JEWS, GENTILES AND ETHNIC RECONCILIATION: PAUL’S JEWISH IDENTITY AND EPHESIANS

Much recent scholarship has focused on Paul’s insistence on Gentile membership of the people of God equally with Jews. Dr Yee’s study of Ephesians 2 reveals how the distinctively Jewish world view of the author of Ephesians underlies this key text. He explores how the Ephesians’ author provides a resolution to one of the thorniest issues regarding two ethnic groups in the earliest period of Christianity: can Jew and Gentile, the two estranged human groups, be one (people of God) and if so, how? Setting Ephesians 2 as fully as possible into its historical context, he describes some of the relevant Jewish features and demonstrates them, revealing many explosive but hidden issues. This book provides an important contribution to the continuing reassessment of Christian and Jewish self-understanding in regard to each other during the critical period of the latter decades of the first century CE.

TET-LIM N. YEE is a Lecturer in New Testament Studies at the Theological Centre for Asia, Singapore. He is also Research Director, City and Culture Research Centre, Malaysia, and Honorary Research Associate, Divinity School of Chung-Chi College at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

SOCIETY FOR NEW TESTAMENT STUDIES

MONOGRAPH SERIES

General Editor: Richard Bauckham

130

JEWS, GENTILES AND ETHNIC RECONCILIATION: PAUL’S JEWISH IDENTITY AND EPHESIANS

Jews, Gentiles and Ethnic
Reconciliation: Paul’s
Jewish Identity and
Ephesians

TET-LIM N. YEE

Theological Centre for Asia, Singapore
City and Culture Research Centre, Malaysia
Divinity School of Chung Chi College, the Chinese University of Hong Kong

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Tet-Lim N. Yee 2005

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2005

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

Typeface Times 10/12 pt.     System LATEX 2_e   [TB]

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Yee, Tet-Lim N.
Jews, Gentiles and ethnic reconciliation: Paul’s Jewish Identity and Ephesians / Tet-Lim N. Yee.
   p.   cm. – (Monograph series / Society for New Testament Studies; 130)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-521-83831-2
1. Bible. N.T. Ephesians II – Criticism, interpretation, etc. 2. Jews in the New Testament. 3. Gentiles in the New Testament. I. Title. II. Monograph series (Society for New Testament Studies); 130.
BS2695.6.J44Y44   2004
227′.5067 – dc22       2004045737

ISBN 0 521 83831 2 hardback

To Jin Kuan
and to our beloved children
Opheleia Tse-Shiuan and Phil Fei-Wu

In memoriam
Zhi Cheng

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

The relation of Judaism to Christianity has always been a question heavy-laden with negative and threatening overtones. The term ‘Christianity’ was initially used (by Ignatius) to define Christianity by way of contrast with ‘Judaism’. And the long centuries of Christian imperialist disdain for Judaism persisted well into the second half of the twentieth century. However, the attempt to achieve a healthier and more just appreciation of Judaism on the part of Christian scholarship is now well under way.

   The New Testament has been at the heart of this reappraisal: understandably, since some of its own more antithetical statements have contributed to the rise of Christian anti-Judaism. But the renewed appreciation of Judaism as a religion of covenant and atonement as well as of law and obedience, and of Christianty’s Jewish origins, of Jesus the Jew, of the New Testament as largely written by Jews, and of the Jewish character of the Christianity therein expressed has more and more counteracted such polemical passages. The new perspective on Paul in particular has made it much clearer that terms like ‘Jew’, ‘Judaism’ and especially ‘Israel’ reflect a much more complex reality (historical, social, religious) than a too simplistic reading of the antithetical statements has hitherto recognised.

   The discussion aroused by this new perspective on Paul has focused principally on the two letters of Paul which deal most fully with the Jew/Gentile issue – Romans and Galatians. Somewhat surprisingly, comparatively little attention has been given to Ephesians – understandable, since the Pauline authorship of Ephesians remains in dispute, but surprising nonetheless since Ephesians 2 is arguably one of the most expressive statements of Paul’s view of the Jew/Gentile issue.

   It is this lack which Dr Yee addresses. He sets himself the task of checking to what extent the new perspective sheds light on Ephesians and vice versa. He sees the letter, chapter 2 in particular, as providing an answer to two basic questions: ‘Can Jew and Gentile, two estranged human groups, be one people of God? And if so, how?’ He notes and analyses the distinctively Jewish, the still distinctively Jewish, attitude expressed in 2.11–12. The problem is that this has become an expression of ‘covenantal ethnocentrism’; religious identity and ethnic identity have become too much bound up in each other. So the solution is not a simple absorption of Gentiles into ethnic Israel. But neither is the solution to regard the ‘Church’ as a new and quite separate entity from ‘Israel’, as though the chapter could be entitled ‘Israel and the Church’. The critique of ethnic Israel (‘covenantal ethnocentrism’) does not extend to Israel as still reflected in the rest of chapter 2. The chapter’s vision is of an inclusivist ‘Israel’ rather than Israel defining itself in narrow exclusivist terms. The primary christological solution cannot be adequately appreciated without also recognising the author’s attempt to deconstruct the more traditional Jewish identity and to re-express it in the terms which he himself still affirmed and embraced.

   This is but the core of the thesis. It is developed and documented in fine detail and the repercussions for our understanding of other parts of the letter are well drawn out. This book will provide an important correction to the course steered by both older and more recent studies of Ephesians. I commend it warmly.

JAMES D. G. DUNN
Emeritus Lightfoot Professor of Divinity, University of Durham

PREFACE

This study is a slightly revised version of my doctoral thesis submitted to the Department of Theology, Durham University in June 1999. It was examined by Professors William S. Campbell and Loren Stuckenbruck, to both of whom I am much indebted for their encouraging reception of the thesis and their helpful comments. None of these scholars is responsible for whatever deficiencies remain in the present work.

   I am especially grateful to my advisor, Professor James Dunn, not only for his wise guidance, insightful comments and patience, but also for his warm friendship and hospitality at Durham. It is a great privilege that I can study with one who has spent decades on Paul and Christian origins and is still producing substantial works on the subjects. Connoisseurs of Dunn’s work will find its ‘echoes’ in this study.

   Among other friends and colleagues who helped and supported me over these years of research and teaching, I should like to thank: Linda and Steve Wright, Vicki and Andy Carver, Steve Barton, Walter Moberly, Rob Hayward, Scot McKnight, Murray Harris, Ezra Kok, Lo Lung Kwong, Michael Fuller, Jenny and Mike Gilbertson, Márta and András Csepreg, Diana and Danny Koh, Marcus Conti, Yong-Qiang Zong, Hanry Yu, Derek Tan, Chris Dippenaar, Alan Harkness, Chin Ken Pa, Choong Chee Pang, Liew Yoo Kiang, Caleb Soo, Chong Chin Chung, Wong Chiau Yau, Clement Chia, Chan Yew Ming, Chen Dong-Feng, and Chan Juin Ming. One of my students, Cynthia Choo Bee Lay, has given invaluable assistance in the preparation of this work.

   During my studies in Durham, I enjoyed and profited enormously from my lessons with two foreign language teachers, Frau Wollfraund Coles of the Department of German, Durham University and Margaret Gough of St Nick’s Church who taught me French. I also must express my heartiest thanks to the helpful staff of Durham Palace Green Library: Alisoun Roberts, Carol Simmons, Barbara Johnson, Colin Gorman. I wish to thank Margaret Parkinson and Anne Parker, the secretaries for postgraduates in theological studies.

   Many friends provided substantial financial support during my research in Britain. I should like to record my heartiest gratitude to Nancy and Richard Song and Huang Kuei-Mei, without whom my years of research would not have been possible. My warmest thanks to family friends Angel Yen and Shou-Chern, Elizabeth and Richard Brigg, and to James Lu and San-San Pan. Members from the Church of the Living Water in Taipei, Taiwan have been immensely generous to our family. I also received a grant from The Langham Scholarships Trust (1995); thanks are due especially to Jeff Gardner and Paul Berg of the Trust for their memorable kindness.

   Finally I want to thank my loving wife Jin Kuan whose unconditional support given to me remains a constant inspiration. This book is dedicated to her and to our children, Opheleia Tse-Shiuan and Phil Fei-Wu, as well as to the memory of our beloved Zhi Cheng (‘Our politeuma is in heaven’).

TET-LIM N. YEE
Kampar, Perak, West Malaysia

ABBREVIATIONS

In general, the conventions followed for the abbreviations of the titles of journals and reference works are those of the Journal of Biblical Literature, 107 (1988), 579–96.