possibility of transcending both is always there. As Ronald Williamson has put it:
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 | | It seems that for Philo, alongside traditional, orthodox Judaism, there was a philosophical outlook on life, involving the recognition of the purely spiritual nature of the Transcendent, in which one day, Philo believed, all mankind would share. In
that
Judaism the idealized Augustus, Julia Augusta and Petroniusamong, no doubt, many others had already participated.
|
| | (Williamson 1989, 13)
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For Philo, such a spiritualized and philosophical Judaism, one in which a faith is substituted for works, remains only a theoretical possibility,
4
whereas for Paul, it becomes the actuality of a new religious formation that tends strongly to disembody Judaism.
5
If the body of language is its
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| | 4. According to H. A. Wolfson, Philo allowed for the possibility of uncircumcised "spiritual" proselytes (1947, 369). Borgen (1980, 87) seems to think that such uncircumcised proselytes could have been fully accepted as Jews by Philo, a proposition I find unconvincing. Nor am I convinced by Borgen's reading of the Talmud at Shabbat 51a, to the effect that for Hillel circumcision was not a prerequisite for conversion. The arguments of Neil McEleney (1974) are not convincing, since they involve faulty readings of talmudic texts, as I will show, Deo volente, in my forthcoming work on Paul. Shaye Cohen's comprehensive work on conversion in late-antique Judaism will clear up many of these doubtful issues.
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| | 5. In a recent letter to me, John Miles has made the following important comments:
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| | The faith-vs.-works dispute which you present as Christianity-vs.-Judaism has a long history, starting well before the Reformation, as a dispute
within
Christianity. A pagan who converted even to the Pauline form of Christianity was enjoined to follow a strikingly different ethical code and to abstain from a host of usages that were incompatible with monotheism. The result did not put him in continuity with Judah as a tribal, genetic community, but it was works, nonetheless, not just faith. It is, in fact, the survival of this much of the concrete Jewish program that makes Christianity indigestible for Gnosticism. The sentence to which I allude continues "whereas for Paul it becomes the actuality of a new religious formation which disembodies Judaism entire." Christianity looks disembodied by comparison with Rabbinic Judaism, but by comparison with Gnosticism it looks pretty corporeal.
|
| | (Miles 1991)
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