Reconstructing Jewish Theology
The Coming Judgement
Verse 1-5
God’s patience with sin must not be taken as a sign that he is weak228 or that he will withhold his judgment forever.
Far from teaching a system of salvation by works, the statement of v. 7, rightly understood, teaches the opposite. “The reward of eternal life … is promised to those who do not regard their good works as an end in themselves, but see them as marks not of human achievement but of hope in God. Their trust is not in their good works, but in God, the only source of glory, honour, and incorruption” (Barrett, in loc.). Paul is simply portraying the motivation and the tenor of the life that will culminate in eternal fellowship with God.
Judgement and the Law
God’s impartiality demands that he treat all people the same, judging every person according to what they have done (vv. 6–11). In response, Jews may object that they possess, in the Mosaic law, a distinct advantage over the Gentiles. So, in the second place, Paul shows that possession of the Mosaic law will make no difference in this judgment (v. 12)—for (1) it is not the possession but the doing of the law that matters (v. 13); and (2) the Gentiles also have “law” in some sense (vv. 14–16).
When the Christians taught that God would judge through Jesus the Messiah, they were introducing a new teaching (cf. John 5:22).102 In one sense it mitigates the judgment. Our Judge will be the one who died for us, so we could not look for anyone more predisposed in our favor. All that can be done for sinners he will certainly do. But this adds a note of solemnity to the judgment. Since he has done so much for us, we cannot expect to get by with a shabby attainment, a half-hearted attitude to the duties we have shirked.
Jews are Under the Law
The name “Jew,” which originally referred to a person from the region occupied by the descendants of Judah, was applied to Israelite people generally after the Exile, when the territory occupied by the Jews encompassed not much more than the original Judah. By Paul’s day, “Jew” had become a common designation of anyone who belonged to the people of Israel. It suggests the special status enjoyed by the people of Israel, in distinction from all other peoples (see 1:16; 2:9, 10).362 “To be named a Jew,”363 then, refers to the status shared by anyone who belonged to the covenant people.
The Jews, however far short of their responsibility to enlighten the Gentile world they may have fallen, continued to boast in these mandates as a means of highlighting their importance and the value of their law in the eyes of a skeptical and sometimes hostile Gentile world.
It was the pride of the Jew that in the law he had the very embodiment of fundamental knowledge and truth (Phillips, “the basis of true knowledge”). The Jew saw himself not as having produced yet another form of knowledge and truth which might compete with the various philosophies of the day. He saw himself as standing before the world holding in the book of the law that truth which is God’s truth, the knowledge which God himself has made known.
Five Big Questions
The first charge, that the Jewish person who teaches others should teach himself or herself, is a heading and is broken down into three specific examples in the questions that follow. Paul cites three flagrant violations of the law as evidence of the Jew’s failure to “teach himself.”
Jewish leaders during the first five centuries A.D. were often extremely concerned about Jewish rabbis who (1) proclaimed “You shall not steal” yet stole from others and (2) affirmed the commandment “You shall not commit adultery” yet were sexual offenders themselves.34 And Anton Fridrichsen has called attention to denunciations by Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher of Hierapolis who was active sometime around A.D. 100, against those who called themselves Stoics and espoused high morals but stole from others and committed various sexual offenses.35 But the exposure of such actions vis-à-vis such lofty teachings can hardly be reserved for Jewish teachers or Greek philosophers. Sadly, disparities between principles and practice are all too common in the lives of all too many people, both historically and today—whatever their status or situations in life, whatever their lofty affirmations, and whatever their self-justifying defenses.
The verb ἱεροσυλέω appears only here in the NT. It is, however, used a number of times in Greek and Jewish Greek writings of Paul’s day to mean quite literally “commit temple robbery.”
The robbery of temples,1 originally the removal of sacred property from a sacred site, is a. in Greek, Roman and Egyptian eyes2 one of the most serious of offences. At times of amnesty, murderers and robbers of temples are of ten excluded. Temple robbery is generally classified with treason and murder. Those convicted are denied burial in consecrated ground. In Plat. Phaed., 113e criminals of these categories are regarded as ἀνιάτως and are plunged into Tartarus.
Later in Israel’s history, however, Jewish merchants seem to have been permitted certain degrees of latitude in matters pertaining to the buying and selling of heathen idols and the buying and selling of gold, clothing, and property that had been previously associated with heathen temples.
Circumcision (vv. 25-29)
Paul asserts that physical circumcision is of no benefit unless the law is obeyed and there is a “circumcision of the heart” effected “by the Spirit.” Later rabbinic writings, which sought to codify earlier Jewish teaching, claimed that “no person who is circumcised will go down to Gehenna.”63 Paul, however, rejects this argument
Three reasons are given in Jewish writings for circumcision, that is, the removal of the male foreskin. The first and undoubtedly most important reason for any pious Jew was simply because God had commanded it,64 and so every act of circumcision was done in obedience to the divine precept.65 A second reason often given in Paul’s day, but one without express biblical support, was in order to identify Jewish males and keep them “from mixing with others.”66 A third rationale for circumcision, which was proposed during the Maccabean period, was that it was a sign of fidelity to the covenant and therefore an indispensable identity marker for Jewish males.
It needs to be recognized, however, as has been observed by a number of scholars, that the Greek word ἔπαινος (“praise,” “approval”) probably reflects a Jewish wordplay on the name Ἰουδαῖος (“Jew”). For while the name “Jew” (Hebrew יהודי) was derived from the patriarchal name “Judah” (יהודה), in Jewish popular theology יהודה seems to have been etymologically associated with the hiphil or passive form of the verb ידה (“to be praised”)—with that association stemming from statements by Judah’s mother Leah at his birth in Gen 29:35 and his father Jacob in his final words to his sons in Gen 49:8.81 And if, indeed, such a wordplay is reflected in Rom 2:29b, then Paul should be seen here as concluding his treatment of circumcision in 2:25–29—as well as closing off his entire discussion of Jews and Jewish failures in 2:17–29—with a telling reminder that it is only the circumcised heart that is praised by God