The wrong criticism of the New Perspective
One new-to-me blog I’ve come across as a result of John Hobbins’ map is Biblical Theology. It’s a fairly clear and clearly conservative voice on biblical studies. The most recent article (at the moment) starts a series on the New Perspective. It does try to be fair to Sanders, and is certainly fairer than many critiques. I will be interested to see how it develops, but there is one point that illustrates a quite significant blindness, which is far too typical of conservative critics of the New Perspective. It comes right at the end:
We need to be extremely cautious about thinking that we have a better understanding of first-century Judaism almost 2,000 years removed than Paul did as one who grew up in it.
The problem with that is that it assumes that the traditional evangelical (and more broadly Protestant) understanding of Judaism, derived largely from the Lutheran reading of Paul, was in fact St Paul’s understanding. That is precisely what the NPP disputes, along with others who are not really NPP people.
What a great deal of (especially) post-Sanders scholarship is saying is that St Paul did not have the understanding of Judaism which Protestant tradition imputes to him, because no such Judaism existed. No-one is saying they understand it better than Paul, but better than Luther.
November 4th, 2007 at 2:33 am
Exactly right! One could paraphrase the quote right back at the critics of the new perspective:
“We need to be extremely cautious about thinking that Luther had a better understanding of first-century Judaism over 1,500 years removed than Paul, the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the ancient Rabbis did as ones who grew up in it.”