scholarly journals The Myth of the 'Law-Free' Paul Standing between Christians and Jews

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Nanos
Keyword(s):  
Daily Life ◽  
Essential Difference ◽  
Apostle Paul ◽  
The Law ◽  
Christ Followers ◽  
Prevailing View

Christians and Jews agree that the Apostle Paul did not observe Torah as a matter of faith, or in his daily life, except when he sought to evangelize among Jews who observed Torah. This perspective and the reasoning provided to explain it conceptualize the essential difference between Christianity and Judaism as revolving around Paul and his supposedly "Law-free Gospel," more so than around Jesus and his teachings. This understanding derives from the perception that Paul did not observe Jewish dietary norms, and that, moreover, he taught other Christ-followers not to observe them. This essay engages the primary texts on which this is based (Gal 2:11-15; 1 Cor 8—10; Rom 14—15) and finds that, contrary to the prevailing view, they show that Paul implicitly and even explicitly supported Jewish dietary norms among Christ-followers. The results challenge centuries of interpretation, with broad implications for Christian and Jewish portrayals of Paul and of the supposed foundations for differences that require and provide strategies of "othering" that continue to pose obstacles to progress in Christian-Jewish relations.

Paul and the Law

Paul ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Fredriksen
Keyword(s):  
Negative Statements ◽  
The Law ◽  
Christ Followers

This chapter examines Paul's praise of the Law, its mandates, and its privilege, and how he urges its standards of behavior not only toward both God but also toward fellow Christ-followers on his gentile communities. It first considers how the gospel's mission to Israel in the diaspora had absorbed sympathetic pagans without demanding that they receive circumcision. It then discusses the inconsistencies of the Law's rhetorical valence in Paul's epistles, along with the identification of “Christianity” with “Law-freeness” and what Paul has to say anything about Jews circumcising their own sons. It also analyzes Paul's negative statements about the Law to his communities mid-century, suggesting that they were intended to dissuade Christ-following pagans from Judaizing in any way other than in Paul's way.

The leges municipales as a Means of Legal and Social Romanization of the Provinces of the Roman Empire

2020 ◽  
pp. 315-331
Author(s):  
Werner Eck
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Southern Spain ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Legal Regulations ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
General Phenomenon ◽  
The West ◽  
The Law

Sections of the leges municipales from at least forty different cities in Southern Spain have survived to us. These laws, understood as a powerful instrument by which Roman legal regulations were introduced into the provinces, are usually connected with Baetica. As a result it is too easy to overlook the fact that corresponding leges were issued wherever Roman or Latin cities were founded, and continued to be issued long after the Flavian era, the time to which most of the surviving fragments date. Documentary evidence has now made clear that leges municipales are a general phenomenon which continued to play a role in the second and third centuries CE. Fragments of city laws are known not only in the province of Alpes Maritimae, but also in Noricum (Lauriacum), Moesia superior (Ratiaria), and in Troesmis (Moesia inferior). The law for Troesmis is especially important because, in contrast to the laws from Baetica, it was issued for a Roman and not a Latin municipium. This demonstrates that specific Roman legal regulations, which were issued in Augustan times exclusively for Roman citizens, were still of relevance in the second century and also must have been used in the province of Moesia inferior. This material indicates that people had to obey Roman legal regulations more or less everywhere in nearly all provinces of the West. The leges municipales were thus one of the decisive means by which Roman law spread in the provinces—more so than has previously been realized—and could even be the basis for daily life.

Mensrea

1990 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Hampton
Keyword(s):  
Daily Life ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Penal Code ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Mens Rea ◽  
Model Penal Code ◽  
States Of Mind ◽  
Criminal Conviction ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Right

Accusing, condemning, and avenging are part of our daily life. However, a review of many years of literature attempting to analyze our blaming practices suggests that we do not understand very well what we are doing when we judge people culpable for a wrong they have committed. Of course, everyone agrees that, for example, someone deserves censure and punishment when she is guilty of a wrong, and the law has traditionally looked for a mens rea, or “guilty mind,” in order to convict someone of a criminal wrongdoing. But philosophers and legal theorists have found it interestingly difficult to say what mens rea is. For example, noting the way in which we intuitively think people aren't culpable for a crime if they disobey the law by mistake, or under duress, or while insane, theorists such as H.L.A. Hart have tried to define mens rea negatively, as that which an agent has if he is not in what we consider to be an excusing state. But such an approach only circumscribes and does not unravel the central mystery; it also fails to explain why the law recognizes any excusing states as mitigating or absolving one of guilt, much less why all and only the excusing states that are recognized by the law are the right ones. Moreover, the Model Penal Code, which gives a very detailed account of the kinds of mental states which justify criminal conviction, does not tell us (nor was it designed to tell us) why these states of mind (e.g., knowledge, purposiveness, intention, assumption of risk of harm, negligence) are relevant to an assessment of legal guilt.

Perception of Legal Inequality in Deeply Divided Societies: The Case of Israel

1993 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elia Zureik ◽  
Fouad Moughrabi ◽  
Vincent F. Sacco
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Divided Societies ◽  
The Face ◽  
Civil And Political Rights ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Way

When commentators discuss the Israeli political system, they invariably single it out as the exception in a region otherwise lacking in democratic and representative regimes. Although political philosophers and theorists remind us that the test of de mocracy hinges on, among other things, the way a society treats its minorities and guarantees them civil and political rights in the face of majority opposition, the de bate over what constitutes justice, equality, and freedom is unlikely to be resolved in a discussion centered on abstract principles and their absolute meanings. It is one thing for a society to profess egalitarian values and another to measure the extent to which these values are perceived and experienced by those immediately affected by them. This does not mean that there are no universal standards of justice against which to measure performance of the law. Our point is that the experiential dimen sion of the law is equally relevant, for it mediates between the meaning of the law as derived from abstract principles and the way it is implemented in daily life.

Preaching the Law

1960 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Ragnar Bring
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Know How ◽  
The Core ◽  
The People ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Law

In The New Testament the word ‘Law’ is largely equivalent to what we today call the Old Testament. But there are exceptions to this use of the term. The Law sometimes designates the Pentateuch. This is the case in the liturgy of the Synagogue. But for the Jews the term ‘Law’ also could include their entire religious tradition. It governed the daily life of the people—not only in matters of what we call worship, morality, ethics or religion but also in matters legal, social and political. Additions to the commandments found in the Pentateuch and the commentaries that had been added and still were being added, were not thought to be something foreign to the law. It was thought that they simply applied what the Scriptures said. The phrase ‘it has been said to them of old times’ is often understood as being merely a formula of disapproval, since in the Gospels Jesus criticised these rules. But their original purpose was to continue the tradition of which the Scriptures were the core. Their contemporary significance was manifest in the constantly renewed discussion of how they were to be interpreted and applied. For this purpose casuistic rules were needed, that took into account all the concrete situations of life. Thus a lawabiding Jew could always know how he had to act.

MAKNA MEMENUHI HUKUM TAURAT MENURUT RASUL PAULUS

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-69
Author(s):  
Eddis Sagala
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Apostle Paul ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Scientific Papers ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Government

fulfilling the law according to the Apostle Paul in Romans 13: 8-10. The research method in writing scientific papers is a qualitative method with an exegetical study approach. The results of the exegetical study of Romans 13: 8-10, the meaning of fulfilling the law is to love God, love fellow believers, not believers and the government as rulers determined by God. So that the implementation of the present day congregation is that every Christian must love God faithfully, love his neighbor as himself, love his fellow believers by not being a stumbling block to fellow believers, loving others who are not believers through friendship with them and giving sweet love to Jesus Christ for them, then loves the government as the ruler through obedience to all the rules and regulations he sets.Keywords: Meaning, Compliance, Law

scholarly journals Deviance or acceptable difference: Observance of the Law in Romans 14–15 and Dialogue with Trypho 47

2012 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald D. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Symbolic Interactionist ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Law ◽  
Christ Followers

Utilising the symbolic interactionist study of deviance, this article compares the treatment of Law-observant Christ-followers in Romans 14–15 and Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho 47, in order to understand better the declining status of Law-observant Christ-followers in the early Christ-movement. The ‘strong’ in Romans 14:1–15:13 are likely Christ-followers who do not observe the Law, whilst the ‘weak’ are likely Christ-followers who do. Although Paul accepts Law-observant Christ-followers, his preference for non-observance decreases the status of those who observe the Law, thereby undermining Paul’s vision of a unified, ethnically mixed Church. In Dialogue 47, Justin intensifies the marginalisation of Law-observant Christfollowers by placing them at the very limits of orthodoxy. Dialogue 47 suggests that the campaign for the legitimacy of Law-observant Christ-following was already failing by the middle of the 2nd century, largely because of Paul’s own preference for non-observant Christfollowing.

scholarly journals Rendering to Caesar and God: St Paul, the Natural Law Tradition, and the Authority of Law

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 469-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Deagon
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Law ◽  
Apostle Paul ◽  
Alternative Analysis ◽  
Precise Nature ◽  
Literature And Philosophy ◽  
The Law

The question of the authority of law has occupied and vexed the literature and philosophy of law for centuries. Law is something that characteristically implies obedience, but the precise nature of law’s authority remains contentious. The return to the writings of the Apostle Paul in contemporary philosophy, theology and jurisprudence begs attention in relation to the authority of law, and so this article will consider his analysis and critique of law with a focus on his Epistle to the Romans. It argues that Paul’s conception of the authority of law is explained on the basis that the law is from God, it externally sanctions obedience by virtue of the civil authorities, and it convicts internally in conscience. This triad is justified by the law of love (‘‘love your neighbor as yourself’’), and will be explained in relation to the natural law tradition as well as converse ideas in positivism. Hence, considering the reasoning of Paul in relation to traditional jurisprudential themes and the law of love provides a useful alternative analysis and basis for further investigation regarding the authority of law and the need for its obedience.

Comparative Law and the Courts

1996 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 545-556 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Koopmans
Keyword(s):  
Daily Life ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Comparative Law ◽  
Trade Marks ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Law

For a long time it looked as though comparative law was a matter for academic research, difficult and, surely, very interesting; beautiful to know something about, but not immediately relevant to the daily life of the law. Practising lawyers would admit the importance of comparative law in theory, but they would add that they themselves were, of course, too much occupied with the latest cases on trade marks, or with recent developments in the law of negligence.1

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document