written out of deference to Jewish believers in Rome and with an eye toward
his upcoming visit to Jerusalem. His letter to the Galatians is far more nega-
tive. There Paul speaks of his “former life in Judaism” in a way that distances
him from it (Gal. 1:13). In lines written to believers in Thessalonica so harsh
that many regard them as an interpolation, he says of the Jews in Judea that
they “killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out; they
displease God and oppose all people, hindering us from speaking to the
Gentiles so that they may be saved, so as to fill up constantly the measure of
their sins. But God’s wrath has come upon them at last!” (1 Thess. 4:15-16).
As for circumcision, it ultimately counts for nothing (Gal. 5:5; 6:15; 1 Cor.
7:19). More, if his Gentile converts have their foreskins cut off under com-
pulsion, they will cut themselves off from Christ (Gal. 5:4). The Jew is one
whose Jewishness is “inward”(en tZkryptZ),and real circumcision is a mat-
ter of the heart, spiritual not literal (Rom. 2:29; Phil. 3:3). The Torah pre-
sided over a ministry of condemnation (2 Cor. 3:9) as an unwitting ally of
Sin (understood as a cosmic power) that brought only death (Rom. 7:9-11).
Because it cannot “make alive” (Gal. 3:21), its fading glory has been set aside
in Christ (2 Cor. 3:10-11), who is the “end” but also “goal”(telos)of the Law
(Rom. 10:4). “No one is counted righteous by works of the Law [i.e., by ob-
serving the Torah’s ritual commandments] but by the faithfulness of Jesus
Christ” (Gal. 2:16), and all who rely on works of the Law, especially circum-
cision, are under a curse (Gal. 3:10).
For Paul, Jesus himself is more than just the messiah of Israel; he is the
universal Savior and Lord. He never calls Jesus “God,” and no Pauline
prayer is addressedtoJesus but to GodthroughJesus. Even so, his Christol-
ogy goes beyond the veneration of any other mediator figure in early Juda-
ism. In a proto-binitarian rewriting of the Shema, he includes Jesus in the
life of the one God and identifies him as the divine agent in creation: “for
us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we
exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through
whom we exist” (1 Cor. 8:6). Christ’s preexistence, divinity, and incarna-
tion are also alluded to in the statement that, though he was in the form of
God, he emptied himself by being born in human likeness (Phil. 2:6-11).
Like Paul’s midrash on the Shema, this poem (probably of pre-Pauline ori-
gin) effectively identifies Christ with heavenly Wisdom. Here messianism
encroaches on monotheism.
It is important to note that Paul addressed none of these letters to Jews
or Jewish believers in Jesus but to his Gentile converts (though the non-
Pauline congregations in Rome probably numbered some Jews), so in402daniel c. harlowEERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
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