Being accustomed from infancy to love Torah and to live by Torah find it natural to separate milk and meat, rest on Shabbos, honor our parents, avoid stealing and murder–as natural as tying our shoes, buckling our belts & using a knife & fork. More so, because we love doing it. Every mitzvah we do is one more kiss we are placing on the face of our Beloved (see the Song of Solomon, where Gd and the people are depicted as a young and passionate couple in love). Gd loves all, Jews and gentiles, but variously, appreciating variety.

And Paul is merrely playing the role of a gentile when he says that those Jewish kisses are a curse? But Paul tells the Jewish Christians to abandon these kisses, these mitzvos, or else Christ died in vain.

As for teaching righteousness to the gentiles–most gentiles WERE righteous. And, the Jews already WERE teaching to gentiles. That’s why we are told “There were many in that city who feared Gd.” Those men and women who did not become Jews, but who attended synagogue and learned from the prayers and from the sermons, were known as “Gd-fearers”.

Any gentile today, too, can live by the Seven laws of Noah. Try googling Noachide or Noachides to see the Seven Laws. If you are doing them, Gd counts you as righteous. You HAVE a portion in the next world, and you have it without being baptized or believing any theology.

Something happened to him post his conversion, in the years that then elapsed, and it is articulated in Galations particularly. I think he tried, more than anybody, to achieve a peace with God through works of the Law, or ‘works of obedience’ if you like. A performance based relationship with God; the more obedient you are the more blessed you are, the less you perform the more rejection to feel. The endless cycle of effort, failure, sin offering – more effort, failure still, sin offering – in the end proved hopelessly inadequate for Paul.

Christianity is not living as a Jew with a better sin offering in Jesus to cover our inevitable failure. It is something else. Paul found a ‘new song’ and it is this he communicates – a Gospel of Grace and acceptance because of the finished work of the Cross.

I have been in Christianity for 50 years and I have only just understood this.

Paul’s discourse in Ro 7 succinctly describes the human condition.. only pride drives us to continue trying to approach God on our own merit (law keeping)

It’s the same sin that the serpent proposed in the garden.. to ascend toward ‘godliness’ by virtue of some quality self attained.

The enemy continues relentlessly in prompting us with an illegal use of the Law.. as if to say, “God probably isn’t pleased with you because of this or that shortcoming (sin).. you must try and do better”

or.. “you’re a moral and upright person, you try and generally succeed for the most part in kindness, charity and so on.. God is probably pleased with you..”

Natural and rational thinking.. sure.. but at enmity with God:

Col 2:14 Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;

Eph 1:6 To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.

Those among you who are simply academics will never understand the message and meaning of the things the Lord and the Apostles taught because, as HE said, it is hidden from such minds as yours, and so all such analysis is meaningless and vanity. To HIM that is. But, go on and air your propositions if it furthers your academic standing and therefore income. It’s you business.

Those among you who openly profess Christ should know better than to participate in such discussion, particularly if you consider yourself mature in the faith such that you can consume the meat of it. Do not lend yourselves to having your ears tickled by those who would trample your pearls in the mud and rip you open.

But, as to the discussion at hand, Paul preached exactly what the Lord told him to preach along the road to Damascus. So, in attempting to analyse Paul you are actually trying to analyse Christ, and therefore God, his Father. Paul’s job was to implement the faith as God so required in the context of the imminent demise of Judaism. Yes, that is to say there is no such thing as Judaism according to the Mosic Covenant, now or for the better part of the last two thousand years. It ceased to exist on the day that Titus destroyed the Temple, it’s clergy and the sacrifices, etc, they were responsible to conduct under the Law. Indeed, once an individual could no longer have his name registered by the priest, there was no such thing as a legal (to God) Jew. Thus, all who henceforth would want to maintain a relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob could only do so through Christ as taught by Paul and the other Apostles, who, as scripture shows reached agreement about what was to be taught.

Saul was a Jew. Paul was neither a Jew nor a gentile. He was born again into the Kingdom of God, as he said, a new creature in this earth but not of it. Yes, he talked to Jews as a Jew to claim them for Christ. And he talked to gentiles as a gentile so they could understand. That is of course until ther were no covenant Jews to be taught, when all were just simly men before God.

This central concept of Christianity, where Jesus is sacrificed for the sins of others, is completely at odds with Judaism and the Torah. The “Akeidah”, where Abraham is dramatically prevented from killing his son Isaac as an offering on Mt Moriah, is a potent demonstration of the fact that God abhors human sacrifice, as practiced by the pagans, who would, for example, sacrifice their children in a fiery death to Moloch.
If Paul saw the death of Jesus as a sacrifice for the sins of man,he was a million miles away from being a Jew.

Thanks very much for the article.

Whatever Paul may have meant in his writings, the message that he conveyed was by no means uniformly hostile to Jews. Here is an instance where his words were used to save Jewish lives. In March 1943, as the Germans were getting ready to deport the Jews of Greece, Archbishop Damaskinos, the titular head of the Greek Orthodox church,strenuously opposed the deportations in a series of memoranda to the German occupation authorities and the Greek quisling government. In all these documents Damaskinos quoted Paul, the founder of the Greek church: “There are no Jews and no Greeks, no men and no women, all are equal in front of the Lord”. Damaskinos then opened to the Jews the gates of Greek churches and monasteries allowing several of them -alas, too few- to escape the Holocaust. Among them was the father of Shimon Peres, Israel’s current president.

Thank you for digging so deeply into Paul’s thinking. May it help to uplift the interdenominational conversation.

I enjoyed this article on Paul (saul). Though to use topical language – “jesus movement” in an argument on first century Saul fails to recognize his torment to reconcile the profound affection for Jewish thought with his awareness of the person Jesus. Modern language weakens your premise. This Rebbe was not a movement as that phrase is used today, did not create or foment hatred of anyone – nor was Paul Anti-Semitic. His message (revelation)about Jesus and his teaching was a tough choice to consider; was not accepted by many or by His people. He was compelled even charged(as Michael W states)to share it with the world. He did just that. It was contrary to peer reviews and other intellectuals of his day, for which he suffered greatly. Wise minds can disagree which does not equate to Paul´s hatred – of self, of heritage, of Jews, nor can his transition be compared to systemic Anti Semitism writ large. Jesus is a Jew. Simply, Paul’s message on Jesus is very clear: both are and always will be Jews and we (Jew and Non-Jew) must live in covenant with G d. How this is attained is based on profound thought and respect for G d. Anti – blank is not sacred, profound nor transformative. Happy Holidays