Mere Fidelity
Mere Fidelity
Paul and the Resurrection of Israel with Dr. Jason Staples
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Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts and Brad East talk with Dr. Jason Staples about his book 'Paul and the Resurrection of Israel.' The discussion explores the themes of restoration eschatology, the role of Gentiles in Paul's theology, and the nature of Israel's restoration. Staples argues that Paul's understanding of Israel is broader than just ethnic Jews, emphasizing the inclusion of Gentiles in the restoration narrative. The conversation also touches on the concept of infectious holiness and the church's role as the assembly of Israel, highlighting the theological implications of these ideas for contemporary Christianity.
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This episode is brought to you by Leximpress, who publishes books that love the word, love the faith, and love the church. Our January book of the month is Reading the Psalms as Scripture by James M. Hamilton and Matthew Damico. This little book is a guide to reading the Psalms in biblical and literary context. We're to read the Psalms individually, in light of the Psalter, in light of the New Testament, and in light of Christ. Lexin Press was recently acquired by Baker Publishing Group, and there will be more news on that to follow. But for now, you can receive an exclusive 40% off discount by visiting BakerBookhouse.com and using the coupon code MERFEDELITIONES Hello and welcome to another episode of Mere Fidelity, a podcast by Mere Orthodoxy, where we think about the Word of God and the world we live in. My name is Derek Krishmaui, and I'll be your host for today. I'm joined by our regular cast and crew members, Alistair Roberts and Brad East. Good to see you, fellas. Good to be here. Good to be here. And we're also joined by a special guest today, Dr. Jason Staples, the professor of philosophy and religious studies at North Carolina State, author of several works, including The Idea of Israel and Second Temple Judaism, and the book that we want to talk about more today, uh Paul and the Resurrection of Israel, Jews, Former Gentiles, and Israelites. This book has caused quite a stir, I think, over the last year or so. It was one of my favorite books last year. I tried to read some biblical studies at least once a year, and that one made it on the list. And I think ever since then we wanted to have you on. So uh Dr. Staples, thanks for thanks for joining us today.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell Well, thank you for the invitation. It's uh it's it's an honor to be asked by this illustrious podcast and and the uh the Mere Orthodoxy bunch. So very, very grateful to be a part of it.
SPEAKER_05Well, we have a I think a lot of questions. Brad is chomping at the bit to to get into it. But what I wanted to ask is just to start out, for folks who have not read um The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism, give me the give me the boilerplate on that first one and how that overlaps with your thesis in this work. I I saw that first one, I thought that looks cool, and then the next one was coming up. I'm I I just figured I'd go for the second one first, but but tell me what I missed uh, as it were, in the first work.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell And it's totally fine to skip the first one, to be honest. I mean, I don't think Cambridge University Press really wants me to say that, but uh but I did, you know, kind sort of summarize the first book in the first chapter of of the second one. Uh and actually, I mean, these were really part of the same larger project. The the idea of Israel sort of provides the foundation on which Paul and the Resurrection of Israel is is then built. And the way that this works uh is such that, you know, with the with the summary in the second book, you only really need to read the first book if you want to look at that stuff independently, at that earlier material independently, or if you've got, you know, questions, if you want to be contentious about the material there, if you about about the claims that I'm making, then that's where I show my work, essentially. That's where it's like, okay, look, here's the evidence for uh this larger foundational piece that I'm I'm arguing from in Paul and the resurrection of Israel. So uh and I thought that was necessary to do. And the basic uh the basic argument of the idea of Israel uh in Second Temple Judaism is is essentially it's two theses. Uh one is that contrary to the way that a lot of us tend to think in the 21st century, when people in the ancient world, when people in the Second Temple period, which goes basically from the 6th century BCE to through the about through 70 CE, when the the Second Temple is destroyed, but really I I take it through about the end of the first century, uh, during that period, if someone says the word Israelite, that does not necessarily mean that they're talking about Jews. Uh and we tend to think in the modern world that when someone refers to Israel, that just means the Jews, that the these are coextensive categories. But it turns out when you actually look closely at ancient materials, they don't actually equate those things. They're not a one-to-one. Instead, and this is the first thesis of the book, one of those categories is a subset of the other. So in the same way that, you know, a Floridian is an American, but not all Americans are Floridians, which, I mean, it's probably a good thing given the reputation of Florida man. But but um not all Americans are Floridians, not all Americans are Californians, right? These are subsets of what it is to be an American. Actually, if you really want to be technical about it, not all Americans are from the United States. You've got Canadians who are North Americans, you've got Central Americans who are Americans in that sort of uh broader sense. The same thing works with the concepts of the Jews and Israel. Israel, if you go back to your Bible, it's not that complicated. If you go back to the Bible, you find out that Israel is a 12-tribe people that the Bible traces back to the progenitor Israel, that is Jacob. And the 12 sons of Israel have eventually it leads to 13 tribes because of the two children of Joseph being regarded as uh adopted in a generation earlier, that's the double portion. But in any case, you have the twelve tribes of Israel that are the whole people. And then when you get Jews, when we start to see this term being used, this is a term that refers to people from the southern kingdom of Judah. Now, Israel as a people divided into two kingdoms. You had the northern kingdom that retained the name Israel, and the southern kingdom that went by the largest tribe of the of the south of those southern tribes, and that was Judah. And people began to refer at times uh eventually began to refer to those from Judah as what we translate Jews, Yehudim, Yehudaioi in Greek, um, there's a host of you know ancient cognate terms that mean this. So that's the the term that refers to that subset to the to the southern, this is like southerners within Israel. Now, the larger assumption within scholarship has been for a very long time that after the northern kingdom of Israel ceases to be a separate kingdom, and you have a a deportation of a lot of the population of northern Israel, though not all of it by any stretch, once you have the collapse of the northern kingdom, then ultimately Jews become, this is the way it's often understood, Jews become the whole of Israel. It's like the only part that's left is the Jews, so now Jews mean Israel. But what we don't see is that that is exactly a transition that we don't see in early Jewish materials in this period. Instead, they retain the distinction. And the second thesis of that book is that the reason, or at least one of the reasons that they retain that distinction is because of the biblical prophets and the Torah itself making ultimate making uh proclamations or promises that God would ultimately restore the whole people of Israel, including not just Jews, not just the people from the southern kingdom, but from the northern kingdom of Israel as well, so that you would have a restoration of the whole people. And because this expectation remained a live theological thing, that distinction continued to be made. There are other reasons too. I mean, you had Samaritans claimed to be Israelites, but they did not claim to be Jews because they weren't from Judah. They claimed to be from the tribes of Joseph, from Ephraim and Manasseh. And that gate that meant that they called themselves Israelites, but neither they nor Jews regarded themselves as actually Jewish or as Jews. So they're kind of the most obvious case of not Jewish, but claim to be Israelites, and that actually becomes a controversial claim within the first century and so on. You see this in some of the discussions in the in the New Testament and all of this. But that's the basic outline of the of the two main theses of the first book. That, you know, Israel and that Jew, Jews are a subset of Israel, that they're Israelites, but they're not all Israel, and that there continues to be an eschatological or end times expectation of an eventual restoration of all Israel.
SPEAKER_05So within that, in the first century, Paul, Paul is a Benjaminite who is nevertheless a Jew of Jews because he w the Benjaminites were a part of the southern kingdom, and so he would have been thought that. So he's a Jew of Jews, but he's not a Judahite in the way that Christ was a Judite and descended from David and all that sort of thing. So so that's part of that framework. But he, your your argument is that he, like so many other Jews, was anticipating the fullness of the restoration of the rest of the ten tribes. He's like, Dan, you know, Naphtali, when are we gonna get you back? That's what we're hoping for to some degree. And that's informing, you argue, his reading of the whole. Brad, I have questions here, but you are more anxious for questions. So I'm gonna let you take over uh to to just start pulling that thread and I'll jump in.
SPEAKER_03Well, before before, I mean, yeah, I have I have a host of questions, but before we start really like getting into it, uh I I think Jason, lay lay out a few more pieces of the argument that unfolds in the new book. So I think first for listeners, what is restoration eschatology? Obviously, not a term that's an enact it's our term of art to describe a phenomenon among Jews at the time. But what is restoration eschatology generally, in which you locate Paul? First part of the question. Second part, what does Paul's gospel do with that? What is what is the unique twist that that Paul puts on it?
SPEAKER_02So the first question, so restoration eschatology, this is you know that kind of mouthful term that I I actually borrowed from E. P. Sanders. Uh and this is a shorthand way of referring to a uh a theological framework in which Israel is understood as being the uh the chosen people of God. But Israel disobeys the covenant, and so they come under the curses of the covenant, which include uh exile, they include actually in in the Torah, it's the death of the people as a whole. Uh, and then and so at the uh the the restoration eschatology sort of begins from the idea that Israel is chosen, but Israel's disobedience leads to a current situation in which Israel is not things are not as they should be, but Israel is under the curses of the covenant uh that we see say in in Leviticus 26 or Deuteronomy 28 through uh Deuteronomy 28 and 29. So that's the the first two steps or two stages. And then the third stage of this is that God has promised that to redeem Israel from the curse of the covenant, such that Israel will be restored in full, Israel will uh will receive circumcised hearts or a new heart and a new spirit, uh, the law written on the heart. There's a variety of different language uh that's used for this within uh within the Hebrew Bible, but that there's an expectation of some future restoration that's going to involve fixing, rectifying the problem that led to them falling under the curses, moving out from an era, from the era of the curses of the covenant, from the age of wrath into an age of renewed blessing, where Israel and a newly obedient and morally capable Israel is now dwelling whole completely wholeheartedly in the f in faithfulness to God, and they love God and they receive the life that is then consequent to the love of God, and that this leads towards justice in the whole world and so on. But Israel's restoration then accompanies that restoration from the nations where they've been scattered, and then again the internal uh change. So this is the larger framework of restoration eschatology that we see in a just a host of early Jewish material. You see it obviously in the in the prophets and you know, Deuteronomy 30, Deuteronomy 32, in biblical material, it's all over the place. But you also see it in Tobit and Judith. Josephus kind of hints at it multiple in multiple places where he's writing to Roman overlords, you know, under their uh uh benefaction. So he's not exactly coming out and saying, Are God's gonna waste you, you know, directly? But he does gesture that way in more than one place where he kind of suggests how this is gonna work out. Most notably a place where he says, Well, so that, you know, the way that this worked is at the you know, after after the whole Babylonian thing, three tribes returned to the land, but only three. The the whole of Israel, and he uses actually the uh a phrase that's very, very similar to Paul's all Israel in Romans 26. He says, the all, but the all of Israel is uh remain uh across the the Euphrates in great numbers, not subject to the Romans. And you get this impression of uh, you know, this army that's that's being assembled across the Euphrates just waiting. And, you know, he kind of gestures at this, that like, here's here's how this is gonna go eventually. Uh you get it, you get it in five in some limited tractates of Philo. You get it all over the place, this kind of expectation. And my argument is that Paul then comes in with this, and he's as a Pharisee, and I think Pharisees definitely held this kind of restoration eschatological expectation. I actually think this is a little bit of a sidebar, but I actually think Pharisees, part of what that whole sect was about was interpreting interpreting the Torah in such a way that the people would would observe it correctly so that the restoration would happen.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02That if they repented adequately and they kept the Torah correctly, then the restoration would happen. Now, of course, this would lead then to some of the conflicts with Jesus, for example. When Jesus one one later rabbinic teaching that we get is there's a there's a rabbi, I I want to say from about the fourth or fourth century, I think, uh, who says, if Israel would just obey it would just keep the the Sabbath uh twice consecutively, then the Messiah would come and Israel would be restored. It it's just gonna take keeping Sabbath twice. We just gotta do that. And his student, a generation later, narrowed that down and said, But if Israel would only keep the Sabbath once correctly, then the Messiah will come. Right. And I think that this actually underlies some of the conflict over the Sabbath that Jesus has in the Gospels. And of course, the irony of this is that they're like, dude, you can't break the Sabbath. Like we're we're we're trying to get this right here. We gotta, you know, the Messiah is gonna be coming. And he's like, guys, Messiah's right here. Yeah. Like, I am the guy that you're trying to wait on. Like, I'm announcing the restoration that you want. So, Paul, I think, is one of those people who believes that this is coming and that there are certain halachic or legal uh strictures that need to be kept correctly in order to initiate this restoration. Now, ultimately, this becomes a wedge issue between Christians and Jews, because obviously those who follow Jesus come to think that Jesus is the one that was sent to restore Israel. And then the others say, well, no, he's not the one that came to restore Israel. And look around, do you see Israel being restored? You know, this is the whole thing, this is this becomes the argument. Paul comes to believe that Jesus was that guy, right? That Jesus is that guy, that he is the Messiah, and that Israel's restoration is actually underway through the work that Jesus initiated, first of all, with his death on the cross, that then was uh was finalized with the resurrection and the exaltation to the right hand of God, and that the Holy Spirit that's being sent is the fulfillment of the promises about the restoration, about the circumcision of the heart, about the you know, the law written on the heart, about the new heart and the new spirit, all of these things. Paul sees this as exactly what is happening through Jesus, and then his gospel essentially amounts to proclaiming that what God has promised in the prophets has happened and is happening through Jesus, who is the Messiah and the exalted Lord. So that's what I think Paul does. I don't think he abandons his prior eschatology. He comes to believe that Jesus is the fulfillment of it, correcting certain aspects of what needed to happen in order for that to come about. So I think that's really the wedge issue that that Paul comes to. And it really boils down to Paul really believes Jesus is the Messiah that everybody was waiting for on this.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so let me add what so add one more thing to sort of like complete the picture, though though there are many things, but there's a sense in which if I took a few words out of your answer there, it would sound not like all of Pauline scholarship, but a good chunk of it. But you are very much um tweaking, more than tweaking Pauline scholarship to really emphasize the restoration bit and connecting not only Paul's ministry but his writing in Romans, especially chapters one through three and nine through eleven, to say that scholar readers in general, but scholars in particular, have seriously overlooked Paul's concern, not for Jews, though he has concern for Jews, and not for Gentiles qua Gentiles or Gentiles per se, but rather for, and I'm gonna give you a blank here, but the runway is for the ingathering of a a kind of resurrected Israel from among the nations, and and that he's actually hyper precise about his usage of the term Israel, which he uses sparingly, except when it just like is everywhere in 9 through 11. So add that final bit about how you understand contra much biblical scholarship, how you understand Paul's conception of in relationship to uh restoring Israel via his ministry among the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_05Aaron Powell In other words, where's everybody wrong, Jason? Please sit just tell us the where everybody's wrong part.
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, I think it boils down to we've within scholarship, we've generally presumed that when Paul says Israel, he means the Jews. And the what I'm essentially pointing out in this book is it's not that complicated. It's just not. Once you realize that for Paul, if he's holding to traditional Jewish eschatology in his era, when he hears Israel, he doesn't hear just Jews. When he's looking for the restoration of Israel, he's looking for Nafdali and Dan and Reuben and Gad and Asher and the rest, and not just a few, but but in numbers, that this is that this is the full restoration of these people. Now the real problem for that, and this was a real problem in the first century, and it's a problem that's grappled with in the Mishnah, for example. In the Mishnah, there is there is a there's a discussion between Rabia Akiva and a couple of other rabbis, but uh specifically I think it's Rabbi Joshua. Rabbi Akiva is, of course, you know, one of the luminaries of of that period uh at the end of the uh of the first century. But Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Joshua are having a uh a debate uh about the the outcome for the ten tribes. And Rabbi Akiva says, the ten tribes will not return. And he's got a scriptural argument for that where it says, you know, and so they are beyond the Euphrates to this day. And Rabbi Joshua says, Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. But it says, But I will restore them from the place uh every place where I've scattered them. And you have this discussion going back and forth within the Mishnah, and the Mishnah actually sides with Rabbi Joshua, and it says, uh, you know, Rabbi Akiva, you know, not not it it gives Rabbi Joshua the last word, and the Babylonian Talmud actually comes in and says, you know, Rabbi Akiva, you know, left his uh left his love on this, uh, uh, that he he uh he was just wrong. But the the debate here, the the reason that this is so difficult is that there's another passage in the Mishnah where it points out that uh there's a question about whether or not an Ammonite should be allowed to convert. And one rabbi says one rabbi says yes and another says no. And the the basis for it is well, it says in the it says in the Torah that a that an Ammonite may not enter the assembly to the to the uh to the tenth generation, so he can't come in. And then the other rabbi says, Well, who really is Ammonites and you know everybody else these days since the days of Sennacherib, when Sennacherib came in and mixed up all the peoples? I mean, who how do we know? And so they admitted him to the assembly. They allowed him to convert. That's a really big deal because what that's telling us is within rabbinic literature, they're aware of this problem of and this is also connected in elsewhere in rabbinic literature, in that early rabbinic literature, to the question of, well, what happened to those ten tribes? Uh and you know, in and within that, later in that uh passage, uh he says, you know, Sennacherib came in and mixed them all up, and then he says, Well, yeah, but you know, Israel was a part of them. And it says, Well, yeah, Israel's going to return. Oh, well, okay, then they admit him. So the problem here comes into Reuben, nobody from Reuben has been seen in a whole long time by the time you're getting in the first century. People are going, okay, well, where is Reuben? What about Naphtali? You read the book of the book of Tobit, and Tobit is this kind of meditation of, well, what about what happened to Naphtali? And the answer that you get is that God took them far into the east somewhere, and you have a few faithful people from Naphtali that are waiting the restoration out there somewhere. But you also have this other view that, well, you know, Israel just assimilated. They married into the nations and they are no more, which is seems to be Akiva's position, for example. I think Paul actually comes to agree with Akiva, but then he comes to the opposite conclusion that Akiva comes to. Akiva thinks they are no more. They're dead. They intermarried with the nations, they're gone. Paul says, yes, they're gone and they're dead, but God is God is the one who raises the dead. And God is now going to call these people back by bringing in the nations into which they were assimilated. So now it's like a metal. It's like a it's like a um an alloy where Israel has intermarried among the various nations, but God's promise to Israel still remains, and God has not abandoned his people, even beyond the grave of an ethnic people. They are no longer a separate ethnic group. They are not my people, which is a passage that Paul cites referring to the ingathering of the nations, that they are not my people. But Paul knows full well that the promise of, I will call those not my pe who were not my people my people, was specifically and explicitly given to the northern kingdom of Israel by the prophet Hosea. So Paul agrees, yes, they are no more to this day. Yes, they they they assimilated into the nations and they were mixed up by Sennacherib and after, such that they are there there is no there is no separate people in this way. They're gone. But God's promise to them remains just as strong as it did before. So God is going to restore them from the nations, and there's two different ways that someone could be restored from the nations. You could say, uh, you know, pick uh pick your prize from that basket. That would mean you're picking a prize out of the basket. But you could say, you could also say, pick from those prizes. And now you're picking out one prize from all of those prizes, and the from can be used either way there. And what Paul does is there Israel is being gathered from the nations by gathering people who are Gentiles. And those Gentiles coming in are effectively filling the place of resurrected Israel because Israel assimilated among them, and so now all you have is alloy. And so God is bringing in the alloy to strengthen the people, and now the people are complete. You can't have the salvation of all Israel without the other tribes. This, you know, just the independence of Jews would not be enough. You have to have Jews and then the rest together. And for Paul, that has to happen through the in-gathering of the nations.
SPEAKER_05It's almost like a counter think about the logic of Ezra and Nehemiah and the intermarriages there is the idea of holiness by way of holiness being diluted through intermarriage and so on and so forth. This is almost like a reverse operation of like, okay, well, I'm gonna grab, I'm gonna grab my holy people out, and doing so, I'm gonna grab the Gentiles who have my holy people, and they're just gonna be they're I'm resanctifying them, as it were, uh in batch as a form. So it's like a it's almost a reverse, I can't remember, Nehemiah or Ezra. Okay, we're just gonna grab all the intermarried peoples back in.
unknownYep.
SPEAKER_05Uh kind of opposite.
SPEAKER_02It's an infectious holiness, is what happens. Okay, yes.
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_02So it is infectious holiness. So previously, and you have this discourse within the prophets, you also have it in a lot of later halakha of if you have something that's impure that comes into contact with something that's pure, which what happens? And you have, of course, the prophet, you know, who asks this question, and well, you know, he asks the priests and they say, well, it becomes impure. But there are certain contexts in which contact of something that was not holy with what is what with what is holy actually sanctifies the previously unholy thing. And in Romans 11, Paul goes to two of those exact halakhic rulings, one of which has to do with a batch of dough, right? And if you pull out the sanctified portion that's reserved for the priests and you put that aside, only the priests can eat that. And the rest of the dough is not holy. But if the rest of the dough comes into contact with the part that has been sanctified after it has been set apart, then the sanctified part actually confers infectiously its holiness onto the whole dough, so that now the whole dough has been made into a sacred set apart thing and now it's no longer fit for common use. Now it has to be used for the sanctified purpose that the pinch of dough was taken off for to begin with. So that's one example. Another example would have to do with a tree. If the tree is in uh sacred, is on sacred ground, this is a sacred tree. It's a cultivated tree on sacred ground, the root of the tree on sacred ground makes whatever fruit the tree produces sacred, and it's only fit for consumption by priests or within the temple, et cetera, right? It's a it's a holy, sacred crop. What happens if you pull in branches from other trees and you graft them into that tree? That fruit is from other branches that came from some other tree, but the moment that they're grafted in, and now they're actually getting their sustenance from the root that is in the holy territory, the fruit that they produce is likewise holy because the tree sanctifies the branches, not the branches impurifying or making the tree less sanctified. So Paul makes a sophisticated argument here that what this is really about is exactly what you talked about. It's not that intermarriage in this case works to infect in the reverse direction. It did. It did at one time work that way. When Israel intermarried among the nations, they actually became not my people. But there are, there is a provision and there is a method, there is uh something that is signaled even in the law and how this works, by which God can take what was previously unclean, what was previously unholy, and use his infectious life and his infectious holiness to reverse that process. And that's what Paul argues is happening. And actually, if you read the Gospels, I mean, this is where Matthew Tyson's uh book on uh Jesus and the forces of death is very much about this, that Jesus in the Gospels, specifically, I mean, especially in Mark, is depicted as having infectious life and infectious holiness such that when he touches, it it it reverses the normal process in this. So that, you know, the the what was previously decaying comes to life. And and that's what Paul believes is happening across the entire cosmos now in in in in light of and in consequence of the restoration or of the resurrection, I should say.
SPEAKER_00So it seems to me there are a number of possible candidates. If you were thinking in terms of a restoration of the um people of Israel, you could think of the northern kingdom being represented in several different categories. People who live in the northern regions, the way that um Matthew quotes um Isaiah Isaiah 9 at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, the Galilee Galilee of the Gentiles quote. Then you have people like Anna, who comes from Asher in Luke, another way of seeing the northern tribes represented, those who descend from them who move down to the south. You have people during the reign of Gedaliah as governor of Judah coming down from Samaria and other places to the north to worship, and presumably settling there. Then you can have the sort of assimilated Samaritan peoples who still retain a Jewish a sense of, or not Jewish, an Israelite identity. They still see themselves that way. And then you have the wider identity of the diaspora who live among the nations, who maintain some identity, typically it seems more as Jews than as Israelites.
SPEAKER_02But right. The the people who identify as Israelites in the in the diaspora are almost always uh Samaritans, interestingly.
SPEAKER_00And so you've got a number of these categories. It would seem to me that of those categories it would be the least expected one that Paul would alight upon the the ones that are for all intents and purposes dead as a people. Um can you explain a bit more about how those other categories relate to Paul's restorationist um vision for Israel?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, I think first of all, 100% yes. Um first uh it it should be noted that that Anna being from the tribe of Asher has been something that's been that's drawn attention because it's so strange. We don't see another person from the tribe of Asher in any other Jewish literature for hundreds of years before that. Uh so what we do what we do know of people um uh among Jews of that era from other tribes is really minimal. We we see Levi, Judah, and Benjamin frequently. We really don't see much of any anybody else. We see we we hear about again some people coming in from uh from the tri the Joseph tribes with uh Gedaliah, as you said, uh in the time of Jeremiah. Uh you get a few of these things, you get a few people mentioned from Ephra Ephraim that are uh that return uh with I think it's with uh Sheshbazar and uh and Zerubbabel in that initial return. There's like one family that's mentioned. So it's there are small portions of that. And in as much as they're they're there, those people would obviously be included and be a part of the larger Israel for Paul. Um and I think same with with the with the Samaritans. I don't think it's an accident that in uh that when Jesus, and this is not Paul, but when Jesus is uh depicted in um in Acts, when he gives his instructions to the disciples on what they're supposed to do, they're supposed to wait in Jerusalem, and then they will go, they they will minister in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and then to the ends of the earth. And this is sort of like the the this is like the the concentric circles of of where Israel is located, essentially. That you have, you know, Judea would be then obviously Jews. They're in Judea. And then Samaria, you go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So now we're talking about restoration of Israel stuff because we're incorporating these northerners. But Samaria is already a little tricky because, as you said, there's a little bit of mixture there, especially when you read 2 Kings 17. One of the reasons that some Jews in Jesus' day rejected any sort of Israelite claim of the of the uh Samaritans is that they saw them as having mixed in with the with the other peoples that the Assyrians brought into and resettled the land with. So for them, the again, this is applying the Ezra-Nehemiah kind of pure seed notion. They ain't it. You get, you know, in the Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, there's uh a fragment, 4Q372 fragment one. Uh lovely, the lovely title given to it by its editors is 4Q Narrative and Poetic Construction, or 4Q 4Q Narrative and Poetic Uh uh Composition. Uh so yeah, uh really banner title there. But this whole thing points to the current inhabitants of that northern region as quote unquote fools. So it's you it's actually alluding to the uh the song of Moses there, who will be swept away when the real descendants of of uh of Joseph come in at the restoration when God brings them in from the from the wilderness of the nations where they're where they are now. Once you get to the Samaritans, you're already dealing with this potential assimilation problem. Right? You're dealing with people who have a more obvious claim to Israelite identity, but it can be ruled out by some on by virtue of their assimilation. So they're already pretty pretty far along that, you know, sort of halfway point to full-blown Gentiles in some Jews' mind on that. But for Paul, it it's no doubt that Samaritans would be included in larger Israel there. The real question, though, is what happened, even if you had people from other different tribes and so on, even if all different tribes were represented there, you still have a large portion of Israel that was made into not my people in Hosea. And that promise that those who are not my people will be called my people still has to be activated. That still has to happen. And that's where the to the ends of the earth comes in and acts. That's what Paul thinks is happening with the nations. So you're still, even with all those other pieces, you're still not complete until you get the restoration of not my people from the nations where they were scattered. And Paul comes to believe that this only happens through bringing in of Gentiles who are receiving the Spirit. And I think he sees Gentiles receive the Spirit, and the Spirit is only promised to Israel and Judah. And when you get these uncircumcised men that receive the Spirit, he goes, Oh.
SPEAKER_01So that's what this is.
SPEAKER_02That's what's happening. That's how this is going to happen. And that then expands that that to the to its end in terms of the the concentric circles that include who Israel Israel is. And if you go to the end of Ezekiel, you get the same sort of sort of concentric circles where Israel is given a much broader territory. And then it's said that as for the the Ger, the sojourner, the the um among you who is you know not from Israelite stock, he's gonna be converted, he's gonna be made into an Israelite, and he will inherit alongside the others, and in whichever tribe he settles, he will receive his inheritance and will be will be regarded as a child of that tribe. And this is what I think Paul thinks is happening is that Israel is being that these Galim, these uh these who had previously have been sojourners, by receiving the Spirit, they're being remade into Israelites in this in this fashion.
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SPEAKER_00It seems that the story playing out with all these people being invited to this feast, and then they refuse the invitation, and then their city is destroyed, is the story of Israel refusing Hezekiah's invitation to the Passover. And then you have something like the story of the parable of the Good Samaritan, it's the story of Ahaz and the defeat at the hand of the Northern Kingdom, and then the prophet Oded, and Jesus is presenting this as happening through his ministry, some sort that flickering moment of mercy where the two nations recognize their brotherhood, and there's some sort of restoration in that. And Jesus presenting this as taking place in his ministry in some way. And then, of course, within Luke, as you mentioned, expanding that, Luke seems to have a lot of a role for the Samaritans. That stage in chapter eight that goes before the Gentiles. They're not seen as a crisis in the same way as the conversion of Cornelius. And then you've got other aspects, for instance, in um John, where it seems John uses the word Israel in a slightly different way from the other Gospels, in the same way as he uses Jews in a far more charged way, as many have noted. But Jesus is presented as the King of Israel, not just the King of the Jews. He's presented uh he presents Nathaniel as an Israelite indeed, and you think about Nicodemus as the teacher of Israel, Israel must be born again. Um to what extent do you see these as complementary with Paul? Are they very distinctive voices? How do you see Paul's reading of the Old Testament playing out in other texts as well? Is or is this very much a Pauline phenomenon?
SPEAKER_02So, you know, one of the things that I've actually done, uh, you know, I had applied for a grant uh a couple years ago trying to do a project that would expand this uh this larger project into um do a book that would expand this larger project into the Gospels and beyond uh Gospels and Acts and and also into some early Christian and and other uh later Jewish uh debates about you know Israel and and how this works and all of that. Uh I haven't been able to do that yet, but um I think you've put your finger on exactly the sorts of things that I want to highlight in that I think that the so you know my of course my my uh my PhD advisor, my my doctoral advisor uh was Bart Ehrman. And he's my doctor father. And one of the things that that Bart has sort of made a career uh explaining is that the Bible has all sorts of different voices and that the different gospels have different emphases, and you know, uh that you have very different things happening in each place. So there's some sort of irony in that I actually think that what I've sort of shown in Paul here that in sort of kernel form, this is everywhere in the New Testament. I I think that that this basically working from restoration eschatology. And reasoning to how Israel is being restored or is going to be restored in the Gospels, um, that this is essentially the sort of uh bedrock that earliest Christianity is is working through. I do think that there are some different emphases in exactly how that is worked out in each of those gospels, but I think all of them rhyme in ways that actually it's it's more like a symphony than it is a cacophony. Right? Uh this is the if you get the gospel, if you get the four gospels together in this respect, and this is a place where I think Bart and I disagree, even though I do acknowledge that there are differences, and even places where, you know, I think the the question, for example, of on what day Jesus was crucified in the synoptics verse, and say gospel of Mark versus Gospel of John, sure, there's that seems to be different. But in terms of of how this works, I think if you put the four Gospels together, you get a you get a four-part harmony. You don't get some, you don't get differences in terms of disagreement. You get, you know, that this one's singing this, you know, melody line. I think, you know, kind of Mark sets the melody, and the others sort of harmonize on Mark to try to make sure that people don't misunderstand Mark. Uh and I think all of them are essentially building out this kind of restoration eschatology uh where Jesus has come to fulfill what the prophets promised, to bring about Israel's salvation. And all of them, Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, all of them ultimately open the door for the nations in different ways. I mean, you get to the end of Matthew, which is, you know, most people point to that as the most Jewish of the gospels, and you know, it's don't go to the don't go the the route of the nations, don't go to the Samaritans, and then you get to 28, and what happens? The door is thrown wide open. Go to every nation and disciple them. Wait, what? Where did that come from? And but then when you reread Matthew, you see hints of that throughout that it's setting up what's happening. So I think this is all over the place. And you know, I think Paul Sloan's recent book on uh Jesus and and the and the Mosaic Law is a great example of identifying exactly these sorts of trends within the Gospels that show that this is that this is what these earliest Christians think is happening and did happen and uh and will continue to happen through the Spirit, but happened in Jesus' ministry, you know, was sealed up by the uh by the resurrection and continues to happen. This is what they think is happening.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. So we had Sloan on and big, big fan of that thesis. And I was over what over over the the whole conversation, just like, okay, that rhymes, that fits. The the whole restoration eschatology picture. And then from there, it's like you guys are tracing different lines of what that means. How does how does that how does that how does the law fit into the portrait? How do the nations fit in the portrait? It's very helpful. Brad.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. Some other time, Jason, we'll get you and Paul uh in the ring to talk about uh the continued the the law observant Paul, but not right now.
SPEAKER_02I I I actually agree with him by and large that Paul remains uh at least in Paul's own view, law observant.
SPEAKER_03So that's the question, right? Yeah. Yeah, Paul's own view versus yeah, uh other other understanding, other halakh understandings. But here's my question for you. I mean, I'm wanting I'm wanting listeners to understand the cash value of what uh of your proposal as well as why anybody would disagree. And I'm gonna I'll say a couple things, I'll say a couple things and then try to give you a little bit of not just someone else's pushback, but a little bit of my own, uh, more about the implications than about the substance. So um, as you well know, there was a there was an unhappy review of your book and first things back in September by Gerald McDermott. He he he was not happy. And I had not read I had not yet read the book, but it was so striking his representation because it didn't jibe with what I'd heard and blur and blurbs and whatnot. And and you got to respond to that and kind of set the record straight. But but I want to I want to kind of steel man uh in someone who was theologically concerned with the implications of your proposal. And you are you are trying to read Paul in his context, so even if your reading of him produces something that makes us unhappy, you can be okay with that. But I want to tease out some theological implications. So, for example, you you say that that uh gen according to Paul, Gentiles uh through the gift through through pistis, through through faith or fidelity, um receive the gift of God's spirit, which circumcises the heart, sets them right with God, and they now belong to the assembly of Israel. Therefore, they they have been grafted in or incorporated into God's one people. Um and that they they are children of Abraham, they they belong to Israel, and therefore we even if Paul doesn't call Gentiles Israelites outright, that is a logical implication of his gospel in as outlined in the New Testament, and you don't see any good reason to deny that. Okay, so then let this is where I want to put a push you. So what you say is this is not supersessionism, because God is not swapping out peoples, he's not saying no to Israel or the Jews, uh and then saying yes to a foreign people, Gentiles. What he's doing is expanding Israel and um and this expansion comes through imp the impartial gift of Pistus to Jew and Gentile alike, and those who are faithful, have faith, are faithful and are united to Jesus, the risen Messiah, receive the Spirit, have uh they have circumcised hearts, and they are right with God, and this is Israel. But historically, what that looks, what you can understand, and you do it at the very end, you kind of you gesture in this direction, but for all intents and purposes, I think the the worry is that that practically speaking, you do still in effect get a replacement. You get most uh katasarka, most logical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob not being a part of this people. That people, again, fleshly speaking, being composed uh nearly entirely, not entirely, but nearly entirely, of Gentiles. And you can call that an ethnic transformation through the spirit because of the miracle of God's resurrecting power, restoring, restoring the lost tribes. But it sure sounds and looks like what what a what an in ordinary some sort of uh semantic terms would be a Gentile Israel, uh, in which liter literal or genealogical or fleshly descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not part of this so-called expanded Israel. That's a lot, but that is that is the concern, I think, that you might have practical supersessionism, even if not literal supersessionism. So, what do you make of that? Correct any misrepresentations, but then respond, I think, to the steel the steel man concern there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so first of all, I think that this is uh obviously really, really important when it comes to modern theological questions, right? But I think we I think I want to take a step a couple steps back before we step forward. And first of all, I want to highlight that, like you said, Paul is working within his own first century context in a way that is not concerned with 21 centuries with 20 centuries later in this respect. The arguments that he's making and that the earliest Christians are making in their own day have a specific application that may actually have downstream implications 20 centuries later that that look rather different from the perspective of 20 centuries later. We have to be willing to acknowledge that. Uh and, you know, the second thing is I don't think that the earliest disciples of the of the apostles and the you know second, third, and fourth generation uh believers in Pauline churches, I don't think that they were idiots. And so the fact that you do, and this is just a fact, the fact that you do get a sort of Christian supersessionism a century later, it's really hard to square where that comes from if it's not from something like this. We have to acknowledge where it came from like we have to we have to assess, like, how did you get there? Uh because they're not idiots. So that's th those are those are the first two things. Now then we have to talk about some some theoretical things. So think about empire, the concept of an empire. Rome, for example. Rome in Jesus' day was a city, but it was also the Roman Empire. And initially, to be a citizen of Rome meant that you were born in the city of Rome to someone who is a free person in the city of Rome. And so you became a Roman citizen. And then Rome went out and they conquered a bunch of other people. And over time, what it meant to be a Roman citizen actually expanded because of the expansion of the kingdom, as it were. And Jesus comes proclaiming the empire of God. He comes proclaiming a divine kingdom in which this kingdom is going to go around and be and expand. And then you have a whole host of a whole lot of citizenship talk in Paul's letters, but also in some of the uh the parables and things, of what citizenship looks like in this kingdom.
SPEAKER_01Now, what is God's kingdom if it's not Israel? And if people become citizens of this kingdom, then what are they?
SPEAKER_02I mean, we need to be honest about this question from a from a from a practical standpoint. Secondly, now we can get exegetical about this. I guess this would be thirdly. Now we can get exegetical about this. Paul explicitly calls his Gentile converts. He explicitly calls them children of Abraham. And he also calls them heirs of Abraham. He also explicitly says that only Isaac is actually the heir of the promise to Abraham. So if they're heirs of Abraham, then that must make them children of Isaac, which he also says effectively. He doesn't call them directly children of Isaac, but he says that they're more or less children of Isaac in Romans 4. Now here's the question. Also says that Jacob is the proper heir to Isaac, to Abraham's uh Abraham's promise. The question is, is there anyone, is there anywhere in Paul's letters or anywhere in any other early Jewish material period that would suggest that there are that there can be heirs of Abraham, heirs to Abraham's promise that are outside of Israel?
SPEAKER_01I'm unaware of a single place where that's an option.
SPEAKER_02And Paul himself seems to restrict that promise to Israel, to Jacob. Then the question is, how does one become an heir to that promise if one is from the nations? And that's what Paul's trying to deal with. So exegetically, that's that's one side of things. I I should bring in sort of historically as well the question of you said, you know, the the majority of the descendants of of of the ethnic descendants of Israel would be excluded from this. I'm not sure that's true. I'm not sure that that's true. I I I suspect that the majority of the people who were descended from the Patriarch Israel and the Patriarch Abraham are not Jewish.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's uh let's actually pause there because I want this to be clear for listeners, but I also I in multiple points in the book, you are you are clear, and fit please correct me on this, that your claim is not that for Paul God knows among the nations who is really a descendant of the ten tribes, and those are the ones, because in fact, on your reading of Paul, they have been so-called gentilized and they are dead qua ethnic people, dead qua genealogy, dead qua flesh. And he makes them Israelites, whether or not they could, if we had a DNA test, uh that that that it would go back to Manasseh. Uh exactly. Yeah. And and so I think that's part of I I was kind of like, I I mean, I am maximally sympathetic to this book and to the proposal and the sub proposals. That was the point where it's not that you lost me, but I I understood the theological point, but it it it I I lost a little bit of the oomph because it actually makes it much more mysterious much more mysterious and attractive of sort of God alone knows where the 10 tribes are and God is bringing them back. And it's like, whoa, that kind of blows my mind. But if it's like if it's just a dude who has no connection, then it's like, well, in what sense is that restoring Israel? I don't see that.
SPEAKER_00I recently came across a book in a nearby secondhand bookstore that was arguing that the Icelandic population descends from Benjamin. So there are all these theories about that. Particularly ones that came from the 19th century. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05I mean, Mormonism is fanfiction on this uh this theme at this point too. But but I mean, I want to steal man on this point because that part if we're taking seriously that Israel has been mixed among the nations, you are getting them back, even if they're mixed among the nations. That that point about the batch and the dough and and all that, these things are being sanctified, they're being brought in. And so yeah, you you are getting them back, but you're not getting them back in the form in which you lost them. You're getting them back resurrected, which is resurrection always implies transformation.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but okay, but but help me out here, because like uh like resurrecting my neighbor and not me isn't resurrecting me. Right. And this is where if you convert like if you convert someone from South America who like did not migrate there from the middle from a long, long time ago, right? So if someone who is not genealogically connected to Joseph, but you say, I've resurrected Joseph, that it's not obvious to me how that works.
SPEAKER_02Right. So what what I want to be clear about here is I'm not saying that that this does not have any sort of genealogical component at all that is involved. What I'm saying is that the genealogical component is precisely what throws the door open to the nations as a whole.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02Right. So I'm so and I also don't, I'm not going to preclude the possibility that I mean, actually, if we if we believe that God is is um uh is omniscient, surely God knows every person alive who has some strand of DNA that you know goes back to Abraham or whatever. That said, I mean, what we now know about DNA is that about 20 generations go by and none of the DNA in your body actually traces back to anyone. It's sort of a weird statistical thing. Except Genghis Khan. Yeah, yeah. Tengis Khan was Genghis Khan just he just makes it. He he he he's he was a prolific dude. But um but uh and we're not quite far enough for for that to be the case. But um but here's the thing is even if God does know every individual who in some way has some sort of thing, my argument isn't that that uh that those people wouldn't be included or whatever. My argument is that the theological move that happens and the the the move that that that gets essentially what happens through Jesus and through the resurrection is that because you have that DNA that has been mixed among the nations, that then throws the door open to all from the nations, potentially, so that that genealogical those who are genealogically Israelite from the nations will be included. But it's not what we do not get any hint of from Paul or anybody else is that only people who have that descent would then therefore be included. Instead, the the the the idea, and this is what I tried to get to in the last chapter, the idea is that because those people wound up in the in the various nations, their contact, so you could put it this way their contact with the nations made them not my people, but at the resurrection, that effectively makes the nations what that they've come into contact with God's nations.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So they transformed the people that they were in by contact. And now they become the prop the property and purview of the God of Israel by the fact that they're in that nation. And so essentially, now that they're in that nation, everybody in that nation is now right, yeah.
SPEAKER_03And those and the gods of those nations are now some god of Israel. Right.
SPEAKER_02They're dethroned. And so that's what happens. Now I want to go a couple quick things uh in addition to this. And that's to the that's to the uh to the parables. So this is where when Jesus tells the parable of the prodigal son, it's not coincidental that there's two sons, one of which goes out and is with the pigs. He's with the nations. He and then when his when he returns, his brother's like, uh-uh, no, he's not one of us. But he's received. And he's received not as a servant, but as a son. And so this is what's happening. You know, the the the I I get the the the angst about like, well, wait, that then this makes Israel into something else. But that's precisely the sort of thing that that the that the parables deal with in the prodigal son, in the story of the of the of the workers who are hired, the people who are hired at the end, they're given the same the same thing. Like, well, what we've been at this the whole time. Yeah, and you know what? They're included fully. So once we have that, yeah, it it does start to, once you get 20 centuries removed, start to look like, well, you know, those who are not in Christ are in some sense on the outside, but those who are in Christ are on the inside without respect to genealogy. But the one place that I think Paul addresses that is that he says that those who are born Jewish, essentially, or who are born Israelite, actually to use his words, so unbelieving Jews continue to be born elect. That doesn't change. They're elect by nature. Those who are of Israelite stock are elect by nature still. The question then, though, of election doesn't solve the problem of whether or not of their of their ultimate uh fate. The question is what will they then do as elect, which is all the question for all of us. And so, you know, I think we have to grapple with the with the implications of this, but I think we need to be faithful exegetes first and then grapple with the with the with the potential outcomes or implications of it second. And, you know, I think we have to recognize that the continued election remains a thing. And we also have to recognize that election brings responsibility and brings and and depends on what how your election works out depends on what you do. The idea that some people who are who are from Israel get cut off and wind up on the outside is by no means unique to Paul or foreign to Judaism itself. This is this is everywhere in the prophets. It's everywhere in in the biblical material. And we just have to reconcile that and come to grips with what that means, even if it's something that maybe not I not exactly what we want to say or hear at the moment.
SPEAKER_00We could maybe see this played out in miniature within Israel's history, where a tribe is cut off. Um the Levites are cut off from the land, they don't have an Inheritance. They're scattered among the people. But they are the people that actually lead everyone into the center and also bring the life of the covenant out to everyone else. And then the whole nation is Levitized through the events of exile. They suffer a curse, but they also bring that same dynamic to the nations. And the church being based in many ways upon the reality of the diaspora, the scattered nation, extends that dynamic further.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and we also have to acknowledge when when we're talking about church, the word church is from ecclesia. And why did they choose the word ecclesia to describe what was happening? And it's because it's the word that's used for the whole assembly of Israel in the wilderness, for the whole assembly of all twelve tribes gathered together. This is the eschatological assembly. You know, the the thing is, yeah, 20 centuries later church has come to mean, you know, almost always Gentiles of various sorts. That's not how they understood this language when they were talking about church. They were not thinking of this as something separate from Israel. The assembly was the assembly of Israel. It's the assembly of the people of God. Yeah. James 1. So we have to be, we have to be willing to, again, be honest exegetes.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and I I know you're not we're not supposed to do this as, you know, good critical, et cetera, et cetera, but I'm a fundy Presbyterian. In just, hey, you were at you were at one time separated, cleaned from the Commonwealth of Israel, and strangers of the covenant's promise, having no hope without God will the world. But now in Christ, you were brought from far off and you were brought near. So previously you were outside of Israel, previously you were strangers, now you are not outside, now you are not strangers, and now all the stuff that used to mark out the people of God, uh, except for the stuff that divided you, um, which has been brought to nothing in Christ, it's it's game on. And so I think people are no citizens of that. You're citizens. You're citizens of what? Which common Oh, Israel. I you know, I Israel is, for me, has always been Jew and Gentile, or in your in your dichotomy, um, you know, uh Israelitized Gentiles, uh, as it were, like, you know, new, newly, newly made Israelites, as it were, in Christ. But I I just don't I don't see a way around that in Ephesians 2, something very much like that in Ephesians 2. Um, so I don't know, that's just me agreeing, but how does Ephesians 2 play into it? Is it just like a nice footnote saying, hey, by the way, uh Paul or a first century reader of Paul agrees with me?
SPEAKER_03Or like as Chesterton would say, Paul or someone else exactly like him, also named Paul.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. That would be basically how I think of Ephesians is that this is either Paul or someone essentially so close to Paul as to be indistinguishable from Paul says exactly this.
SPEAKER_05Answerable to a description, answerable to a mugshot description of Paul.
SPEAKER_03Numerically identical with the man Paul, but maybe not Paul.
SPEAKER_05Uh to steal to steel, man, one question though from another friend. Um what do you what do you make of the idea of uh losing the nations as nations? So for instance, like Romans 15 and and like the nations witnessing um if the nations become Israel, are they still the nations? And is it God kind of manifesting himself before the nation? Like so the eschatological vindication of God's name in front of the nations as the nations, but is his name vindicated before them um as as nations if they are now Israel, right? Does that does that shift? Um or is it like, hey, it's vindicated the nations. When you stay a nation, it's being vindicated and that you're seeing the judgment of God and you're like gog and magog, and you're just, you know, in in the sense that you're cooked and now you have to acknowledge God's holiness. Um I spent a lot of time on 38 and 39 in my dissertation. So I actually I'm okay if that's like a a thing, but but I'm I'm curious how you read that problem.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I've wrestled with this a lot uh because I think this is one of the more challenging things to to address here. Uh first of all, I think the the most obvious thing is that not everyone be not everyone from the nations becomes a spirit-filled follower of Jesus. So you s it's not like this eliminates the nations out there. The nations are still there. They're still people from the nations. So um so that's number one. Uh number two is I think again, thinking about the the mechanics of of empire is helpful here. When an empire takes a new state and those people eventually become citizens of that empire, they don't exactly cease to be people from that state, right? So, you know, you you might have Paul, for example, who is a Roman citizen. Does that make him less of a Benjaminite or a Jew? No, he's still that, but he is that from a Roman perspective, that's secondary. For Paul's perspective, the Roman thing is ancillary, it's secondary, right? The the identification of becoming a part of Israel, that supersedes every other every other citizenship, but that doesn't eliminate every other citizenship. I mean, think about it this way. I'm a Christian, but I'm also an I'm also a U.S. citizen. Being a Christian doesn't eliminate my U.S. citizenship, though, I mean, who who knows, in a generation from now or whatever, it might. I don't know. But I am both a Christian, I am therefore a citizen of the uh commonwealth that's res that's discussed in in Ephesians, but I'm likewise a citizen of another nation. I don't think that disappears for Paul. Right? I don't think that people who are who are Jewish uh followers of Jesus stop being Jewish. And I think for Paul, people who who stop being Jewish because they follow Jesus, I think for Paul, I think that that's something he would what are you doing? No, no, no, no, no, no. You know, let each one remain in the in the in in the way that he was when he was called. Right? So I I don't see that as as how he understands this. So so that's the second thing. And then the third thing is that I think when we when and and I'm gonna do the I know we're not supposed to do this move, but let's go to Matthew. In Matthew 25, 32 and following, you have this parable of the of the sheep and the goats. Right? And the uh the Son of Man comes and all his holy angels are with him, and then they will separate the nations as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. Now, the Son of Man and all the brothers with him judge the nations. The nations are separate from the brothers. And these nations don't recognize Jesus. They don't know who he is. When he judges them, they say, Who are you, Lord? When when were you hungry? When when when were you thirsty? I we didn't we we don't know who you are. And he says, Well, as much as you've done it to these, at least to these my brothers, you've done it to me, and the brothers are separate from them. So we see that that there's an expansive, what appears to be an expansive salvation that goes even beyond the citizenship within Israel that's happening through the the in the the spirit in in Paul's own ministry. And this is you know Jesus' own words. And I think we have to again recognize uh the the larger implications of that, that this is still salvation through Jesus, but it looks different. Yeah. In some ways. So that the nations don't disappear, but people from the nations becoming Israelite citizens is first of all, they don't stop being from those nations, even though they're Israelite citizens. And then secondly, the Israel, the non-Israelite citizens among the nations haven't gone anywhere in the process, and many of them might actually still wind up being judged as sheep. Right. So we have to be good exegetes here and put all this together.
SPEAKER_03You know, Jason, you made me, I'll I'll kick it to Derek because I think he has to close this off. But you you brought home to me by the end of the book the significance of Paul, aka Saul, a Benjaminite, and Barnabas, aka Joseph, a Levite, uh being the two principal um apostle missionary evangelists to the nations, that you have two non-Judahites from Levi and Benjamin being the ones who take this gospel um uh to across the Roman Empire. But Derek, Derek, take us, take us out.
SPEAKER_02Uh I'm I've got to add one more thing to that. When Paul refers to his former way of life in Judaismos, that's really controversial of what he means by my former way of life in Judaism. I I actually suspect that part of what he's talking about there is a sort of Judah-only kind of uh approach to things. Interesting. And so when he leaves with Barnabas to go to the nations in this way, this is no longer Judah only. He's going beyond Judaismos in a way that actually expand that he's going to to the larger Israel beyond this his prior way of life in Judaismos, in the Judah-centered aspect of this. Very interesting. And you can put that together with the with the Barnabas and and Saul thing as well. So, I mean, uh there's just so many layers here, and I think my book has only just barely scratched the surface of this, and I'm still honestly working out what the what the ultimate implications of this would be for the present and and beyond and you know, all sorts of other things within within scripture. But I didn't intend this book to be the end, the end word. I wanted this to be the beginning of a conversation, and I think a lot of people will be able to take this further than I have.
SPEAKER_05Jason, I can feel how many books are still there, and I really hope you get that grant to uh work out more. Um, having this conversation with you is very similar to a conversation with uh Paul Sloan. There's just so many avenues pulling on these threads, and so really grateful for you to join us. If you have been listening so far, honestly, just pick it up. Paul and the Resurrection of Israel, Jews, former Gentiles, Israelites. It's been uh a heck of a conversation, really stimulating work. Thank you for joining us. If you are still listening, also feel free to rate and review us on iTunes, sign up for the Patreon account, get the word out if you found this at all valuable. But for now, this has been Mere Fidelity.