1.

As has once been said in jest, there is an appalling amount of Paul in the NT (13 of
27 books are attributed to Paul), and when it comes to Evangelical treatments of Paul,
there is also a plethora of those available as well. Indeed one cannot read all the
treatments are out there, as they number like the sands on the seashore. But if you are
going to read some thorough treatments of St. Paul, then one of those treatments (at
1700 pages in two volumes) is Tom Wrights magnum opus entitled Paul and the
Faithfulness of God. What is now going to happen on this blog is there is going to be a
long running interaction with and critique of this important work, with occasional
comments from Tom himself in response to a few queries I will ask him. This will not be
like the dialogue we had last Fall on his collected Pauline essays, but rather a thorough
analysis of Wrights big work, chapter by chapter. I will of course intersperse other sorts
of posts along the way for those who glaze over when detailed exegetical and theological
discussions appear on blogs in a world too attuned to sound-biting everything. One other
note. When these posts begin to appear I will be teaching in India for a couple of weeks
so if you have comments or questions, be patient and I will respond in due course.
Lets start with the astounding claim, made almost from the outset, namely that
Paul invented Christian theology and what that invention entailed was the reworking of
basic early Jewish theological themes having to do with monotheism, election, and
eschatology in light of what Paul now believed about Messiah and Spirit. Of course the
claim has often been made that Paul was the inventor of Christianity (and as such the
first corrupter of the true Jewish religion of Jesus). This is not in fact what Tom is claiming,
but it is not totally dissimilar to such claims. At the heart of Toms most fundamental
claim is that Pauls own mindset after Damascus Road was fundamentally changed by
what I would call his conversion experience (Tom demurs from calling it a conversion),
and the change had to do with the new things Paul came to believe about Jesus of
Nazareth and the Spirit and how that led to a total re-envisioning and re-working of the
major categories of his pre-existing Jewish symbolic universe.
I think he is quite right about the radical nature of the change, and implicit in this is
a thorough-going critique of folks like Mark Nanos who are not even prepared to talk
about the parting of the ways when it comes to Paul, rather seeing Christianity as still
part of the in house debates in the synagogue. Nanos is simply wrong about this. There
was a reason the Judaizing Christians wanted Paul dead and ran around behind him
trying to correct what he had done, even when it came to Gentiles. But lets let Tom
speak for himself as we set out on this long sea voyage through these new stimulating
books:
the main thesis of the book can be briefly stated thus: Paul developed
something we can appropriately call his theology, a radical mutation in the core beliefs
of his Jewish world, because only so could he sustain what we can appropriately call the
worldview which he himself held and which he longed for his churches to hold as well.
Other worldviews have their sustaining and shaping practices, but for Paul these markers
(circumcision, the food laws, and so on) had been set aside as inappropriate for the new
messianic people. Only a robust reappropriation of the Jewish beliefs monotheism,
election, and eschatology, all rethought around Messiah and the spirit would do.My
proposal is that Paul actually invents something we may call Christian theology, in this
particular way (Jewish beliefs about God reworked around Messiah and spirit) for this
particular purpose (maintaining the new messianic people in good order). (p. xvi).
Tom goes on, early on, to explain what he thinks took precedence above all else for
Paul in his narrative thought world, namely the reconciliation and mutual welcome of all
those in the Messiah, taking Gal. 3.28 as a fundamental statement of this bedrock belief
(p. 12). This is interesting, and in some ways echoes R.P. Martins earlier claims that
reconciliation (as opposed to endless discussions of justification) was what was really
nearest and dearest and at the heart of Pauls theology. Note that Tom does not think
that the term Christos is ever simply a cipher for Jesus, and indeed he is prepared to
argue that Christos should regularly be seen as a collective noun, including Christ and his
people. He puts it this way on p. 17when Paul uses the word Messiah he evokes a world
in which the Messiah, the king of Israel, sums up his people and their story in himself.

Two thousand years of history, from the call of Abraham to the time of Jesus, are
collected up like light in a prism and focused onto the royal representative in whom their
meaning and purpose is fulfilled. (p. 17).
And how does Tom begin to spin this all out? by discussing Philemon!!! More in
the next post.
One of the things I most appreciate about Tom Wrights work, including these new
volumes is that Tom, like Paul himself, is a global thinker. And when I say a global thinker,
Im not just referring to the whole field of theology, but rather to the fact that Tom is
interested in get right the whole mindset of Paul not just in regard to his theological
ideas, but in regard to his praxis, and his symbols, and his stories. He is equally critical of
the reductionism of the left (say e.g. the attempts by Richard Horsley and others to
reduce theology to anthropology or sociology or even worse to politics) as of the
reductionism of the right (that wants to abstract theological ideas from Paul and sort
them into some kind of logical sequence or presentation, and then privilege certain major
ideas, say justification, as the essence of Pauls thought and the like). To give one
illustration of the kind of reductionism he is most peeved about when it comes to
Evangelicals he says this justification by faith has come to mean justification by
believing in the proper doctrine of justification,a position which, in attempting to swallow
its own tail, produces a certain type of theological and perhaps cultural indigestion (p.
42, and compare his book on Justification, responding to his critics).
Tom instead wants a thick description of Pauls thought world and praxis and stories
and symbols, and this includes taking into account social history and Pauls rhetoric. You
will not be surprised to hear that I am especially pleased to see him appropriate the
benefits and recent gains of socio-rhetorical analysis in these volumes on Paul.
When I say that Tom is a global thinker, I also am referring to the fact that he wants
to take a holistic approach when it comes to Pauline ethics as well as Pauline theology.
The two need to be discussed together, indeed the two belong together and are coentailed. In one sense ethics involves the living out of ones theology, living out what God
is working in the community to live and to do. Belief and behavior are two sides of one
coin, in one sense. Or as Tom puts it in regard to Philemon, the reason it is necessary for
Philemon to do what Paul is urging him to do is because of who Christ is a God who is
reconciling the world to himself, and wants reconciliation to be the signature of the
relationships within his community.
Toms account of Philemon stresses that the main point of the letter is to get
Onesimus and Philemon reconciled, back sharing koinonia, as it were. He takes it as
possible secondary implications that: 1) Paul wants Philemon to manumit his slave, and
2) to perhaps send him back to Paul to work with him.
I actually think this does not go far enough. When Paul says quite literally in vs. 16
that Philemon should receive Onesimus back no longer (ouketi) as a slave but above
and beyond (hyper) the slave category as a beloved brother in Christ, especially so to
me, and how much more to you even in the flesh and also in the Lord he is indeed
making an emancipation proclamation that comports with the implications of Gal. 3.28.
In Christ there should be no slave or free (see the work of Scott Bartchy, especially his
article published on this blog months ago).
While I agree with Tom that Paul is not like a modern Fredrick Douglas nor is he an
ancient capitulator to the existing slave system. He is instituting reform within the
context of the Christian community, not in society in general. And in this case the reform
involves a fundamental principle if one is a brother in Christ he should be treated as a
person, and no longer as a piece of property, a slave. And Paul is insistent on this matter,
speaking of Philemons obedience and threatening a coming visit. I take the you will do
even more to mean even more than manumit, namely sending him off to work with Paul.
What I especially find strange in the sublimating of Pauls spinning out the social
implications of reconciliation is that Tom is one of the big proponents of Pauls antiimperial rhetoric. Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not. Christ is the reality of which Caesar is
the parody, and so on. But it is precisely that imperial ideology that had led to the
enslaving of a huge portion of the population of the Roman Empire. Most slaves became
slaves as fortunes, or better said misfortunes, of war.

Paul surely knows this, and since Paul was a global thinker he surely would have
realized that opposing imperial ideology involves opposing the enslaving of much of the
world. If Caesar is not the Christians lord, then Christians do not have to obey the
dictates of Caesar when it comes to the slave trade. Paul is working for change within the
context of the Christian community, not in society at large, but he is working at it, as
Philemon shows, and as C.F. D. Moule was to say, Philemon provided the ammunition in
early Christianity for a strong opposition to the contradiction in terms implied in having a
Christian slave. Moule in fact suggests Paul provides here the depth charge which would
eventually blow up the institution of slavery.
It is important however to end this post on a positive note, as there is so much to
learn from Toms excellent reflections in his first major chapter (74 pages long). It is
useful to remind ourselves of Toms helpful reiteration of his approach to texts and realia
both ancient and modern namely critical realism. Here is what he says it is, a selfcritical epistemology which in rejecting naive realism which simply imagines we are
looking at the material with a Gods-eye view, rejects also the narcissistic reductionism of
imagining that all apparent perception is in fact projection, that everything is really going
on inside our own heads. Critical realism engages determinedly in a many-sided
conversation, both with the data itself and with others (including scholars) who are also
engaging with it. The conversation aims not at unatttainable objectivity, but at truth
nonetheless, the truth in which the words we use and the stories we tell increasingly
approximate to the reality of another world, in the historians case, the world of the
past. (p. 51
One of the things about being a global thinker is that you realize the merits of a
spectrum of viewpoints, and even realize that it is not often wise to pick sides in the
history vs. theology debate, not least because the Gospel involves both. Christianity is
after all an historical religion, and as I am prone to stress nothing can be theologically
true that is historically false, if we are talking about the places where theology and
history intersect. Fortunately, Tom Wright is insistent that history and theology need to
be held together to understand Paul and his thought world and his praxis and his symbols
and his stories. In other words, we need to history and theology to understand just about
anything of importance about Paul. Tom is not enamored with either those who would
want to reduce theology to history, or alternately ignore history as irrelevant to doing
theology. In a creative and interesting allegory towards the end of Chapter One, using
Philemon and Onesimus as ciphers he says this There are many Philemons out there,
the self-appointed guardians of Pauline orthodoxy (of whichever sort) who will only be
prepared to have the slave [in this case history] back in the house once hes been
suitably chastised and given strict conditions of service. Do not give us this History they
say; do not tell us that in order to understand Paul we have to study his context, to learn
about the Jewish world of the first century and the pre-Pauline meanings of Pauls favorite
words! How will Theology be able to speak the good news if it is festooned with footnotes
about Pharisees and spattered with speculation about the sectarians? How can we sing
the lords song in such a strange land? Is this not an appeal away from the Text, and is
not our calling (as devout scripture believers or simply as good, quasi-Barthian
postliberals) to deal with the Text and nothing but the Text, and to keep away from
everything else? Were not the years AD 1-30 a special time, different from all others, so
that all we need to know is that in that time God walked the earth, died for our sins, and
rose again? Or (another voice from a similar point of view) is it not the case that the
great traditions of the church, with their creeds and canons have provided a wise and
authoritative reading of all scriptures, so that we should pay attention to them rather
than to historical reconstructions based on the wider world of the first century?(p. 69).
And Wright pin points just why it is that so many conservatives become if not
agnostic about history (it doesnt matter or affect my faith), then gnostic (the Gospel is
about spiritual truths and eternal verities not historical particulars) about history. History
is after all about danger; the danger of contingency, the possibility that things might
have been otherwise, the prospect of being adrift a night and a day on a sea of unsorted
data, the likelihood of being lashed, beaten, and stoned by other evidence, other world
views, determined to provide a harsh reality check by which to measure Theology and

cut it down to size. (p. 70). In short, conservatives happily exchange the messiness of
history for the apparent tidiness of an airtight theology which very rarely has any contact
with history. Unfortunately for this approach, God himself has vetoed it by getting
involved repeatedly in the messiness of history. Its what the word incarnation connotes.
Christianity and the Christian faith is not just about having a set of nicely connected
theological ideas. It certainly involves ideas, mindsets, worldviews, but that is by no
means all it involves. Tom Wright quite rightly wants a both/and approach when it comes
to theology and history. We must all beware of lusting for a kind of certainty when it
comes to the knowledge of God or his ways, that makes faith unnecessary and history at
best a sub-floor, best unseen and unexamined, in the theological hotel.
One final thing about Chapter One its full of interesting metaphors and zingers.
Tom Wright is fun to read, even when he is in deadly earnest. For example, for the sake of
focusing on the main thing he says he will focus on the seven letters widely regarded as
authentically Pauline and bring in Ephesians and 2 Thessalonians rather as Winston
Churchill said he would bring ancient languages into a modern school curriculum; he
would, he said, let the clever ones learn Latin, as an honor, and Greek as a treat.1
Timothy and Titus will be used, in the opposite way to that in which a drunkard uses a
lamppost, for illumination rather than for support. (p. 61).
Not many scholars or lay persons have swallowed the ouevre of Tom Wright whole.
By this I do not mean that not many have bought his arguments, but rather that not
many have read even all the seminal scholarly books he has written. I have read all the
big ones (all the way back to the Climax of the Covenant and even before) and many of
the littler more popular level books as well. Here I have to warn you that if you are
planning to read Paul and the Faithfulness of God (2 volumes, 1700 and some pages),
then to really get the most out of it, you will have needed to read the previous volumes in
the NTPG series (The New Testament and the People of God volumes) NTPG Vol. One,
Jesus and the Victory of God, Resurrection and the Son of God, and now these Paul
volumes. I say this because not only does Tom build on what he has said before, he
presupposes it and counts on it at various points in these Paul volumes. Thus for example
on p. 77 he says In my minds eye I see the whole of NTPG Part III as though they were
physically part of this bookand I encourage readers to do the same, even though there
is a twenty year hiatus between his discussion of the Pharisees in that first volume in the
series, and the discussion here in the Paul volumes. Tom is not merely a global thinker,
he is a longitudinal thinker and in most major things he has not changed his mind much
in the last two decades and so he can say things like this and mean them. Not many
persons, including not many scholars, have that degree of orderly sequential mental
processes and convictions over such a long stretch of time.
Chapter Two also begins a series of chapters with birds in the title, first the birds of
Isaiah 31.5, then the owl of Athena, then the eagle of Rome, and then some interesting
bird poems by a poet he admires. At this point Tom is clearly playing with the houses
money in his scholarly career, as we Americans would say, and he is giving free reign to
his fertile and creative imagination in his titles and turns of phrase. Lets hope no one
makes the crack that in the end these chapters are indeed for the birds, because in fact
they are important and serious contributions to the discussion and the argument he is
trying to make.
One more reminder. Tom has read a voluminous amount of material on the Biblical period
and the Jewish, Greek, and Roman contexts, but he too stands on some shoulders of
scholars who have gone before him. His ideas do not spring from his fertile imagination
alone like Athena from the head of Zeus. Thus he relies on he epitomizers and says
Standing on the shoulders of text-reading giants, even if the giants were sometimes
looking the wrong way, is better than crawling around on the floor. (p. 78 n.5). Point
taken, and I agree. Scholarship should not be seen as an exercise in creating a novum,
something entirely new, when what truly matters is saying something true rather than
merely saying something new. Only God is really capable of creatio ex nihilo. Doctoral
students take note: It is difficult if not impossible to soar with the eagles if you only read
and hang out with the turkeys!

Those who have read NTPG Vol. One will find the discussion of Saul the Pharisee in
Chapter Two of the present volume familiar. Saul is characterized as a Shammai-ite
Pharisee given to zeal of the sort we find with Phineas and the Maccabees, to wit he is
prepared to persecute people when they violate Torah. Pharisees however were, as Tom
admits, a divided lot some following what more nearly could be called the peace party,
namely the Hillel and Gamaliel line, but Saul seems to differ from his teacher on this
score.
It is not however clear to me that Paul and the Maccabees could both be labeled
Zealots in the later sense of the term applied to folk like Judas the Galilean and his
descendents who fomented the Jewish war in due course. He is not a Zealot (with a
capital Z) if by that one means those prepared to go to war against pagans when they
violated Torah, Temple, or Territory, the three Ts of Judaism. I see no evidence that Saul
the Pharisee was an advocate of the violent overthrow of the pagan overlords, but every
evidence that he wanted to punish Jews who, in his view, violated their own laws,
covenants, monotheism.
Zeal for Jews maintaining the Law is one thing, revolt against the pagans who were
not, after all, obligated to keep the Jewish law, another, especially if they were leaving
the Temple and its cultus alone (the triggering mistake Antiochus Epiphanes made).
And if indeed it is true Paul was a Roman citizen both before and after his
conversion, there is no evidence he repudiated it. Indeed, there is evidence in a text like
Rom. 13 that we would have opposed the violent overthrow of authorities he believed
were only in power due to the God of the Bible. Here Chris Bryans book Render unto
Caesar is helpful on this point. Long story short, I dont think you can actually connect
the dots between Saul the zealous defender of the Law, and Pauls critique of the
imperial cult, though it seems reasonably clear that he does critique that cult in his
letters. He does so however not by advocating or practicing violence against said cult.
Hes prepared to leave it to God to deal with those folk.
One of the major important contentions of Tom Wright is that Israel lived out of, or
better said, lived as actors in, the grand story of God and his people, involving both their
judgment and their restoration. Toms understanding of this fundamental narrative that
he believes early Jews not merely resonated with but lived out of has not changed much
from twenty years ago until now, to judge from the retelling of the story in Chapter Two,
pp. 108ff. Tom still sticks by his contention not only that Jews were living in a ongoing
story seeking an ending, so there was a sense of things being unfinished, but he also
sticks by the more controversial suggestion that Pharisees and other Jews, even if living
in the Holy Land believed they were still in exile awaiting the final promised rescue (p.
114). He things that after the Bar Kokhba revolt, Jews basically gave up the long story
with an eschatological future, and exchanged it for individual stories of Torah-true, Law
observant Jews.
Before then early Jews like the Pharisees were not primarily interested in
developing their own individual piety but rather They have pulled a book off the shelf
called My Life only to discover that it is Volume 99 in a hundred volume narrative, and
that to make sense of who they are supposed to be they have to recall the entire
narrative of the first 98 volumes, and read ahead into number 100 to find out how its all
supposed to end. (p. 116).
In other words, they did not see the Bible as a mere collection of types, shadows,
allusions, symbols, examples though it involved these things. They saw it as the source
of their collective story with God. It follows from this that one needed to read the story
right. Has Tom read the story of early Jews right by continuing to suggest they saw
themselves in exile? For my part I do not think so.
In the first place, the Jewish festivals in the first century A.D. were enormously
popular and well attended. Jews, including Jesus, and early Jewish Christians, continued
to attend these feasts, worship in the Temple, sing the songs of Zion and so on. This does
not sound like the Jews in Babylon saying How can we sing the songs of Zion in a foreign

land? Secondly, Dom Crossan and others are not correct about the Temple domination
system and indeed about the ever-present heavy hand of Rome. Ordinary Jews in Judaea
and Galilee were not being followed around by Officer Publius. They ran into Romans
where they were garrisoned in Caesarea Maritima, or occasionally when they were out on
patrol, at border crossings, or very occasionally when it was tax time (though normally it
was subordinate agents, often themselves Jews like Matthew who collected the taxes for
either the Herods or the procurator or both). Most of the Roman troops in the region were
stationed in Syria, not in ordinary cities in Galilee or Judaea.
In other words, if you were an ordinary Jew, not a Zealot or hot head, and not
running around trying to bump off Roman soldiers or their auxiliaries, the situation would
not have been seen as always ominous, much less an exile situation. When someone
comes to your house and takes too much of your money or property to cover the taxes,
you may feel like youve been robbed, but you dont feel like you are in exile. Youre at
home, but you feel vulnerable in your own home, in your own land. Thats about all.
Clearly, most Jews did not agree with the Qumran community that the Temple
system was hopeless corrupt and doomed. It is not a surprise that such a suggestion got
Jesus into hot water. It does not appear most Jews thought that way in Jesus day,
especially not most Pharisees and Sadducees who had much invested in the Temple
system (for example the sacrifices were offered according to the stricter Pharisaic rules).
Notice how many early Jews were indeed named after the Maccabean war heroes
Simon, Judas etc. The time when they had complete and utter control of their land and
Temple was fresh in their memories, and they saw the present difficulties as not
preventing them from continuing to focus on Torah, Temple, and Territory.
When one arrives at pp. 139ff. it begins to become clear, as Tom presents yet more
grist for his Exile mill, (citing O.H. Steck and Robert Carroll) that what he is basically
talking about is the Deuteronomic pattern of sin, judgment (which may or may not
involve exile) and finally restoration, with restoration coming after judgment on Gods
people. This theme is actually present in a lot of the prophets (see the two volumes by
Koch). So, Toms main point is that many early Jews saw themselves as under some kind
of dark cloud, some kind of judgment, whether it involved actual geographical exile or
not, and did not see the present as the full restoration Scripture promised. They were
stuck in the middle between sin and restoration.
This makes better sense than continuing to use the word exile to explain the point.
Still, it is important not to over-egg the pudding. John the Baptizer and Jesus were both
reformers. So were various of the Pharisees. So was the Qumran community. That the
reformers saw a great need for repentance and change in the relationship with God is
true enough. And many ordinary Jews responded to the call to repent, or become more
Torah true etc. Many of them bought the Pharisaic notion of every man a priest and
living by a modified set of priestly rules. In other words, they either believed something
was wrong or in need of improvement, but this does not mean that the majority of them
saw the Temple in Jerusalem or the festivals as illegitimate, or saw themselves as in exile.
Under some sort of cloud of judgment perhaps, but in exile no.
There is a better way of conceptualizing what Tom Wright means when he says that
Jews in the Holy Land saw themselves as still in exile. Following the schema of Steck and
Koch, he means that many, perhaps most of them saw themselves as still under some
sort of judgment of God for their sins. In the threefold pattern of sin leading to judgment,
and after judgment comes restoration, exile is seen as one paradigmatic form of
judgment on Israel. I would prefer just saying that many Jews saw themselves as still
under judgment, even in Israel, still under a dark cloud, and they knew that something
was wrong. Some of them, for instance those at Qumran or some of the Zealots, were
taking a more worst case scenario view of things. Some of them did not think things were
entirely out of kilter, but knew things werent quite right, hence the large response to the
call by John the Baptizer for repentance.

Tom explains things a bit further on pp. 150-51: What then does exile mean in the
continuing sense? Answer: the time of the curse spoken of in Deuteronomy and Leviticus,
a curse that lasts as long as Israel is the tail and not the head, still subject to the rule,
and often the abusive treatment of foreign nations with their blasphemous and wicked
idolatry and immorality, not yet in possession of the promisedglobal sovereigntyas
long as we are still in Deut. 29 hoping and praying that Daniels 490 years will soon be
complete, that the Messiah will come at last Tom makes a good deal of the fact that in
Ezra 9 the writer still talks about Israel beings slaves even though they have returned to
the promised land. Fair enough. But it is impossible to ignore the Maccabean experience
and period. The truth is, many Jews pointed to the Maccabean experience as
demonstrating they had in part for a while returned to the good ole days in the land.
They did not forget the exile, or even the sense of dependency and loss and danger even
when back in the land, but different Jews viewed the situation differently. It is doubtful for
example that the Sadducees were advocates of the were still in exile attitude. There
was a mixture of views in the time of Jesus about the actual spiritual state of Israel, just
as their was a mixture of views about the coming Messiah or Messiahs (or lack thereof).
Tom has done a much better and more detailed job making his case for the we are
still in exile idea, and he is right that there was more than enough sense of dis-ease that
lots of apocalyptic literature was being produced before and after the Maccabean period.
Such literature manifests a state of heart and mind that believes something is badly
wrong, but that after judgment God will restore things to order. We may say there is a
dominant theme of we are still under judgment, still awaiting the consummation and the
messiah and in some cases this included the suggested of a double return from exile, or
a fuller return from exile, as Tom suggests.
Qualifications of an important thesis are always crucial. At the end of his robust
defense of his exile thesis we get some of these and they are worth noting. First it should
be noted that Tom is arguing that Deut. 27-30 combined with Dan. 7-9 (especially 9), set
up a narrative pattern which affected many early Jews in the way they thought about
their past, present and future. Many, but not all, by any means. On p. 158, in a
parenthetical comment Tom says this my case is not that all Jews throughout the
period understood themselves to be living in a state of continuing exile only that such
an understanding was widespread, and was particularly likely to be true of zealous
Pharisees [i.e. Pharisees of the ilk of Saul of Tarsus]. Tom grants that a series of early
Jewish texts are exceptions to what he calls the basic pattern or the controlling
metaphor of exile, including Sirach, some of the Maccabean material. In response to
Seifrids critique of his theory, Tom makes the following further qualifications (p. 160
n.335): 1) he grants that there are a variety of positions taken on this issue during the
period; 2) the narrative locations of the texts in question vary widely. This he also grants.
It is worth pointing out that it was perfectly possible for an early Jew to believe that the
exile had long been over, but the full restoration had not yet happened. There had been
some foreshadowings, and foretastes of it during the Maccabean period. Would these
Jews have seen this as a false dawn as Tom repeatedly calls it, a mere premonition and
not a foretaste? I think this is more than doubtful. It is probably just wrong. What exactly
would they have been celebrating at Hanukkah with all the waving of the palm branches
if they thought the Maccabean revolt was a false dawn, an exercise in futility? Just
because the Maccabees were not the Messiahs, doesnt mean they would not be seen as
a partial fulfillment of Gods promises to his people, including the ones in Deut. 27-30,
indeed they surely were seen as a sign that God had not abandoned his people to yet
another exile, which explains why so many early Jews were named after these war
heroes. At the same time they recognized that the full restoration was yet to come, when
Messiah, resurrection etc. happened as Daniel suggested. Tobit, 2 Baruch, Testament
Naphtali speak of what Tom calls a respite in the larger overall bleak and dire situation.
This may give these texts too little credit. In other words, they dont seem likely to fall
into the category of people who viewed the respite as illusory or a false dawn. And here
is where I say that the issue then becomes what is the dominate view? Is it the basic

pattern as Tom sees it, which allows him to call what was happening in Israel in Jesus
day still an exile of sorts? It seems to me that the most he can demonstrate is that he
has established an important pattern, but there is no way to know if it is the basic or
dominant one. The evidence against such a strong conclusion is as substantial as the
evidence for this. The most one can say on the basis of hard evidence is that some
zealots, including some zealous Pharisees likely thought this way. It is not at all clear that
Jesus agreed with them. Indeed, I think it is safe to say that Jesus would have had strong
disagreements with Saul of Tarsus before be became a follower of the man from
Nazareth. And last, but not least, not being in exile is one thing, experiencing full
restoration is another. The fact that many Jews did not see themselves as still in exile,
and so not in the worst possible state, doesnt mean they saw themselves as already
fully experiencing Gods highest and best for his people. Restoration is the beginning of
positive things. The end of exile is the end of negative ones. These two things can be
distinguished.
I think Tom has now made as strong a case as he can that some early Jews saw
themselves as still suffering lingering effects of exile. That this is the dominant or
controlling pattern or metaphor of early Jewish literature of the second temple period he
has not established. We must examine in the next post what he says about restoration.
Rehearsing a fair bit of the data Tom covered at length and well in Resurrection and
the Son of God, Tom reminds us that the future hope of early Jews was basically not of an
other-worldly nature. Very few texts (perhaps Wis. Sol. 3.1ff.) in fact take a non-material
view of the afterlife. Thus Tom stresses that what answer you get from texts to a real
extent depends on what questions you ask of a text If you ask What must I do to inherit
everlasting life? and mean by that what many modern Christians think that means,
namely dying and going to be with God in heaven. then youve asked the wrong
question (see p. 163).
On p. 165, Tom throws down the gauntlet in this fashion.At the risk of arousing
thunderbolts of wrath and showers of angry meteorites, I venture to suggest that the
scholarly construct of a parousia in which the space-time universe would cease to exist,
followed by a second order construct of a delay in this event which then precipitates a
new form of Christian self-consciousness, has been an enormous black hole in historical
understanding into which legions of scholars have sucked one another through the
gravitational forces of their unremitting zeal for the traditions of the fathers the
fathers in this case being Schweitzer and Bultmann and their various successors. As
Tom says on p. 166, it is the worldviews rather than the language system which
determine how the metaphors work, and in his view, cosmic language about the end of
the world, is actually about the end of a world, and a particular worldview (so for
example the language about the son turning black would be an apt metaphor for the
eclipse of some ruler who claimed to be the sun god or Apollo for instance). Pauls use of
apocalyptic language does not support the notion that he anticipated the literal end of
the space time continuum, is part of Toms point. But that is not nearly all, as Tom
continues to follow George Cairds (his doctor father at Oxford) reading of the
eschatological language in early Jewish and Christian sources. He sees the material in
Dan. 7,9 and 4 Ezra 11-12 to be about the victory of Gods people over the pagan
empires of the world under the leadership of the Messiah (see p. 171).
The question as posed by Eddie Adams, Dale Allison and others who challenge
some of Toms readings of apocalyptic material becomes which parts of these various
dire predictions are to be seen as referring to actual future events and which parts are
metaphorical coloring, as Tom calls it? In some ways I would say this is the wrong
question. Its not about sifting metaphor from potential future fact. The point is that all
this metaphorical apocalyptic language is both metaphorical and referential. The proper
question is to what do these metaphors refer? Obviously we are not meant to take
metaphors literally, but we are meant to take them seriously and referentially. The issue

is not literal vs. metaphorical, because metaphors can be used to describe the real. The
issue is referential vs. non-referential. For example, John Collins in his classic treatment
The Apocalyptic Imagination claims that apocalyptic language is not meant to be
referential. It has some kind of emotive and consolatory force but its not real prophecy
about real events, its not referential in that sense. I would strongly disagree. You could
say a fair bit of early Jewish apocalyptic is referential and they simply got the predictions
wrong. But I dont think you can say its not referential. The question is To what does it
refer?
Does for example the language about Christs return on the clouds really refer to
his ascension into heaven and ruling the world empires currently from above? This still
allows the language to be referential but it turns future eschatology into inaugurated
eschatology, something that Cairds reading encourages us to consider. There is the
further point that often cosmic upheaval metaphors are actually political in character
referring to the collapse of literal empires, evil rulers etc. They dont refer to the end of
the space time continuum (see pp. 173-74). Tom adds that even when people saw literal
earthquakes, comets etc. as referential to events soon to come to pass, they did not see
them as referring to future earthquakes, comets etc. but rather to coming events in the
social and political realm. for example the cosmic sign that was thought to augur the
coming death of Julius Caesar, not a future cosmic sign on a grander scale.
To the question What is the solution to our current dilemma of having pagan
overlords Tom says Pharisaic Jews saw as the solution to the smaller scale problem that
Jews become more rigorous in keeping the Torah, and pray hard for God to fulfill his
promises, and perhaps in some cases join the freedom fighters against the overlords, and
perhaps the new age is dawning through more rigorous observance of the law etc. (see
pp. 178-79). In part this was based on the Pharisaic synergistic approach to life. Unlike
the Essenes who thought one should just wait for divine intervention (being deterministic
in theology) or the Sadducees who simply believed in free will and doing what they
wanted, the Pharisees believed they were required to work towards bringing Gods
kingdom, even though in the end it was up to God himself how and when he would do it
(p. 181). Tom stresses their creational monotheism. Salvation never looked merely like
the abandonment of the space time continuum for an ethereal other world realm called
heaven. It looked like the election by God of a people,rescuing them from bondage, and it
involved future resurrection as well. Tom suggests (p. 182) that the moral dilemma facing
the Pharisees was that while they believed Gods people were meant to be the solution to
the worlds battle with evil, and yet they themselves kept being engulfed by that evil,
how then could Israel fulfill its role as a light to the nations? Early Christians saw Jesus as
the answer to the question he was the elect one, the true Israelite, the light of the
world, who fulfilled Israels roll to both Gods people and to the world. Gods people, the
whole of humanity, and creation itself must be put right as God is not interested in just
redeeming human souls, or even in just rescuing his own people, but restoring the whole
of his creation.
P. 187 provides an important summary of how Tom things Saul the Pharisee would
have viewed things before he became a follower of Christ, namely: 1) in the age to come
God will judge the wicked (both pagans and renegade Jews), and will vindicate (=declare
righteous) his people (i.e. will declare that they are part of the all Israel); 2) the present
marks of this vindicated/justified people will be the things that show their loyalty to their
God and their zeal for his covenant, and 3) this entails especially the keeping of the
things that distinguish Jews from Gentiles sabbath, food laws, circumcision, and 4)
those who do these things are marked out as those who in the future will be vindicated
as true Jews. In other words, the doctrine of justification [has] as it nest the interface
between election and eschatology (p. 188). In an interesting footnote, Tom talks about
the phrase the glory of Adam in the Qumran lit. (1 QS 4.23, CD 3.20 and other references
on p. 189 n.434), which refers to the inheritance of Adam, restored to Gods people who
keep Torah. Glory in such texts does not equal sovereignty. The glory of Adam seems to

include the dominion, the stewardship exercised by Adam over all Gods creation (p.
190). At the end of this lengthy discussion Tom concludes that Pauls missionary zeal to
convert others does not likely have a precursor in his having evangelized Gentiles as a
Pharisee, it comes from another source. His prior concern was with dealing with those he
deemed renegade Jews, like Stephen.
In response to a request for Tom to clarify exactly what he thinks is still outstanding
when it comes to eschatological events, he says the following in an email to me
Im puzzled because I have constantly, regularly, explicitly and directly affirmed all
the above the 2nd coming, the future resurrection, the final judgment the new heaven
and new earth. George Caird did too. It would be quite bizarre for Allison or Adams or
anyone else to suggest, in view of the entire argument of The Resurrection of the Son of
God, and especially Surprised by Hope, to suppose that I have a fully realized
eschatology (like those oddballs who think that the entire end-time events happened in
AD 70!). The great events in Romans 8.18-26, for a start, clearly havent happened yet;
ditto 1 Cor 15, Phil 3.20f., etc etc. It would be absurd (or very depressing) to think
otherwise. My reading of Allison is that HE has a totally UNDER-realized eschatology, a
kind of gloomy nothings-really-happened-yet view which may go with his (non?)-view
of Jesus bodily resurrection??
If I had to state what I think is still to come I would simply summarize the middle
chapters of Surprised by Hope. New creation (the complete renewal of the entire created
order, heaven and earth coming together at last, corruption and decay and death
abolished for ever); Jesus himself the personally present centrepiece and sovereign over
all of it, finally revealed/returned (the two amount to the same thing from the perspective
of the new world, as is signalled in e.g. 1 Jn 3.1f., Col 3.1-4); the final sorting-out/puttingright of all things, as in the Psalms (96, 98, etc); the resurrection of the dead. All of these
belong very closely together with one another, and all are predicated (a) on the ancient
Jewish beliefs in the one God as creator and judge and (b) on the death and resurrection
of Jesus himself . . .
Chapter Three of Tom Wrights magnum opus is a first rate summary of Greek
philosophy insofar as it has relevance to understanding the thought world and writing of
Paul. Particular focus is given to Stoicism (including helpful discussions of Seneca and
Epictetus of course). Such a precis is important because, as Tom stresses, Paul believed
he was offering an essentially Jewish message to a largely pagan world (p. 200) and he
wanted it to be a word on target, a persuasive word. The one thing I wish could have
been included in this chapter was a discussion of the interface between philosophy and
rhetoric as it has a bearing on the understanding of Paul. After all, Aristotle himself was
not only the father of much subsequent philosophy, he was the father of rhetoric in
various ways as well and saw the latter as the proper way to present the former.
One of the reasons this sort of background chapter is important is to remind us that
while in the modern era we often separate politics and religion, this was hardly the case
in antiquity, and it is often a mistake to treat religion as if it were something
hermetically sealed off from the social world and political life of the Empire. To the
contrary, religion, especially in the case of the Emperor cult, was an expression of politics
in Pauls world. As Tom puts it religion was what kept the wheels of the state turning in
the right direction (p. 203). And what Paul was preaching would have sounded more like
a philosophy than a religion (bereft as it was of temples, priests, and literal sacrifices).
Saul of Tarsus was born into a world where eight hundred years of Hellenic culture was
alive and well, and where, in particular the philosophies of four centuries earlier were
making a considerable come-back (p. 211). This was especially true of Stoicism, the
classic form of pantheism.
Tom draws interesting analogies between Deism in the modern west and ancient
Epicureanism, in that the vision of god or the gods in the latter involved remote deities

not much interesting in dirtying their hands with the affairs of humankind. Interestingly,
he then adds whereas the default mode of most westerners is some kind of
Epicureanism [not only in regard to the remote deity bit, but also in regard to the living a
self-centered life in pursuit of certain kinds of pleasure and happiness], the default mode
for many of Pauls hearers was some kind of Stoicism (p. 213) i.e. that God was
everywhere and in all things as the sort of guiding force, elan vitale, essential spirit of it
all. A Stoic might have said if its all god, then its all good and what seems to be evil is
mere lack of understanding on our part. The Epicurean by contrast sees much in the
world that is genuinely evil and retreats to his garden, his safe spot, his sanctuary to
dedicate himself to true pleasure life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.
The aim of the Stoic was to engage in a progress [I think he means process] of
continual moral enlightenment, with the goal of becoming a sage, a truly wise, wellformed character, able to live in accord with naturein this divine sense becoming selfsufficient, impervious to the nasty tricks which life can play (p.214). The Stoics saw our
senses as basically reliable so one could make sense of the world to a good degree,
where as the Skeptics felt the human senses were basically unreliable. For the essentially
theological nature of Stoic thought, see p. 217 (and here Wright differs strongly from the
analysis of folk like Engberg-Petersen, as do I).
There is a nice series of quotations from Epictetus in this chapter including the
remarkable peon of praise where Epictetus insists that the chief end and aim of
humankind should be to praise god (see pp. 226-227). Here again Wright differs from
Engberg Petersen in saying that theology is right at the heart of Epictetus exposition of
Stoicism, and he is correct about this. The attempt to denude Stoicism or Paulinism of
theology is an exercise in futility. Tom concludes that Paul would have assumed that the
default mode of most of his audiences thought would have been the Stoic development
of Platonic thought (p. 232).
As a sort of precursor to what we find in Paul (which is an interesting blend of
Jewish thought in Hellenic thought forms and modes of expressions) Tom fruitfully
explores the Wisdom of Solomon where essentially Jewish thought is expressed in ways
user friendly for a world long since Hellenized.
This is my favorite chapter thus far in this book and I will use it as a summary of
important data for my students. Part nine.