2. I am in a tradition here of Jewish interpreters of Paul who read these passages as midrashim and interpret them by referring to standard midrashic methodologies, though the details of my interpretation are different from either of the predecessors of whom I am aware, namely, Klein 1918 and Schoeps 1961. It is in this dual sense that this section is entitled “Reading Paul as a Jew,” that is, in a tradition of Jewish scholars who have read Paul as integrally connected with Jewish tradition. Note that Davies wrote, regarding Betz: “The neglect of the Jewish connections of the Galatians perhaps accounts for certain aspects of H. D. B.'s interpretation” (Davies 1984, 178). I would, however, suggest that these Jewish connections do not necessarily prove anything about the Galatians themselves, as they could have been primarily intended to be “overheard” by the opponents, who certainly were Jewish Christians. Sanders also writes of this passage, “We see, rather, Paul's skill in Jewish exegetical argument” (Sanders 1983, 26).

I haven't a clue from where Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly draws his notion that in the text that I discuss in this and the following sections, “Paul interprets the death of Christ against the background of a midrash on Numbers 25:1–13, in which Abraham and Phineas are linked by means of Psalm 106” (Hamerton-Kelly 1992, 74). Only his inexorable determination to make Paul's discourse support his slander of Judaism explains this bizarre and unsupported interpretation. [BACK]

3. For a distinction between Paul's hermeneutic stance, which is not midrash, and his exegetical techniques which often are, see Chapter 5 above. [BACK]

4. Romans 5:20 would seem to be a counter-argument and often is cited as support for the notion that Paul's theology of the Law was that it was given in order to increase the amount of sin in the world. Dunn, himself, however has provided the answer to this objection by glossing that verse as “God's purpose for the law was not to distinguish Jewish righteous from gentile sinners, but to make Israel more conscious of its solidarity in sin with the rest of Adam's offspring” (Dunn 1988, 286). “Increasing transgression” means, then, increasing awareness of transgression. Another possibility is that Paul is arguing that the Law increases transgression as an unwanted side effect of its existence. Romans 7 would tend to support such a reading. In this case also, the point of Romans 5:20, as befits its context in Romans, is to convince Jews that they are not privileged vis-à-vis gentiles in soteriology. Not only will the Law not help them get saved; it may hinder them. The Rabbis held very similar notions, also believing that it was easier for gentiles to be saved than for Jews. [BACK]

5. Sanders's dismissal of Schlier's view (1983, 54n.26) seems to me totally ungrounded. [BACK]

6. “Schlier's own solution is to argue from vv. 11–12 that the curse attaches to ποιεῖν itself as it is determined by the law. But this is simply to ignore the fact that Deut 27:6 applies the curse not to those who do the law but to those who do not ” (Cosgrove 1988, 53). The interpretation of the midrash that I offer here answers this objection to Schlier's interpretation, which is the only one that I believe makes theological sense. [BACK]

7. Richard Hays refers to this passage and remarks that “one could hardly invent a more whimsical inversion” (1989, 4 and cf. 194n.9). If I am right, however, in my comparison with Paul, I think that we do not have whimsy here but time-honored hermeneutical principles of midrash, which have to do with a theological understanding of the nature of God's words (not Word). [BACK]

8. See also my discussion of H. Schlier's interpretation of Galatians 3:10. Note the difference between this view and that of Dunn, who draws the distinction as between “works of Law” and “doing the Law,” while mine puts works and doing on the same side over-against fulfilling (Dunn 1990, 202). [BACK]

9. My interpretation is thus in fine quite different from that of Barclay (1991, 139–40). [BACK]

10. That is, I am suggesting that although it is not the same word, still by carrying a semantic component of completeness and by not including a semantic component of “mere” performance, it was available for Paul's purpose of drawing a distinction between “doing” and “fulfilling,” once the former term, at the end of the verse, is understood as in contrast with the latter. [BACK]

11. I thoroughly disagree with Schoeps's rendition of this as a midrash based on the hermeneutic resolution of a contradiction, the “thirteenth canon of Rabbi Ishmael” (Schoeps 1961, 177–78), but not on the grounds that it could not have existed before the second century (apud Betz 1979, 138, who himself regards this hermeneutic principle to be as old as the Septuagint in another place, 158n.49, unless I have misunderstood him). Schoeps has both misconstrued the rabbinic canon (cf. Dahl 1977, 159–77) and also reads in here that which is not here. Schoeps's basic instinct was, however, sound. This is a near perfect example of rabbinic style building up an argument from several verses and, in fact, constitutes the best pendant I know for the antiquity of such style. The Rabbis well recognized that their own methods of hermeneutic could be used to achieve “false” results. See also below. [BACK]

12. My reading here is completely different from that of Hays (1983), who reads the subject of this verse, “the righteous,” as referring to the Messiah. [BACK]

13. See above Chapter 5 n.27 discussion of the controversy over the meaning of “faith of Jesus Christ,” i.e., whether it is faith in Jesus or the faithfulness of Jesus which is being invoked. [BACK]

14. This interpretation is similar to that of Sanders (1983, 22). [BACK]

15. See the convenient summary of earlier interpretations in Sanders (1983, 54n.30). [BACK]

16. For a discussion of how Romans 2:13—justification for the doers—fits in here, see above, Chapter 4. [BACK]

17. Here I must say that I find Dunn's interpretation of the “curse” as the curse of misunderstanding of the Law too narrowly focused for my taste (Dunn 1990, 229). I do think that Paul's christology involves an ontological change in the status of the Law. It is the Law which is called by him pedagogue—not Christ! [BACK]

18. Ideas of a virgin birth for Isaac were not unprecedented in pre-Christian Judaism. See, for instance, Philo, On the Cherubim, 40–52. [BACK]

19. In Aramaic תיערז, from the root meaning “seed,” is the regular word for family. [BACK]

20. He simply asserts, without arguing the point, that this is the correct interpretation and that older commentators got it wrong. Presumably, he is relying on arguments in other commentaries. [BACK]

21. Barclay's argument against Lull that “whether you viewed the restraining influence of the παιδαγωγός as good or bad depended on whether you were the parent employing him or the child under his care!” (1991, 107n.2) seems to me an uncharacteristically (for Barclay) weak reed. The issue is not how the child in her immaturity would perceive the role of the pedagogue but how an observer from outside would perceive this role, and in this, I think, Lull is entirely correct in assuming that the role would be seen as positive and necessary. Therefore, τῶν παραβάσεων χάριν must mean “to deal with transgressions”—either to prevent or punish them—and not “to generate transgressions.” Sanders has made substantially the same point (1983, 66). On the other hand, Sanders continues generally to accept the standard Reformation claim that Paul argues here that “God gave the law, but he gave it in order that it would condemn all and thus prepare negatively for redemption on the basis of faith (3:22, 24, the purpose clauses conveying God's intention)” (68). For my alternative interpretation of these verses, see immediately below. [BACK]

22. See also next section. Nevertheless, I am entirely unconvinced by Thielman's notion that the only thing that has changed in the eschatological age is that now people have the ability to keep the Law, whereas before they were cursed with inability to do so. His offhand qualification in a footnote (76n.102) that “ all but those portions that distinguish Jews from Gentiles continue to have validity in the age of the Spirit” (emphasis added), rather vitiates his argument, because it begs the question of by what mechanism these have been invalidated while the rest continue as valid! Moreover, the parallels which Thielman offers in these pages from contemporary Jewish literature do not support his argument either. It is obvious that for most Judaisms (including rabbinic Judaism) sin is defined as breaking the Law, and it is also obvious that having the Law makes one more culpable for sin. This does not in any sense constitute a parallel to the alleged Pauline notion of the Law as having been given because of sin and to confine all under sin, however we understand these difficult and contested phrases. For all of the Judaisms that I know of, the Law is the way that God wants Jews (or all humans) to behave, and it is sinful to disregard his will. One who knows the Law is more culpable than one who does not, for the obvious reason that his or her defiance is willful and not ignorant. This is not what Paul says, on any account, because Paul is at pains (contra Thielman) to argue that the Law as it was understood by Jews, that is, in its outer aspect of physical, ethnically marked observances, is no longer valid after the coming of the Christ. Thielman's basic assumption—namely, that Galatians 5:14, in which Paul identifies “You shall love thy neighbor as thyself” as the whole of the Law, indicates a commitment to keeping the Law, as Jews understood it—is mistaken. To be sure, as I have already pointed out, Rabbi Akiva did understand this verse as “The great principle of Torah,” but certainly not as abrogating Sabbath, kashruth, or circumcision! This can only be achieved via the sort of spiritualizing, allegorical hermeneutic that I am positing for Paul.

Thielman over and over again contradicts himself in order to maintain his basic thesis when his often sound and sensible readings raise difficulties for that thesis. As a final example, he remarks on the pedagogue metaphor:

Thus Paul explains to the Galatians that, far from being able to make them inheritors of the promise and righteous, the law can only point out and punish their mistakes. To submit to it is to step backward from maturity to childhood, from the ability to live according to God's will to the period of constant mistakes and punishment.

This seems to me to be exactly right, but then he adds, “Again, it is not the law in its every aspect which is spoken of here, but the law as something which points out and punishes sin.” This is, I submit, incoherent. Either the Galatians are supposed to keep the Law or they are not. Clearly, Paul is arguing that they should not keep the Law, and for precisely the reasons given in the first part of the quotation from Thielman. What aspect of the Law, then, remains? If it is only the love of Galatians 5:14, then Paul has thoroughly redefined the Law (as I think he has) and abrogated the literal commandments by fulfilling their spiritual sense. Thielman seems so influenced by Paul's own distinctions between Law and Law that he does not hear how revolutionary they truly are. “Gal. 2:15–16, 3:10–14, and 3:19–5:1, therefore, do not propose the cancellation of the law, the sine qua non of Judaism. They are instead statements about the law motivated from the conviction that the time of God's redemption of Israel, and of all humanity, from sin has arrived. These passages serve as reminders to the Galatians of the time in which they should be living as those who believe in Jesus Christ, and thus they serve as arguments to persuade the Galatians not to submit again to the yoke of bondage to sin (5:1) by undertaking circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath keeping as if they had some value for justification before God (5:3)” (86). But from a Jewish point of view, circumcision is not a submission to the yoke of bondage to sin; it is The Law, a crucially significant element of the Law. How, then, is it possible to claim in the same breath that Paul does not propose cancellation of the Law, but that circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath keeping have no value before God? The bottom line is that Thielman's hypothesis, essentially the same as Davies's, is that the Law is abrogated in the Messianic Age, and there is no more evidence now for a view that circumcision, etc., would be canceled then in any Judaism than there ever was. All this does not vitiate the many excellent individual exegetical remarks with which the book is studded, several of which I cite in this chapter. [BACK]

23. This interpretation is different from those which see Paul here as protecting himself from a Marcionite misinterpretation that the Law is evil, e.g., Longenecker (1990, 143). My interpretation seems to me to make much more sense of the sequel than a reading that sees here a defense of the Law. [BACK]

24. Nils Dahl has already noted this, but for a somewhat different exegetical purpose (Dahl 1977, 174). [BACK]

25. Cf. Campbell, who writes: “He is not willing to identify himself with those who see the ‘old’ covenant as obsolete, the law itself as sinful, and Jewish scriptures and culture as being both anachronistic and wrong for all Christians” (1992, 183). Of these propositions, I think that Paul certainly does see the old covenant as obsolete and anachronistic, for otherwise how can we understand this metaphor of the pedagogue? While it may not be methodologically correct to force Romans to mean what Galatians means, neither does it make sense to interpret Romans in ways that directly contradict Galatians. I agree, of course, that it is not the sinfulness of the Law that has led to its supersession but only its ethnic specificity. [BACK]

26. The best refutation of this strange theological notion is Romans 7 as demonstrated by Gager (1983, 220–23), following Stendahl's classic Paul Among Jews and Gentiles (1976, 86ff. and 92–94). Paul repeatedly asserts the essential goodness of the Law, which would be impossible were the function of the Law ab initio to produce and increase sin (pace Westerholm 1988, 178). I am afraid, however, that I find the rest of Gager's argument about this chapter unconvincing. To suppose that the “I” that speaks here of his desire to keep the Law and his inability to do so is a gentile (or only a gentile) is to stretch hermeneutical ingenuity to the breaking point. On “Marcionite” interpretations of Paul, see now Campbell (1992, 126). [BACK]

27. In fact, the term originally meant the letters of the alphabet. The philosophical connotations of “fundamental principle or material out of which all things are composed” is a later development associated with Aristotle, so it is possible that Paul here is digging at philosophy as well. For στοιχεῖα, see Saxonhouse (1992, 25) and esp. Kahn (1960, 120). [BACK]

28. In a more recent article, I think, Thielman has somewhat revised his previous position. See Thielman (1992, 237–40). [BACK]

29. Alan Segal has got this point just right:

For Paul and other religiously committed Jews, Torah was a body of divine wisdom that had to be adopted in its entirety, however that entirety was defined. The only question was how Torah was to be interpreted; by means of allegory, pesher, or midrash first-century Jews found grounds for latitude in practice. Though Paul had given up Pharisaism, he simply did not recommend that his community observe the ethical requirements of Torah and ignore the ceremonial parts.…There is no ready-made vocabulary on which Paul can depend. Paul takes an unprecedented position when he says: “With the mind, I serve the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin” ([Romans] 7:25b) He thus invents a new, personal vocabulary for dealing with the ceremonial laws. His vocabulary partakes of Hellenistic philosophy and apocalypticism simultaneously. Though Paul's mature position about the special laws is unique, it does have certain affinities with the extreme allegorizers to whom Philo gives credit for having found philosophical wisdom. Philo criticizes the extreme allegorizers for trying to be souls without bodies; such a criticism would make sense against Paul as well, although Paul uses a concept of a spiritual body instead of a soul in the philosophical sense.

30. As we learn from the fact that Philo had to oppose such views. [BACK]

31. The Rabbis interpreted the verse which forbids putting a stumbling block in the way of the blind as an injunction against tempting others into (and providing the conditions for them to) sin, and in the early Middle Ages it was actually debated whether there exists in this verse a prohibition against placing stumbling blocks in the way of the blind! [BACK]

32. In his recent article Thielman refers to this passage to support the notion that Paul held the continuing validity of the Torah (Thielman 1992, 241). Now, on the one hand, he is clearly correct. Paul does appeal to the verse of the Torah as an authoritative source for practice. On the other hand, the allegorical reading offered that verse, such that the concrete law becomes a signifier for something in the Christian situation, is practically emblematic of Pauline hermeneutics as I understand them. [BACK]

33. Cp. the somewhat similar formulations of Sanders (1983, 171) and the sensitive remarks of Campbell (1992, 133). [BACK]