William Campbell’s Romans– The Dialogue Part Nineteen

June 19, 2023 By Ben Witherington

Q. On p. 126 you suggest that what dikaiosune theou means, at least primarily, is God’s covenant fidelity to Israel. What is odd about this assertion is that not only is Paul mainly addressing Gentiles and talking about right standing or rectification for them, but also interestingly, this is what Brueggemann and others have asserted hesed means in the OT— and they are wrong. The term hesed is even applied to Rahab and Ruth in the OT and has the more general meaning of God’s loving kindness to whomever. It’s not a term that specifies a covenant relationship with Israel. And I would say the same applies to dikaiosune theou which in the first instance refers to God’s own just, holy, moral character, as demonstrated in 1.18-32, against all idolatry and immorality by whomever practices it, in this case mainly Gentiles. I do think that all the dikaios word group needs to interpreted together— righteous, righteousness, to make righteous or perhaps count as having right standing with God. I would have thought you would pick the singular reference to pistis theou, to mean the faithfulness of God to his promises for Israel etc. Not dikaiosune theou which has a broader meaning involving both Gentiles and Jews.

While I think you are quite right that Paul is telling Gentiles that they didn’t and don’t obtain right standing with God by becoming Jews and keeping the Mosaic covenant, the fact is, he is also telling Jews they need to embrace their messiah, because ‘works of the law’ doesn’t produce the solution to the sin problem, in fact it can even make it worse because knowledge of what the law says about sin turns sin into trespass a willful violation of a known law. The law can tell us what is wrong, but it cannot enable a fallen human being to keep the law. One needs the Spirit of God, available through Christ. What is wrong with this argument?

A. What we need to clarify here is that Paul speaks of the God of Israel and tries to explain characteristics of this God to non-Jews, that is, former idolaters. These would have been accustomed to the deities of their families, clans, neighborhoods etc. who were perceived quite differently from Israel’s perception of their God. Paul is contrasting the characteristics of these deities with characteristics of the God of Israel. Thus e.g. this God is faithful, whilst the reliability of pagan deities had be secured again and again by cult performance, in the vein of do ut des, which I would call works (rites) of law (the rules that are prescribed to perform the ritual). You are correct to note the many terms used in the Old Testament to get a sense of who God is. These terms however, should not be taken as precise lexical definitions, rather they should be taken as describing characteristics of God, without clear cut conceptual boundaries. This is similar to Paul’s use of varied metaphors to describe relationships with God, which conceptually could be clashing with one another but which he is able to take as cumulatively describing this relationship. It is problematic to conceptualize biblical language concerning human relations to God since relationships, human or divine, do not lend themselves easily to conceptualization. These terms thus express something which is ultimately beyond words.

William Campbell’s Romans– The Dialogue Part Seventeen

June 17, 2023 By Ben Witherington

Q. P.109ff. I found the argument that what is being opposed is only adult circumcision in Rom. 2 doesn’t make sense to me when I consider what Paul is arguing against with his fellow Jewish Christians in Galatia, who want to circumcise Gentiles, regardless of age so they can become full-fledged Jews. Clearly Paul views circumcision as the sign of the Mosaic covenant just as baptism is the sign of the new covenant inaugurated by Christ. Put another way, circumcision is an entrance ritual which as originally practiced had nothing to do with repentance or consent since it was largely practiced on the 8th day. Paul says that a Gentile who gets themselves circumcised is thereby obligated to keep the whole 613 commandments of Moses. What Paul says in Rom. 2 needs to take account of what he has already argued against in Galatians. What is at stake, and Paul makes this clear in Gal. 4, is covenantal theology, with the Mosaic covenant viewed as the childminder until Christ came and fulfilled that covenant’s demands. Paul connects the Abrahamic covenant to the new one, and distinguishes both from the Mosaic covenant which he does not think either Jews or Gentiles who are Christ followers have to keep any longer. This is why Abraham and not Moses is set up as a paradigm or precursor to what faith or trust in God should look like for Christ-followers. I think Paul would point out to you that ‘Abraham our forefather according to the flesh’ was certainly not circumcised on the 8th day, not being under the Mosaic covenant, and that the Abrahamic covenant is the one connected by Paul to the new covenant. The new covenant is definitely not a renewal of the Mosaic one, which Christ fulfilled. Paul’s thinking is eschatological and grounded in both the Christ event and his reading of Jerm. 31, very similar to the way it is read in Hebrews. How would you read Galatians 4 differently?

A. Romans 2 has been notoriously difficult to interpret, so much so that E.P.Sanders at one point mentions despairing of making good sense of any of it. As noted, part of the problem is the analysis of the actual content Paul includes in the chapter, which I think I have adequately dealt with in my commentary. On the point that circumcision can transform an adult gentile man into a Jew I have argued and demonstrated that nowhere in the OT or Jewish literature of the time is there an example of such an adult transformation. Adult circumcision in the OT only enables certain social interaction between Jews and non-Jews in the land of Israel, and seems to be a sign for a proselyte and his turning to the one God during the Second Temple Period. But only the grandson of such a person would be considered a full member of the people Israel as Philo indicates (Virt 108, cf. Commentary 1105). The real issue for a proselyte is not his own circumcision but rather the circumcision of his son on the 8th day. Only thus could this son become the father of a boy born to a man who had been circumcised on the 8th day and thus this boy (that is the third generation) would become a full member of the people Israel. Although Jews welcomed interested gentiles, they were not actively seeking proselytes because becoming a Jew, if it was considered possible at all, was a process over at least three generations. Only Rabbinic Judaism at a later date accepts the conversion of a gentile to become a Jew, and only then did adult circumcision become the sign of such a conversion.

William Campbell’s Romans– The Dialogue Part Thirteen

June 13, 2023 By Ben Witherington

Q. I was a bit surprised by your take on Rom. 7.7-25. Speech in character, from a rhetorical point of view or prosopoeia requires that one be speaking as a well-known historical person recently mentioned, as Quintilian stresses. In this case the person in question is Adam, mentioned less than 5 minutes before Rom. 7 in the continuous reading of the text of Romans likely by Phoebe. Notice the change in verb tenses from 7.7-13 to 7.14-25. Also, only Adam was given a single commandment which is all that is mentioned in 7.7-13, and interestingly in early Jews interpretation of the Genesis story, the rabbis speculated that the single commandment given to Adam was a form of the commandment about covetousness. The personification of Sin as a creature fits the talking serpent as well. So, this would mean that the ongoing issue in 7.14-25 is with those who are in Adam, but outside of Christ. For sure you are right that Paul is not describing his own autobiography, or for that matter devout Jews. I did wonder about why one has to take the word ‘nomos’ to always be a reference to the Mosaic Law, when it fact it seems to be used otherwise— there is a ruling principle of the mind and there is another and different ruling principle, namely the bondage to sin, described in Rom. 7.14-25. In neither case do we need to identify these with the Mosaic Law. And when we turn the page to Rom. 9— the ruling principle of the Spirit which sets a person free from the bondage to sin, is again surely not the Mosaic Law. The problem with the Law was that it could tell a person what they ought to do, but could not enable them to do it. That required the Spirit, which is not the Law. I do agree with you that Paul is no antinomian, as Rom. 12-14 makes clear. But I don’t think he views the new covenant is simply a renewal of the Mosaic one. Why not? Because in the first place there is his references to the Law of Christ, for instance in Gal. 6 where he is alluding to a couple of teachings of Jesus, not the Mosaic Law. The new covenant seems to involve taking over some of Mosaic commandments, some of the teachings of Jesus (for instance his teaching that declares that nothing that enters one’s mouth defiles a person, but rather what comes out of the mouth), and perhaps some apostolic teachings of Paul and others. I am unconvinced by your suggestion that in 2 Cor. 3 is not a comparison between the glory of Christ and the new covenant, as opposed to the fading glory on the face of Moses and of the old covenant. This all the more the case because of what Paul says in Gal. 4— namely that the Mosaic covenant was pro tempore, until the coming of Christ. Explain why you think this is all wrong.

A. I think speech in character in Paul does not necessarily follow the pattern of schoolbook rhetoric. Paul’s habit is to be flexible with well-known Hellenistic rhetorical patterns. He is well enough educated to be able to show his competence in that milieu, having most likely picked it up as general knowledge rather from any formal rhetorical education. Thus, his selective use of rhetorical patterns renders it difficult to draw precise conclusions from Quintilian as this would be far too static for a creative writer and thinker like Paul. This why I think Adam is not in view here. My take on Rom. 7.7-25 is that what follows in chapter 8.1 ff is the answer to the problems Paul seeks to address in the previous chapter. But Paul in Romans has not yet properly introduced the Spirit, note the unusually few references up to this point in a letter which tends to deal with topics in layers or in sequence. The last reference to spirit in 7.6 reveals chapter 7 as practically devoid of references to the Spirit which is completely reversed from the beginning of chapter 8. This indicates that in Rom 7.7-25 Paul is only dealing with life with the Law and without the Spirit whereas this is rectified in chapter 8. This suggests that Rom 7.7-25 is an artificial scenario depicting a persona with the Law and without the Spirit which has its main purpose to demonstrate that only by the Spirit of God can the Law be properly observed and its function realized. Theoretically one could argue that this also applies to the Jews, but Paul in 7.9 clearly states the this persona ‘once lived outside the sphere of the Law’ which could not apply to Jews, but only to former pagans. This coheres with Paul’s clear indications that this letter is addressed to gentiles. The reasons why it must be the Torah that Paul here refers to with nomos is because he affirms that “the nomos is holy and just and good” (7.12), that the nomos is spiritual” (7.14)and that the persona delights in the nomos of God (7.22). Although he might use nomos in a more general sense elsewhere, here he clearly refers to the Torah in my view.

You raise further questions here, that are not focusing on Rom 7.7-25 but which in my mind are not contradicted by my approach to this chapter since I am not here dealing with anything related to covenant renewal or even with the Law of Christ drawn from the arguments of other letters. I am simply trying to keep focused on the questions I have to answer.

William Campbell’s Romans– The Dialogue Part One

May 22, 2023 By Ben Witherington

Q. Your way of reading Romans is quite different especially from traditional Protestant readings. What was it that prompted you to take a ‘Paul Within Judaism ‘approach when it comes to Romans, or to put it another way, what led you to change your mind on the way you read Romans earlier in your career?

A. Firstly, I think I would not term ‘Paul Within Judaism’ an approach in the same way as .e.g. a Social Identity Approach. It is more a revision of the perspective and evaluation of the historical and theological context rather than an ‘approach’ employing certain defined methodologies etc. When the label “Paul With Judaism” appeared on the scene of scholarly research, it assembled under its umbrella a number of scholars who had argued over a significant period of time and from diverse angles that not only Paul himself but also his message should be seen as fully part of the range of Jewish traditions of the time. As a younger scholar, I had always insisted that Paul did not argue in an anti-Jewish way and that he should be read only in context. I had been coming from such a perspective throughout my career, so did not need to change, but only to extend the range of what I understand as Paul’s context. I see “Within Judaism” as something like a school of which a number of people share a significant number of aspects in varying degrees.1 Moreover, it is also rather recent in its emergence as a distinct focus of interpretation with its own label which is only now beginning to be clarified as e.g. in a forthcoming volume 2………in which I have a contribution on the meaning of reading Paul within Judaism for contemporary Protestantism, showing that such a reading is coherent with present Protestant thought.

Secondly, although I did not change my mind, I am aware that with writing about and teaching Paul’s letters, I did gradually develop my understanding over a period of years. I always followed Johannes Munck in his thesis that Paul wrote for gentiles yet only after 1990 did I consciously try to formulate what this meant3. But already I had argued in The Scottish Journal of Theology that Paul would not compel Jews to give up their Jewish identity in order to follow Christ. Rather, this was retained. I realized that it is one thing to presume that Paul’s communities were mainly gentile and another to assume that he writes exclusively to gentiles, as I have claimed here for Romans and what this means for the interpretation of his letters. I wrote my PhD thesis (1972) on Romans prior to the main work of both Krister Stendahl (1976) and E.P. Sanders (1977). My initial concern with Romans was to seek to demonstrate that it was not a doctrinal treatise but a contextually targeted letter to an exigency that Paul addressed. I have refined this contextual reading more precisely to view it as addressed only to gentiles, hence my commentary which seeks to draw out the implications of this reading. In and with this contextual emphasis I argued already in 1972, that there is no anti-Jewish bias in Romans, and that chs. 9-11 are not a secondary addition or a digression , but the climax of the argumentation in the letter. So, in that sense, I argued for reading ‘Paul within Judaism’ long before there was such a label.

Notes:

1 See Kathy Ehrensperger, “Paul, the Jewish Apostle to the Nations: Key Aspects of the Paul Within Judaism Perspective”, Early Christianity, Vol 14 (2023) 35-54. 2 Within Judaism? Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives from the First to the Twenty-First Century, eds. Karin Hedner Zetterholm and Anders Runesson,Lanham, MD: Lexington/Fortress Academic forthcoming 3 “Did Paul Advocate Separation from the Synagogue? Vol. 42 (1990) 457-67 and my chapter on “Religious Identity and Ethnic Origin in the Earliest Christian Communities” in my Paul’s Gospel in an Intercultural Context, Bern, New York et.al.: Peter Lang 1991, 98-121.

2 Within Judaism? Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives from the First to the Twenty-First Century, eds. Karin Hedner Zetterholm and Anders Runesson,Lanham, MD: Lexington/Fortress Academic forthcoming 3 “Did Paul Advocate Separation from the Synagogue? Vol. 42 (1990) 457-67 and my chapter on “Religious Identity and Ethnic Origin in the Earliest Christian Communities” in my Paul’s Gospel in an Intercultural Context, Bern, New York et.al.: Peter Lang 1991, 98-121.

3 “Did Paul Advocate Separation from the Synagogue? Vol. 42 (1990) 457-67 and my chapter on “Religious Identity and Ethnic Origin in the Earliest Christian Communities” in my Paul’s Gospel in an Intercultural Context, Bern, New York et.al.: Peter Lang 1991, 98-121.

The Bible vs. Biblical Womanhood– The Dialogue Part One

May 13, 2023 By Ben Witherington

Ben : Firstly, do you have or have you consulted the massive Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek? The entry on kephale is interesting.

COM: I have consulted The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek by Montanari, but have not seen the K volume. If you are able to send me an image of the entry on κεφαλή, that would be most welcome.

Ben: Source is a small minority reading in those sources, but nevertheless I think you are right that kephale in 1 Cor. 11 likely means source. I think you present a cogent argument that Paul is talking about hair, which connects all of the things he says in that passage, however, and it is a big however, you seem to overlook that Paul is dealing with a Roman colony city, and worship practices in that setting did involve head coverings.

COM: In fact, I did not overlook that Corinth was a Roman colony. For example, on pp. 60–61, I wrote, “it was customary for leaders in Roman worship (Corinth was a Roman city at this time) to drape a garment over their heads, the capite velato custom. This was not disgraceful, but a sign of piety. However, it was disgraceful for men to display long, effeminate hair. Paul opposed allowing men to lead worship with effeminate hair because those hairstyles were known to attract illicit sexual liaisons. First Corinthians 11:4 addresses the shame a man brings on himself and on Christ, his creator/source, when praying and prophesying with long, effeminate hair.

Ben: You can see this in the statuary from the emperor on down, Not a veil, which you are right about, but a pulling of the toga over the head, or a headcovering of some other sort. And frankly the phrase ‘something down from the head’. is weird, when Paul could simply say hair in Greek.

COM: Paul doesn’t say “something” down from the head, simply “down from the head”. Simply saying “hair” would not specify long effeminate hairstyles. I find it quite unlikely that Paul would say regarding a custom that was a sign of piety, the capite velato custom, “Every man who prays or prophesies capite velato καταισχύνει τὴν κεφαλὴν αὐτοῦ. Nor do I think readers in a Roman city would agree with that statement, even Christian readers. I can’t think of any other instance in Paul’s writings when he calls something disgraceful that in Hellenistic or Roman culture was a sign of piety. Paul does write of the incompatibility of drinking the cup of the Lord and of demons (1 Cor 10:20–22, but even that is introduced in 10:19 “What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? ? No …” and Paul concludes in 10:28–33 “for conscience sake—I mean his conscience, not yours—do not eat it. For why should my liberty be determined by another man’s scruples? If I partake with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks?” Regarding sacrifices made to idols, Paul makes comments such as “an idol has no read existence” (1 Cor 8:4), “But some, through being hitherto accustomed to idols, eat food as really offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. Only take care that this liberty of yours somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.… (1 Cor 8:8–13). Since Paul applies the principle of Christian liberty even to food offered to idols, I find it unlikely that he would attack as disgraceful a religious custom intended to convey piety. But if by “having down from the head” he is referring to effeminate hairstyles that we know from the literature were associated with disgrace and soliciting homosexual hookups, Paul’s words and the message they convey are in harmony with his other statements about homosexual acts. This also fits both the sentiment and wording of 11:14: “Does not nature itself teach you that for a man to wear long hair is degrading to him.” And regarding the wording, “something down from the head” is weird. If Paul meant κάλυμμα, it would be weird for Paul to convey κάλυμμα with this expression since he uses κάλυμμα repeatedly in 2 Cor 3:13–16—or for ἱμάτιον, a common NT word. But if he is referring to something shameful reported to him in the church in Corinth, a man leading prayer or worship with long effeminate hair, it fits his comments elsewhere regarding things too disgraceful to name, for him to use this euphemism. If this was happening in Corinth, his readers would understand the reference. For it to be a moral issue for both men and women fits the language of 11:7, “A man ought not cover his head…” and 11:10 “a woman ought to exercise authority over her head [by doing her hair up].” The Bible vs. Biblical Womanhood page 77, n. 29 cites Herter’s RAC article that gives over 100 citations regarding men wearing effeminate styles, most citing it as disgraceful. The largest number are from Paul’s day. It also cites two other works where I document these issues at far greater length.

Ben: Then there is also the issue of the angels, which as you say are the participants or guardians of worship.

COM: I do not recall saying that the angels “are the participants or guardians of worship” What I do say o p.69 is:

“On account of the angels”: The context here is worship, and Paul refers to angels in the context of worship elsewhere. Earlier in 1 Corinthians he wrote:

We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to human beings. (1 Cor. 4:9)

Paul implies that angels observe the church in 1 Timothy 5:21:

I charge you, in the sight of God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels . . .

This fits the New Testament theme that Christian worship reflects the presence of angels before the throne of God (Matt. 18:10). If the symbolism of undisciplined sexuality and the shame it causes both a woman and her husband is not sufficient reason, “because of the angels” (who observe worship and report directly to God) gives one more reason why women should exercise control over their heads by not letting their hair hang loose.

Ben: I agree with you that the reason for a woman to wear a headcovering has nothing to do with her submission to men.

COM: According to Cynthia Westfall and Caryn Reeder (if I recall correctly), slave women were not permitted to wear head-covering garments. Would Paul command women to do something illegal?

Ben: It has to do with the fact that only God’s glory should be seen in worship,

COM: Can you cite a Scriptural statement of this? The OT temple vestments and the temple’s ornate designs display God’s glory because they reflect his glory. They were not covered.

Ben: a woman’s hair is her glory, hence the need to cover it up.

COM: 1 Cor 11:15 states, “Does not nature itself teach you that … if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her long hair is given as a covering.” This identifies the long hair itself as the covering, not that long hair is something that should be covered. Throughout 1 Corinthians 11 it is the “head” that is to be covered, not “hair” that is to be covered. Hair is identified, instead, as the covering in 11:15. I find that this understanding fits the entire passage, including the reference to the bitter water testing of the suspected adulteress in 11:5–6. In Paul’s day, the punishment for a woman found guilty of adultery was that she was shorn.

Ben: This is not said of men’s hair.

COM: The reason it is not said of men’s hair that that long effeminately-styled hair was regarded as disgraceful, not man’s glory, especially in Paul’s day, as Herter’s “Effeminatus” RAC article demonstrates.

Ben: It seems to me that Paul is doing a delicate dance of on the one hand wanting to affirm women in ministry, but on the other hand recognizing that it was appropriate for men and women to be recognized as different while at the same time being equals.

COM: πλήν in 11:11 does point not simply to Paul’s central concern, but also to a contrast with what precedes. Paul has just given different instructions to men than the instructions he gives to women, so πλήν is particularly appropriate to introduce “However, woman is not separate from man, nor is man separate from woman in the Lord.” I do not, however, see the instructions of 11:4–10 as in any way contradicting the affirmation of gender equality in Christ in v. 11. I understand them both to be telling leaders in worship, whether men or women, not to wear their hair in ways that symbolize in that culture solicitation of homosexual hookups or uncontrolled sexuality. That Paul’s restrictions are limited to people leading in worship, either its vertical dimension, prayer, or its horizontal dimension, prophesy, is fully compatible with a church welcoming prostitutes and men in drag into worship services.

Ben: And I like Hooker’s notion that the headcovering could be seen as rather like a clerical collar, it shows she was authorized to speak in worship as long as her ‘glory’ was not in evidence.

COM: What about female slaves? Is Paul telling them to cover their hair, even if that was illegal for them? What in 1 Corinthians 11 says that a woman’s glory should be hidden? What is 1 Corinthians 11 identifies a garment head-covering other than 11:15, where is long hair is said to be given to a woman ἀντὶ περιβολαίου? What in 1 Corinthians 11 indicates that a headcovering is like a clerical collar?

[Ben: First of all it was not illegal for slaves to cover their heads in a worship setting when an offering was made or other religious acts were performed. The prohibition doesn’t have to do with what slaves did in a home but what they did in the public, for instance in the agora.]

Ben: 1 Tim. 2 is dealing with a different issue, high status women with bling who want to teach before they learn and usurp the position of the already authorized teachers in Ephesus (have you seen Gary Hoge’s important monograph on the latter?).

COM: I have not seen Gary Hogue’s monograph. Is it or a summary or review of it online?

Ben: One side note— I don’t think the material from the OT about priests and caps is of any relevance to this discussion. Paul’s not drawing on Levitical practices for his largely Gentile audience.

COM: I agree that Paul is not drawing on Levitical practices for his largely Gentile audience. But I do not see Paul anywhere else saying it is disgraceful to do anything demanded in the Torah or calling something disgraceful that in Roman custom was a sign of piety.

William S. Campbell’s Romans– Part Ten

May 5, 2023 By Ben Witherington

On pp. 123-24 Campbell make the interesting point that Jews and Gentiles are judged differently, and Gentiles are in a dire situation since they have no covenantal relationship with the true God and so no means of atonement and forgiveness, whereas Jews are guilty of disobedience to the law and will be judged by the Mosaic law, but they have a means of atonement and so of forgiveness. The problem with making a sort of blanket statement like that about Jews is that the OT law doesn’t provide for sacrifices and atonement for deliberate premeditated sins like murder and adultery as Paul in his speech to Jews in Acts 13 reminds us. This is also likely why we see David in Psalm 51 throwing himself on the mercy God—‘create in me a clean heart….cast me not away from your presence’ because there was no sacrifice he could offer to atone for his sins involving Bathsheba and her husband.

I don’t really think Campbell and others can get around the universalism of 3.20 ‘by works of the law ‘all flesh’ cannot be set right with God’. This is so for two reasons: 1) Paul believes in the universality of sin and of all being sinners, and that all need Christ, the Jewish messiah to redeem them. Indeed, Paul is exhibit A that even very observant Jews need to be redeemed by Christ; 2) while allowing that comparatively speaking Gentiles are far worse sinners that Jews, and so some Jews could be said to be righteous by comparison, nevertheless all need the grace of God in Christ to be saved; 3) here again is where the work of Sanders is helpful. He is right that OT religion is not some sort of graceless religion so that we could pit Judaism in general vs. Christianity as religions of works righteousness vs. religions of grace. This is false. What is however true is that there were plenty of early Jews who believed that by works righteousness, by obedience to Torah they maintained their righteousness before God and so did not need to be ‘born again’ or a new creature in Christ. And herein lies the rub. Paul believes that not merely getting in but staying in is a matter of God’s grace, and not just obedience after one gets in. What makes clear Paul’s view of the universal scope of sin is Rom. 5.12-21 where we hear about Adam and his sin. As we shall see Rom. 5.12-21 prepares for the discussion in Rom. 7.7-13 where Adam speaks in a speech in character passage and he is not talking about a commandment given by Moses, he’s talking about the singular commandment he had (and he was the only person other than Eve who had only one commandment). It was later Jewish reflection on the Genesis story that led to the conclusion that the ‘thou shalt not eat…’ was a form of the later commandment ‘thou shalt not covet’.

At 10.3 Campbell does not pay attention to ‘they tried to establish righteousness for themselves’ (by keeping Torah), as a critique of Jews who don’t follow Christ. In Paul’s view everyone ultimately must receive the righteousness that comes from Christ now that the messianic times have dawned, and so there is a critique here of Jewish ‘works righteousness’. i.e. by doing the Law. See the volume by Seifrid, Carson, and O’Brien, on Variegated Nomism Vol. 1: The Complexities of 2^nd Temple Judaism. Examples include. 4 Ezra 7 4; Sirach 3:14, 30; 16:14; 2 Baruch 14:12; 24:1; 41:6; Testament of Abraham A12:12–13; A 14:2–4; Rule of the Community (1QS) I, 7–8; III, 9–12; Pesher Habakkuk (1QpHab) VIII, 1–3; Miqsat Ma‘ase Ha-Torah (4QMMT) C 26–32; m. Abot 2:16; 3:15; 4:11, 22; and t. Qiddushin 1:13–16. There are more examples. So a critique of trying to establish or maintain one’s relationship with God simply by doing works of the Law is a critique of some actual Jews in early Judaism, but not necessarily all Jews.

On p. 126 Campbell suggests that what dikaiosune theou means, at least primarily, is God’s covenant fidelity to Israel. What is odd about this assertion is that not only is Paul mainly addressing Gentiles and talking about right standing or rectification for them in Rom. 1-2, but also interestingly, this is what Brueggemann and others have asserted hesed means in the OT— and they are wrong. The term hesed is even applied to Rahab and Ruth in the OT and has the more general meaning of God’s loving kindness to whomever. It’s not a term that specifies a covenant relationship with Israel. And I would say the same applies to dikaiosune theou which in the first instance refers to God’s own just, holy, moral character, as demonstrated in 1.18-32, against all idolatry and immorality by whomever practices it, in this case mainly Gentiles. I do think that all the dikaios word group needs to be interpreted together— righteous, righteousness, to make righteous or perhaps count as having right standing with God. I would have thought you would pick the singular reference to pistis theou in Rom. 3.3 to mean the faithfulness of God to refer to his promises for Israel etc. Not dikaiosune theou which has a broader meaning involving both Gentiles and Jews.

Five View on the New Testament Canon– A Review and Critique

January 7, 2023 By Ben Witherington

Five Views on the New Testament Canon, eds. S.E. Porter and B.P. Laird, (Grand Rapids, Kregel, 2022), 288 pages, $24.99.

In recent years there have been a slew of books with four or five views on some topic important to students of the Bible. This is another one, and interestingly it involves Protestants Catholics, and Orthodox scholars sharing and comparing their views on the complex manner of NT canon formation. Three of the views are by Protestants, or at least by people well conversant with the Protestant views on such matters (and two are labeled some sort of Evangelical, the other representing liberal Protestantism). Doubtless this is because the folks putting this together know that the main audience for such books by Kregel are Protestants, and chiefly Evangelicals. But it is very helpful that both a Catholic and an Orthodox scholar are allowed to weigh in on the matter, and critique the other presenters as well.

No book can be all things to all people, and this is a good book remarkably free of unnecessary and unhelpful polemics. It involves respectful dialogue, but if you are looking for a deep discussion of what counts as truth, what counts as the Word of God, what we should think about the relation of history to theology, and particularly what we should think about the inspiration of Biblical texts, there is not a surfeit of discussion on those relevant topics, though there is some. For instance, there is little or no discussion about how sacred texts worked and were viewed in an overwhelmingly oral environment in early Judaism or the Greco-Roman world. There is no real discussion about whether inspiration somehow produces truthful discussions about history, theology and ethics in the NT. There is also next to no discussion about the relationship between the closing of the canon of the OT and the canon of the NT even though all the quotations of the OT in the NT with one possible exception (Jude quoting 1 Enoch, but he does not quote it as ‘Scripture’ but as a true prophetic utterance) all come from the 39 books of the OT that all Christians and also Jews recognize as Scripture. This suggests that the OT canon was de facto closed by the time the NT documents were written, and provided Scriptural resources for the composers of NT documents, all of whom or almost all of whom were Jews. What we do get in this volume is elongated discussions and debates about whether the church authorized and canonized the NT books, or merely recognized them as authoritative on the basis of certain criteria— apostolicity (in some sense), catholicity, widespread use etc. What about the criteria of veracity of content?

There are many positive things to say about this volume, and here are some of the things: 1) it makes very clear that all the participants recognize that the NT is (and I would add, should be) these 27 books plus nothing. Other early Christian literature is valuable but not canonical, not NT Scriptures. 2) Protestants Catholics, and the Orthodox have more disagreements about what the OT canon includes than the NT canon. Only Protestants are in agreement with Jews about the extent of the OT canon; 3) the term kanon itself refers in the first instance to a measuring rod, and came to refer to canonical limits of the NT, something that no sort of definitive statement was made about before the 4^th century. And as Prof. Boxall says, the real watershed moment for Catholics was at the Council of Trent (on which see below). 4) Note the helpful definition of apostolicity by Prof. Boxall on p. 143: “Apostolicity is understood rather as the preservation of the original apostolic response to the Christ event, first conveyed through the preached Gospel, and preserved both orally in the ongoing transmission of the apostolic tradition, and in written form in the writings now recognized as canonical. The authority of the NT writings lies in their preservation of the authoritative testimony from ‘the closing period of foundational revelation.’” Note the reference to revelation. The NT is not viewed as mere human words about God, but as revelation. What should have been also said in this statement is that the authoritative testimony is a true testimony. Its authority doesn’t primarily lie in which human being said it, but in what was said when the truth was revealed. 5) Prof. Boxall rightly stresses that at the heart of all these texts is a person— Jesus Christ, a living person, indeed the risen Lord, not merely a collection of texts. But does this mean that the teaching of Jesus is somehow more inspired than say the teaching of Paul? The early church fathers do not in the main seem to think so. Here, I’m thinking particularly of people like John Chrysostom.

Something has to be said about the false notion that shows up in places in this volume that the writers of the NT had no clue they were speaking or writing God’s Word, but rather that idea was a clearly ex post facto judgment. Just for a moment let’s talk about probably the earliest contributor to the NT— the apostle Paul. Consider for a minute what’s in perhaps our earliest NT document—1 Thessalonians 2.13— “And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the Word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.” Paul of course is talking about hearing the Good News about Jesus which he calls ‘the Word of God’, and he quite clearly says it was properly received as not merely the words of human beings, but THE WORD OF GOD. In fact, he says that it is actually the Word of God, the change agent at work in those who believe. In fact, the phrase ‘logos tou theou’ throughout the NT, when it does not refer to Christ himself (e.g. in John 1) refers to the oral proclamation of the Good News and the truth about Christ. This is true where this phrase occurs in Acts and also in Hebrews where that word of God is said to pierce to the depths of a person’s being and changes that person. Paul, and others believed they were inspired to proclaim God’s Word that told the truth about Jesus (see my The Living Word of God, on this and on the issue of whether the canon misfired or not!). It’s not enough to talk about canon consciousness. We need to discuss Word of God consciousness spoken of above, Scripture consciousness (see 2 Pet.3—- “He writes the same way in all his letters….which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures”), and yes canon consciousness. Both Word of God and Scripture consciousness already existed and was applied to what is now the content of the NT, including the earliest Pauline content, long before the canon or canon consciousness appeared in early church history. The failure to deal with the historical situation of genuine Christians before there was a canon of Scripture and yet for whom various of these texts were soul nourishing and coming from God through human writers is a significant failure in some forms of canonical criticism.

Now we can debate what the relationship of this oral proclamation is to written words, but when we actually look closely at a text like 1 Cor. 7, Paul stacks up his own pronouncements alongside of Jesus’ in regard to divorce, and thinks they have the same authority for his audience as Jesus’s words. And if there was any doubt about that he tells them that he too, like Jesus, has the Spirit of God inspiring his words. I do not personally doubt Paul believed his written words were viewed by him as just as authoritative as his proclaimed words. Indeed, his letters contain what he would have proclaimed orally to various congregations had he been present there. They are oral and rhetorical discourses. Put another way, they are the preaching of God’s Word in written form.

And are we really to suppose that when we read in regard to the OT Scripture that it is God-breathed that somehow the writer thought that the content of the writers of the NT about Jesus as the Savior of the world were somehow less authoritative or truth-telling than the God-breathed OT? The answer is surely no. They did not. They believed God’s inspiration applied not just to speaking but also to writing, just as was the case with the OT prophets like a Jeremiah. The authority of what was said was determined by the truth of the content itself as inspired by God. A secondary thing that gave authority to what was said is who it came from—- from eyewitnesses (cf. Lk. 1.1-4), from apostles, and from the co-workers of both apostles and eyewitnesses. And since that, broadly speaking, became the criteria used to determine what books should be consider inspired NT texts in due course, then automatically any documents created after the apostolic period of whatever sort were ruled out as canonical Scriptures of the NT.

Of course, it is true that various Christian writers of the 2^nd through 4^th century were not always clear on the criteria for what counted as their new Scriptures, but happily various parts of the church recognized these 27 documents as their NT in the fourth century. No canon lists or codexes included any Gnostic documents, or the Gospel of Thomas, or the Acts of Paul and Thecla, or other second century documents though there was some debate about the Gospel of Peter and the Shepherd of Hermas early on and occasionally such a document showed up in a codex, but it may be debated whether we should view codexes as canon lists. More likely they are approved Christian reading lists.[1] And even the Gospel of Peter, when read by a church authority was disapproved for reading in church.

One of the lacuna of this volume is any detailed discussion of the importance of text criticism, of establishing the earliest Greek text of the NT as best we can. Thankful the editors of the volume in their conclusions have a brief discussion of the matter and offer a helpful listing of volumes where we can track down the canon lists and other helpful resources. This is good, but contrast this with statements about the Council of Trent that Prof. Boxall rightly draws our attention to. There is a huge problem with the Council of Trent’s pronouncement about the 27 books of the NT because they added the phrase ‘in all its parts”, which includes the long ending of Mark, John. 7.53-8.11 and the additions to Luke’s passion narrative.[2]

This is problematic on several counts: 1) text determines canon in regard to this matter. By this I mean that no clearly later additions to the text in the second or later centuries should be considered the original inspired text of NT Scripture. This is just a basic principle of text criticism widely recognized today, and is rightly the basis of the revisions of NT translations in the last century; 2) of course when the Council of Trent made its decision in 1546, Latin was still the official language of the Scripture and liturgy of the Catholic Church, and proper text criticism didn’t truly exist, even to the point of not giving priority to the original language texts of Scripture. Latin was in any case the original language of no NT text.[3]

When one considers the intertwined nature of history, theology, and ethics in the NT, and especially in the Gospels and Acts the question that has to be raised is this— If the text is making both a historical and a theological claim, how should this be viewed? Can a text be both theologically true and historically false? My answer to that question is no, if the theology in question is grounded in and dependent on some historical occurrence. So, for example, as Paul makes clear in regard to the resurrection of Christ in 1 Cor. 15— if Christ is not raised then his death atoned for nothing and we are still in our sins. History and theology are intertwined because early Christianity is a religion grounded in, and based on some historical claims, especially about Jesus. It would have been good if one of the writers of these chapters was an ancient historian who had actually written a book on NT History.

The NT is full of theologizing which needs to be interpreted, and it does not require a later ‘theological or canonical reading’ of the text to make it theologically important or significant. Later theological readings of the text are fine, if they comport with or are a reasonable exposition or amplification of the theology in the Scriptural text itself. The fact that the original texts of the NT are words on target for those first audiences does not mean they could not be words on target for other and later audiences as well. But the important point is that what the text meant in its original setting is still today what the text means— hence the need for good detailed contextual exegesis. It may have a different significance or application today, but what it doesn’t have is a different meaning. Meaning is in the configuration of the words in the Greek text, not in the eyes of the beholder, even though it is true we are all active and even creative readers of the text. What must be guarded against in such readings is reading something into the text which does not comport with the actual meaning of the text. In other words, the sin of anachronism needs to be avoided.

In the first couple of chapters by Evangelical scholars, the chapter by D. Lockett is far less problematic than the one by D. Nienhuis. The latter follows the sort of canonical approach to the Scriptures we find in the work of Robert Wall and others. While I have no problem with the notion that the NT once assembled in a particular order took on further significance, provided further insights, led to new applications of the NT, there is however a big problem with seeing this as the point at which we find the definitive meaning of the text or the point at which it became Scripture for the church. It had already been Scripture read in church for generations before then. A text without a context is just a pretext for whatever you want it to mean and the original contexts of each of the NT documents is the first century audiences to whom it was sent.

It was the Word of God for those earliest Christians first, before there ever was a collection of Gospels, or Paul’s letters or the Catholic epistles, and since it is the same texts with the same words which later became part of the NT canon its meaning did not suddenly show up in the fourth century A.D., nor for that matter its original significance. The sort of canonical criticism suggested in Nienhuis is largely a-historical or to some degree anti-historical in approach (or later 4^th century historical in approach). It somehow mistakes liberal and radical historical criticism of the NT as either the only sort of critical historical study there is of these texts, or suggests we must simply accept the notion that there are pseudepigrapha (see p. 90) in the NT canon, a suggestion many and perhaps most conservative Protestant and Catholic and Orthodox scholars would rightly reject. As Richard Bauckham and others have made clear, there was a serious problem with pseudepigrapha when it came to the truth claims within a document. As Bart Ehrman demonstrated at length— such documents are forgeries, and there is clear evidence from the second century and later that church leaders rejected such documents as not to be read in church, much less later included in a NT canon.[2] The Pastoral Epistles, for example, were not viewed as such by the early church.

Underlying all the discussions in this volume is the issue of the relationship of Scripture to later church tradition, with various authors suggesting that these are two streams of Christian teaching worth studying and learning from, which is of course true, with some suggesting that the tradition outside the NT canon is in various ways as authoritative as the tradition inside the NT canon. I prefer the statement of my old Princeton Teacher, Bruce Metzger that the church recognized what the Holy Spirit had guided the church to see as its NT Scripture, it did not determine the canon. As such the canon of the NT was to be seen as the norm of all norms which can be supplemented by, amplified by, explained by other traditions, but can’t be supplanted by, corrected by later traditions. Only the NT documents are revelation from God, not the later traditions that can supplement and explain such revelation.[4]

Prof. Parsenios says that the Orthodox tradition never felt it necessary to make a definitive statement about the limits of the NT canon, unlike the Council of Trent. This is perhaps in part because the Protestant movement was born in Europe out of Roman Catholicism, not out of the Orthodox tradition, and the Council of Trent was of course part of the attempt by the Catholic church to counter the Protestant Reformation. Happily, this volume helpfully proves we don’t need to be anathematizing each other anymore. Rather, we can have respectful dialogue, even with significant disagreements and can actually work towards understanding canonical matters better together as brothers and sisters in Christ.

It is the measure of a good book like this one that it teases the mind into activity thought as C.H. Dodd used to say about Jesus’ parables, and produces vigorous and hopefully helpful responses. I highly recommend this book for that very reason, however much I may disagree with this or that point of the five main contributing writers.

[1] On the issue of the Muratorian fragment being a second century canon list, see not only the article by J. Verheyden listed in the Five Views book in a note on p.47, but also my deconstruction of the later date theory by Hahneman in my, What’s in the Word? (Baylor U. Press, 2009).

[2]. See Ehrman, Forged: Writing in the Name of God, (Oxford, 2012).

[3] The council went on for many years, starting in 1545.

[4] See my lengthy discussion of this issue in Letters and Homilies for Hellenized Christians, Vol. One. (IV Press, 2014).

Into Turkey–Part Thirty-Six

December 22, 2022 By Ben Witherington

Also usually missed by the normal tours is the important little museum of Ephesus, which we will now explore…

On the front outside the museum we see small stone representations of gladiators….

And the usual beautiful flowers..

And giant sarcophagi too big to fit into a small museum…

Inside the museum there are multiple statues of Artemis, who appears in various ways…. probably the items on her chest are breasts, but they could also be eggs…in either case they are symbols of fertility, as she was the goddess of fertility.

There is also a nice small model of the temple of Artemis in the museum…

Probably the emperor that John anathematized in his Revelation was Domitian who indeed persecuted Christians, and sent John himself into exile.

Of the three Flavian emperors (Vespasian his father, then Titus his brother) he was clearly the worst. He was paranoid and finally was done away with.

Here’s a nice bust of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius.. a much better emperor…

This is a sundial, before there were Arabic numbers… so Greek letter mark the divisions of degrees. Below is the symbol of the city of Ephesus on a coin— and the meaning of the word Ephesos, namely bee!

There are some busts of priests and priestesses…

Complete with their party hats on…

There is also a bust of a third century empress…

And more importantly a nice bust of Socrates…

There are the remains of a spectacular frieze rescued from a burnt down house and here is what the sign says it depicts…

Here is a spectacular serving tray…

Below, busts of Eros (looking anything but lustful) and Lysimachus

And one more interesting frieze and a few sides of sarcophagi for good measure….

After all that, we went to a carpet factory where we drank tea and were educated in how a silk worms threads could be turned into a beautiful and expensive carpet, expensive not least because even a small one takes up to 500 man hours to hand make if not more. The big one’s take years, which of course why in America we let machines do the work…. and the product is much inferior, to say the least. First he demonstrates how using a whisk broom and boiling water he can separate the threads from the cocoons (and by the way those worms only eat mulberry leaves if you want any production).Let me be clear, I saw no magic carpets, despite the name of the factory.

There was however one flying object hanging out in the room….

Then the thread is wound up on spindles…

Then the thread is dyed…

Using all natural dyes… e.g. vegetable and other plant dyes…

Then we have the long process of doing the double knot process done in Turkey which makes the weave much more secure than a single knot process, but also much more time consuming… the worker needs a comb like object to bang the threads down once knotted, and a knife to cut the thread as well.

Mostly they are producing wool or wool on cotton carpets, but the silk ones are spectacular and shiny….

It’s time to go visit one of the 2 or 3 biggest tourist attractions in all of Turkey— the ancient site of Ephesus.

Into Turkey– Part Nine

November 25, 2022 By Ben Witherington

Pergamon. This site makes the acropolis in Athens look like a molehill, and it gives new meaning to the phrase nosebleed seats in stadium or theater. You will soon see exactly what I mean. Here are two illustrations of what the site looks like (which by the way takes a ski lift to get to, normally).

Let’s focus on the theater hanging on the side of a cliff first….

To make matters worse, the god of wine, Dionysius had his temple at the bottom right next to the theater, and here are its remains.

Can you imagine a slightly inebriated person trying to walk down those aisles to their seat without killing themselves and falling to the bottom? Imbiber emptor! We’ve already shown you, in one of the previous Istanbul posts, what Pergamon looked like before the German archaeologists carted off the Temple of Zeus lock stock and barrel and set it up in a museum in Berlin. Well this below is what remains of it.

Yes those few perimeter steps and a few others under the trees are all that’s left of a once incredible temple of Zeus. It’s bad enough that an archeologist’s life is constantly in ruins, but then some pilferers from another country and come and steal the best part of the remains! Yikes! Notice the remarkable view of the lower city from here.

Despite the precipitous height of this acropolis the ancients still didn’t feel safe enough so they built very substantial city walls to protect the acropolis and they at least are still remarkably intact.

Over centuries building continued at this site, with some of the latest being Trajan’s decision to build a platform at the very pinnacle of the on top of which he would build a temple and other things. This required no little engineering just to build the platform. Look at these shots…

The last three shots show some of the very substantial under structure that had to be built before one could build anything on top of it.

Before you reached the very top, there was a wide area where the famous Pergamon library once stood, a library pilfered by Marc Anthony to impress Cleopatra, who had the world’s greatest ancient library in Alexandria already. Pergamon was a major center for learning, and it is the place parchment was invented. The word itself is an Anglicized or barbarized version of the ancient name of the city Perg-mon. parch-ment. Parchment was not made from the stalk of reeds like papyrus, and so was an improvement as it was not easy to tear or destroy. It was made from cellulose from tree fibers, or from cotton like material and is more durable than papyrus. More important books and papers tended to be put on parchment once it became readily available, including many of the books and treatises in the Pergamon library. The picture below shows sadly all that is left of where the library was….

Pressing on to the top of the acropolis you can see that Trajan was not interested in building anything small— he wanted huge columns, hugh capitals, huge statues, huge platforms, all demonstrating what a BIG man (with a big ego), he was.

Wait that’s not Trajan, that Mark a pastor from Macon Georgia, a member of my tour group.

The temple was such an undertaking it took two emperors to finish it, Hadrian being the successor of Trajan.

There were also free standing altars as well for sacrifices not related to the emperor cult.

Sparing no expense, only the finest artistry and marble carving would do…

There are also many honorific columns near the top of the acropolis including this one which speaks about Pergamon having the neokoros, that is the privilege of being the temple keeper.

In fact it lists Trajan, and oddly Germanicus, so named for his military victories against the Germans. he may be listed here because he came to Asia Minor and helped set up provinces like Cappadocia. He may have been poisoned like Claudius and in any case he died prematurely in Antioch.

When you get down from the lofty heights to where you catch the ski lift back down the acropolis, there are of course in inevitable tourist trap shops with their books and trinkets and statues of gods no one believes in any more.

I agree with the dog. That stuff just puts me to sleep.

In our next post, we will explore the medical complex outside the lower city of Pergamon, the temple of Asklepius the god of healing, and consider the greatest doctor of his age— Galen, who came from here.