Abstract
Is a circumcision performed by a Jewish woman valid under Jewish law? This matter is disputed in the Babylonian Talmud.1
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Notes
The following discussion appears in b. ‘Abod. Zar. 27a (Vilna: Romm, 1880–1886). For further consideration of it, see Shaye J. D. Cohen, Why Aren’t Jewish Women Circumcised: Gender and Covenant in Judaism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 93–101.
Many important manuscripts have “us,” rather than “you” in v. 7. The present reading, however, enjoys what Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (London: United Bible Societies, 1971), 536, has called “superior and more diversified support.”
A good deal of attention has been given to whether the Greek verb bebaioō should be rendered as “fulfill” or “confirm.” See Robert Jewett, Romans (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2007), 892, for a brief consideration of both sides. I do not believe my argument benefits or suffers from either of the two translations.
This general approach to Romans 15:7–13 is found in, among others, Ulrich Wilckens, Der Brief an die Römer, EKKNT 6 (Zurich: Benzinger Verlag, 1982), 3:104–9;
Klaus Haacker, Der Brief des Paulus an die Römer, HThKNT 6 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1999), 295–300;
Eduard Lohse, Der Brief an die Römer, KEK 4 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 386–90; Jewett, Romans, 886–99;
Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans, AB 33 (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 704–8.
See especially Sam K. Williams, “The ‘Righteousness of God’ in Romans,” JBL 99, no. 2 (1980): 241–90;
Lloyd Gaston, Paul and the Torah (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1987), 133.
In order to determine a referent for the promises, many conflate these two inadequate alternatives, combining God’s promises to the patriarchs with the supposedly messianic promises in the prophets; see, for example, Otto Michel, Der Brief an die Römer, KEK 6 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1955), 322;
C. K. Barrett, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 2nd ed., BNTC 6 (London: A & C Black, 1991), 249. Oddly, many fine commentators make no effort at all to link Christ’s role as “servant of the circumcision” to “the promises to the patriarchs,” as though there were no interpretive crux whatsoever; see, for example,
J. Ross Wagner, “The Christ, Servant of Jew and Gentile: A Fresh Approach to Romans 15:8–9,” JBL 116, no. 3 (1997): 477.
See Ekkehard W. Stegemann, “Coexistence and Transformation: Reading the Politics of Identity in Romans in an Imperial Context,” in Reading Paul in Context: Explorations in Identity Formation. Essays in Honour of William S. Campbell, ed. Kathy Ehrensperger and J. Brian Tucker (London: T & T Clark, 2010), 16–17. For Stegemann, however, circumcision is still understood metonymically as “Jews, but not all of them.”
Mohel is the Hebrew term for the person who performs the rite of circumcision in a Jewish context. For more on the rite of circumcision in ancient Jewish contexts, see Lawrence A. Hoffman, Covenant of Blood: Circumcision and Gender in Rabbinic Judaism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Cohen, Why Aren’t Jewish;
Elizabeth W. Mark, ed., The Covenant of Circumcision: New Perspectives on an Ancient Jewish Rite (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2003);
Andreas Blaschke, Beschneidung: Zeugnisse der Bibel und verwandter Texte, Texte und Arbeiten zum neutestamentlichen Zeitalter 28 (Tübingen: Francke Verlag, 1998);
Nina E. Livesey, Circumcision as a Malleable Symbol, WBC II 295 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010);
Matthew Thiessen, Contesting Conversion: Genealogy, Circumcision, and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians, NIGTC (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982), 141, offers a lucid rendering of Paul’s logic in this case. Hermann W. Beyer, “διάκoνoς,” TDNT, 2:88–89, has suggested that “‘Servant’ here might be rendered ‘promoter.’” Similarly,
Louis Martyn, Galatians, AB 33A (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 255, suggests that the accusation to which Paul is responding is that he has “in effect turned Christ into one who condones and even facilitates sin, rather than combating it” (emphasis added).
Admittedly, this is not the predominant meaning of the word family in the NT, but neither is it rare or idiosyncratic and, as we have just seen, it has this sense in the only other case where Paul applies it to Christ. Many prefer to interpret Romans 15:8 in light of the gospels’ use of the diakonos word family rather than Paul’s own usage; for example, James D. G. Dunn, Romans, WBC 38B (Dallas, TX: Word, 1988), 2:846, sees an allusion to Christ’s comments about service and self-sacrifice in Mark 10:43–45. Yet Christ’s discussion of self-denial has to do with his passion, not his ministry among the Jews while he was alive.
The syntactical relationship between v. 9a and v. 8 has received much scholarly attention, since it can be read in several different ways. For example, J. C. von Hofmann, Die heilige Schrift Neuen Testaments (Nördlingen: C. H. Beck, 1868), 3:591–92, sees v. 9a as an independent sentence with the main verb as an optative of wish: “Would that the Gentiles glorify God on behalf of mercy!” Far more frequently, however, v. 9a is taken to be either a second purpose clause or a resumption of Paul’s indirect speech. On the first score, Paul would be saying that Christ’s service to the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God has two consequences: (1) it fulfills the promises to the patriarchs, and (2) it causes Gentiles to glorify God on behalf of mercy; if it is a resumption of the indirect speech, then Paul would be saying two discrete things: (1) Christ became a servant of the circumcision, on behalf of the truth of God, in order to confirm the promises to the fathers, and (2) Gentiles are glorifying God on behalf of mercy. Unimpressed with either alternative, Wagner, “Christ,” 481, takes v. 9a to be an accusative of respect, so that Christ has become a servant in two respects: (1) a servant of the circumcised, on behalf of the truth of God, in order to confirm the promises of the patriarchs, and (2) a servant with respect to the Gentiles, on behalf of mercy, in order to glorify God. Each of these proposals has strengths and weaknesses, but for our purposes it is most important to observe that all of them are based on the assumption that diakonos peritomēs means “servant to the Jews.” When one reads it as “agent of circumcision,” then any of the syntactical arrangements above makes sense, except for Wagner’s. My translation understands v. 9a to be a resumption of Paul’s indirect speech. In this case, Romans 15:8 fits cleanly between vv. 7 and 9, both contextually and grammatically. Verse 8 constitutes a justification for v. 7, thus accounting for the introductory gar; at the same time, v. 8 provides a fitting apposition for the claim in v. 9, conjoined by a copulative de. That is to say, in order to defend his claim that Christ has welcomed Gentiles into the glory of God, Paul says, on the one hand, that Christ has become an “agent of circumcision,” on account of the truth of God, in order to confirm the patriarchal promises, and on the other hand, that Gentiles are now glorifying God on account of mercy (cf. the merciful election of Gentiles described in Rom. 9). If v. 9a in fact forms a secondary purpose clause, the interpretation works equally well. Paul would then say that Christ became an “agent of circumcision” in order to confirm the patriarchal promises, and this happened in order that Gentiles might glorify God. In either case, the sentence becomes sensible only when one acknowledges that Christ has become an “agent of circumcision” for Gentiles, not a servant or minister to the Jewish people. For a recent consideration of the syntax,
see A. Andrew Das, “‘Praise the Lord, All You Gentiles’: The Encoded Audience of Romans 15.7–13,” JSNT 34, no. 1 (2011): 90–96.
As Das, Solving the Romans Debate (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2007), 106–7, observes, this assumption is well grounded. The Greek terminology used with regard to food (koinos and kathera), in particular, suggests a dispute over Jewish scruples. As we will see momentarily, however, Das also correctly recognizes that Jewish concerns and behaviors do not require audience members of Jewish origin.
According to Mark D. Nanos, The Mystery of Romans (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1996), 85–165, the “weak” are to be identified as “non-Christian Jews.” For a detailed critique of this position, see Das, Solving, 115–48;
Robert A. J. Gagnon, “Why the ‘Weak’ at Rome Cannot Be Non-Christian Jews,” CBQ 62, no. 1 (2000): 64–82.
This is by no means the exclusive scholarly opinion, of course. Many have claimed that the “weak” and the “strong” have no objective referents in Rome, but refer to “weak” and “strong” faith in general terms. See, for example, Robert Karris, “Romans 14:1–15:13 and the Occasion of Romans,” in The Romans Debate, ed. Karl P. Donfried, 2nd ed. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991), 65–84; J. Paul Sampley, “The Weak and the Strong: Paul’s Careful and Crafty Rhetorical Strategy in Romans 14:1–15:13,” in The Social World of the First Christians: Essays in Honor of Wayne Meeks, ed. L. Michael White and O. Larry Yarbrough (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1995), 40–52;
Wayne A. Meeks, “Judgment and the Brother: Romans 14:1–15:13,” in Tradition and Interpretation in the New Testament, ed. Gerald F. Hawthorne and Otto Betz (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), 293–300.
According to Max Rauer, Die “Schwachen” in Korinth und Rom nach den Paulusbriefen (Frieburg im Briesgau: Herder, 1923), 164–68, the “weak” are individuals (rather than a faction) in Rome who, as former Gentile Gnostics or initiates into the mystery cults, have incorporated ascetic practices into their new religious life.
According to Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 610, “About 60 percent of critical scholarship holds that Paul did not write the letter.” Provided there has not been significant fluctuation in the last ten years, then roughly four out of ten think Paul did write it. For an introduction to the basic arguments for and against Pauline authorship of Colossians,
see Raymond F. Collins, Letters That Paul Did Not Write (Wilmington, DE: Glazier, 1988), 171–208.
This circle of disciples is often referred to as a Pauline “school.” Outi Leppä, The Making of Colossians (Helsinki: Finnish Exegetical Society 2003) offers a fine introduction to the issues surrounding the pseudepigraphy of Colossians. While many attribute authorship of Colossians to a Pauline “school,” Leppä notes that “there are still different opinions about the character of the school. According to Lohse, Schenke, Müller, and Kiley, it was set up after the death of Paul in order to protect his heritage, while Conzelmann, Ollrog, Ludwig, Gnilka, and Hartman assume that the school already started to develop during Paul’s lifetime” (12). Further dispute arises when it comes to the dependence of Colossians on Paul’s genuine epistles, where opinions range from reliance on none, to some, to all of them. For further discussion of the so-called School of Paul, see Angela Standhartinger, “Colossians and the Pauline School,” NTS 50 (2004): 572–93.
This option appears to receive the most support among more recent commentaries: For example, Markus Barth and Helmut Blanke, Colossians, trans. Astrid B. Beck, AB 34 (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 364–65;
Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, NIGTC (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 158;
Peter O’Brien, Colossians, Philemon, WBC 44 (Waco, TX: Word, 1982), 117;
Robert McL. Wilson, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Colossians and Philemon, ICC 51/57 (London: T & T Clark, 2005), 204.
Cf. the stiff neck that requires circumcision in 1QS 5.5 (James H. Charlesworth, et al., eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English Translations, Volume 1, Rule of the Community and Related Documents [Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1994], 20). For this understanding of Colossians 2:11,
see Eduard Schweizer, The Letter to the Colossians, trans. Andrew Chester (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1982), 141; Lohse, Colossians and Philemon, 101–3.
See, for example, Marvin Vincent, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistles to the Philippians and to Philemon, ICC 50 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1961), 93–94;
Gerald F. Hawthorne and Ralph P. Martin, Philippians, rev. ed., WBC 43 (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2004), 175;
O’Brien, The Epistle to the Philippians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), 358;
Bonnie B. Thurston and Judith M. Ryan, Philippians and Philemon, Sacra Pagina 10 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2005), 113–15;
G. Walter Hansen, The Letter to the Philippians, Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 220, though note his disclaimer: “Paul’s bold claim that all believers in Christ are included in the circumcision, in the people of God, does not imply that the Jewish people are excluded from the people of God.”
See the similar argument by Peder Borgen, “Paul Preaches Circumcision and Pleases Men,” in Paul and Paulinism: Essays in Honor of C. K. Barrett, ed. Morna Hooker and Stephen Wilson (London: SPCK, 1982), 37–46. Of course, Borgen’s understanding of the figurative circumcision misconstrued by Paul’s opponents is much different than the concept of reckoned genital circumcision proposed in this study. For Borgen, it is the standard notion of the ethical circumcision (of the heart) achieved through the renunciation of vices and illicit behaviors.
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© 2012 Joshua D. Garroway
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Garroway, J.D. (2012). Romans 15:7–13. In: Paul’s Gentile-Jews. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137281142_6
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