Recherche – Detailansicht
Ausgabe: | November/2020 |
Spalte: | 1075–1077 |
Kategorie: | Neues Testament |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Ehrensperger, Kathy |
Titel/Untertitel: | Searching Paul. Conversations with the Jewish Apostle to the Nations. Collected Essays. |
Verlag: | Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2019. XI, 458 S. = Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 429. Lw. EUR 149,00. ISBN 978-3-16-155501-5. |
Rezensent: | František Ábel |
This volume of essays joins a growing number of studies and vol-umes that focus on Paul the apostle from a Jewish perspective and reintroduce him to his Jewish context within the diverse world of Second Temple Jewishness as well as of Graeco-Roman antiquity in a broader sense. This approach helps us to better understand the complex and divergent nature of the early Christ-movement in its various strands, and moreover, conducts researchers open-mindedly in the process of perceiving and interpreting Paul’s message and the Jewishness of the time as it was, without negative impressions or anti-Jewish prejudices.
The book is structured into six parts, including the Introduc-tion, where the author, Professor Kathy Ehrensperger, one of the leading and world-respected scholars engaging in Pauline research, introduces and clarifies in more detail the presuppositions and criteria which guide and shape her approach to and conversations with Paul within the context of contemporary scholarship. The core of the book contains nineteen individual essays, not counting the introductory one; these were composed over the years 2007–2018 and represent, as E. states at the beginning, »trajectories of an exploratory journey with and through the literary traces Paul the Jewish apostle to the nations has left in the letters available to us.« These essays are presented thematically, not in the chronological order in which they were originally published. The choice of the essays overall is well thought-out, covering the most significant aspects of Paul’s theologizing, although it is evident that this kind of survey conversation is, and has to be, a continuing process.
In the core of the book, which begins in the second part (Gender and Traditions), E. focuses on the significance and importance of taking into consideration all the specifics and processes of everyday life and the socio-cultural and political dynamics with which Paul and the primary addressees of his letters were involved. In this context, special attention must be given to the process of embodiment of Paul’s announcement of the Christ-event and its implications for the various layers of daily life of the addressees, who were people of diverse contexts living around the Eastern Mediterranean and at Rome, the center of Roman Empire. This embodiment occurred not in abstraction, but with particular regard to all the specifics and features of daily life such as ethnicity, gender, social status includ- ing power relations and social categorization, and traditions, as well as differing perspectives of the Jewish symbolic and social world, which allowed for particularity and diversity, and the Roman imperial honor system (cursus honorum) with its dominant élite ideal as a paradigm of human striving for the incorporation of the subjugated nations, which from the Roman imperial point of view was the only way to participate in the benefits of civilization.
All these things, as part and parcel of current Pauline research, are closely related to the various aspects of cultural translation of the apostle’s Jewish message into different cultural environment, the topic that E. engages with in the third part of the book (Among Greeks and Romans), and in the fourth part of the book (The Lan-guage of Belonging) with its emphasis on the necessity of understanding the texts of New Testament corpus, including Paul’s message, in historical context, namely Jewish notions and traditions in the Mediterranean Graeco-Roman world of the first century CE, as the only proper and unbiased approach to reception history and the formulation of Christian self-understanding in today’s pluralistic, interreligious world without prejudices against Jewish traditions and Jewish people. In various contexts, E. emphasizes the com-plexity of the process of transmitting Paul’s Jewish message into the network of various symbolic and social worlds of non-Jews, with their different cultural encyclopedias and codes. In this regard, the current findings of research into intercultural interaction and sociolinguistics offer Pauline scholarship especially helpful tools for a new paradigm for interpreting Paul and his message in the context of the Roman Empire.
All these significant aspects gain more weight in particular contexts of the contents of Paul’s letters. Therefore, in the fifth part of the book (Romans), E. focuses on the specifics of Paul’s communication and interaction with his addressees, particularly in relation to his letter to the Roman Christ-followers. Finally, in the sixth and final part of the volume (Early Reception), E. concludes her »interpretative journey with Paul« with two specific examples of the early reception of his person and message as expressed in I Timothy, one of the Deutero-Pauline letters of the New Testament corpus. E. emphasizes that content analysis of these letters proves that they are embedded in Jewish traditions in relation to early Christ-fol-lowers from the nations, providing insight into the process of the followers’ gradual accommodation to the Roman imperial system in the path of least resistance, but still seeking to be embedded in the essence of Paul’s message and theologizing, holding on to the Jewish identity-shaping ethos, especially the Jewish tradition of social justice.
As a whole, this volume is a remarkable and valuable contribution to the research of Paul and his message in a Jewish context, focusing on the topic from various angles and in interdisciplinary ways, informed by most recent research into the socio-historical, political, and cultural dimensions of the period, and taking into consideration all the attainable specifics and complexities of every-day life in the world of Graeco-Roman antiquity under Roman dominion. The findings presented help perceptive readers better understand the complexities of the historical context within which Paul’s apostolic mission among the non-Jewish nations took place, including its early reception. Despite the ever-present skepticism and underestimation of the Paul within Judaism perspective, in my view an absolutely groundless attitude – one noticeable especially in relation to some of the polemical issues regarding the ongoing conundrums, whether questions of gender (including also feminist perceptions of Paul’s message, traditions, language, identity, and the relation between language and identity, especially in the context of the imperial hegemony), or whether and to what extent Paul might be familiar with the historical Jesus, or similar questions concerning the interpretation of Paul’s message in its historical context – the anthology represents a valuable contribution. Given the diversity of Second Temple Judaism with all its complexities, current scholarship should be cautious when studying Paul and his message, and, rather than remaining within traditional ap-proaches, should explore newer perspectives and pay close atten-tion to the context of Paul’s message itself, including how it was perceived and understood by other Jewish and non-Jewish authors. This volume is the work serving to that end, and thus it is essential for anyone who wishes to learn more about this fascinating collection of ancient texts and the background they shed on Second Temple Judaism, and possibly even on nascent Christianity.