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Modular Religion Major: Life and Letters of Paul (REL 315)

Modular Religion Major: Life and Letters of Paul (REL 315). Session 1: Strategies for Interpreting Paul Paul and Acts The Pauline Corpus An Overview of Paul’s Ministry. Strategies for Interpreting Paul. Paul’s letters (excluding Romans) were occasional:. Strategies for Interpreting Paul.

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Modular Religion Major: Life and Letters of Paul (REL 315)

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  1. Modular Religion Major: Life and Letters of Paul (REL 315) Session 1: Strategies for Interpreting Paul Paul and Acts The Pauline Corpus An Overview of Paul’s Ministry

  2. Strategies for Interpreting Paul Paul’s letters (excluding Romans) were occasional:

  3. Strategies for Interpreting Paul Paul’s letters (excluding Romans) were occasional: (1) The letters are responses to certain situations. Therefore, we must understand the situation to which the letter is responding.

  4. Strategies for Interpreting Paul Paul’s letters (excluding Romans) were occasional: (1) The letters are responses to certain situations. Therefore, we must understand the situation to which the letter is responding. (2) All we can know of the situation is reflected in Paul’s answer (i.e., we have no independent, non-Pauline access to the situation).

  5. Strategies for Interpreting Paul Paul’s letters (excluding Romans) were occasional: (3) We must assume that Paul is not misrepresenting and/or misunderstanding the situation he is addressing.

  6. Strategies for Interpreting Paul Paul’s letters (excluding Romans) were occasional: (3) We must assume that Paul is not misrepresenting and/or misunderstanding the situation he is addressing. (4) We must recognize that Paul’s understanding of the situation does not necessarily coincide with what his readers thought of the situation.

  7. Strategies for Interpreting Paul Paul’s letters (excluding Romans) were occasional: (5) If we were to “add up” all the Pauline letters, it would still not provide us with a comprehensive presentation of everything Paul thought or believed.

  8. Strategies for Interpreting Paul A Theology of Paul?

  9. Strategies for Interpreting Paul “The theology of Paul cannot be more than the sum of the theology of each of the individual letters for the obvious reason that these letters are the only firm evidence we have of Paul’s theology. Consequently, we are bound to them and by them, and if we try to dispense with them in any degree we simply lose touch with our primary and only real sources. At the same time, however, a theology of Paul has to be more. Why? Because the letters themselves indicate the need to go behind the letters themselves. . . .The letters are somewhat like the sections of an iceberg above water:

  10. Strategies for Interpreting Paul we can deduce from what is visible a good deal of what is invisible. Alternatively, Paul’s letters are like the embossed marks on paper made by an irregular shape behind the paper; these marks are sufficiently clear to enable us to gain a coherent picture of the underlying regular shape” (James D.G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, 14-15).

  11. Strategies for Interpreting Paul “It is commonplace to say that it is easier to interpret Paul than Jesus because we have direct access to Paul’s own letters but only indirect access to Jesus through the Gospels. Even so, the theology of Paul and the theology expressed in the letters are not identical. This is not because Paul thought one thing and wrote another; rather, this distinction results from the character of Paul’s letters as we know them. What we know of Paul’s theology depends on the letters we have; yet the letters

  12. Strategies for Interpreting Paul themselves were significantly affected by what lay ahead of them (among the readers), and by what lay behind them (in the writer and his resources) as well” (Leander Keck, Paul and His Letters, 12).

  13. Strategies for Interpreting Paul “Paul was born a Jew, lived a Jew, and died a Jew. It was therefore obviously as a Jew that he followed Jesus as Messiah and Lord. Indeed, although the word “Christian” appears twice in the book of Acts and once in a New Testament letter that might have been influenced by the Pauline tradition, it is completely absent from the Pauline correspondence. Paul knows Gentiles as well as Jews who are believers in Jesus as the Christ, but not Christians. If Paul was the founder of Christianity, he did not know it” (Michael J. Gorman, Apostle of the Crucified Lord).

  14. Strategies for Interpreting Paul History of Israel’s Subjugation: 1. Babylonian Rule (605 – 539 BCE) 2. Persian Rule (539 – 331 BCE) 3. Hellenistic Rule (331 – 143 BCE) 4. Hasmonean Rule (143 – 63 BCE) 5. Roman Rule (63 BCE – 192 CE)

  15. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 1. Babylonian Rule (605 – 539 BCE) The Era of “Deportation and Destruction”

  16. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 1. Babylonian Rule (605 – 539 BCE) Major Rulers & Events:

  17. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 1. Babylonian Rule (605 – 539 BCE) Major Rulers & Events: Nebuchadnezzar II (605 – 562 BCE)

  18. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 1. Babylonian Rule (605 – 539 BCE) Major Rulers & Events: Nebuchadnezzar II (605 – 562 BCE) Belshazzar (544 – 539 BCE)

  19. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 1. Babylonian Rule (605 – 539 BCE) Major Rulers & Events: Nebuchadnezzar II (605 – 562 BCE) Belshazzar (544 – 539 BCE) Three Deportations (605, 597, 586 BCE)

  20. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 2. Persian Rule (539 – 331 BCE) The Era of “Restoration and Return”

  21. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 2. Persian Rule (539 – 331 BCE) Major Rulers & Events:

  22. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 2. Persian Rule (539 – 331 BCE) Major Rulers & Events: Cyrus the Great (539 – 530 BCE)

  23. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 2. Persian Rule (539 – 331 BCE) Major Rulers & Events: Cyrus the Great (539 – 530 BCE) Darius I, Xerxes I, Artaxerxes I

  24. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 2. Persian Rule (539 – 331 BCE) Major Rulers & Events: Cyrus the Great (539 – 530 BCE) Darius I, Xerxes I, Artaxerxes I Three Returns from Exile (538, 457, 444 BCE)

  25. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 2. Persian Rule (539 – 331 BCE) Major Rulers & Events: Cyrus the Great (539 – 530 BCE) Darius I, Xerxes I, Artaxerxes I Three Returns from Exile (538, 457, 444 BCE) Reconstruction of the Temple

  26. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 3. Hellenistic Rule (331 – 143 BCE) The Era of “Forced Hellenization and Revolt”

  27. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 3. Hellenistic Rule (331 – 143 BCE) Major Rulers & Events:

  28. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 3. Hellenistic Rule (331 – 143 BCE) Major Rulers & Events: Alexander the Great (born 356 – died 323 BCE)

  29. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 3. Hellenistic Rule (331 – 143 BCE) Major Rulers & Events: Alexander the Great (born 356 – died 323 BCE) Ptolemy I /Ptolemaic Dynasty (301 – 30 BCE)

  30. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 3. Hellenistic Rule (331 – 143 BCE) Major Rulers & Events: Alexander the Great (born 356 – died 323 BCE) Ptolemy I /Ptolemaic Dynasty (301 – 30 BCE) Seleucus I / Seleucid Dynasty (301 – 64 BCE)

  31. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 3. Hellenistic Rule (331 – 143 BCE) Major Rulers & Events: Alexander the Great (born 356 – died 323 BCE) Ptolemy I /Ptolemaic Dynasty (301 – 30 BCE) Seleucus I / Seleucid Dynasty (301 – 64 BCE) Antiochus III (The Great) (223 – 187 BCE)

  32. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 3. Hellenistic Rule (331 – 143 BCE) Major Rulers & Events: Alexander the Great (born 356–died 323 BCE) Ptolemy I /Ptolemaic Dynasty (301–30 BCE) Seleucus I / Seleucid Dynasty (301–64 BCE) Antiochus III (The Great) (223 – 187 BCE) Antiochus IV (Epiphanes) (175 – 164 BCE)

  33. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 3. Hellenistic Rule (331 – 143 BCE) Major Rulers & Events: Alexander the Great (born 356 – died 323 BCE) Ptolemy I /Ptolemaic Dynasty (301 – 30 BCE) Seleucus I / Seleucid Dynasty (301 – 64 BCE) The “Maccabean Revolt” (166 BCE)

  34. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 4. Hasmonean Rule (143 – 63 BCE) The Era of “Home Rule”

  35. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 4. Hasmonean Rule (143 – 63 BCE) Major Rulers & Events:

  36. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 4. Hasmonean Rule (143 – 63 BCE) Major Rulers & Events: Simon of the Maccabees (143 – 134 BCE)

  37. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 4. Hasmonean Rule (143 – 63 BCE) Major Rulers & Events: Simon of the Maccabees (143 – 134 BCE) John Hyrcanus (134 – 104 BCE)

  38. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 4. Hasmonean Rule (143 – 63 BCE) Major Rulers & Events: Simon of the Maccabees (143 – 134 BCE) John Hyrcanus (134 – 104 BCE) Aristobulus II v. Hyrcanus II (67 – 63 BCE)

  39. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 4. Hasmonean Rule (143 – 63 BCE) Major Rulers & Events: 80 years of independence. . . . slowed Hellenization helped expand the Jewish state forced conversion of foreign inhabitants allowed for the rise of sectarian Judaism

  40. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 5. Roman Rule (63 BCE – 192 CE) The Era of the “Pax Romana”

  41. Strategies for Interpreting Paul 5. Roman Rule (63 BCE – 192 CE) The Era of the “Pax Romana” This is the era into which Jesus born, the era in which Paul lived, and the era in which the NT was written.

  42. Strategies for Interpreting Paul Disobedience to Torah brought judgment

  43. Strategies for Interpreting Paul Disobedience to Torah brought judgment Repentance and obedience brought YHWH’s restoration

  44. Strategies for Interpreting Paul Disobedience to Torah brought judgment Repentance and obedience brought YHWH’s restoration Contentment in YHWH’s restoration led to temptation

  45. Strategies for Interpreting Paul Disobedience to Torah brought judgment Repentance and obedience brought YHWH’s restoration Temptation led to disobedience to Torah Contentment in YHWH’s restoration led to temptation

  46. Strategies for Interpreting Paul Disobedience to Torah brought judgment Repentance and obedience brought YHWH’s restoration Temptation led to disobedience to Torah Contentment in YHWH’s restoration led to temptation

  47. Strategies for Interpreting Paul Important Theological Assumptions: YHWH is One (the Great Shema; Deut 6:4-6) YHWH is Gracious, Compassionate, Slow to Anger, Abounding in Lovingkindness, etc. (Exod 34:6; Num 14:18; Neh 9:17; Ps 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jon 4:2) YHWH has covenanted with Israel alone (Amos 3:2) Obedience to Torah is necessary for the covenant people to continue enjoying blessings of YHWH (major emphasis of the prophetic books)

  48. Paul and Acts There is a scholarly assumption which holds that the Paul of Acts and the Paul of the epistles look (and for some, are) very different from one another. We are, of course, talking about the same historical individual, but not everyone is convinced that the two pictures are complementary. Some have even spoken of Paul’s “split personality.”

  49. Paul and Acts • The nature of Biblical narrative • Polemic and apologetic • Somewhere “in between”

  50. The Pauline Corpus Undisputed Letters: (Authentic Pauline Epistles) 1 Thessalonians Galatians 1 & 2 Corinthians Philippians Philemon Romans

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