I'm just now discovering this work. Thanks for this analysis of Paul. Of all the "anti-Paul" essays I have read your piece is the most intelligent. Sometimes I wonder if Paul is sometimes writing in a code only the members of an oppressed community would get. Any of these letters could have been intercepted by the police. Maybe he included things like is Romans 13 to defuse suspicion. Kind of like the way an enslaved person might communicate to another a reminder always to respect and obey the master (wink, wink). Just a thought. Thanks again.
Thank you, friend! Your readership and thoughtful dialogue is greatly appreciated.
While I'm presently working on some historical excavation essays, I mean to come back to a number of "dangling threads" within my analysis of Paul. It's far, far from complete, no question, though it dawned on me that the rest of my theses on him wouldn't make sense until the "playing field" of the first century was better developed.
A wonderful scholar with whom I (lovingly) spar on this question is Brandy Mitchell. She's genuinely brilliant, rigorous, and someone whose work should be treated as critically valuable. (Her page is https://loudme93.substack.com/.) She and I have an ongoing discourse over the exact point you're making and, I believe, she's in the middle of a landmark production that I think can re-situate Pauline studies into a more authentic vision of his teachings, orthopraxy, and how scholars can and should regard his contributions today. She's the kind of thinker whose debates produce far more light than heat.
That said, she and I differ on this question and I suspect the two of us will be respectfully discoursing these questions for some time. I'm looking forward to her next response as, I believe, she's gonna land some real body blows on my arguments and I can't wait to see how deeply she can paint me into a corner. It should make for a great read for anyone interested in this question.
Stay tuned! Or, better yet, jump into the fray with us!
I love how you challenge my understanding of Torah. I find myself polemically aligned with Paul against the weaponization of doctrine, which is how I've always understood "the law." I do agree fundamentally that trust in the divine voice provides a deeper righteousness than we can receive from scrupulously following rules.
But I do think that Paul turned a movement rooted energetically in real relationship and embodied community into an argument about words. Once it became about words on a page, it was lost. The ebyonim didn't need a book of words; they had the embodied mercy.
One thing that's interesting though about Paul is he prophesies about "the despised ones who bring to nothing the things that are" in 1 Corinthians 1:28. That's been a core prophecy for me. So it's interesting to me that ebyonim and exouthenemona (the word Paul uses) have almost identical meanings.
I presume that Jesus is most present with the pueblo crucificado and I am called to sit at the feet of the despised ones and let them be my judges (Paul says that too in a verse that gets garbled in English translation).
I very much resonate with your judgment of Paul's legacy even though there are aspects of his perspective that have been very important to my journey. And I think I can say with confidence that he will not rest until the harm of his legacy has been healed.
Like the first steward of the Ebyonim, Ya’akov ha-Tzaddik, said:
“True devotion to the Guardian manifests in this way: to dwell among the widows, the orphans, and the vulnerable, being present with them in their sufferings.”
The insurrection of mercy that Yehoshua’s campaign represents, both then and still today, require the infrastructure of support and equity and justice that are outlined in excruciating detail within the Torah.
This is literally the only reason to continue to point to the Torah: through rigorous application of its teachings, the declarations of YHWH, as Moses had received them, as Yehoshua explained them, as James and the apostles restored them.
If there had been a better way, at least any better ways known to Yehoshua at the time, I feel very confident and suggesting that he would have pointed to that instead.
And even in pointing, demanding a restoration, of Torah he made his own reasoning crystal clear: it exists solely to safeguard and sustain the lives of those who bear breath in their lungs. Everything else is commentary.
I still think we need a reboot. I just think we need to look at what we've learned over the last 2000 years and figure out covenant that works in our context today. And I think part of it for me is that the new covenant needs to be contextual and hyperlocalized instead of coming in the form of universal edicts that everyone has to follow exactly the same without regard for all the idiosyncrasies of context. It's the abstraction of universal edict that I can't go along with.
I'm just now discovering this work. Thanks for this analysis of Paul. Of all the "anti-Paul" essays I have read your piece is the most intelligent. Sometimes I wonder if Paul is sometimes writing in a code only the members of an oppressed community would get. Any of these letters could have been intercepted by the police. Maybe he included things like is Romans 13 to defuse suspicion. Kind of like the way an enslaved person might communicate to another a reminder always to respect and obey the master (wink, wink). Just a thought. Thanks again.
Thank you, friend! Your readership and thoughtful dialogue is greatly appreciated.
While I'm presently working on some historical excavation essays, I mean to come back to a number of "dangling threads" within my analysis of Paul. It's far, far from complete, no question, though it dawned on me that the rest of my theses on him wouldn't make sense until the "playing field" of the first century was better developed.
A wonderful scholar with whom I (lovingly) spar on this question is Brandy Mitchell. She's genuinely brilliant, rigorous, and someone whose work should be treated as critically valuable. (Her page is https://loudme93.substack.com/.) She and I have an ongoing discourse over the exact point you're making and, I believe, she's in the middle of a landmark production that I think can re-situate Pauline studies into a more authentic vision of his teachings, orthopraxy, and how scholars can and should regard his contributions today. She's the kind of thinker whose debates produce far more light than heat.
That said, she and I differ on this question and I suspect the two of us will be respectfully discoursing these questions for some time. I'm looking forward to her next response as, I believe, she's gonna land some real body blows on my arguments and I can't wait to see how deeply she can paint me into a corner. It should make for a great read for anyone interested in this question.
Stay tuned! Or, better yet, jump into the fray with us!
Thanks for responding. Yes you introduced me to Dr. Mitchell yesterday and I have been enthusiastically reading both of you. Blessings.
I love how you challenge my understanding of Torah. I find myself polemically aligned with Paul against the weaponization of doctrine, which is how I've always understood "the law." I do agree fundamentally that trust in the divine voice provides a deeper righteousness than we can receive from scrupulously following rules.
But I do think that Paul turned a movement rooted energetically in real relationship and embodied community into an argument about words. Once it became about words on a page, it was lost. The ebyonim didn't need a book of words; they had the embodied mercy.
One thing that's interesting though about Paul is he prophesies about "the despised ones who bring to nothing the things that are" in 1 Corinthians 1:28. That's been a core prophecy for me. So it's interesting to me that ebyonim and exouthenemona (the word Paul uses) have almost identical meanings.
I presume that Jesus is most present with the pueblo crucificado and I am called to sit at the feet of the despised ones and let them be my judges (Paul says that too in a verse that gets garbled in English translation).
I very much resonate with your judgment of Paul's legacy even though there are aspects of his perspective that have been very important to my journey. And I think I can say with confidence that he will not rest until the harm of his legacy has been healed.
“If you have ears to hear, listen up!”
“… they had embodied mercy.” amen to this!
Like the first steward of the Ebyonim, Ya’akov ha-Tzaddik, said:
“True devotion to the Guardian manifests in this way: to dwell among the widows, the orphans, and the vulnerable, being present with them in their sufferings.”
The insurrection of mercy that Yehoshua’s campaign represents, both then and still today, require the infrastructure of support and equity and justice that are outlined in excruciating detail within the Torah.
This is literally the only reason to continue to point to the Torah: through rigorous application of its teachings, the declarations of YHWH, as Moses had received them, as Yehoshua explained them, as James and the apostles restored them.
If there had been a better way, at least any better ways known to Yehoshua at the time, I feel very confident and suggesting that he would have pointed to that instead.
And even in pointing, demanding a restoration, of Torah he made his own reasoning crystal clear: it exists solely to safeguard and sustain the lives of those who bear breath in their lungs. Everything else is commentary.
I still think we need a reboot. I just think we need to look at what we've learned over the last 2000 years and figure out covenant that works in our context today. And I think part of it for me is that the new covenant needs to be contextual and hyperlocalized instead of coming in the form of universal edicts that everyone has to follow exactly the same without regard for all the idiosyncrasies of context. It's the abstraction of universal edict that I can't go along with.