1 Introduction Paul: A Circumcised Apostle

[Jesus’] disciples said to him, “Is circumcision beneficial or not?” He said to them, “If it were beneficial, their father would beget them already circumcised from their mother.1 Rather, the true circumcision in spirit has become completely profitable.” (Gos. Thom. 53 [Lambdin])

1.1 Introducing Paul and Circumcision

While these words almost certainly do not go back to the mouth of the historical Jesus of Nazareth,2 many find them to be at home in the theology of the apostle Paul. For example, Gerd Lüdemann comments, “Like Paul (Rom. 2.25 – 29; 1 Cor. 7.7 – 19 [sic]; Gal. 6.5 [sic]; Phil. 3.3), this verse understands circumcision in the metaphorical sense and thus provides a further argument against the benefits of circumcision.”3 In the same vein, Joshua Jipp and Michael Thate note, “Paul redefines circumcision and Judaism in such a way that the literal is transcended by the spiritual; that is, circumcision is not of the flesh but is rather a process worked by the Spirit on the heart….Like Paul, [in the Gospel of Thomas] true circumcision is not of the flesh but is altogether located in the metaphorical and spiritual realm.”4

These remarks represent a fairly standard reading of Paul and circumcision that has been prevalent for centuries.5 This common understanding of how Paul speaks about circumcision makes a handful of claims. First, Paul denies the benefit and value of physical circumcision.6 Second, Paul redefines what constitutes proper circumcision and who it applies to. Third, spiritual circumcision makes physical circumcision redundant or obsolete. Lastly, like Thomas’ Jesus, Paul’s negative evaluation of circumcision occurs irrespective of ethnic concerns. While individual interpreters’ readings are nuanced in their assessment of Paul’s discourse on circumcision, these are the commonly shared ideas that one typically encounters in scholarly discussions of Paul and circumcision.

In this book, I argue that Paul held none of these views about circumcision. Through a comprehensive examination of every instance of circumcision language in Paul’s epistles, I make the case that he upholds the practice and value of circumcision for Jews. He does not redefine it, replace it, declare its irrelevance, or expand its application to non-Jews—metaphorically or otherwise. Paul’s rejection of circumcision for non-Jews does not indicate any repudiation of the practice for his fellow Jews. For example, in Phil 3:3, Paul’s statement, “We are the circumcision,” does not refer to “Christians” as the “true circumcision”—a phrase that does not occur in Paul’s writings or the New Testament—but simply refers to Paul and Timothy, the Jewish authors of the letter (Phil 1:1). Or in Rom 2:28 – 29, when Paul speaks about circumcision of the heart, he does not do so to describe a universal circumcision available to his gentile audience or to devalue physical circumcision, but to describe the necessity of heart-circumcision for physically circumcised Jews. Or in 1 Cor 7:17 – 19, Paul does not view circumcision and foreskin as things of indifference, but as important ethnic and social categories that have ongoing implications for how Jews and non-Jews in the assembly are to live.

Crucial for this investigation is Paul’s self-identification as an apostle to the nations (e. g., Rom 1:5; 11:13 – 14; Gal 1:15 – 16; 2:7 – 9). It is within the context of his epistles written to foreskinned non-Jews that we find all of Paul’s words on circumcision. Hence the title of this work, The Apostle to the Foreskin: Circumcision in the Letters of Paul. This title—I think—captures the physical and ethnic binary that frames Paul’s discourse on circumcision.

1.2 Paul and Circumcision via “Paul and Judaism”

Scholarly treatments of Paul and circumcision are often determined by how one views Paul’s relationship to Judaism.7 The centuries-long, prevailing perspective in Pauline studies is that Paul abandoned Judaism, which included a rejection of the necessity of physical circumcision.8 The justification given for Paul’s conversion out of Judaism often mirrors one’s justification for Paul’s abrogation of physical circumcision. For the majority of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Paul’s rejection of Judaism and circumcision was thought to be a product of his rejection of the supposed legalism and exclusivity of Judaism, and his conversion to universalistic, law-free Christianity.9 For example, Rudolf Bultmann writes, “Paul's struggle in Galatia against the Law as the way to salvation is simultaneously a struggle against the ritual and cultic rules, particularly against circumcision and the Jewish festivals.”10 By positioning legalistic Judaism as law-free Christianity’s foil, it was easy to justify Paul’s rejection of physical circumcision within the context of his rejection of the legalism of Judaism.

While some scholars in the twentieth century began to question the validity of the characterization of Judaism as legalistic11—and thus, Paul’s relationship to it12—it was not until the publication of E. P. Sanders’ Paul and Palestinian Judaism in 1977—and the subsequent birth of the so-called “New Perspective on Paul”—that perspectives on Paul’s relationship to Judaism began to shift more broadly. As scholars adopted Sanders’ revised view of Judaism as a religion of grace, they began to rethink the question of Paul and circumcision.13 Most notably, James Dunn and N. T. Wright argued that Paul rejected the necessity of physical circumcision because of the ethnocentrism and exclusivism of Judaism, not because of its supposed legalism.14 On their readings, circumcision and other works of the law functioned as Jewish badges of covenant membership that divided Jews from non-Jews. As Wright puts it, “They were determinative for showing who was a part of the people dividing lines between Jews and gentiles, and have no place in the ekklēsia.”15 Since—on this reading—the people of God have now been redefined through pistis directed toward the Messiah, Paul can dispense with the ongoing validity of these Jewish identifying marks, of which circumcision is chief.

Despite the fact that the majority of interpreters assert that Paul no longer found physical circumcision to be of value for those who followed the Messiah, many note that circumcision continued to have metaphorical and symbolic value for Paul.16 Due to the perceived negative assessment of Judaism in Paul’s writings, his positive employment of circumcision leads many interpreters to conclude that he is redefining or reinterpreting circumcision.17 On this type of reading, Paul transforms what it means to be circumcised and what the category of “the circumcision” refers to. Here, scholars appeal to Rom 2:28 – 29 to argue that Paul spiritualizes—and thus universalizes—circumcision by noting “true circumcision” is of the heart. Furthermore, Phil 3:3 is used to demonstrate that the Christian church has replaced Jews as “the circumcision.” On these readings, Paul reappropriates and Christianizes circumcision for the church.

1.2.1 An Emerging Paradigm

The primary point of departure between this project and the majority of previous treatments of Paul and circumcision—and thus one of the main contributions of this work—is how I understand Paul’s relationship to Judaism. I make the argument of this book within the context of the emerging Paul within Judaism Schule.18 Simply put, the guiding assumption of this perspective is that “the writing and community building of the apostle Paul took place within late Second Temple Judaism, within which he remained a representative after his change of conviction about Jesus being the Messiah (Christ).”19 To put it another way, Paul’s acknowledgment that Jesus was the Messiah20—and his subsequent call to be the apostle to the nations—did not constitute an abandonment of his ancestral traditions (or his ethnic identity), but was simply its own expression of Judaism within a sea of other expressions (e. g., Pharisaic Judaism, Qumran Judaism, Enochic Judaism, etc.).21 Or to state it more succinctly, Paul was not a Christian.22

Like most deities in antiquity, Paul’s god is an ethnic god; he was Jewish.23 As Paula Fredriksen notes, unlike other gods and their peoples, the Jews claimed that their god “was also the universal god, the highest god, the supreme god. Even odder was the claim of some Jews of apocalyptic bent: the Jewish god, they said, would ultimately be worshiped by ethnic others, both human and divine.”24 Paul believes that through the work of the Messiah, the time has come for non-Jews to worship Israel’s god. It is within this eschatological context that Paul...