Paul and the Jewish Law: Halakha in the Letters of the Apostle to the Gentiles (review)

158 SHOFAR Fall 1992 Vol. 11, No. 1 Paul and the Jewish Law: Halakha in the Letters of the Apostle to the Gentiles, by Peter J. Tomson. Compendia Rerum ludaicarum ad Novum Testamentum III/I. Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum; Minneapolis, Fortress, 1990. 327 pp. This book was written by a Dutch Reformed theologian who devotes an extensive study to Paul's hortatory and doctrinal instructions and their relation to his Jewish background, especially to Jewish halakha. Such instructions were formulated by the Apostle even in writings addressed to Christians ofnon·Jewish background. For after his call to preach the gospel of Christ, Paul proclaimed that gospel and formulated his teaching along the lines of traditional Jewish halakha. In his introduction Tomson discusses the three assumptions often used to explain Paul's relation to the law: his polemic against it, or its insignificance for him, or the denial that it had anything to do with his teaching. Tomson shows how the works of George Foot Moore and Albert Schweitzer broke with such assumptions and redirected the study of Paul. This redirection led in time to the studies ofW. D. Davies, E. P. Sanders, K. Stendahl, and others, all ofwhom sought to take seriously the impact of Paul's Jewish background on his teaching. After the introductory survey, Tomson explains halakha: "the tradition of formulated rules of conduct regulating life in Judaism," Le., the summary of "traditional behavioural rules of the Jewish people" (p. 19). This he finds expressed not only in the Mishnah, Tosephtah, Talmudim, and Midrashim, but also, to some extent, in Qumran literature and other intertestamental writings, most ofwhich was of a "non.legal character" (p. 20). The halakha in such writings has been partially studied by others, especially that in Sirach, Aristeas, Jubilees, the Damascus Document, and the Temple Scroll. In the light of this preliminary discussion, Tomson devotes six chapters to Paul's background in Judaism and Hellenism; a generic description of the halakha in various Pauline letters; the halakha found in that most Hellenistic of Paul's letters, First Corinthians; the halakha involved there in his treatment of idolatry, idol offerings, and table· fellowship. This concentration on First Corinthians has enabled him to discuss in detail such matters as sexuality (1 Cor. 5-6), celibacy, marriage, and divorce (1 Cor. 7), and worship and liturgy (1 Cor. 11-14). Tomson's conclusion: "Halakha was pervasive in Paul's thought" (p. 264), even as he passed on items of Hellenistic ethics, apostolic tradition, and dominical instructions, for these were all colored by his use of the general Jewish halakhic tradition in which he had been trained. All of this explains why Book Reviews 159 Paul can speak of his "rule in all the churches" (1 Cor. 7:17c), which is summed up as "keeping the commandments of God" (7: 19b). Tomson does well to remind us again of Paul's Jewish background and how his legal training helped him to formulate his Christian teaching and exhortations. It has always been a temptation to overemphasize Paul's dependence on Hellenism, on Greek philosophy and culture, whereas he was in reality a "Hellenistic Pharisee" (p. 53). Many of the pages of Tomson's discussion illustrate well this characteristic ofthe Apostle and his letters and bring new insights to details of Pauline halakha. One detects, however, a problem in the title of the book. Given the concentration on First Corinthians in it, one wonders why it is entitled Paul and tbeJewisb Law, for it scarcely copes with the problem that the title suggests to anyone who picks up this book. The subtitle is more accurate, and even that could have been limited to First Corinthians. The book, moreover, labors under a massive petitio principii, which skews the good effect that it might have. Though Tomson makes a token nod (pp. 25-27) toward the late date of the rabbinic literature that he cites for much of his comparison and illustration, he never copes with the problem that this late literature creates for his discussion. Nowhere does he give a proper answer to the question that he himself raises, "what Jewish sources qualify as Paul's background" (p. 11). Instead he...