Apologetics
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 60, No. 2 – Spring 2018
Managing Editor: W. Madison Grace II
By E.P. Sanders. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016. 468 pages. Paperback, $39.00.
Among his other work, E.P. Sanders has produced three works widely recognized in New Testament studies: Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977); Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (1983); and Jesus and Judaism (1985). Sanders has influenced New Testament studies by bringing Judaism to new light for Christianity with his coinage of “covenantal nomism” to describe the Jews’ active participation in the covenant in obedience to righteousness as opposed to the commonly held view that reduces Judaism to mere legalism. Sanders has aimed at understanding Jews and their Judaism. This recent volume entitled Comparing Judaism and Christianity is a collection of twenty-two essays that derive from this central thread of Sanders’s work.
Worth noting from the onset is that more than half of these essays have been published previously, and ten essays from this collection have only been presented in various papers and lectures. The first essay that serves as the introduction is also entitled “Comparing Judaism and Christianity,” an autobiography of what led Sanders to compare the two religions. Without much flare or embellishment, the account stays grounded, revealing how his rather uneventful childhood and education led to some very fortunate encounters with institutions and scholars. These encounters shaped Sanders’s love for and understanding of Jewish history and Talmudic studies.
After this introductory essay, the rest of the articles are divided into three parts: “Early Judaism and the Jewish Law”; “Paul, Judaism, and Paulinism”; and “Inner and Outer in the Study of Religion.” The first essay of Part I, “The Origins of the Phrase ‘Common Judaism,’” gives further thought to covenantal nomism, which depicts the essence of Judaism as loyalty to the law for sustaining a covenantal relationship with God. The essay proposes the need to recognize “common Judaism” by emphasizing the essence of practice and belief.
The next essay, “Covenantal Nomism Revisited,” states the tenets of covenantal nomism, which includes: (1) God has chosen Israel, (2) God gave the law, which is (3) God’s promise to maintain the election of his people, along with (4) the mandate to obey. Sanders places the focus of salvation to be the result of God’s mercy rather than human achievement. The next two essays explore similar patterns of Judaism in other Jewish communities, such as the Qumran and synagogue communities in the ancient world.
Part II is an examination of Paul in his beliefs and writings. There are eight essays in this section. The first of these, entitled “The Covenant as a Soteriological Category and the Nature of Salvation in Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism,” shows that all Palestinian Jewish literature, except for IV Ezra, points to membership in the covenant and keeping the law toward salvation. IV Ezra expresses doubt in the covenant’s ability to save and sees only a limited few who are saved. In Hellenistic Judaism, there is a more mystical element of Hellenism where salvation is realized through a rite or vision.
The following essay, entitled “God Gave the Law to Condemn,” is one that examines providence in Paul’s theology and arrives at the conclusion that Paul intentionally “picked on” the law as God’s way of condemning the world. The essay “Literary Dependence in Colossians” shows Colossians to be dependent on Paul’s authentic letters, especially in the paraenetic material found in Romans and Galatians.
In “Was Paul a Prooftexter?” Sanders shows evidence of Paul’s rabbinical training, where memorization was critical for his style of argumentation as an ancient Jew. With the essay “Did Paul Break with Judaism?” Sanders concludes that Paul did not, although he did create a division within Judaism based on the new condition of entry into the in-group through faith in Christ. In “Did Paul’s Theology Develop?” Sanders answers with an overwhelming “yes” in the areas of eschatology, inner spiritual life, and suffering/imitation/sharing, particularly in 1 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians. The essay entitled “Paul’s Jewishness” reconstructs Paul’s Jewish education. This education focused on memorization, perhaps one reason for Paul’s conflating quotations in his writings. In “Jewish Association with Gentiles and Galatians 2:11–14,” Sanders investigates Gentile relations with Jews regarding impurity.
Finally, Part III consists of chapters 14–22. These were lectures and presentations covering topics within Judaism and Christianity: fruit, works, tithing, hypocrisy, and inclusion into the inner circles of community.
As Sanders noticed growth in Paul’s theology in one of his essays, this collection is also a growth of Sanders’s thought on Paul’s hermeneutics, training, rearing, and role as a rabbi. The autobiographical essay at the beginning shows the trajectory that views Sanders’s work from the standpoint of his training and his desire to uncover the reality of Judaism in Paul’s time—that Judaism was not a culture of works-based faith nor a religious institution of legalism. The fruit of Sanders’s labor is his handling of primary sources and his honest aim to place Paul in his Jewish surroundings.
Moderate in his theological orientation, Sanders’s positions are largely in line with his mainline Protestant background. This most recent essay collection offers a range of ideas to explore Paul’s background as a rabbi and his context as a Diaspora Jew, especially considering what Sanders has later coined “common Judaism” in Paul’s time.
