As indicated in the introductory comments, the interpretation of Paul's new-creation motif has been intimately connected with the Jewish context of the pre-Christian Paul, and this is a more than reasonable starting point. The primary concern here is to determine what (if any) Jewish antecedents might have exerted a formative influence on the apostle's conception of new creation. I have already provided a rationale for the selection of primary sources to be examined in part I, and more comment on this subject will be offered at the beginning of each section. While an adequate treatment of this theme requires a full analysis of a very select group of extra-biblical texts, close attention to the footnotes will reveal a broadly researched argument, with ample corroboration from the literature of the period.

Following a survey of this theme in the prophetic literature of the Hebrew Bible (chapter 2), I will look closely at the book of Jubilees (chapter 3) and Joseph and Aseneth (chapter 4). These sources provide evidence for a variety of applications of new-creation imagery in the literature and thought-world of first-century BC/AD Judaism, and each of these uses may be regarded as potentially influential on Paul the apostle. While it would be wrong to limit Paul to only these interpretive options, effectively disallowing his own creative intellect, it would be equally imprudent to examine Paul's letters in a historical vacuum. Original thinkers occasionally part company with their contemporaries, yet sometimes the better part of originality is a fresh reformulation of primitive faith.

Galatians: recent issues in interpretation

Pauline studies have undergone something of a Copernican revolution in recent years, and the epistle to the Galatians has figured prominently in every reconfiguration of the Pauline solar system. The critical issues raised by the “new perspective” on Paul concern, among other things, the nature of first-century “Judaism” – a controversial term in itself – and the reason(s) behind Paul's rejection of his “former way of life in Judaism” (Gal. 1.13). Because Galatians is one of our primary sources in this debate, scholarly writing on this letter has been (rightly) preoccupied with this subject, and this is reflected in the “ever-burgeoning literature” on the theme. Indeed, the “new perspective” has generated a whole body of material devoted solely to keeping up with the debate.

A second important issue in the interpretation of Galatians, though perhaps not of Copernican magnitude, gained prominence with the publication of Hans Dieter Betz's Hermeneia commentary, which analyzed the argument of Galatians in terms of classical rhetorical theory. Betz's work has been challenged and modified in a number of ways, though most would accept that the relationship between structure and meaning so ably illustrated by Betz's exegesis had not been fully appreciated prior to his detailed rhetorical analysis.

Given the all-encompassing nature of these two issues, it may come as a surprise to discover that Paul's new-creation motif in Galatians may be pursued largely independently of these interpretive maelstroms.

The current debate

The biblical story, from beginning to end, can rightly be described as an epic of new creation. As its prologue opens with Elohim's creation of heaven and earth, so its epilogue closes with the dramatic appearance of the new heaven and the new earth – a place where sorrow and death are no more, and where the dwelling place of God is with his people. Creatio originalis gives way to creatio nova as the one seated upon the throne announces, “Behold, I make all things new!” (Rev. 21.5). But this grand inclusio, while hopeful in its preface and jubilant in its finale, brackets a history of tohu wabohu. As early as Genesis 3 the battle lines are firmly fixed. The creature has shunned the creator, the creation groans in bondage to decay (Gen. 3.17–18; Rom. 8.19–22), and posterity is left with a legacy of despair: “O Adam,” laments Ezra, “what have you done? For though it was you who sinned, the fall was not yours alone” (4 Ezra 7.117; cf. Rom. 5.12–21). But before we let Heilsgeschichte degenerate into Angstgeschichte, it is worth recalling that the biblical story is a drama of redemption. And while the plot is not without its twists and turns, it does reach a fitting and moving climax in the passion narratives.

The motif of “newcreation,” however, is not confined to the opening and closing chapters of the Christian Scriptures. The prophets, the psalmists, the evangelists, and so on, all exhibit a robust faith in the creative activity of God, and this faith was not focused solely on the remote past or the distant future.

2 Corinthians 5.16 and 17 have been ranked among “the most famous verses in the whole of the New Testament“, and there is no reason to dispute this claim. Yet familiarity is both friend and foe of good exegesis. Carol Stockhausen lists 2 Corinthians 5.16–21 as one of a small handful of passages in this letter which have come under intense scholarly scrutiny, yet which are all too often examined, “without regard for their function within 2 Corinthians itself.” In a similar way, Jörg Baumgarten laments the fact that so much exegesis of Galatians 6.15 and 2 Corinthians 5.17 has been led astray (verleiten) by the history-of-religions parallels to Paul's καιν κτσις motif rather than “in erster Linie dem Kontext die Funktion der Deutung zugestehen.”

The point made by these authors is legitimate, and in what follows I will take up their challenge and locate Paul's new-creation statements in the argument of the letters in which they are found. Good exegesis is often a delicate balance between the literary context of an idea and the larger conceptual world of which it is also a part. However, when several historical-conceptual backgrounds are on offer, the determinative vote should be cast by the specific literary-theological context. As we shall see, careful attention to the argument of 2 Corinthians and Galatians – along with the historical circumstances which prompted these letters – provides all the necessary clues to the interpretive riddles of these passages, be it what some have called “cosmic crucifixion” (Gal. 6.15), or knowing Christ κατ$ σ%ρκα (2 Cor. 5.16).

In placing Paul's new-creation statements in their epistolary context, we immediately face the question of which letter to consider first.

By all accounts, the motif of new creation as encountered in the literature of Second Temple Judaism had its ultimate origin in the eschatological hopes of the later prophets. Whether mediated through subsequent developments of this idea or not, Paul's own application of this motif is commonly linked to these prophets, principally the so-called trito-Isaiah, so any analysis of new creation in Paul must begin here. In the following pages I offer only a survey of this Old Testament theme, outlining the main contours of this idea as it is found in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. Nothing controversial will be argued in this section, and the focus therefore will be on the primary source material. Unlike the following sections, interaction with secondary literature will be kept to a minimum.

Yet while the analysis here must be brief and to the point, I do not mean to give the impression that this material is unimportant for understanding the motif of new creation in Paul. As noted above, contemporary scholarship traces the Pauline application of this idea to the Isaianic oracles concerning the new heavens and the new earth, and this connection is considered crucial to the interpretation of καιν κτίσις in Paul's letters. But contemporary scholarship seems unaware that there is more than one new-creation motif in the later prophets, and apart from excluding the witness of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah 40–55, any adequate survey of this theme will have to reckon with more than one possible Old Testament background.

Context

As noted earlier, the rhetorical question of 6.1, “Shall we remain in sin …?,” casts its shadow at least as far as 7.6, and is probably not fully answered before the end of chapter 8. In refuting this false inference, Paul yokes his argument to three analogies, baptism (6.3), slavery (6.16), and marriage (7.2–3). Each of these is introduced by the formulaic “Do you not know?” (6.3; 6.15; 7.1), revealing three distinct but closely connected literary segments: 6.1–14, 15–23; and 7.1–6. Like ever-widening concentric circles, the analogies broaden to address the readers from different perspectives: as Christians (baptism), as Romans (slavery), and as humans (marriage).

The analogy of 7.2–3 represents a daring step in the argument, though one which Paul has been maneuvering to make since the opening chapter: Ο δE δίκαιος Eκ πίστεως ζήσεται(1.17). To be sure, the word νΟμς is not absent from chapters 1–6, but Paul has yet to look Moses in the eye without blinking. He does so here. In describing the law as that which brings the knowledge of sin (3.21), works wrath (4.15), increases transgression (5.20), stands opposed to grace (5.20–21; 6.14), and so on, Paul was preparing the ground for the startling declaration in 7.4: “My friends, you have been put to death with respect to the law”.

In Galatians 2.19–20 there is yet another crux interpretum, recently described as “probably the most important single [text] for understanding Paul's theology.” While a number of passages could vie for such an accolade, Galatians 2.19–20 definitely belongs in the competition. Not surprisingly, this passage has its interpretive difficulties, especially its concise, heavily coded language. Barclay speaks for many when he says of it, “Paul's thought is so compressed as to be somewhat obscure”. This section (2.15–21) is equally crucial for understanding the argument of Galatians itself, and is often seen as a summary of what precedes and a précis of what follows. As a theological and epistolary nodal point, Galatians 2.19–20 repays close scrutiny and significantly augments the understanding of Paul's death–life symbolism. It underscores again the foundational nature of this soteriological metaphor for Paul, while at the same time illuminating the message of Galatians. Its epistolary significance will be highlighted in a later section (chapter 11), where I consider Paul's summary of his argument, Galatians 6.12–16.

Context

The line of thought in Galatians 2.15–21 is notoriously difficult and it is neither necessary nor feasible to enter into the intricacies of this debate here. Galatians 2.19–21 concludes Paul's version of the Antioch incident, and it is generally agreed that, somewhere along the line, the focus of Paul's address shifts from Peter to the Galatians.

Beginning with the broader theological context, the first point to be reiterated is that Paul's new-creation motif belongs to that family of passages whose foundational metaphor is the movement from death to life, and 2 Corinthians 5.17 and Galatians 6.15 should not be treated in isolation from this crucial so teriological matrix. The examination of initiatory symbolism in chapter 5 emphasized the interconnectedness of such physiomorphic transformation symbolism, while also locating the Pauline material within a larger, universal pattern of symbolic expression. Death–life symbolism is hardly unique to Paul, and a consideration of this wider context adds definition and clarity to the same imagery in Paul's letters.

The primary purpose of initiatory rituals is to mark the initiate's transition from one status to another. While the symbolism varies from culture to culture, the common emphases of the death–life drama are transformation (a change of identity and status), demarcation (separation from uninitiated), and empowerment (enablement for service within a new social structure). While the focus of these life-crisis rituals is on the individual, their ultimate aim is “the transformation of raw human material into socially responsible persons”. The new individual is the building-block of the new community, and the perspective of the apostle Paul fits comfortably within this broader religious framework.

The discussion of death–life symbolism inevitably raised the issue of new-birth imagery, the two being intimately connected in religious symbolism from antiquity. Indeed, “resurrection, ” “new birth,” and “new creation” are merely alternative formulations of the “life” side of the death–life equation, and the argument of this monograph is that Paul's letters provide further evidence of this common association.

This study, as noted in the introduction, is essentially an argument about context. Without a specific literary-conceptual framework to provide definition and texture, words remain intangible and amorphous entities capable of any number of meanings. Understanding an idea in its native environment means becoming acquainted with a whole host of other ideas indigenous to that environment. It is this conceptual network which furnishes the definitional boundaries of an idea and, to a great extent, determines its content. In what follows I attempt to place Paul's newcreation statements in the theological context in which they are found, his death–life symbolism. Within this theological matrix – surely one of the most important in Paul – a number of ideas occur with remarkable consistency, and it is these, I will argue, which add content and clarity to Paul's allusive καιν κτίσις.

The dominant symbolism of these texts, dying and rising with Christ, has been the subject of several distinguished monographs and numerous shorter studies, and an exhaustive treatment is certainly not offered here. This present study will be limited in two important ways. First, I shall take as the starting-point the classification proposed by Robert Tannehill, who identified two essential varieties of death–life passages in Paul: those in which dying and rising with Christ form the basis of the new life, and those in which it expresses the structure of the new life. The primary focus of chapters 6, 7 and 9 will be an examination of those passages which fall into the former category (Rom. 6.1–14; 7.1–6; Gal. 2.19–20), as it is to this family of texts that 2 Corinthians 5.17 and Galatians 6.15 belong.

“Death” and “life” constitute, arguably, the most fundamental categories of human existence. Not surprisingly, they occur with predictable regularity in religious symbolism from culture to culture. The goal of this introductory section is to provide the backdrop against which Paul's death–life statements gain fullest clarity. Specifically, I will demonstrate the importance of interpreting this symbolism within the broader category of “life-crisis rituals,” which anthropologists and ethnologists have scrutinized and evaluated for nearly two centuries. Situating Paul's symbolism within this larger, universal pattern of symbolic expression will serve to orient the exegesis of the relevant texts, while also providing a methodology for interpreting Paul's religious symbolism generally. Specialists in the phenomenology of religion can offer valuable help to New Testament exegetes in the interpretation of religious imagery. Where exegetes atomize, comparative religionists synthesize. Both are crucial, but if exegetes neglect the whole, their understanding of the parts is likewise diminished.

Rites of passage

The work of Arnold van Gennep

The name of Arnold van Gennep is virtually synonymous with rites of passage. His seminal study of the subject early in the twentieth century was both ground-breaking on the theoretical level, and noteworthy on the popular level: it is one of only a handful of technical monographs which can claim to have established a popular idiom in a variety of languages. The genius of this contribution lies in its simplicity and comprehensiveness.

Jubilees: a case study

As “one of the most important documents in the history of the Jewish religion”, the book of Jubilees provides an immensely valuable introduction to the issues and ideas which shaped the “Judaism” of the pre-Christian era. Written either just prior to the Maccabean uprisings, or sometime early in the Maccabean era, Jubilees offers a commentary on the tumultuous events of this period from a perspective closely related to that of the Hasidim, those pious defenders of the lawwhorallied to the support of Mattathias and his sons against the encroachments of Hellenistic culture. Jubilees' use of Enochian material, along with its obvious importance to the sectaries at Qumran, attests to its broader relevance and influence and renders it an ideal specimen for examination. Moreover, its length and literary integrity permit a more confident evaluation of its themes, especially in comparison with the composite work of 1 Enoch. Finally, if any weight at all can be attached to the traditional connection made between the Hasidim of the Maccabean era and the Pharisees of the New Testament era, and if any book can claim to illuminate the perspective of the pre-Christian Paul, the Pharisee par excellence (Phil. 3.5; cf. Acts 23.6; 26.5), Jubilees is that book.

Using Jubilees as a representative work of apocalyptically oriented Judaism, the goal in this section will be to understand new creation within the argument of this book and, by implication, within the apocalypses more generally. Because the main interest is in the book of Jubilees, the burden of corroborating evidence from other sources will be borne by the footnotes.

The literary context of 2 Corinthians 5.11–21

The unity of the document we now possess as 2 Corinthians was much debated in the twentieth century, and even now the question is far from settled. Yet in spite of the lack of consensus on the composition of canonical 2 Corinthians, no one doubts the unity of 2.14–7.4 (6.14–7.1 excepted). The argument of this chapter is not dependent on any particular literary reconstruction of 2 Corinthians, nor can the unity of this letter be positively excluded. In what follows I will assume that chapters 1–9 belong together, and leave open the question of 6.14–7.1. Chapters 10–13 will be used critically to inform this (probably earlier) material, but only when specific data in both segments can be correlated in such a way as to warrant this. Given these general assumptions, the connection between 2.14ff. and what precedes deserves comment.

The transition from 2.13 to 2.14 is abrupt, though it is not unreasonable to suppose that the thanksgiving period of 2.14–17 was occasioned by the mention of Titus in 2.13. Paul resumes this line of thought in 7.5, where we discover the reason for his sudden outburst of thankfulness: he was overjoyed by the reception Titus had received from the Corinthians (7.5–16).

Plot summary

The story of Joseph and Aseneth, a Hellenistic romance of Diaspora Judaism, takes as its point of departure the curious statement of Genesis 41.45: “Pharaoh gave Joseph the name Zaphenath-Paneah and gave him Aseneth, daughter of Potiphera, priest of On to be his wife.” The marriage of a venerated patriarch to the daughter of a pagan priest would have certainly raised a few (Jewish) eyebrows and invited explanation. Such an explanation would be all the more relevant if also employed to address specific concerns within the author's community.

With these twin goals in mind, Joseph and Aseneth tells the story of a beautiful, if high-minded, Egyptian virgin (Aseneth) who spurns the suggestion of her father that she marry Joseph, “the powerful one of God” (4.7), insisting that only Pharaoh's firstborn is her equal. Aseneth's pride is soon turned to shame when Joseph arrives in his golden chariot, royal attire, and angelic splendor (5.1–7). Further humiliation awaits the love-struck Egyptian when Joseph refuses her kiss of greeting and offers her instead a sermon on the inappropriateness of a God-fearing man whose lips bless the living God kissing a “foreign woman” whose lips bless lifeless idols (8.5). Seeing Aseneth's dejection, Joseph prays that God would re-create her by his Spirit and that she might one day be numbered among God's people (8.9).