This review essay is part of the 2023 Society of Biblical Literature's review panel for Yael Fisch, Written for Us: Paul’s Interpretation of Scripture and the History of Midrash. Find the full panel here.
It is my most profound privilege to thank Matthew Novenson, Laura Dingeldein, Simcha Gross and Krista Dalton, for initiating, organizing and co-sponsoring this event at SBL, bringing together the Pauline Epistles and the Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism sections together in an SBL session that so fully realizes the aim of my book to place Rabbinic literature, midrash, and Paul in conversation. I’m deeply thankful to Daniel Picus for urging this panel to publication and to Krista Dalton for taking on the challenge.
In an era characterized by an overabundance of published works, where so many monographs, rather than emerging into the light are born into obscurity and met with silence, this book faces a unique challenge. As a work examining Paul from the perspective of a midrash scholar, it is particularly susceptible to being overlooked in both fields. Venturing beyond the confines of my immediate discipline, I risked anonymity in one field and potential disinterest in the other. This coming together of readers, is then in itself the marked success of my work. So it is my distinct pleasure to thank Christine Hayes, Daniel Picus, J Ross Wagner, and Isaac Soon, for reading the book and honoring me with the most profound gift: not only to read it, but to read with it in hand.
Entryway
Until the late 1980’s, the rabbis still had some sort of place within Paul scholarship, however distorted with antisemitic tropes it was. However, with the publication of Richard Hays’ Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, something shifted. In order to open up the discussion of Pauline hermeneutics to new insight on poetics and intertextuality, Hays argued that “Midrash” explains very little, when Paul’s work with scripture is concerned. If the redaction of the earliest tannaitic compositions postdates Paul’s letter, Hays writes, then it is unfounded to assume that any of it could stand in the background of Paul’s writing. Therefore, he claims and I quote “we are undertaking a valid and necessary (even if preliminary) task when we inquire independently into the way in which any one of them [Pauline hermeneutics and rabbinic midrash] uses scriptural texts.” (Hays, 11). After Echoes of Scripture, very few studies that stemmed from a NT context ever mention rabbinic literature anymore. My book works to revive and reframe this conversation, make room for early rabbinic texts in the study of Paul and make room for Paul in the study of ancient Midrash, without collapsing these texts into constricting and antiquated models of dependency and borrowing.
What I certainly did not intend to do was to end the conversation, and this collection of responses proves that I certainly did not. A committed reading of Written for Us generated 4 new papers: Christine Hayes provides a methodological contextualization of the book, asking me to consider different approach to comparative religion; Daniel Picus expands my discussion of reading practices to new avenues that may host both Paul, the Tannaim and other ancient Jewish authors without committing to a narrow (and precarious) social institution of reading; J. Ross Wagner questions my approach to Paul as an exegete and traces some of the books’ shortcomings to a systematic marginalization of Christ; and Isaac Soon offers a new constellation of two Torot in Paul, that thoroughly, though not entirely, differs from my own. In what follows, I will offer some comments and questions on each of these rereadings and departures.
Response to Christine Hayes
Christine Hayes and I appear to share the view that Paul and the Tannaim mutually shed light on each other. However, she urges that they are merely “two dots on a larger map that includes many dots – all of which are mutually illuminating.” She encourages me to embrace the approach of other current comparativists in our field—Kattel Berthelot, Simcha Gross, Richard Hidary, Matthew Thiessen, and herself— who collectively avoid a genealogical trap by considering a range of Jewish texts as formulating their “own response to some aspect of the dominant Hellenistic or Roman imperial context.” In doing so, they show the rabbis to engage with and set themselves apart from the prevailing discourse, all the while maintaining their individual distinctiveness. I am sympathetic to this comparativist approach, one which Hayes refers to as “triangulation.”
However, I wonder if my own pressing questions about the place of Paul/rabbis in scholarship could be answered directly had I triangulated them with imperial texts in this book. The fate of the discussion of rabbinic middot, rules of interpretation in comparative scholarship on Paul in Midrash is a case in point. Various antiquated studies of Pauline hermeneutics, most of which predate the emergence and reception of the New Perspective on Paul, labeled various interpretative texts in Paul “midrashic” since he supposedly used a technique listed in the Seven rules of Hillel or other collections of midrashic techne. However, since David Daube and Saul Lieberman, and some of their followers them (Philip Alexander for instance) have shown that Paul and the rabbis participate in the same Greek and Roman rhetorical tradition and use tools known across the empire for their own ends – Paul and the rabbis ceased to be relevant “mutually illuminated” dots among other dots. In this book, however, I set out to do exactly that: to persuade scholars of Paul and the NT, that when we imagine Paul within a Judaism, Tannaitic texts may and should participate in shaping our view of what this Judaism is and looks like. To this end I picked three case studies, that each touch upon a different plane of comparative literature: How is text, in this case, Torah, conceptualized, how is ideal readership conceived, and how do (some) interpretative techne compare to each other. In some of my test cases (though perhaps not all), a Roman context can simply not account for the interconnections between Paul and the rabbis, and taking on triangulation as a method would have obscured the emerging picture.
Such is the case of the interpretative rhetoric, to which I referred to in my book as the “midrash pesher” technique. This technique involves decontextualizing verses, breaking them down into fragments, and reading them sequentially to produce new meaning interwoven into the text—something I sometimes refer to in my oral teachings as the “salami technique.” While Hayes rejects the label “midrash pesher” (which I think has benefits but am not wedded to) it seems we are otherwise in agreement. Indeed, my reading was motivated by a striking similarity I found, to ultimately reveal a difference. I identify all three bodies of literature—Qumran, Paul, and the Tannaim—as productively utilizing (and developing) this “pesher like” technique, which argues through its totality. In both their similarity and difference, these specific dots illuminate one another.
And a last note on what this specific compairson illuminates: if Paul’s and the Qumran Pesher are interpretations invested in monosemy and Endtime, the rabbis employ the same technique in a polysemic, non-apocalyptic context. In other words, while the technique emerges in “apocalyptic” texts (in Paul and Qumran), the rabbis detach them from the end of time and interpretation, and reconfigure them in polysemic contexts. Perhaps this process only happens in rabbinic midrash at the level of redaction: individual homilies, each speaking in highly monosemic language (this is that; x zeh y), were gradually integrated and redacted into polysemic compositions. An imperial context, in this case, would have eclipsed this history. I’m grateful for Hayes’ suggestion that my discussion of pesher and its rabbinic usage, is very much akin to another claim I make in the book: that the rabbis construct a counter-hermeneutic of veiling, in response to Paul’s ideal unveiling in 2 Corinthians 3. Similarly, not only is the rhetoric of midrash-pesher shared across these texts, but the rabbis reconfigure their own midrash-pesher as a counter hermeneutics.
Response to Daniel Picus
On the topic of unveiling. If this metaphor is sometime used for a truth clearly and unequivocally appearing, surely not all interpretation unveils. It is certainly not so in the case of the rabbis, but also not in the case of Paul. Daniel Picus asks us, are all interpretations meant to clarify a text? And answers: “While a rhetoric of the simplicity and clarity is sometimes used (the text speaks for itself, the text has a plain meaning),” by Paul and the Tannaim, actually, for the interpretation is often about what Picus calls, “a hermeneutic of difficulty.” Interpretation makes sense of a verse, but this sense is itself difficult, it requires a teacher. The teacher, among other things, is the one that associates passages with each other in order to divinate a future, interpret a text or read a liturgy. I think that my book, perhaps too implicitly, paints a similar picture. Surley for Paul and ofttimes with rabbinic literature, there’s a façade of simplicity that covers intricate and delicate readings.
To this I would like to add an observation out of one of the lost versions of Written for Us, that didn’t make it to the final cut. Paul is a notoriously a difficult writer. His interpretations of scripture are extremely difficult to follow and understand. He thoroughly lacks sapheneia, clarity. In this lost version I asked, how does this opaque Paul, whose readings that are so difficult to understand, fit in the medium of the letter, the most straightforward of all means of communication? How did it persuade without being understood? And indeed, there is more to say about the hermeneutic of difficulty, that demands a presence of a strong figure, seducing with forceful language that is at the same time elusive. There is a story to tell, a story in which both Paul and the Rabbis and other ancient “readers” and “teachers” have place, about how this hermeneutic of difficulty allows for control exactly because it is difficult: it requires a teacher.
Response to J. Ross Wagner
Certainly, not all interpretations are persuasive, and regrettably, I did not convince J. Ross Wagner this time. Instead of immediately defending the thesis in my book in light of his detailed criticism, I wish to highlight two things. Firstly, by no means do I intend to downplay Christos in my reading of Paul. In a discussion on the Syndicate about her now canonical book “Paul the Pagan’s Apostle,” a scholar we both greatly admire, Paula Fredriksen, understood my reading exactly this way. She writes about my reconstruction of Paul’s two Torot, perhaps articulating more clearly what I argue:
“She [=Fisch] notes that the result of the reception of Christ’s pneuma for both groups, Israel and not-Israel, is knowing what time it is on God’s clock: that is the significance of trusting in Jesus’s identity as the risen, pneumatically present and (soon-to-be) publicly returning messiah. In the meanwhile, both Christ-groups live according to the Law—Jews in their way, gentiles in theirs—until cosmic forces are subdued, eschatological transformation into spiritual body complete, and the victorious Christ hands the Kingdom over to his divine father (1 Cor 15:28; cf. Phil 2:10). It is in this specifically ethnic sense, she urges, that Paul presents a double Torah: Jews currently have the nomos tōn ergōn, the “law of works” (Rom 3:19; and they can be righteous according to its mandates, Phil 3:6), though to achieve the Law’s telos, all Israel will need pistis, “trust” in the evangelion, thus, too, reception of pneuma. And the in-Christ-ethnē currently (mid-first century) have nomos pisteōs, the “law of trust” (cf. pistis as emunah). Ex-pagan gentiles cannot fulfill the “law of works” except through reception of pneuma, and not all of that torah is required of them.”[1]
The entire distinction of two Torot, is already attested to in the “law and the prophets” (3:21), but it has only now been revealed. We shall perhaps agree to continuously disagree about whether there are only two types of righteousness in Rom 3 or also two laws, a torah of works and a torah of trust, but ultimately, it is only now, with Christ and in the Endtime that this double nomos becomes apparent, and is at all needed. Without Christ and wihtout Pneuma there is no double Torah.
Christ, in my reading of Paul, is certainly the determining “ex-factor” in the unveiling of hearts and minds in 2 Cor 3, however, it is Ross Wagner who thinks this passage is not about reading or understanding scripture, but about new creation in Christ. However, I am not convinced that these are mutually exclusive possibilities. Surely, veiled and unveiled hearts are, like other transformed hearts in scripture, matters of new creation. Indeed, Psalms 51 is relevant here, in which it is God who hides is face from man’s sin, and then creates a new, pure, heart within him:
Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
הַסְתֵּ֣ר פָּ֭נֶיךָ מֵחֲטָאָ֑י וְֽכָל־עֲוֺ֖נֹתַ֣י מְחֵֽה׃
לֵ֣ב טָ֭הוֹר בְּרָא־לִ֣י אֱלֹהִ֑ים וְר֥וּחַ נָ֝כ֗וֹן חַדֵּ֥שׁ בְּקִרְבִּֽי׃
If 2 Cor 3 only about new creation, what are we to make of Israel’s hearts veiled as the Torah is being read? Is 2 cor 3 not about a renewed reading? I wonder.
Second, Wagner claims I compartmentalize my test cases, read them outside of their fuller contexts, fail to integrate them fully in his letters. Perhaps, in this sense, I approach Paul as a Midrash scholar. Indeed, my expertise in Midrash is my ticket to this fair. Rather than merely being a mistake or a cultural bias, it is a reading strategy that allows me to deal with the multiplicity and irreconcilability of some of Paul’s arguments, even in the same letter. Not all of Paul’s genealogies in Galatians describe the same family structure, for instance. We can individualize him into homilies, without weaving in all ends into a systematic theology, a project that to my mind, will encounter no fewer obstacles than did mine.
Wagner, speaking from his expertise, offered a sola scriptura kind of reading of Paul in place of my own comparative reading. His overarching claim that Paul does not set out to interpret Israel’s scripture per se stands out to me as strange. Surely, Paul writes letters that proclaim Christ, not lemmatic commentaries. But as he speaks scriptural language, he interprets. Indeed, many ancient texts do not explicitly set out to interpret—the Mishnah, or the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice for instance—but they absolutely do, explicitly and implicitly, and we work to consider them within the broader scope of ancient hermeneutics.
I would like then to end with a question we can hopefully discuss in the future: what could be a hermeneutical comparative or contextual project that could befit the Paul J. Ross Wagner presented us with here?
Response to Isaac Soon
Finally, I turn to Isaac Soon, who offers his own corrective my claim that Paul participates in an ancient Jewish discussion that argues for not one Torah but a double Torah [Christine Hayes claims, an not a Jewish but an ancient discussion that goes back as far as Plato]. Soon agrees that in Paul there are two nomoi, not merely two dikaiosynai (righteousnesses). However, he understands them to be differently mapped unto scriptures, and attributes orality and writtenness to them in a distinct manner. Again, I will not defend own thesis of two Torot, oral and written, against his here. I am honored by this new reading, that as much as it departs from my own, is generated by it. While we disagree on the specific dynamics of the two nomoi in Romans, who their audiences are and their possible hermeneutical implications, we agree on what for me are the critical fundamentals: Paul engages in a double law discourse prevalent in Second Temple Judaism, in which the rabbis also creatively participate, and we must think of them together. On how orality is mapped on Israel’s Torah according to Paul, Soon and I disagree.
I say the rabbis creatively participate, as it is important to me to show in my book, that the generative conceptualization of Torah did not end with the Tannaim. Unlike a common misconceptions in scholarship and beyond it, the Tannaim and the Amoraim after them, offer a range of literary conceptualization of Torah, of which the double Torah, Oral and Written, is only one possibility. Other distinctions, that do not attribute the oral teachings to Moses or Sinai, are equally common (Mikra/Mishnah, Mikra, Mishnah, Halakot and Aggadot). I dwell on this, as I think that something of Soon’s reconstruction of Paul’s concept of a unified-double-nomos also has a counterpart in Tannaitic literature. The famous homily from the Sifra which argues that two Torot were given in Sinai also lists other sorts of divine teachings given at Sinai. This is not in a separate, contradicting view, but as part of the same homily. The Sifra quotes Leviticus 26:46 and interprets it:
“These are the statutes (החקים) and ordinances (המשפטים) and laws [והתורות]” (Lev 26:46) [the verse goes on: that the the LORD established at Mount Sinai between himself and the Israelites through Moses]: “statutes” these are the midrashim, “ordinances” these are the deductions, “laws” [torot]—this teaches us that two Torot were given to Israel, one in Script and one in the mouth”.
So seemingly, not only two Torot were given in Sinai, also whatever techne (midrashim and deductions) needed to perhaps unite them. Indeed, Rabbi Akiva is then cited with an opposing view that not two torot, but many torot were given, – of which Torah from Sinai is but one. He makes no distinction between Oral and Written. In fact, this multiplicity generates a unity for Rabbi Akiva, for whom all is one Torah. In Talmudic literature elsewhere, other distinctions map the oral and written as two complementing of a whole single Torah (not a double Torah). Hosea 8:12 says:
אֶ֨כְתָּוב־ל֔וֹ רֻבֵּ֖ו תּֽוֹרָתִ֑י כְּמוֹ־זָ֖ר נֶחְשָֽׁבוּ׃
I write for him the multitude of my instructions [“the multitude” in Hebrew also reads as “the majority of” I will write him most of my instructions] they are regarded as a strange thing.
When this verse is read in various rabbinic homilies they emphasize that the oral and written are one Torah, Israel’s ethnic Torah, committed to different media. Various rabbis voice disagreements about whether there’s more oral material than written, or less.
I list these examples to indicate that, though Soon focused primarily on Paul in his response to my book, there is room within the comparative framework I laid out to integrate the rabbis into his new reading of Paul’s two Torot. Room in the sense that, even though I interpret Paul’s notion of Torah differently—in a way that unsettled Soon and estranged Paul from him—it remains feasible to read Soon's double-Torah-that-is-but-one comparatively with some Tannaitic concepts and not lose touch with my driving questions. Indeed, some of the rabbis thought that there is but one Torah, even when using a language of multiple/double Torot, and that the Oral upkeeps the Written.
I thank my readers and my critics, and look forward to see many more new ways to integrate Paul into a Judaism that has room for rabbinic literature in it.
Thank you.
[1] https://syndicate.network/symposia/theology/paul-the-pagans-apostle/