192 A History of Judaism
the new communities he founded were not expected to think of them-
selves as part of Judaism. He himself, however, was prepared to become
‘as a Jew to Jews’, and he visited the assembly of Jewish believers in
Jesus in Jerusalem to discuss with them in 49– 50 ce ‘the gospel that I
proclaim among the gentiles, in order to make sure that I was not run-
ning, or had not run, in vain’.^51
In the version in Acts of Paul’s meeting with Peter, James and others
of the Jerusalem Church, the discussion was all about the minimum
moral standards to be expected from gentile converts. Paul is portrayed
as himself behaving as an ordinary Jew, having his hair cut to fulfil a
vow, offering sacrifices in the Temple, undergoing ritual purification,
paying the expenses of a nazirite ceremony for others, and stating in the
Sanhedrin that he is a Pharisee. Paul’s own references to his attitude to
Judaism are rather more ambivalent, perhaps reflecting either changes
in his own beliefs from time to time or the rhetoric of a particular let-
ter, or both. Thus in his last letter, to the Christian community in
Rome, Paul affirmed that to the Israelites, his ‘kindred according to the
flesh’, belong ‘the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the
law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and
from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah’. Later in the
epistle he urged his gentile Christian readers to recognize that although
‘a hardening had come upon part of Israel’ (in their failure to recognize
Christ), ‘all Israel will be saved; as it is written, “Out of Zion will come
the Deliverer; he will banish ungodliness from Jacob.’ ” According to
Paul in this passage, ‘as regards election they [Israel] are beloved, for the
sake of their ancestors, for the gift, and the calling of God are irrevoc-
able.’ But, in contrast, Paul had written earlier to the Galatians about
the insufficiency of the Torah to bring salvation – ‘no one will be justi-
fied by the works of the law’ – and he had specifically noted that ‘we
ourselves are Jews by birth and not gentile sinners; yet we know that a
person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus
Christ.’
It seems likely that when the main aim of a letter was to persuade gen-
tile Christians of the unimportance of observing the Torah for them, Paul
played down the importance of the Torah for him. The letter to the Gala-
tians reflects the conundrum as experienced by Paul’s fellow missionaries
in his accusation against Cephas (another name for the apostle Peter):
But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he
stood self- condemned; for until certain people came from James, he used