The Apostle Paul in the Jewish Imagination: A Study in Ideology

这个项目将通过出版一篇关于犹太人对一世纪新约作者保罗的看法的主要研究来填补学术文献中的一个突出空白。虽然关于犹太人对耶稣的看法有很多文章，但关于这位所谓的外邦使徒的文章却很少。这是值得注意的，因为保罗的思想和基督教对它的解释极大地塑造了教会（尤其是新教教会），而犹太教在几个世纪以来一直在与教会斗争。传统上，保罗的教导甚至被认为是犹太教和基督教“分道扬镳”的原因。因为对保罗的理解对于理解基督教至关重要，研究犹太社区和学者如何理解保罗，将为了解犹太人对待基督教的方式以及犹太-基督教关系的发展提供重要的见解。在试图理解犹太社区在历史上是如何看待保罗的，区分通俗观点和学术观点是很重要的：一方面，该项目将探索媒体和广播档案、流行历史、布道、私人信件以及包括戏剧、小说和美术在内的艺术贡献。它还将包括对宗教领袖和犹太社区普通成员的采访。所谓的传统犹太人对保罗的看法，认为他是叛徒，是犹太人的敌人，是一个背弃犹太律法或托拉的人，因此谴责其忠诚的追随者受到他的门徒几个世纪的迫害，这是众所周知的。一个有待检验的假设是，对保罗的负面看法的流行是否可以从更广泛的文化景观中得到最好的解释，特别是对许多犹太人来说，具有深刻负面历史、社会学和心理学内涵的一系列复杂的思想和态度。有意识或无意识地将这些态度投射到保罗身上，这可能解释了“传统犹太观点”的力量。要分析的概念范畴包括：(1)犹太叛教者，(2)犹太自我憎恨者，(3)无视托拉的犹太人，(4)弥赛亚犹太人。另一方面，这本书将记录由个别犹太作家提供的关于这个主题的各种各样的观点，他们绝不总是反映大众的意见。这些观点的范围很广，从认为使徒保罗是造成犹太人死亡人数最多的思想家，到将他视为犹太-基督教宗教间关系的希望与和解人物，再到将他视为后现代犹太身份政治的象征。犹太学者研究保罗的历史比人们想象的要晚。直到19世纪，犹太人对保罗没有什么兴趣，这与犹太人对耶稣的兴趣形成鲜明对比。一个有待检验的假设是，犹太人重新认识耶稣是一个“好犹太人”，这一时期的出现，是否导致了犹太学者对保罗的新兴趣，把他作为敌对基督教的主要代表。在这样做的过程中，它开始将学术和宗教意识形态联系起来。在某种程度上，正是学术与公众舆论之间的多方面关系使这项研究与众不同。此外，它还将首次涉及犹太和基督教保罗学术的历史发展。在解构使徒的艺术表现的过程中，本研究将扩大对如何处理这些神学主题的关注。

This project will fill a prominent gap in the scholarly literature through the publication of a major study on Jewish views of the first-century New Testament author, Paul. Although much has been written about Jewish views of Jesus, little has been published concerning the so-called Apostle to the Gentiles. This is remarkable since Pauline thought and Christian interpretations of it have significantly shaped the Church (especially the Protestant Church) with which Judaism has struggled down through the centuries. Traditionally, Paul's teachings have even been regarded as responsible for the 'Parting of the Ways' between Judaism and Christianity. Because an understanding of Paul is vital to understanding Christianity, a study of how the Jewish community and scholars have made sense of Paul will provide crucial insights into Jewish approaches to Christianity and to the development of Jewish-Christian relations in general.In attempting to understand how the Jewish community has regarded Paul historically, it is important to make a distinction between popular and scholarly views:1. One the one hand, this project will explore media and broadcast archives, popular histories, sermons, private correspondence, and artistic contributions including plays, novels and fine-art. It will also involve interviews with religious leaders and ordinary members of the Jewish community. The so-called traditional Jewish view of Paul', which sees him as a traitor and an enemy of the Jewish people, as one who renounced the Jewish Law or Torah and thereby condemned its loyal followers to centuries of persecution by his disciples, is well known. One hypothesis to be tested is whether the popularity of the negative view of Paul might be best explained in terms of the wider cultural landscape and, in particular, a complex array of ideas and attitudes that possess profoundly negative historical, sociological, and psychological connotations for many Jews. It is the conscious or unconscious projection of these attitudes onto Paul that might account for the power of the 'traditional Jewish view'. Conceptual categories to be analysed include (i) Jewish apostates, (ii) Jewish self-haters, (iii) Jews who disregard Torah, and (iv) Messianic Jews.2. On the other hand, this book will document the wide variety of views on the subject offered by individual Jewish writers, who have by no means always reflected popular opinion. These range from an assessment that the apostle Paul has been responsible for more Jewish deaths than any other thinker, to seeing him as a figure of hope and reconciliation for Jewish-Christian interfaith relations, to holding him up as an icon of post-modern Jewish identity politics. The history of the Jewish scholarly study of Paul is more recent than one might imagine. Until the nineteenth-century, there was little Jewish interest in Paul, in stark contrast to Jewish interest in Jesus. One hypothesis to be tested is whether the emergence of a Jewish reclamation of Jesus as a 'good Jew' at this time was responsible for the new Jewish scholarly interest in Paul as his replacement as chief representative of a hostile Christianity. In so doing, it sets out to relate the scholarship and to the religious ideology.It is the multifaceted relationship between the scholarship and public opinion that, in part, makes this study unique. In addition, it will relate for the first time historical developments in Jewish and Christian Pauline scholarship. And in the deconstruction of artistic representations of the apostle, this study will broaden the focus of how such theological subjects are approached.