What evidence from Pauline Letters (aside from Paul's claims) do we have that he was a pharisee and a Jewish scholar?

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Irish1975
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Re: What evidence from Pauline Letters (aside from Paul's claims) do we have that he was a pharisee and a Jewish scholar

Post by Irish1975 »

John2 wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 4:24 pm And since the Sadducees rejected the traditions of the fathers, Paul cannot have been a Sadducee. And since Paul doesn't appear to have been an Essene to me, I think the best option is that he was a Pharisee.

And most Jews then were Pharisaic (at least in Israel), just like today, and according to Josephus, even Sadducaic judges deferred to Pharisaic rulings in Ant. 18.1.4.
But they [the Sadducees] are able to do almost nothing of themselves; for when they become magistrates, as they are unwillingly and by force sometimes obliged to be, they addict themselves to the notions of the Pharisees, because the multitude would not otherwise bear them.
So for me the odds are that Paul was a Pharisee, even if we didn't have Php. 3, Gal. 1:14 and Acts.
How much did Josephus know or care about Jewish life in the Diaspora? To what extent was there a division among the four “schools” outside of Palestine? Anyhow, I don’t see much of a connection between Paul (the writer) and Judean ideology.
ABuddhist
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Re: What evidence from Pauline Letters (aside from Paul's claims) do we have that he was a pharisee and a Jewish scholar

Post by ABuddhist »

Irish1975 wrote: Sat Nov 27, 2021 8:52 am
John2 wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 4:24 pm And since the Sadducees rejected the traditions of the fathers, Paul cannot have been a Sadducee. And since Paul doesn't appear to have been an Essene to me, I think the best option is that he was a Pharisee.

And most Jews then were Pharisaic (at least in Israel), just like today, and according to Josephus, even Sadducaic judges deferred to Pharisaic rulings in Ant. 18.1.4.
But they [the Sadducees] are able to do almost nothing of themselves; for when they become magistrates, as they are unwillingly and by force sometimes obliged to be, they addict themselves to the notions of the Pharisees, because the multitude would not otherwise bear them.
So for me the odds are that Paul was a Pharisee, even if we didn't have Php. 3, Gal. 1:14 and Acts.
How much did Josephus know or care about Jewish life in the Diaspora? To what extent was there a division among the four “schools” outside of Palestine? Anyhow, I don’t see much of a connection between Paul (the writer) and Judean ideology.
With all due respect (and supporting your overall claims), from what I recall reading about this topic, the following things have been accepted by modern scholars.

1. That Josephus, in presenting Judaism as divided into 4 distinctive sects, was trying to make Judaism seem comparable to Greek philosophical traditions, which also had distinctive sects.

2. That the assumption that all Jews had to belong to a distinct sect was, at best, a desire within certain Jewish religious and intellectual elites (such as Josephus, the founders of Rabbinical Judaism, and perhaps Paul) that did not match the diversity of beliefs that Jews had during the First Century CE.
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Irish1975
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Re: What evidence from Pauline Letters (aside from Paul's claims) do we have that he was a pharisee and a Jewish scholar

Post by Irish1975 »

ABuddhist wrote: Sat Nov 27, 2021 9:07 am
Irish1975 wrote: Sat Nov 27, 2021 8:52 am
John2 wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 4:24 pm And since the Sadducees rejected the traditions of the fathers, Paul cannot have been a Sadducee. And since Paul doesn't appear to have been an Essene to me, I think the best option is that he was a Pharisee.

And most Jews then were Pharisaic (at least in Israel), just like today, and according to Josephus, even Sadducaic judges deferred to Pharisaic rulings in Ant. 18.1.4.
But they [the Sadducees] are able to do almost nothing of themselves; for when they become magistrates, as they are unwillingly and by force sometimes obliged to be, they addict themselves to the notions of the Pharisees, because the multitude would not otherwise bear them.
So for me the odds are that Paul was a Pharisee, even if we didn't have Php. 3, Gal. 1:14 and Acts.
How much did Josephus know or care about Jewish life in the Diaspora? To what extent was there a division among the four “schools” outside of Palestine? Anyhow, I don’t see much of a connection between Paul (the writer) and Judean ideology.
With all due respect (and supporting your overall claims), from what I recall reading about this topic, the following things have been accepted by modern scholars.

1. That Josephus, in presenting Judaism as divided into 4 distinctive sects, was trying to make Judaism seem comparable to Greek philosophical traditions, which also had distinctive sects.

2. That the assumption that all Jews had to belong to a distinct sect was, at best, a desire within certain Jewish religious and intellectual elites (such as Josephus, the founders of Rabbinical Judaism, and perhaps Paul) that did not match the diversity of beliefs that Jews had during the First Century CE.
I agree with that. I know that John2 puts a lot of weight on the “4 schools” idea, so I was suggesting to him that—even if there is merit to this classification within Palestine/Judea—it probably has very little to do with Diaspora Jews such as Paul.
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Re: What evidence from Pauline Letters (aside from Paul's claims) do we have that he was a pharisee and a Jewish scholar

Post by John2 »

What then do you suppose Paul means by "the traditions of my fathers"? Do you think it is only a coincidence that this is what the oral Torah of the Pharisees is commonly called (including in the NT)?

I haven't read everything Josephus wrote, but I know that he writes about Jews and converts in Mesopotamia and wrote the first Hebrew edition of the Jewish War for them. He also visited Rome before the war to help priests who were imprisoned there and he lived there after the war. So Josephus himself is an example of a Pharisee in the Diaspora.

Rabbi Akiva also visited Cilicia (where Paul is said to have been from in Acts, not to say that this necessarily means that it's true), and the Herodian princess Berenice, who visited Paul in Acts, was married to Polemo, the king of Cilicia, in Paul's time.

And Herodians are presented as being in cahoots with Pharisees to kill Jesus in the NT (like Paul had first opposed Christians), and Paul himself was arguably related to Herodians. So Rabbinic Jews (like Akiva) and others who were acquainted with Pharisaic Judaism (like Barenice) had ties to Cilicia, so it doesn't seem out the realm of possibility to me that Paul could have been a Pharisee in the Diaspora. But even if he wasn't, who says he never visited Israel before his involvement with Christianity and became a Pharisee there? Acts says that he learned from Gamaliel in Jerusalem, after all.
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Re: What evidence from Pauline Letters (aside from Paul's claims) do we have that he was a pharisee and a Jewish scholar

Post by ABuddhist »

John2 wrote: Sat Nov 27, 2021 12:36 pm What then do you suppose Paul means by "the traditions of my fathers"? Do you think it is only a coincidence that this is what the oral Torah of the Pharisees is commonly called (including in the NT)?
1. Why assume that Paul was being honest rather than, like Yogi Bhajan, inflating his religious credentials in order to attract converts?

2. Paul may have been referring more generically to training in Judaism quite different from the oral Torah; the Dead Sea Scrolls and Philo reveal that much Judaism unrecognizable or unacceptable to to the Pharisees and the later rabbis existed.
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Re: What evidence from Pauline Letters (aside from Paul's claims) do we have that he was a pharisee and a Jewish scholar

Post by John2 »

In the big picture I know there are things that can be dismissed (like the idea that Paul wrote the Pastorals or Hebrews), but there are also things that strike me as "if we dismiss the evidence for X then there's no evidence," and that is how the "Was Paul a Pharisee and knew Hebrew?" question strikes me. It says that Paul was a Pharisee in a letter attributed to him that I regard as genuine ("but we should dismiss it") and in Acts, which I think could have been written by someone who knew Paul or at least knew his letters ("but we should dismiss it"), and Acts says that he spoke Hebrew and this would make sense if he was a Pharisee.

If the reference to Paul being a Pharisee in Php 3 is an interpolation, then it either had to happen before Acts was written (in my view c. 95 CE, but the mid-second century CE isn't out of the realm of possibility for me either), or whoever wrote Acts interpolated Php. 3, or someone who liked Acts interpolated it. Maybe so, but it seems simpler and more plausible to me (for all the reasons I've given above) to think that Paul was a Pharisee (like Php. 3 and Acts say and as Gal. 1:14 seems to imply)) and spoke Hebrew (like Acts says and being a Pharisee seems to imply). I don't think there's anything outrageous about the idea, at least.
Last edited by John2 on Sat Nov 27, 2021 3:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What evidence from Pauline Letters (aside from Paul's claims) do we have that he was a pharisee and a Jewish scholar

Post by John2 »

ABuddhist wrote: Sat Nov 27, 2021 2:41 pm
John2 wrote: Sat Nov 27, 2021 12:36 pm What then do you suppose Paul means by "the traditions of my fathers"? Do you think it is only a coincidence that this is what the oral Torah of the Pharisees is commonly called (including in the NT)?
1. Why assume that Paul was being honest rather than, like Yogi Bhajan, inflating his religious credentials in order to attract converts?

Well, I don;t know how honest Paul was (generally speaking), but he does say in Gal. 1:13 that, "For you have heard of my former way of life in Judaism," which could mean that his credentials were known.

2. Paul may have been referring more generically to training in Judaism quite different from the oral Torah; the Dead Sea Scrolls and Philo reveal that much Judaism unrecognizable or unacceptable to to the Pharisees and the later rabbis existed.

But he uses an expression that commonly refers to the oral Torah of the Pharisees (like in Josephus and Mark) and I'm unaware of any other ancient Jewish sect that used it.

The DSS Damascus Document (for example) appears to oppose the Pharisees and use a wordplay on another word for the oral Torah (halakhot), and it promotes the observance of a "new covenant" led by the Teacher of Righteousness, and when it speaks of the "forefathers" it means the ones in the OT, and it belittles the "fathers" who came after that ("But all they who hold steadfast to these laws to go out and to come in according to the Law and llisten to the voice of the teacher and shall confess before God ... we are guilty, we and our fathers because they walked contrary unto the laws of the covenant"). So this seems like an unlikely place to find regard for "the traditions of the fathers."
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Re: What evidence from Pauline Letters (aside from Paul's claims) do we have that he was a pharisee and a Jewish scholar

Post by ABuddhist »

John2 wrote: Sat Nov 27, 2021 3:25 pm Well, I don;t know how honest Paul was (generally speaking), but he does say in Gal. 1:13 that, "For you have heard of my former way of life in Judaism," which could mean that his credentials were known.
From whom would Paul's audience have heard such things? In the absence of evidence to the contrary, there is a distinct possibility that they may have heard such things from Paul himself or from Paul's followers repeating what Paul said - rather like Yogi Bhajan's followers learning about his allegedly vast stature within Sikhism from him and his followers.
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Re: What evidence from Pauline Letters (aside from Paul's claims) do we have that he was a pharisee and a Jewish scholar

Post by John2 »

ABuddhist wrote: Sat Nov 27, 2021 3:36 pm
John2 wrote: Sat Nov 27, 2021 3:25 pm Well, I don;t know how honest Paul was (generally speaking), but he does say in Gal. 1:13 that, "For you have heard of my former way of life in Judaism," which could mean that his credentials were known.
From whom would Paul's audience have heard such things? In the absence of evidence to the contrary, there is a distinct possibility that they may have heard such things from Paul himself or from Paul's followers repeating what Paul said - rather like Yogi Bhajan's followers learning about his allegedly vast stature within Sikhism from him and his followers.

The same way Christians in Judea heard that he had persecuted Christians in Gal. 1:22-23.

I was personally unknown, however, to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. They only heard the account: “The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.”
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Re: What evidence from Pauline Letters (aside from Paul's claims) do we have that he was a pharisee and a Jewish scholar

Post by Ken Olson »

ABuddhist wrote: Thu Nov 25, 2021 2:16 pm I thank you very much for your answer, which is exactly what I was seeking, given my (and others', apparently) doubts about Acts' reliability.
I want to add that, though I think Paul was a Jewish scholar (and a real person!), and plausibly a Pharisee, that should not be taken to mean that I am defending the reliability of Acts' depiction of Paul, or Acts in general. I've had a few posts criticizing gryan's theory that there are two different Jameses in Galatians, basically one who favored Paul's law-free mission to the Gentiles and one who opposed it. I think there is only one James mentioned in Galatians, and that the James who championed the law-free mission to the Gentiles in Acts 15 is a fictionalization by the author of Acts of the James mentioned by Paul in Galatians. I think Paul may have been a Pharisee in some sense of the word, but I'm very dubious of the claim in Acts 22.3 that he studied under Gamaliel.

Paul of the Letters versus the Paul of Acts is a major issue in New Testament studies. I would like to recommend John Knox, Chapters in a Life of Paul (original 1950), and particularly the first two chapters, as a useful approach to the issue of determining what material from Acts we might accept and what we might not. (I realize on this forum there is a great deal of skepticism toward both Acts and the Letters as giving us information about the historical Paul).

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I'll have more to say about Darrell J. Doughty's argument that Phil. 3.2-21 is non-Pauline, though that will have to wait until tomorrow. But basically I think it is largely circular. He proposes a post-Pauline context for interpreting the passage and then argues that the passage, when understood in that context, is non-Pauline.

Best,

Ken
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