Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FROM THE GOSPELS TO JESUS §9.5
gations specified by the Torah for Israel as fully as possible which resulted in
what was in effect a competitive dispute as to what that meant in practice (cf. not
least Gal. 1.14). All would have agreed that they ought to live according to the
principles of 'covenantal nomism', 159 but each group's claim that it (alone) was
so living carried with it the effective denial that others were doing so. In these
disputes circumcision played no role, since they were all disputes within Judaism;
circumcision came into play as a boundary marker between Jew and Gentile,
as the early Christian mission to Gentiles reminds us. But it is clear that
other issues of calculating feast days and the right maintenance of purity (including
Temple purity), food laws, and Sabbath were usually the flash points and
make-or-break issues on which differences and divisions turned. 160 Here again
we should recall the seriousness of these disputes as indicated by frequent use of
the abusive epithet 'sinners' (§9.4), for a sinner was defined precisely as one who
broke or disregarded the regulations of Torah. In such polemic the need for a
group to find in the Torah its own self-affirmation had the inevitable corollary of
making the Torah an instrument by means of which one group condemned another.
On this point too it may be important to reflect further on the distinction
between Judaism and Israel. For it could be argued that it was an overemphasis
on the Torah, and on such distinctives as circumcision and food laws, which gave
the term 'Judaism' its national and anti-Gentile character. It was the Torah seen
and emphasized in its function of separating Israel from the other nations which,
we might even say, transformed Israel into Judaism. Not the Torah as such, but
the Torah understood to define the Jew by his difference from the Gentile.
Whether this was a factor within Jesus' mission is quite unclear, but it certainly
became a factor in Paul's reconfiguration of his faith in the light of his conversion
and sense of call to apostolic mission. Here again, a proper setting of the historical
context, both for Jesus and for embryonic Christianity, will surely help us
to a better grasp of how and why Jesus was remembered as he was and how and
why Christianity developed as it did.
159. The term coined by Sanders and used by him to denote the obedience to the law
which was generally understood to be the appropriate (and necessary) response to the grace of
God given in the covenant (Judaism 262-78). 'Covenantal nomism' is Sanders's alternative to
(rejection of) the older view of Jewish 'legalism' prevalent up to the 1970s in NT scholarship,
and although some important qualification is required (see particularly F. Avemarie, Torah und
Leben: Untersuchungen zur Heilsbedeutung der Tora in der frühen rabbinischer Literatur
[Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996]), the basic balance which the phrase achieves between
covenant-grace and law-requiring-obedience is still sound. See further below, vol. 2.
160. E.g., 1 En. 82.4-7; 1QS 10.1-8; 4QpHos 2.14-17; Pss. Sol. 8.12, 22; T Mos. 7.10;
1 Mace. 1.62-63; Gal. 2.11-14; Jub. 50.6-13; CD 10-11; Mark 2.23-3.5.
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