14 - Law as a Problematic Aspect of Religion

Summary

Paul’s writing reflects a variety of attitudes towards Jewish ritual precepts, among them a denial of those precepts’ helpfulness on the path to religious perfection. Paul indeed upholds the unshaken authority of the hard-core moral commandments of the biblical law; yet he is skeptical about the Torah’s ability to enable one to follow its ordinances. Paul’s attitude seems to have been partly conditioned by his projected gentile addressees, whom he saw – in agreement with Hellenistic Jewish tendencies – as those whose path to redemption is not defined by the Torah as the exclusive source of divine law. However, as the paper argues, Paul also had in mind an additional, implicit audience – the Jews within the Jesus movement; his letters therefore were to speak to that audience too. Keeping in mind that “hidden Jewish setting” of Paul’s arguments, the paper outlines broader trajectories in Jewish tradition that evolved in similar directions. Even when not questioning the Torah as the foundation of covenant, these trajectories highlighted problematic aspects of the revealed law formulated in a set of written decrees. Paul thus is shown to be a witness to a broader skeptical tendency, while the solution he offers clearly represents the apostle’s “sectarian” conviction.

I Introduction

In his pioneering studies, E. P. Sanders described late Second Temple Judaism as “covenantal nomism” in the sense that while the demands of the law as derived from the Torah constitute a core element of the covenantal relationship between God and Israel, the covenant is not exhausted by its law-centered aspect. It includes additional foundational components like election, God’s faithfulness, his mercy, and mechanisms of atonement and reconciliation. As the title of his book where the term was first introduced indicates,¹ it is in conversation with views found in the epistles of Paul, penned mostly during the 50s of the first century CE, that the scholar was able to portray this more nuanced picture of the contemporaneous Judaism. No wonder – Paul, a member of the nascent Jesus movement, a messianic offshoot of broader Judaism, provides many examples of coping with the law-centered tenets of religion juxtaposed to those of God’s mercy revealed in messianic redemption. This chapter attempts to further clarify certain aspects of Sanders’ important intuition.

Paul uses extensively the term nomos (law) with a variety of meanings: sometimes this may refer to a universal law, archetypal law of the cosmos, which, as already the Hellenistic Jewish second-century BCE Letter of Aristeas argued, essentially overlaps with the law revealed in the Torah.² I, however, focus here on the cases where the particular Jewish meaning of nomos as related to Torah is clearly indicated by the context. This focus will allow to revisit the issue of Paul’s grasp of the interactions between various parts of the Torah-centered law and their standing vis-à-vis other aspects of the covenant. Contextualizing Paul’s strategies against the backdrop of the variety of early Jewish thought patterns, I would argue that while propagating a singular, Jesus-centered, message – in many cases explicitly directed at Gentile fellow-travelers – Paul also addresses concerns of his implicit Jewish audience. His arguments thus echo and bear witness to a broader intra-Jewish awareness of the problematic aspect of the notion of religion as first and foremost law.

II Torah and the Works of the Torah

Scholars have long recognized nascent Christianity’s multifaceted nature reflected in various, sometimes contradictory, emphases found within the Jesus movement during the first decades of its history. Attitudes to the demands of Jewish religious law, as expressed, on the one hand, in the Book of Acts, and, on the other hand, in Paul’s authentic letters provide a telling example of such unresolved tension. According to Acts, in the times of messianic redemption those Gentiles who become part of the Jesus movement are exempt from embracing some ritual markers of belonging to Judaism. However, the continuing faithfulness of Jewish believers in Jesus to these precepts is never questioned, but rather presented as harmonious with their adherence to Jesus the Messiah (Acts 15:1–29; 21:18–25).³ As a matter of fact, it seems that even Gentiles willing to embrace some positive Mosaic ritual prescriptions, preached in the Diaspora synagogues, are welcome to do so or, at least, not reprimanded for this inclination.⁴

Paul’s writings, however, are distinguished by a different and clearly polemical emphasis, unequivocally denying the capacity of Judaism’s ritual prescriptions to contribute to the cleansing of the hearts. These prescriptions might have had such a capacity in the past; but in the messianic era, it is exclusively identification with and “sharing” in the Messiah’s expiating death, and belief in his resurrection, that constitute the path leading to salvation – by grace and not by acquired merit. It is in this either-or context characterizing the Epistle to the Galatians that Paul comes to view those “external” precepts as harmful, as blocking the way to individual justification in the eyes of God through grace (Gal. 2:21, cf. Rom. 3:20): “I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification were through the law (nomos, Torah?), then Christ died to no purpose.” Moreover, those who still put their hope in the “works of the law (Torah)” are bringing upon themselves “law’s/Torah’s curse” (Gal 3:10–11, 6:15). The argument in chapter 2 of the epistle, where the phrase the “works of the nomos,” obviously central for Paul’s thinking there, is used repeatedly and emphatically, strengthens the understanding that nomos here means specifically the Torah of Israel (Gal. 2:15-16):⁵

We ourselves, who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet who know that a man is not justified by works of the law (ἐξ ἔργων νόμου), but through faith in Jesus Christ/the Messiah, even we have believed in Christ/the Messiah Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of the law (οὐκ ἐξ ἔργων νόμου), because by works of the law (ἐξ ἔργων νόμου) shall no one be justified.

The Epistle to the Galatians is explicitly addressed to Gentile followers of Jesus in Galatia, who are under pressure from some representatives of the Jewish section of the movement to embrace Judaism’s ritual practices, first of all circumcision so that the Jews and the Gentiles of the messianic group can become one community, for example, eat together (Gal. 2:11–14).⁶ One then is justified in viewing the “works of the Torah” language as belonging to the discussion of that core issue – in other words, the phrase seems to designate the ritual markers of Jewish tradition. Therefore, the “works of the law, ἔργα νόμου,” that Paul expresses doubts with regard to their effectiveness (Gal. 2:15–21) should be understood in this context in a limited sense – namely, as designating those practices prescribed by the Torah that serve as “identity badges” separating Jews from their Gentile neighbors. They are thus distinguished from the “core commandments” defining God’s covenant with Israel or the Torah (νόμος) proper, such as the Decalogue and Leviticus 19:18 – passages that indisputably retain their centrality in the apostle’s interpretation of the messianic salvation in Jesus, as forcefully expressed, e.g., in Gal 5:14.⁷ Such an understanding of the “works of the law” finds corroboration in the מעשי התורה (ma’asei ha-torah, the works of the Torah) usage attested in 4QMMT from Qumran, where the phrase denotes ritual precepts, marking the proper observance of the Temple cult, corrupted according to the composers of the document by the current priestly leadership.⁸ This ritual understanding is further confirmed when Paul reiterates the core opposition mentioned above (Gal. 5:2): “Now, I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Messiah/Christ will be of no advantage to you.”

Such a reading, highlighting the Gentiles within the Jesus movement as Paul’s intended audience, supports the interpretation suggested by a number of influential scholars subscribing to what is now customarily called the New Perspective on Paul. Among them Krister Stendahl, John Gager, and Paula Fredriksen, who emphasized the specific context in which Paul’s harsh statements concerning the (works of the) Torah were meant to resonate – namely, the non-Jewish addressees of the apostle’s writings.⁹ It was argued, moreover, that Paul’s claim that pious Gentiles do not have to observe the positive ritual precepts of the Torah, for example, perform circumcision (whereas the prohibition of participating in idol worship was emphatically upheld by Paul with regard to the Gentile fellow travelers too),¹⁰ in fact followed an accepted, particularly in the Hellenistic Diaspora, Jewish perception. Namely, even in the last days, the Gentiles will join the redemption in accordance with the pattern found in the biblical prophecy, that is, as Gentiles, without blurring the borderline between Israel and the nations. Following Isaiah’s prophecy, the nations will come to the mountain of the Lord to serve him together with the Jews and become privy to the core messages of God’s Torah, while remaining ethnically and culturally distinct from the people of Israel.¹¹ According to this influential approach, the demands to Gentiles wishing to become part of Israel’s vocation are basically two: abandoning idol worship for the sake of worshipping the one God and adopting a truly moral behavior derived from the allegiance to the Creator.¹² Paul therefore followed here a beaten track, and since he addressed Gentiles only, he obviously did not intend to introduce any drastic reevaluation of the Torah vis-à-vis Jews.¹³

This new view of Paul clearly has its merits. However, as I argued elsewhere, the context of Galatians indicates that besides the Gentile fellow-travelers Paul must have had an additional, hidden, audience in mind – namely, those Jewish propagandists from within the movement, whose pressure on the Gentile members of the community prompted the apostle’s response.¹⁴ In fact, the opening line of the passage under discussion too points to a supposed intra-Jewish logic of the argument (Gal. 2:15–16): “We ourselves, who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners … know that a man is not justified by the works of the Torah …” One is therefore prompted to ask if the apostle’s collation of a hierarchical distinction between the hard-core commandments of the Torah and the peripheral “ritual markers” of Judaism with the claim that those ritual “works of the Torah” do not actually contribute to achieving the righteousness epitomized in the Torah’s foundational precepts, could resonate within the Jewish milieu too.

As noted above, this kind of outlook was somehow reflected in the general Hellenistic Jewish attitude toward Gentile sympathizers. The awareness of the hierarchical relationships between ritual markers of Judaism and its moral precepts is expressed in the second century BCE Letter of Aristeas. The Jewish sages there, also addressing Gentile audience, both emphasize the shared ethical values of the Torah and general Hellenistic outlook and try to argue for the usefulness – though they are not obligatory for the Gentiles – of Jewish ritual prescriptions as “helping devices” in educating our souls in their path to moral perfection.¹⁵ It seems, however, that the hierarchical division – based on a variety of principles and with a different outcome – was applied to intra-Jewish religious discourse too, as aptly expressed in a well-known passage from the famous first century CE Jewish Hellenistic author, Philo of Alexandria:

There are some who, taking the laws in their literal sense as symbols of intelligible realities, are over-precise in their investigation of the symbol, while frivolously neglecting the letter. Such people I, for my part, should blame for their cool indifference, for they ought to have cultivated both a more precise investigation of things invisible and an unexceptionable stewardship of things visible. As it is, as if living alone by themselves in a wilderness, or as if they had become discarnate souls, knowing neither city nor village nor household nor any company of humans at all, transcending what is approved by the crowd, they track the absolute truth in its naked self. These men are taught by Sacred Scripture to be concerned with public opinion, and to abolish no part of the customs ordained by inspired men, greater than those of our own day.

For all that the Seventh Day teaches us the power of the un-originate and the non-action of created beings, let us by no means annul the laws laid down for its observance, kindling fire, tilling the earth, carrying burdens, instituting changes, sitting in judgment, demanding the return of deposits, recovering loans, or doing all else that is permitted in non-festal seasons. And though it is true that the Feast is a symbol of spiritual joy and of thankfulness to God, let us not bid adieu to the annual seasonal gatherings. And though it is true that circumcision indicates the excision of pleasure and all passions and the removal of the godless conceit under which the mind supposed itself capable of engendering through its own powers, let us not abrogate the law laid down for circumcising. For we shall be neglecting the Temple service and a thousand other things if we are to pay sole regard to that which is revealed by the inner meaning. We ought rather to look on the outward observances as resembling the body, and their inner meaning as resembling the soul. Just as we then provide for the body, inasmuch as it is the abode of the soul, so we must attend to the letter of the laws. If we keep these, we shall obtain an understanding of those things of which they are symbols, and in addition, we shall escape the censure and accusations of the multitude.¹⁶

Philo tellingly attests to a variety of Jewish attitudes toward the “external” precepts of the Torah – from neglecting to upholding them – all of which acknowledge the above division and share the conviction that the true meaning of the commandments is the “internal” one. Philo himself clearly ascribes to this consensual appraisal and confirms the priority of the inner meaning of the Torah precepts. Unlike some of his Jewish contemporaries, however, whom he criticizes for their readiness to drop ritual observance altogether and deal directly with the mending of their “inner man,”¹⁷ Philo – a responsible member of the community who recognizes the constraints of our physical and social existence – upholds the validity of the ritual side of Jewish tradition as befitting external means for “gradually educating one’s soul.” Nevertheless, the problematic tension between the two divisions (or interpretations) of the law lingers: As aptly observed by Christine Hayes, while Philo’s move aspired to strengthen the ritual aspect of the Mosaic Law, it could inadvertently “enable precisely that which Philo here protests.”¹⁸

Such dichotomist perceptions seem to have not been limited to the Greco-Roman Diaspora only. Though evidence concerning the early proto-rabbinic tradition is scarce and relatively late, it may indicate that the idea of a twofold partition of the bulk of religious precepts was known and duly discussed in the Land of Israel too. Suffice it to quote a tradition ascribed to none other than the second-century codifier of the Mishnaic law himself (m. ̉Abot 2.1):¹⁹

R. Judah the Prince said: Which is the proper course that a man should choose for himself? That which is an honor to him and elicits honor from his fellow men. Be as scrupulous about a light precept (מצוה קלה) as of a weighty one (כחמורה), for you do not know the reward allotted for each precept. Balance the loss incurred by the fulfillment of a precept against the gain and the accruing from a transgression against the loss it involves.  Reflect on three things and you will never come to sin: Know what is above you – a seeing eye, a hearing ear, and all your deeds recorded in a book.²⁰

One notes a partial overlap of terminology between our early third-century Mishnah and Matthew 5:19 (τῶν ἐντολῶν τούτων τῶν ἐλαχίστων, “the least of these/ the light commandments”) – an overlap that points to the terminology’s early provenance. Moreover, not unlike Philo (and Jesus in Matthew 5:19!),²¹ the Mishnah votes for the importance of the efforts to fulfill precepts ostensibly not belonging to the core of the Torah. Though the reasons may be different, the “peripheral” commandments are seen here too as being in the final account expedient for a person’s “balance of merits.” And again, like Philo, the Mishnah mirrors an alternative approach, which it polemically rejects. Finally, while the dichotomy itself emerges as a shared feature of a whole spectrum of traditions, its character – namely, what commandments are seen as belonging to either category – may vary considerably. Thus, as distinct from Philo with his dichotomy between internal/spiritual and external meaning of the commandment, the Mishnah – similarly, for example, to Jesus’ stance in Matthew 23:23 – seems to understand both categories as pertaining to the realm of deeds.²²

If in the tractate ̉Abot the “light” commandments are presented as potentially expedient for God’s approval, another telling Mishnaic tradition speaks of the fateful eschatological transformation of the individual – that is, the gift of the holy Spirit and the resurrection – as conditioned by the sequence of efforts at fulfilling, inter alia, ritual (external, secondary) observances (m. Sotah 9.15):

R. Pinhas son of Yair says: “Expediency brings to cleanness, cleanness brings to purity, purity brings to chastity, chastity brings to holiness, holiness brings to meekness, meekness brings to the fear of sin, fear of sin brings to righteousness, righteousness brings to the spirit of holiness (holy spirit), and the holy spirit brings to the resurrection of the dead, and the resurrection of the dead comes through Elijah of blessed memory. Amen.”

The historical context here is that of the destruction of the Temple and anticipation of redemption. Yet it stands to reason that the singling out of certain ritual observances as crucial for obtaining righteousness and eventually redemption is linked and point to an older topic – as does the previously discussed mishnaic passage.

To sum up, all the reviewed sources express awareness of one or another kind of distinction between primary and secondary (meaning of) Torah precepts, thus allowing to contextualize Paul’s arguments within broader Jewish trends. While in the final account these sources uphold the validity of the secondary, for example, ritual, commandments, they indirectly attest to the possibility of an alternative tendency to dismiss those commandments as not crucial – an attitude they polemicize against.²³ Paul in Galatians therefore may be viewed as reflecting that alternative tendency; and his daring move could have been helped by the fact that he first came to discuss the issue while addressing a non-Jewish audience, which as noted, was perceived from the beginning as not obliged to the ritual identity markers of Judaism.

III The Core Demands of the Torah Law

Having rejected the auxiliary value of the ritual precepts, Paul states explicitly what constitutes the true core of the Torah law, unswervingly obliging in the Messianic era – namely, Leviticus 19:18 precept “love your neighbor as yourself” (Gal. 5:14–15): “For the whole law (ὁ γὰρ πᾶς νόμος) is fulfilled in one saying (ἐν ἑνὶ λόγῳ), ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’. But if you bite and devour one another take heed that you are not consumed by one another.“ Further on, in Galatians 5:22–23, the apostle clarifies the expectations from interpersonal relations, derived from the Leviticus 19:18 directive: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; with regard to such there is no measure (limitations).”²⁴

It turns out, however, that Paul is not only pessimistic with regard to the ritual exercises’ capacity to help one achieve the perfection of the great love command, but in fact denies the ability to fulfill it through any efforts of our own. According to the apostle, the very nature of the foundational demands of the religious law is such that we are unable to satisfy them however hard we try – it is only through the intervention of the divine agency of the Spirit that the mission can be accomplished. In other words, our only hope to achieve the true righteousness propagated by law, namely, to fulfil the above lofty aspects of the Lev 19:18 precept – is to be endowed with the Spirit (Gal. 5:5–16, 22, 24–25):

For through the Spirit, by faith, we wait for the hope of righteousness. … But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. … . But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control … And those who belong to the Messiah Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.

[emphasis added]

Thus, whereas the validity (usefulness) of the “secondary” law precepts is questioned, with regard to the indisputable core elements of the Torah-related righteousness it is our ability to fulfill them that is negated. We will return below to the motif of the Spirit as the great enabler, as well as to that of Jesus’s atoning death, but for now suffice it to note that such an appraisal appears to undermine the whole function of the Torah as covenantal law.

It is possible to try interpreting this deeply seated skepticism in Galatians too as directed specifically at the Gentiles – in accordance with a broader Jewish perspective on Gentiles as “sinful by nature,” reflected, as we have seen, in Galatians 2:15 (“We ourselves, who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners”). According to this interpretation, therefore, it is only through the intervention of the Spirit that the “Gentile nature” could be reformed and the Gentiles become capable of fulfilling the Torah’s great commandment. However, as already the beginning of the slightly later Epistle to the Romans testifies, ostensibly addressing concerns of both Gentile and Jewish segments of the community in Rome,²⁵ that basic inability to cope with the Torah as law was viewed by the apostle as characteristic of Jews as well.²⁶

In Romans, that “final account” of Paul’s writing,²⁷ characteristically, the issue of ritual markers so central to Galatians takes a back seat,²⁸ with the epistle focusing instead on the basic incapacity of both Gentiles and Jews to properly respond to the core demands of God’s law.²⁹ The Gentiles’ failure is explained already in Romans 1 as resulting – in accordance with broader patterns of Jewish propaganda – from betrayal of the belief in one Creator. As for the Jewish failure, highlighted in Romans 2 in respect to one Decalogue precept, it receives its comprehensive explanation later on, in Romans 7.³⁰ Finding unconvincing the attempts to interpret the reasoning in Romans 7 as targeting exclusively the “Gentile predicament,”³¹ I therefore side with those who discern here Paul’s grim diagnosis of the human condition, Jews included.³² In the final account, what is central to my argument is that whoever are the explicit intended addressees of the reasoning in Romans 7, we should take into account – the move already probed above with regard to Galatians – the implicit Jewish audience too. The apostle’s pessimistic appraisal is characteristically complemented with the quantum leap, leading from the earlier impotence vis-à-vis the demands of the law imposed from outside to the new mode of existence (Romans 7:4–6):

Likewise, my brethren, you have died to the Torah/law through the body of Christ/ the Messiah, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God. ⁵ While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. ⁶ But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.

The appearance of the favorite Pauline expression “bear fruit” collated with the centrality of the Spirit, duly noted in the earlier discussion of Galatians 5, indicates that the “freedom from the law” here does not at all mean lawless frivolity. It rather designates a new stance “in the Spirit,” finally enabling one to fulfill the core Torah commandments, which was impossible when one’s relation to the law was that of vis-à-vis externally ordered obligation. In fact, Paul himself continues to clarify the matter (Romans 7:7-12):

What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I should not have known sin. I should not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” ⁸ But sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, wrought in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law sin lies dead … ¹⁰ the very commandment which promised life proved to be death to me. ¹¹ For sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and by it killed me. ¹² So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good. Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, working death in me through what is good …

[emphasis added]

So, the law “is good” and it opens one’s eyes, teaching what sin is, but, unfortunately the law does not provide one with the capability to resist sin (cf. Romans 3:20). Moreover, in our encounter with the just demands of God’s law, sin manages to exploit our pervert nature (evil inclination?),³³ turning the commandment into temptation to disobey it. The problematic side of the “written code” is idiosyncratically emphasized here, though Paul takes care to piously ascribe the blame not to the Torah itself, which is holy, but to the defective human condition – and Jews are clearly not exempted.

In the following programmatic passage, Paul further elaborates on the issue, this time pointing to our “being flesh” as the real culprit (Romans 7:14–25):³⁴

We know that the Torah/law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. ¹⁵ I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶ Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. ¹⁸ For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. ¹⁹ For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. ²¹ So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. ²² For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, ²³ but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. ²⁴ Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? ²⁵ Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.³⁵

Telling is the variety of meanings in which the word “law” (νόμος) is used. First, the law is God’s Torah addressed to our inner man, to our mind (nous) – thus it is “spiritual” (cf. Philo’s position discussed above). However, when devoid of the Spirit, our response to God’s law is “carnal,” which means transgressing the commandment we are supposed to fulfill, thus succumbing to the “law of our bodily members,” a sinful negative of God’s holy Torah.³⁶

According to Paul, this pitiful stance vis-à-vis God’s law will continue until the body, which, as it were, pulls us down, is metaphorically “put to death” overwhelmed by the Spirit. The belief in Jesus’ atoning death, combined with the notion of our bodies’ metaphorical “death to sin,” seems to reflect – and drastically modify – here a broader idea that until the very moment of physical death we all, even the righteous ones, are destined to incessantly struggle with sin. This is, for example, how this idea is expressed in the rabbinical midrash Genesis Rabbah (9.5):³⁷

“And lo, very good” (Genesis 1:31). [What is very good?] It is death. Why was the death ordained [even] for pious ones? [Because] all the time when they are [still] alive they spend fighting their evil impulse. [Only] when they die, they [may at last] rest.

This death-centered perception of final transformation is characteristically collated in Paul with the belief in the liberating function of the Spirit (Romans 7:24–8:4):

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? ²⁵ Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ/the Messiah our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Chris/the Messiaht Jesus. ² For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ/the Messiah Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. ³ For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴ in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

[emphasis added]

One notes that the crux of Paul’s reasoning is the aspiration to finally be able to fulfill “the just requirements of the Torah.”³⁸ The Torah is helpless: even if it still has a very important function to accomplish – namely, to highlight and strengthen the awareness of one’s sins (Romans 3:20) – it also exposes one to the cunning of the evil impulse and, most important, does not provide the means to overcome humanity’s built-in sinful inclinations and follow God’s commandments (Romans 9:31).

At the end of the chapter, I will return to the characteristic collation of Jesus’ atoning death and the gift of the Spirit as two complementing “enablers.” Right now, however, I am going to ask to what extent this pessimistic appraisal of our inherent ability to cope with God’s Torah as law was Paul’s idiosyncratic contribution to the religious discourse or, alternatively, a reflection of an intuition of a much broader currency in the Jewish world.

It goes without saying that the call for the earnest effort to try to fulfill Torah commandments as the sure path to righteousness was characteristic of Jewish covenantal outlook as a whole, to which there are multiple attestations. The telling passage from Mishnah Abot 2.1, addressed above, is a fine example of such an outlook. An influential trend in rabbinic tradition also viewed the Torah as antidote to the evil impulse, even if its effectiveness is not always thorough.³⁹ However, by the time Paul was addressing the topic, a substantially different intuition, derived from an essentially pessimistic appraisal of a person’s ability to gradually build the edifice of righteousness by his/her own efforts, had also been voiced in Jewish tradition. It was even enticingly suggested that this pessimistic appraisal was intrinsic to the Pharisaic religious outlook, which propagated the expansion of the scope of the commandments by means of reinterpretation (Oral Torah) to the realm of intentions (”the inner man”) – a demand that further aggravated the impossibility of the task.⁴⁰ Later rabbinic sources also bear witness to such a tendency, with the sometimes inevitable conclusion, mentioned above, that nothing short of death can cure one’s sinful inclination. I have dealt at length elsewhere with rabbinic responses to this conundrum;⁴¹ it will suffice to say here that in such a context a variety of remedies were suggested, such as: trust in last-minute repentance, trust in God’s merciful benevolence, and belief in the expiating function of one’s death.

In eschatological thinking, however, this basically pessimistic assessment engendered aspirations for the last-days transformation of the nature of man’s stance vis-à-vis God’s law. This tendency, in fact, goes back to classical biblical prophecy, with a famous example provided by Jeremiah, who speaks of a “change of heart” imposed by God “from outside” – and not the steadfast efforts invested in pious ritual actions, temple sacrifices included – as the only way to righteousness, remission of sins and redemption (Jeremiah 31:31–34):

³¹ “Behold, the days are coming,” says the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, ³² not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. ³³ But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” says the LORD: “I will put my Torah/law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ³⁴ And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, – ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

It is only this inner transformation enforced by God that makes the observance of the core stipulations of God’s covenant possible.⁴² Characteristically, in another famous oracle, that of Ezekiel, this eschatological transformation is further described in terms of receiving the gift of Spirit (Ezekiel 36: 24–29):

²⁴ For I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. ²⁵ I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. ²⁶ A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷ And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. ²⁸ You shall dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. ²⁹ And I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses; and I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you.

[emphasis added]

Compared to m. Sotah 9.15 quoted above, the passage from Ezekiel outlines an inverted sequence – instead of the righteousness, forgiveness of sins, gift of the Spirit and redemption as the crowning outcomes of earnest efforts to fulfill God’s precepts, including the ritual ones focused on the cleanness-uncleanness dichotomy, the very ability to act righteously is presented here as conditioned by the prior intervention by God that changes one essentially with the “stroke of the spirit.” This perception would be later picked up in the Rule of the Community, drastically modified in accordance with the Qumranic double predestination belief. A powerful expression of that pattern of religious thinking is found in the closing section of the Rule (1QS 11.7–17):⁴³

To those whom God has selected he has given them as everlasting possession; until they inherit them in the lot of the holy ones. ⁸ He unites their assembly to the sons of the heavens … to be an everlasting plantation throughout all future ages. ⁹ However, I belong to evil humankind to the assembly of wicked flesh; … the assembly of worms … of those who walk in darkness … ¹⁰ For to man (does not belong) his path, nor to a human being the steadying of his step; since judgment belongs to God, ¹¹ and from his hand is the perfection of the path. By his knowledge everything shall come into being, and all that does exist he establishes with his calculations and nothing is done outside of him. … ¹³ he will free my soul from the pit and make my steps steady on the path; ¹⁴

… in his justice he will cleanse me from the uncleanness of the human being and from the sin of the sons of man, … so that I can extol God for his justice … Blessed be you, my God, who opens the heart of your servant to knowledge! ¹⁶ Establish all his deeds in justice, … to be everlastingly in your presence, as you have cared for the selected ones of humankind. ¹⁷ For beyond you there is no perfect path and without your will, nothing comes to be.

[emphasis added]

According to the Rule, the God-imposed transformation is (a) the only possible avenue to achieving the righteousness and (b) conditioned on the predestined election. The flesh-spirit dualism characteristic of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as of Paul in Romans 7,⁴⁴ is only hinted at here (the “flesh” being incapable of following God’s will, line 9, cf. Matthew 26:41); the Spirit, however, is clearly perceived elsewhere in the same scroll as both cleansing the person’s “inner man” when the last days come, and revealing God’s ultimate mysteries (1QS 4.20–23):

Meanwhile, God will refine, with his truth, all man’s deeds, and will purify for himself the configuration of man, ripping out all spirit of deceit from the innermost part ²¹ of his flesh, and cleansing him with the spirit of holiness from every irreverent deed. He will sprinkle over him the spirit of truth like lustral water (in order to cleanse him) from all the abhorrences of deceit and from the defilement ²² of the unclean spirit. In this way the upright will understand knowledge of the Most High, and the wisdom of the sons of heaven will teach those of perfect behavior. For these are those selected by God for an everlasting covenant ²³ and to them shall belong all the glory of Adam.

[emphasis added]

The heavenly mysteries revealed to those “refined by God” are identified as a new interpretation of the Torah precepts, pertaining to the pre-eschatological “age of wickedness” in the Damascus Document 6, whereas both the necessity of the initially enforced action of the holy Spirit for obtaining righteousness and its cardinal effect as preventing one from sinning against God in the future are again highlighted in the Qumranic Thanksgiving Hymns (1QH 4.17–26):

[I give you thanks, Lord,] for the spirits you have placed in me … .to confess my former sins, to bow low and beg favour ¹⁹ for […] of my deeds and the depravity of my heart. Because I wallowed in impurity, [I separated myself] from the foundation [of truth] and I was not allied with […] ²⁰ To you does justice belong, blessing belongs to your Name for ever! [Act according to] your justice, ²¹ free [the soul of your servant,] the wicked should die! However, I have understood that [you establish] the path of the one whom you choose ²² and in the insight [of your wisdom] you prevent him from sinning against you, you restore his humility through your punishments, and by your ord[eals streng]then his heart. ²³

[You, Lord, prevent] your servant from sinning against you … . ²⁵ […] for your servant is a spirit of flesh. Blank ²⁶ [I give you thanks, Lord, because] you have spread your holy spirit upon your servant […] his heart …

[emphasis added]

The emphasis on election/gift of the Spirit as the precondition for fulfilling the Torah precepts is expressed with particular force and clarity in Qumranic texts – not least, thanks to its being linked there to the double predestination concept.⁴⁵ However, it stands to reason that outside of this idiosyncratic linkage, the late Second Temple revival of the intuition found already in Ezekiel 36 was not restricted to their sectarian eschatologically oriented milieu.⁴⁶ Paul then may be viewed as an important witness to this tendency.

IV Conclusion

My reading suggests that in both Galatians and Romans, Paul repeatedly addresses the challenge of the νόμος (law) component of Jewish religion. The apostle’s rhetorically amplified statements there attest to a variety of nonharmonized appraisals – from the Torah precepts being “good and holy” to constituting an obstacle on the way to true righteousness. In accordance with the latter emphasis, the centuries-long Christian tradition ascribed to Paul the conviction that in the messianic era, following Jesus’s salvific death, the Jewish religious outlook centered on the Torah and its commandments becomes obsolete. Trying to cope with the apostle’s statements on the Torah’s (partial) validity and absolute holiness this tradition explained them away as, for example, dictated by the tactical constraints of the mission. Various modifications of this appraisal have also been adopted, mutatis mutandis, by some influential modern scholars.⁴⁷

There have been also a number of inroads in recent research, alleviating this picture of Paul’s substantial reversal of the attitude to the Torah law, including the law’s ritual aspects. Most prominently, the scholars propagating the so-called New View of Paul forcefully argued for a context-related interpretation of Paul’s criticism of Torah ritual precepts as directed exclusively toward Gentiles. If so, there is no reason at all to view it as radical – and no reason to think that he called for annulling the Torah obligations of the Jews. The issue of Torah observance or deeds-grace controversy can moreover be viewed as not part of the initial core of the apostle’s teaching of messianic salvation, but rather one of the secondary themes evoked in response to varying circumstances – most notably, the appeal to non-Jewish addressees. This study approached the issue from a different angle. Not denying Paul’s very particular circumstances, it aimed at discerning in the apostle’s reasoning a reflection of broader Jewish awareness – within the covenantal nomism outlook – of the problematic side of the law as religion’s foundational aspect.

I started with a discussion of Paul’s “works of the Torah/law” usage featuring prominently in Galatians, which gives support to the suggestion that this phrase should be understood, similarly to its Hebrew parallel in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in a limiting sense of ritual markers. The context of the epistle indicates that those are the distinguishing positive ritual markers of Judaism, circumcision et al. that Paul tries to discourage his Gentile addressees within the Jesus movement from adopting. The apostle’s argument is that the ritual elements of the law are, in fact, not helpful in our attempts to achieve true righteousness. The position, that those are only the core demands of the Torah – embracement of monotheistic faith and worship and of proper morals – and not the details of ritual law that are expected from Gentile God-fearers, was, in fact, current among Hellenistic Jews. Paul therefore may be viewed as riding upon an existing tendency. Though the apostles’ polemical stress on the dilemma of either Jewish ritual or Jesus’ atoning death, is definitely his singular trademark.

I suggested, however, that Paul’s insistence that “secondary” ritual observances do not contribute to achieving true righteousness epitomized in the Torah’s foundational demands, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18), was also aimed at his “hidden audience” – those Jewish members of the movement, whose influence on the Gentile fellow-travelers he is trying to repel. To clarify that intra-Jewish logic of the argument, I reviewed a number of early Jewish sources attesting to the variegated divisions of the Torah law into “primary” and “secondary” sections. Though in the final account, all these sources uphold the “righteousness value” of the “secondary” (external, ritual) observances – for example, as assisting in fulfillment of the foundational moral demands – they clearly betray the backdrop disagreements and polemic. This strengthens the probability that Paul’s negation of the ritual’s auxiliary value, first triggered by the concrete polemical situation vis-à-vis his Gentile addressees, was in the final account meant to have a broader appeal. Since in the intra-Jewish discourse it was likewise a matter of contention, Paul might have consciously related to some aspects of this contention.

However, it turns out that Paul’s doubts with regard to the usefulness of the ritual precepts for our aspiration to achieve righteousness are part of his more substantial skepticism. The apostle in fact argues that one is incapable of fulfilling the Torah’s foundational moral demands, those “just requirement of the law,” through one’s own efforts at all. In the Epistle to the Romans, he further elaborates on that, blaming our “being in flesh” for the basic impotence in coping with God’s law. The chapter shows that side by side with more optimistic appraisals of the man-versus-Torah-as-law conundrum, this pessimistic one was not unknown in broader Jewish tradition, representing, moreover, a long-standing tendency within it.

Having briefly related to rabbinic responses to this pessimistic appraisal of human nature that focused on mechanisms of repentance and God’s forgiveness, I noted that traditions of eschatological flavor alternatively attest to the aspiration for the last-days transformation. They are often expressed in terms of receiving the Spirit, which would finally make feasible the fulfillment of God’s commandments. According to my reading, Paul inherited from broader patterns of Jewish thought not only the pessimistic diagnosis of human condition vis-à-vis God’s demands in the “externally imposed” law, but also the eschatological solution of the problem through the gift of the Spirit. One of the characteristic features of Paul’s argument is the coupling of this inherited motif of broader circulation with the “sectarian” argument, ascribing the same enabling function to Jesus’s salvific death.

In the final account, my investigation brings me to the conclusion that the crux of the apostle’s reasoning was not the annulment of the Jewish religious outlook centered on the Torah and its commandments. It was rather the perception of the deeply problematic nature of the human predicament in face of God’s will as epitomized in the code of law. This seasoned pessimism was coupled with the eschatological hope for the inner transformation induced by the Spirit that would finally enable us to live up to the just demands of God’s Torah. With regard to both these motifs, as well as to the perception of the hierarchical division between peripheral and core precepts, Paul’s writings may be viewed as an illuminating witness to broader intuitions of Jewish tradition. The apostle, however, retains his idiosyncratic singularity thanks to the addition of the atoning death of the Messiah as a complementing enabler of that eschatological metamorphose, and, of course, to the conviction that this metamorphose is already somehow present among his addressees.