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In my reading today of Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah, Jacob Neusner critiques E.P. Sanders’ classic of the 1970′s, Paul and Palestinian Judaism. Sanders’ book played a big role in launching the “new perspective” of New Testament studies, which reacted against the tendency of many Christian New Testament scholars to assert that Paul was rebelling against Jewish legalism in his emphasis on God’s grace.
The new perspective’s position was (1.) that (contrary to Christian stereotypes) Judaism was not legalistic, but believed in God’s grace, and (2.) that Paul did not leave Judaism because he felt burdened by its demand that he do good works to earn God’s favor, for, as (1.) says, Judaism’s not even about that. Rather, Paul left Judaism because he held that faith in Christ was necessary for salvation, and Judaism did not share that belief. Moreover, for Sanders, Paul emphasized dying and rising with Christ unto a new life and the inclusion of the Gentiles into God’s community rather than forgiveness from God. In short, as far as Sanders is concerned, Paul himself did not wrestle with a guilt complex amplified by the Jewish Torah, for Paul says in Philippians 3:6 that, prior to his becoming a believer in Christ, he was blameless with regard to the righteousness of the law.
Neusner’s problem with Sanders is that Sanders rips rabbinic texts from their contexts, rather than allowing them to speak within their own literary and historical settings. For Neusner, Sanders is looking at the rabbinic texts with the issue of the New Testament in mind, when many of them came after the time of the New Testament, meaning they were speaking to a different historical context from that of the New Testament. Moreover, Neusner seems to be saying that Sanders is pulling from different rabbinic texts to create a picture of Judaism, without respecting those texts’ meaning in their own contexts.
But Sanders looks at a variety of Jewish texts, both from Israel’s pre-70 and post-70 periods. Sanders shows that covenantal nomism—the notion that God saved Israel by grace, but expects her to obey—was a common motif throughout the history of Judaism, both before and after the temple was destroyed.
