NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF BAPTIST PROFESSORS OF RELIGION

TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT?:

AN EXAMINATION OF WHICH RITUAL TRADITIONS FROM JUDAISM PAUL KEPT,

WHICH ONES HE DISCARDED, AND WHY

PRESENTATED DURING THE

NEW TESTAMENT I SECTION

BY

THOMAS J. WHITLEY

26 MAY 2009
 Thirty years ago E. P. Sanders helped launch a new chapter in the

study of Pauline theology, particularly concerning Paul's relationship with

Judaism. Sanders, and an increasing number of scholars after him, rightly

insists that Paul's own experience and subsequent writings do not permit the

traditional, straightforward conclusion that Paul rejected the Judaisms of his

day. More precisely, while Paul did reject certain traditions and teachings of

Judaism; he retained others. This paper examines two specific ritual

traditions; one retained, one rejected, so as to examine both sides of the

issue. After Paul's Damascus Road experience, Paul clearly upholds the

tradition that women must be veiled for prayer (1 Cor. 11) and clearly rejects

the ritual tradition of circumcision for Gentiles who come to God through

faith in Jesus and the breaking of table-fellowship that resulted in Antioch

(Gal.).

This paper builds off the understanding that Paul did not fully reject

Judaism, as theories about him converting from Judaism to Christianity

purport, but rather reevaluated it in light of a transformation. Further, this

paper argues that Paul's reorientation of his understanding of the past and

the future becomes apparent when examining his preservation and rejection

of ritual traditions from Judaism. This paper holds that Paul chose to keep

and discard ritual traditions from Judaism as a direct result of his belief that

Gentiles were now eligible for inclusion in the gospel he was preaching. This

view is at odds with the common interpretation of Sanders’ idea of

covenantal nomism,1 which asserts that the issue is not “getting in,” but

“staying in.” It is not, however, completely at odds with Sanders, as I will

show later. Further, Paul's experience at Antioch of Jewish and Gentile

believers eating together was the impetus for defining just what Paul's

transformation and reorientation would look like. It was from this event and

Paul's subsequent insistence that Gentiles be included in the gospel, that he

decided which traditions to jettison, so as to open the door wider for

Gentiles, and which traditions to preserve.

It is certainly no secret that the most prevalent interpretation of Paul’s

relationship with Judaism is that he broke completely with the religion of his

former life. The new perspective on Paul, especially as carried out by James

Dunn, effectively shattered this misconception. Dunn’s work, self-admittedly,

relied heavily on the work of Sanders who essentially gave us a new

perspective on Second Temple Judaism. Sanders, Dunn, and many others

have shown that Paul was much more a product of the Judaisms of his day

than had previously been acknowledged, but they have left room for error on

the other end of the spectrum; namely, by opening up the door to the view

that Paul was simply a product of Second Temple Judaism; nothing more,

nothing less. This view is misguided because it does not acknowledge the

areas that Paul broke with Judaism including, but certainly not limited to, the

1
Sanders defines “covenantal nomism” in Paul and Palestinian Judaism as “is the view
that one’s place in God’s plan is established on the basis of the covenant and that the
covenant requires as the proper response of man his obedience to its commandments, while
providing means of atonement for transgression” (E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian
Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 420.).
non-necessity of circumcision and his insistence that the “true Israel” did not

inevitably consist of all who were Jews. Moreover, this view often wrongly

interprets Sanders as saying that since the covenantal nomism of Second

Temple Judaism was not about “getting in” but “staying in,” that Paul’s view

was the same.

Sanders, however, rightly recognizes that “Paul's mind did not run

entirely in ways familiar from the Bible or from most forms of Jewish thought

known to us.”2 For indeed, Sanders notes that “there are important ways in

which [Paul’s] thought about Christian life and experience does not stay

within the categories which are familiar in Jewish covenantal thought. Many

things essential there are absent, and some of Paul's key concepts move into

a different realm of thinking and discourse.”3 Thus, to use a phrase of

Sanders that has become a favorite of mine: “Not all his mental furniture is

from the same workshop.”4 John Barclay understands this when he says that

“One cannot conclude that Paul has simply adopted Jewish covenant notions

or that he has rejected them altogether; his radical interpretation defies any

such univocal conclusion.”5 Simply knowing that Paul did not fully accept or

reject covenant notions and ritual traditions from Judaism, however, still
2
E. P. Sanders, Paul, the Law and the Jewish People, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
1983), 209.
3
Ibid.
4

Ibid.
5

John M. G. Barclay, Obeying the Truth: Paul's Ethics in Galatians (Vancourver: Regent
College Publishing, 1988), 97.
leaves the water muddied, for it may offer the what, but makes no attempt

to offer the why. While I surely recognize that the ground ahead is

notoriously shaky, I will offer a why.

For most Second Temple Jews it may have been about “staying in” and

not “getting in,” as Sanders states, but for Paul both were important. John

Barclay makes this clear when he highlights the “getting in” nature of the

first section of Galatians and the “staying in” nature of the ethical section of

Galatians. Language like that which is included in Romans 2:28-29 helps to

paint the picture that while Paul may not have been only concerned with

“getting in,” he was at least partially concerned with it: “For a person is not a

Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and

physical. Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision

is a matter of the heart-- it is spiritual and not literal. Such a person receives

praise not from others but from God.”6 Paul’s redefinition of what classifies

one as a Jew is not vastly important in the bigger picture, for he continues to

use the Jew/Gentile dichotomy elsewhere, but it is important in that it shows

his concern with just how someone comes to “receive praise … from God” or

to be accepted by God. Paul is very concerned that Gentiles are also able to

receive salvation. Thus, Romans 1:16-17: “For I am not ashamed of the

gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the

Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed

6
Quoted from the New Revised Standard Version. All biblical quotations will be taken
from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘The one who is righteous will live by

faith.’”

Simply stating that Paul was very concerned that Gentiles be included

in his gospel message is not overly helpful, so now I will turn to the two test

cases mentioned earlier. In 1 Corinthians 11 Paul upholds the tradition that

women must be veiled for prayer and in Galatians he rejects the ritual

tradition of circumcision for Gentiles who come to God through faith in Jesus.

There has been much discussion in numerous circles as to the meaning and

implications of 1 Corinthians 11 for the modern church. Those are not the

discussions I am interested in; for many of them are motivated by agendas

that insist that they do interpretive and exegetical gymnastics to try to get

the text to say something other than what it says. The text, however, clearly

says that women must be veiled during prayer and prophecy.

But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and
the husband is the head of his wife, and God is the head of Christ. Any
man who prays or prophesies with something on his head disgraces his
head, but any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled
disgraces her head-- it is one and the same thing as having her head
shaved. For if a woman will not veil herself, then she should cut off her
hair; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or to be
shaved, she should wear a veil. For a man ought not to have his head
veiled, since he is the image and reflection of God; but woman is the
reflection of man.7

The first question from some may be: “How do we know that this actually

was a tradition in Judaism and not something new implemented by Paul?”

7
1 Corinthians 11:3-7.
However asinine the question may be, I will still answer it briefly. Art that has

survived from Egypt and Dura-Europos shows that Jewish women “ordinarily

covered their hair with a net, sometimes with a cloth.”8 Furthermore,

Sanders, in his book Judaism: Practice and Belief 63BCE – 66CE, shows that

the view that Jews would have been vastly different from the bulk of the

population around them in dress and hair styles should be dismissed.9 So,

while we know that Jews are contained in the art from Dura-Europos, but are

not necessarily contained in every piece of artwork from this era depicting

dress and hair styles, we will not be far off base to assume that the style of

dress and hair was similar to what is commonly depicted. To this regard,

Sanders comments: “Graeco-Roman styles in both clothes and hair were

pervasive: they penetrated even beyond the borders of the empire, and …

they changed slowly. First-century Egypt, second-century Palestine, and

third-century Mesopotamia (Dura-Europos) show the same styles of

clothes.”10 Thus, it is safe to say that when Paul commands women to be

veiled in 1 Corinthians 11, he is asking them to do something that was not

uncommon.

The next natural question seems to be if Paul has had a radical new

vision, then why does he not reject all of the old traditions. Many answers to

8
E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice & Belief 63BCE - 66CE (London: SCM Press, 1992),
123.
9

Ibid., 124.
10

Ibid.
this question seem to also be “jumping through hoops,” so to speak, to arrive

at conclusions that suit their dearly held predilections. Constance Parvey, for

instance, speaks about the passage in question and contends that Paul is

stating that the Corinthian church should indeed maintain this traditional

Jewish custom, but only as a theoretical “sign of subordination to men,”

claiming that Paul is “arguing against the influence of radical Gnostic

ecstatics, who were said to have an aversion to women covering their

heads.”11 This stance not only lacks support, but is also quite anachronistic in

asserting that Paul, who is writing during the middle of the first century, is

combating a group whom we have no evidence of until at least a century

later, at the earliest. The more interesting argument that Parvey makes is

that Paul “found it difficult to adapt his social thought to conform with his

radically new theology.”12 This view, however, seems to have as its

foundation the view that Paul desires to make a more drastic break with

Judaism, even if he was not able to just yet when he wrote 1 Corinthians.

Rosemary Radford Ruether is more correct when she notes that no matter

how astonishing the new vision, “it must always be communicated and made

meaningful through some transformation of ideas and symbols already

current.”13 For, it goes without saying that no new theology or vision, no

11
Constance F. Parvey, “The Theology and Leadership of Women in the New
Testament,” in Religion and Sexism: Images of Woman in the Jewish and Christian Traditions,
ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 125.
12

Ibid., 123.
13
matter how radical it may be, is written on a “cultural tabula rasa.”14

The sociology of sectarian ideology is very helpful in explainingthe

continuity and discontinuity with Second Temple Judaism contained in Paul’s

writings. “Any sect in the process of breaking away from the parent religion

will endeavour to justify its existence as the sole legitimate heir of the

religious tradition while also introducing a host of reinterpretations which

define its differences from the rest of the religious community.”15 To be sure,

maintaining that women should be veiled for prayer and prophecy does not

work to show Paul’s gospel message is the “sole legitimate heir of the

religious tradition,” but it does work to preserve continuity not just with

Second Temple Judaism, but also with the larger society. Showing continuity

with the ancient world was important in the Greco-Roman world, for the

society was suspicious of so-called “mystery religions” because they did not

have any connections with anything before them. That Judaism did have this

continuity made it at least a tolerable religion in the Greco-Roman world and

Paul certainly would have wanted to keep as much continuity as was possible

with his new message. Thus, Paul maintained that women should cover their

heads when praying and prophesying because it was not at odds with the

Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology

(Boston: Beacon Press, 1983), 14.
14

Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, 14.

15
Barclay, Obeying the Truth, 98.
essence of his message; that is, that the gospel was for “everyone who has

faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:17).

Circumcision, conversely, was at odds with the essence of Paul’s

gospel. Making Gentiles be circumcised before they can be members of the

covenant group only works to enforce the understanding that one must be a

Jew to be accepted by God. Paul’s account of his dispute with Peter in

Galatians 2 makes unambiguous his view that making circumcision

necessary and breaking table fellowship with Gentiles because they were not

circumcised were in complete opposition with the gospel message he was

preaching. For Paul, the gospel had to break down barriers. He makes this

clear in Galatians 3:28: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer

slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in

Christ Jesus.” Circumcision maintained a barrier between Jews and Gentiles.

Further, Peter’s action and the action of the “men from James” in Galatians 2

also maintains this barrier. Prior to Peter’s withdrawal, however, Jews and

Gentiles seem to have had no issue with table-fellowship in Antioch, a scene

which surely influenced Paul and his own statement against such barriers.

Moreover, we should note that the power of the gospel to break down

barriers is not a periphery concern for Paul. Rather, he accuses Peter and the

“men from James” of not “acting consistently with the truth of the gospel” or

not walking straight in line with the gospel when they abandon the Gentile

believers at the table. The barrier created by requiring circumcision and by

withdrawing from the table-fellowship at Antioch and the message that Paul
preached were mutually exclusive in Paul’s mind. John Barclay correctly

identifies the central concerns as being about behavior and identity. The

message that Paul preached was supposed to result in a change in behavior

and identity. The behavior of certain Jewish believers, especially Peter and

the “agitators” in Galatians, showed no change and thus Paul was obligated

to say that they were not walking straight in line with the gospel.

Additionally, the gospel gave its believers a new identity. The sticking point

for Paul, though, was that it gave everyone the same identity, hence

Galatians 3:28. This new, shared identity, then, meant “fully accepting the

other believer who is different from you, who disagrees with you.”16 In Paul’s

thought two dimensions seem to be “inextricably interlocked – the vertical

and the horizontal”, acceptance by God and valuing and accepting the

other.17

The situation at Antioch seems to have been both extremely positive

and extremely negative for Paul. On the one hand, Paul witnessed Jews and

Gentiles eating together, which meant that the Jews in Antioch had

technically become “sinners” from the Jewish perspective, but had

apparently decided that the gospel “establishe[d] a new pattern and

standard of life,” as Barclay put it.18 On the other hand, then, Paul’s message

was heavily opposed by the agitators in Galatia. Thus, Antioch tested Paul
16
Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul, 32-33.
17

Ibid.
18
Barclay, Obeying the Truth, 80-81.
from multiple angles. Viewing the situation in Antioch this way led James

Dunn to state that “it was because Paul was so challenged that he was

forced to make explicit formulation of what his gospel involved for Jewish as

well as Gentile believers.”19 Dunn then expands on this statement:

…it was the insistence on the laws of clean and unclean at Antioch
which raised the issue whether faith needed to be complemented by
works of the law, any works of the law. In other words, Paul's
formulation in Gal. 2.16 was, as the context suggests, formulated in
response to the crisis at Antioch ... The events at Antioch showed Paul
that the teaching had to be sharpened -faith and not works.20

Paul’s experience at Antioch was certainly a formative one for him and his

message. It must be understood, though, that for Paul “the quality and

character of Judaism” are not in question. The question is not about “how

many good deeds an individual must present before God to be declared

righteous at the judgment, but … whether or not Paul's Gentile converts

must accept the Jewish law in order to enter the people of God or to be

counted truly members.”21 The question that Paul is responding to in both

Galatians and Romans 9-11 is about whether one had to be Jewish.22

To further highlight that Paul was indeed concerned with “getting in”

and not just “staying in” one need only examine Paul’s use of Abraham in

19
James D. G. Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2005), 39.
20

Ibid., 41.
21

Sanders, Paul, the Law and the Jewish People, 19-20.

22

Ibid., 159.
Galatians 3 and Romans 4. Paul was concerned not with Abraham’s actions,

but rather by his “initial acceptance by God”, the fact that he was already

considered righteous in Genesis 15:6, that is, prior to his subsequent

circumcision in Genesis 17.23 James Dunn put it this way: “To include

consideration of Abraham's subsequent obedience (Gen. 26.5), as Jewish

tradition did, was to confuse the key issue so central to the key question of

whether Gentiles could be regarded as also and equally acceptable to God.”24

The point should be clear by now that Paul did not simply uphold all of

the traditions that he previously observed because he was a regular Second

Temple Jew. In addition, it should be equally as clear that Paul did not

endorse jettisoning all of the Jewish traditions because he had a revelation

on his way to Damascus. The answer is no longer as uncomplicated as many

have previously thought. Just as most versions of the old or Lutheran

perspective are inadequate because they fail to recognize just how Jewish

Paul was, so many manifestations of the new perspective are insufficient

because they see Paul as merely a Second Temple Jew and do not

acknowledge the areas of his thought and theology that clearly diverge from

the Judaisms of his day.

Though the time and space has not allowed for an exhaustive look at

which traditions from Judaism Paul retained and which ones he rejected, it

has attempted to offer an introduction to the question. I am convinced,

23
Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul, 48.
24

Ibid.
though, that the succinct nature of this paper does not diminish the

conclusion that I am positing. For as Paul’s thought is further examined,

especially concerning how he answers the question of just who the “true

Israel” is and how he redefines what it means to be a child of Abraham, there

appears to be one concern that becomes more and more central for Paul;

how can Gentiles be included as members of the covenant. No tradition

passed by Paul without having this criterion applied to it. Whenever Paul

asked, “take it or leave it” the answer was simple; does it allow Gentiles to

be included in the gospel? This issue was “at the heart of Paul’s theology,”

for his conviction was that “the gospel of God’s righteousness is for all who

believe, Gentile as well as Jew.”25

25
Ibid., 30. See also Romans 1: 16-17.