Paul was not a Christian. Wow! That got my attention. From Sunday schools to church homilies to high school Religion classes, I was inundated with the mission and message of Paul: his letters and his missionary journeys. We even drew maps of his journeys and learnt them too. I grew up with Paul embedded in my psyche. I knew him as the chief promoter of Christianity. I hardly knew him as a Jew. He had a conversion experience and that was the genesis of Christianity. That is what I learnt. Just the title of Pamela Eisenbaum’s book hit me like a bombshell. I had to go beyond the cover for this new enlightenment. And, my God, what an enlightenment! But it was one so essential for understanding my faith. As St. Anselm said, “Faith seeks understanding”. This was the understanding I needed.
The author starts with a captivating narrative. Not only was it engaging but it established a timely rationale for her thesis:Paul was not a Christian, his message was misunderstood. The narrative is set in a church visited by the author. It describes her reaction to a testimony given by a Jew who converted to Christianity. His testimony provides the perfect introduction to her book because it captures the tension between Judaism and Christianity. For the author this tension is rooted in the misinterpretation of Paul’s message, which is the reason why Christians view Judaism in a negative light. Unfortunately, this animus bears the seed of anti-semitism.
Eisenbaum’s thesis rests on the “New Perspective”, a proposed approach to reading the letters of Paul. She credits James D. G. Dunn with inventing this phrase to describe a new way of interpreting the letters of Paul. In promoting this new approach Eisenbaum introduces us to the leading scholars whose works on Paul and Judaism are overturning centuries of misinterpretation of Paul stemming from Augustinian-Lutheran influences. In addition to Dunn, she cites the works of E.P. Sanders and Stendhal. The New Perspective opens up a radically new understanding of Paul the man, his mission and his message. By discussing these scholars in her book, Eisenbaum has paved the way for Christians, with the help of these scholars, to engage in deep introspection. Hopefully, such exercise would remove the deeply embedded animus towards Judaism. Her efforts would do the same for members of her faith. And consequently, a bridge would emerge, bringing to fruition Paul’s vision of Jews and Gentiles belonging to one community of God’s people. It is obvious that Eisenbaum shares this vision and her work is dedicated to this end. Her book is the beginning of this task.
How do you bring Jews and Gentiles into the Community of God’s People? In modern term how do you create religious pluralism? The answer is simple. It is understanding. However the task in responding to this question is intellectually tortuous, complex and complicated. Nevertheless, Eisenbaum takes on this daunting task which involves peeling away multiple layers of both the misinterpretation and the masking of Paul’s Jewish identity, formed over two thousand years. She had to wrestle with two giants of Christian theology, St. Augustine and Martin Luther. But it didn’t stop there because unfortunately she had to contend with another two giants of her Jewish faith, Leo Baeck and Martin Buber. Their mistake, according to Eisenbaum, was in adopting the common German Protestant interpretation of St. Paul. Thus, the author’s task is driven by an underlying question that is fundamental to understanding the mission and message of Paul. A prerequisite for both Jews and Christians is to acknowledge the identity of Paul.
It is critical to understand that Paul’s identity is grounded in Hellenistic Judaism, specifically late Second Temple Judaism. For this reason, Eisenbaum delves into fundamental features of Judaism related to Paul and his times. This discussion occurs principally in chapter five of her book. She does such an excellent job delineating the core of Jewish religious thought that long before the end of the book it is clear that the man we know as Paul the promoter of Christianity was no such person, but, truly and essentially, was Paul who obeyed the call to enlighten Gentiles about the One true God. For this reason chapter five may be regarded as pivotal to the thesis of her book.
One concept that is dear to me, one that I struggled with but never resolved is Jews as God’s “Elect”. This is a concept that I passively accepted. It was a part of my Christian heritage that I never questioned. As a teenager I was perplexed by it, but left it as an unresolved matter. Over the years I grew to admire the Jews for their tremendously disaportionate contributions to humanity. Their magnificent contributions in multiple areas of life is so remarkable given the egregious brutal treatment they had to endure in almost every century in the history of ancient and modern human civilization. Notable were the pogroms in Europe(including the Crusades), the Levant and The Russian Empire. But the most horrendous pogrom of all was the Holocaust in the twentieth century. That the Jews were able to survive these multiple threats to their wellbeing and, more importantly, their existence was more than enough to convince me that God had chosen them to be ‘the light of the world’. However, Eisenbaum discussion on “Election” gave me further affirmation of the position I have taken. She did not gloss over any apparent contradictions in this theological concept. She acknowledged that it was problematic for Jewish intellect because, for them, it didn’t resonate with the concept of the One true God Who was the God of all. This was one of the difficulties I had. In facing squarely the problems inherent in the Jewish theology of election, Eisenbaum has given me the theological insight and explanation that I find most palatable.
This book is not just an academic exercise nor does it aim just to correct misconceptions Christians and Jews have about each other’s faith. For Eisenbaum, addressing these misconceptions has ramifications beyond the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. She became aware that her experience as a Jew teaching in a Christian institution paralleled that of Paul as a Jew ministering to Gentiles. The similarity unveiled an insight about Paul’s message that is overlooked by scholars. It was clear to her that Paul’s message pointed toward religious pluralism. It reminds me of a Hindu saying:“Just as all the rivers lead to the one great sea so do all the religions of man lead to the One Great God”. The interaction between Jewish and Christian theologians is a Pauline dream come true. As intimated by Pamela Eisenbaum such cooperations between the two faiths could serve as a model for religious pluralism in our world. Just imagine if this were to come to pass. Then we would be able to sing with Louis Armstrong:“What a wonderful world, oh yea”. To that I say, amen.
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Thiago
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