Читать книгу Paul Among the Gentiles: A "Radical" Reading of Romans - Jacob P. B. Mortensen - Страница 22

Caroline Johnson Hodge has worked to determine how to understand the Gentiles in Paul, both from Paul’s own perspective, and from the Gentiles’ perspective.1 Even though Paul and the Gentiles undergo various transformations in identity in his letters, he never separates himself from Judaism, and he intentionally affiliates his Gentile assemblies with Israel, though not as full members. According to Johnson Hodge, the Gentiles are not Jews, and neither are they Christians. But neither are they Gentiles any longer, even though they somehow remain Gentiles. So they are Gentiles, but also not Gentiles. Paul calls them a number of things including ‘beloved’, ‘holy ones’, ‘faithful ones’, ‘brothers and sisters’, ‘heir’, and ‘a new creation’. But what Johnson Hodge struggles to determine is, what then have they become? What are the Gentiles-in-Christ?2

According to Johnson Hodge, the Gentile addressees of Paul’s letters are Gentiles ‘in-between’, who occupy an ‘in-between space’.3 From a historical perspective, as a group, the Gentiles affiliated with Judaism is not difficult to understand. Johnson Hodge explains that there are many examples of Gentile sympathizers with Judaism, as perceived by Jews in the Second Temple period. There is a wide variety of material (texts, inscriptions, etc.) in which Jews report that Gentile sympathizers adopted Jewish practices such as Sabbath observance, making offerings in the temple, attending synagogue services, and so on. But the Jews showed little interest in defining these Gentiles as a group, and neither did they consider the religious status of these Gentiles. According to Johnson Hodge, neither did Paul construct a stable identity for these Gentiles-in-Christ. This means that as a group, they resist classification – at least in an ancient or historical sense. The Gentiles-in-Christ hover around the borders of identities that they are not quite, and Paul’s definitions of them shift with his rhetoric. Consequently, Johnson Hodge offers a model of multiple identities4 and hybridity as an alternative to the idea that ethnic identities are monolithic and one-dimensional. Individuals and groups may embody several ethnic or other identities, situationally emphasizing one while downplaying others. And from this etic perspective, Johnson Hodge manages to describe what the Gentiles-in-Christ are, and how Paul emphasizes different aspects of their ‘situational identity’ in different situations – foregrounding some, while downplaying others, at rhetorically relevant points.