The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

380 The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context
righteousness before God, is not really present within the section',
since SiKaiov^ievoi is 'broader than this, being completely dominated
in context by the ideas of eschatology and salvation'. 5
Campbell is aware that he is joining the company of Adolf
Deissmann and Albert Schweitzer in arguing as he does, as well as
Krister Stendahl, Nils Dahl and E.P. Sanders. 6 Each of these scholars
characterized the principal argument, within which justification
appears as corollary, in a distinctive manner. Campbell argues, as may
be seen in his paraphrase of the passage, for 'an eschatological dimension
within God's righteousness—and this seems particularly evocative
of the righteousness language of Isaiah'. 7 In the reading he defends,
Campbell joins a consensus of critics in positing an almost exclusive
focus on the ethics of ultimate salvation within Paul's position: 8
Thus the rightwizing of the believer is the completion of the revelation of
God's righteousness in Christ. God reveals his salvation in order that he
might actually save—and such a statement seems a fitting finale to the
passage.
The language of 'rightwizing' here is not incidental; it is an example
of jargon manifesting an author's ideology. For Campbell, the Pauline
Christ is the power of Isaiah's righteousness, the engine of an ethical
orientation no longer dominated by 'works of the law'.
Scholars of the historical Jesus are routinely warned of casting their
subject into their own image, but it may be that Paulinists are even
more prone to that failing. In this instance, there is an indication of a
procedural failing when Campbell observes that the language of
justification is shared with Paul's 'Jewish precursors', 9 but does not
explore what those 'precursors' said. The work cites Quintilian, Cicero,
the author of the Rhetorica ad Herrennium, Demetrius, Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, Aristotle, Pseudo-Aristotle, Plato, Longinus, Tacitus,
Hermogenes, and Philodemus, 10 in order to explicate Paul's syntax,
but contents itself with general speculations, together with, at most, a
5. Campbell, Rhetoric, p. 202.
6. Cf. Campbell, Rhetoric, pp. 142-43.
7. Cf. Campbell, Rhetoric, p. 159, citing Isa. 5.16; 9.7; 11.5; 16.5; 29.9;
32.16,17; 33.5,6; 41.2; 42.6,7; 45.8,13,24; 46.12,13; 51.5,6,8; 56.1; 59.11,14,17;
61.10,11; 62.1,2; 63.1.
8. Campbell, Rhetoric, p. 170, here commenting particularly on the end of v. 26.
9. Cf. Campbell, Rhetoric, p. 144.
10. Cf. Campbell, Rhetoric, pp. 77-79.