Boyarin, Daniel. A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity

Boyarin, Daniel. A radical Jew: Paul and the politics of identity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994

A Radical Jew:

 

Paul and the Politics of Identity

 

Sam Moshinsky

 

Boyarin, Daniel. A radical Jew: Paul and the politics of identity.

 

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

 

When I graduated, in 1951, from the Marist Brothers-run St. Francis Xavier College in

 

Shanghai, I left with a powerful impression of St. Paul, as then taught in the catechism and

 

Church History classes. Whilst St. Peter and his fellow Apostles were portrayed as basically

 

religious idealists, it was St. Paul who was clearly the visionary and dynamic figure who

 

possessed the courage to break away from Judaism in order to found a new religion based on

 

the teachings of Jesus Christ. It was Paul to whom the accolade “The First Christian”

 

seemed to fit most aptly. Whatever one’s religious orientation, there was no doubt that

 

one could not but have immense respect for Paul’s towering intellect, energy and

 

leadership.

 

It was not until sometime later, after having arrived in Australia, and in the course of

 

further reading and discussions with friends – Christians, as well as Jews – that I came

 

across a more troubling dimension about him. These related to his perceived total rejection

 

of Judaism, particularly the basic tenets of Torah, circumcision, and the prohibition of

 

eating certain foods. This, in turn, fuelled the notion of anti-semitism with which he

 

became associated. Although it was the Lutheran movement which was most identified with this

 

virulent view of Judaism, other Christian teachings can also not escape the accusation that

 

the establishment of Christianity is very much intertwined with a feeling of disdain and

 

even hatred of Judaism and the Jews.

 

As a result, Pauline theology and Rabbinic Judaism grew apart from each other and the two

 

faiths progressively had less and less to say to each other. Saul, the Jew from Tarsus,

 

appeared to have orchestrated a chasm which lasted for centuries.

 

However, as Father Brendan Byrne, S. J. said in his address at a seminar recently

 

conducted by the Council of Christians and Jews in Melbourne, a “roll-back” of the

 

traditional interpretations of Paul’s influence on Christianity’s negative view of

 

Judaism started to occur at the beginning of this century. This mainly took the form of

 

either questioning the reliability of Paul’s understanding of the teachings of the Torah,

 

upon which his own view of Christ’s teaching is based, or whether Christian theology had,

 

in fact, developed a mistaken interpretation of what Paul actually thought and said.

 

This process of Questioning gained momentum with the general recognition of some form of

 

Christian responsibility for the Holocaust, stemming from the largely anti-Jewish bias of

 

Christian Scripture.

 

It is against this background that considerable interest was generated by the publication

 

of Daniel Boyarin’s book as it was perceived to be traversing new ground in the

 

understanding of the teachings of Paul. For, rather than again question as to what Paul is

 

meant to have said, or if we understood him correctly, Boyarin explores whether, despite of

 

the unattractive baggage associated with him, Paul still does have a relevant message in

 

today’s world.

 

Damiel Boyarin is an Orthodox Jew, the Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture at the

 

University of California, and is generally respected as a post-modern cultural critic. The

 

fact that a scholar of Boyarin’s standing should turn his attention to Paul’s letters

 

and epistles is a testimony to the remarkable changes which have taken place in the world of

 

Pauline studies. In tackling Paul, he taught himself Greek, and carried out an extensive

 

study of the immense amount of writings which Paul generated. Boyarin’s scholarship has

 

earned him a respected place among Pauline scholars. His book on Paul has been extensively,

 

and intensively, reviewed in nearly all the serious theological journals. They comment

 

favourably on his scholarship, but have reservations, like myself, in regard to his

 

conclusions.

 

Boyarin ascribes to Paul’s opposition to the Judaic Law because of Paul’s

 

understanding that the Law insists on the “priority and importance of the flesh”. He

 

begins his book by sketching Paul’s background as a ’Hellenistic Jewish cultural

 

clone” characterised by a “dualistic system which preceeds and is primary over body”.

 

Central to Paul’s resentments against the “Law” is its carnality, as symbolised by

 

circumcision, as a literal act “which should not mark off the body as ethically distinct

 

from other human bodies”. He also deals fully with Paul’s attitude for sexuality,

 

arguing that first-century Judaism had become thoroughly anxiety-ridden about it, ea. the

 

Torah commandment to procreate, but also to avoid sexual desire.

 

The main interest in Boyarin’s book lies, in my opinion in its dissertation on

 

identity, more particularly, the reconciliation between universality, on the one hand, and

 

particularisation, on the other. Boyarin has, I believe, identified this as the critical

 

issue of our times. He proposes that Paul, as a radical thinker, is as relevant today, in

 

this respect, as he was two thousand years ago.

 

Paul, as a sophisticated Diaspora Jew, sensed the mood of his times. The known world was

 

then seething with a large number of sects and religious beliefs. Despite this high degree

 

of fragmentation of society, of which the Jews were just one part, there was a strong

 

striving for some form of unification of thought. All these various ideas yearned for a

 

universal God who would make sense of the meaning of human existence on earth. But only the

 

Jews really possessed a single God and a seemingly coherent view of the cosmos and the place

 

of mankind in it. However, entry into this faith was difficult; circumcision, the

 

prohibition against eating certain foods and the necessity to observe numerous commandments,

 

were real deterrents to vast numbers of Gentiles. Although the more Hellenised Jews of the

 

Diaspora took a more “wordly” and elastic approach to observance, the Rabbis, who were

 

the guardians of the faith, based in Jerusalem, were unwilling to “bend the rules” to

 

accommodate these Gentiles, whose entry into Judaism in substantial numbers would have

 

allowed it to be the basis of a more universal religion.

 

The famous “apparition” or conversion which struck him on the road to Damascus was

 

apparently the realisation that it would have to be through Christ’s message of faith and

 

grace that this universal salvation could be attained. Once possessed of this belief, his

 

zeal knew no bounds. In defence of Paul, it would be fair to state that he did strive to

 

achieve his objective of universality via Judaism. He argued that strict observance of the

 

basic tenets of Judaism may not be as critical as hitherto believed to be. He proposed that

 

they should be considered as no more than allegories for something more spiritual and

 

meaningful than the observance itself.

 

Paul’s universalism is enshrined in that most famous of statements from Galations 3:28,

 

which Boyarin uses as the centrepiece of the cover of his book.‘There is neither Jew

 

nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no ma/e and female, for ye are all one

 

in Jesus Christ.’

 

This message of universalism exerted an extremely powerful appeal to the Gentiles who

 

sensed an opportunity for acceptance and inclusiveness in a hitherto exclusive monotheistic

 

society. But to the Jews the spirituality of Judaism had the effect of destroying the

 

tangibleness of their world, revolving around the Torah, Temple and the land of Israel. In

 

the end, as we know it, the pull of Paul’s universalism overcame the central gravity of

 

Judaism, and Christianity established itself as a separate universal religion.

 

It is in this final chapter of the book that Boyarin is at his most interesting and

 

controversial. It is entitled “Answering the mail – Toward a radical Jewishness”. For

 

Boyarin, too, has an obsession, and that is with Jewish identity today. He attempts to draw

 

on Paul as a resource for cultural critique and renewal. He proposes that Paul be viewed as

 

not only a Hellenised Jew who believed in universal sameness, but as a radical social

 

thinker, a quasi Marxist universalist, even a Jewish thinker, whose thoughts could make an

 

important contribution to the important Jewish issues of today.

 

To understand Boyarin’s pre-occupation with Jewish identity, one has to appreciate that

 

he is writing in the context of the state of American Jewry, where the issues of its

 

identity and continuity are now of paramount concerns. These concerns are also relevant to

 

us in Australia, as they are also, in varying degrees, to all Diaspora communities in open

 

societies, where the forces which have traditionally sustained Jewish identity are

 

disappearing.

 

American statistics disclose and ever increasing rate of marriages of Jews to non-Jewish

 

partners, which in turn leads to a reduction of community size. This gradual erosion is not

 

due to conscious decisions to quit Judaism, but is, in fact, the result of a process of

 

drift. The anxious question being increasingly asked is, whether Diaspora Jewry, as a

 

distinct ethnic, cultural and political entity has a future! In the flurry of an intensive

 

process of self-analysis, the basic question has even been asked: Does God want Jewish

 

people to continue?

 

Whilst there is general consensus that the continuity of Judaism, and the Jewish people,

 

must ultimately depend on an inner belief as a distinct religious community, based on the

 

centrality of Torah, there is no doubt that there must be a much clearer conception of what

 

is so special about Judaism, its religion and its way of life. This has led to calls to

 

appreciate that the Talmudic tradition is not as monolithic as many believe it to be, that

 

it does respect and preserves in the commentaries opposing views. Quite obviously, Jewish

 

education must be taught in a more professional and imaginative manner, particularly in ways

 

to appeal to the younger generation. In addition, there have been calls to ameliorate the

 

exclusiveness of Judaism by a greater acceptance of secular Jews, as well as those from

 

“mixed” marriages. After half a century of existence, even the place of Israel in the

 

Jewish world is part of this analysis.

 

Against this backdrop, Boyarin, in his final chapter, tries to reconcile the Rabbinic

 

emphasis of distinctness with Paul’s vision of universality. In doing so, he expresses his

 

concerns with developments in Israel, which he associates with (mistakenly, in my opinion)

 

racist tendencies as examples of extreme forms of Jewish particularism. He sees territory

 

and power as promoting intolerance, and therefore argues for a de-territorialised Jewish

 

Diaspora existence, which, in his opinion, would more comfortably thrive in a multi-cultural

 

environment. Only thus, he suggests, could a meaningful balance be maintained between a

 

particularist cultural and religious existence within a universalist environment of

 

interaction with other cultures.

 

I find his arguments for a de-territorialised Diaspora identity, entailing a conscious

 

abdication of power to be unconvincing, and I very much doubt that the Jewish people would

 

want to see again a Jewish world without a Jewish state. Jewish helplessness would be an

 

aspect of Jewish existence which Jews would not wish to see return.

 

It seems clear that the world does not appear ready for a truly universal existence, and

 

recent events in Europe and Africa, tragically demonstrate that, given the opportunity,

 

peoples will opt for ethnic particularity. Unfortunately, particularity is invariably

 

accompanied by intolerance of other particular identities, leading to strife and bloodshed.

 

Paul’s idealist vision of universality is still probably too sophisticated a concept for

 

universal acceptance. Particularity still rules the day and is likely to continue for the

 

foreseeable future. What still eludes us is the social mechanism whereby differences, when

 

living side by side, can enjoy mutual respect and flourish in a harmonious atmosphere.

 

Despite the above reservations of Boyarin"s conclusions and prescriptions, the concept of

 

the book is both informative and challenging. Informative because the author has made a

 

significant contribution to a better understanding of Paul and his philosophy. To the extent

 

that he has succeeeded in correcting the mistaken anti-Jewish bias associated with this

 

towering figure of Christian religious ideology, Boyarin will have played a significant and

 

worthwhile part in reducing religious tensions between Christians and Jews. The book is also

 

very challenging because in using Paul’s belief in universality, we are enjoined to think

 

about, and work for, that most elusive aspect of human existence – to respect our fellow

 

human beings and to live in peace with them.

 

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