There is a tendency to view Paul as the first Christian; to view him in terms of Before and After the road to Damascus. The Damascus road event was perceived as so drastic that many Christians think that he used to be called Saul and that his name was changed to Paul after his so-called "conversion" in Acts 91. Going along with this perceived revolution, there is a tendency to believe that Paul rejected his former religion - Judaism - in order to form the new religion of Christianity. Among the early Christians, it was accepted that Paul was a charismatic and theological leader of this new religion - his works deemed significant and canon-worthy around the 5th century CE. In addition, the social distance between Jews and Gentile Christians was great enough (Christianity going from a religio licita2 to the state religion of the Roman Empire3) that it was easy enough to read the Lukan account and Paul's epistles in a way that the Church could be seen as abrogating and replacing Israel as God's chosen people. And much of this narrative of the Church's supremacy over the Jews hinges upon the understanding that Paul defected from the Jewish way of life and the Jewish people to help found this new religion. What happens if that is wrong?
I am going to suggest that Paul did not convert to Christianity but rather remained and identified as a Jew who was instead called to be an apostle to the Gentiles in his new found knowledge that indeed the crucified and resurrected Jesus was the Messiah. Paul never stopped being a Torah-observant Jew nor expected any other Jew who believed in Jesus as Messiah to stop practicing Torah. Rather, he argued (rather vehemently) that Gentiles ought not be circumcised nor practice Torah but be accepted as distinct yet equal in the commonwealth of Israel who remained, for Paul, the people of God.
For this post, I will only give two passages in the Acts account and will not speak to the implications or other theological or practical speculations concerning what then it means to be Jewish or Gentile, or why this makes a difference historically. It will also become necessary to examine the Pauline epistles concerning these matters. I'll get to that in later posts. For now, I believe that if I can show that Paul remained Torah observant and expected other Jews who believed in Jesus to remain observant then there can be a more proper reading of his letters and will create better categories for understanding identity in the Messiah of Israel in regards to: Torah, Jews and Gentiles.
1. Acts 15 "Then certain individuals came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, 'Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.' And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to discuss this question with the apostles and the elders."
A few issues are made apparent here. First, certain individuals from Judea (most likely Ebionites) were probably believers in Jesus since they came to a group of believers to deal with the doctrine of salvation concerning the Gentiles' who believed in Jesus as Messiah. Otherwise they would have not come to them at all, or would have come to them to kill or imprison them as Paul had done prior. Secondly, Paul disagreed with their assessment concerning the Gentiles need to be circumcised and keep Torah, but what is absent yet implied is that the Jewish believers must have already been Torah observant and had no dispute concerning keeping the commandments. Why else would they even have bothered to send people to Jerusalem to consult James concerning Gentiles keeping the Law if the Jewish believers themselves weren't keeping it? The verdict of the Council of Jerusalem was that the Gentiles should only have to keep a few laws (sometimes correlated to the Noahide Laws) and the reasoning for only having to keep just those laws is stated explicitly in verse 21, "For in every city, for generations past, Moses has had those who proclaim him, for he has been read aloud every sabbath in the synagogues." I suggest that James was counting on the fact that the Gentiles would be a part of the Sabbath services at the synagogues to learn Moses (read:Torah) which is tantamount to learning what it means to be a part of Israel and who God is. While they must have understood how this would be problematic, there is no assumption or implication that the new Gentile Believers would have formed an entirely separate entity from the Jews, but rather they viewed themselves as a sect within Judaism. It is worthy to note that in Chapter 16, Paul had Timothy circumcised because although his mother was Jewish, his father was Greek and he wanted no obstacle for the Jews they would encounter.
2. Acts 21 "When we arrived in Jerusalem, the brothers welcomed us warmly. The next day Paul went with us to visit James; and all the elders were present. After greeting them, he related one by one the things that God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. When they heard it, they praised God. Then they said to him, “You see, brother, how many thousands of believers there are among the Jews, and they are all zealous for the law. They have been told about you that you teach all the Jews living among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, and that you tell them not to circumcise their children or observe the customs. What then is to be done? They will certainly hear that you have come. So do what we tell you. We have four men who are under a vow. Join these men, go through the rite of purification with them, and pay for the shaving of their heads. Thus all will know that there is nothing in what they have been told about you, but that you yourself observe and guard the law. But as for the Gentiles who have become believers, we have sent a letter with our judgment that they should abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication.” Then Paul took the men, and the next day, having purified himself, he entered the temple with them, making public the completion of the days of purification when the sacrifice would be made for each of them."
The Jewish believers in Jerusalem praised God when they hear of God's works through Paul's ministry among the Gentiles. Surely then, they knew that Paul did not require the Gentiles to be Torah observant as they mentioned at the end of the passage. But what of the Jewish believers? Paul is told that there were thousands of believers among the Jews and that they were all zealous for the law. But apparently rumor 'round Jerusalem was that Paul was teaching the Jewish believers to forsake the law. They advised Paul to go through the rite of purification with four other believers to prove that "there is nothing in what they have been told about [Paul], but that [he himself] observes and guards the law." Paul then does purify himself and publicly shows that he does indeed observe the law. There is nothing to indicate that Paul was being disingenuous or appeasing the Jewish believers in some sort of political move, but rather he was upholding the goodness of the Law and Torah and in no way wanted to show that his faith in Jesus as Messiah is contrary to the Law.
What we find in looking at these two passages is that Paul maintains his Torah observance even after coming to the knowledge of Jesus as the Messiah of Israel. He instead wants to show that the Gentiles have no responsibility to maintain Torah in order to be brought into the covenant of God with Israel as equals (something he will argue for in his letters). Thus, he maintains a distinction of 'Jew' and 'Gentile' not in terms of salvation or equality, but rather in terms of role and responsibility.
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1 Luke writes in Acts 13, "Saul, who was also called Paul..." and then chooses to maintain the name Paul for the rest of the book. Paul had already been a believer before this point and there is nothing that explains why Luke maintains the name 'Paul' for the rest of the book.
2 religio licita or tolerated religion. Christianity was officially tolerated via the Edict of Milan in 313 CE which gave the freedom of religion to the Roman people.
3 Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire via the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 CE.
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