Dru Johnson (00:00)
Was the apostle Paul a philosopher? Well today we’re going to talk to Dr. Joey Dodson who in his new book argues that Paul is both weaving together ⁓ greco-roman philosophy with Hellenistic Judaism and correcting it with the Hebrew Bible, affirming what was good and critiquing what was not.
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Dru Johnson (00:42)
From your perspective, what do you think is one of the most misunderstood things about Paul?
Joey Dodson (00:49)
My perspective and scholarship are among laypeople.
Dru Johnson (00:53)
When you’re talking to lay people as someone who spent a lot of time in Paul, a lot of time in the Greco-Roman world, a lot of time in Hellenistic Judaism, what do think everybody’s just kind of missing right off the cuff that if they could grasp this, it would just dramatically improve their understanding of Paul?
Joey Dodson (01:09)
I’m sure you know the story about Karl Barth when the Nazis came and drug him out of the classroom. He thought he was going to death and as you’re dragging him out of the classroom, he has his one last statement to say to his students and he says, exegesis, exegesis, exegesis. And I would underline that, but I would also say that we can’t really have exegesis until we have context, context, context. And so for most evangelical readers, which is kind of the circles that I swim in the most, ⁓
We forget totally about context. We emphasize inspiration of scripture so much that we totally forget that Paul is in a real world with real people using real language. And so that context includes what happens between Matthew and Malachi. Matthew and Malachi, you know, just like it’s difficult for us to read the New Testament without the lenses of the Reformation. That’s how difficult, if not more so, would it be for Paul to read the Old Testament without the lenses of that?
that 400 that period between Malachi and Matthew, their testamental period. And then the second one is that there are some they’re like, yeah, Paul was a Jew. He was a Jew. He was a Hebrew of Hebrews. But they even forget that even Judaism during that time had been greatly influenced by Hellenism. In fact, by the time Paul is writing his letters, that Judaism had been influenced by Hellenism longer than the USA has been in existence. And so there’s a quote in the book. I quote my children.
Dru Johnson (02:35)
Hmm.
Joey Dodson (02:38)
where one, I think it was my daughter who just one day just randomly said, Paul has Hebrew underwear. And I didn’t really know what she meant, but I liked it. And I think that, yeah, Paul is that Hebrew of Hebrews. And so his underwear, everything he says, the core of that is his Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible. But, and then she says, but he has Greek socks. And I was like, what? That’s a great way to put it. And so we have to understand Paul, if we want us understanding from his head to his toe, as it were, then we have to understand.
Dru Johnson (02:44)
yeah.
Joey Dodson (03:08)
that he had this Hebrew underwear that is different from our Reformation reading of Paul. And he also has Greek socks on as well. And so we need to look at Paul from both of those contexts.
Dru Johnson (03:21)
You call him in the title of the book, Paul, the rabbi philosopher. Okay. So philosophy has lots of meanings. In fact, it’s almost like the ask a rabbi, get three opinions, right? The thing with philosophers, ask a philosopher, what is philosophy? And they’ll give you many different definitions. if you can be as specific as possible here, you can go nerdy, but what do you mean by philosophy or philosopher versus…
Joey Dodson (03:34)
Hahaha
Dru Johnson (03:49)
Forget about what everybody else means. How do you mean the term?
Joey Dodson (03:52)
Sure, very good. Yeah, often we think of philosophers, we think of the philosophy class that we had in undergraduate.
and we’re talking about free will and ⁓ divine providence or these type of things. But ⁓ in the first century, Paul was a first century philosopher. Many would look at Paul and see him more as a philosopher, more than as a rabbi because he’s speaking to Gentiles. He’s using philosophical words and terms. He’s even lecturing in the Hall of Terenius, if you remember. The philosophers during this time really emphasized kind of moral progression.
overcoming those sinful desires. They also emphasize unity in the community using the body metaphor. And so for Paul, ⁓ and also we kind of separate philosophy and theology, but part of philosophy during that time was metaphysics, who is God? And it does include questions like the problem of evil. know, Socrates says that we must wholly resist that God is the author of evil. But if God is not the author, then we have to find another author. And so some of the same philosophical ⁓
Dru Johnson (04:32)
Mm.
Hmm.
Joey Dodson (04:54)
issues that ⁓ the Stoics, the Cynics, the Epicureans, the people that were the philosophers during the time, Paul is addressing. And so there are times where Paul even really leans into that philosopher ⁓ idea. The most obvious example is Acts chapter 17 on the Areopagus, where Paul is accused of the same thing that Socrates is.
Dru Johnson (05:15)
Hmm. Yeah, well, Acts 17 is an interesting one because he both leans hard into that Greek philosopher side and people will debate as to if he had any formal study in philosophy or if he’s just picking this up as he goes. Right. But he does not end that argument with a heavy-handed Greek rhetoric. He actually ends
Joey Dodson (05:25)
Mm-hmm.
Right, this is perma-logos is the word that the, armed tear theologian.
Dru Johnson (05:44)
in judgment, like a very specific Jewish. Yeah. So I think that’s a good example of kind of doing what you’re talking about here is working both angles or working all the angles of the room. What do you think motivates that aspect of Paul? The fact that he’s able, not that he’s just, he seems very gifted in being able to move between those different dimensions of thinking, but why do it? Why not just say like, hey, the Jews have figured it out.
Joey Dodson (05:47)
resurrection to this one. Exactly. Right.
Hmm
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think it probably goes back to Paul’s roots. You know, you can take the boy out of Tarsus, but you can’t take Tarsus out of the boy. So yeah, we know that Paul ends up going to Jerusalem and standing under Gamiliel, but we’re not quite sure how long he was in Tarsus. But Tarsus was kind of like an Ivy League school, a town of the day. So when the Romans sacked ⁓ Athens, there was a diaspora, there was a spreading out of the philosophers and some went to Corinth.
Dru Johnson (06:15)
Come on over, the water’s warm and we’re not peeing in it.
Joey Dodson (06:44)
Some went to Rome, some went to Alexandria because of the big library. That’s probably where I would go. I’d go to the books. But a number of them especially went to ⁓ Tarsus. so I think part of that is something that Paul had gotten from the very beginning. so especially like in Romans and First Corinthians and Philippians, we really see Paul lean into that ⁓ philosophy side. But it also goes back to what we see in First Corinthians of Paul becoming all things to all people in order to reach some.
Corinth, since it was surrounded by these sophists and stoics, Paul’s going to say, okay, well, I’ll fight fire with fire. And even there, does kind of say, ⁓ punching back at them, I believe it’s referring to the philosophers of the time. But where’s the sage? Where’s the wise man? Our God’s foolishness, the Jewish God’s foolishness is greater than that. And so I do think there are some shots fired that Paul will bring to the Jewish people, I mean, to the philosophers of that time.
Dru Johnson (07:30)
Yeah.
Mm.
Yeah, I think ⁓ the modern term for what a lot of people think of as philosophy is sophistry, right? We just think it’s a bunch of people. My students, whenever I have them read anything ⁓ who are not philosophy students, but when I have them read anything like Thomas Aquinas or have them read one of Socrates’ dialogues, ⁓ many of the students will say, he’s just talking in circles. And I would always say,
No, if he was talking in circles, nobody would copy this text and every, you know, read it for thousands of years. Like they’re actually trying to do something. I think that’s what a lot of philosophy sounds like to people. ⁓ but Paul seems to have, ⁓ this strange ability to kind of, speak the language of the people. I’m trying to think of a good example. Maybe it would be something like if you lived in another country and a group of Americans came over, right.
Joey Dodson (08:22)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (08:40)
you couldn’t quite, know, there was something they were misunderstanding. ⁓ And, or, you know, they they were in this grocery store doing the wrong things against taboo. And you were there, you might pull them aside and be like, hold on. I know how to explain to them what’s going on here. Like when we lived in Israel, I, and I took groups back to Israel after we lived there, I knew how to tell them how to act like, okay, and when you’re in the grocery store, don’t get offended when somebody cuts you off, right?
Joey Dodson (08:56)
Mm-hmm.
Dru Johnson (09:07)
I feel like you get some of that, as the kids say, a lot of that energy, a lot of that vibe off of Paul, like, I know how to talk to these people, this is kind of what they need to hear in order for it to make sense to them. Is that essentially what’s going on, or is there more to it?
Joey Dodson (09:17)
Yeah. I think so.
think Paul is great at code switching. And I think some of it is intentional, but I think some of it just goes back to his Jewish underwear and his Greek socks. so, again, because we have works like Four Maccabees and The Wisdom of Solomon, these are the books that Paul probably grew up cutting his teeth on. And so some of this is just what he has inherited from his Judaism. Some of it is his roots living in Tarsus.
Dru Johnson (09:25)
Yeah.
Joey Dodson (09:46)
And then some of it is, I think, his idea of ⁓ contextualizing the gospel for these people who are not as familiar with the Hebrew Bible, but taking ⁓ all truth and making it God’s truth.
Dru Johnson (09:59)
Yeah, and so this is the big question is, as you point out in the book, which I think is really helpful for a lot of people, it’s going to be that Judaism is fully, I would say, infected with Hellenism, because in some ways it offers new ways of thinking about things, but in many ways it’s crippling them in ways they’re not aware. Paul seems to fully understand this in my reading of Paul, or at least has a good grasp of where the boundary markers are. ⁓ And from my take, and you…
Joey Dodson (10:11)
I like that.
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Dru Johnson (10:28)
correct me as much as you want here, is he seems to say like, look, this is good so far as it goes, but there’s this other system of thinking that needs to like fund all of this. ⁓ I’m wondering what you think he’s pulling from. I usually say Deuteronomy because of David Linsacum’s work, but also Paul just feels like Deuteronomy to me ⁓ coming out of the Torah. That’s again, that’s more of a vibe. I’m wondering how like, is Paul sitting down thinking,
Joey Dodson (10:44)
Mmm.
Hahaha!
Dru Johnson (10:58)
Okay, how am I gonna make, you know, Leviticus make sense to these people? I’ve got it, you know. I’ll grab this line from Seneca and show you. What do think is going on there?
Joey Dodson (11:09)
Yeah, so I think when it comes to Leviticus, Paul’s going to say to Apollos and Barnabas and Luke, you guys run with that. No, no, there’s definitely some, I’m translating with the student right now, Masoretic text and ⁓ Septuagint through Leviticus. And then another student, one of your former friends, we’re going through Deuteronomy, both in the Masoretic text and the Greek text. And it’s fun because both of them are Leviticus and Deuteronomy evangelists. And so they’re continuing to try to just show me.
They’re right. There’s Leviticus and Deuteronomy fingerprints all over it. I lean towards the Apocalyptic Paul school. For me, a lot of those blanks are points of connection I see with this Apocalyptic idea that’s connected. You’ll see that in the second half of the book as well, where I just show that this Jewish Apocalyptic also has resonances, resemblances with the Stoics at that time as well.
Dru Johnson (11:45)
Okay.
Joey Dodson (12:05)
I would want to bring in Isaiah, of course, because of that.
Dru Johnson (12:09)
Yeah, so what do you mean by so for people that don’t know the apocalyptic school, what’s the TLDR on that? Okay. It is.
Joey Dodson (12:13)
Sure, yeah, right. I’ll give you my version of it. So it’s really slippery, slippery, slippery terms.
there’s like, I’ve almost seen like literal fisticuffs at our SBL meetings over the definition of apocalyptic. So it’s the golden apple that you just throw out in the middle and ask what is apocalyptic. But I would say there’s like three aspects, three road signs for apocalyptic. One is temporal. It’s looking to the future. And for Paul, we’re living in the last days right now. So we’re not waiting for the end times.
we’re in the end time. So the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has issued that. And so we’re waiting for the great shout and the voice of the archangel and the perusia of Christ. And so the eschatological aspect of that. The second road sign is ⁓ not just temporal, but spatial. So there’s the world up above and then there’s our world. And this is not the real world. Instead, there’s these demonic powers that are working inside of us. And so think of like the spiritual warfare type of idea that we have.
with this idea of the kingdom above and fighting against this cosmological battle against ⁓ sin, death, and Satan. Sin, death, and Satan, similar to what we see in Revelation, because Revelation is the apocalypse, but it has imperial connotations. And so I think with apocalyptic, Paul is often punching up at the Roman Empire with that. And so the day is going to come where all of the kingdoms are going to be put, Christ is going to all kingdoms before the feet of God.
Specifically Rome and so there’s there’s some imperial critical counter-imperial aspects with apocalyptic and the third aspect that I would bring in to it is the idea of this Vision that Paul has some sort of mediator. So usually within apocalyptic like what we see in Revelation There’s someone that is giving you this vision and we see Paul having this whether it’s in 2nd Corinthians 13 or whether we see it on the apocalyptic but
Paul has this voice where he is mediating the voice of God to the people. those are like three road signs of apocalyptic.
Dru Johnson (14:17)
Yeah, that’s very helpful. We just did a conference on politics in the Bible last week in Philadelphia. ⁓ And so again, I don’t know how to do this even with my own students where I keep trying to tell them when Jesus says kingdom of God, that’s a political statement, which has political implications in the real world. like, know, saying I’m going to be the governor means that there are police officers who are going to follow your orders now or whatever.
Joey Dodson (14:22)
Mm-hmm.
Exactly.
You
Yeah
Dru Johnson (14:47)
So how do you, is Paul doing, he’s, the, we’ll just take the apocalyptic school as the gold standard for right now. ⁓ Is Paul doing political philosophy? Is he trying to argue how the nature of reality basically funds a certain politic over another?
Joey Dodson (14:56)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah,
I think so. Just like we, it’s very difficult to separate Paul’s Hebrew underwear from his Greek socks. It’s very difficult to separate during this time politics, theology, and philosophy. These are all, they’re a holy trinity of philosophy that’s there. even, so Socrates was kind of like the Jesus of the Greeks. And if that’s the case, Plato would be like,
Dru Johnson (15:19)
Mm-hmm.
Joey Dodson (15:33)
John, the beloved disciple. so, and then you would have Paul, would be kind of like Aristotle. But ⁓ the Romans of Plato would be ⁓ the Republic. And of course, the Republic is philosophy, but it’s political philosophy that there, and it’s talking about the Dikaiosune. It’s talking about Dikei, righteousness and justice and how to build this utopia.
Dru Johnson (15:48)
Right. Right.
Joey Dodson (15:57)
And so I think that anytime Paul speaks theology, just like you said, the word kingdom of God, but the word Lord, the word pistis, but belief is going to have allegiance connotations that are there. And so most people are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, Roman 13, Roman 13, Roman 13. But I’m like, imagine Paul standing before Nero and saying, hey, you’re a servant of God and that God is the God of Israel whose son you crucified. That would be treasonous to say that the Roman Empire served in it. So even
Dru Johnson (16:11)
you
Joey Dodson (16:26)
And I would, I think there’s a spectrum that we can talk about if you want to when it comes to imperial critical. So I think you can be critical without being counter. But sometimes where Paul I think really is punching Rome in the face, just like they’re proclaiming peace and security, police, peace and security, like what we see in first Thessalonians. And Paul’s like, that’s funny. And maybe even that second Thessalonians has that with respect to the restrainer and. ⁓
Dru Johnson (16:47)
Right.
Joey Dodson (16:53)
the man of lawlessness that comes. So I think sometimes Paul is definitely punching Rome in the throat and I think other times it’s much more subversive and I think that’s what we see in Romans 13.
Dru Johnson (17:02)
and to that point, so merging the issue of what is philosophy and then kind of how Paul is arguing a particular political philosophy. I think my philosopher friends are going to struggle with this one point is, well, the whole point of philosophy is not thinking about a particular historical founding. So political philosophy is not about America being founded by, you know, British citizens who’ve rebelled. It’s about the nature of freedom and apart from any historical story we tell about.
freedom, right? And so I think this is where, and again I think this is just a bias in modern ⁓ English-speaking philosophy is as soon as Paul starts saying, but there is a God who appointed a time and a man, a particular person with a name and a particular date, ⁓ that then leaves the realm of philosophy and that enters the realm of like religion, theology, history, etc.
⁓ Do you see a role in just your opinion? Do you see a role for history and particularity in Paul’s philosophy? Or do you think that’s where he’s kind of bouncing back between his like dogma and abstract thought?
Joey Dodson (18:09)
Yeah, I think again, this is where the apocalyptic kind of ⁓ bridges those gap. Galatians is probably the first letter that Paul wrote. And so, and if Paul’s letters precede the Gospels being written down, this is the very first written down statement that we have, but Jesus Christ gave himself for our sins. So there you go. That’s our theological side, it seems. But for what? In order to set us free. So there’s that freedom. And this freedom is not just my personal freedom. I can do what I want. Tell me what you want, what you really want. But this freedom is,
from this present evil age that’s marked by the stoicae and these rulers. And so I think even the idea of freedom has political terms, but the political terms for Paul in that historical date is these demonic powers that I believe is working through the Roman empire, kind of the emergence of sin type idea by Crossan that sin is not just a misdeed that we do. It’s not just this cosmological power, but it’s also systemic. And so you have ⁓ all three of these.
Dru Johnson (19:05)
Mm-hmm.
Joey Dodson (19:07)
that Christ came to set us free from. And so I don’t know if all philosophy is purely political, but it often leads to political. The culmination is how now shall we live? What is the social bond that we have in the social treaty?
Dru Johnson (19:25)
Yeah, so even that point that sin can be systemic, here’s how my mind runs that is like, okay, that’s, Paul is getting that from the Torah where constantly Moses and God are saying, don’t do this thing. And it’s not something an individual can do. It’s something the whole community has to do in order to maintain justice. And so that even that idea of the systematics, no, the systematicity, I don’t know, I’m making up words over here.
Joey Dodson (19:52)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
CCP. ⁓
Dru Johnson (19:55)
Yeah.
Is actually funded in this like deeply embedded Torah thinking. I guess I just want to ask directly, do you think that Paul thinks the Torah is ultimately right about things? Or do you think he has kind of a ⁓ critical edge towards the Torah? Like here’s what’s good and here’s what we don’t, it’s not going to help us anymore. I’m obviously I’m leading into your discussion of law, right?
Joey Dodson (20:06)
Hmm.
Let’s open that Pandora’s box. I think it depends where Paul is writing. I don’t think Paul is a systematic scholar. Now I’ve got your word in there. And so there are times where Paul seems to say some really nasty things about the law of Moses, like 2 Corinthians chapter 3 and this old covenant. But there’s other times where he’s like, the law, of course the law. Love your neighbor.
Dru Johnson (20:24)
Hahaha
Joey Dodson (20:48)
yourself and the whole law is fulfilled in that. And so it gets us to the two times where Paul talks about the law of Christ, what is the law of Christ, and it gets us into Romans 7, the last podcast that I had with you. think to understand Paul’s understanding of the law, Romans 7 is the best place to go to try to figure that out. there was one scholar, Raisin, who says that Paul is inconsistent when it comes to the law. I don’t think he’s inconsistent, but I do think that Paul has a specific point, a particular point for
a real church in a real situation. so depending on what his goal is, his pastoral goal, that’s going to nuance how he presents the law. And so there is a paradox, seemingly paradox with Paul when it comes to the law. But I do think that Paul loves the law and brings it in as much as he can. So he’ll say some nasty things about the law, but then he’ll come and say, if you assume Paul wrote Ephesians 6, which I do, as it is written.
My favorite verse in the Bible, children honor your father and mother. And this is the first commandment with the promise. And so this gets into a large history of Christian scholarship, trying to figure out what’s the role of the law in the life of a Christian.
Dru Johnson (22:01)
Yeah, that’s very helpful. I’m going through the gospels with one of my freshman classes right now. And ⁓ so I’ve had to help them understand that Jesus often says things that he does not literally mean, or he does not mean to be taken literalistically. And he says things for rhetorical effects. So the famous ones, I don’t believe he’s calling a woman a dog or equating foreign women to dogs, or he’s not telling people to quit loving your father and mother. ⁓
Joey Dodson (22:25)
Right.
Dru Johnson (22:31)
to actually let the dead bury their dead. Maybe in that instance, yes, but in all instances, no. As I was reading your book, I started thinking, I wonder if Paul, in some of these occasions, he has to speak with the most extremity he can to get them kind of knocked off their pedestal so they can listen to what he’s saying. ⁓ But the thing he’s saying is actually not meant to be taken so pejoratively. So even when he says ‘nomos, the law,
He might actually be referring not to the law itself and what it was supposed to do, but the law and how it has functioned incorrectly. Would that be a decent take?
Joey Dodson (23:11)
Sure, yeah, that’s some theologians are going to come and say the problem is not with the law, it’s what the people have done with the law. So the law is holy, righteous and good, but as soon as it comes into our world, ⁓ we use it for the wrong purposes for the sake of self-righteousness. And then you’re to have those like what we see with the apocalyptic is that ⁓ the problem is not humanity as much as that the power of sin that has hijacked the law because the law was too weak.
to do this. And so this is ⁓ that more of apocalyptic idea. But the good news is that ⁓ what the law couldn’t do, God did by sending his Son in the flesh to condemn sin.
Dru Johnson (23:47)
Right.
Yeah, I thought that was helpful in the book where you talked about the weakness of the law. ⁓ And particularly, I’m imagining him talking to people who think the law can do everything, and it is the be all end all of what it means to be people. And to those people, they need to hear about the weakness of the law. But maybe not everybody, you know, as you’re entering, you know, if you’re just trying to describe what is God’s plan through Israel, you wouldn’t start with, well, first of all, the law is weak, right?
Joey Dodson (24:16)
right?
No, not at all. Yeah. And so so in the book, I have a chapter where I’m comparing what the wisdom of Solomon does with the word in the law in comparison with Paul. And again, the wisdom of Solomon is written between Malachi and Matthew. And I have another word coming out that looks at four Maccabees and Galatians because four Maccabees be like, no, the law, it helps you live a holy life.
Dru Johnson (24:36)
Hmm.
Joey Dodson (24:42)
But in the book, this, Harry Potter fans might enjoy this. ⁓ If you haven’t read Harry Potter yet, then I apologize for the spoiler. But I really feel like the law is kind of like Snape. So there are many times where we just think Snape and we don’t think he’s a good guy, but he really is a double agent and he’s working for Dumbledore the whole time. And so the law is weak and it allows itself to be sacrificed, to be taken over in order to show how sinful sin is, to show that.
Dru Johnson (25:01)
Hmm.
Joey Dodson (25:10)
deadly results of it, in a sense, it’s setting up ⁓ the spirit to come and spike it. I don’t know if you’ve read ⁓ the Pilgrim’s Progress. I’m sure you have, ⁓ but Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s so good. ⁓ Well, I read it in high school. One of my ⁓ English professors, she assigned two books to me, which is
Dru Johnson (25:21)
Sorry, the… No, I haven’t. I’m woefully under-read on Christian classics.
Joey Dodson (25:35)
maybe providential. One was the Pilgrim’s Progress. This was before I was a Christian, so was like 15 years old. And the other one was I, Claudius. And so, yeah, which I don’t know why I think the ⁓ teacher would do both of those, but those are two that really left a dent in me. And going back to that 15 year old Joey reading Pilgrim’s Progress, there’s a scene where the pilgrim looks inside this log cabin and it just seems like an empty room.
Dru Johnson (25:44)
Interesting.
Joey Dodson (26:02)
But then a person comes and begins to sweep. And as they begin to sweep, all of a sudden the dirt and the dust just begins to fill the room. And she starts choking and then leaves the room. And then the dust settles. And then she comes back with a mop and she gets it out. And so Pilgrim’s confused, like what’s happening at this point? And I don’t remember if it was Evangelist, I forget who the guy. he’s like, well.
this is our life and the law came in to show us how dirty we were and to do it up. And so the law shows us all of our sin. It shows our dirt ⁓ and our inability to deal with it. But then the spirit comes in and does what the law couldn’t do. And so I think that’s really Pauline. And I don’t know if Bunyan’s reading Romans 7, what he’s doing.
Dru Johnson (26:49)
Yeah, I think what’s absent in that conversation ⁓ is that the law, my reading of it, ⁓ is the law is actually meant to be epistemically and morally formative. It’s actually meant to bring righteousness into the world so that justice and righteousness are the fruits and the products of it. So think that’s why it’s hard to Paul, and I say speaking in extremis, where he’s saying like, look, it’s weak, it’s not, it’s.
Joey Dodson (26:56)
Hmm
Exactly, yeah
You
Dru Johnson (27:16)
You’re
not gonna be a child of God and the son of the law, right? You gotta go one of two directions here. And then you try to put that in conversation with Jesus who is saying like, no, no, the law, like I’m not doing away with any of this. I would say he’s recontextualizing it for the new covenant, just as prophets always recontextualize the law for their current ⁓ audience.
Joey Dodson (27:30)
Yeah. Right.
Exactly. Yeah, one
of the most Jewish things that you can do. Yeah.
Dru Johnson (27:39)
Yeah. Okay.
the, ⁓ cause this is the name of the book is Paul, the rabbi philosopher. We’ve talked mostly about the philosopher, the rabbi side. wonder how you see him. I mean, I hear a rabbi, think rabbinics, Mishnah, ⁓ and, Talmud. So do you think Paul cares about the, the rabbinic discussions of his day, or is he just like, screw these guys? moved on to like, they’re stuck on a word. We’re at ZZ here over here.
Joey Dodson (27:46)
you
Hahaha!
Yeah, yeah, you know, I do a lot of Philo and I think Paul’s probably closer to Philo than he is the rabbis. This wasn’t my title a little bit. So yeah, yeah, the title I wanted was Paul, a man of twists and turns because of the introduction talks about Paul in a sense as a new Odysseus. And so I knew that it’s somewhat anachronistic to read the word rabbi back in to Paul. But you do have John in the fourth gospel calling Jesus a rabbi.
Dru Johnson (28:18)
Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, we all get that.
Joey Dodson (28:38)
But in the sense of a rabbi, in that the Hebrew text is the authoritative text, you know, this is the Theopneustas, the word of God that Paul is using. And what’s interesting is that he uses it for Jewish people and Gentile people. And so it’s not just the text of his ⁓ Jewish underwear, but now it’s the text of the church. And so even when Paul’s not explicitly quoting
the Hebrew Bible like what we see in First Thessalonians. There’s no quote of it. It’s all underneath. And so it just forms him so much. And so the fingerprints of the Torah, the fingerprints of Isaiah, the fingerprints of Psalms is just all over it. And so you don’t have to scratch much. And so even when it’s not explicit, there’s echoes and there’s a story, the meta narrative that’s driving Paul. And so as a rabbi is one who uses the Hebrew text, as a rabbi in the sense that he’s concerned with the fate of Israel. So Paul’s not like
Dru Johnson (29:06)
Mm-hmm.
Joey Dodson (29:30)
see Israelites come
Dru Johnson (29:31)
Right.
Joey Dodson (29:32)
instead, he continues. And we see this in Romans nine, he’s crushed and broken for his own people. it’s funny, even in Acts, where he’s like, I’m done with you Jewish people. then the next next time he’s going straight back to the synagogue. And so, yeah, so his concern for Israel in that sense. then as a rabbi, this is a concern for ⁓ God’s will and who God is and that theological concern. And so that’s what I mean by rabbi in the text.
And so put him side by side with the wisdom of Solomon as if that author and Paul were at a pub drinking a beer and talking about these things. What would be those points where they would resonate? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Say that louder for the people in the back. And then the points where they might throw beer in each other’s face and start having a bar fight. And so that was the goal of that first half of the book.
Dru Johnson (30:22)
Yeah, and I think if you haven’t read The Wisdom of Solomon, you should just go read it because it’s very, you will recognize a lot of themes in there. And then hopefully some things will pop off the page where you go, wait, what? Where are they getting this from? Right? ⁓ And I always say it’s, you know, it’s like Stranger Things where there’s a couple of guys who never lived in the 80s trying to tell a story about the 80s. And it looks pretty good.
Joey Dodson (30:32)
Yes.
Exactly.
Dru Johnson (30:44)
But those
of us that grew up in the 80s are kind of like, something’s not, like they didn’t have that kind of a phone in the 80s. Like those light switches weren’t the kind of light switches that,
Joey Dodson (30:50)
Right. Yeah, but Stranger
Things is a great example. saw someone tweet the other day is like, where are the parents during while all these things are happening? But if you grew up in the 80s, you knew the parents weren’t around, you know, so it’s it’s just. Yeah, so I went to like respond is like, actually, dude, that’s like spot on that’s on brand when it comes to 80s. And there’s like 300 other people that are like, no, that’s the 80s. That’s the 80s. That’s the 80s. So there’s some things like
Dru Johnson (30:59)
I was like, they were spot on on the absence of parental involvement.
Joey Dodson (31:17)
that Paul assumes from his rabbi background and so also the wisdom of Solomon. And the wisdom of Solomon actually was in our very first New Testament. A lot of people don’t know this. So there’s a Muratorian canon. So Marcion, the bad guy, he comes and he comes up with his New Testament that is anti-Semitic and his picking and choosing and the early church fathers, quote unquote, they is like, well, we need to strike back. And so they came up with the Muratorian canon and it included the wisdom of Solomon. So
Dru Johnson (31:28)
Great.
Joey Dodson (31:47)
highly esteemed among ⁓ the early church.
Dru Johnson (31:51)
Yeah, and like you said, I never know what to make of statements like these, but sometimes I read somebody who said, you know, surely Jesus would have been familiar with several of these texts, these ⁓ Hellenistic Jewish texts. I heard, I think I read someone who said he might have even been more familiar with these than the Torah itself and the Hebrew, which I’m like, yeah, maybe not. ⁓
And I think there is a little bit of an open… The point is, it’s an open question how much these texts are being read by whom, or they’re being read aloud and people are hearing them, right? ⁓ But certainly in the synagogue, ⁓ which is its own Hellenistic Jewish ⁓ creation,
Joey Dodson (32:33)
Jesus reading,
seemingly reading out of the Greek of Isaiah in Luke chapter
Dru Johnson (32:37)
Right,
right, exactly. So is this something that would actually show up in the synagogue during the week and study or would it actually be read on Shabbat? ⁓ We don’t know, I don’t think. I don’t think anybody knows any of this. But it’s, you know, kind of like, I don’t listen to pop radio, but I somehow figure out some lyrics and tunes because they just kind of bleed over, you know, at the grocery store or whatever. Like it’s just floating in the water, right? So it becomes part of the social imaginary.
Joey Dodson (32:48)
No, no way, no.
Dru Johnson (33:06)
So it’s not hard to imagine that Jesus is always doing soft contact with these texts, affirming and correcting, and then Paul is kind of falling into that as well. ⁓ I guess Jesus being called a rabbi makes a little bit more sense to me in the sense that he does directly confront rabbinic views of his day, ⁓ or at least some of the views that are floating around in Jewish leadership. ⁓
Joey Dodson (33:28)
All right.
Dru Johnson (33:34)
And it doesn’t seem like Paul is interested in that claim. when he comes in, of course, I’m cheating off of Luke, Acts 21. When he comes into Jerusalem, he’s just like, no, no, no, no, I acquiesce. Like, no way am I. And then he goes and gives a sacrifice. Taking Luke at his word here with Paul, what do you think that does for Paul’s trajectory? mean, this is kind of one of the last things he does as a free man.
Joey Dodson (33:43)
Yeah
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (34:02)
And is he actually affirming his belief in the Torah or is he just like trying to play nice? I didn’t even the hard ones here.
Joey Dodson (34:07)
Yeah, it’s a great question. We don’t know. it? Yeah, I mean, he
says again, you have in debate in New Testament scholarship for your audience that don’t know that is Luke’s Paul really Paul? Luke seems to look at the church history with some rose colored glasses. And so is he making Paul more Jewish than Paul is? I think that Luke’s Paul is Paul with some small bit of nuances. But you do have Paul in 1 Corinthians saying, I am no longer under the law, but I come under the law, even though I’m not.
under the law anymore. And so to me, that’s like the closest explanation to what we see in Acts 21. Paul’s fine with that. Although our friends like Paul Sloan and Logan, they’re coming in saying, actually, need to, and Fredrickson and Novenson and all these are arguing for this Paul within Judaism. And so I’m teaching a course this fall at Denver Seminary just on that so that I can try to wrap my mind around. Or exactly. Yeah. So and so yeah, there’s more people that are
Dru Johnson (34:54)
Mm-hmm.
Read all those books again.
Joey Dodson (35:06)
are saying, we need to really take more seriously Paul as affirming and rejoicing in the law. And the problem with the law, it seems if I understand the Paul within Judaism world the most, the problem with the law is just when Gentiles get involved with the law. But for the Jewish people, yeah, it’s fantastic according to Paul, according to that reading.
Dru Johnson (35:26)
Yeah, and even the, you know, Paul’s, hey, I’m a Hebrew of Hebrews, tribe of Benjamin, which again is the weirdest flex ever. ⁓ And then ⁓ a Pharisee of Pharisees, right? ⁓ The only reason you would have to make that flex is if people were doubting that you were at that. Yeah.
Joey Dodson (35:32)
the
Yeah, that’s right. Exactly. Yeah, right.
And these super apostles that Paul seems to be fighting against in that Jason Staples argues that Hebrew of Hebrews means that Hebrew was his first language or make was his first language. And so Paul’s like, Hey, you guys don’t even speak Hebrew, that’s there. But yeah, I think that this is an example. Paul doesn’t say I was but but I am and so that’s another example of his Jewish underwear, if you will.
Dru Johnson (35:57)
Right.
Yeah, and I think it’s fair to say that if you are a Pharisee of any sort, even a lapsed Pharisee, ⁓ you are in the rabbinic discussion somewhere. You’re familiar with these debates about when do you say the Shaman, et cetera.
Joey Dodson (36:19)
Yeah, right. Right. And so Paul
may not be doing it exactly like the rabbis are going to be doing it, but he is dealing with some of the same issues. The fact that he’s addressing the law and the purpose of the law is that his weird sections, like in Galatians three and four, where he does like the allegory, this is very rabbinical, this very Jewish. And so I find going back to that exegesis, exegesis, exegesis, context, context, context, there are times where we really scratch our head the most of what Paul is saying.
Dru Johnson (36:39)
that very.
Joey Dodson (36:48)
⁓ It’s when he’s going most Jewish rabbi-like.
Dru Johnson (36:53)
Yeah, maybe I’m sympathetic to this as well because I did some training in analytic philosophy and I’ve written some stuff that I wanted my analytic philosophy colleagues to pay attention to and so I wrote it in such a way that I knew it was comforting to them in the way that I was hoping it was comforting at least. And I’m just talking about the way that I wrote the argument. And if you’d asked me, well, how would you actually want to say that if you were explaining on your own, I probably would have done it completely differently.
Joey Dodson (37:10)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm. ⁓
Dru Johnson (37:22)
But because I really wanted their ear and their attention, ⁓ I was happy to put it in a way that I knew that they could, ⁓ would be easily digestible for them and would raise the least. So I, sometimes I just project that back onto Paul. he, maybe this isn’t his preferred way of saying it, but he needs to say it in a way that you can understand it. And so this is, this is what we get. ⁓ And I love reading Lisa Bowen’s book, ⁓ African American Readings of Paul, because
Joey Dodson (37:35)
and ⁓
Yeah.
So, wonderful.
Dru Johnson (37:49)
I forget
the name of the woman, but she’s an evangelist that goes back down into the South and risks her life getting, you know, captured again as a slave. But ⁓ it’s black Christian men who are saying, well, Paul tells us not to listen to women, so you shouldn’t be down here preaching. And she says, any old fool that’s read all of Paul knows that he was talking to a specific circumstance, know, a specific groom. I was like, so we’re like, okay, it’s not like we just figured something out in the second half of the 20th century.
Joey Dodson (37:55)
Mm-hmm.
Aw, chef’s kiss, yeah.
Dru Johnson (38:19)
⁓ Excellent. Okay. Yeah, yeah, please.
Joey Dodson (38:22)
You know, just real quick on that. So
that’s a book that we assign for my Paul class as well. So great. So if your audience hasn’t written that, listen, read it. It’s fantastic. But the African-American readings in Paul. But Peter Williams has a new book out on the genius of Jesus, how we look at Jesus as a messiah figure, of course, the son of God, of course. But we think of genius. We think of Einstein, not Jesus. And so he makes an argument. He gives like a rubric of what qualifies as genius and then looks at Jesus’ teaching.
on how he’s a genius because of that. I think there needs to be a follow up as Paul as a genius because what Paul is doing and seemingly seamlessly and it’s easily of how he can communicate with both the Jews and the Greeks and the Romans in the same context. And we see this in first Corinthians 15 in the same breath, Paul is going to quote the Hebrew Bible and a philosopher, Greek philosopher. And he just does it so well. And again,
Dru Johnson (38:57)
Hmm.
Joey Dodson (39:20)
I’m like you, I nerd out on all the readings, especially between 200 BC and the 200 AD, and I have not found anyone in that time, and arguably not since, that could do that as well as Paul. mean, it takes a level of genius to do that. And so that’s one reason I love studying Paul.
Dru Johnson (39:33)
Hmm.
It’s almost like a fluency in two different languages or ⁓ in cultural fluency that he has. I mean, I think you see it as well in a shocking place in John’s gospel. Everybody knows the prologue ⁓ where he does something similar but equally wacky and vulgar Greek, right? But ⁓ at the end, he has the narrator turn and break the fourth wall and turn to the audience and says, I said this so that you may…
Joey Dodson (39:52)
Mm-hmm.
Right, yeah.
Yeah. ⁓ yes. Yeah.
Dru Johnson (40:08)
And it’s one the most brilliant moves I’ve ever seen in my life. And so I think there
is, I’m saying this because I’m writing a book right now on Jesus’s intellectual development in the Torah. So I’ve been thinking a lot about this exact issue. I didn’t know about Peter Williams’ book, but Peter’s a great writer and he knows how to pull the data together very well. So, but yeah, that.
Joey Dodson (40:16)
Okay.
The last real
quick the last time I saw Peter he was my Aramaic professor and When I was in the PhD program and hadn’t seen him for a few years and I came back to Cambridge at Tindall house And the first question he asked me was like, how’s your Aramaic? To be honest, like I don’t get a chance to work with their make very much. I was like, ah, it’s Most likely most likely he just looked at me like this
Dru Johnson (40:31)
interesting.
Yeah!
Yeah, was he wearing salmon colored pants? That’s all I want to know. Yeah.
Joey Dodson (40:53)
just bitter disappointment and just like walked away so But his book is fantastic and he’s a great writer It’s wonderful, yeah
Dru Johnson (40:55)
Yeah. And there’s nothing like British scholarly disappointment. You and I know it’s a special kind.
⁓ well, and I think this is the other issue when we say philosophy. I think I have my view of what philosophy is and what counts as philosophy is pretty wide, but I think this is the most strangely enough. If you were to ask me what philosopher in history is doing something as some similar to what Paul is doing, it would easily be Nietzsche for me. ⁓ somebody who again is not a train fly. He’s a philologist, but
Joey Dodson (41:17)
and
Dru Johnson (41:36)
could work in lots of different registers and use lots of creative ways to speak across these registers. There’s some downsides to what he was doing as well and some points of his philosophy I would quibble with. ⁓ But he’s also thinking theologically just as he is and he knows how to jab in the right places. The problem with Nietzsche, he was all jab and no grace, right? ⁓ But it is a rare form.
Joey Dodson (41:38)
Hmm
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (42:01)
of philosophizing where you become fluent in these various cultures and languages, and then you’re able to kind of cross talk and join things together. ⁓ my guess I’d be interested in your opinion on it. My guess is that the reason we don’t see a lot of that is because it’s so general genuinely it’s almost prophetic. Like I see this problem and now I need to be self. I need like, I need to shrink back and I need to say this the way you can understand it. And so I got to do all of this very difficult work.
Joey Dodson (42:23)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Right.
Dru Johnson (42:31)
We tend to do the opposite where we’re like, here’s how I understand it, let me tell you my way of thinking about this thing and win you over to my way of thinking, my metaphors, my analogies, et cetera. Yeah, why do you think you’re not finding that, I mean, in that golden age, that 400 years around Jesus, why are you not finding other people like Paul?
Joey Dodson (42:54)
I don’t know. That’s a great question, Yonase. Yeah, ⁓ I think it makes sense why Christ called Paul to be the apostle to the Gentiles. Yeah, but because of that, I do think that there’s some inspiration upon him that helps out with that. he’s doing that. ⁓ But yeah, I do think like the wisdom of Solomon gets close.
Dru Johnson (42:58)
Loyaldea, think is the answer.
Definitely.
Joey Dodson (43:23)
to it. Of course, he’s writing in an Egyptian context, probably writing from Alexandria. So he does close and takes what Lady Wisdom, like what we see in Proverbs 6 and 8, and there’s a lot of Isis type stuff around him. He personifies death in the wisdom of Solomon, you have Osiris. And so I think he’s an example of that. And again, think Four Maccabees gets pretty close to it as well, as kind of standing between those two worlds.
Dru Johnson (43:51)
Here would be my naive observation of the difference though, ⁓ is I feel like when I’m reading Wisdom of Solomon, that author isn’t aware of how much they’re showing their hand. ⁓ Like they’re not fully aware of how much Hellenistic influence is kind of seeping through the seams of what they’re saying. Where I generally, maybe I’m just favorable towards Paul, but I generally feel like he knows exactly where the seams are.
Joey Dodson (44:04)
Right. ⁓
Right.
Hmm
Dru Johnson (44:18)
And he can shine a light through them anyway, which way he wants to make metaphors ⁓ Okay, go ahead
Joey Dodson (44:20)
⁓ I like that. Well, another difference is that Wisdom
of Solomon and Four Maccabees are actually writing to a Jewish audience, no Gentiles audience, where Paul is actually taking a lot of his Jewish underwear and bringing it to predominantly Gentiles. And so we just don’t know of a character that’s doing both of that so much. I’m sorry for that metaphor. my blame it on my five year old daughter back in the day.
Dru Johnson (44:29)
Yeah, yeah.
He’s making socks out of underwear is what I hear him I love it. Yeah,
vivid, vivid metaphors stick with us. Okay, final question. Have we made too much of Paul in the church? if we, given him too loud of a voice, should we tamp it down a little?
Joey Dodson (45:00)
Yeah, I’m a Paul guy, I’m a bit biased. I think we’ve given too much voice to the interpreters of Paul and not enough voice to the original Paul. For many of us, when we think of Paul, we don’t think of love. We don’t think of humility. We don’t think of harmony or unity. But if you get Paul’s letters and you squeeze those out, Paul talks about love more than Jesus does in Matthew through Luke. mean, John, of course, ⁓ it would be the exception of that.
Dru Johnson (45:04)
I’m asking for an honest answer here.
Hmm.
Joey Dodson (45:29)
You know, Paul talks about unity and he humbles himself so much. And so I think that we’ve given a voice to the wrong Paul. Paul needs new PR. But I don’t say I wouldn’t ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever say that we should exalt Paul over the Gospels or over Hebrews and the general epistles. And so, yeah, I think that it’s not that we’ve given Paul too much of a voice, but if there’s points where he is louder than others and it’s not that we need to bring him down, we just need to bring
the Gospels and General Epistles up. We can leave Revelation down there. I’m not a fan of Revelation because it’s so horribly interpreted.
Dru Johnson (46:01)
Yeah, Paul needs… Yeah, I get it. get it. The short and
the long is Paul needs better theological PR in the Christian church. Yeah, that’s a good way to put it.
Joey Dodson (46:13)
He does, he does. And I’m trying to raise it up.
The EJ Gupta has a new book out on like the affection of Christ and it’s looking at Paul as the apostle of love. And so we need some more people to redeem Paul. And with that also, because of the Reformation, those lenses that we have, we often misunderstand Paul and think he’s anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish or just totally ignoring the Jewish world. And so our friends that are doing the Paul within Judaism says, no, we don’t read Paul.
against Judaism. We read Paul within Judaism. so, yeah, I think we need a lot more better interpreters of Paul than some of the ⁓ grumpy old men that have proclaimed Paul and their lives. Yeah, you know what saying. So yeah, we need more people to imitate Paul in his love and his humility. And ⁓ we need more of those people. And ⁓ bad theology leads to ⁓ hurting people.
Dru Johnson (46:59)
I know exactly what you’re saying. Yep.
Joey Dodson (47:10)
And so we need good theology that comes from good exegesis, which brings us back to the context.
Dru Johnson (47:16)
Yeah, I’ll end with this observation or as an experience I had where I got to hear a pastor, a Gazan pastor from Gaza five, six years ago before, you know, the war started. But, you know, Christians were being persecuted in Gaza. Very, you know, his elders were getting executed in the street by Hamas. And ⁓ he talked for 30 minutes through using only Paul. I don’t know why Paul was his guy, but he was using only Paul.
Joey Dodson (47:32)
Mm.
Wow.
Dru Johnson (47:45)
And he was talking about the situation of the church in Gaza under persecution. And it was as if I had never read Paul before in my life. You know, he was just lighting, illuminating like the grace and the mercy that Paul brought. I wish I had a recording of this talk. I did not, but it was, as you were saying, it was like the Paul that we’ve completely neglected. And because we haven’t been pressed in persecution, we’re just worried if our work’s getting a salvation or not, or, you know, a predestination.
Joey Dodson (48:01)
I was about to ask if you did. ⁓
Dru Johnson (48:15)
We’re stuck in that, you know, those kinds of categories that we kind of miss Paul. Paul needs better PR. Okay. And I bet there’s lots of people out there like you who can give it to them. All right, Dr. Joey Dodson, thank you so much for your wisdom and thanks for this book, Paul, the rabbi philosopher.
Joey Dodson (48:30)
Thanks for having me.
