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Paul's Former Occupation in Ioudaismos · Reformed Thinking

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Imagine reading a letter from a close friend, only to find out
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years later that you misunderstood the single most
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critical word in the entire message.
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Oh, that would be incredibly disorienting.
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Right, because let us say your friend thought they were talking
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about a specific political protest, but you thought they
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were talking about an entire organized religion.
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That changes the whole meaning of the relationship, the context
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of the letter, and, well, the way you view that friend's
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entire life. It rewrites the history
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completely. It really does.
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Now, what if I told you that one of the most famous theological
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texts in history, the Apostle Paul's letter to the Galatians,
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has been fundamentally misread by brilliant historical minds
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for almost 2000 years? Wow.
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And all because of a single Greek word.
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It is a staggering thought, honestly.
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But you know, modern readers have a terrible habit of
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projecting contemporary categories onto ancient texts.
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Yeah, we really do. We just assume people living in
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the Roman Empire thought like us organize their world into neat
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little boxes like us and well used words the way we do, but
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they lived in an entirely different conceptual universe.
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Right. The hardware is totally
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different, yes. When we take a modern
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dictionary, find an ancient Greek word, and just plug in the
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modern English equivalent, we assume the case is closed.
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But doing that often destroys the actual historical meaning of
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the text. Welcome to Reformed thinking,
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everyone. We are jumping into our deep
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dive for today, and we are taking a thorough look at a
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linguistic landscape that is, frankly, incredibly messy.
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Very messy. Our whole conversation revolves
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around a brilliant essay by Matthew Feed Novenson.
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It is titled Paul's Former Occupation in IUD Smos and we
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are pulling this from the broader academic volume
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Galatians and Christian Theology.
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It is a fascinating piece of scholarship.
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It is, and if you are listening to this and you have read the
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book of Galatians, you probably thought the something I thought.
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On its face, it looks like Paul is writing a harsh, sweeping
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critique of the religion of Judaism.
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Yeah, it reads like a manifesto against a rival world religion.
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But if Novenson is right, that Greek word Paul used in his own
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autobiography, the word iodasimos, it means something
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radically different. The central question we are
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tackling today is what Paul actually meant when he described
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his past life in the 1st chapter of Galatians versus 13 and 14.
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Because if we get that one word wrong.
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Then the entire landscape of the letter shifts.
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It goes from a theological debate about world religions to
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something far more political, historical and highly specific.
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So to pace ourselves here, we are going to start by looking at
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the historical misunderstandings.
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Then we will dig into the linguistic anomalies of ancient
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Greek. Always fun.
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Right. And finally, we will reconstruct
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Paul's true historical and political context.
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Sounds like a solid plan. So I was looking at the timeline
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of how people interpreted this letter, and it seems like
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everyone from the early church Fathers to the Protestant
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Reformers just took for granted that Judaism was a world
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religion that Paul hated. They did.
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Why did so many brilliant minds fall into that same interpretive
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trap for centuries? To understand the trap, we have
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to look at the historical water. Those thinkers were swimming in
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this misunderstanding, you know, it did not start in the modern
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era. OK, we can actually trace a
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clear line from late antiquity all the way to 20th century
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scholarship. And the starting point is really
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a figure named Ignatius of Antioch.
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Tell me more about the context around Ignatius, because he is
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writing in the early 2nd century, right?
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Yes, early 2nd century. This is a time when the early
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Jesus movement is really trying to figure out its identity.
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Correct. They were in a highly precarious
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position within the Roman Empire, and Ignatius is actually
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the writer who introduces a firm distinction between the Greek
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terms ayudaismos and Christianismos.
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Oh, he coins that distinction. He essentially sets them up as
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opposing forces. Yes, he wrote to local churches
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claiming that it is absurd to profess Jesus Christ and at the
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same time follow Jewish customs. Wow.
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He was trying to build a solid, impenetrable wall between the
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two groups. So he is creating 2 distinct
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buckets, two distinct religious systems.
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Exactly. And he needed to do that because
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the lines were incredibly blurry at the time.
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I mean, a lot of early believers in Jesus were Jewish and
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obviously continued living as Jewish people.
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Right, they did not see a conflict, but.
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Ignatius comes along and says no.
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These are mutually exclusive categories.
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And that boundary drawing? It became the default lens for
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reading Paul. And then, a few decades later,
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along comes a man named Marcion of Sinope.
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Oh boy. Marcian.
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Yeah, Marcian. He takes his distinction to an
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absolute extreme. He looked at the Hebrew
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Scriptures and the texts of the early Christian movement and
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concluded there must literally be two separate gods.
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A2 God system that is a massively How does someone read
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these texts and then conclude there are two entirely different
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deities? Well.
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You have to remember Marcian lived in a Greco Roman culture
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that highly valued philosophical dualism.
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Oh, like the material world is bad, spiritual world is good?
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Yes, that is the core poor idea. The physical material world is
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flawed and the spiritual world is pure.
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So Marcion decided that the God of the Old Testament, God of the
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Jews, was this harsh, legalistic creator deity who made our
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flawed material world. OK, I see where he's going with
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this. In contrast, he believed the
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supreme, loving God of the spiritual realm was newly
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revealed by Jesus Christ, and for Marcion Galatians was the
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ultimate proof text. He read it as the story of a
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cosmic conflict between two opposing religions backed by two
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opposing gods. Which the early church obviously
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recognized as a massive problem. They push back against that to
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God theory quite aggressively. Oh, they fought back hard,
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primarily through figures like Tertolian.
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The apologist from North Africa. That is him.
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Tertolian fought fiercely against Marcin's system.
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He insisted there is only one God who created the world and
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sent Jesus. However, and this is the crucial
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part, Tertullian agreed with Marcion's basic reading of the
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Galatians text itself. Wait, really?
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Yeah. Tertullian agreed that the
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epistle was a decisive text against Judaismus He rejected
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the two gods theory, but he entirely accepted the two
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opposing religions theory. So the narrative hardens right
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there. It absolutely does.
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Even the people fighting the heretics agree on this one
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fundamental reading of Paul's letter.
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They all agree Paul is attacking a religion.
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And that reading passes right down the line to Augustine in
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the late 4th and early 5th centuries.
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And Augustine had a huge impact on Western thought.
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Massive. He framed the issue in a way
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that shapes centuries of theology.
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You know, Augustine lived during the slow collapse of the Roman
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Empire, and he thought a lot about the city of man versus the
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city of God. He argued that if Paul said he
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advanced in Judaismus by persecuting the church, then
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clearly Judaismus itself is opposed to the church.
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That makes a kind of superficial sense.
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It does. Augustine framed it as a problem
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with the his words, carnal and slavish way of life of the
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Jewish people themselves, contrasting it with the
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spiritual freedom of the Church. You can easily see how that
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interpretation would shape centuries of hostility very
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easily. It sets up this 0 sum game where
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one side has to lose for the other to win.
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And that zero sum game crosses right over into the Reformation
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in the 16th, 10th century. Let's talk about Luther.
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Yes, Martin Luther. When Luther read Paul's phrase
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about his former occupation in Judaism, Luther was fighting his
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own massive institutional war with the Catholic Church over
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the sale of indulgences and church corruption.
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Right, he had a very specific lens.
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So Luther equated Paul's critique with any religious
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system that trusts in its own merits.
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He just maps his own 16th century battles right onto a 1st
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century text. He maps it perfectly.
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Luther used the term as a cipher.
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He applied it to the Pope, the Turks, the Jews, and anyone he
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saw as relying on human works rather than divine grace.
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It basically becomes a universal catch all for Bad Religion.
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It does, and that pattern persist straight into the modern
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era. Take Rudolf Boltman, a highly
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influential 20th century scholar.
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He saw Galatians one as God's condemnation of Jewish striving
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after righteousness. Which again reflects the time he
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lived in. Exactly.
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Think about the context post World War Europe, where human
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progress in institutions had spectacularly failed.
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Scholars like Carl Barth and J Louise Martin framed the letter
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as a universe level clash of opposites, divine action versus
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human religion. By the logic of their reading,
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the Judaism of Paul's day fell firmly on the human religion
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side of that equation. Reading Galatians as a textbook
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against a world religion is like trying to run modern software on
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vintage hardware. Oh, I like that.
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You know, the system just was not built to process that
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concept. You have all these historical
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heavyweights, Augustine, Luther, Barth trying to boot up a modern
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understanding of world religions on a 1st century letter.
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And the hardware is rejecting the code, yes.
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The hardware rejects it. So if all these brilliant
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historical minds read it this way for almost 2000 years, what
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specific clue made modern scholars realize they might be
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misinterpreting the text entirely?
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Well, the shift started with a linguistic observation published
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in 2007 by a scholar named Steve Mason.
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OK, 2007. So this is very recent.
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Very recent Mason essentially shifted the entire conversation
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away from heavy centuries old theological assumptions.
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He forced everyone to look at basic Greek grammar and ancient
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sociology. Tell me about Steve Mason's
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proposal, because this is where the conventional wisdom gets
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completely flipped upside down. Mason pointed out a glaring
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historical anachronism. He argued that the concept of
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Judaism as a religion simply did not exist in the Greco Roman
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world. Wait.
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Not just that Paul didn't mean it, but the concept didn't exist
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at all. Correct.
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The entire category of religion was absent from the ancient
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mindset. That is hard to wrap your head
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around today. It is today we think of religion
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as a discreet set of beliefs, right?
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A private conviction, you can choose to adopt or leave.
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Ancient people did not think that way.
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They belong to ethnic. Groups.
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So an ancient person wouldn't say I am converting to the
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religion of the Egyptians? No, never.
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They would say I am adopting the ancestral customs of the
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Egyptian ethnic group, yes. Ancient ethnic groups had
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ancestral traditions, geographical homelands, local
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laws, and specific gods tied to their specific lands.
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To adopt the gauze was to adopt the whole ethnic package.
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That makes sense. And this brings us to the Greek
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verb you daiso, which is typically translated into
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English as to Judaize. Mason pointed out that this verb
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does not mean to believe in the Jewish religion.
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It means to act like a Jew or to adopt Jewish customs.
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This is a crucial distinction. It is not about mental assent to
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a doctrine. It is about taking on the
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physical and cultural habits of a specific people group.
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Exactly. And here is the grammatical
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linchpin that changes everything.
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In ancient Greek the subject of the verb you daiso is always
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without exception, a non Jew. Wait, really?
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A Jewish person cannot Judaism. They cannot any more than a
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Greek person can Hellenize or a Mead can meet eyes.
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Oh wow. In the Greek language these
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verbs ending in ESO signify the adoption of native practices by
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non-native persons. Let me make sure I think about
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it. A Mead does not act like a Mead.
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They just are a Mead. A Greek does not adopt Greek
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customs, they just live their daily life.
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A Jewish person does not adopt Jewish customs, they just live
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their ancestral life. Therefore, the only people who
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can Judaize are Gentiles taking on foreign habits.
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That makes perfect logical sense.
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Let's make this concrete for the listener because the source
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material provides 3 specific ancient examples to prove this
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point. Let's do it.
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I was looking at the first example from the text of
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Galatians itself in chapter 2 verse 14.
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This is the famous incident at Antioch.
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Ah yes, it is a highly tense social situation.
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Set the scene for us. Paul is rebuking Peter publicly.
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Peter had been eating with the Gentile believers, sharing table
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fellowship with them. But when some traditionalist
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visitors arrived from Jerusalem, Peter got nervous.
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He gets cold feet. Exactly.
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Yeah, He pulls away, stopping his meals with the Gentiles to
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appease the visitors. Paul confronts him and says, If
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you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how
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can you compel the Gentiles to Judaize?
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Notice the phrasing Paul uses there.
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Peter is not Judaizing. Peter is a Jewish man.
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Peter is compelling the gentiles to judaize.
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He is forcing non jurors to adopt Jewish customs like
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specific dietary laws just so they can be allowed back to the
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dinner table. Right, the pressures on the
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outsiders to conform to the insider ethnic customs.
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So the grammatical subject of the action of Judaizing is the
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Gentile group. Always.
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And the second example Novenson cites comes from the Greek
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translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint,
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specifically the book of Esther, chapter 8, verse 17.
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I love the story of Esther set the political scene in the
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Persian court for us there because the context really
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explains why people would suddenly start changing their
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habits. The context is a massive
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reversal of fortunes. A high official named Haman had
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manipulated the Persian king into issuing A decree to
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annihilate all the Jews in the empire.
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A total genocide order. Yes, but Queen Esther
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intervenes, Haman is executed on his own gallows, and a new
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decree goes out allowing the Jewish people to arm and protect
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themselves. So the balance of power flips
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overnight. Overnight and the narrator
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reports that out of fear of the Jews, many of the Gentiles in
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the land underwent circumcision and Judaized.
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Again, it is the non Jews who are Judaizing.
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Out of sheer political terror. These Persian citizens are
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adopting the physical markers and customs of the Jewish ethnic
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group. They are doing it to blend in
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and save their own lives. Right.
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They are not converting to a theology, they are adopting an
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ethnic camouflage. That is a great way to put it.
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Our third piece of evidence comes from classical Roman
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literature. Plutarch wrote a biography of
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the famous orator Cicero. OK, switching gears to Roman
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politics. Yes, in this text, Cicero is
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prosecuting A corrupt former governor named Varus.
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One of the people trying to lead the accusation against Varez is
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a Friedman named Kiselius. OK.
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The text notes that Sicilius is accused of Judaizing.
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Meaning he is a Roman citizen improperly following Jewish
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customs rather than his own local Roman customs.
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Exactly. Maybe he was refusing to eat
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pork or observing a Sabbath and Cicero just mocks him for it in
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public. Cicero uses it as a straight up
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insult in the courtroom. So across all these different
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types of literature, a letter from Paul, a Hellenistic Jewish
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narrative in Ester, and a classical Roman biography by
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Plutarch, the verb eodaiso always refers to non Jews
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adopting Jewish ways. OK, let's follow the logic here,
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because if the verb ayudaiso means gentiles adopting Jewish
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customs, then we have to look at the noun form of that word.
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We do. The noun is ayudaisos.
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Logically, in standard grammar, the noun describes the action of
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the verb. Therefore, igudesmos should
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logically mean the adoption of Jewish customs by non Jews.
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That is the exact conclusion Steve Mason drew in his 2007
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paper. He is basically saying Ayudesmos
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is the Judaizing industry, and if Mason's logic holds up, it
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completely rewrites Paul's autobiography.
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How so? Well, when Paul says in
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Galatians One that his former occupation was an Eudesmos,
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Mason concludes that Paul must be confessing that he worked as
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a missionary for Gentiles before his conversion to Christ.
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Yes. The theory implies Paul was
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traveling around the Mediterranean trying to convince
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pagans. It would be a staggering
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biographical shift. We would have to picture a pre
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Christian Paul who is already running a mission to the
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Gentiles. Just a different kind of
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mission. He would be an agent of
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assimilation. But there is a flaw in that
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theory, isn't there? There is a big one.
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Mason's logic relies entirely on the assumption that language
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always follows strict mathematical rules.
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And that is the catch. Mason's logic is perfectly sound
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on paper, but as Novenson points out in our source text, language
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does not always behave logically.
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It really doesn't. Sometimes language breaks its
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own rules in the real world. Which brings us to the
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epigraphic evidence. Yes, the hard evidence.
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We are looking at actual stones carved in the ancient world, not
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just textbook grammar. Novenson presents a brilliant
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counter argument to Mason, proving that while Mason is
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right about the verb, he is wrong about the noun.
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Novenson points out the standard Greek pattern.
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Verbs ending in ESO turn into nouns ending in ismos.
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These nouns denote the action of the subject of the verb.
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Take the verb baptiso, which means to perform a water ritual.
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It becomes the noun baptismos. The ritual washing itself makes
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sense. Cathariso to purify becomes
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Catharismos, A purification. The pattern is incredibly
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consistent. Eudidiso to Eudizmos should
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follow suit. But the stones tell a different
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story. They really do.
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Novitsen proves that in all pre Christian instances where the
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noun IUD ismos is used, it is an activity practiced by Jewish
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people. Wow, use the lies etymology.
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Exactly the way real people spoke on the street contradicted
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the textbook grammar. We have to bring in the hard
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archaeological evidence to back this up.
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Novenson points to two specific inscriptions from the Roman
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period that blow a hole in Mason's theory.
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Let's. Look at the first one.
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It is a funerary inscription, an epitaph from the 3rd or 4th
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century. It was found in Porto, a port
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city near Rome with a significant Jewish diaspora
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community. It honors a woman named Katya
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Amias, the carved stone reads. Katya Amias, daughter of
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Monophilus, the father of the synagogue of the Carcarisians,
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lived virtuously in Ayudasmos, having dwelt 34 years with their
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spouse. Let's analyze that stone.
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Katya Amias is undeniably a Jewish woman.
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Without a doubt. Her father is literally the
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father of the synagogue, and the public monument says she lived
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virtuously in Ayudasmos. She is the one doing the action,
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a Jewish woman practicing Ayudasmos it.
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Completely shatters the idea that only non Jews can
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participate in it. It does, and the second
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inscription provides even more proof.
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Yes, this one is a synagogue benefaction record from the city
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of Stoby in Macedonia, dating to the 3rd century.
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It honors A prominent Roman citizen named Claudius Tiberius
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Polycarmis. Quite a name.
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Right. He is also given the official
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title Father of the Synagogue at Stoby.
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The public inscription states that he, quote, administered
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every policy in accordance with IU Desmos and in fulfillment of
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a vow gave his own property to expand the Holy place.
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Again, we have a prominent Jewish leader, a synagogue
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father handling administrative policies for his community.
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His actions are described as being in accordance with Ayudi
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Ismos. So the grammatical subject in
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these real world examples is undeniably a Jewish person.
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I know Mason tries to cautiously suggest that maybe Polycarmis
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was a gentile convert who became a synagogue leader.
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He does suggest that, but there is 0 positive evidence for that
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outside of Mason's own grammatical theory.
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It's a stretch. It is a massive stretch.
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The most straightforward reading of the hard evidence is that
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Jewish people are practicing ayudisimos.
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Think of. It like the English words
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flammable and inflammable. Oh, that is a great comparison.
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This trips people up all the time.
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Logically, based on on the prefix in, they should be exact
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opposites. If something is flammable, it
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catches fire. If it is inflammable, it
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logically should not catch fire. Like invisible means not
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visible. Exactly.
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But historically, because of the way the Latin root evolved and
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how workers actually use the warning labels in the real
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world, both words mean the exact same thing.
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They both mean the object will burst into flames.
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Language is messy. Etymology is not always destiny.
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That is a highly effective way to frame it.
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The messy shifts of daily language use create an anomaly,
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and that anomaly becomes fixed as a new pattern of speech.
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Eudesmos is one of those anomalies.
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It breaks the EZO 2 Ezmos rule. But this raises an immediate
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counter argument. If Eudesmos just means what Jews
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do, aren't we right back to square one?
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What do you mean? Does that not just mean the
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religion of Judaism? Are we just doing a massive
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linguistic circle to end up agreeing with Agustin and Luther
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that Paul was attacking a world religion?
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That is the critical question, and the answer is a resounding
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no. OK, Why?
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Because while udismos is something Jews do, it is not
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something all Jews do. It does not mean everyday
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baseline Jewish religious life. It means something far more
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specific and far more intense. To understand what it really
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means, we have to trace the word back to its absolute origin,
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which takes us to a bloody revolution in the 2nd century
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BCE. We have to go to the forge where
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this word was actually created. Yes, this is where the history
20:54
gets incredibly gripping. The word Eudesmos was not
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pointed by scholars in a library debating theology.
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It was coined in the trenches of the Maccabean revolt.
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We find the very first uses of the word in the historical text
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of Second Maccabees. The background here is severe
21:10
existential crisis for the Jewish people living under this
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Seleucid empire. Specifically under a king named
21:16
Antiochus. The 5th Epiphanes paint the
21:20
picture for us. What is happening in Jerusalem
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that leads to this crisis? It begins as a culture war that
21:27
eventually turns lethal. You had a rogue high priest in
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Jerusalem named Jason. Rogue Priest.
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OK, Jason wanted to modernize the city, which at that time
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meant making it Greek. He was pushing a political and
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cultural program called Hellenismos.
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And what's that? Involve practical.
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This involved building a Greek gymnasium right under the
21:44
citadel in Jerusalem. Now, a Greek gymnasium was not
21:47
just a place to lift weights, it was the center of Greek civic
21:50
and educational life. And men exercise completely
21:55
naked for Jewish youth to participate.
21:58
They were essentially publicly repudiating the physical mark of
22:02
the covenant, circumcision. Wow.
22:04
Jason also encouraged young men to wear Greek hats,
22:07
fundamentally adopting the customs of the ruling empire.
22:10
So the author of Second Maccabees views this as an
22:13
extreme adoption of foreign ways.
22:15
Yes, an absolute disaster for their ancestral traditions.
22:18
And Antiochus the 5th eventually escalates this from soft
22:21
cultural pressure to violent state sponsored persecution.
22:25
He outlaws basic Jewish practices under penalty of
22:28
death. It is brutal.
22:30
It is. He desecrates the Temple in
22:32
Jerusalem by sacrificing pigs on the altar.
22:34
He makes it a capital offense to possess the Torah.
22:37
He sends soldiers to inspect villages and murder mothers who
22:40
circumcised their infants. So in response to this
22:42
aggressive, violent campaign of Helen Ismos, the author's Second
22:46
Maccabees invents a new word as a Duke to contrast term, yes,
22:50
and that word is Uday Ismos. And this is vital for
22:53
understanding Paul later on in Second Maccabees.
22:56
Uday Ismos does not mean everyday Jewish life.
22:58
Because everyday life didn't need a word.
23:00
Right before Andy Uckis showed up, everyday Jewish life didn't
23:04
need a special iodism word. It was just life.
23:07
You woke up. You observed the Sabbath.
23:09
You ate the food of your ancestors.
23:11
Yeah, the word iodizmos was coined to mean the defense of
23:15
Jewish ancestral traditions under severe, violent duress.
23:19
It's a battle cry. It is a rallying flag.
23:22
The text highlights specific characters to illustrate this
23:25
concept in action. Let's talk about Judah Maccabee,
23:28
yes? Judah Maccabee, the famous
23:30
military leader. He's described as enlisting
23:32
those who had persevered in IUD Ismos.
23:35
He is gathering an army of zealous activists to fight a
23:38
guerrilla war against the Empire.
23:40
And then there is the intense story of a man named Razis.
23:44
Razis tell. Me about Razis because his story
23:46
shows just how high the stakes were.
23:48
Razis was an elder of Jerusalem. The text calls him a father of
23:52
the Jews. He says he was indicted for UD
23:54
Ismos and risked his body and soul for IUD Ismos.
23:57
OK, so he is a target. A prime target when the Greek
24:00
soldiers come to arrest him, rather than submit to their
24:02
torture and defilement, he falls on his own sword.
24:05
But the wound is not fatal, so he throws himself off a wall
24:09
into the crowd, and finally, bleeding out, he pulls out his
24:12
own internal organs and throws them at the soldiers, calling
24:16
upon God to return them to him in the resurrection.
24:19
That is wow. He dies a gruesome, defiant
24:21
martyr's death. He is the ultimate extreme
24:24
example of this concept. So UD is most in this context is
24:28
what zealous Jews do. Yes, it is what militant Jews do
24:32
when their entire way of life is threatened with extinction.
24:36
Matthew Novinson brings in a brilliant concept from the
24:38
sociologist Peter Berger that really crystallizes how a normal
24:42
daily habit becomes a militant action.
24:44
It is called the heretical imperative.
24:46
Walk me through how that applies to the Maccabean crisis.
24:50
Berger notes that in a traditional society, following
24:52
the rules of your culture is just basic existence.
24:55
It requires no conscious thought or choice.
24:58
It is simply what is done. Right, it's just the water you
25:00
swim in. But when a society is suddenly
25:02
exposed to competing worldviews, or in this case violent
25:06
suppression, the situation changes drastically.
25:09
The individual is forced to make a conscious choice to maintain
25:12
their traditions. They have to opt in.
25:14
Exactly that necessity of choosing is the heretical
25:19
imperative. Let's break that down with a
25:20
modern analogy. Think about wearing a specific
25:23
color of clothing. OK, say you throw on a blue
25:26
shirt. Normally, putting on a blue
25:29
shirt means absolutely nothing. You just grabbed it out of the
25:31
closet. It is the background hum of
25:34
getting dressed. But imagine you are living
25:36
through a violent political uprising and a rebel faction has
25:40
claimed blue as their official color.
25:42
The ruling government has banned the color entirely.
25:46
Suddenly, walking at your front door wearing a blue shirt is no
25:49
longer a neutral act of getting dressed.
25:52
It becomes a loud, undeniable declaration of allegiance.
25:55
You are choosing a side. You are risking your life by
25:58
putting on a shirt. That parallel captures the
26:00
dynamic perfectly. Before the persecution by
26:03
Antiochus, keeping a kosher diet or circumcising a child was just
26:07
the background hum of daily life in Judea.
26:10
It was what everyone did. But under Antiochus, when those
26:14
acts were explicitly outlawed under penalty of death, simply
26:18
refusing to eat pork became an incendiary political statement.
26:22
It became an act of militant defiance.
26:24
So IUD Esmos was the name of a political cause, an activist
26:28
movement. It was a sectarian program.
26:31
It was not a broad world religion encompassing every
26:34
single person who lived in Judea.
26:37
It was the specific radical choice to fight for the
26:41
ancestral ways. And not all Jews practiced IUD
26:44
Esmos, because not all Jews were activists or fighters.
26:47
Many we probably just tried to keep their heads down and
26:49
survived the occupation. Just trying to get by.
26:52
Right IED Ismos was the domain of the zealous.
26:55
So with this massive historical context established, moving from
26:58
the Maccapean battlefields, and the invention of this word as a
27:01
marker of political resistance, we have to take this new,
27:05
historically accurate definition and plug it directly back into
27:08
the scriptural text of Galatians.
27:10
This is where the lights really turn on for the text.
27:12
Let's look at Paul's autobiography again.
27:14
Yes, keeping the ghost of Judah Maccabee in the back of our
27:16
minds. I am going to read the core
27:19
verses Galatians chapter 1 verses 13 and 14, but instead of
27:23
using the traditional English translation Judaism, I am going
27:27
to substitute Novenson's suggested gloss based on all
27:31
this history. Which is the generalization
27:33
movement. Right.
27:35
Listen to how dramatically this alters the tone Paul writes for
27:39
you heard of my former occupation in the Judaization
27:41
movement, that I was persecuting the Church of God severely and
27:45
was destroying it, and was advancing in the Judaization
27:48
movement beyond many of my peers among my people being
27:51
exceedingly zealous for my ancestral tradition.
27:54
It fundamentally changes the nature of his confession.
27:56
It really does. Let's analyze the specific Greek
27:59
words Paul chooses here, OK? He talks about his former
28:02
occupation. The Greek word is anastrophy,
28:05
which means a distinct pattern of activity or conduct, a way of
28:09
operating. Like a career or a campaign.
28:11
Yes, he talks about how he was advancing beyond his peers,
28:15
showing ambition within a structured movement.
28:17
He describes himself as being exceedingly zealous for the
28:20
ancestral traditions. And the consequence of that
28:23
extreme zeal was that he was violently persecuting the
28:26
Church. The vocabulary he uses zeal,
28:29
advancing, persecuting ancestral traditions.
28:32
It perfectly matches the militant activist tone of Second
28:35
Maccabees. He sounds exactly like the
28:37
soldiers enlisting with Judah Maccabee to purge the land of
28:40
foreign influence. He paints a picture of himself
28:43
as a partisan enforcer, and if Paul simply meant that he used
28:46
to be a devout, everyday Jewish person, he would not use this
28:51
specific politically charged word.
28:53
How can we be sure? Of that we know this for a fact,
28:56
because we have other letters where Paul talks about his
28:57
normal Jewish religious background and he completely
29:00
avoids the word Edo ismos. Look at Romans Chapter 9 or
29:04
Philippians chapter 3. Excellent examples.
29:06
In those texts he is definitely talking about his heritage.
29:09
Romans 9 he talks about his sorrow for his people.
29:12
He lists their privileges of the adoption of the glory, the
29:14
covenants, the giving of the law, the temple worship, and the
29:17
promises. And in Philippians 3 he lists
29:20
his personal credentials. Circumcised on the eighth day of
29:24
the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of
29:27
Hebrews, as to the Law, a Pharisee.
29:30
Exactly. In all of those detailed
29:33
descriptions of standard Jewish identity and religious practice,
29:37
the word IUD ismos is completely absent.
29:40
Because in those passages he is just talking about his daily
29:43
life, his birthright, his heritage, right?
29:45
But in Galatians 1 he is making a very specific targeted
29:49
confession. He is confessing to his past as
29:53
a political activist. A militant enforcer of
29:56
traditionalist boundaries. He saw the Really Jesus movement
29:59
as a massive threat to the ancestral traditions, just like
30:02
the Maccabees saw Hellenism as a threat and he took violent
30:05
action to suppress it. He was part of a movement
30:07
dedicated to the aggressive defense of Jewish ancestral
30:10
ways. That is what he means when he
30:12
says he was advancing in the Udaismos.
30:15
He was climbing the ranks of an activist movement.
30:17
I have a critical question regarding the rest of the
30:19
letter. Go for it.
30:20
We have established that in Galatians 1, Paul is talking
30:23
about his violent activist past, not his everyday religion.
30:27
But if Paul was so focused on this activist movement in his
30:29
autobiography, what does he actually think about the
30:33
everyday non activist religion of his Jewish contemporaries in
30:37
the rest of the Book of Galatians?
30:39
That is a great point to bring up.
30:40
Because the traditional reading assumes the whole letter is a
30:43
sustained assault on Jewish religious practice as a means of
30:46
salvation. Is he attacking everyday Jewish
30:49
life later in the letter? To find Paul's view on the daily
30:53
religious life itself within this specific letter, we have to
30:56
look very carefully at chapters 2 and six.
30:58
OK, Novenson argues that the traditional reading misses the
31:02
actual conflict entirely. Paul is not attacking the Jewish
31:05
heritage. So what is the actual conflict
31:07
happening in Galatia? Who is he angry with?
31:10
The true target of Galatians is not Jewish religion acting as a
31:13
rival means of justification before God.
31:16
His target is the prospect of Gentile believers Judaizing,
31:20
that is, non Jews adopting Jewish customs in order to
31:23
secure their status within the community.
31:26
Let's breakdown Galatians chapter 2, verses 15 and 16,
31:30
because this is often cited as the core theological thesis of
31:34
the entire letter. Right, Paul writes.
31:37
We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners from among the
31:40
Gentiles, know that a person is not justified from works of the
31:44
law except through the faith of Jesus Christ.
31:47
OK, the traditional reading here.
31:49
The traditional post reformation reading usually assumes Paul is
31:52
saying we Jews thought the law justified us, but now we know we
31:56
were wrong. Right?
31:57
But Novenson highlights a completely different reading
32:00
based on the Greek syntax. Paul is saying that Jews know
32:03
better than to make the category mistake of trying to use the law
32:07
as a mechanism for justification.
32:09
Wait, say that again. That is a massive paradigm
32:11
shift. You are saying Paul thinks his
32:13
fellow Jewish people already understand how grace works?
32:15
Yes, Paul is saying to Peter, look, you and I are Jews by
32:19
birth. We know how our ancestral
32:21
covenant works. We know that the law was never a
32:23
ladder you climb to earn justification.
32:26
The lot was given after the covenant of grace was
32:28
established. It is the Pagan Gentiles, the
32:31
ones who are brand new to this whole concept of the God of
32:34
Israel, who are confused. They don't have the background.
32:37
Right. They're the ones who think they
32:39
need to adopt these ethnic markers like adult circumcision
32:42
or dietary laws to earn their way into God's favor.
32:47
Think of it like someone walking into a bank trying to pay off a
32:50
mortgage with monopoly money. Oh, that is good.
32:52
The experienced bank teller looks at them and says we know
32:56
better than to think this paper holds any value here.
32:59
Why are you letting this new customer think they have to earn
33:02
their status using counterfeit currency?
33:04
That is exactly it. Paul is essentially saying to
33:07
Peter, we know the score. Why are you letting these
33:09
Gentiles think they need to Judaize to be right with God?
33:12
The problem in the Galatian churches is not the Jewish
33:15
people are practicing their ancestral traditions.
33:18
The problem is that non Jewish people are being heavily
33:21
pressured by outside agitators to adopt those traditions as a
33:25
false mechanism for salvation. Got it.
33:28
Paul's anger is directed entirely at that ethno spending
33:32
pressure, not at the Jewish heritage itself.
33:34
This shifts how we read the closing lines of the letter. 2
33:37
Let's move to Galatians chapter 6, verse 16.
33:40
Paul uses this very famous phrase, the Israel of God.
33:44
He says as many as follow this rule, peace be upon them and
33:48
mercy also upon the Israel of God.
33:51
Who is he actually talking about there?
33:52
Historically, many commentators have argued that the Israel of
33:56
God is a spiritualized term for the Christian Church, suggesting
34:00
the church has completely replaced ethnic Israel.
34:03
But Knowlinson brings in the analysis of scholar Susan
34:06
Eastman, who argues quite persuasively that Paul's
34:10
referring directly to the ethnic Jewish people.
34:12
What evidence does she use to support that reading?
34:15
Because that pushes against a lot of standard commentary.
34:17
She looks at Paul's consistent vocabulary across all his
34:20
writings. Everywhere else.
34:22
Paul uses the word Israel in his letters to the Romans,
34:26
Corinthians, Philippians. It invariably refers to the
34:30
Jewish ethnos, the physical descendants of.
34:31
Abraham always ethnic. Always.
34:34
There is no logical reason to assume he suddenly changed his
34:37
vocabulary to meet something purely spiritual right at the
34:40
end of this one letter. That makes total sense.
34:43
Eastman suggests Paul is offering A2 part blessing.
34:46
Paul wishes peace upon his Galatian audience who follow his
34:50
rule, meaning the Gentile believers who stand firm and
34:53
refuse to Judaize. And then?
34:55
And then, as a separate thought, he wishes mercy upon Israel.
34:59
Meaning his fellow Jewish people, including those who do
35:02
not currently follow Jesus. Yes, he anticipates that the
35:05
mission of Peter the apostolate to the circumcision mentioned
35:08
earlier in chapter 2 will eventually bring them into the
35:10
messianic fold in Galatians. Paul's non Christian Jewish
35:15
kinfolk are not the enemy, they are the recipients of his hope
35:18
for God's mercy. So if Galatians is not the place
35:21
where Paul systematically dismantles Jewish observance,
35:25
where does he actually deal with the theological status of the
35:27
law? Because we know he writes
35:29
extensively about it. He deals with that complex
35:31
theological burden in his letter to the Romans.
35:34
Romans. Yes, Romans is where Paul
35:37
wrestles deeply with the fact that the mission to his Jewish
35:40
kinfolk has not been as universally successful as he
35:43
hoped. That is where you find his
35:46
intense anguish over his people and his intricate, sustained
35:50
arguments about the law, righteousness, and God's
35:52
sovereign choices. But even when we read Romans, we
35:55
have to be extremely careful not to project our modern dictionary
35:58
definitions backward. Absolutely.
36:00
As the renowned scholar EP Sanders noted decades ago, even
36:04
at the very end of his life, Paul did not imagine Judaism as
36:07
the broad, systematic concept we hold today.
36:10
Right. He was dealing with his literal
36:11
kinfolk, his physical traditions, and his fiery
36:15
conviction that the promised Messiah had finally arrived.
36:18
He was not debating A rival Elieism in a Modern Comparative
36:21
Religions seminar. No, not at all.
36:24
He was the 1st century man dealing with a 1st century
36:26
crisis. Let's synthesize this entire
36:28
conversation because it covers a massive of historical and
36:31
linguistic ground, but it is incredibly clarified.
36:34
It really brings it all together.
36:35
We started with a 2000 year old misunderstanding.
36:39
From Ignatius to Augustine, from Luther to Bolt Man.
36:43
The prevailing assumption was that Galatians was Paul's
36:46
manifesto attacking the religion of Judaism.
36:49
But then we looked at the linguistic anomaly brought to
36:51
light by Steve Mason. Right, the verb eudaiso always
36:54
refers to Gentiles adopting Jewish customs.
36:58
And yet the noun eudaismo stubbornly refers to something
37:02
Jewish people themselves do, breaking the standard rules of
37:06
Greek grammar. To resolve that linguistic
37:08
anomaly, we had to go back to the Maccabean battlefields.
37:11
The Forge. The forge we discovered that you
37:14
day the most was forged in the literal fires of persecution
37:17
under Antiochus Epiphanes. He was never a word for everyday
37:21
religion. It was a battle cry.
37:23
He was the name of an activist political cause.
37:25
A zealous movement to forcefully defend ancestral traditions
37:29
under the threat of torture and death.
37:32
And when we plug that historical definition back into Galatians
37:34
Chapter 1, Paul's autobiography snapped into sharp focus.
37:38
He was not saying I used to follow the Jewish religion, but
37:41
now I don't. No, he was confessing.
37:44
I used to be a violent militant in the traditionalist movement,
37:47
a partisan persecutor of anything I saw as a threat to
37:50
our customs. And finally, we saw that Paul's
37:53
actual anger in the letter to the Galatians is directed at
37:57
Gentiles who are trying to Judaize to earn their
37:59
justification. He calls out this behavior as a
38:02
category mistake that he says his fellow Jews should know
38:05
better than to make. Shifting the definition of one
38:08
single word, a Udeus mouse, completely alters the landscape
38:12
of one of the most debated letters in antiquity.
38:14
It moves it from a theological attack on a world religion to a
38:18
nuanced pastoral intervention about grace, ethnic identity and
38:22
social pressure. It forces us to read the text on
38:25
its own terms, in its own century, rather than forcing the
38:28
text to answer modern questions it was never asking.
38:31
Which leaves us with a massive question to ponder.
38:33
I want to leave you with this final thought to work through on
38:36
your own. This is the big one.
38:37
If the Apostle Paul, one of the most prolific writers of the New
38:40
Testament, did not even possess a word for the broad,
38:44
encompassing religion of Judaism as we conceptualize it today,
38:48
how many other modern cultural categories are we accidentally
38:51
projecting backward onto ancient texts?
38:54
When we open these letters, are we listening to a genuine 1st
38:57
century voice, or are we just hearing an echo of our own
39:00
modern debates reflected back at us?
39:02
If we read our own world into their words, whose voice are we
39:05
really hearing? Something to really sit with.
39:07
Thank you for joining us on this deep dive into the messy,
39:10
fascinating world of ancient texts.
39:12
We will catch you next time on Reformed Thinking.