¹ Copenhagen, 1954 (Acta Jutlandica 26.1).

² Throughout this article the numbers in parentheses refer to pages of Munck's book.

³ Munck comments: ‘Dieser scheinbare Partikularismus ist Ausdruck seines Universalismus: Jesus kommt gerade zu Israel, weil seine Sendung der ganzen Welt gilt.’ (266).

⁴ Mt. 23.3 is declared textually corrupt; it cannot report the teaching either of Jesus or of any Christian group important enough to have influenced the text of the Gospel (250).

⁵ Munck suggests (115–21; 228 ff.) that for Peter the conviction that observance of the Law was not necessary for salvation may have been based on his own inability, as an am-ha-arez, to observe it. The consequent theory is put in Peter's mouth by Acts 15.10 and is also appealed to by Paul in argument with Peter, as common ground, Gal. 2.14 ff. Perhaps it is one more likely to have been developed by an am-ha-arez, but such considerations are uncertain, cf. the familiar argument that only one who had made a desperate effort to observe the Law could be so thoroughly convinced of the impossibility of the task. Munck is certainly right in arguing (1, n. 2) that Phil. 3.6 f. tells strongly against the usual supposition that Gal. 2.15 ff. reflects Paul's experience of his own inability to fulfill the requirements of the Law. He does not directly discuss the problem of reconciling Phil. 3.6 with Rom. 3.9 ff., but it appears from his remarks in other connections (loc. cit. and 248) that he would probably say Phil. 3.6 was written from the viewpoint of a Jew (‘blameless’ — according to the generally accepted standards), Rom. 3.9 ff. from that of a Christian to whom Jesus' revelation of the deeper demands of the Law had revealed also the impossibility of any man's meeting them. Perhaps the most serious objection to be brought against Munck's account of Paul's conversion is that it simply ignores the existence of the subconscious mind and therefore treats Paul's persecution of Christianity as proof that he was ‘immune’ to the Gospel (5). Just the contrary!

⁶ It is worth noting that this term — like euangelion — expresses the viewpoint of the elect. But the elect were a minority (Lk. 13.23 f. and //; Acts 4.12; II Thess. 1.8; &c.) From the viewpoint of most of the expected participants, as expressed by Celsus, the predicted events seemed rather a Verdammungsgeschichte (Adv. Cels. 3.16; 4.23, 73; 5.14; 7.9; 8.48). Wetter, G., Der Sohn Gottes, Göttingen, 1916, 123Google Scholar, has conjectured that it was the doctrine of the coming judgment which brought upon the early Christians the charge of being enemies of mankind. (Consequently John's insistence, that Jesus is not to be the judge of the world, may be apologetic, ib. 120–4.)

⁷ Munck objects, however, that the usual picture of Paul cannot be true because it represents him as egotistical and sensitive to considerations of personal honor (44, n. 38; 77).

⁸ The community at Antioch was gentile (98, 115 f.), but Paul's missionary work in Syria and Cilicia was among Jews (113 f.; 268 f.).

⁹ That Paul reports it after his account of the conference (Gal. 2.11 ff.) proves nothing, according to Munck. It must have been before the conference, otherwise the disagreement could have been represented as annulling the results of the conference, or raising an issue not previously dealt with. In that event Paul would never have mentioned it in his argument (93).

¹⁰ Contrast this argument of Munck's with his attack (76 f.) on the conventional picture of Paul as a ‘Polemiker’ ‘der es mit der Wahrheit nicht so genau nimmt.’ This picture he finds ‘nicht anziehend’ and therefore false. However, there is no doubt that Paul was not scrupulous about minor misrepresentations of fact: Paul himself admits it, II Cor. 9.2 ff. Contrast also II Thess. 3.8 ff., where he claims that he received no gifts from anyone while in Thessalonica (and uses the example of his own self-support to justify his prohibition of others’ living on charity), with Phil. 4.16, where he reminds the Philippians that they had the unique honor of sending him contributions while he was in Thessalonica. As for apparent conformity to the norms of the surrounding society, he himself boasts of this, I Cor. 9.19–23, and in the conclusion of the following chapter gives a rationale of the practice: Voluntary abrogation of one's liberty is justifiable, even praiseworthy, if the sacrifice is made for a worthy cause and the observance of the Law is not thought an act of virtue in its own right. He does not, apparently, consider it an objection that such apparent conformity might occasion misunderstanding. In fact, I Cor. 9.19 ff. suggests that he practiced it in order to occasion misunderstanding. Acts 21.18–26 is understood by Munck to report, as it stands, a particular instance when (on the advice of the elders of the Christian community in Jerusalem) this general rule was put into practice. See below, notes 13 and 18.

¹¹ Col. 2.16–23 is not specifically discussed, in spite of the parallel to Gal. 4.9; the opponents in Phil. 3.2–8 are declared to be Jews, not Judaizers, in spite of 3.18 (274, n. 46).

¹² Munck does not mention the fact that three chapters of I Cor. (8–10) are given to the question of Christian liberty, with special reference to permitted and forbidden food. Nor could he explain this discussion as intended only for the Jewish Christians in the Corinthian community, since he thinks that community almost purely gentile (195).

¹³ The remaining material may here be summarized by the following outline of its principal elements: Paul's troubles with the Corinthians ended happily. Romans, written in Corinth after the reconciliation, reports his reflections on the whole set of problems raised by the disputes of the preceding period; it is therefore worthless as evidence for the make up of the Christian community in Rome, except for the fact that it addresses these Christians as former gentiles (190–4). The rest of Paul's career is reported with reasonable accuracy in Acts, except that 21.20 must be textually corrupt. It represents the leaders of the Jerusalem community as counselling Paul to participate in a legal ceremony in order that the many Christians of Jerusalem who are zealots for the Law shall know that he also observes it. Munck thinks this deception and argues that such deception is incompatible with the moral character of James, the Brother of the Lord. Therefore the text must be emended so as to make Jews of the persons who are to be deceived. Just how this palliates the deception is not explained (234–7). It is argued that the point at issue in Paul's trial was the right of Christianity to be considered a form of Judaism, i.e., a licit religion (307–13). The difference reported by Philippians between those who favor Paul and those who preach Christ in order to get him in trouble is explained as a difference of policy, between those who wished to stand by him when he faced a criminal charge and those who wished to disassociate the movement from him (317 ff.). The development of Paul's eschatological expectations is traced and it is argued that, although he at one time hoped to precipitate the End by bringing the gentiles and their tribute (from Greece) to Jerusalem — so fulfilling such prophecies as Is. 2.2; 60.5 f.; &c. — he came to see, during his imprisonment in Jerusalem, that the fitting conclusion for his career was an appearance before the emperor, therefore his appeal was also an eschatological action (294–302; 319–21).

¹⁴ Here, too, the present dating can best be retained by supposing deliberate misrepresentation. See my remarks on Mk. 11.1–13.37, HTR 48 (1955) 45–6Google Scholar.

¹⁵ His treatment of the Gospels, in particular, makes no pretense to be more than the discussion of a few passages which can be understood as supporting his conclusions, or as apparently opposed to them. Therefore it need not be further considered here.

¹⁶ A few of the more important are on pp. 131–7, 168 and 170 f.

¹⁷ An unlikely equation if this doctrine was, as Munck supposes, taught and practiced by all Christians except the dissenting group in Galatia. Munck has well remarked (176) how Paul likes to settle questions by referring to the practice of the universal Church. Had such reference been possible in his dispute with the Galatians, it is almost incredible that he should not have used it.

¹⁸ This seems to me more probable than the explanation that Paul considered Timothy a Jew because his mother was a Jewish Christian. For the moral problems raised by this doctrine, and further parallels, see above, n. 10. It is quite useless to cite, against this interpretation, verses like Gal. 5.2, for they refer — as the context clearly shows — to circumcision-in-order-to-fulfill-the-Law, which is quite a different thing, to Paul's mind, from circumcision-as-a-concession-to-others'-weakness.

¹⁹ It should be noted that in this passage the observance of the Law by gentiles is not in question. Paul is charged with teaching the Jews of the diaspora not to observe the Law, and is advised to refute the rumor by demonstrating that he himself observes it. The question of the gentiles is taken as settled by the decision of ch. 15. This limits the significance of Paul's action, but does not touch the essential question, since the antinomian core of his teaching was obviously applicable to converted Jews, and it is hardly credible that he refrained from making this application in particular practice as he did in general theory.

²⁰ Munck (79 ff.) attempts to prove this from the use of the present participle in Gal. 6.13. But the force of the tenses of Greek participles is not very reliable (H. Smyth, A Greek Grammar for Colleges, N.Y., N.D., sec. 1872, a, 1; cf. sees. 2043, 2052a, 2091) and here, in particular, the verse presumably refers to persons who had been circumcised before Paul wrote (certainly not to persons being circumcised at the very moment of writing). Just how long in the past the operation had taken place can hardly be determined from the use of a present participle. Prof. A. D. Nock suggests the translation, ‘who are by way of being circumcised,’ which is as indefinite as the original.

²¹ Close parallels in Plato, Euthyd. 303 C, and Philo, Mos. 2.241. ἤσαν refers to the time of the conference. It is not to be contrasted with the present tense of δοκοῦντες, since the temporal force of such participles is negligible (v.s., n. 20). Paul is making, in passing, a pun on the participial sense of οἱ δοκοῦντες — ‘those seeming’ — and its use by transference as a noun to mean ‘persons of position’ (Euripides, Hec. 295). It would be pedantic to press either the details of the wording, or the logical implications, of such a passing pun.

²² It may be that the Judaizers had appealed to the Jerusalem figures not only as ecclesiastical authorities, but also as persons of special holiness and gifted with special spiritual powers (cf. II Cor. 12.1, 11 f.); it may be — on the other hand — that the Judaizers had attacked the Jerusalem leaders as hypocritical and were therefore particularly bitter about Paul's dependence on them.

²³ Prof. A. D. Nock remarks in a note to me, ‘the use of ἵνα may simply represent an imperative.’

²⁴ See above, in the outline, Munck 133.

²⁵ To this interpretation someone will certainly object that Paul recognized only one gospel, his own, that he anathematized anyone who should preach the Galatians another (Gal. 1.8), and that he rebuked Peter for not walking ‘according to the truth of the’ — undoubtedly Pauline — ‘gospel’ (Gal. 2.14). But this argument neglects the complex nature of unity. Paul could, on occasion, speak with approval of two different gospels: Gal. 2.7, on which see Fridrichsen, A., The Apostle and His Message, Uppsala, 1947Google Scholar (U. U. Årsskrift), 8–11. Further, Paul's use of ‘my’ gospel sometimes seems to suppose the existence of other gospels differing from his own (Rom. 16.25; II Cor. 4.3; cf. I Cor. 15.1; Gal. 1.11; 2.2); and in Gal. 1.6 he declares that one such gospel is being preached, though he violently disapproves of it (cf. II Cor. 11.4). Therefore ‘gospel’ for Paul is an ambiguous term. There is the gospel (of Christ) which, presumably, all good gospels have in common. There are at least two good gospels, that of the circumcision and that of the uncircumcision, and we are not told how they differ — perhaps in secondary content, perhaps in method of presentation, perhaps in proposed audience, perhaps in all three. Finally, there are other gospels which are bad, because they do not accord with the gospel. In this paragraph Paul is arguing for the authority of the-gospel-which-he-preaches-among-the-gentiles, viz., that ‘of the uncircumcision.’ One of his arguments is that it was recognized to be the work of the same Lord who inspired that ‘of the circumcision.’ His anathemas on anyone who preaches any other gospel to the Galatians (Gal. 1.8) may be explained by the context as referring to false gospels only, or as motivated by a concern lest the Galatians be confused by the variety of true teachings, or as the result of anger at others’ poaching on his preserves, or — most likely, in Paul — as a careless utterance, expressing his immediate feelings more accurately than his general theory. The possible explanations of the scene in Antioch are equally numerous and even more hypothetical.

²⁶ As that, for instance, on the permissibility of preparing food on the Sabbath, Mk. 2.23 ff.

²⁷ E.g., Mat. 12.5 f.; on the difference of Mat. from Mk. here see the excellent remarks of Daube, D., The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism, London, 1956, 66–71Google Scholar.

²⁸ This is not to say that it is also the earliest and most reliable, see my comments in JBR 24 (1956) 94 fGoogle Scholar.

²⁹ ‘A case in point (to illustrate the procedure in official decisions as to the calendar) is that of Rabban Gamaliel and the elders, who customarily sat (in formal session) on the steps of the Temple, with Johanan, the official secretary, in their presence. They would say to him, “Write: To our brethren, the men of Upper Galilee and the men of Lower Galilee. May your peace increase. We make known to you that the time of the removal has come, for the removal of tithes from the pits where olives are stored.” Or, “To our brethren, the men of the Upper Negeb and the men of the Lower Negeb. May your peace increase. We make known to you that the time of the removal has come, for the removal of tithes from the wheat sheaves.” Or, “To our brethren, the men of the diaspora of Babylon and the men of the diaspora of Media and all the other diasporas of Israel. May your peace increase. We make known to you that the young pigeons have not yet feathered and the young lambs are yet small and the season of ripening has not come; therefore it has seemed good to us and to our colleagues to add to this year thirty days.”’

³⁰ E.g., his secondary arguments against Acts 20.21 (235 f.), all of which presuppose a small, centralized community, where all the members knew everything that went on.

³¹ It is one of Munck's major accomplishments to have challenged seriously, if not refuted entirely, the notion that either Peter or James was the sponsor of the Judaizing movement and therefore behind the opposition to Paul. Munck's argument on this point depends on the interpretation of many details and runs throughout the whole book, e.g., 94, 99, 101 ff., 104 ff., 118, 134, 172, 228–31.

³² Munck thinks the Twelve came to be called apostles only as a result of later Christian misunderstanding of a reference by Paul to the Galatians' misunderstanding of their position (206–7). For him, Peter was the only other apostle in the same sense as Paul, the remaining uses of the word refer to individuals of an entirely different rank and function (53). It is interesting to note, as an incidental result of this discussion, that Munck's theory turns out to be built principally on an uncritical acceptance of one aspect of Acts and on a polemical passage in one of Paul's letters — although he particularly inveighs against the previous uncritical acceptance of Acts and the use of the polemical passages of the letters as guides to the interpretation of the rest (72 ff.).

³³ Munck 28–60 and passim, esp. 33 ff., 38 f., 111–14, 195 ff. The chief texts are Rom. 1.5; 11.13 ff.; 15–16 ff.; I Cor. 9.1–6; II Cor. 10.8; 11.23–30; Gal. 1.16; 2.2, 7–9; Col. 1.23–9. To these may be added (from Fridrichsen, Apostle, 7, cit. sup. n. 25, where the same theory is defended) II Cor. 2.14 ff. It is clear that Paul thought his message valid for all the gentiles, but presumably he thought it valid for all the Jews, too (Gal. 2.14–21). Therefore the notion of its universal validity cannot be made to imply the notion of his own universal authority, as Fridrichsen attempts to make it. Nor is reference to Paul's ‘care of all the churches’ (II Cor. 11.28) justified as proof of this point. Paul, in that verse, is boasting of his burdens. Now he pretty certainly was not burdened with the care of the church in Alexandria, nor of that in Rome. Therefore when he boasts of caring for ‘all’ the churches, he must mean no more than ‘all those many which I do supervise.’ The authority implied is merely extensive, not all-inclusive, still less exclusive.

³⁴ Munck promises (38, n. 20) to treat the question of the apostolate in a later volume. Therefore the opinions he has advanced here may not have been supported as fully as they otherwise would have been.

³⁵ This point was already made by Fridrichsen, Apostle, cit. sup. n. 25, and by Cullmann, O., Le Caractère eschatologique du devoir missionaire, RHPR 16 (1936) 210 ffGoogle Scholar. Fridrichsen's work further agrees with Munck's in a number of important points, notably the concept of Peter as the apostle to the circumcision, over against Paul as the apostle to the gentiles, based on Gal. 2.7, and the attempt to justify this by supposing that the Jerusalem council resulted in a geographical division of the mission field (though F. gives Paul everything outside Palestine). F.'s arguments for these theories, however, are not so strong as to have required special notice above.