Recruitment, Conquest, and Conflict: Strategies in Judaism, Early Christianity, and the Greco-Roman World (Emory Studies in Early Christianity)

6B '+052-0

Emory Studies in Early Christianity General Editor Vernon K. Robbins

Associate Editor David B. Gowler, Chowan College Editorial Board William A. Beardslee, Emory University; Emeritus Peder Borgen, University of Trondheim, Norway Sharyn E. Dowd, Lexington Theological Seminary John G. Gager, Princeton University Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Princeton Theological Seminary Richard B. Hays, Duke Divinity School Luke Timothy Johnson, Emory University

Recruitment, Conquest, and Conflict Strategies in Judaism, Early Christianity, and the Greeo-Roman World

Cover Design by Gina M. Tansley (adapted from Rick A. Robbins, Mixed Media 1981)

edited by Peder Borgen Vernon K. Robbins David B. Gowler

The cover design intro duces an environment for disciplined creativity. The seven squares superimposed over one another represent multiple arenas for programmatic research, analysis, andinterpretation. The area in the center, common to all the arenas, is like the area that provides the unity for a volurne in the series. The small square in the center of the squares denotes a paragraph, page, or other unit of text. The two lines that extend out from the small square, perpendicular to one another, create an opening to territory not covered by any of the multiple squares. These lines have the potential to create yet another square of the same or different size that wo~ld be a new arena for research, analysis, and interpretation.

SCHOLARS PRESS Atlanta, Georgia

EMORY STUDIES IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY Recruitment, Conquest, and Conflict Strategies in Judaism, Early Christianity, and the Greco-Roman World edited by Peder Borgen Vernon K. Robbins David B. Gowler Copyright © 1998 Emory University All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by means of any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed in writing to the Rights and Permissions Office, Scholars Press, P.O. Box 15399, Atlanta, GA 30333-0399, USA. Grateful acknowledgment is given to the Office of the Secretary of the University, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Emory College, and the Department of Religion.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Recruitment, conquest, and conflict : strategies in Judaism, early Christianity, and the Greco-Roman world / edited by Peder Borgen, Vemon K. Robbins, David B. Gowler. p. cm. -(Emory studies in early Christianity i vol. 6) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-7885-0526-2 (alk. paper) 1. Evangelistic work-History-Early church, ca. 30-600. 2. Conversion-History of doctrines-Early church, ca. 30-600. 3. Proselytes and proselyting, Jewish-History-To 1500. 1. Borgen, Peder. II. Robbins, Vemon K. (Vernon Kay), 1939III. Gowler, David B., 1958. IV. Series. BR195.E9R43 1998 291.4'2-dc21 98-32322 CIP

Published by Scholars Press for Emory University Volumes 1-111 in the series published by Peter Lang Publishing

In memory o/Isabella Lewis, who made publication 0/ this voZume possible with a gift in honor 0/ CZay Lewis

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduetion

Vemon K. Robbins and David B. Gowler

Mission, Conquest, and Conversion in the Mediterranean World 1.

The Hellenistie Öffentlichkeit: Philosophy as a Social Force in the Greeo-Roman World

Troels Engberg-Pedersen 2.

Expansion and Reeruitment among Hellenistie Religions: The Case of Mithraism

D. E. Aune 3.

57

Paul and the Beginning of Christian Conversion

Alan F. Segal 5.

39

Proselytes, Conquest, and Mission

Peder Borgen 4.

15

79

Jesus Before Culture

Graydon F. Snyder

113

Conflict in ludaism and Christianity 6.

Conquest and Social Confliet in Galilee

Richard Horsley 7.

129

Onee More - The Hellenists, Hebrews, and Stephen: Confliets and Confliet-Management in Aets 6-7

Torrey Seland

169 '

8.

9.

10.

Judaism, the Circumcision of Gentiles, and Apocalyptic Hope: Another Look at Galatians 1 and 2 Paula Fredriksen

INTRODUCTION 209

A Response to Fredriksen's "Judaism, the Circumcision öf Gentiles, and Apocalyptic Hope: Another Look at Galatians 1 and 2" Peder Borgen

245

Expansion and Conflict: The Rhetoric of Hebrew Bible Citations in Galatians 3 Kjel! Ame Morland

251

Strategies 0/ Social Formation in Early Christianity 11.

12.

13.

14.

Phases in the Social Formation of Early Christianity: From Faction to Sect - A Social Scientific Perspective John H. Elliott

273

Election, Obedience, and Eschatology: Deuteronomy 30:2-14 in Romans 9-11 and the Writings of Philo Per Jarle Bekken

315

The Role of the Congregation as a Family within the Context of Recruitment and Conflict in the EarIy Church Karl Olav Sandnes

333

Family-Like Care and Solidarity as a Pattern of Social Control in the Ancient Church @yvind Norderval

347

Emory Studies in Early Christianity volumes

357

Vemon K. Robbins and David B. Gowler

The inspiration for this volume arose from conversations between Pe der Borgen and Vernon Robbins earIy in this decade. In the 1980s, Borgen was instrumental in obtaining aseries of appointments of Fulbright scholars at the University of Trondheim. These appointments accelerated an exchange of scholarIy dialogues between Norway and the United States that began to reverberate between both of these countries. The meeting of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas at the University of Trondheim in 1985, followed by its meeting at Emory University in Atlanta the next year, gave rise to further scholarIy exchange and dialogue at these two institutions and between Borgen and Robbins in particular. As a result of these conversations, during March 17-19, 1991, Emory University hosted an initial joint conference of Scandinavian and American scholars. Then, August 3-5, 1992, the University of Trondheim hosted a symposium. Both meetings were entitled "Recruitment, Conquest, and Conflict in Judaism, Early Christianity, and the Greco-Roman W orId. " One of the results of these exchanges was the introduction of Kjell Arne MorIand to Vernon Robbins, which led to the publication of the 1995 volume, The Rhetoric 0/ Curse in Galatians, in the series Emory Studies in Early Christianity. We are pleased that the current volume also appears in the same series and as Peder Borgen is serving as president of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas that features his presidential address, "Two Philonic Prayers and Their Contexts. An Analysis of Who is Heir 0/ Divine Things 24-29 and Against Flaccus 170-75." Pe der Borgen's extensive work in the corpus of Philo of Alexandria expanded to aseries of young scholars in Scandinavia during the 1980s. His influence, for example, is especially evident in the essays by Torrey Seland, Kjell Arne Modand, and Per J arie Bekken in this volume. The broad context of the work of these scholars has been to ask how far Jews and Christi ans participated in widespread Mediterranean political practices, social structures, ideologies, and symbols, and the various ways in which they developed their own ,distinctive convictions and practices within this broader setting. During thus period, Robbins entered the dialogue with Borgen at a critical point. Robbins, like many New Testament scholars, c1earIy understood the Jewish context of the New Testament writings. From 1968 to 1984, however, Robbins taught in the Department of Classics at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign which led hirn to further insights about the

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nature of New Testament texts in the context of the Mediterranean worId. His writings began to illustrate how New Testament texts merge Jewish literary and social conventions with Hellenistic-Roman ones. Robbins's interest in Hellenistic-Roman texts does not diminish his view of the importance of Jewish texts, but he recognizes that other literary and cultural conventions pervaded the Mediterranean area and that New Testament texts also partake in this larger Mediterranean culture.1 In this context, then, the dialogue between Borgen and Robbins continued to progress, especially when Robbins was a Fulbright Scholar during 1983-84 at the University of Trondheim. 2 In the meantime, the work of Borgen and his students continued, and questions began to arise about strategies of recruitment, issues of identification, and modes of conflict between various kinds of Jews and Christi ans during the New Testament period. These discussions began to evoke aseries of additional questions concerning strategies of recruitment and attraction in Judaism and Christianity: Did strategies of recruitment and attraction in Judaism and Christianity have anything to do with Greek and Roman political policies, philosophical traditions and groups, and with Hellenistic-Roman religions? Did eschatological, apocalyptic, or mystical Jewish traditions in any way provide an ideological framework for recruitment and conformity? Did J udaism and Christianity gain participants in their community traditions through rhetorical persuasion, educational nurture, social force, ideological conquest, transformation of cultural symbols, all of the preceding, or few of the preceding? Out of these questions - ones vigorously explored by Borgen and his students - arises the context for this collection of essays. So, in reality, the genesis for this book was the energetic work of Peder Borgen in particular and his students in general. We, as co-editors of this volume with Peder Borgen, are pleased to offer this collection of essays as a tribute to his pioneering work in New Testament studies, in honor of his continuing influence on the discipline, and in celebration of our friendship.

Structure 0/ the Volume The ordering and placement of the essays in this volume inherently evolved out of the multiplicity of views expressed in them. The first section sets the stage with aseries of programmatic essays in which the authors pursue, from their own distinctive points of view, major issues involved in strategies of lSee the further explanation by David B. Gowler in Robbins 1994:1-36. 2Robbins initially presented his artic1e, "Rhetorical Argument about Lamps and Light in Early Christian Gospels," in honor of Pe der Borgen. See Robbins 1987; 1994:200217.

ROBBINS AND GOWLER: INTRODUCTION 3 mission, conquest, and conversion in the Mediterranean W orId. Some of these authors disagree significantly with one another, and, by conscious design, there is no attempt to lessen or smooth over those dis agreements . The second section focuses more directly on conflict in J udaism and Christianity. The essays he re deal, for example, with questions about conflicts within Judaism itself and between Judaism and othe~ groups and religions in the Mediterranean worId. The issues discussed in other essays, however, extend to conflicts between Judaism and Christianity and then within Christianity itself. The third section concerns scholarIy assessment and discussion of strategies of social formation in earIy Christianity. One of the issues here is the terminology of faction, sect, and cult; another is the use of the Hebrew Bible in a context of social change; and still another is the use of concepts like family and friendship in earIy Christianity.

Mission, Conquest, and Conversion in the Mediterranean World The first section beg ins with an essay by Troels Engberg-Pedersen that proposes that philosophical schools at the beginning of the Hellenistic period - the Academy, the Lyceum, Epicureanism, and Stoicism - did not have an explicit strategy of recruitment. They formulated, however, a conception of philosophy as integral to the social fabric of life, and the high level of discussion of this concept in the public re alm created what Engberg-Pedersen calls the Öffentlichkeit, which perhaps may be translated "the public face," of Hellenistic and Roman society. The theory and practice of psychagogy, as developed and applied by philosophers like Philodemus, Seneca, Dio Cbrysostom, Plutarch, and Epictetus during the later Hellenistic and Roman periods, built the earIier influential and prominent philosophical discourse into something akin to the missionary practices of a person like the apostle Paul. The key to the influence of the philosophical schools, according to Engberg-Pedersen, lies in their formulation of "systems of philosophical principles or sets of belief one could subscribe to no matter how, when, and where one lived." This means that philosophy is perceived to be a TixvTJ, a realm of technical knowledge rather than mere belief. In the realms of ethics and politics, then, the philosophers were the ones who had the expert knowledge - the ones who knew. In modern terms, Engberg-Pedersen suggests, this means that philosophy became an ideological phenomenon, an "understanding" related to other social and material phenomena.

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Engberg-Pedersen distinguishes the ethico-political public sphere of philosophy from the sphere of 7rClLDeLCi, thecentral concept on which Isocrates hung his educational project. Stoicism and Epicureanism, the two dominant earlier philosophies, did not need to recruit since they already belonged to a public sphere with strong, direct influence on the dominant ethical and political discourse of the time. Implicit in this argument is a presupposition that explicit recruitment occurs among philosophicallyoriented groups only when they are actually or perceptually exc1uded from dominant ethical and political discourse. David E. Aune explores Mithraism, which originated during the last half of the first century CE. Some scholars, like Franz Cumont, have described Mithraism within a Christian model of understanding, using terms like church, conversion, apostle, and preaching, and many have considered it to be the major riyal of Christianity during 11-111 CE. Aune examines the extant data used to describe Mithraism and conc1udes that there is no evidence for strategies of recruitment similar to Christianity, nor was Mithraism a significant riyal of Christianity during 11-111 CE. Peder Borgen proposes that the matrix of Christi an mission was the Jewish Jewish notions of proselytism, eschatology, and conquest. proselytism featured religious, ethical, and social conversion. Christianity held a similar view of religious and ethical conversion. Gentiles had to convert from the worship of many gods to the one true and living God, and they were to lead a life that produced the virtues of the spirit. The strongest form of active Jewish outreach was military conquest, where gentiles either had to be circumcised and follow J ewish laws or leave the territory. Christi ans practiced a peaceful form of conquest in the new eschatological era when all nations were to be reached. Military imagery, however, could be used to understand Paul and other missionaries as soldiers. The book of Revelation, in particular, uses military imagery to present militant messianism. 3 Alan Segal' s perspective for understanding J ewish and Christian conversion differs considerably from Borgen's. Segal is interested in the different way in which Jews and Christians define conversion. For Jews, he argues, there was aperiod of learning followed by a change of identity based on oath and ritual. For Christianity, in contrast, conversion was based on Jewish mysticism. Segal uses Gershorn Scholem's analysis of Jewish mysticism, which suggests that Jewish Merkabah mysticism grew out of apocalypticism, which is the tail-end of the prophetic movement. Central to this mysticism 3Borgen does 'not indicate what the relation of his view might be to Aune's analysis, because he does not discuss the nature of Christian mission du ring II-III CE when Mithraism flourished within the Roman army. Mithraism became a dominant religion within the Roman army, and its imagery emerged from military ranks and practices.

ROBBINS AND GOWLER: INTRODUCTION 5 was adesire to go to heaven and see what was there, and this was possible for some people not only at death but during their lifetime on earth. Reading 2 Corinthians 12:1-9 as Paul's pseudepigraphical account of his own mystical experience and 2 Corinthians 3 as an account of the process of transformation available to a Christian, Segal argues that Paul equates the human form of God (the Kavod) with the form of Christ in the heavens. Christi ans behold the glory of the Lord and are transformed into his image. The experience of knowirtg Christ is to be allowed into the intimate presence of the Lord. In Segal's view, Paul fights against both the conversion to Judaism model (learning followed by oath and ritual) and the Jewish model of the resident sojourner (gentiles following certain basic laws to find acceptability among Jews) with a conception of conversion based on spiritual metamorphosis. Followers of Paul changed Paul's own experience of transformation into a conversion ritual especially for gentiles without adherence to the law. Paul, then, searches for a new definition of community based on internal states, confirmed by baptism and the Lord' s Supper, and later Christianity builds upon this new definition. As Segal continues, he argues for an evolution of models of conversion in Christianity and a his tory of the concept of universalism in Christianity parallel to this evolution. In Segal's view, someChristians adopted a view of some Jews that gentiles could not be saved as gentiles - in other words, they had to be circumcised and follow Jewish practices. Other Christians, basing their views on Paul's mystical conversion, argued that faith was the meanS for inc1usion in the community. For these Christians, the issue of the righteous gentile outside the believing community became an unimportant issue. In contrast, Rabbinic Judaism, concerned that introducing gentiles into their midst would endanger Jewish communities, favored the view that salvation of righteous gentiles, without conversion, was part of God's plan. The counterpart of this perspective was a view that conversion meant adecision to join a beleaguered minority through an extensive system of ritual requirements. Righteous gentiles should have all the benefits promised to Israel, but they should not be considered to be members of the elect community unless they lived according to the extensive rituals of the community. Graydon Snyder investigates those rare, interesting cases in the New Testament where the authors not only do not castigate those who do not understand the Gospel as they have presented it, but where they protect or even praise those who have not necessarily understood. This leads Snyder to ask if and how we can trace popular conversion to Christianity prior to its emergence as the dominant culture and to suggest that important evidence may be gleaned from non-literary sources as weIl as from literary ones.

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RECRUITMENT, CONQUEST, AND CONFLICT

Christianity took on a particular cultural form based on a symbol system rooted in the Mediterranean traditions of the first four centuries of our era. Much of that earliest Christi an culture was true to the original pre-cultural Jesus tradition. But canonical development in the Mediterranean world was not historically necessary, and Snyder muses about whether it is possible to repeat the assimilation process in cultures without going through the Mediterranean original. He suggests that there is a possibility that Christian missions could advance in this way and a Christianity produced which had none of the Mediterranean characteristics except for its preservation of the pre-cultural impulse (the Jesus tradition). And Snyder cautions us not to forget the "precultural" Jesus traditions and communities "below the level of canon." Perhaps, unlike Marcion, we - and others from non-Mediterranean cultures may be successful.

Conflict in ludaism and Christianity The second section beg ins with an essay by Richard Horsley in which he argues that, in Galilee, the nature of contHct is not Judaism versus Hellenism but rulers versus ruled, taxers versus taxed, city versus village, and official versus popular tradition. The relationship of Galilee to Judea, therefore, involves a fundamental structural social conflict compounded by regional and historical differences. Neither temple nor Torab is central to life in Galilee, but basic covenantal commandments to God are. While the populace of Galilee shares this basic covenantal perspective with the populace of Judea, contHct arises as a result of the Jerusalem high priests' use of that perspective for their own interests. Pharisees in the Galilee are not loeal people in charge of synagogues, as often thought. Rather, they are representatives of the economic and political interests of the high priesthood in J erusalem in the name of guardians of the Torah. Torrey Seland ex amines the issue of non-conformity and the inevitable contHcts that occur when one group and its representatives overstep the limits of "tolerance" of another social group. Seland offers a model that encompasses various actions of contHct management. When Acts describes, for example, various measures of accommodation, manipulation, or official discipline that fai! to bring Stephen back within acceptable boundaries, vigilante actions occur. Vigilantism (or "establishment violence"), therefore, ultimately is a means of social control, and Seland concludes that Stephen's death is best characterized as an example of establishment violence. Establishment violence involves acts or threats of coercion in violation of the formal boundaries of an established sociopolitical order, but they are actually intended by, the violators to defend that order from "perversion." Such

ROBBINS AND GOWLER: INTRODUCTION 7 vigilantism occurs when a regime is unwilling or unable to take counteractions against "deviants" such as Stephen, so defenders of the social order justify "illegitimate coercion" against those deviants. Seland contends that Philo advocated zealotic establishment violence (in the tradition of Phinehas) against specific deviances from the Torab that challenged monotheism (apostasy, seduction by false prophets, and perjury). So vigilante actions against non-conformers to the Torab in the Judaism of the first century CE not only shed light on contHcts and competitive strategies between Judaism and Christianity, but, for Seland, constitute one element of this text' s "historical plausibility." Paula Fredriksen builds the argument in her essay on a view similar to the one discussed in Segal's essay, n~mely that Gentiles would be "included" in God's salvation at the end of time without "converting" to Judaism. Fredriksen argues that circumcision is the sine qua non of conversion to Judaism. There was no need for Gentiles to be circumcised to be included in the ekklesia, and this was not a difficulty in Jerusalem. The difficulty arose in the Diaspora where the majority of the population was Jewish but, nevertheless, a mixture of various kinds of peoples. In these communities, Jews needed protection from Rome, and the message of a Messiah who was crucified as a politically dangerous person was a dangerous one in these contexts. In Galatia, "false brethren" had decided that the delay of the coming of the Kingdom was being caused by the growing unreadiness of Israel. Their answer was to inaugu!ate something awkward and new: Jewish mission to the Gentiles. James had not required circumcision of Gentiles, nor had other early Christians. Paul was angry that Peter was "passive aggressiv'e" about this - by not confronting these false brethren, he was allowing them to "compe!" Gentiles to be circumcised. Peder Borgen responds to Fredriksen with an assertion that in some Jewish circles circumcision was not "the" requirement for entering the Jewish community but was one of the commandments to be obeyed upon receiving the status of a Jew. Moreover, when stressing the use of circumcision as an entrance requirement, Fredriksen, in his view, overlooks the most aggressive mode of Jewish proselytism: conquest in which they compelled the local populations to accept circumcision and follow the ancestral laws or to leave the land that had been conquered. Thus, he suggests, Fredriksen makes a major mistake when she claims that "all" Jews presupposed that circumcision was "the" requirement for conversion. Borgen argues that while some will have held this view, others did not. In addition, there are sources which demonstrate that at least some Jews were expecting an eschatological conversion of gentiles to Judaism in the end time.

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Kjell Arne Morland, taking a position eloser to Borgen's than Fredriksen's, contends that Paul's letter to the Galatians is an interesting example of emerging Christian "conquest" discussed against the background of both recruitment and conflict. Two Christi an missionary groups compete for the same group of converts. The mission of Paul in Galatia recruited many converts with Gentile backgrounds, and a conflict arose with opponents who sought to impose circumcision on Gentile converts. The letter is an attempt to resolve the conflict by persuading the Galatians to choose bis teaching and to reject his opponents and their teaching. Morland argues that Paul's citations from the Hebrew Bible g"ive important elues for reconstructing some main elements of the conflict, especially if they are recognized as elear reflections of disputes according to Hellenistic rhetorieal status legales - which concerns controversial interpretations of written documents. Four kinds of such disputes can be distinguished: They could be related to the will behind the words in a law, to contradictory laws, to ambiguous expressions, or to reasoning from analogy. Galatians 3 is an illuminating example of a conflict where the focus concerned the role of the J ewish law with conventional patterns of persuasion and interpretation of the authoritative Hebrew Bible. Paul's use of the Hellenistic status legales in his discussion, which gave bis argument an unmistakable flavor of a lawsuit, underscores the seriousness of the conflict - as does his use of a curse upon his opponents. It was a confliet of how to perceive the work of Christ, with ramifications for how the effects of Christ's death and resurrection should, if at all , be harmonized with the concern for the Jewish law and national identity. For Paul, according to Morland, the true " gospel of Christ hinges on which position one takes.

Strategies of Sodal Formation in Early Christianity The third section begins with an essay by John H. EIliott in whieh he argues that a combination of the terms sect and faction is the most satisfactory means for social-scientific analysis to describe early Christianity. In his view, Christianity began as a Jewish faction which eventually transformed into a deviant J ewish sect. Troeltsch had argued that earliest Christianity was not a sect and that the rise of Christianity was a religious and not a social phenomenon. Troeltsch distinguished between the church, the sects, and mysticism. Sects emerged only in opposition to the church as an established institution. Thus sectarianism is a medieval phenomenon, and Christianity as a sect of Judaism is not a matter of discussion. Weber used Troeltsch's categories, but analyzed sectarian forms of Judaism during the post-exilic period aud their relation to early Christianity.

ROBBINS AND GOWLER: INTRODUCTION 9 EIliott argues that the category sect involves social and ideological dissociation which is not typieal of any of the Jewish coalitions during Jesus' lifetime. For hirn, "all conflicting Palestinian coalitions, ineluding the Jesus faction, remain inseparable parts of and- ideologically bound to the ethnos of Israel." However, "within a ~eneration of Jesus' death, the Jewish messianic faction centered in J esus of N azareth eventually began to assurne the characRodney Stark recently has argued that early ter of a Jewish sect." Christianity is best described as a "cult," wbich is a new faith. Elliott considers this point of view to be helpful from the perspective of Greco-Roman society, which viewed Christianity more as a foreign eastern cult than an embodiment of J ewish traditions. Per Jarle Bekken' s essay addresses other broad social issues in the investigation of early Christianity. Interpreters have reached no consensus about Paul's view of the law, his view of salvation history with respect to the relationship between Jews and Gentiles, Paul's perplexing use of the Hebrew Bible, and many other questions. Bekken thus attempts to elarify some of these issues by means of comparative analysis of texts selected from Philo in order to demonstrate that Paul's exposition of Deut ~0:12-14 can be placed within the framework of Jewish exegetieal study and method. Paul's exposition of Deut 30:12-14 is at the center of Paul's attempt to broaden the significance of the law from what he perceived to be a too narrowly-defined understanding. Paul believed that the religious change involved in the Christ event necessitated a social change as weIl. To begin with, the connection between election, covenant, and law is a fundamental and persistent theme of J ewish self-understanding and identity. The law functioned as a boundary marker for Israel's distinctiveness as a nation. In Romans 10 Paul speaks against many of the assumptions held by his Jewish contemporaries. Paul was concerned, at least to a certain extent, that the covenant promise and law had become too elosely identified with ethnie Israel, which was set apart by such boundary-defining practiees as keeping the Sabbath, "circumcision, and food laws. Paul wants to redraw those boundaries by reelaiming what he considers to be the "proper meaning" of the covenant as witnessed by Deut 30:11-14. Bekken's analysis of Philo's use of Deut 30: 11-14 makes it quite elear tbat Paul is using a text that resonates with a Diaspora Jewish_audience. But, as a Christian, Paul is convinced that the eschatologie al effect of Christ was to bring God' s purpose to a new stage where belonging to the "people of God" was no longer to be defined by national or ritual boundaries, but as a righteousness from faith in Christ. Faith in Christ is the obedience the law now calls for. It is no longer Jew versus Greek (Romans 10:12); it is those who call on the name of the Lord versus those who do not (cf. Romans 9:13, 25, ,26; 10:2).

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Paul redraws boundaries to argue that the promise of God is now available - free from ethnic constraints because of the Christ event - to Gentiles. It is no longer the ritual of circumcision, for example, that signifies inc1usion in the people of God, but the confession found in Romans 10:9: "Jesus is Lord." In this regard, Paul's use of Deut 30:12-14 is at the center of his attempt to explain the transformation of the people of God from a national J ewish community into a "cross-national" community. Paul used categories that were common and understandable in contemporary Judaism in order to argue his point that God had ~witched the roles of J ews and Gentiles in the program of election that offers salvation to the world. Karl Olav Sandnes addresses yet another social dynamic in early Christianity by proposing that a significant part of successful recruitment by early Christianity was its forming of an inviting and welcoming fellowship that was "family-like." Against what he considers to be an over-emphasis on conversion into Christianity to compensate socially for personal distress or dissatisfaction with life, he emphasizes that when people embraced the Chri~tian faith and joined the movement they were regularly brought into confllct with their families. In this context, he emphasizes a theory of conversion based on sociology of knowledge rather than social compensation. S~dnes as~ert~ that it is important to keep on taking conversion seriously. FaIth remams m the context of a community, anti conversion persists when t~e social setting of a person's life is a family-like congregation. In this settmg, people find "significant others," and the relationships resemble the setting of primary socialization in the upbringing of children within a family. Using Luke's summary of Christian fellowship in Acts 2:42-47 as a case study, Sandnes explores how early Christi an fellowship was associated with privat~ houses, ho,,: they intermingled household language with friendship by spendm.g a lot ~f tlI~e together and eating together, and how they practiced generallzed reClprocIty - exchanging resources with one another without expectat~o~ of. return. This leads to a conc1usion, against some interpreters, that a dlstmctlOn between family and friend should not be emphasized for early Christianity. 0yvind Norderval responds to Sandnes by supplementing his informa. tIon from Acts with information from writings during the Patristic era. In the Acts of the Martyrs, new converts exhibit the priority they give to their relationships with their Christian brothers and sisters over their blood family. He observes an absence of references to theological perspectives on Christians as family, and he proposes that Sandnes glorifies the family-like fellowship and harmony of early Christian communities. The early church also exhibits regulation of Christian fellowship: If Christi ans did not care for and love each other as a normative demand, they could be punished or expelled from

ROBBINS AND GOWLER: INTRODUCTION 11 the community. Christians were to understand themselves as an eschatological family waiting for the parousia, and during this time they were to live with love towards God and one' s neighbor in singleness of heart. This implied a denial of private life for life in a community where the heart was held to be totally public to the gaze of God and God's angels. Focusing on urban Christianity, Norderval emphasizes the necessity for the early Christian communities to develop habitual and resilient norms so they could function as a strang moral force in Mediterranean society. Thus, Christian life was a matter of living an "over-controlled love." Falling short of these norms meant punishment not only by the Christian community, but by God. Pointing to the portrayal of Judas, Ananias, and Sapphira in New Testament writings, as weIl as instances in the letters of Paul, Norderval further supports this approach of over-controlled love with data from second century Christi an writings. An additional feature within Christianity to support this system was the rise of the monarchic episcopate, the bishop as the head of the Christian family. Bishops not only cared for the spiritual needs of the congregation but controlled the finances of the church.

Conclusion The early Christian era, in fact the entire Hellenistic era, was an age of active polyglossia, that is, a time when different national languages were interacting within the same cultural systems. Scattered throughout the entire Mediterranean were cities, settlements, and other areas where several cultures and languages direct1y "cohabited," and they interwove with each other in distinctive patterns (Bakhtin:64).4 The texts and discourses considered in the essays of this volume - inc1uding New Testament narratives - germinated and flourished in these fields of active polyglossia. They are dialogues that actively engage a wide range of different cultures, societies, and peoples. Furthermore, we would argue that any text is a rejoinder, an active participant in social dialogue, whose style and content are influenced by its interrelationship with other rejoinders in the greater social dialogues. All such "sociallanguages" are specific points of view on the world, and each is characterized by its own meanings and values. As such, they may be juxtaposed to one another, mutually supplement one another, and/or contradict 4Bakhtin, a trained c1assicist, observed that: "Where languages and cultures interanimated each other, language became something entirely different, its very nature changed: in place of a single unitary sealed-off Ptolemaic world of language, there appeared the open Galilean world of many languages, mutually animating each other" (65).

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ROBBINS AND GOWLER: INTRODUCTION 13

RECRUITMENT, CONQUEST, AND CONFLICT

each other as they interrelate dialogically. They struggle and evolve, as do the essays in this volume, in an environment of social heteroglossia. As these social languages cohabit with one another, some deliberately intensify the differences between themselves and other social languages and oppose them in apparently unresolvable dialogues (Bakhtin:291-292). The significance of any discourse must be understood, therefore, in the context of other discourses on the same theme - a context made up of numerous and often contradictory opinions, points of view, and value judgments. An active understanding, one which assimilates any discourse under consideration and strives to understand it, establishes aseries of complex interrelationships - in consonances and dissonances, with centripetal and centrifugal forces - with the discourse and enriches it with new elements. It is in this dialogical relationship of various points of view, conceptual horizons, and systems, that sociallanguages come to interact with each other (Bakhtin:282). The title of this volume assurnes the fact that discourse is a social phenomenon, and that there are no neutral words. No narrative is created in a literary, cultural, social, or historical vacuum, and no discourse is created ex nihilo. New Testament narratives, for example, were created and preserved in conversations with their cultural environments, and they partake, vigorously at times, in that dialogical social discourse. Speakers do not utilize pristine words - "untainted" and straight out of a dictionary - but rather those words have already existed in the mouths of others and thus already partially belong to others - each word "tastes" therefore of the contexts in which it has lived its socially-charged life in previous speakers' personal, cultural, social, and ideological contexts. It is from those places that one must take the words and attempt to make them one's own. What therefore may first appear to be "original" utterances are actually rejoinders in a greater dialogue, incorporating, in different ways, the words of others. So language is never a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into a new conceptual system; it is a difficult, complex, and often conflictual process. In the processes which are described in these essays, differing groups partake in the heteroglossia of the ancient Mediterranean world and actively orient themselves amidst that heteroglossia. They move in and occupy a position for themselves within, against, and in concert with other groupsand their sociallanguages (cf. Bakhtin:293-295). Such is the nature of groups; such is the nature of societies; such is the nature of language. Such is the nature of the essays in tbis volume. . The editors offer this volume to the scholarly community in the hope of advancing a discussion that has many sides, many deep commitments, and many points where bitter dis agreements are natural. The social, cultural,

ideological, and religious environments in which people live are the foundational treasure troves of their lives. On the one hand, then, it is natural for peöple to expand the realm of their environment through aggressive, peaceful, subtle, or understated ways so that other people might become participants in it. On the other hand, it is natural for people to be offended when people from some other environment compel them to change or successfully win members of their community over to a new and different environment. These processes will continue as long as there is human society, since the process itself is apart of building and maintaining social, cultural, ideological, and religious identity. We offer this volume as a way of encouraging meaningful discussion, dialogue, and exchange in peaceful environments of deliberation and reflection.

Works Consulted Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1981 The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. Robbins, Vernon K. 1987 "Rhetorical Argument about Lamps and Light in Early Christian Gospels." pp. 177-195 in Context, FestskriJt til Peder Johan Borgen, ed. Peter Wilhelm Böckman and Roald E. Kristiansen. Relieff24. Universitetet i Trondheim: Tapir. Reprinted in Robbins, 1994: 200-217.

1994

New Boundaries in Old Territory: Form and Sodal Rhetoric in Mark, ed. and introduced by David B. Gowler. Emory Studies in Early Christianity 3. New York, Bern, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Press, 1994.

CHAPfERl THE HEILENISTIC ÖFFENTLICHKEIT: PHILOSOPHY AS A SOCIAL FORCE IN THE GRECO-ROMAN WORLD Troels Engberg-Pedersen Department 0/ Biblical Exegesis Copenhagen University, Denmark

Introduction Philosophers do not, as philosophers, participate directly in social conflict. Nor do they, as philosophers, engage in military conquest. Or so we might say, reflecting both an Aristotelian and a modern conception of the discipline: Philosophy, as philosophy, is not directly concerned with practice. Still, philosophy may influence the social and historical process in a number of ways and in an intimate interplay with other causal factors. How? In a volume of essays focusing on the role of various ideologies in the Hellenistic and Roman world in relation to the themes of recruitment, conquest, and conflict, it is appropriate to ask ab out the social function of one such ideology - Hellenistic (and Roman) ethical and political philosophy. How does this specific ideological construct compare with the other ideologies that were around in the Hellenistic and Roman periods with respect to the themes under discussion? There are several broad issues that fall under this question. One concerns the Sitz im Leben or social situation of Greco-Roman ethical and political philosophy. What was a philosophical school? How did it recruit its members? How did philosophers r~late to society in a broad sense, including political rulers, such as the Hellenistic kings? And how did these kings relate to the philosophers? What was the social status of philosophy, and what were the ways and means of philosophical influence and impact on society? Can we even speak of a sense of mission on the part of the Hellenistic philosophers? Other issues concern specific, substantive social and political problems that appear to have gathered momentum during the Hellenistic and Roman periods and are directly relevant to the themes of conflict and conquest. One is the problem of ethnicity or of the relationship between ethnic groups. How, if at all , did Greco-Roman ethical and political philosophy, which

16

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reflected the perspective of the political rulers and of the dominant culture, tadele that problem? Another problem is that of the legitimacy of kingship and the relationship between kingship and social justice (law). This was a burning problem already at the beginning of the Hellenistic period, and it became no less important when the Hellenistic king turned into a Roman emperor. Yet another problem, which seems to have been discussed particularly in the second and first centuries BCE with the arrival of the Romans on the Greek scene, is the justification of the empire. What were the views of the philosophers on this specific issue, and did they have any influence on actual practice? In this essay, I shall concentrate on the first, more formal issue and only incidentally touch on some of the substantive ones. Nor shall I in any way attempt to provide an exhaustive account even of the formal issue. Rather , I shall focus on the beginning of the Hellenistic period and the main philosophical schools that were founded or flourishing at that time: the Academy, the Lyceum, Epicureanism, and Stoicism. This willleave out whole movements like those represented by Cynics, Neo-Pythagoreans, and philosophically~ minded sophists of the Roman imperial period like Dio Chrysostom, as weIl as later developments within the philosophical schools proper - both of which might be thought to imply a more direct engagement with society than one finds in the earlier, more strictly technical philosophical schools. There is some truth in this. Indeed, if one wants specific analogies to the missionary practice of early Christianity - the apostle Paul, for example - the place to find it is in the theory and practice of psychagogy as developed and applied by "philosophers" in the later Hellenistic and Roman periods - for example, Philodemus, Seneca, Dio Chry~9stom, Plutarch, and Epictetus.1 I have a good reason, however, for focusing on the earlier period. I shall argue that behind the later developments lay an overall conception of the status and role of philosophy as a distinctive element in the social fabric a conception which was formulated at the beginning of the Hellenistic period (with Plato and Aristotle as essential forerunners) when the schools were founded and when their relationship with the wider society was first defined. This conception stayed in place all through the Hellenistic and Roman periods. In the highly mixed bag of ideologies that characterize these periods, this conception defines, and was taken by those living at the time to define, the specific construct of Greek and Roman "philosophy." It is important to get a dear grasp of its main contours. I shall argue that by the beginning of the Hellenistic period, philosophy had gained such a social status and played

IThe importance of this has been shown by Abraham J. Malherbe in a number of writings, most persuasively perhaps in Malherbe 1986.

ENGBERG-PEDERSEN: HEILENISTIC ÖFFENTLICHKEIT 17 such a social role that a level of public discourse had been created which, for want of a better word and with recent precedence, we may term the Öffentlichkeit of Hellenistic and Roman society. The later developments of psychagogic theory and practice and the discussions of the substantive issues all took place within and presupposed that distinct level of discourse.

The Schools in Actual Life Wespeak of the Hellenistic philosophlcal schools as schools, but it is important to be dear about how this should be understood. They were "schools" in one of the modern senses of this term, that is, as what the Greeks themselves called aipeaeLC;: systems of philosophical principles or sets of belief that one could subscribe to no matter how, when, and where one lived. 2 Were they also schools in the sense of physical institutions that one might frequent in order to obtain higher education and with a clearly defined and generally recognized social status? In some ways yes; in others no. Let us start with the negative ans wer . We are best informed about the period when the schools were set up: the Ac ademy , the Lyceum, and Epicurus's Garden. Most of the relevant material comes from Diogenes Laertius, Lives 0/ Eminent Philosophers, not least due to the fact that he has preserved a number of wills, of which those by Theophrastus and Epicurus are particularly important (Diog. Laert. 5.5157; 10.16-21).3 1. The schools were essentially private. They were set up by individuals. Where there was any property involved (as in the case of the Academy,4 2For this sense cf. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers (henceforth Diog. Laert.) 6.103, where just before setting forth the "doctrines" that Cynics hold in common (ra KOWf1 apeaKovrCY. CY.urotpaua1'rae; rOLe; 7farpLOLe;. An additional example is found in Mos. 2:44: Jl8raßaA8L1' 87ft riJ1' rovrw1' JlO1'W1' TLJlT,1', with a parallel about the proselyte in Virt. 177: Jl. 7fpOe; Cx1'V7faLTL01' SWT,1'. As for the phrase &.1' olp.m . . . EKauroVe; Jl8raßaA8L1', it refers to the optative form of a sentence with the predieate changed into the infinitive. The optative with &1' denotes a future action that is qualified by, or dependent on, some circumstances or condition, whether expressed or implied (Reik: 107). Here the condition for the future action in the form of collective conversion is the impact made by the Laws of Moses together with the glorious and prosperous times of the Jewish people. The universal acceptance of the Laws of Moses is also the future hope expressed in Sib. III:702-30. When the peoples see how weIl God guards and cares for His Elect, then they will say: "Corne, let us all fall on the ground and entreat the immortal king, the great eternal God. Let us send to the Temple, since he alone is sovereign and let us all ponder the Law of the Most High God ... " (Sib. III:716-19; Charlesworth:1.378, cf. 741-59; cf. Volz: 172, 390; Baron: 199-209). Such parallel ideas support the understanding that Philo in Mos. 2:43-44 envisions the time when all nations will become J ewish proselytes by abandoning their own laws and accepting the Laws of Moses.

The "Reaching Out": Mission to and Conquest

0/ the Nations

There are sources which suggest that Jews actively reached out by peaceful means or by military me ans in order to recruit proselytes. In Virt. 211-19 Philo pietures Abraham as a proselyte who peacefully approached his pagan surroundings by being a model that called for respect as weIl as by his persuasive prophetie speech. Abraham turned away from the polytheistie creed of the Chaldeans and left his native country, his race, and paternal horne. He was regarded as king by those in whose midst he settled, a sovereignty gained

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not with weapons, nor with mighty armies but by the election of God. He was transformed by the divine spirit: "whenever he was possessed, everything in hirn changed to something better, eyes, complexion, stature, carriage, movements, voice. For the divine spirit which was breathed upon hirn from on high made its Iod ging in his soul, and invested his body with singular beauty, his voice with persuasiveness, and his hearers with understanding" (Virt. 217). Thus, in this picture of Abraham, there is an element of a conquest of others not by military means, but by inspired teaching and by being a model presented to the gentiles for them to imitate when becoming proselytes. Moreovet, the conversion is conceived of as a transformation by means of the divine spirit. Under inspiration he sought another society than that of the gentile surroundings (Borgen 1994:227-28). According to Virt. 177 Moses also actively reached out to the gentiles. He invites polytheists and offers them instruction, exhorting them to turn away from the many gods to God, the Creator and Father of all. Correspondingly, Philo encourages those whose actions serve the common weal to use "freedom of speech and walk in daylight through the midst of the agora, ready to converse with crowded gatherings . . . and . . . feast on the fresh sweet draught of words wbich are wont to gladden the minds of such as are not wholly averse to learning . . .. [W]e [the Jews] should follow her [nature's] intentions and display in public (7rpon()ivcxL) all that is profitable and necessary for the benefit of those who are worthy to use it" (Spec. 1 :321, 323; McKnight:55).6 The evidence from Rome is of special interest. Cn. Cornelius Scipio Hispanus (ca. 139 BCE) "banished the Jews from Rome, because they attempted to transmit their sacred rites to the Romans" (Stern:#147a; cf #147 b). Moreover, in 19 BCE J ews were expelled from Rome by the emperor Tiberius, and at least one of the reasons was related to proselytes (Josephus, Ant. 18:81-84; Tacitus Annales 2:85:4; Dio Cassius Historia Romana 57:18:5a). McKnight (73-74) tries to minimize the importance of these data, but admits that here Jewish missionary activity had been at work. In J ewish history and traditions there is also another form of reacbing out to the gentile world, that of military conquest. Here the emphasis is placed on the collective aspect, that of the people of Israel conquering the nations. According to Philo God even gave into Moses's hands the whole world as his portion (Mos. 1:149, 155-57). In the battle with the Phoenicians, God showed that the earth and the lowest regions of the universe were the portions assigned to the Pho enici ans , and the ethereal, the holiest region, to the Jews. Just as heaven holds kingship in the universe and is 6Cf.·Josephus, Ant. 9:208-14.

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superior to the earth, so the Hebrew nation should be victorious over its opponents in war (Mos. 1:217; Borgen 1992:344). The conquest of pagan peoples refers both to conquests in the history of the Jewish people and in the future (eschatological) hope. As for past history it is of interest to notice that J osephus records cases where military conquest and proselytism were combined. He reports that Hyrcanus subdued all the Idumeans and permitted them to stay in their country "if they would circumcise their genitals, and make use of the laws of the Jews" (Ant. 15:257-58). Aristobulus "made war against Iturea, and added a great part of it to Judea, and compelled the inhabitants, if they would continue in that country, to be circumcised, and live according to the Jewish laws" (Ant. 13:318). Although the Book of Esther is a novel in historical form, it is of interest to see that here the conquest of pagans by the Jews took place in a diaspora setting, in Persia. The Persian king issued an edict for "the Jews who were in every city to gather and defend their lives, to destroy, to slay, and to annihilate any armed forces of any people or province that might attack them . . ." (Esther 8:11); " ... the Jews were to be ready on that day to avenge themselves upon their enemies" (8:13); " ... and many from the peoples of the country declared themsel ves J ews, for the fear of the J ews had fallen upon them" (8: 17). In the Septuagint, Esther 8: 17, it is further specified how the gentiles became Jews: "and many of the Gentiles were circumcised and became Jews, for the fear of the Jews." Also Josephus, Ant. 11:285, mentions circumcision. Since the Book of Esther is the text related to the feast of Purim, the Jews thus every year learned the ideology of militaryactions which brought gentiles to become proselytes by fear. Thus, the Septuagint festival, according to Philo, made non-Je ws to become almost proselytes and to express thanks for the Laws of Moses, while the feast of Purim, as confirmed by Josephus (Ant. 11:292-95), advocated military measures against pagans, to the effect that some would become proselytes out of fear. As for the future and eschatological hopes there were traditions which envisioned a universal conquest of all nations by the J ewish nation. This view is already formulated in the Septuagint version of Num 24:7: "There shall come a man out of his seed, and he shall rule over many nations . . . . [H]e shall consume the nations of bis enemies . . . ." The use of the Septuagint version of this text in various writings proves that it represented a living tradition (Vermes: 169ff.; Hengel). Thus in Mos. 1 :290 Philo draws on Num 24:7(LXX) and pictures a Hebrew emperor who will bring to its full realization the universal charge of Moses and the Hebrew nation: "There shall come forth from you one day a man, and he shall rule over many nations and his kingdom spreading every day shall be exalted on high." In Praem. 93-97 Philo also refers to Num

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24:7(LXX) and states that the conquest is conditioned on the lews keeping the Laws of Moses. At that time: the first boon you will have is victory over your enemies. Either, then, as he says, the war will not pass through the land of the godly at all, but will dissolve and fall into pieces of itself when the enemy perceives the nature of their opponents, that they have in justice an irresistible ally . . .. Or if some fanatics . . . come care~r­ ing to attack . . . , they are unable to win. Because, forced back by your supenor strength, they will fly headlong . . .. Some ... will turn their backs and present admirable targets to their enemies . . .. For "there shall come forth a man," says the orade, and leading his host to war he will subdue great and populous nations ... (Praem. 79, 93-95).

The passages do not specify how far the nations are to obey the Laws of Moses. In Praem. 97 it is said in a general manner that the conquered subjects will feel affection or fear or respect: "For the conduct of their rulers show three high qualities which contribute to make a government secure from subversion, namely dignity, strictness, benevolence, which produce the feelings mentioned above. " At several other pi aces in various J ewish writings the future hope is stated that the Jewish nation and its ruler are to conquer the nations and rule them (Dan 7:14; Jub. 26:23; 39:4; Sib. III:49; V:414-416; Enoch 62:6.9; T. Sim. 7:2; T. Levi 2:11; 4:3-4; 1-8:1-9; T. Jud. 24.6; T. Zeb. 9:8; T. Benj. 10:5; Pss. Sol. 17:29-30; 4 Ezra 6:26). The idea is also present that the Laws of Moses, the Laws of the Jewish nation, which are also the universal Laws, will be universally put into effect (see Mos. 2:36.44; Wisd. 18:4; Sib. III:716-19). Thus, in some of the future eschatological expectations, the Jews entertained the view that they were going to conquer the nations, and if the hope was not to destroy the nations, they believed that they were to be the head nation who would rule over all in a world-wide imperium. As shown above, in Jewish history there were cases where non-Jews, due to Jewish military conquest, became proselytes by being forced to undergo circumcision and to obey the Laws of Moses. McKnight mentioned these and similar texts in summary fashion, but listed them under the heading of "God's Intervention" (50-51) or conversions through force (68). It is a serious weakness with his study that he has not discussed these texts more fully, since they actually represent a religiously-founded ideology and an extreme form of "aggressive missionary activity" (McKnight's terminology).

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Christian Proselytism and Conquest of the Nations Christi an mission in the New Testament is rooted in Jewish ideas and methods of proselytism, but they are recast on the basis of the motif of eschatology and conquest. As background for missionary ideas and practices, Philo's ideas ab out proselytes offer a strikingly adequate background with the threefold understanding of conversion. Thus, also in Christi an mission, conversion consisted of these three aspects: (1) The religious conversion which meant a change from many gods to the one God. Two passages from Paul will illustrate the theme "from many gods to one God": (a) "Formerly, when you did not know God, you were in bondage to beings that by nature are no god; but you have come to know God ... " (Gal 4:8-9); (b) " ... how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God ... " (l Thess 1 :9-10). A corresponding formulation in Philo is found in Virt. 102-104: "the proselytes ... abandoning ... the temples and images of their gods . . . to the worship of the one and truly existing God." The eschatological setting is explicitly stated by Paul. In Gal 1 :3-4 Paul talks of liberation from the present evil age. As a statement in the prescript of the letter it makes c1ear that the whole letter is to be understood from this point of view. Another central idea in Galatians is that the promise to Abraham is put in effect in Jesus Christ: all nations shall now receive the blessing. The eschatological and Christi an adaptation of such Jewish proselyte-tradition is also evident in 1 Thess 1:9-10, by the fact that reference to the resurrection and the parousia of J esus and the wrath to come are added: " ... how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come" (Bussman:52-53). The christological identification of this deliverer from the wrath to come is a unique feature in Paul's rendering of this conversion-tradition. The christological aspect is specified as being Jesus, whom God raised from the dead. (2) The ethical conversion from pagan immorality to Jewish/Christian morality. The transition from pagan immorality to a moral way of life is pictured in Christian sources in a way similar to ideas found in Philo: The lists of vices in 1 Cor 6:9-10 and Gal 5:19-21 have points in common with Philo's descriptions of pagan life. For example, without using the form of catalogue, Philo, in On the Contemplative Life, describes the life of the Gentiles as Paul does: as a life of idolatry, immorality, and excessive banqueting. In 1 Cor 6: 11 and Gal 5:22-3 the new life of converts is seen in contrast

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to the gentile life of vices. In Gal 5:22-33 Paul even renders a list of virtues similar to the list given by Philo in Virt. 182. Paul writes: "But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-contro!." Also elsewhere in Christian literature the new li fe is characterized in a similar way, such as in Justin, Dialogue 110:3: " ... we cultivate piety, justice, brotherly charity, faith and hope .... " Both in 1 Cor 6:10-11 and in Gal5:19-23 the eschatological perspective i~ explicitly stated. Immoral life will lead to the exelusion from the kingdom ofGod. (3) The social conversion from other peoples to one people (=Jewish proselytism) and to one community among many peoples (= Christian mission). Material from the Pauline corpus will be used as main sources. Christian sources draw on J ewish traditions in their characterization of how the Christian "proselytes" form a cross-national community, a people among many peoples. The best example is found in Eph 2: 11-22. In accordance with the proselyte pattern of contrast, the present is described against the pagan background, when they were uncircumcised gentiles, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, 1] 7rOALTEia TOU 'Iopaf]A. In the present they are not strangers nor foreigners, but fellow-citizens, avp..7rOALTaL, and members of the household of God. In Eph 2: 12 the term 7rOALTEia was used, the very term which also is central in the J ewish people/nation in Philo' s passages on proselytes. The conelusion of this analysis in Eph 2:11-22 seems then at first to be that Christi an mission and Jewish proselytism are identical entItIes. The passage seems to tell how the gentile converts were brought into the commonwealth of Israel, that is, to be members and citizens of the Jewish nation, within the limits set by the political circumstances. In spite of this use of legal and technical terminology from the realm of state and ethnic communities, the passage in Eph 2:11-22 breaks away from this context. According to Eph 2: 11-22 the Christi an proselytes are not to make an ethnic and judicial break away from their families , country, and nation. Thus the gentile converts are not to become citizens of the J ewish nation of the Torah. The law of commandments is abolished. In this way the J ewish idea of the people of God has been reshaped to mean the church of Christ into which both gentiles and J ews are to enter. The atonement in Christ has made this new inelusive community possible. While Jewish proselytism brought gentile converts into the Jewish nation, Christian mission brought them into a cross-national community of Jews and gentiles, "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ hirns elf being the chief cornerstone in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord" (Eph 2:20-21). Nevertheless, the agreements between these Christian sources on the one

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hand and Philo's description on the other hand are elose. Christi an missionary preaching and teaching here elearlY use J ewish traditions about the conversion of proselytes. At several points, then, Christi an mission and Jewish proselytism have the same content and have the same view on the change from polytheism to the true God and from a gentile lifestyle to a Jewish/Christian ethicallifestyle. In Paul' s Letter to the Galatians there is a conflict between Paul' s eschatological and cross-national recasting of Jewish proselytism and his opponents who wanted to bring the Christi an gentile converts into the Jewish nation as normally was the case with proselytes. When Paul characterized their activity, he used a widespread formula-like phrase: ava-YKaSELv TLva 7rEpLTep..veaOaL.

Gal6:12: "they campel you to be circumcised" obroL ava-YKcXrOVCTLV VJ1.&e; 7repLrBJ1.VeaOm

I

Josephus, Vita. 113: "When the Jews would have compelled them to be circumcised if they wanted to be with them, I did not allow any compulsion to be put upon them . . . ." rovrove; 7repLriJ1.veaOm rwv 'Iovoa/'wv ava-YKarOvrwv, ei OeAovaLv elvm 7rap' auro'ie; .... Gal2:3: ". . . not even Titus who was with me and who was a Greek was campelled ta be circumcised. " ouos ... ~va-YKcXaOTJ 7repLrJ1.TJO~Vm .... Ant. 13:318: ". . . he . . . compelled the inhabitants . . . to be circumcised, and to live according to the Jewish laws." ava-YKcXaae; re roue; evoLKouvrae; ... 7repLriJ1.veaOm Kai Kara roue; 'Iovoaiwv VOJ1.0Ve; Nv.

Ptolemy (Stern:#146): "The Idumaeans ... having been subjugated by the Jews and having been compelled to undergo circumcision . . . ." ava-YKaaOivree; 7repLriJ1.veaOm

Although these paralleis occur in different contexts, all demonstrate that it was widespread to regard circumcision as a basic identity marker for a Jew and that, when needed, gentiles were forcefully circumcised. It is of interest to notice that J osephus was hirnself put under severe pressure by the people when two gentiles from the region of Trachonitis had fled to the J ews for refuge. The Jewish crowd wanted to compel the two gentiles to be circumcised as a condition of residence among them. J osephus finally had to help the two persons tlee so that they could escape forcible circumcision (Vita.

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112-13; 149-54). This incident illustrates the kind of pressure and persecution that Paul's opponents feared might happen to them. This fear motivated them to compel the Galatian Christi ans to be circumcised (Gal 6: 12). Paul refuses to make circumcision a condition for the Galatian converts to remain in the people of God. According to hirn there is a christological basis for the transition. Instead of binding the change to physical circumcision, Paul ties it to the death of Christ Jesus: "And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passion and desires" (Gal 5:24). In 1 Cor 6: 11 the transition is marked by baptism and by being justified in the name of Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. For Jewish proselytes the new life, characterized by lists of virtues, is a life in accordance with the Laws of Moses. It is to be lived in the new context of the Jewish nation, as it was organized at various places in the Roman empire, for example in the form of a 7roAL7eVIlCi.. According to the Christi an mission, as understood by Paul, the gentile converts are not under the Law of Mos-es (Gal 5:18). They are not members of the Jewish 7roAL7eVIlCi.. But their new life outside of the J ewish nation is in accordance with the Laws of Moses, as noted by Paul in connection with the list of virtues in Gal 5:22-23: " ... against such things there is no Law" (GaI5:23b). In this eschatological and Christi an recasting a peaceful form of Jewish proselytism has been transformed to serve the motif of conquest of the nations. As shown above, this notion of conquest existed in Jewish tradition both with reference to history and to eschatology. (Within the limitation of this essay only some scattered pieces of material can be listed in survey fashion. The cited passages nevertheless suffice to substantiate the points made). Some of the points of agreement between Christi an mission and Jewish conquest are as follows: 1. The active and conscious reaching out to the nations. Several passages within the Pauline corpus as weIl as elsewhere in the New Testament testify to tbis point. As an example one might mention Paul' s call as apostle to the gentiles: " ... [he] was pleased to reveal his Son in me, in order that I might preach hirn among the nations . . ." (Gali: 16). Another outstanding example is Mt 28:19: "Go ... make disciples of all nations .... " A militaristic reaching out to the nations is pictured in Num 24:7-8(LXX): " ... he shall rule over many nations ... he shall consume the nations . . . ." With variations the Septuagint version of this passage is also found in the Targums (Vermes:159ff.), in Philo Mos. 1:290-91 and Praem. 95-97, and in Josephus Ant. 4:7, cf.l0:208-10. In Mos. 1:290-91 the following phrases may be quoted: "... he shall rule over many nations, and his kingdom spreading every day ... it [the people] shall eat up many nations .... " Praem. 95 reads: " ... leading his host to war he will subdue great and populous

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nations .... " 2. The basis for this mission to the nations is a Jewish sovereign who has a universal claim on the nations. As examples from the New Testament Rom 1:3-5 and Mt 28:18-19 might be cited. Rom 1:4-5: " ... his Son, who was a descendant from David . . . who was appointed Son of God in power ... by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship ... among the nations . . . ." Mt 28:18-19: "All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore ... of all nations" (Windisch 1909:61). This conquest scene about the cosmic authority of Jesus corresponds to the instalIment of Moses as universal king in Mos. I: 155-57. And this God-given charge to Moses will be brought to its fulfillment by "the Man" who shall rule over many nations (Num 24:7[LXX]), as rendered by Philo in Mos. 1 :290-91 and Praem. 9597. 3. The Christi an conquest takes place by using ideas and methods from the peaceful form of Jewish proselytism. Thus it is a conquest by peaceful means. Some features from Jewish military conquest traditions are still traceable, however (Windisch: 1909; Leivestad): According to 1 Cor 15: 24f., at the future eschaton the final victory over all authorities will be won (Leivestad: 133-34): "Then comes the end when he [Christ] delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet." Although no combat is pictured in Phil 2:10-11 (Leivestad: 113-14), the passage should be mentioned here, since the scene is the 7rpOaKUVrwu; of Jesus Christ as Lord, that is, as the cosmic and universal ruler: "... that in the name of J esus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, the glory of God the father." Within military thought categories the crucifixion is interpreted as a triumph over the principalities and powers (Collins; Leivestad:100-04): "He [God] disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in hirn" (CoI2:15). The most elaborate use of ideas from militant messianism is found in the Book of Revelation (Leivestad:246-48). The Roman emperor represents antichrist and together with the pagan nations he attacks the saints. Christ is depicted as a victorious conqueror. Also he re the decisive victory is paradoxically understood as won by J esus in his sacrificial death on the cross. On that basis he was exalted as King of kings and Lord of lords to rule the nations with an iron rod. Accordingly, Paul and the other missionaries were soldiers (Phil 2:25; Philemon 2) who fought an ideological war (Leivestad:146-47): "For though

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we live in the world we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstac1e to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ" (2 Cor 10:3-5). Commenting on this passage H. Windisch (1924:296) wrote: " ... die Vorstellung von dem in kriegerischem Kampf die Welt erobernden jüdischen Messias ist auf das sonst so friedsame Werk der Ap. übertragen." Although the apostles and missionaries experience sufferings and persecutions, their work can be seen as victory and triumph (Leivestad:140-45; 147-48): "But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumph ... " (1 Cor 2: 14). R. Leivestad (148) renders the meaning of this verse as: "What makes Paul praise God is that God leads us everywhere, so that the knowledge of Christ is spread all over the world, a knowledge which certainly implies death to those who are perishing, but abundant life to those who are saved. " In the New Testament the Jewish motif of conquest is central, not as a conquest by military me ans , but by peaceful methods of persuasion and in this way making proselytes of all nations. Nevertheless, in the New Testament, the inauguration of the eshatological era by the appearance of Jesus as the Messiah meant that now the Jewish (cosmic and universal) thoughts of the conquest of all nations was to take place. Thus it has been substantiated that, although it is correct that Christian mission has some distinctive features, its matrix was the Jewish notions of proselytism, eschatology, and conquest. Instead of conquering the nations by military means, Christian mission meant that the Jewish notion and method of proselytism were recast on the basis of the Jewish motif of conquest. Thus, the belief in Jesus as the Christ meant that disciples were to be actively recruited from all nations. In this way Christianity moved into the Roman world as a teaching and worshipping movement in competition with religions and philosophical schools. Gradually, even the political life of the Roman Empire was penetrated to such an extent that Christianity became a major political factor from the Emperor Constantine and onwards.

Works Consulted Aalen, Sverre 1951 Die Begriffe 'Licht' und 'Finsternis' im Alten Testament, im Späjudentum und im Rabbinismus. Oslo: Jacob Dybwad. Baron, Salo W. 1953 A Sodal and Religious History ofthe lews, Voll. Second Edition. New York: Columbia University.

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Borgen, Peder 1992 "'There Shall Come Forth a Man.' Reflections on Messianie Ideas in Philo." pp. 341-361 in The Messiah. Ed. James H. Charlesworth. Minneapolis: Fortress. 1994 "Jesus Christ, the Reception of the Spirit and a Cross-national Community." pp. 220-35 in lesus of Nazareth: Lord and Christ. Ed. Joel B. Green, Max Turner. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. "Man's Sovereignty Over Animals and Nature according to Philo of 1995 Alexandria." pp. 369-89 in FS Lars Hartman: Texts and Contexts: Biblical Texts in their Textual Situational Contexts. Ed. David Hellhom, Tord Fomberg. OsIo: Scandanavian University. Bousset, Wilhelm 1926 Die Religion des ludentums im späthellenistischen Zeitalter. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). Bussmann, Claus 1971 Themen der paulinischen Missionspredigt auf dem Hintergrund der spätjüdischhellenistischen Missionsliteratur. Bern: Herberto Lang. Charlesworth, Iames H. (ed.) 1983 The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Vol l: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments. Garden City, NI: Doubleday. Cohen, Shaye I. D. "Crossing the Boundary and Becoming a Jew." HTR 82:13-33. 1989 Collins, Adela Y. 1976 The Combat Myth in the Book of ~evelation. Missoula, MT: Scholars. Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler 1976 "Mirac1es, Mission and Apologetics: An Introduction." pp. 1-25 in Aspects ofReligious Propaganda in ludaism and Early Christianity. Ed. E. Schüssler Fiorenza. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame. Georgi, Dieter 1964 Die Gegner des Paulus im 2. Korinthbrief Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag (also available: The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986). Goldenberg, Robert 1979 '''The Jewish Sabbath in the Roman World up to the time of Constantine the Great." pp. 414-47 in ANRWII, 19.1. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Hengel, Martin 1989 "Messianische Hoffung und politischer 'Radikalismus' in der 'jüdischhellenistischen Diaspora. ,,, pp. 655-86 in Apocalyptidsm in the Ancient Near East and the Hellenistic World. Second edition. Ed. David Hellholm. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).

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van der Horst, Pieter W. "Jews and Christians in Aphrodisias in the Light of their Relations in Other 1989 Cities of Asia Minor." Netherlands Theologisch Tijdschrift 43: 106-21. Jeremias, Joachim 1958 Jesus' Promise to the Nations. SBT 24. London: SCM. Kuhn, K. G. and H. Stegemann 1962 "Proselyten." pp. 1248-83 in Pauly's Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Supplementband IX. Ed. G. Wissowa, et. al. Stuggart: Alfred Druckenmüller.

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Sundkler, Bengt 1936 "Jesus et les paiens." RHPhR 16:462-99 (also available pp. 1-38 in Arbeiten und Mitteilungen aus dem neutestamentlichen Seminar zu Uppsala. Vol. 6. Uppsala: Das neutestamentliche Seminar zu Uppsala, 1937). Swete, Henry B. 1902 An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Tcherikover, V. A., A. Fuks, and M. Stern 1957-64 Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum. 3 Vois. Cambridge, MA: Harvard U niversity .

Leivestad, R. 1954

Christ the Conquerer. London: SPCK.

Vermes, G. 1961

Mcknight, Scot 1991 A Light among the Gentiles: Jewish Missionary Activity in the Second Temple Period. Minneapolis: Fortress. Meecham, Henry G. 1932 The Oldest Version ofthe Bible: 'Aristeas' on its Traditional Origin. London: Holborn Publishing House. Moore, George F. 1927-30 Judaism in the First Centuries ofthe Christian Era: The Age ofthe Tannaim. 3 Vols. Cambridge: Harvard University. Müller, Ulrich B. 1980 "Rez. Ulrich Fischer, Eschatologie und Jenseitserwartung in hellenistischen Diasporajudentum ... 1978." ThZ 26:238-40. Munck, Johannes 1954 Paulus und die Heilsgeschichte. Aarhus/Copenhagen: Aarhus University Press/Ejnar Munksgaard. Reick, Karl 1907

Schwartz, J. 1967

Der Optativ bei Polybius und Philo von Alexandria. Leipzig: Gustav Fock. "Die Rolle Alexandrias bei der Verbreitung orientalischen Gedankunguts." Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 1 : 197 -217.

Sheppard, A. R. R. 1979 "Jews, Christians and Heretics in Acmonia and Eumeneia." Anatolian Studies 29: 169-80. Stern, Menahem 1976-84 Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism. 3 Vois. Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Volz, Paul 1934

Scripture and Tradition in Judaism. Leiden: Brill. Die Eschatologie der jüdischen Gemeinde im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter. Second edition. Tübingen: 1. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).

Windisch, Hans 1909 Der messianische Krieg und das Urchristentum. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Pau1 Siebeck) . 1924 Der zweite Korinthbrief Ninth edition. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

CHAPrER4 PAUL AND lliE BEGINNING OF CHRISTIAN CONVERSION Alan F. Segal Bamard College Columbia University

Introduction In this paper I want to trace the relationship between various Jewish definitions of conversion and the Christi an ones. Social scientists tell us that each community defines uniquely what it means by conversion. We do not know everything we need to know about the origins of the rabbinie version of conversion. But we can tell a great deal about the Dead Sea Scroll community. In different ways, both communities outlined aperiod of learning, followed by a change of identity based on oath and ritual. The Christian definitions of conversion, however, are quite different. How did they come ab out? To find out we will have to ask basic questions of the entire relationship between Judaism and Christianity in the first century. So I must briefly address the issue of Jewish mysticism, which is in some ways the environment out of which the Christi an versions of conversion grow.

Jewish Mysticism

I

That Jewish mysticism has a history is due to Gershorn Scholem. When all the modern Jews were saying that Judaism was a religion of reason, more reasonable than Christianity they thought, hence more able to deal with the modern world, Scholem pointed out that they were forgetting - trying desperately to forget - a lively tradition of J ewish mysticism. That his tory included Merkabah, kabbalah, and Hasidism. I wish to focus on Merkabah. But it is clear to me that what we call Jewish mysticism grew out of aseparate phenomenon, apocalypticism, the tail-end of the prophetie movement, which claimed the world is going to end abruptly. All Jewish mysticism, indeed even the doctrine of resurrection itself, depends on a very peculiar passage in Daniel 12, the only apocalyptic work

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accepted into the Hebrew Bible: At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was anation til that time; but at that time your people shall be delivered, every one whose name shall be found written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, so me to everlasting life, and some to shame and ever-Iasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever (DanieI12:13).

We often gloss over the rather peculiar aspects of the prophecy in Daniel. In it, it says that two kinds of people will be resurrected - the very good, and the very bad (not the usual understanding). More interesting to me is the idea that those who are wise will shine as the stars in heaven; this is literally where The Zohar, the principal book of Jewish mysticism, gets its name. Essentially this document tells us that those who make themselves wise will become stars, that the good people on earth will become stars. Angels in heaven and stars are equated. The history of Jewish mysticism is deeply concerned with the experience of becoming a star. But that is precisely what Paul tells us. We must wait to see how. This vision serves as the basis for the doctrine of resurrection in Judaism. In the Jewish prayer for the dead, "eI malay rahamirn," it is directly quoted: "grant perfect peace under the wings of the Shekhina, among the holy and pure beings on high who shine as the brightness 0/ the heavens." This shows the enormous effect these verses have had on ordinary J ewish piety. But this is only the prologue. For Merkabah mysticism was not quiet contemplation. Instead it was the active des ire to journey to heaven and see what was there. Not only could you go to heaven at the end of your life, some people actually went while alive. In fact, the importance of going during your life, you might say, was to prove that you were going after death. It was a kind of eschatological verificationism (pace Hick). I want to underline two aspects of this mystical experience and show how it is fundamental to Paul's experience. The first aspect of the Jewish mystical experience is the vision of a principal angelic mediator who like the angel of the Lord in Exodus carries the name of God or participates in God' s divinity somehow. All the passages describing the Glory of the Lord, especially Ezekiel 1:26 . . :. . the human figure on the throne in Ezekiel's vision are pulled into this angelic figure, making a consistent figure of a principal angelic mediator . This mediator figure can be called a variety of different names - Yahoel, Melchizedek, and even the son of man, and as I have tried to show in Paul the Convert, it was this figure that Paul saw and with whom

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he identified the crucified Christ. So for Paul, the figure was the traditional one except, as he says in 2 Corinthians, it has the face of Jesus. The second aspect of this tradition which is important to the study of Paul is transformation. In the J ewish mystical tradition, adepts or heroes or patriarchs can be transformed or subsumed into the mediator figure. This is more or less the equivalent of becoming an angel or becoming astar, which is the exact point of Daniel 12. The most obvious example of this phenomenon, though by no means the only one, is Enoch, who is transformed into the Son of Man in 1 Enoch 71. I would submit that what is narrated there is the very experience of being made a star, which is narrated in Daniel 12. From a historical point of view, the problem with this tradition is that chapter 71 of Enoch cannot be proven to be pre-Christian. Most scholars believe it to be pre-Christian, but that is not the same thing as proof. Since Enoch cannot be proven pre-Christian, Paul' s testimony becomes the most important. Furthermore, Paul gives us first-person, confessional experience ab out wh at these experiences are. He tells us ab out the man who went to heaven, and he tells us what it is like to be in Christ.

Paul's Use 0/ Mystical Vocabulary Paul hirnself gives the best evidence for the existence of ecstatic journeys to heaven in first-century Judaism, with his report in 2 Corinthians. 1 We begin with heavenly ascent. Although the account of Paul's ecstatic conversion in Acts is a product of Luke's literary genius, Paul gives his own evidence for ecstatic experience. In Galatians 1, Paul claims that he did not receive the gospel from a human source. And in 2 Corinthians 12:1-9, he describes an experience that transcends human ken: 2 I must boast; there is nothing to be gained by it, but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught

up to the third heaven - whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into Paradise - whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know, God knows - and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. On behalf of this man, I will boast, but lCallan shows how Paul wished to limit the term ecstasy. Prophecy for Paul is not ecstatic, in that it need not be accompanied by trance. Therefore, our use of it, though proper, also remains an etic term. 2S ee Tabor, where he illustrates his contention that this mystical experience is meant to be taken very seriously as a part of Paul's religious life. Although Paul means to criticize those who make claims on the basis of their spiritual gifts, this is not merely a strange corner cf Paul's universe, and it is certainly not a parody of an ascent, in the tradition of Lucian' s Death 0/ Peregrinus.

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RECRUITMENT, CONQUEST, AND CONFLICT on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. Though i~ I wish .to boast, I shall not be a fool, for I shall be speaking the truth. But I refram from lt, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me. And to keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I besought the Lord about this, that it should leave me; but he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. "

Most all scholars understand that Paul is speaking about his own experience but that he is reticent to name hirnself because he does not want to elaim authority on the basis of spiritual gifts. But that is not the same thing as· denying that he had them. It is also significant that in 2 Corinthians 12, when Paul talks about mystical journeys directly he too adopts a pseudepigraphieal stance. He does not admit to the ascent personally. Apart from the needs of his rhetoric, rabbinic rules also forbid public discussion of mystie phenomena. A first century date for this rule would explain why Paul would not divulge his experience in his own name at that place. It would also suggest why Jewish mystics consistently picked pseudepigraphical literary conventions to discuss their religious experience, unlocking the mystery behind the entire phenomenon of pseudepigraphical writing. But none of the standard discussions of this incompletely understood phenomenon discuss Paul's confession or the Mishnah here. 3 Again, Paul may be giving us hitherto unrecognized information about Jewish culture in the first century whieh is unavailable from anywhere else. When Paul is not faced with a direct deelaration of personal mystical experience, he reveals much about the mystical religion as it was experienced in the first century. Paul himself designates Christ as the image of the Lord in a few places: 2 Cor 4:4, Col 1:15 (if it is Pauline), and he mentions the jJ.oP4>it of God in Phil 2:6. 4 More often he talks of transforming believers into the image of His son in various ways (Rom 8:29; 2 Cor 3:18; Phil 3:21; and 1 Cor 15:49. See also Col 3:9). These passages are critical to understanding what Paul' s experience of conversion was. They must be seen in eloser detail to understand the relationship to J ewish apocalypticism and mystieism, from which they derive their most complete significance for Paul. Paul' s longest discussion of these themes occurs in an unlikely place in 2 Cor 3:18 - 4:6. Here he assurnes the conte~t rather than explaining it completely. Thus, Paul's term, "the glory of the Lord," must be taken both as a reference to Christ and as a technical term for the Kavod ("J:J), the human

3The most recent good analysis of pseudepigraphal writing is found in Meade. Mystical notions are not even mentioned. 4in this section, I am particularly indebted to Gilles Quispel.

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form of God appearing in biblical visions. In 2 Cor 3: 18 Paul says that Christi ans behold the Glory of the Lord (7TJV oo~cx" KVpLOV) as in a mirror, and are transformed into his image (7TJV CXV7TJV eiKovcx).5 For Paul, as for the earliest Jewish mysties, to be privileged enough to see the Kavod or Glory (06~cx) of God is a prologue to transformation into His image (eiKwv). Paul does not say that all Christi ans have made the journey literally but compares the experience of knowing Christ to being allowed into the intimate presence of the Lord. But we know that he has made that journey. The result of the journey is to identify Christ as the Glory of God. When Paul says that he preaches that Jesus is Lord and that God "has let this light shine out of darkness into our hearts to give the light of knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ" (4:6), he seems elearly to be describing his own conversion and ministry, just as he described it in Galatians 1, and just as he is explaining the experience to new converts for the purpose of furthering conversion. His apostolate, which he expresses as a prophetie calling, is to proelaim that the face of Christ is the glory of God. It is very difficult not to read this passage in terms of Paul' s later description of the ascension of the man to the third heaven and conelude that Paul's conversion experience also involved his identification of Jesus as the "image" and "glory of God," as the human figure in heaven, and thereafter as Christ, son, and savior. Or at least this is how Paul construes it when he recalls it. Ecstatic ascensions like the one described in 2 Corinthians 12, and spiritual metamorphoses like 2 Corinthians 3 are strangely unfamiliar to modern Jewish and Christi an religious sentiments. Neither Christianity nor rabbinic Judaism transmitted these lively mystical Jewish traditions of the 5The use of the mirror here is also a magico-mystical theme, which can be traced to the word Eyyin (l'Y) occurring in Ezekiel 1. Although it is sometimes translated otherwise, eyyin probably refers to a mirror even there, and possibly refers to some unexplained technique for achieving ecstasy. The mystic bowls of the magic:iI papyri and Talmudic times were fi1led with water and oil to reflect light and stimulate trance. The magical papyri describe spells which use a small bowl that serves as the medium for the appearance of a god for divination: e.g., PGM IV, 154-285 (Betz:40-43), PDM 14.192, 295-308, 395-427, 528-53, 627-635, 805-840, 841-850, 851-855 (Betz:195-200, 213, 218-9, 225-226, 229, 236-239). The participant concentrates on the reflection in the water's surface, often with oil added to the mixture, sometimes with the light of a lamp nearby. Lamps and charms are also used to produce divinations, presumably because they can stimulate trance under the proper conditions. The Reuyoth Yeheikel, for instance, mention that Ezekiel' s mystical vision was stimulated by looking into the waters of the River Chebar. It seems to me that Philo appropriates the mystic imagery of the mirror to discuss the al1egorical exposition of scripture. See The Contemplative Life 78; and Dieter Georgi:272-73; and cf. Schu1z:1-30. Paul's opponents then look into the mirror and see only the text. But because Pau1 and those truly in Christ actually behold the glory of the Lord, they have a c1earer vision on the truth. My thanks to David Balch for insisting that I deal with these issues, though he will no doubt dissent from my opinion.

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first century openly. But in the context of the first few centuries, the combination of these two themes of ascension and transformation, both inside and outside ludaism, normally suggested the gaining of immortality and the context of lewish mysticism also connects with the issue of theodicy. Daniel 12 suggests that those who lead others to wisdom (or "the enlighteners": hamaskilim C",";,fV7-'i1) will shine as the brightness of the heavens, like the stars and that they will be among those resurrected for eternal reward. The Parables 01 Enoch (1 Enoch 37-71) contains the interesting narration of the transformation of Enoch into the son of man, but no one can be sure that this is not itself a Christian addition to the text, since it agrees so completely with the transformation that Paul outlines. 6 Without Paul we could not suppose that this experience is evidenced in the first century because the date of 1 Enoch is uncertain. N or would we know that the mystic experience was even possible within Judaism. Concomitant with Paul's worsbip of the divine Christ is transformation. Paul says in Philippians 3:10: "that I may know hirn and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like hirn (avp.p.oP4>LNl-u:voc;) in his death." Later, in Philippians 3:20-21, he says: "But our commonwealth is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will change (p.sTcxaXYJp.cxTLasL) our lowly body to be like (avp.p.op4>ov) bis glorious body, by the power which enables bim even to subject all things to hirnself. " The body of the believer eventually is to be transformed into the body of Christ. Paul's depiction of salvation is based on bis understanding of Christ's glorification, partaking of early Jewish apocalyptic mysticism for its expression.7 In Romans 12:2 Paul's listeners are exhorted to "be transformed" 6The romance of exaltation to immortality was hardly a unique Jewish motif; rather it was characteristic of all higher spirituality of later Hellenism - witness the Hennetic literature. Even in a relatively unsophisticated text like the magical Recipe for Imnwrtality (the so-called Mithras Liturgy) of third century Egypt, the. adept gains a measure of immortality by gazing directly on the god and breathing in some of his essence. 7Scholars like Kim who want to ground all of Paul's thought in a single ecstatic conversion experience, which they identify with Luke's accounts of Paul's conversion, are reticent to accept this passage as a fragment from Christian liturgy because to do so would destroy its value as Paul' s personal revelatory experience. But there is no need to decide wh ether the passage is originally Paul's (hence received directly through the "Damascus revelation"), since ecstatic language nonnally is derived from traditions current within the religious group. Christian mystics use Christian language, Muslim mystics use the languages developed for mysticism in Islam, and no mystic is ever confused by another religion's mysticism unless it is the conscious and explicit intent of the mystic's vision to do so. See R. C. Zaehner; Steven Katz. In this case the language is not even primarily Christian. The basic language is from Jewish mysticism, though the subsequent exegesis about the identification of the Christ with the figure on the throne is Christian; the vision of God enthroned is the goal of Jewish mystical speculation.

SEGAL: PAUL AND THE BEGINNING OF CHRISTIAN CONVERSION 85 (p.STcxp.op4>oDaOs) by renewing of your minds." In Galatians 4:19 Paul expresses another transformation: "My little children, with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed (p.op4>wOfl) in you!" This transformation is to be effected by becoming likE1 bim in his death (avp.p.op4>LSop.svoc; TG OcxvaTUJ cxvToD, Phil 3: 10). Paul' s central proclarnation is: J esus is Lord and all who have faith have already undergone a death like bis, so they will share in his resurrection. This proclarnation reflects a baptismal liturgy, implying that baptism provides the moment whereby the believer comes to be "in Christ." Christianity may have been a unique J ewish sect in making baptism a central rather than apreparatory ritual, but same of the mystical imagery comes from its Jewish past. Altematively, Paul can say, as he does in Galatians 1:16, that "God was pleased to reveal His San in me (ev ep.oL)." This is not a simple dative but refers to bis having received in hirn the Spirit, in bis case through his conversion. Being in Christ in fact appears to mean being united with his heavenly image. The same, however, is available to all Christians through baptism. This is not strange since apocalyptic and mystical Judaism also promoted tevilah (il'''J~), ritual immersion or baptism, as the central purification ritual preparing for the ascent into God's presence. The Jewish ritual of purification for coming into the divine presence and proselyte baptism has been transformed by Paul's community into a single rite of passage, though it does not thereby lose its relationsbip to its source. Dying and being resurrected along with Christ in baptism is the beginning of the process by which the believer gains the same image of God, God's SiKWV, which was made known to humanity when Jesus became the san of man - that human figure in heaven who brings judgment in the apocalypse described by Daniel. Paul' s conception of the risen body of Christ as the spiritual body (1 Cor 15:43) at the end of time and as the body of Glory (Phil 3:21) thus originates in Jewish apocalypticism and mysticism, modified by the unique events of early Christianity. The meaning of Romans 8:29 can be likewise clarified by Jewish esoteric tradition. There, Paul speaks of God as having "foreordained his elect to be conformed to the image of bis Son" (7rpOWpLasv aVJ-Lp.op4>ovc; TfjC; siKOVOC; ToD vioD cxvToD). Paul uses the genitive here rather than the dative as in Philippians 3:21, softening the identification between believer and savior. But when Paul states that believers conform to the image of his San, he is not speaking of an agreement of mind or ideas between J esus and the believers. The ward avp.p.op4>YJ itself suggests a spiritual reformation of the believer's body into the form of the divine image. Paul's language for conversion develops out of mystical Judaism.

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Paul speaks of the transformation being partly experienced by believers already in their pre-parousia existence. His use of present tense in Romans 12:2 and 2 Corinthians 3:18 underscores that transformation is an ongoing event. However in 1 Corinthians 15:49 and Romans 8 it culminates at Christ's return, the parousia. This suggests that for Paul transformation is both a single, definitive event yet also a process that continues until the second coming. The redemptive and trans formative process appears to correspond exactly with the turning of the ages. This age is passing away, though it certainly remains a present evil reality (1 Cor 3:19; 5:9; 2 Cor 4:4; Gal 1 :4; Rom 12:2). The gospel, which is the power of God for salvation (Rom 1:16), is progressing through the world (Phil1:12; also Rom 9-11). Christ is not explicitly given the title the Glory 0/ God in the New Testament. 8 But there are several New Testament passages in which o6~a (glory) and, more relevantly, the glory is attributed to Christ or the Son. In J ames 2: 1, it is possible that we should translate "our Lord J esus Christ, the Glory." Paul himself repeatedly uses the term" glory" to refer to Christ. In Philippians 3:21 Paul speaks of Christ's "Body of Glory" (r4J aWlla7L rTJ,::> 1J'Y or, abbreviated, akkum (Ci::>Y) "a worshiper of stars and planets," applied in talmudic litera-

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Could there be such a thing, then, as a morally good Gentile? J osephus suggests that those pagans who respect Jews and Judaism are morally superior· to those who do not. Later, the rabbis discussed the question (which is to say, there were dissenting views) and for the most part concurred: Gentiles could be righteous, and as such they would have a place in the world to come.1 When the focus of rabbinic discussion shifts from "real Gentiles considered in principle" to the imagined circumstances of the ger toshav or ben Noach, the abandonment of idolatry seems to be the measure of such righteousness: it features prominently in the various lists of the Noachite commandments. 8 The rules for the ger toshav describe the ideal behavior of pagan residents in Palestine, to be observed or enforced (according to later rabbinic traditions) when the Jubilee year would be kept, that is, in aperiod of Jewish sovereignty.9 Such "legislation," drawn up as it was after the wars with Rome, was thus in many ways a form of wistful thinking. In reallife, Gentiles had another option: They could convert. Conversi on to Judaism in antiquity was a common enough phenomenon to provide the material for sarcastic or satirical remarks - Horace's on modes of persuasion; Juvenal's on the effects of parents' bad habits on children,l° Rabbinic law specified as halakic requirements for those who would join Israel instruction in the mitzvot and accompanying ritual acts: immersion; while the

70n Josephus, Cohen 1987:409-30. T. Sanh. 13.2 gives the debate between two first-century rabbis, R. Eliezer and R. Joshua. See also Sanders 1977:206-12, further developed in 1985:212-221 (esp., on this debate, 1985:215: "The point of the Rabbinic passage is to pair that saying [i. e., Eliezer' s denial of Gentile righteousness and redemption] with the opposite one by R. Joshua, to the effect that there are righteous Gentiles who will share in the world to come"). 8The Noachite commandments establish certain minimal standards of moral behavior enjoined on non-Jews, Sanh. 56-60. The seven tradition al rules prohibit idolatry, blasphemy, violent bloodshed, sexual sins, theft, and eating from a living animal, and enjoin the formation of law courts, b. Sanh. 56b. Cf. AvZar 8(9):4-6; iub. 7:20ff.; cf. James's ruling in Acts 15:20. See Tannenbaum 1987:48, 59; Goodman 1989b:182; Cohen 1989:22. David Novak provides a comprehensive discussion (1983). 9bArakin 29a; discussion in Tannenbaum: 48; Moore 1927:1:339-40; Schürer 3.1:171-72 (from now on, HiP). 10Horace , Satires 1.4.142-43 ("like the Jews we shall force you to join our crowd" cogemus in hanc concedere turbam). John Nolland has argued that this jibe targets Jewish political, not religious, persuasion, 1979:347-55. Juvenal complains that the sons of judaizing fathers actually convert fully to Judaism, Sat. 14.96-106 (n. 13 below). See too Gager 1983:56ff.; HiP 3:162-65, 169; also the material cited in Stern, below n. 13.

FREDRIKSEN: ANOTHER LOOK AT GALATIANS 1 AND 2 213 Temple stood, sacrifice; and finally, for the male convert, milah, circumcision. ll Circumcision is likewise singled out in Hellenistic Jewish, pagan, and Chiistian literature as the premier mark of the Jew, and specifically of the convert to Judaism. According to both Juvenal and Josephus, the decision to receive circumcision is what distinguishes, quite precisely, the sympathizer from the convert. 12 Philo speaks warmly of the proselyte: he is to be welcomed and esteemed as one who spiritually recapitulated the journey of Abraham, quitting his idolatrous homeland and traveling "to a better .home ... to the worship of the one truly existing God" (Virt. 20.102-04; also, e.g., Spec. 1.5254). The "true proselyte" is inc1uded as part of the community iIi. the thirteenth benediction of the chief synagogue prayer, the Amidah or Shemoneh Esreh. 13 The convert had certain legal disabilities with respect to marriage (in particular, with priestly families), but in most other respects was integrated and integrable. As such, he or she becomes irrelevant to this disllSifre Num. 108 on 15:14; m. Ker. 2:1; b. Ker. 9a; b. Yebam. 46a-b. Circumcision stands last in my list for rhetorical reasons; in reality, it precedes immersion. That conversion requires acceptance of the whole,Torah is frequently emphasized, HiP 3.175 n. 93 for many references; so too Paul, Gal 5:3 "every man who receives circumcision [i.e., converts to Judaism] ... is bound to keep the whole Law." Further primary references in HiP 3.170 n. 78 (Mishnah). On the phenomenon of conversion to Judaism in antiquity, the older discussions in Moore 1927:1.33lff.; Bamberger; Braude; Kuhn:727-44; more recently Gager 1983:55-66; Schiffman:122-39, revised and expanded in 1985:19-40. See too CoIlins:163-86; Cohen 1989; Goodman 1989a:4-19 and notes; 1989b. The proposal that some proselytes in some communities need not have been circumcised, put forth most recently by McEleney:328-33; Borgen: 85-102, esp. 85-89, has been sufficiently refuted by Schiffman and Nolland 1981: 173-94. The question of female conversions is more problematic. Cohen (1984:19-53, esp. 25-29) has pointed out that nonrabbinic materials seem to assurne the usual method to be marriage to a Jewish male. 12"Quidam sortiti metuentem sabbata patrem ... mox et praeputia ponunt; ... Iudaicum ediscunt et sevant ac metuunt ius," Juvenal, Sat. 14.96, 99, 101; Josephus, on Izates' receiving circumcision as the final stage in his conversion, Ant. 20.38-42 (see too NOlland 1981); on circumcision for conversion in other cases, 11.285; 13.257-58 and 318-19; 15.254-55; 20.139 and 145-46. See esp. Cohen 1987:419ff.; 1989:25ff. On the Christian perception of circumcision as the prime identifier of the Jew more above' for the non-Christian outsider's perspective, the material collected in Ste~:nos. 55, 56: 81, 115 (37) (Strabo wrongly construes female circumcision, i.e. excision, as weIl), 117 (same author, same mistake), 124 (again), 129, 146, 176, 190, 193-5, 240, 241, 243, 245; 2, no. 281 (Tacitus, who comments on circumcision both of the born Jew and of the convert). 13"Over the righteous and over the pious; and over the elders of thy people of the house of Israel; and over the remnant of their Torah scholars; and over the righteous proselytes; and over us [i.e., the praying community] may thy mercy shower down, Lord our God." Text from HiP 2.457; for the addition of proselytes to the benediction Meg. 17b. '

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cussion, because the Gentile who converts is no longer a Gentile, but a Jew.1 4 Some scholars take this well-attested fact of conversion to Judaism together with other data to mean that J ews actively sponsored actual missions to Gentiles: Judaism, they contend, was a missionary religion. According to this line of reasoning, missions are implied by ancient demography: the Jewish population increased "vastly" from the time of the Babylonian Exile to the early Imperial period; only aggressive proselytism can account for such an increase. The significant body of Hellenistic Jewish writings supports this view: it is the literary remains of.an active campaigx;t to attract Gentiles to Judaism. The effectiveness of this campaign in . turn accounts for ancient pagan anti-Semitism: pagans resented Judaism's success. And finally Mt 23: 15 states what this evidence otherwise strongly implies: Jews would cross sea and land to make a single convert. They actively proselytized Gentiles.1 5 14See HIP 3.175 and nn.93-101 for rabbinic discussion of rights, duties, and disabilities of the convert who, upon the completion of immersion (since sacrifice was no longer possible) "is in all respects like an Israelite, " Yeb 47b. Similarly Philo, Virt. 20.103; Josephus, Ap. 2.210, 261; also I. W. 2.388, where Agrippa II refers to the princes of Adiabene as OP.OCPVAOL; after Achior converts and is circumcised he is considered to be "joined to the house of Israel," Idt 14:10; cf. Justin Martyr's lament that converts to Judaism strive in all ways to be like "native" Jews, Dialogue with Trypho 122. Isa 56:37 asserts that tbose who have joined Israel will be gathered in with them at the End: more on this prophetic verse and its relation to conversion in antiquity below, n. 38. While Cohen acknowledges the proselyte's equality in principle (1989:28-29), he questions it in reality: the fact that proselytes are designated as such in inscriptions, he argues, points to their continuing ambiguity: "In the eyes of (sorne?) Jews, a gentile who converted to Judaism became not a Jew but a proselyte, that is, a Jew of a particular sort" (30). I take this as a distinction without much difference: where categories within Israel are given (e.g., Damascus Covenant 14.3-6), proselytes indeed stand in their own category, coming after priests, Levites, and Israelites; but in a binary system (Israel and not-Israel) proselytes are part of Israel. I do not know what kind of evidence would satisfactorily demonstrate "that the proselyte achieved real equality with the native born" (29), esp. since, as Cohen construes his epigraphical data, a "truly equal" convert would be one not designated "convert" in an inscription: he or she, for the purposes of this question, would thus be invisible. Final1y, given the unambiguous emphasis on circumcision for male conversion that Cohen acknowledges (26-27), his inc1usion of "godfearers" (a.k.a. "sympathizers" and "adherents" passim) within his seventh category ("Becoming a Jew") is inconsistent and confusing. 15The issue is not whether Jews encouraged admiration of their religious cult and culture - c1early they did - but whether this is tantamount to "mission" as the word is normally understood and used, implying c1ear ideological commitments to religious advertising and solicitation, self-conscious organization - the image drawn, in other words, from later Christian practice. Besides the older studies of Jewish proselytism cited above, also Hahn (esp. 21-25); the more recent work of Georgi:83-228; Cohen 1983; . Feldman (I thank Prof. Feldman for allowing me to consult and cite his MS.). Jeremias states: "This was a wholly new phenomenon: Judaism was the first great missionary religion to make its appearance in the Mediterranean world" (11). He cites in support Moore 1927:1.323; but Moore's view is more nuanced, see n. 24 below.

FREDRIKSEN: ANOTHER LOOK AT GALATIANS 1 AND 2 215 ~ut receiving and encouraging converts is one thing; actively soliciting them IS another. Do data attesting to J ewish influence or, conversely, to Jews' awareness of their wider cultural environment, require missionary enterprise as explanation? To address the data in the sequence in which I presented them above: (1) A supposed increase in the J ewish population over more than half a millennium should count neither as a phenomenon that needs to. b~ explained by an appeal to massive conversions (and so, qal vahomer, to roIsslOns), nor as a datum supporting the missionary hypothesis. We simply cannot know enough about ancient populations to make the argument.l 6 (2) He~lenistic Jewish literature of the sort that argues the superiority of Judaism to Idolatry, of Jewish religious and ethical notions to their pagan counterparts,17 reveals only one voice in the sparring of competitive middle-brow salon cultures. It aims to inspire respect and admiration for Judaism, presented as an ethical philosophy; its intellectual and literary pretensions indicate how smalI, relatively, the audience for such writings must have been. 18 (3) As for pagan "anti-Semitism," the supposed response of Gentile culture to Jewish missionary success, most of the writers cited in support of such are culturally xenophobie: passages satirizing circumcision and abstention from P?rk target not Jews or Jewish customs per se, but anything perceived as forelgn, hence threatening.l 9 Finally (4) Matthew's Pharisees evidently do seek

. 16S~e Georgi (83ff; nn.4-15). Reliance on so-called demographical data for this penod IS extreme1y hazardous. Harnack; Juster; and Baron are the loei classici for this data; see ?OW HJP 2.1-19, on Palestine, 3.3-86 on the Diaspora. 17Whl~h are usually condemned (hence the vice lists, mentioned earlier) or, at best, d~ned w~th what am~unts to faint praise; i.e., where the Greeks got something right (philosophlCal ~onothelsm, for example) they relied on Jewish learning and revelation. He~ce the tradItIons that a Greek translation of Jewish scriptures existed before Ptolemy Philadelphus (285-246 BC~) commissioned the LXX: Homer, Hesiod, Pythagoras, Socrates, ~d Pl~to had ObvlOusly had some access to Torah! (Aristobolus, a 3rd - 2nd c. BCE Jewlsh wnter, p!eserv"ed in ~usebius, Praep. Ev. 13:12, 1-16). Sometimes pagans even ~onceded the pomt: What IS Plato," asked Numenius of Apamaea "but Moses speaking Greek?" (apud Clement, Strom. 1.72,4). ' . 18See too Tannenbaum's remarks (60). Put differently: Ioseph and Asenath does mdeed "argue" ~at ,~o~v~rsion ~o Judaism is prefe:able to continuing in idolatry. But does that make It a mlssl0nary tract? Is persuaslOn by one literate minority directed toward another tantamount to "missionary activity?" Only in a limited sense. But scholars who maintain the existence of Jewish missions think in terms of vast numbers To the degree that this literature had a target, that target would have been individual~ rather than. populations; and its primary intended audience might have been internal its goal to aff~ Jewish identity in the Diaspora. See, e.g., V. Tcherikover (169-93);' cf. for the 0pposlte argu~ent, e.~., :-e1dI?an ~S 20-24) and the literature cited (nn. 43-54). See too the remar~ mtrod~cmg Jewlsh Llterature composed in Greek" in HIP 3.470ff.; ~so ~60, persuadmg Gentiles to the fundamental viewpoints of Judaism (esp. re: ethical hfe) IS not tantamount to converting them to Torah. 1.9Cf. Seneca's rem~ks, Ep. Mo~. 108,22, Stern 1, no. 189; Tacitus, Annals 2.2,85 mentlons a ban on Jewlsh and Egyptlan practices; on the cultural xenophobia of Roman

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converts. But they do so in a passage of highly-charged rhetoric, within a document whose social situation is difficult to reconstruct. Whether real Pharisees - or, for that matter, Jews generally - sought converts is a question that Matthew cannot help us with. 20 If the external evidence for J ewish missions is unobliging, the internal evidence is no less so. "One of the great puzzles of the proselytizing movement is how to explain the existence of a mass movement when we do not know the name of a single Jewish missionary, unless, of course, we except Paul. "21 Beyond not knowing who missionized, we do not know how. We might expect, at least from the rabbis - those J ews of antiquity evidently most concerned about categories, boundary-formation, and halakic precision - prescriptions for and legal discussion of correct missionary practice, if missionizing were anormal and widespread Jewish activity; in fact, we find nothing. Rather , the rabbis' (perhaps idealized) accounts describe the procedure to follow once a Gentile requests conversion: by implication, the initiative is the Gentile's, not the Jewish community's.22 Further, the earlier Jewish evidence both of Josephus on the royal house of Adiabene and the broader data of the earlier New Testament writings evinces the improvisational character of "Jewish outreach." If conversions were the result of misliterati, Gager 1983:Part TI. 20See now esp. A.-J. Levine. Levine conjectures that such activity was an ad hoc response to preceding missions by Mt's group. Similarly Martin Goodman, on thirdcentury rabbinie statements that seem to favor actual missions: "One new factor that might have encouraged this novel attitude is that the rabbis in Palestine were by now aware of the success of some Christians in winning pagans . . .. [T]he effectiveness of the Church's methods may have gradually changed the religious assumptions of some nonChristians in the ancient world" (185). Pagan evidence on Jewish proselytism is no easier to assess. Valerius Maximus suggests that Jews were expelled from Rome in 139 BCE who "Romanis tradere sacra sua conati sunt" or "qui Sabazi Iovis cultu Romanos inficere mores conati erunt": Was this effective influence or active missionizing? Astrologers were likewise expelled (loc. cit.; Stern 1. nos. 147a-b; also discussion 359f.). These passages are preserved in two epitomes drawn up some 500 years after Valerius' lifetime, wen into the Christian era. Dio Cassius also says that Tiberius expeIled the Jews from Rome in 19 CE because they were converting many Romans (TWII T8 'Iov~aLwll 7rOAAWII Be; T1J1I ·pwP.WII UVII8A(}OIlTWII Kat UlJ)(1I0Ue; TWJI B7rLXWPLWJI Be; Ta u4JiT8pa e(}T/ p.8(}wn5tIlTWJI, TOUe; 7rAeLOllae; B~r,AaU8J1, Historia Romana 57.18:5a, Stern 1. no. 419). They may have been; but, again, receiving converts is not necessarily synonymous with missionizing. 21Feldman, MS p. 19, who goes on to tadde the problem (cf. Feldman 1992:381) .. 1 would except Paul: he is Jewish, his gospel is quintessentially Jewish; but it is hIS anonymous competition, the circumcisers, who preach Judaism to the Gentiles, not he. 22Yeb. 47a: "When a man comes in these times seeking to convert, he is asked, "What is your motive? Do you not know that Israel is now afflicted, distressed, downtrodden ... ?" If he answers, 'I know ... " they accept him at once."

FREDRIKSEN: ANOTHERLOOKATGALATIANS 1 AND 2 217 sions as opposed to the free-Iance, amateur, non-institutionally-based efforts of individuals or the side-effect of unstructured contact through Diaspora synagogue communities23 - we should be able to have a better sense of how such Jewish missions proceeded. Again, on the evidence of Paul's letters, no one, when faced with a missionary situation (which, according to this line of argument, would have to be accounted for) apparently knew quite what to do. And finally, to mention here a point that I will develop shortly, Judaism had little reason, ideologically or theologically, to solicit converts. Between these two extremes of fornicating idolators and full converts we find a gradient of Gentile affiliation with Judaism, especially in the Diaspora. Synagogues drew interested outsiders. Some, as the Greek Magical Papyri perhaps show, might attend out of a sort of professional interest, in order to make the acquaintance of a powerful god in whose name they could command demons. 24 Others, as Philo mentions in his Life of Moses, were drawn by the public Jewish festivals, like the one held on Pharos near Alexandria to celebrate the translation into Greek of the Bible. 25 But others, well-attested in literary and epigraphic data, formed an identifiable, if liminal, group of adherents. Their ancient designations vary: ~oßovp.evOL, ueßDp.evoL, or, in inscriptions, Oeoueße'i