Jeffrey, I wonder whether we are missing each other's points in this
discussion. I don't really think this is a matter of either/or--one
understanding of PAQHMATA vs the other, but rather of more than a single
element entering into the way the word (PAQHMATA) is being used. I do very
definitely think that Paul understands the very will to do what is
righteous as a potential snare, a trap laid by Sin as a sort of demonic
power out to get us one way or another. But the notion of demonic powers,
be they minions of Satan or spirits resident in the planetary spheres and
exercising control (KOSMOKRATORES THS PAROUSHS SKOTIAS), is another
constituent element of Hellenistic culture, as is the worship of the
goddess TYCHE and the sense of enslavement to hEIMARMENH that some
expressed.
Nor was I arguing that Paul borrows DIRECTLY from Stoic philosophers in
Romans 2. And yes, I do indeed think that there are allusions to Wisdom of
Solomon there, but I don't think that exhausts the sources in contemporary
thought upon which Paul is drawing. I'm not arguing either that Stoicism or
Cynicism was pervasive in the first century, but rather that an eclectic
amalgam of elements of Stoic belief in providence and the universal LOGOS,
of Platonic dualism, of a Stoic-Cynic notion of a life in accordance with
nature, of Stoic and Epicurean notions of emotions as powerful forces to
which one may readily be enslaved--that these are elements in a cultural
atmosphere, elements that one could be easily familiar with without having
attended one of the schools in Athens or Cos or Rhodes or Alexandria.
If we are at odds here, I think it is more likely over what you and I mean
by Hellenized Judaism. I think this is something that may mean different
things in Palestine and in Alexandria and in Asia Minor--Paul's Tarsus--and
in Greece and Italy, but my guess is that you and I have different ideas
about the extent to which Hellenized Judaism is a fundamentally
ethnocentric and xenophobic phenomenon. I rather think it runs the whole
spectrum from extremely conservative Jews who don't speak Greek at all and
imagine that they are altogether immune from the taint of Hellenism to
radical Jews who see the Mosaic tradition as one of the competing
philosophic systems, more like each other than distinct, by which humanity
seeks to orient itself in the universe. Where does Paul belong on that
spectrum? Probably a pretty complex and conflicted young man, I would
think, even before his transformation, whether that be called a "call" or a
"conversion," from a fanatical persecutor of Jewish Christians who are
proselytizing Gentiles to the foremost fanatical proselytizer in their
company.
But really, I don't think we are arguing at cross-purposes here so much as
each underscoring the importance of one aspect of the background of Paul's
psychology of sinfulness.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/