What Did Paul Believe About Judaism?

It is common in Christian academic circles to debate whether or not Paul was the "second founder of Christianity" who converted from Judaism to start a new religion. I disagree with this view because I cannot accept the simplistic explanation that Jesus was a loyal Jew, faithful to his people, while Paul was a renegade who canceled the law and preached that the Israel of history had been replaced by the new, spiritual, Israel--the church.

Following the argument of Paul-as-renegade, some people also suggest that Paul invented the idea that the Gospel replaces a no-longer-valid Judaism and as such, Paul could be viewed as the first anti-Semite. I completely disagree. I think Paul was something very different--a remarkable and faithful Jew whose vision of unity between Jews and Gentiles stemmed directly from the Hebrew prophets.

We know from many scriptural sources that Paul valued his Jewish heritage. When writing of the Torah, Paul used the metaphor of an olive tree, symbolizing the Jewish people and their way of faithfully serving God, as providing nourishment for an engrafted branch, the non-Jews who had come to faith in God through Jesus the Messiah. This means that the root nourishes the branch. It certainly does not render Judaism invalid, and is therefore not "replacement theology," also called supercessionism--the theology that Christianity has superceded Judaism, making it invalid. This 'replacement theology'--a now-discredited idea that dominated church teaching through the centuries and spawned anti-Semitism--maintains that the Israel of the Hebrew scriptures has been replaced by the new Israel. God has revoked his covenants and promises to the Jewish people, and transferred them to the church.

It is true that supercessionism and anti-Semitism derive support from the teachings of Paul, but Paul himself was not anti-Semitic. He did not preach the abrogation of Torah or hatred for his people.

Many interpreters claim that after his Damascus Road experience, Paul stopped being a Jew or a Pharisee; he stopped observing the commandments. He left Judaism and became a Christian. I believe that this view is seriously mistaken. The Torah continued to have a practical meaning for Paul his entire life. In Galatians 5:3 the apostle declares, "I testify again to every man who receives circumcision that he is bound to keep the whole law." Paul was circumcised--and he would have viewed himself as being bound to keep the whole Jewish law.

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