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Paulus und Die Heilsgeschichte. By Munck Johannes. Acta Jutlandica, Publications of the University of Aarhus, xxvi, i. Teologisk Serie 6. Copenhagen, 1954. 342 pp. 28,00 Kroner.
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page 60 note 1 (1950), pp. 26ff.
page 60 note 2 New series, vol. II (1951), pp. 316.
page 60 note 3 Lake's assumption that the accounts in Acts cannot be reconciled with that in Galatians arises from a too literal exegesis, because there need be no fundamental inconsistency between Paul's insistence on the purely divine origin of his call and the existence of a human intermediary at that call in the form of Ananias. The accounts of the conversion prevalent at Jerusalem or elsewhere did not conflict with that of Paul himself in Galatians. Nor was the latter aimed at the former. Thus it is unthinkable that the story of Ananias should not have been known at Galatia, and if the account in Galatians was aimed, as Lake held, at refuting the tradition at Jerusalem, it is strange that the mediation of Ananias which was part of the Jerusalem tradition should find no echo in Galatians. It is equally strange that, if the three accounts in Acts are from different localized traditions, with peculiar emphases, there should be no greater variation among them in essentials. Moreover, two of the three accounts in Acts occur in speeches and would, therefore, naturally be coloured by the character of the audiences to which they were addressed. (Thus, for example, Munck would explain the Jewish tone of Acts xxii as due to the fact that the audience addressed was Jewish.) On all these grounds Munck refuses to regard the accounts as variously derived.
page 60 note 4 The points at which Paul differs from the O.T. figures are two. First, Paul's call came to him not merely when he was unprepared for it, as was Amos, for example, for his, but when he was in fierce opposition to the people of God. Secondly, Paul is of greater eschatological significance than they, because his lot was cast in the New Age and his call directed not only to Israel but to the nations. Fr Paulus ist seine eigene Zeit and daher auch seine eigene Aufgabe von grsserer Bedeutung als diese Gestalten des alten Bundes. Er hat sie namlich als den alten Bund in Lichte von Christus and seiner Kirche gesehen, weil es jetzt die Zeit der Erfllung ist (p. 50).
page 61 note 1 Here Munck follows O. Cullmann in Revue d'histoire et de philosophie religieuses (1936), PP. 21045.
page 61 note 2 The significance here ascribed to the preaching of the Gospel is consonant, so Munck urges, with the eschatological traditions of Judaism and with what appears elsewhere in the N.T.
page 61 note 3 While there have been others engaged in preaching to the Gentiles, it is Paul who is their true priest destined to bring in the fullness of the Gentiles. But this ministry to the Gentiles is also directly related to the fate of Israel. The fact that the Gentiles through Paul's work have come to inherit the promises made to Israel provokes the old Israel to jealousy and thus allboth Jews and Gentilesthrough Paul's work at last enter into salvation.
page 61 note 4 His work in the East was now complete, not in the sense that every individual in the East had been converted, nor that the great cities of the East had become centres of evangelism for surrounding areas, but in the sense that all the peoples of the East through some of their number had been con-fronted with the Gospel and had accepted it. Thus through representative salvation' the whole of the East from Jerusalem to Illyria had been saved' and hence Paul is free to turn West.
page 61 note 5 But there are other polemic passages which point to the same thing. In II Cor. iii. 718 the implication is that Paul is a figure of greater significance than Moses. Der Grsste in Israels Geschichte ist unter den herumreisenden Zeltmacher gestellt' (p. 53) In the Christian Dispensation, in Gal. ii. 78, he compares himself to the great Peter. Peter is a pillar not the Rock of the Church and Paul finds his apostleship to the Jews comparable withnot greater thanhis own to the Gentiles. In addition Munck refers to Acts xi. 313; xx. 1738; I Tim.; II Tim.; the understanding of Paul which we find in the later Church goes back to Paul himself.
page 62 note 1 Namely: (I) That the antithesis between particularism and universalism is a modern one which should not be read back into the first century (the antithesis itself Munck claims is a product of Tbingen). Neither Paul norJesus was a universalist in the modern sense. (2) That it was incredible, as Baur held, that the disciples almost completely forgot the message of their Lord. (3) That the Tbingen position leaves inexplicable the mildness with which Jewish Christianity recognized Paul's Gentile mission.
page 62 note 2 Because his criticisms of Acts are too rigid and do not sufficiently recognize that Acts does provide secondary material which re-endorses that of the Pauline Epistles. See John Knox, Chapters in a Life of Paul (1950).
page 62 note 3 The seriousness of this is that Baur had made the presence of polemic one of the tests of the genuineness of the Epistles and under his influence the opponents of Paul, as stated, were lumped together as Judaizers related to the Jerusalem Church. Non-polemic sections of the Epistles were reduced to insignificancebut this together with the primacy given to Acts meant that secondary sources and polemics determined the interpretation of Paul.
page 62 note 4 See Moule, C. F. D., An Idiom Book of New Testament Greek (Cambridge, 1953), p. 107, who takes Gal. vi. 13 to mean for not even the very ones who get circumcized keep the law.Google Scholar
page 63 note 1 Form the point of view indicated Munck holds the following interpretations of passages in Galatians: (I) Gal. ii. if. is usually interpreted in the light of Acts xv: behind the visit lies Paul's attempt to seek an agreement on circumcision with the Jerusalem Church. But this, Munck urges, cannot be the case: for Paul to admit even by implication, in referring to his Jerusalem visits, that he had sought an agreement with the Church there would be to stultify his own position. The need to show independence of Jerusalem also lies behind the necessity of showing how Peter bent before Paul. To attempt to interpret Gal. ii. I f. in terms of Acts xv is merely perverse. Gal. ii. I f. is not an objective historical statement but a polemic. (2) H. 45, the case of Titus, refers to the fact that Titus was not circumcized, but this has no reference to the presence of Judaizers in the Council of Jerusalem, but to Judaizers whom Paul confronted in his Churches. ii. 45 do not clarify ii. 3 (so Lietzmann) but are a kind of asidea side-glance by Paul towards the Churches. (3) The phrase 
is usually taken to refer to the fact that the apostles concerned had once been companions of Christ and were, therefore, superior to Paul who had not been such: Paul's reference to them is polemic, he insists that his ministry is equal to theirs. This polemic intention Munck denies. He refers the 
to lapses in the lives of the pillars'such as they had in common with Paul, the arch-persecutor! (4) These apostles had added nothing to Paul: this refers notas is usually heldto rules such as those mentioned in Acts xv as those claim who argue that Acts xv, Gal. ii. If. do not refer to the same events: it refers to the fact that the Jerusalem Church had made no demands such as Paul's opponents thought they must have made. They claimed that Paul, in reliance on Jerusalem, had at first preached a gospel which demanded circumcision and the Law but that later in order to please men Paul had left these demands out of his preaching. (5) The conflict between Peter and Paul at Antioch did not occur after the agreement reached between Paul and the Jerusalem Church. This would imply that the agreement between Paul and Jerusalem was short-lived and would play into the hands of Paul's opponents who claimed that he was only in superficial agreement with Jerusalem. Instead, by insisting on the significance of the change of sequence from 
in i. 15 to 
in i. 18, i. 20 and back again to in ii. I Munck urges that ii. I I f. does not indicate a chronological sequence but merely a most striking proof of Paul's independence of Jerusalem. The question as to when ii. I I f. happened remains open. (6) The phrase 
Munck explains to refer to Jewish Christians from Jerusalem who had no specific connexion with James at all. (7) The phrase 
(ii. 2) does not mean that Paul (a) had to go up to Jerusalem to have his Gospel recognized, or (b) that Paul could not afford to allow emissaries from Jerusalem to enter his churches to ravage themthese are the customary views. The concept of emissaries sent out from Jerusalem is unhistorical: the idea first emerges in Acts where Jerusalem is given a central place. There is nothing really corresponding to these emissaries in history and even in Acts it is only Peter, John, Barnabas, Silas, Judas who are official emissaries. As a matter of history the Jerusalem Church, Munck urges, did not exercise control over the Gentile Churches. There are no emissaries mentioned in I, II Corinthians and Romans. The conflict between Peter and Paul in Antioch occurred before Acts xv and there is nothing in Acts to suggest that Peter at Antioch was on an inspection. And those from James are not a party of inspection. Again the phrase 
does not refer to Jewish Christians but to Jews. The phrase 
then has reference to eschatology. Paul had to know what position the Jerusalem Church took on the Gentile mission. It regarded this as secondary: it was not concerned to interfere with Paul's work. But Paul could not well continue his Heidenmission without being sure that the mission to Israel was also being adequately taken care of. (8) What was the nature of the agreement between Paul and the pillars? Paul speaks of them in a friendly fashion: the expression in I Thess.ii 14 that the faws were hindering the preaching of the Gospel to all creatures would be very strange if Jewish Christians were doing the same thing; Paul speaks of the attitude of the Jewish-Christian pillars as friendly to his work. I Thess. ii. 14 seems to suggest good relations between Paul and the Jewish-Christian Churches of Palestine. This is also suggested by the collection for the Jerusalem Church and by the friendly relations between Paul and Peter everywhere in I Cor. xv. 5; i. 12; iii. 22. I Cor. ix. 5 is not polemic against Jewish leaders of the Church. (9) The character of James as a rabid Jewish-Christiansuch as Pauline research usually gives usis unhistorical. Josephus does not support this picture: it is wholly derived from Hegesippus who has been accepted because his picture of James coincides with what the Tbingen School desired. The missionary position of James is clear. The Gentiles are not to be regarded as outside the pale but their conversion is to follow that of Israel. Nor is it correct to regard Peter as the compromising figure we usually think of: he is on the same side as Paul in essentials. The point at which Peter and Paul differed is clear. Peter took the stand-point of the Jerusalem Churchwhen Israel were won the Gentiles would be won. So for Peter the conversion and baptism of the Gentile Cornelius was an exception. Paul on the other hand held the view that the conversion of the Gentiles would lead to the conversion of Israel. So the visit of Paul to Jerusalem in Gal. ii. I f. was concerned not with the Gentile problem at all but with the problem of Israel. As stated above, Paul could not lightly turn to the Gentiles unless he was certain that someone was caring for the Jews. The problem at Antioch between Paul and Peter as at Jerusalem was not over Law and Circumcision but over meals.It was Gentile Christians who introduced these problems. These, however, were not only opposed to Paul but also to Jewish Christianity and to the oldest apostles at Jerusalem. Paul and Jerusalem are at one. There was no school at Jerusalem behind the Judaizers. At many points in Munck's work we are reminded of J. H. Ropes, The Singular Problem of the Epistle to the Galatians (1929).
page 64 note 1 Behind I Cor. xi. 19 lies according to Munck a Jesuswort such as is cited by Resch, Agrapha (1906), from Justin, Dialogue 35, 3, with which compare Matt. xxiv. 10, Acts xx. 30, II Pet. ii. I (in Gal. v. 1921 
is a work of the flesh), i.e. in I Cor. xi. 19 the reference is eschatological as is shown in the phrase 
. The 
in the Corinthian Church are part of the pangs of the Messiah which Paul already finds to be breaking out.
page 64 note 2 In I Cor. xi. 18 this is the case, so Munck, and in I Cor. xii. 25 the reference is too general to this to apply it in detail to parties and this is true of I Cor. i. 10.
page 64 note 3 The claim that there is a Christ-party referred to in I Cor. x. 7 is rejected by Munck.
page 65 note 1 Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, vol. xxxi, (1948), pp. 22440.
page 65 note 2 Pentecost was a sign to Israel as such that Jerusalem with its Temple was the centre for all Jews. That the disciples became missionaries to the Gentiles is a figment of the later Gentile Church.
page 66 note 1 Persecution was widespread and confined not merely to radicals like Paul and Stephen.
page 66 note 2 There is nothing that Stephen utters that cannot be traced back to Jesus himself and in Luke's account there is no reference to a difference between Stephen, Jesus and the primitive community. The clinging of the disciples to the Temple does not mean that they held a purely Jewish point of view, neither do the Greek names of the Seven signify that they were Greeks.
page 66 note 3 Professor Munck points out that Acts xv assumes the division of missionary labour mentioned in Gal.ii.79.
page 66 note 4 This is peculiar because seldom does Acts refer to the Pharisees at all.
page 66 note 5 Peter is not here speaking as a Paulinist: he is merely expressing the point of view of the Urgemeinde.
page 66 note 6 Here James, the brother of the Lord, is optimistic about the reception of the Gospel by Jews. Contrast the facts as Paul gives them in Rom. ix-xi.
page 66 note 7 Luke's concentration on the significance of the city centres in the period may be responsible for leading him to connect Judaizers with Jerusalem even though they actually belonged to the Pauline mission field. For example, the scenes in Gal. ii. I-Iof. may have given rise to the description of the Council in Acts xv.
page 66 note 8 Professor Munck argues that we cannot ascribe the kind of duplicity which the text as it stands demands of him to James, the brother of the Lord, in which he shows one attitude to Paul and another to the Urgemeinde. Wendt's interpretation of k8 of 
in xxi. 17 as friends or relatives of Paul is untenable, because it is a stock term in Acts for Christiansfor the community or communities. To support his emendation Munck urges: (i) that there were not in the whole of Palestine myriads of Jews; (2) a reference to danger from members of the Urgemeinde makes no sense: Jews fit the con-text better; (3) xxi. 22 is unintelligible if the reference is to Jewish-Christians whom Paul was visiting and who would therefore know of his visit; (4) the complaints made against Paul are such as Jews would make: compare the case of Stephen.
page 66 note 9 They occur only in contexts where Paul and Stephen are attacked. The silence may be due either to the fact that they were assumed to be binding on the Urgemeinde or again that they were not deemed to have independent significance for the life of the Church.
page 67 note 1 The silence of Acts on Judaizers is not due to its desire to defend Paul or to its calculated diminution of the contrast between Jewish and Gentile Christianity as the Tbingen School held. Luke is true to history: the Urgemeinde was not Jewish Christian. The introduction of Judaizers in Acts xv. I, 5 is due to the transference to the first-century Church of an attitude that belonged to the second.
page 67 note 2 At this point Professor Munck insists that it is erroneous to think of Judaism in the first century as showing missionary zeal. But he ignores the recent work of Braude and Bamberger in this field.
page 67 note 3 See pp. 266ff.
page 69 note 1 Dibelius-Kummel, Paul (Eng. trans.; Philadelphia, 1953), pp. 129ff., 9ff.
page 69 note 2 See, for example, St Paul in Ephesus: The Problem of the Epistle to the Galatians, in The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, vol. xxiv, no. 1, April 1940.
page 69 note 3 See, for example, Ropes, J. H., The Singular Problem of the Epistle to the Galatians (1929); W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism (1948), p. 50.Google Scholar
page 69 note 4 Bulletin III (Oxford, 1952), pp. 18ff., The Gentile World in the Thought of Jesus.
page 69 note 5 See Moule, op. cit.
page 70 note 1 On this see T. W. Manson, op. cit.
page 70 note 2 See Dupont, J., Gnosis (1949), pp. 258ff, 266ff.Google Scholar
page 70 note 3 See The Beginnings of Christianity, ed. Foakes Jackson and Kirsopp Lake, vol. v, pp. iii ff.
page 70 note 4 The Birth of Christianity (Eng. trans.; New York, 1954), p. 91, n. i.
page 70 note 5 The Epistle to the Hebrews (1950), pp. 25 ff.
page 70 note 6 Aufstze. Zur Apostelgeschichte (Berlin, 1953), pp. 175ff., Paulus in der Apostelgeschichte.
page 71 note 1 See Schoeps, H. J., Theologie and Ceschichte des fudenchristentums (Tbingen, 1949), who tends to go to the opposite extreme of equating Jewish-Christianity with that of the Urgemeinde.Google Scholar
page 71 note 2 In The joy of Study, ed. Johnson, S. E. (New York, 1951), Oaerconcersion in Paul's Churches, pp. 43ff.Google Scholar
page 71 note 3 The History of Dogma (Eng. trans.), vol. 1, pp. 290f.
page 72 note 1 See Dodd, C. H., The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, vol. xvii (1933); vol. xviii, (1934).Google Scholar
page 72 note 2 Das Ende des Gesetzes (1952), pp. 157ff. For the geographic as well as theological determination of Acts, see New Testament Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, Sept. 1954, P. H. Menoud on Le plan des Actes des Aptres, pp. 44ff.
page 72 note 3 Dibelius, op. cit. p. 177.
page 72 note 4 See especially Robinson, J. A. T., The Body (1952), p. 58. Cf. Dibelius-Kmmel, Paul, p. 56.Google Scholar
page 72 note 5 In no case does Paul refer to himself as 
(except in the phrase in I Cor. xv. 9: ὼ 
). Mosbech, Studia Theologica (Lund, 1950), vol. ii, Fasc. ii, p. 195 on Apostolos in the New Testament, has claimed that it was the Judaizing controversy that made it necessary for Paul to insist on his own apostolic status. Before this controversy he merely refers to himself as Paul, but in all the Epistles from the time of the controversies with the Judaizers (and in the Epistle to the Colossians) he has called himself... with small variations Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ.