'All Things to All People'

I want to try both to let in some new shafts of light on Paul, even it means carving a notch through some of the traditional ways of studying him, and to observe closely how he goes about certain tasks. Despite the tendency to sneer at Paul and to press him for answers to questions he didn't ask, I persist in regarding him as the intellectual equal of Plato, Aristotle or Seneca, even though the demands of his overall vocation, coupled with his dense style, mean that what we possess of his thought is compressed into a fraction of their written compass. Whichever angle you come at him from, there will be surprises and riches in store; again and again, just when you think you've got his measure, he chuckles and forces you to read a passage you thought you knew well in a quite different light, and then, if you dare, to attempt what he had already accomplished, to reflect on how the different viewpoints integrate one with another.

Reading Paul is a bit like climbing a mountain; there are many routes up and those who are used only to the easy tourist path sometimes forget that scaling the vertical crags is not only more exciting but might perhaps get you to the top more quickly. And part of the excitement of reading Paul is the fact that he straddled at least three worlds, so that whatever he says demands to be heard within three different echo chambers, which may or may not have been audible to one another even though Paul intended them to resonate simultaneously. Only if we bear each of them in mind will we have any chance of understanding the contours of his writing.

The first world, the one by which he ascended the mountain, was of course Judaism. Second-Temple Judaism has been studied more in the last generation than in the previous millennium, and new research continues to pour out on Scrolls, Pharisees, early Rabbis, and so on, not to mention the relevant archaeological discoveries. Yet a broadly coherent picture can and does emerge from the confusing mass of information, just as the climber can pick out the main rivers and roads without necessarily being able to see how every lane and stream join up. Second-Temple Judaism was a many-sided and vibrant mixture of what we would now call (though they would not have recognized these distinctions) religion, faith, culture and politics. But even its clashing elements were usually clashing about the same issues: what it meant to be part of God's people, to be loyal to Torah, to maintain Jewish identity in the face of the all-encroaching pagan world, and (above all in the view of some) to await the coming of God's kingdom, of the 'age to come' promised by the prophets, of Israel's redemption, hoping that when that day dawned one might have a share in the coming vindication and blessing.

This was the world from which Paul came, and in which he remained even though he said things which nobody within that world had thought of saying before and which many in that world found shocking, even destructive.

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