1. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz explains this, in part, as owing to a misunderstanding on the part of these Greek philosophers of the nature of biblical religion. They thought that the Mosaic prohibition on the making of images of God was indicative of a spiritualized conception of divinity that resisted imagining the deity in human form, while in fact the opposite might be claimed, namely, that such spiritualized theological conceptions (and I am not claiming them as better) only developed in the wake of the contact with Greek philosophical thought (Eilberg-Schwartz forthcoming; Boyarin 1990a). [BACK]

2. Note how this completely revises older paradigms, in which Judaism and Hellenism are considered as alternative options for explaining Paul. See, e.g., the account of H. A. A. Kennedy's and A. D. Nock's work in Smith (1990, 65–71). To this day, however, in much Pauline scholarship we find statements not unlike those of Kennedy's to the effect that Paul is fully explicable as a development of biblical religion pure and simple in an apocalyptic framework. Even more to the point, however, are the recurrent figurations of Hellenism or “platonism” as taints or contaminants which must be exorcised from the Pauline corpus. Nock described the New Testament as “the product of an enclosed world living its own life, a ghetto culturally and linguistically!” (qu. in Smith 1990, 71). [BACK]

3. Compare the “standard” account of the historical origins of universalism out of monotheism offered (critically) by Wallerstein (1991, 30). [BACK]

4. Compare the similar views of Gundry (1976, 31 and esp. 84). Although I tend to agree with his view in general, I think he overstates the case when he writes, “Nor does the difference and separability of the corporeal and the incorporeal in man imply any inferiority on the part of the corporeal.” Gundry also distinguishes between “radical dualism” and “duality,” while I prefer to use the term “dualism” and suggest that the relative axiological weight placed on body and soul is a separate function from the dualism itself. [BACK]

5. This is an attempt not at super-PCness but simply at emphasis of the fact that the universal, spiritual human almost always ends up being universally male—and Christian. See Chapter 9 below. [BACK]

6. Philo, however, can refer to the body as “a sacred dwelling place or shrine fashioned for the reasonable soul” (Op 137), a much less misomatist but just as dualist image. See also D. Boyarin (1992b, n.6). [BACK]

7. For the notion of the disembodied self as “naked” and its Greek roots, see Lucian's account of Charon's charge to a “client”: “Off with your beauty then. Off with your lips, kisses and all. Off with that lovely long hair, and those rosy cheeks—in fact off with your whole body” (Lucian 1961, 66). See also 1 Corinthians 15:35–49, a notoriously difficult passage, and discussion in Conzelmann (1976, 280–88). [BACK]

8. I think that Gundry has rather missed the point when he writes, “In view of the evidence, it is difficult to comprehend failure to see duality in rabbinic anthropology” (1976, 93). Of course, the Rabbis also believed in a soul that animates the body. The point is, rather, that they identified the human being not as a soul dwelling in a body but as a body animated by a soul, and that makes all the difference in the world. Gundry similarly misses the same distinction with respect to the Hebrew Bible. There is no evidence among the data that he cites (117–34) that the soul has an individual personality or that it is the essence of the self, a fortiori no notion that an individual could be rewarded with a disembodied bliss after death. To the extent that such ideas appear widely in Hellenistic Judaism and to some extent in rabbinic Judaism (not at all “standard for Judaism” [!] as Gundry (148) would have it), they are indeed, it seems, a product of the Hellenistic culture of which Judaism was a part at that time (pace Gundry, 148n.2). See also Barclay (1991, 184n.11), who has leveled a somewhat similar critique at Gundry's work. See also the very important discussion in Kuschel (1992, 183–84 and passim). [BACK]

9. I accordingly respectfully dissent once more from Davies's interpretation here to the effect that “Paul calls the earthly body a σκῆρος and although there are abundant parallels to this, as we saw, in Hellenistic literature, the term would also be quite natural to a Rabbi” (1965, 313). In the parallel that Davies cites there from Genesis Rabbah, it is not the body which is referred to as a clay vessel but the entire person, and this makes all the difference. On the other hand, Josephus provides a perfect parallel to Paul (Wars 7, 8, vii), adopting, however, the much more negative metaphors of prison and corpse for the body in which the soul is captured until released by death. Another elegant argument for this interpretation of Paul's anthropology is provided by Philippians 1:19–26, for which see Gundry: “‘To depart’ is to die bodily death. ‘To be with Christ' is to be absent from the body (cf. II Cor 5:7–9)” (Gundry 1976, 37). Contrast this with Bultmann (1951, 1, 194). However, even Bultmann is constrained to admit, “From the very fact that Paul conceives the resurrection-life as somatic, it is apparent that his understanding of the self was not shaped by this dualism. But, on the other hand, he sees so deep a cleft within man, so great a tension between self and self, and so keenly feels the plight of the man who loses his grip upon himself and falls victim to outside powers, that he comes close to Gnostic dualism. That is indicated by the fact that he occasionally uses soma synonymously with sarx (‘flesh’)” (Bultmann 1951, 199). [BACK]

10. For a full catalogue of Hellenistic parallels to 2 Corinthians 5, see Knox (1939, 128 ff.) and discussion in Davies (1965, 311–13). For the seen and the unseen, cf. also Romans 1:20. Arlene Saxonhouse traces this theme back to the pre-Socratics: “It is, then, in the fragmentary writings of the pre-Socratics, of Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, that we discover the early fear of diversity and how that fear leads them to dismiss what is seen in favor of what is unseen.…They search for a unity in the natural world that can overcome the experience the senses have of a vast multiplicity” (1992, x–xi). [BACK]

11. Bultmann thus contradicts his own view as quoted above in n.9. I think here we see Bultmann the exegete contradicting Bultmann the systematic theologian, a point that I develop below. It has long been recognized that Romans 1 shows clear signs of Alexandrian influence. See Charles (1913, 28). For a critical discussion of this view (a critique that I do not find entirely convincing), see Davies (1965, 28–31). Strikingly, even Davies writes, “Unconsciously of course, he follows Plato, who in order to understand justice in the soul drew a large-scale picture of justice in the state” (30). [BACK]

12. But I cannot, of course, understand what allows Bultmann then to say, “It would be an error in method to proceed from such passages as these to interpret the soma-concept that is characteristic of Paul and determines his fundamental discussions” (202). To be sure, “soma” has other meanings in Paul and his dualism does not involve the denigration of the body that we associate with certain gnostics or with a Plotinus, for example, but given these differences it seems to me methodologically sound to proceed from such passages to an understanding of Paul's anthropology, like his ontology, christology, and hermeneutics, as fundamentally dualistic. [BACK]

13. It is important to note that Paul does not use σάρξ here for the physical but rather ψυχή, but I would not make too much of this, as it is possible that he uses the latter term for the sake of the midrash. In any case,ψυχή and σάρξ seem quite close in Pauline anthropology. [BACK]

14. See also Bultmann (1951, 204) on this passage. Once more he produces essentially the same reading that I do (“Paul is influenced by Gnostic usage”), and then undermines its import, because it does not suit his theology. Even stranger is his assertion (233) that “flesh and blood here means humanity as such, human nature.” There is no doubt at all in my mind that “flesh and blood” here means physical bodies and nothing else! [BACK]

15. See the following surprising convergence on this point:

As in Freud's account of moral masochism, Reik's typical subject seems ardently given over to self-mortification of one kind or another…but the psychic dynamics are otherwise quite different. To begin with, an external audience is a structural necessity, although it may be either earthly or heavenly. Second, the body is centrally on display, whether it is being consumed by ants or roasting over a fire. Finally, behind all these “scenes” or “exhibits” is the master tableau or group fantasy—Christ nailed to the cross, head wreathed in thorns and blood dripping from his impaled sides. What is being beaten here is not so much the body as the “flesh,” and beyond that sin itself, and the whole fallen world.

16. Another way of approaching this question would be through N. T. Wright's typology of dualisms. Thus Paul's would fit Wright's “cosmological duality: the classic position of Plato…a mainline belief of the Greco-Roman (and modern Western world)” and his anthropological duality, which is the human-centered counterpart of the cosmological, but would avoid “theological/moral duality,” which sharply divides the world into good and bad principles with the body/material on the side of the bad (not necessarily the product, however, of an evil god). I have added to Wright's typologies a hermeneutical dualism which is the counterpart for language of the cosmological and anthropological dualisms. Once this distinction between these (and other) types of what has been called dualism is clearly made, I think that objections to referring to Paul's dualism should be greatly lessened. (Wright 1992b, 253–54). See also Vincent Wimbush, who writes:

Thus, what was now required was “salvation”—from the self, or from the “house” (σῶμα, κόσμος) in which the self abides. Almost universally (Panhellenistically) “salvation” entailed some form of ascetic behavior, namely, some form of renunciation of the world, or part thereof.

17. All of the following summary is drawn directly from Jewett's very useful Forschungsgeschichte. I am only citing certain of the major views that I find interesting in particular as background for my proposals here, so for the full history, Jewett must be consulted directly. Jewett several times remarks of scholars that they have remained “aloof from previous or contemporary discussion” and therefore have produced interpretations that “could about as well have been written in the last century” (1971, 76). This suggests to me—although not to Jewett, apparently—that perhaps the last century was on to something. I feel strongly that this is the case with regard to the profound denial of any platonistic-dualist moments in Paul's religious culture. Jewett's own ideas are bound up in a neo-Reformation theology within which “strict obedience to the law” is sarkic because it is a “human revolt against God” (94). One of the advantages, I believe, of the view of σάρξ which I am promulgating here is that it allows us to understand why Paul refers to the Law as the flesh without making the assumption that he believed that those who kept the Law were thereby in revolt against God and ipso facto sinners. [BACK]

18. Jewett's main argument for this suggestion is that Paul does not use the term σάρξ in the allegedly parallel Thessalonian situation (108–14), but this argument is dependent on a very specific interpretation of the Galatian situation as being one of libertinism and a “serious outbreak of sensuality,” for which I see not the slightest shred of evidence in Galatians. My interpretation of Galatians 5 takes it as evidence only for Paul's concern for possible misunderstanding of his gospel of freedom, an interpretation which 5:13 strongly supports. See Chapter 7 below for extensive discussion of this point. If the strong analogy with the Galatian situation falls, all Jewett is left with is a particularly weak form of argument from silence, i.e.: If Paul had had the spirit / flesh opposition why did he not use it in Thessalonians? This claim is based on so many presuppositions that it would be better not to use it at all. [BACK]

20. See the partial anticipations of this interpretation already in Robinson:

In this connection,σάρξ, again like the basar in the Old Testament, stands especially for the solidarities of sex (“the twain shall become one flesh,” 1 Cor. 6.16; Eph. 5.31) and of race (“my kinsmen according to the flesh,” Rom. 9.3, contracted to “my flesh” in Rom. 11.14). So, in Rom. 4.1, Paul speaks of “Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh,” and says of Christ that He was “born of the seed of David according to the flesh” (Rom. 1.3) and was an Israelite τὸ κατὰ σάκα, in what concerned race (Rom. 9.5).

This usage constantly tends to fall over into a contrast (already implicit in the τό of Rom. 9:5) between mere external, racial connection and what is of real, spiritual, divine import. “Israel after the flesh” (1 Cor. 10.18) is distinguished from the Christian Church, the true Israel of God. In Gal. 4.23 and 29, the son born “after the flesh” is contrasted with the one born “through the promise” and “after the Spirit.” in Rom. 8.9, the antithesis becomes quite stark: “It is not the children of the flesh that are the children of God.”

Robinson's extraordinary exegetical good sense comes aground, however, for him as well, on the shoals of existential neo-Lutheran theology:

Consequently, as Bultmann rightly stresses, “the mind of the flesh” stands primarily for a denial of man's dependence on God and for a trust in what is of human effort or origin. Thus, when Paul asks the Galatians, “having begun in the Spirit, are ye now perfected in the flesh?” (Gal. 3:3), he refers, not to a lapse into sensuality, but to a return to reliance upon the law. The flesh is concerned with serving “the letter” (Rom. 7.6; 2.28 f), which is “of men” (Rom. 2.29) and represents human self-sufficiency (2 Cor. 3.5 f). (Robinson 1952, 25)

2 Corinthians 3:5 is, of course, totally irrelevant, as it speaks of Paul's competence as an apostle and his credentials and has nothing to do with the Law at all. There is accordingly nothing whatever in the cited verses that supports the notion that what troubles Paul is human self-sufficiency! Nor does Romans 2:29 say that the Law is of men! [BACK]

21. I think, however, that even Martin's discussion of the text itself contradicts this interpretation. If the Christ κατὰ σάρκα, whom they have known until now is “Christ in his worldly accessibility, before his death and resurrection,” or even according to the views that the adverbial modifies the knowing and not the object of the knowing, so we have known Christ according to the flesh, it still is impossible, in my view, to gloss this as “without reference to God”! Even Christ according to the flesh, or known according to the flesh, was by no means without reference to God. Martin's tacit attempts to overcome this difficulty only point it up all the more, in my opinion: “It would be a human achievement (σάρξ, ‘flesh'; cf. Phil. 3:3), and Paul cannot accept such knowledge because it is narrowly circumscribed, i.e., he denies that this way of knowing Christ has any scope in a person's relationship to God.” [BACK]

22. To be sure, the sociological twist on this interpretation is new to Segal (and Watson), but the denial of hermeneutical significance to the flesh and spirit has become near-orthodoxy. [BACK]

23. See the discussion of 2 Cor. 5:16 below. See also 1 Cor. 3:3–4, but note that Paul there uses different adverbial forms:σαρκικός and σάρκινος and not κατὰ σάρκα, which I am claiming has an hermeneutic Sitz im Leben. He does, on the other hand, use κατὰ ἄνθρωπον περιπατεῖν in the same context where it clearly is to be taken axiologically. [BACK]

24. A point made by Barclay (1991, 212). I think, however, that my notion of semantic multi-valence is far superior to Barclay's styling of Paul's usage of σάρξ as ambiguous. It is not ambiguity that Paul is exploiting but the rich generative possibilities of a polysemic word and its cultural associations. The association of both keeping the Law and libertinism with σάρξ is not some kind of a rhetorical trick on Paul's part but the very essence of his thought. [BACK]

25. Thus, to take only one example among several, Jewett alleges that Paul's usage of κατὰ σάρκα is inconsistent vis-à-vis ἐν σαρκί, claiming that in 2 Corinthians 10:2–3 the two terms are distinct, while in Romans 7:5 and 8:8–9, they are alleged to be synonyms. Examining the texts, however, in the light of the exegesis proposed in this book shows this not to be the case. Rather there are complicated nuances (as well as a paradox that Paul himself sees). “In the flesh” has indeed two senses. On the one hand, in Romans 7:5 and 8:8–9 it refers to the condition of those who live in the fleshy condition of commitment to the literal law of the flesh. In the Corinthians passage it refers to the condition of being alive in a human body. The paradox is exactly the same paradox that we find explicitly recognized by Paul in Galatians 2: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and what I now live in the flesh I live in faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me” (2:19–20). The fleshy existence of the Christian is only apparent—precisely what Paul is arguing in the 2 Corinthians passage as well—but the fleshy existence of those who live according to the flesh is real. They are really in the flesh! There is thus no contradiction in Paul's semantics here. [BACK]

26. Jewett's arguments to the contrary (1971, 162–63) are invalid. Paul, however, throughout addresses his “brothers,” who are kinsmen not literally but only in faith, in the spirit, allegorically. Here, therefore, he draws a contrast by referring to his literal kinsmen. Far from being tautological, the adverb is necessary to avoid misunderstanding. Finally, the notion that “Israel according to the flesh” describes the nature of the Jews and not the hermeneutical status of their nomination as Israel is incredible. Jewett writes, “If the phrase κατὰ σάρκα was inserted by the Hellenistic congregation in the confession cited in Rom. 1:3 with the intention of deprecating the fleshly existence in contrast with pneumatic existence, should we not expect that it has a similar negative significance in Rom. 9:5”—where it refers to Christ! Why not argue the exact opposite? If in Romans 9:5 Christ according to the flesh means simply the earthly, physical Christ as opposed to the risen Christ, according to the spirit, then perhaps that is what it means in 1:3 as well, and we need not assume multiple, contradictory glosses in that poor maligned verse. Jewett writes, “And if σάρξ is blandly neutral in v. 5, why does Paul emphasize the phrase with τό and thereby stress that Christ came from Israel only insofar as his flesh was concerned?” The question answers itself (see also Robinson's insightful understanding, cited above in n.20). The whole point of Romans 9–11 is to emphasize the positive but limited role of physical Israel. [BACK]

27. On my reading, even if the church is (and I think it is) the spiritual Israel κατὰ πνεῦμα, this does not mean for a moment that Paul implies that it could not fall into error (pace Hays 1989, 96). Quite the opposite. The Israelites κατὰ σάρκα could very well have been highly spiritual, and the church which is Israel κατὰ πνεῦμα could very well prove itself carnal indeed, which is certainly the danger that Paul's letter to the Corinthians comes to guard against. We must not conflate κατὰ σάρκα with the description of the Corinthians as σαρκικοί (carnal) in 1 Cor. 3:3–4, as Hays does. [BACK]

28. Cf. also Schweizer in TDNT, VII, 127: “This expression carries with it an evaluation; this is the Israel which understands itself only in terms of descent. In the context, however, this is not the point at issue, and it is no accident that we do not find the antithesis ὁ Ἰσραὴλ κατὰ πνεῦμα.” [BACK]

29. Hays's reading of this entire passage (91–102) is, as usual, astute. For my explicit points of disagreement with it, see below. On the interpretation of “Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16), I am entirely persuaded by the arguments of Dahl (1950) that this means the new community of the faithful, both those of Jewish as well as those of gentile origins. See also Sanders (1983, 173ff.). Sanders wonders how Paul would have referred to his new creation, since other than here, he does not seem to actually use the term “true Israel” or “Israel of God,” and he certainly does not use a term like “Christians.” I think that at least one further clue is to be found in Philippians 3:3: “for we are the [true] circumcision.” Since “the circumcision” is clearly a technical term in Paul for Israel, when combined with Galatians 6:16, I think it is hard to escape the conclusion that the notion of Verus Israel was at least embryonic in Paul (pace Campbell [1992, 48 and 74–75]). [BACK]

30. Richard Hays has written to me on this matter (personal communication, March 10, 1993):

No, for Paul, that which Israel signified (signifies?) is instantiated in the historical phenomenon of the early Christian communities. I think that you (ironically) here do to the concrete historical Christian community what you complain I do to the concrete historical Jewish community: spiritualize it out of historical existence.

I think that there is a certain (understandable) misunderstanding of my position revealed here, and I had better try to clarify myself. There is no question but that Hays is right in his claim that that which Israel signifies is manifested in the Christian community; however, note that I substitute for “instantiated” “manifested.” The question is what the nature of that “historical phenomenon” is. If for the historical, fleshy Israel, it was a life “according to the flesh,” that is, a life of historical action in the world, getting and spending, procreating and dying, for the new Israel, it is a life “according to the spirit,” that is, beyond dying and birthing. The Christians have conquered death, Paul says repeatedly, and as such, have exited from history, because death is the necessary condition for history! Paul himself is troubled by the paradox of being in the body while living according to the spirit and treats that paradox at least once, when he writes that your seeing him in the flesh is only apparent, but the spirit of Christ lives within him. “For through the Law I died to the Law, in order that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and what I now live in the flesh I live in faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me” (Galatians 2:19–20). (See my discussion of this passage below, Chapter 5.) It is this sense that Paul constantly communicates of Christians being beyond history that creates his (realistic) anxiety that they will misunderstand and think that ethics no longer applies to them as well, an anxiety that he is quick to allay, on my readings, in Galatians 5–6 and 1 Corinthians. [BACK]

31. The term “Judaisms ” may go back to Claude Montefiore's work on Paul, as I learn from Westerholm (1988, 35). [BACK]

32. See Fredriksen (1988, 172) for similar notions of the relationship between Paul's “high” christology and his universalism. [BACK]

33. I say this primarily to exclude the notion that Paul's doctrine of justification by faith and its entire hermeneutic are a secondary part of his thought, “forced upon him, not by vision of the risen Christ, but by developments in his mission to the Gentiles. Practice determined theory rather than the other way around” (Wrede, as paraphrased by Westerholm 1988, 20). [BACK]

34. See also Davies's precise formulation with regard to 1 Corinthians 15:

Paul, in his doctrine of the Second Adam, asserts the same truth that the Fourth Gospel proclaims in its insistence that the Word became flesh, in another, Rabbinic way, that the particular is not a scandal. He was impelled to assert this not from philosophical motives but from the mere fact of Christ in history. (52)

The determination, however, of Christ in history as this or that kind of fact is, of course, a product of “philosophical motives.” [BACK]

35. Thus the Rabbis can refer to “circumcision in the flesh” and also “the Covenant of the flesh” to mean circumcision, with, obviously, quite a different valence from its usage in Paul. [BACK]

36. I therefore disagree with Martyn (1985, 416) that the Law has become an ally of the flesh in the eschatalogical moment. The Law has always been of the flesh; that is its essence. The issue has rather to do with the evaluation of fleshiness within Pharisaism (later Rabbinism) and Hellenistic Judaism, with Paul an extreme representative of the latter. (See Segal: “Philo criticizes the extreme allegorizers for their attempt to ignore daily life, imagining themselves to be disembodied souls.…Philo, had he known Paul, would have considered him one of the radical allegorizers. Though Paul certainly did not ignore the body, he preached its radical transformation through death and rebirth in baptism and through a mystical identification with Christ, which opened him to a criticism similar to Philo's when he claimed to have left behind the body of flesh and entered the one spiritual body of the Lord” [1990, 246].) Moreover, it is impossible for me to follow Martyn in his assumption that the new age obviates the antinomies of the past, when the fundamental antinomy around which all others are organized—the flesh and the spirit—still exists. On the other hand, I see no reason to doubt that for Paul the place of the flesh and all of its concomitants—ethnicity, sexuality, the Law, etc.—has been entirely changed in the realized eschatology of the crucifixion. The pedagogue belongs to a certain historical moment, now transcended. See also Cosgrove (1988, 181–83). [BACK]

37. This is the transfer that lies at the bottom of the allegory of Galatians 4:21–31 as well, discussed above in the first chapter. [BACK]

38. In the Septuagint both translate רשב (flesh). There is, of course, in biblical Hebrew no word that distinguishes “body” as opposed to “flesh.” [BACK]

39. There is even a variant reading here which readsτῆς σαρκὸς “deeds of the flesh,” thus further suggesting their synonymity. “Deeds of the body” is, apparently, the better reading. [BACK]

40. I am not convinced by Jewett's explanations for the particular instances. Even with his over-elaborate theories, dependent on very particular and specific analyses of the breakdown of the Corinthian letters, Jewett is still forced to admit that “at times such usage appeared to be motivated and at other times it did not.” [BACK]

41. I am not distinguishing here between soul, spirit, and mind, which all have different referents in philonic anthropology. For the purpose of the present typology, the broad distinction between flesh and spirit or body and soul is sufficient. [BACK]

42. I am just adding a further (but to my mind crucial) wrinkle to the point already made well in Hays: “Of course, the expression κατὰ σάρκα is a theologically loaded one for Paul. At the superficial level, it refers simply to the process of natural physical descent, but there are at least two other levels of meaning in Paul's usage of the term: it alludes to circumcision and, at the same time, to the mode of human existence apart from God. The meaning of the expression in Rom 4:1 is to be determined not by choosing among these possibilities but by discerning their complex interweaving in the present context” (1985, 86). This seems to me to be just right, except that I add the hermeneutical sense of “literal” to the interwoven senses identified by Hays, and that I would question whether κατὰ σάρκα truly refers to an existence apart from God. This seems to me a relic of another mode of interpreting Pauline discourse. [BACK]

43. Although nearly every translation I have seen silently supplies here “true,” as they do also in Romans 2:28–29 in a similar context, Paul writes just ἡμεῖς γάρ ἐσμεν ἡ περιτομή “For we are the circumcision,” i.e., the Jews, Israel. [BACK]

44. Cf., for instance, 2 Corinthians 5:12: “We are not recommending ourselves to you once more, but rather providing you a suitable basis to boast in us, that you may have something to say to those who are boasting of what is outward and not of what is within,” i.e., to have confidence in us that you may have something to say to those who rely on the outer (lit., what is on the face) and not the inner (what is in the heart). The issue is surely not one of false pride or arrogance but of a mistaken placement of trust by the opponents. This point is even clearer if we adopt the reading of several very important manuscripts that have here ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν “have confidence in yourselves” rather than ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν “in us.” This lectio dificilior may be difficult from the point of view of Greek syntax and usage. Note that nearly the exact same phraseology also appears in Galatians 6:4: “But let each one test his own work, and this his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. For each man will have to bear his own burden.” Here, once more, “have confidence in” or “rely on” gives better sense than “boast.” This interpretation of καυχᾶσθαι has the singular virtue of obviating the need for comments to the effect that Paul uses the verb sometimes positively and sometimes negatively; if we are not speaking of a moral quality, then the verb itself is neutral and the positive or negative valence is a product of the object of the verb. See also Bultmann (1951, 1, 243), who makes substantially the same point: “Very closely related to ‘boasting after the flesh'—in fact, even synonymous with it—is ‘putting one's confidence in the flesh.’ In Phil. 3:3 it constitutes the antithesis to ‘boasting in Christ Jesus’” (emphasis original). [BACK]

45. For a similar unthematized tension in Bultmann between exactly these two elements, see Watson:

In Gal. 5:2ff, Christ and circumcision are contrasted with each other. Bultmann rightly notes that the demand for circumcision means that “the condition for sharing in salvation is belonging to the Jewish people” (Theology, I, 55), but he can still claim that Paul's discussion of circumcision brings us to the heart of “the Pauline problem of good works as the condition for participation in salvation” (111). This mental leap from circumcision to a wrong understanding of good works is quite illegitimate. Paul opposes circumcision because it is the rite of entry into the Jewish people, and for that reason alone.

46. I trust, therefore, that my interpretation will not be subject to the strictures that have met similar proposals to the effect that they “repristinize Paul” as a Hellenistic philosopher (Jewett 1971, 77). [BACK]

47. It is at least partially this which is meant when all Western philosophy is regarded as footnotes to Plato. [BACK]