The legacy of the traditional Reformed reading of Paul’s presumed polemic against legalism and works-righteousness has been a largely — if not wholly — negative view of the piety of first-century Judaism. This is thought to find further evidential support in Jesus’ stringent critique of the Pharisees and teachers of the law and more generally of ‘the Jews’ in the Fourth Gospel. A longstanding presupposition that two competing religious systems are being portrayed and contrasted in the NT — a new and good ‘Christianity’ versus an old and bad ‘Judaism’ —has become deeply embedded in both academic and popular Evangelical discourse. ‘Pharisee’ and ‘Pharisaic’ have become commonplace disparagements, synonymous with wilful hypocrisy; while ‘the Jews’ are held responsible for rejecting and murdering the Messiah.
Christianity has taken as somehow ‘obvious’ Judaism’s destiny to be the ‘dark cloud’ against which the light of Christ is enabled to shine all the more brightly.
Modern readers are often blindsided by the assumption that what is under debate is simply a universal and timeless clash between salvation by good works and human effort versus the grace, faith and promise of the Gospel.
However, recent scholarship centred in the so-called ‘New Perspective on Paul’ offers a profound challenge to these longstanding supersessionist assumptions concerning the true nature of first-century Judaism and Jewish-Gentile relations. Amongst its findings are an awareness that there were at the time a number of identifiable groups holding passionate yet somewhat divergent views on what constituted authentic Judaism, of which the early Jesus-following movement was but one. Nascent ‘Christianity’ was, from its adherents’ perspective, simply ‘Judaism’. Paul never knowingly left something called ‘Judaism’ for something called ‘Christianity’ (a term he never employed). Similarly, Jesus’ own critique was not an external Christian condemnation of an apostate Judaism, but one Jew contesting with others, internally within Judaism, in the polemic of the day, on the proper understanding of the nature, character and purposes of the God of Israel.
This paper outlines the significance of this new research for the Christian understanding of Judaism and Jewish-Gentile relations in NT times, challenging traditional Reformed assumptions, leading to a more sympathetic, generous and kindly Christian hospitality towards Jewish people and our shared historic faith.
The full paper is attached to this post.
