Rome, the Greek World, and the East, Vol. 3 - The Greek World, the Jews, and the East

 Jews and Others

Even in this context the issue arose much later and more hesitantly than
might have been expected. For the questions of the legitimate inheritance
of Abraham, of the necessity of circumcision, of the meaning of the story of
Hagar and of the validity of the Mosaic law were all raised in the very earliest
Christian writings which we possess, the letters of Paul. In what is almost
certainly the earliest of all, Galatians, Paul performs a remarkable feat of in-
terpretation in relating his message to the story of the two sons of Abraham:

Tell me then, you are so eager to be subject to the Law, have you lis-

tened to what the Law says? Scripture says that Abraham had two sons,

one by the slave girl and one by the freewoman. The son of the slave girl

came to be born in the way of human nature; but the son of the free-

woman came to be born through a promise. There is an allegory here:

these women stand for the two covenants. The one given on Mount

Sinai—that is Hagar, whose children are born into slavery; now Sinai

is a mountain in Arabia and represents Jerusalem in its present state, for

she is in slavery together with her children.^51

The crucial point in Paul’s preaching was however the claim which he had
made in passing earlier in Galatians (:): that it had been the faith in God
which Abraham had displayed, and not the Law, which had been crucial,
and it had been this which had been ‘‘accounted to him for righteousness.’’
This claim is explored more fully in Romans, almost certainly written a few
years later, with the very significant additional precision that Abraham’s faith
had been displayed while he was still uncircumcised. Hence he was to be the
father not only of the circumcised but of all those who believed while un-
circumcised; as the ‘‘father of many nations [ethnē],’’ he was ‘‘the father of
us all.’’^52
The claim that there could be, and was, a legitimate claim to the inheri-
tance of Abraham which was independent of and logically prior to circum-
cision, anda fortiorito the Mosaic Law, ‘‘which came  years later,’’^53 was
(and is) fundamental to Christianity. Moreover, in their subsequent mission-
ary preaching Christians were clearly not compelled to attach any impor-
tance to the question of whether the groups concerned had or had not previ-
ously practised circumcision. At the same time, as is well established, it was
they, and not his fellow Jews, who took up and exploited the presentation

. Galatians :–, trans. New Jerusalem Bible.

. Romans .

. Galatians :.