The following offers, in English, brief answers (as requested for the event, slightly expanded) to three questions about my research for Paul within Judaism for an interview being translated into Italian, with special attention to the implications of this approach.

1. Interviewer: We are interested in your perspective on the Apostle Paul, and how you would describe him. What are the key traits highlighted in your research?

My reply:
My research explores the proposition that Paul lived and taught from “within Judaism,” and just as importantly, that those to whom he wrote knew that was the case, and thus interpreted his letters “within Judaism.” This approach represents a significant departure from the way that later “Christian” interpreters read Paul, and most still do; namely, from the premise that he was a “convert” from Judaism who thereafter wrote primarily from “outside of” and “against” Jewish identification and Torah-based Jewish behavioral norms (commonly referred to as “the Law”). For example, they understand Paul’s letters to denounce practices such as circumcision, kosher dietary norms, and calendrical observances like Sabbaths, as well as participation in synagogue gatherings, and also to devalue as meaningless identification as a Jew. My approach (and that of most other Paul within Judaism scholars) argues from the historical premise that there was no Christianity yet, that there was rather a variety of Jewish groups and subgroups with different, including competing views about how to best interpret and practice Torah and regarding messianic expectations and claims, and that Paul’s views, teaching, and community forming activity can be plotted on this Jewish communal social map for the time. From this premise, I argue (again, with most other PwJ scholars) that the recipients of Paul’s letters knew that he practiced a (rigorous, Pharisee like) Jewish way of life (i.e., Torah-based Judaism), and promoted a Jewish way of life (i.e., a Torah-based Judaism) for those (like themselves, whether Jews or non-Jews) convinced by the gospel claims for Jesus.

The traditional approaches operate from the assumption that Paul’s original recipients would have expected him to disparage Judaism and Torah-fidelity for Christ-followers (traditionally named “Christians”)—just as his later Christian interpreters have, and thus to interpret his language accordingly. This traditional and still widely practiced approach is characteristic of scholars no less than preachers and non-specialists who interpret his arguments from the conviction that after his “conversion” Paul opposed Jewish identification and culture (i.e., Torah) as passe and inferior or even harmful for followers of Jesus (i.e., that Paul was anti-Jewish). Moreover, it is often asserted that Christians and Christianity replaced Jews and Judaism (i.e., supersessionism, replacement theology).

Instead, a PwJ approach challenges many features and implications of the familiar ways that later Christian interpreters present Paul’s persona, aims, and messages in terms of a “convert from Judaism to Christianity” who was writing to advance Christianity and distance it from Judaism. In my case, I argue that Paul’s revelation convinced him that the end of the ages the Jewish people (Israel) awaited had begun with the resurrection of Jesus as the Messiah of Israel and Savior of the world. Paul thus believed that Jews (Israel) were about to be free of foreign enslavement and cultural restraints and thus to be able to fully live according to God-given Torah-based ideals. The age of peace (shalom)—when people from all the other peoples (nations) would also be reconciled to the One Creator God of all humankind—had begun, which would soon be recognized by everyone. This conviction, which Paul articulated as the enactment of the ideals celebrated in the Shema Israel (that Israelites should declare to each other that the One God of Israel was also the Only God of all humankind, which would be realized at the end of the ages according to Zecharia 14:9), naturally brought to bear the need to reflect on the role of Torah for guidance and whether to advocate (or not) for proselyte re-identification for the non-Jews persuaded of these Jewish gospel claims, or promote their witness as representatives from the other nations. Attention to this contextual qualification undermines the premises from which the traditional interpretations of Paul proceed, and is central to the project of re-analyzating Paul’s original rhetorical aims “within Judaism.”

To illustrate how Paul’s rhetoric can be approached within Judaism, consider a brief comparison with how most approach the rhetoric of prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah. They had visions that included criticism of Israelites and other rivals, usually leaders, as well as instructions that often foregrounded intentions and ideals like faithfulness and concern for the marginalized while at the same time ostensibly devaluing the role of Temple sacrifices, but they are nevertheless recognized to have upheld Israelite and Jewish ideals and practices rather than to be signaling conversion from them to some other, new religion. Their polemics are understood to be efforts to combat hypocrisy, such as when rituals are maintained but not the social behavioral ideals that they are meant to signify; in other words, they are relative statements with rhetorically recognizable aims, not statements of fact to be universalized. The goal was/is to emphasize that the recipients should be dedicated in heart and action to what the rituals represent—not that they should abandon the rituals. So too Paul’s rhetoric should be understood—to be upholding Israelite/Jewish ideals and practices as well as ritual norms; they are not to be abandoned as obsolete but emphasized as essential to fulfill for the right reasons and in the right ways, that is, according to the guidance of Torah, and thus qualified as they apply to Christ-following Jews versus Christ-following non-Jews.

The rhetoric of such prophetic figures is, without hesitation, interpreted “within Israelitism,” you might say, or, for comparison, albeit anachronistic, “within Judaism.” Similarly, we should read Paul and the Jerusalem-based apostles to have understood themselves to be engaging in an intra-Israelite/intra-Jewish project and thus, without hesitation, approach their rhetoric accordingly, including the need to relativize any polemical statements about Jewish identification and Torah. These statements appear in arguments designed to enhance adherence to Torah-based Jewish ideals among non-Jews in line with a gospel-based perspective versus the perspectives maintained by rivals, whether other Jews and Jewish groups, or the constraints imposed by non-Jews. This commitment logically involved the concomitant responsible to live accordingly (i.e., Jewishly) for Jews like Paul, who announced this “good news” (“gospel”) of reconciliation to the Creator God of humankind to fellow Israelites and non-Jews throughout the world. In this effort, they taught Jewish cultural norms to the other peoples (i.e., “gentiles/non-Jews”) who were turning from their various people’s gods to the Creator God alongside of the Jewish people (Israel), who already worshipped this god as the One.

The non-Jews Paul addressed understood that he sought to guide them to live Jewishly although, at the same time, also to be insisting they remain non-Jews; in effect, that they become culturally “Jew-ish” but not ethnically “Jews.” That proposition was, and still is, confusing for many readers of Paul, because it challenges prevailing ways of categorizing and discussing these matters, including the habit of conflating ethnic identification (in this case, Jew or non-Jew) with cultural behavioral norms (in this case, behaving Jewishly or not). And yet it is widely recognized that a Jew, who can also be referred to nominatively as “Jewish,” can also be referred to adjectively as behaving more or less “Jewish” or, as an adverb, behaving “Jewishly.” So too, properly qualified, we can speak of a non-Jew being or behaving “Jewish” or “Jewishly,” or, perhaps to better avoid confusion, being “jewish” or even “jewish-ish” and behaving “jewish-ishly.” For Paul and his original addressees, who lived “within Judaism” rather than outside of or against Jewishness (although the latter obviously did become the case in later centuries for non-Jew “Christians”), his arguments were understood to represent rhetoric that must be decoded in terms of its intra- and inter-Jewish as well intra- and inter-Roman and other local based cultural contexts. The arguments, including appeals to gospel claims and polemics against undertaking proselyte conversion and those who advocated that course, then can be understood as originally designed to enhance adherence to their particular Jewish movement’s Jewish ideals and practices in contrast to those maintained by rival people and groups, not to express the disparagement toward Jewish ideals and practices per se in the ways that Paul’s later (Christian) interpreters have read them.

Consider this analogy, albeit imperfect. It is widely recognized that there is a difference between a non-Catholic guest gathering with and among Catholics (perhaps because of marriage, proximity, attraction to beliefs or rituals) while believing and behaving Catholically (Catholic-ish) but not entitled to the Catholic sacraments, and a catechumen who completes the rites of passage by which he or she becomes a Catholic, thereafter entitled to partake in the sacraments. Once he or she becomes a Catholic, this person would remain a Catholic even if he or she fails to live as Catholically as he or she perhaps did when a non-Catholic guest. But a non-Catholic does not become a Catholic no matter how much they might act like a Catholic (and no matter how many decades they might do so), apart from completing the requisite rites of passage. (A Catholic can renounce identification as a Catholic, but otherwise some failings are to be expected, for which there are policies and practices to reinstate one in good standing.) The distinction between Catholic initiation rites (completed by the rite of baptism) and Catholic cultural behavioral norms that those who complete initiation are responsible to uphold, is not unlike the issues Paul addresses, that is, he distinguished between the proselyte Jewish initiation rites (completed by males through circumcision) and the Jewish cultural behavioral norms based on Torah to which those thereafter identified as Jews are responsible to uphold. These are different in kind, and should not be conflated, although one would hardly recognize this from reading the familiar interpretations of Paul’s texts.

At the same time, it is important to recognized that, somewhat differently than the comparison just drawn between Catholic norms and Paul’s aims, Paul was bringing non-Jews into Jewish cultural life and practices but, based on his interpretation of the claims of the gospel that the reconciliation of all peoples had begun, he insisted that Christ-following non-Jews remain non-Jews (not undertake the rites of passage by which to become proselyte Jews, symbolized by the synecdoche “circumcision,” by which these rites were completed by males) and that Christ-following Jews remain Jews. Both were to practice Jewish cultural norms, with distinctive responsibilities to which to be faithful that were defined based on their identification in Christ as a non-Jew or Jew. That is different from Catholic policy that one must become a Catholic in addition to behaving culturally like a Catholic to be entitled to the sacraments, or from the missionary impulse to promote that course of action. But this difference is based on a different expectation produced by the gospel when read within Judaism; that is, that not all people are to become Jews/Israelites at the end of the ages that Paul announced to have begun, and yet that the end of the age cultural norms for non-Jews were those defined in Torah and Jewish traditions. A corresponding theoretical case can be imagined in Catholic terms (I am uncertain of the official Church teaching presently): although the Catholic Church might technically maintain that in the present age one must become a Catholic to be saved, one could argue that when the awaited end of the ages arrives according to Catholic expectations, that is, with the return of Christ, then, at that time, although everyone convinced about Jesus would become in effect “Christians” (believers in Christ), not everyone would necessarily become Catholics, and yet everyone would be expected to behave according to the cultural norms that Catholicism idealizes for life in the awaited age (that is, Catholic-ish).

Returning to Paul, I posit that any non-Jews turning to God through Jesus by way of Paul’s influence were joining Jewish communal subgroups (regardless of the actual percentages of Jews and non-Jews involved in these synagogue subgroups), wherein Jewish (i.e., Torah and tradition-based) cultural norms guided communal life. There were many different Jewish interpretations of those norms, which itself creates variety as well as tension and conflict—and confusion.

Indeed, Paul’s (and the other apostles’) policies about to how to incorporate Christ-following non-Jews were confusing not only to those they sought to guide, but also for those who were in contact with them but did not agree with their claims and thus expectations, all the more when they saw those as threats to the prevailing norms and social order (pax). The new policies and practices the Christ-followers (like Paul) introduced, no matter how Jewish, created conflicts, especially with those who were not similarly convinced that what they practiced and promoted was warranted, because they were not similarly convinced that the gospel claims were legitimate (the common theological terms is “justified”). Other Jewish groups and subgroups might be expected to contest such policies and practices for non-Jews if they involved declaring them full members (the sons of Abraham promised to him from the other nations) rather than guests apart from completing the requisite rites of passage, if those Jews and Jewish groups and subgroups were not persuaded of the claims of the gospel to legitimate (justify) a social change that impinged upon themselves. They can be expected to insist that these non-Jews be instructed to undertake the inclusive rites by which to become proselytes or else understand themselves to remain guests, welcome, but not entitled to the identification and associated rights of fellow Jews. Likewise, local non-Jew family, friends, neighbors, and community and empirical leaders, would likely take issue with fellow non-Jews who did not respect and practice the requisite cults and cultural norms based on appeals to ideas that were probably incomprehensible apart from these non-Jews becoming proselyte Jews, even if that too might be met with concern if not also disdain as representative of disloyalty to one’s own family and people group(s). And these are just the kinds of tensions that Paul’s letters seek to address, at least as I read them. I submit that the many reasons for these developments, and the complex situations that this new movement introduced in Roman social life no less than Jewish communal gatherings, are more intelligible when approached from a Paul within Judaism paradigm. This approach allows us to make more probable historical sense of the data, and offers more promising implications for those who seek to apply Paul’s voice to the concerns of our own times.

This messianic movement was not seeking to bring non-Jews into Israel through completion of proselyte transformation, that is, by promoting that they become Jews (members of Israel), but nonetheless sought to bring them into Jewish communal (subgroup) living. This is in some ways a very simple paradigm change based upon distinguishing between opposition to initiation rites related to proselyte conversion, which were not actually enjoined in Torah but represented a “custom [nomos]” becoming normative in Paul’s time for non-Jews seeking to become full members of the Jewish people (i.e., circumcision), and arguments about how Christ following non-Jews as well as Jews should best interpret and observe Torah in light of their convictions about the meaning of Jesus for the present age (i.e., Torah/”Law”). To read Paul’s language according to this paradigmatic shift involves wrestling with these texts and considering new language in order to conceptualize and communicate the results in new directions, because the familiar is, well, familiar, and the familiar language used to discuss Paul’s language has already been shaped by the familiar interpretive decisions that the Paul within Judaism paradigm calls into question.

In short, Paul wrote to non-Jew males that they must not become circumcised (the culminating act of the proselyte ritual). But this has been misread as opposition to Torah; however, circumcision of non-Jews to make them Jews is not enjoined in Torah, so opposition to this custom is not opposition to Torah. Paul claims that his position on this matter actually upholds Torah. This qualification is fundamental to re-evaluating Paul’s rhetoric, but it remains to date almost entirely unrecognized in Pauline studies. If Paul’s opposition was specifically to the rites involved in proselyte conversion (better: transformation), that is, to adult male circumcision of non-Jews already in Christ, as I have argued, then the received Paul of so-called Paulinism, in which the apostles is instead understood to oppose Torah, does not represent the aims or messages of the original apostle Paul. What Paul advocated created—and still creates—confusion. But this confusion can be overcome, when approached from Paul within Judaism premises.

In summary, I submit that the original recipients knew Paul did not oppose observance of Torah, and that he was instructing them how to behave in accordance with Torah norms while remaining non-Jews (i.e., specifically opposing circumcision when it signified completing the custom of proselyte conversion for non-Jew males who were already followers of Jesus); however, later Christian interpreters did not, having lost touch with the original contextual aims of his arguments. It is time to seriously reevaluate the historical, exegetical probabilities, the way that these texts are discussed, and the implications for defining how to best interpret (including, when warranted, to best challenge) the use of the historical Paul’s voice for our time.

2. Interviewer: Which recent research discoveries about Paul have gained significant recognition, and which areas require further development or emphasis?

My Reply:

“Paul within Judaism” research is in the early stages of exploring how Paul’s teachings might reflect Jewish concerns with how to incorporate and teach non-Jews in a Roman first-century context. Many implications are already evident, yet almost certainly there are far more implications than have been realized to date, which extend to historical and exegetical as well as hermeneutical insights. For example, the traditional ways of defining differences between the nascent Christian movement’s beliefs and practices and Jewish ones as if in principle, is immediately called into question. For although the Christ-confessing Jewish subgroups advocated some policies that differed from those of other Jewish groups, in particular the idea to incorporate non-Jews as full members apart from becoming proselyte Jews, they nevertheless justified these policies on terms that other Jews might grant in theory—when the arrival of the awaited age to come was empirically verifiable. In other words, some if not many differences were not based on incompatible theological ideas as much as on different opinions about where humanity was on various interpretations of eschatological timelines, and, in particular, in reaction to the gospel claims that the awaited time has begun. This was, in Paul’s time, an intra- and inter-Jewish debate and rivalry.

In this vein, we can interpret Paul’s opposition to proselyte initiation rituals for his non-Jews (symbolized by adult male “circumcision”) based on the gospel-based eschatological claims noted above for non-Jews in Christ. But his opposition to proselyte initiation rituals like circumcision by these non-Jews is not equivalent to opposing Torah-based behavioral norms for Jews (those circumcised), such as dietary norms and calendrical practices. Moreover, Paul’s letters consistently maintain that non-Jews in Christ adopt Torah-based cultural norms, for example, declaring that the Torah idealizes the practice of love, that living according to human cravings that are selfish or harmful to oneself and others (fruit of the flesh) must be renounced and avoided and instead that one must make the effort to live according to divine ideals such as those enjoined in Torah and Jewish culture, which are listed as the fruit of the spirit (see Gal 5—6 for Paul’s argument). He argued the policy of teaching non-Jews in Christ to remain non-Jews rather than become proselytes in fact upheld Torah, even that it was advantageous for a Jew to be a Jew, but, at the same time, it was disadvantageous for a non-Jew in Christ to become a Jew; indeed, it would represent unfaithfulness to the gospel claims of which they had been persuaded, and thus would negate the advantages that it had already provided them such as the work of God’s spirit among themselves, even miracles.

Although seldom recognized, proselyte conversion for non-Jews, including adult male circumcision to complete these rites, are not enjoined in Torah. Thus, Paul was not opposing Torah when he opposed the circumcision of the non-Jews he addressed. Rather, he was opposing a contemporary innovative interpretation of Torah, a “custom” (a common translation of nomos), not “the Custom,” i.e., Torah. In recent research, I have been re-investigating familiar translations such as of nomos as “Law/Torah,” which instead can signify the specific “custom” of completing proselyte rituals (circumcision), and erga nomou as “the works of the law,” which instead can signify the “customary rites” of proselyte conversion (completed by male circumcision).

Paul within Judaism scholars need to lead the way in exploring new translations and discursive choices that avoid perpetuating the traditional reasoning if we aim to investigate the premise that Paul was promoting Judaism for non-Jews who must remain non-Jews in order to demonstrate that the awaited time when all of the nations would join alongside of Israel was beginning in the present age among the gatherings of Christ-followers.

3. Interviewer: In what ways can research on Paul provide inspiration or critical stimulus for the Church, theology, and broader society today, and how might this be achieved?

My Reply:

Scholars have a responsibility to do history well, to be faithful to those they seek to speak for, regardless of what each believes or prefers that the figure represented, or might mean for their own times. This responsibility, in the case of a figure like the “Apostle” or “Saint” Paul, to whom many look for “divine” guidance, involves the role of qualifying his language in its context. It also involves the responsibility to assess the moral values his language embodies in the interpreter’s own time, and where warranted, to challenge rather than repeat what Paul wrote as if self-evident statements of universal truths to be internalized for guidance and proclamation by later Christians without qualification. This discipline is especially important when the traditional translations, interpretations, and pastoral and liturgical pronouncements have proven to inspire or justify harmful policies and behavior, or can be anticipated to do so.

Scholars must be vigilant about this responsibility, because historically Christian culture has been invested in promoting its own persona based in part on a particular way of reading Paul that involves an essentializing negative contrast with the persona projected onto Jews and Judaism as a foil. This confessionally based bias has permeated Western and in many ways World culture. And this posture toward Jews and Judaism has influenced Christian ways of reasoning about anyone else whom the Christians who developed and maintained these interpretive legacies “othered”—for example, women and people who are not white and LGBTQ+ people and non-Christian people in general, but also often rival Christians they seek to delegitimate, often by accusing them of “Judaizing” (and frequently also declaring that these “others,” like Jews, are inferior and fit for enslavement).

To the degree that Paul within Judaism approaches demonstrate historical probability, they logically bring into serious doubt the received interpretive legacies upon which these traditional cultural ideologies are in several ways dependent. Importantly, as within Judaism scholarly approaches mature (for Paul, but also for interpreting other NT and other early “Christian” literature), this scholarly revolution will likely lead to very different ways forward for (the approximately billion) Christians who look to this literature for guidance, hopefully producing monumental implications for a new, much more promising future for humankind.

In short, “within Judaism” scholarship offers Christians of good will new, more generous and just ways to think about, talk about, and interact with the heretofore often victimized “other,” with powerful, positive implications for everyone their influence affects.