Apostle Paul, Jew: But What Sort?

So the question Mike Bird is asking in his richly footnoted and discussion-centered new combination of various studies: An Anomalous Jew: Paul among Jews, Greeks, and Romans. The study combines studies of Scholarship on Paul, what Paul’s view of salvation means in the Jewish world, how Paul was always both an apostle to gentiles and Jews, how Galatians proves Paul was both salvation-historical as well as apocalyptic, the origins of “Paulinism” in the famous incident at Antioch (Gal 2:11–14), and how Paul is to be related to the Roman empire. Some of these chapters are brand new studies while others are reworked, revised and expanded studies previously published.

That opening study on scholarship is worth the price of the book, for it sketches how to connect Paul to Judaism. In fact, though it would be a stretch for many seminarians this is a good place to be introduced to the discussion about Paul in modern scholarship. If that is too much, try his text book-ish A Bird’s-Eye View of Paul.

Here are his types of Pauls one finds in scholarship today:

1. A former Jew
2. A transformed Jew
3. A faithful Jew
4. A radical Jew
5. An anomalous Jew

The anomaly called Paul combines an apocalyptic reading of Jesus’ death and resurrection that led Paul to re-read the OT in light of Christ, but it also yielded a different praxis redrawn around Jesus as Messiah and this praxis created the church that saw itself as renewed Israel of the inaugurated kingdom. For Bird, we need “more” to explain Paul rather than less, and too many proponents of the first four drop too much from the picture to comprehend this more-ness of Paul.

If you read this carefully — and Bird often requires careful readings — you see the back and forth of the salvation historical and the apocalyptic as well as both continuity and discontinuity. I found this dialectic and both-and throughout the first few chapters.

Bird’s Paul is closer to the “old” or Reformation Paul than to the new perspective, though he might disagree. He’s both in some ways, but he fights the new’s lack of (I’ll say it, Augustinian) anthropology while he fights the old’s lack on understanding Judaism and the themes of continuity. He whacks the apocalyptic standard bearers a few times for too much Barth and Torrance and not enough Judaism and apocalyptic literature.

He also contends Paul was originally shaped by a mission to Jews that spilled over into gentile mission but from the Apostolic Conference in Jerusalem on Paul became increasingly an apostle to the gentiles. Yes, the dating of Galatians (he’s a N Galatian theorist; he sees Galatians 2 and Acts 15 as the same) factors into this theory but his theory promotes a gradual move into the gentile focus while an earlier dating of Galatians would see a more sudden gentile focus. The issue here is if Paul was an apostle of Christ to both Jews and gentiles most of his life or whether he was far more committed to gentiles much earlier. He thinks Paul’s relationship to the Antioch church was wounded permanently by the incident at Antioch, though I have to say I see not a shred of evidence in that in either Galatians 2 or Acts. Paulinism then is the antithesis of Christ and Torah when it comes to the salvation and standing of gentile believers. On this Bird sounds decisively pro-Hengel and not a little Lutheran at times.

Which is to say, Paul is the anomaly that Bird himself is!

His study on Paul and Romans and empire expands on the study he did for Joe Modica and me in our book: Jesus is Lord, Caesar is Not.