PAUL AMONG THE PEOPLE

PAUL AMONG THE PEOPLE: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined In His Own Time
By Sarah Ruden
Pantheon, 2010
ISBN 978-0-375-42501-1
194 pages

A Review by George R. Pasley

My local librarian recommended this book to me after I wrote a poem about “thorns in the flesh,” a reference to one of the Apostle Paul’s personal experiences. I am glad she made the recommendation. It was on the shelves at our local library, but I intend to purchase my own copy forthwith.

Ruden is a scholar and a Christian (Quaker) but not a biblical scholar, even though at the time of the books publication she was a research fellow at Yale Divinity. Rather, she is a scholar of Greek Literature, and brings her knowledge of language (Latin and Greek, both classical and Koinonia) and culture to the interpretation of Paul’s New Testament epistles.

Specifically, her aim is to interpret them as they would have been heard by the Greco-Roman culture but her interpretation is powerful in our time.

Though her work is scholarly it is also personal and as such each chapter, and the corpus, is a powerful sermon.

The first chapter serves as a bit of introduction, with six chapters following that deal with pleasure, homosexuality, women (and marriage), Christians and government, slavery and love. Actually, the first chapter is a bit more than introduction- it sets the case that Ruden has figured out that the socially-conscious church is not an invention of modern times, but is present with Paul’s letters to Christians.

Ruden brings formidable translation skills to her work, and they are most evident in the chapter on pleasure, where she works through Paul’s lists of works of the flesh and fruits of the spirit. Especially helpful is her summary of Paul’s use of Sarx (Greek for flesh). “Paul’s point is not that the body or nature is bad and the mind or spirit good. It is about two ways of using the body, the one for a life that is worth living forever, and the other for a life that is as good as death in the short time before it vanishes.” (p. 41)

Homosexuality being a subject of strong division within the church today, Ruden deals with it rather thoroughly. Yes, it was a sin in Paul’s Jewish faith (though Paul set aside other Jewish things), but that is not what Ruden notices with what Paul says about homosexuality. First, she notes the pervasiveness of homosexuality in the Greco-Roman culture as an abusive practice. Her examples from Greek literature are quite numerous, and bawdy. But she makes her point: abusive sex was rampant, but the stigma was on the passive partner- victim- and not the aggressive partner, which was almost everybody (or so it seems). Linguistically she points out that Paul’s condemnation is to both partners, a novel thought in those days, and then she makes a final translation revelation: the word most often translated as “wickedness” would have been understood among the Greeks as “Injustice,” which paired with”ungodliness” in itself was a rather novel concept since there was no “thoroughly just god in their traditional pantheon” (p. 69) Ruden concludes:

“Paul’s Roman audience knew what justice was, if only through missing it. They would have been surprised to hear that justice applied to homosexuality, of all things. But many of them- slaves, freedmen, the poor, the young- would have understood in the next instant. Christ, the only Son of God, gave his body to save mankind. What greater contrast could there be to the tradition of using a weaker body for selfish pleasure or a power trip? Among Christians, there would have been no quibbling about what to do: no one would have imagined homosexuality’s being different than it was, it would have to go. And tolerance for it did disappear from the church.” (p. 71)

In effect, Paul’s ban on homosexual practice was an act of justice, not holiness.

I had to wonder about the accuracy of Ruden’s depiction of the rampant nature of sexual abuse in those times, until I watched a documentary on sex trafficking in our time. Considering that it is as rampant as it is, even in a so-called Christian nation, it is no longer hard for me to imagine widespread abuse in ancient times.

In the same effective manner Ruden deals with various issues regarding women (having their heads covered was an act of justice that lifted up the poor, non-ladies< to the same status as the most respected women)

Particularly moving is Ruden’s treatment of the book of Philemon (which has some sharp criticism for Crossan!). Paul was most definitely not asking Philemon to set Onesimus free. But what he was saying that Philemon would do, if he kept in mind what God has done for us, was even more radical: Forgive him, and treat him as a brother. In our time that seems quaint and easy, but it was most definitely counter-cultural, radical, and revolutionary in Philemon’s day. On pages 165 and 166 Ruden has a list of 14 things that Paul is doing and that Philemon ought to do that are completely at cross-currents with the culture.

One might be amused to find the love chapter included in a book that helps us to re-imagine Paul, but indeed the last chapter, on Paul and Love, is also very helpful. For one, Ruden emphasizes that agape was relatively unused outside of Christianity, that people in the Roman world only gave things to get things. But there is more.

Ruden emphasizes the verb nature of love, with a very helpful literal translation and little chart that shows how Paul new verbs out of three adjectives: kind, boastful and arrogant. Love is not a feeling, it’s a verb, and we need to DO things.

Which of course is hard, nay, impossible? But in a way that becomes quite personal, Ruden shows how Paul’s reference to himself as a child (Unheard of in ancient literature) helped her to realize that Love is something that is outside of us, doing for us, leading us, helping us to love as love does.

George R. Pasley
August 9, 2010
Ketchikan AK