Читать книгу Paul Among the Gentiles: A "Radical" Reading of Romans - Jacob P. B. Mortensen - Страница 15

Paula Fredriksen is primarily known for two things in her scholarly work: her work on the problem of the historical Jesus,2 and her work on Augustine.3 In her work on Augustine, she has given voice to a ‘softer’ and more ‘enlightened’ version of Augustine’s relationship to the Jews.4 According to Fredriksen, Augustine was not anti-Judaistic,5 but should be positioned cautiously within a proper and nuanced discussion between Christian theologians of the church, and his Manichean opponents. In her work on the historical Jesus, Fredriksen worked to contextualize Jesus in Second Temple Judaism as an apocalyptic prophet,6 instead of framing him as a Christian saviour. In one of her articles, she states: ‘Jesus was a Jew of his time rather than a left-leaning liberal of ours’.7

In Fredriksen’s work on both the historical Jesus and on Augustine, she has focused specifically on anti-Jewish elements and how to avoid those in contemporary scholarship.8 Even though the main aspect of her research does not concern Paul, Fredriksen has managed to calibrate her scholarly work about Jesus and Augustine to the field of Pauline studies, since it also concerns early or formative Christianity. The consequence of this is that the positions expressed in her work on the historical Jesus and Augustine also becomes valid in relation to ‘Paul the Jew’. Paul was and remained a Jew. He did not ‘create’ a new religion (Christianity), and he did not criticize Judaism from a position ‘outside’ Judaism. In her article ‘Judaism, The Circumcision of Gentiles, and Apocalyptic Hope: Another Look at Galatians 1 and 2’, Fredriksen considers the Galatian controversy in the history of Pauline interpretation:

Paul’s position in this controversy – that salvation in Christ is through ‘grace’ and not through ‘the works of the law’ – has served for centuries as the fundamental statement of the difference between Christianity and Judaism. … Our [theological] interpretive context for Galatians is the birth of Christianity; theirs [Paul and his Jewish co-workers] was scriptural – that is Jewish – hopes and expectations in the face of the approaching End of Days.

Fredriksen’s intent is to work more historically than theologically: She wants to determine what Judaism was at the time of Jesus and Paul, so that she can understand Jesus and Paul from their background in Second Temple Judaism.

One of the advantages of Fredriksen’s work for the radical perspective is her focus on the eschatological situation of Paul and his congregations. By drawing on the idiom of Jewish restoration theology concerning the return from Babylon and the experience of redemption from sin, evil, and exile, Fredriksen establishes a plausible social and religious context for Paul’s mission and work. The Jews at the time of Paul who participated in this restoration movement were expecting the twelve tribes to be restored, the people to be gathered back to the Land, the Temple and Jerusalem to be restored and made splendid, the Davidic monarchy to be restored, and God’s kingdom to be established.9 And in this splendid restoration, Fredriksen identifies a certain part to be played by the Gentiles. For one thing, the Gentile nations will be destroyed, defeated, or in some way subjugated to Israel. But another stream within the restoration thinking concerns the eschatological inclusion of Gentiles. Within this stream of restoration theology, the Gentiles participate in Israel’s redemption. They stream to Jerusalem and worship the God of Jacob together with Israel (cf. Isa 2:2–4; Mic 4:1ff.). On God’s mountain, the Gentiles will eat together with Israel (Isa 25:6), and as the Jews leave the lands of their dispersion, Gentiles will accompany them (Zech 8:23). According to Fredriksen, it is crucial that these Gentiles remain Gentiles and do not undergo conversion and circumcision. They are to be saved as Gentiles, and do not, eschatologically, become Jews. These Gentiles, then, were the ones to whom Paul addressed his gospel, and who made up his eschatological congregations.