Getting In and Staying In: Another Look at 4QMMT and Galatians

E. P. Sanders criticized the previous New Testament scholarship’s stereotypical portrait of Second Temple Judaism as a legalistic religion, proposing that it can be typically described in what he calls ‘covenantal nomism’, that is, one ‘gets in’ the covenant by God’s gracious election and ‘stays in’ the covenant by obedience to the law. However, this does not describe the Qumran sectarian group who required the works of the law and their particular halakhoth not only to ‘stay in’ but also to ‘get in’ the sectarian covenant. Comparison between 4QMMT and Galatians, and a mirror reading of Galatians suggest that Paul’s opponents persuaded the Galatians to do the works of the law not only to ‘stay in’ but also to ‘get in’ the true covenant of God, to become full members of God’s covenant people, for one is justified by the works of the law, in addition to faith in Christ.

Mirror-Reading a Pseudepigraphal Letter

This study investigates the implications of pseudonymity for the interpretative process, arguing that we need to take into account the pseudepigraphal attempt to achieve a “reality effect” by employing tropes and concerns from authentic Pauline letters to lend the forged writing an air of verisimilitude. But in this way our ability, if we judge a text pseudepigraphal, to discern reality from appearance is severely problematized, and we should therefore consider the possibility that pseudepigraphal letters should be treated more as rhetorical compositions than as epistolary literature, since all the ostensive elements of epistolarity are fictionalized in a pseudepigraphal letter.

The Pauline Letters in Contemporary Research

Paul’s letters address the particular situations of first-century audiences. Mirror-reading, as exemplified in Galatians scholarship, is fraught with potential difficulties and must be executed cautiously. The Thessalonians received Paul’s apocalyptic message in a social situation of conflict and alienation. The First Letter to the Corinthians admonished unity in the gospel for a fragmented congregation. Interpreters of Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians grapple with whether this is a single letter or multiple letters and the proper ordering of the chapters. Reconstructions of the Roman situation often assume erroneously that Paul is writing to a mixed community of Jews and Gentiles after a mass expulsion and return of the Jewish communities. Philippians, a single letter, primarily addresses a conflict between two women. Philemon is not an attempted reconciliation of a runaway slave to his master but an explanation of the need for further assistance from a changed man.