struggle against the flesh is centered in the cross event and with the appropriation of this event for oneself in baptism, the power of the flesh is broken. It can threaten again only if man foolishly places his faith in the flesh again, thus setting his will in line with the flesh's lures” (106). But this is precisely the opposite of Paul's concern here. He is not telling the Galatians that if they ignore his preaching and get circumcised they will be prey to the lures of the flesh but rather he is afraid that if they take in his preaching, they will misunderstand and think that the flesh is permitted to them. That is, after all, what Paul articulates explicitly as his concern in 5:13, “For you were called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.” Paul does, indeed, argue in other places that keeping the Law leads to sensuality, though not for the reasons that Jewett adduces but, as I claim throughout this chapter, because the Law requires sexuality and all of its fruits!

I submit, then, that flesh is flesh: human flesh. As such it can be involved in the performance of commandments, or it can be involved in sexuality; indeed, among the commandments, the command to have sex is the most fleshy of all. All the commandments belong to the realm of the flesh, and as such, for Paul share an inferior position. Paul has argued strenuously in the first four chapters of Galatians for liberation from the Law because it is fleshy; he now says, in effect, that it would be most ironic, if not tragic, were this liberation to be misunderstood as an opportunity for the very flesh that it was meant to defeat. The possibility for this misunderstanding is palpable, and everything Paul says in this passage is directed against it. The whole point, Paul says, is to enter the Spirit, and therefore, since the flesh and the spirit are entirely opposed to each other in desire and in works, to understand Christian freedom from the Law of the flesh as permission for the flesh would be grievous and tragic misreading indeed, escaping a pit only to plummet into a pitfall. All the other usages of flesh in Paul are derivations from this primary meaning through the chains of association and analogy that I discuss throughout this book. [BACK]

31. I think Dunn is, therefore, for once absolutely wrong when he writes, “The ἐν ᾦ obviously refers to the law (as most recognize), not to the ‘old man,’ or the ‘being in the flesh’ just described.” According to my interpretation, these are precisely the same thing! [BACK]

32. The quotation is from the traditional marriage blessings current from late antiquity until the present. For discussion see Boyarin (1993, 44–45). [BACK]