common plight & uncommon solutions: unprecedented?

There is a further very elegant argument that allegorization & spiritualization represented Paul's hermeneutic approach to the Law:

I refer to 1 Corinthians 9:8-11,
where Paul uses precisely an allegorical interpretation of the law
in the Torah which he explicitly applies
to the Christian situation:


'DO I say this
on human authority?
Does not the law say the same?
For it is written in the law of MOSHE,
"YOU shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain!"
IS IT for the oxen
that "G*D" is concerned?
Does he not speak entirely
for OUR sake?
It was written
for OUR SAKE,
because
the plowman
should plow in hope
and the thresher
thresh in hope
of a share
in the
crop.
*
IF we have sown
spiritual good among you,
is it TOO MUCH if we reap
your fleshly
benefits?'


Paul
engages
in a double spiritualizing move
in interpreting the verse of the law.
In the FIRST place he explicitly denies its literal sense
- DO NOT muzzle an ox - is relevant AT ALL!
Indeed, one might ask whether, according to Paul,
it is forbidden to muzzle an ox
while it treads?
To THIS point, however,
Paul's interpretation is not entirely unlike a fairly rare
but attested midrashic move that reads certain halakhic verses
as metaphors for something
ELSE.


THUS,
for example,
the verse of Leviticus which prohibits placing a stumbling block
before the blind is understood by the Rabbis
as a prohibition on aiding
someone
to sin.


Paul's
next move, however,
seems to me to leave midrash behind
and enter ALLEGORY,
namely his RE-READING of the grain
which is trodden as
'spiritual good,'
suggesting also the familiar hermeneutic
antinomy of the spiritual
and the physical
as well.


It follows
that even though Paul refers to the Law as an authority here,
this is the Law as UNDERSTOOD according through the Spirit, in accord
with its spiritual sense and NOT its LITERAL,
physical sense.


~*~


By
understanding
that the Law according to the flesh
was the signifier of an allegorical Law of love according to the spirit,
and that those, including ethnic Jews,
who received the spirit
were absolved of the requirements of the Law according to the flesh,
Paul was NOT apologizing for Jewish Law and particularity,
for Jewish difference,
like the other ['circumcising' and/or 'uncircumcising'] Hellenistic Jewish writers cited,
but annulling Jewish
difference!


"REMAIN as I am,
for I have become as YOU are" [GAL 4:12].
In the PATHOS of this verse is the CENTER of Paul's ministry.
HE has given up his specific Jewish identity
in order to MERGE his ESSENCE into the essence of the gentile Christians
and CREATE the NEW spiritual
People of "G*D".


IF
they NOW
turn away from this transumption
into the allegorical and become Jewish Christians,
they will have thereby LOWERED themselves
and left Paul
ALONE.


The ENTIRE force
of his apocalypse will have been
annulled!


It is
difficult for me to understand
how scholars can assume that Paul remained Law-observant
given THIS verse:
the ENTIRE continuation of THIS passage
through verse 20
can easily be understood in the light
of THIS interpretation?


The THEME
of exclusion and inclusion
that Paul develops in verse 17 is CENTRAL
and refers once more to inclusion in and axclusion from the Jewish People,
and THIS leads with perfect naturalness into the allegory
of ISHMA'EL & HAGAR,
perhaps the biblical text
that MOST explicitly
thematized
exclusion.


For Paul,
the ONLY possibility for HUMAN EQUALITY
involved HUMAN
SAMENESS!


Difference
was the THREAT!



IF Paul
is NOT the origin
of anti-Semitism
[and I hold that he is NOT],
it may certainly be fairly said that he is
the origin of the "Jewish
QUESTION."
verliefd
engel
08 jul 2005 - bewerkt op 08 mrt 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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