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Paul in Acts: Preacher of Eschatological Repentance to Israel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

David P. Moessner
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Extract

The ‘enigmatic ending’ of Acts continues to baffle the exegetes. Not the least of its difficulties is the status of ‘the Jews’ after Paul's peculiarly solemn pronouncement of Isa 6. 9–10 against a ‘closed’ and ‘hardened’ people (Acts 28. 26–27). Coming as it does as a climax to the equally ponderous pronouncements of judgment in Acts 13. 46 and 18. 6, for many scholars the cumulative, three-fold impact of this indictment resounds a note of finality, of foreclosure upon Israel which consequently consummates an era and looks ahead almost exclusively to a Gentile church. The two leading clusters of opinion expressing this understanding are those associated with E. Haenchen – viz., that repentance for Israel by the end of Acts is de facto now over, with Gentiles replacing Jews as the people of God – or with J. Jervell – that a core of repenting Jews constitutes a restored Israel which, along with increasing numbers of Gentiles, by the end of chapter 28 has completed its mission to unrepenting Jews who no longer have a right to the name ‘Israel’ or ‘people of God’.

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Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , January 1988 , pp. 96 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

NOTES

[1] For a lucid discussion of the various interpretations, see Walaskay, P. W. (‘And so we came to Rome’: The Political Perspective of St. Luke [SNTSMS 49; Cambridge: Cambridge Univ., 1983] 18–22).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

[2] Although Haenchen's delineation between the story time of the narrative and Luke's own time is not always clear, he apparently is convinced that Luke himself believes that by the time of Paul's arrival in Rome the Pauline mission had ‘written off’ the Jews (The Acts of the Apostles [14th ed.; Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1971] 128–9); see n. 9.Google Scholar

[3] Luke and the People of God (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1972) 41–74Google Scholar; The Unknown Paul (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984) 26–51, esp. 39–43.Google Scholar

[4] Jervell, J., Luke and the People of God, 68.Google Scholar

[5] See e.g., Radl, W. (Paulus und Jesus im lukanischen Doppelwerk [Bern: Lang, 1975])Google Scholar; Mattill, A. J. Jr, (‘The Jesus-Paul Parallels and the Purpose of Luke-Acts: H. H. Evans Reconsidered’, NovT 17 [1975] 15–46)Google Scholar; Moessner, D. P. (‘“The Christ Must Suffer”: New Light on the Jesus-Peter, Stephen, Paul Parallels in Luke-Acts’), NovT 28 [1986] 220–256.Google Scholar

[6] An approach to any narrative text which places a priority on relating various parts of the ‘narrative world’ of the text to each other in establishing the necessary literary context within which diachronic issues and conclusions concerning tradition and redaction should be addressed. See further, n. 9.

[7] E.g., Am 5. 18–20; Isa 5 (passim); Mic 2. 1–4; Jer 22. 13–14; Ezek 34. 2; cf. 1 Enoch 91–104Google Scholar (passim). Cf. Aune, D. E., Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983) 96–97Google Scholar; Steck, O. H., Israel und das gewaltsame Geschick der Propheten (WMANT 23; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1967) 50–8Google Scholar. Westermann, C. (Basic Forms of Prophetic Speech [London: Lutterworth, 1967] 190–4) locates the Sitz im Leben of the ‘woe oracle’ in recitations of the ‘curses’ of Deut 27. 15–26 in the covenant renewal ceremony. See below for this Deuteronomistic view of Israel's guilt.Google Scholar

[8] See Gen 4. 10; 2 Chr 24. 25.

[9] The approximate ‘mid-point’ according to a sequential reckoning of the ‘story-stuff’ (fabula) in the journey account. For definitions of ‘story’, ‘plot’, ‘story time’, ‘plotted time’, ‘narrative world’, etc. as developed by the Russian Formalists and utilized in the present investigation, see Bann, S. and Bowlt, J. E., ed. (Russian Formalism [Edinburgh: Scottish Academic, 1973], espGoogle Scholar. the essays of Todorov, T. [6–19]Google Scholar, Sherwood, R. [26–40]Google Scholar, and Shklovsky, V. [48–72])Google Scholar; Petersen, N. R. (Literary Criticism for New Testament Critics [Philadelphia:] Fortress, 1978] 33–92)Google Scholar. For various interpretations of the dissonance of form from content in the Lukan ‘travel narrative’, see Moessner, D. P. (‘Luke 9:1–50: Luke's Preview of the Journey of the Prophet like Moses of Deuteronomy’), JBL 102 [1983] 575–605Google Scholar; idem (forthcoming) Lord of the Banquet. The Literary and Theological Significance of the Lukan Travel Narrative (Philadelphia: Fortress; AThANT, Zürich; Theologischer Verlag, 1988).Google Scholar

[10] E.g., Isa 3. 12; 29. 13–14; Jer 16. 11–13; Am 3. 2; 4. 1–2; 8. 4–8; Mic 3. 9–12; cf. Aune, , Prophecy, 92Google Scholar; Steck, , Geschick, 57–8.Google Scholar

[11] For the same notion in intertestamental and Rabbinic literature of the God of Israel ‘abandoning/leaving’ the Temple, see e.g., Bar 2. 26; T. Levi 15. 1; 1 Enoch 89. 56; Pesiq. R. 138a; 146a;cf. Dan 9. 17b.

[12] Cf. Am 5. 1–2.

[13] ‘The Fall of Jerusalem and the “Abomination of Desolation”’, JRS 37 (1947) 47–54.Google Scholar

[14] Isa 29. 3; 37. 33; Ezek 4. 2; 21. 22.

[15] Ezek 4. 2;cf. Jer 27. 29.

[16] Isa 29. 3; 37. 33; Ezek 4. 2; cf. Jer 27. 29.

[17] Isa 3. 25–26.

[18] See Dodd, (‘Fall’, 50–2), for detailed discussion.Google Scholar

[19] See n. 9.

[20] Dodd, , ‘Fall’, 51–2Google Scholar; Reicke, B., ‘Synoptic Prophecies on the Destruction of Jerusalem’, Studies in New Testament and Early Christian Literature: Essays in Honour of A. P. Wikgren (ed. Aune, D. E.; Leiden: Brill, 1972) 126–8.Google Scholar

[21] Nickelsburg, G. W. E., Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981) 9–18Google Scholar; Steck, , Geschick, 110–95Google Scholar; Rad, G. von, Deuteronomy. A Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966) 195–201.Google Scholar

[22] In B.

[23] Cf. Steck, (Geschick, 77–80, 137–43) on this dynamic in the Deuteronomistic history.Google Scholar

[24] Aune, , Prophecy, 95.Google Scholar

[25] Zimmerli, W., Ezekiel I (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979) 2, 67.Google Scholar

[26] The variation is significant within the threefold repetition; for ‘variation’ and ‘repetition’ as poetic devices in narrative ‘point of view’, see Berlin, A. (Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative [Bible and Literature Series 9; Sheffield: Almond, 1983] 73–9).Google Scholar

[27] For Rome referring to the ‘end of the earthy’ from a probable Palestinian perspective, see Pss. Sol. 8.15.