Who Made Early Christianity? American Lectures on the History of Religions This volume is the eighteenth to be published in the series of American Lectures on the History of Religions for which the American Council of Learned Societies, through its Committee on the History of Religions, assumed responsibility in 1936, and for which the American Academy of Religion assumed responsibility in 1995. Under the program the Committee from time to time enlists the services of scholars to lecture in colleges, universities, and seminaries on topics in need of expert elucidation. Subsequently, when possible and appropriate, the Committee arranges for the publication of the lectures. Other volumes in the series are Martin P. Nilsson, Greek Popular Religion (1940); Henri Frankfort, Ancient Egyptian Religion (1948); Wing-tsit Chan, Religious Trends in Modern China (1953); Joachim Wach, The Comparative Study of Religions, Christianity (1959); Robert Lawson Slater, World Religions and World Community (1963); Joseph M. Kitagawa, Religion in Japanese History (1966); Joseph L. Blau, Modern Varieties of Judaism (1966); Morton Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament (1971); Philip H. Ashby, Modern Trends in Hinduism (1974); Victor Turner and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (1978); Annemarie Schimmel, As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam (1982); Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (1988); W. H. McLeod, The Sikhs: History, Religion, and Society (1989); Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (1995); Wendy Doniger, The Implied Spider (1998); and Bruce B. Lawrence, New Faiths, Old Fears: Muslims and Other Asian Immigrants in American Religious Life (2002). Who Made Early Christianity? THE JEWISH LIVES OF THE APOSTLE PAUL JOHN G. GAGER Columbia University Press New York Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Copyright © 2015 Columbia University Press All rights reserved E-ISBN 978-0-231-53937-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gager, John G. Who made early Christianity? : the Jewish lives of the Apostle Paul / John G. Gager. pages cm. — (American lectures on the history of religions ; 18) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-231-17404-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-231-53937-1 (e-book) 1. Paul, the Apostle, Saint—Relations with Jews. 2. Identification (Religion) 3. Christianity and other religions —Judaism. 4. Judaism—Relations—Christianity. 5. Christianity—Origin. I. Title. BS2506.3.G34 2015 225.9′2—dc23 2014044886 A Columbia University Press E-book. CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at cup- [email protected]. Cover Design: Jordan Wannemacher Cover Image: Torah shrine. Courtesy of Yale University Art Gallery, Dura Europos Collection. References to websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. CONTENTS Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION 1. WAS THE APOSTLE TO THE GENTILES THE FATHER OF CHRISTIAN ANTI-JUDAISM? 2. THE APOSTLE PAUL IN JEWISH EYES: HERETIC OR HERO? 3. LET’S MEET DOWNTOWN IN THE SYNAGOGUE: FOUR CASE STUDIES 4. TWO STORIES OF HOW EARLY CHRISTIANITY CAME TO BE 5. TURNING THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN: AN ANCIENT JEWISH LIFE OF JESUS 6. EPILOGUE Notes Index ACKNOWLEDGMENTS THESE chapters grew out of a series of lectures delivered in Atlanta, Georgia, in April of 2013. Sponsored by the American Academy of Religion (AAR), the lectures form part of the series, The American Lectures in the History of Religions. My lectures were delivered at Agnes Scott College, Georgia State University, Spelman College, Morehouse College, and Emory University. My hosts for these lectures were Jack Fitzmier, Executive Director of the AAR, and Lou Ruprecht of Georgia State University. Without their friendship and constant support, these lectures and chapters would not have happened. I am deeply grateful to them. Their efforts went well beyond what was necessary. I must also express my gratitude to the students from the various institutions who attended my lectures and raised important questions in our discussions. The work reflected in these chapters reaches back over many years and is indebted to many friends and colleagues in the Department of Religion at Princeton. Martha Himmelfarb and Leora Batnitzky have shown encouragement at every stage of my work. Simi Chavel, Naphtali Meshel, and Azzan Yadin-Israel (Rutgers) demonstrated outstanding patience and knowledge as we worked through various versions of the Toledot Yeshu. Peter Schäfer, my distinguished colleague for many years, served as both mentor and helpful critic. He shared generously from his enormous knowledge of ancient Judaism. Michael Meerson has proved to be a reliable resource at many points. Jeffrey Stout has been a constant companion. Undergraduate students, reaching back to 1968 at Princeton and elsewhere, have provided a constant source of inspiration. This is also the place to recognize the work of my graduate students, who have become my teachers in this prolonged project. In the world of the academy, there can be no greater joy than seeing one’s students flourish as distinguished scholars and teachers. Two deceased scholars—Krister Stendahl and Lloyd Gaston—have exercised an enormous impact on my understanding of the apostle Paul. It is impossible to overstate what their work and friendship has meant to me over many years. I must also recognize the work of two Jewish scholars, neither of whom was known to me personally, whose work on Paul deserves far more attention than it has received—Jacob Taubes and Michael Wyschogrod. I would be remiss not to acknowledge the support I have received from various Israeli colleagues, to whom I am grateful—David Satran, Guy Stroumsa, Israel Yuval, Hillel Newman, Maren Niehoff, Yair Furstenberg, and Yaacov Deutsch. I must also acknowledge the two anonymous reviewers of my manuscript. They read it with great care and understanding. Their criticisms and suggestions aimed at making this a better book, not a different one. I can only hope that I have not disappointed them in following their proposals. Some of the material in these chapters has appeared in earlier publications. Portions of chapter 1 appeared in my book Reinventing Paul (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). Much of chapter 4 appeared in my essay “The Rehabilitation of Paul in Jewish Tradition,” in “The One Who Sews Bountifully”: Essays in Honor of Stanley K. Stowers, ed. C. Hodge, S. Olyan, D. Ullicci, and E. Wasserman (Providence: Brown University Press, 2013), 29–41. It is used here by permission. Portions of chapter 5 have appeared in various earlier publications, as indicated in the endnotes. Finally, I dedicate this book to my beloved children—Kristin, Peter, and Andrea. They make living and working worthwhile. INTRODUCTION The vanquished have given their laws to the victors. —SENECA, ON SUPERSTITION SENECA, the aristocratic Roman philosopher, penned these words early in the first century CE. A variant of the saying was already in circulation in Rome; it expressed Roman anxiety over the pervasive Greek influence in every aspect of Roman life—art, architecture, mythology, philosophy, and more. Rome had defeated Greece on the battlefield but had been swamped by Greek culture at home.1 Here Seneca deploys the saying to express his dismay at the spread of Judaism among Romans, a fact well illustrated by numerous Roman authors of the time. Jews had come to Rome as slaves in the first century BCE, but were now attracting Romans in disconcerting numbers. For us, the saying may serve as a useful reminder of Judaism’s social and political status in the period that will concern us—from the fourth century CE to the modern era. Two points are essential: first, by the end of the first century CE, the vast majority of Jews lived in the Diaspora, outside of what the Romans had renamed Syria Palaestina; and second, from the time of Constantine (d. 337 CE), the first Christian emperor, onward, Rome was increasingly a Christian empire—he embraced the new faith around 312 CE and Theodosius I (d. 395 CE) adopted it as the official religion of the empire. Before that time, Jews and Christians had existed as religious minorities in the Mediterranean world, with Jews very much advantaged by virtue of their great antiquity. The cultural space that Christianity sought to occupy as it expanded beyond its Palestinian birthplace was already occupied by an older, well-established, and legally protected biblical faith. As shown in the following chapters, Jewish synagogues and their communities were prominent features on the cultural landscape of the Roman world and their demography included Gentiles as well as Jews. Jews in the Diaspora continued to occupy that