Paul and Palestinian Judaism by E. P. Sanders
Essentials in Biblical Theology Series
Paul and Palestinian Judaism by E. P. Sanders[1]
Few books can be said to have changed the entire course of a discipline, yet E. P. Sanders’s book Paul and Palestinian Judaism (PPJ) is one of those remarkable books. Published in 1977, PPJ has widely been deemed the ur-text of the New Perspective on Paul. By unshackling Pauline studies from the Bultmannian consensus, Sanders opened the way for the works of James D. G. Dunn and N. T. Wright as well as those who have reacted against the New Perspective, both on the side of a Reformed reading of Paul—D. A. Carson, Thomas R. Schreiner, and Douglas Moo among many others—and the so-called “Paul within Judaism” school such as Mark D. Nanos and Paula Fredriksen. Put shortly, contemporary Pauline studies may be divided into two epochs: Before Sanders and After Sanders.
Yet so many volumes have been written post-Sanders that one could easily bypass PPJ altogether and skip right over the monumental argument that changed the discipline. Therefore, in this introductory article to the book, I hope to demonstrate why PPJ shifted the discourse on Paul by first giving an overview of the state of Pauline studies before Sanders, summarizing the argument of PPJ, reviewing briefly the state of Pauline studies after Sanders, and giving some critical review of the book.
In the beginning, there was Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976). While the heated debate that has surrounded the New Perspective, especially since the 1990s, would lead many students to assume that Sanders targeted the traditional Lutheran and Reformed readings of Paul with PPJ, Sanders did not consider traditionalist readers such as conservative Evangelicals as his conversation partners. The conversation Sanders entered belonged to the academic biblical studies of liberal Protestantism, especially of the German university tradition. Classical liberalism had once ruled this tradition with its emphasis on criticism of the historical veracity of the biblical text, but in the years between the world wars, classical liberalism lost its hold on the academy. Karl Barth’s commentary on Romans (1922) initiated a new approach to Scripture that became known as Neo-Orthodoxy. Unlike the old orthodoxy, Neo-Orthodoxy did not reject the historical-critical method of classical liberalism, yet it sought to rescue the authority of the biblical text by appealing to the significance of the Christ-event in the lives of believers.
While Barth spent most of his career in the realm of dogmatics, Bultmann made similar pioneering steps in New Testament studies. Like Barth, Bultmann also did not abandon the legitimacy of historical-critical methods, insisting that the text could be demythologized from premodern elements such as miracles or apocalyptic images. Nevertheless, demythologization did not lead to a lack of authority for Bultmann. Bultmann found the significance of the New Testament in the kerygma, or proclamation of Christ, which brings individuals into an existential encounter with Christ that transcends the historical veracity of the New Testament. While not everything in the New Testament might be historically true, the existential truth of the New Testament’s message remained authoritative in the lives of believers.[2] To fully appreciate Bultmann’s perspective, one should read Bultmann’s “Evangelical-sounding” sermons, which powerfully called his congregation to experience faith in Christ.
Foundational to Bultmann’s approach to the New Testament was the contrast between Judaism and Christianity. Under the continued influence of Martin Luther’s law-gospel dichotomy, Bultmann characterized Judaism as ethno-centric and legalistic. Judaism taught a system of works-righteousness whereby the Jewish people could earn righteousness before God. Christianity, which Bultmann saw as primarily Hellenistic in outlook and influenced by Gnosticism and Roman mystery religions, was not a religion of works but of experience, and this experience of faith in the kerygma was universally available to all people as individuals. In the post-war period, New Testament studies became dominated by Bultmann’s disciples, especially Gunther Bornkamm and Ernst Käsemann, although each made their own significant alterations and additions to the Bultmannian school. But Bultmannianism had a fatal flaw. Its account of Judaism had an antisemitic ring to it, and in light of the atrocities of the Holocaust, scholars needed to evaluate the role theology might have played in the construction of the death camps. The consensus of Bultmann could not be maintained for long.
Sanders delivered his protest to this consensus with PPJ. In general, PPJ is a quite simple and modest project. Sanders spends much of the book reviewing the sources for what he labels Palestinian Judaism—rabbinic literature, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Apocrypha, and Pseudepigrapha—evaluating their teaching on the topics of election, covenant, law, obedience, salvation, and reward/punishment. Then he turns for his final chapter to Paul, examining the same categories within the Pauline corpus. But the power of the work lies in the simplicity of the approach. Sanders’s goal was none other than “to destroy the view of Rabbinic Judaism which is still prevalent in much, perhaps most, New Testament scholarship”—that is to destroy Bultmannianism (xii).
Readers are encouraged to slog through Sanders’s careful analysis of the various categories of Second Temple and Rabbinic sources, where Sanders notes similarities and differences between the various documents (chapters 1–3), but the essential component of the project is his summary of Palestinian Judaism in chapter 4. Instead of legalism, Sanders argues that the primary pattern of Jewish religion was “covenantal nomism” (nomism coming from the Greek nomos, or law). Rather than earning God’s grace, obedience to the law maintained one’s membership in the covenant (420–22). The basic logic of almost every Jewish source, whether Pharisee, Essene, or Rabbinic, can be summarized in eight basic points:
(1) God has chosen Israel and (2) given the law. The law implies both (3) God’s promise to maintain the election and (4) the requirement to obey. (5) God rewards obedience and punishes transgression. (6) The law provides for means of atonement, and atonement results in (7) maintenance or re-establishment of the covenantal relationship. (8) All those who are maintained in the covenant by obedience, atonement and God’s mercy belong to the group which will be saved (422).
Rather than contrasting Judaism with Christianity as religions of works vs. grace, Sanders demonstrates that Jewish literature overwhelmingly testifies to the grace and mercy of God, both in the election of Israel and through various forms of atonement. Certainly, the law demands obedience and God will reward obedience while also punishing sinners, but the Jewish sources do not support the simplistic “pay-to-play” legalism that Bultmann and his disciples had attributed to Judaism.
What then is the relationship of Paul to Judaism? Bultmann’s approach to understanding Paul moved from plight to solution.[3] Paul, realizing that sinful man could never be justified by works of the law (plight), needed God’s saving act in Christ (solution), the content of the kerygma. Sanders, however, writes, “It seems likely, however, that Paul’s thought did not run from plight to solution, but rather from solution to plight” (443). Sanders claims that “the main theme of Paul’s gospel was the saving action of God in Jesus Christ and how his hearers could participate in that action” (447). Christ’s death is not the solution, therefore, to the plight of human guilt before the law, but rather a cosmic act that believers participate in through faith and thus die to the power of sin in the present age (467–68). In light of this, Paul takes issue with Jewish law observance, not because of its legalism, but because it belongs to an old epoch. Judaism operated within the system of covenantal nomism whereby the Jewish people expressed their thanksgiving to God and remained in relation to him through obedience to the law and acts of atonement, but with the cosmic act of Christ, union with God comes through faith in the death and resurrection of Christ. Judaism was not wrong, except that it was now past its due date. Thus Sanders famously concludes, “In short, this is what Paul finds wrong in Judaism: it is not Christianity” (552).
In his simple yet brilliant work, Sanders laid the foundation for a new perspective on Paul. As Wright explains, “[T]here never was one single entity called the ‘new perspective.’ It was always a loose movement containing sharply divergent presuppositions, aims, methods, and results.”[4] While Wright accurately describes the New Perspective as a “loose movement,” it nevertheless found unity around two core Sandersian convictions: (1) Second Temple Judaism was a religion of covenantal nomism, not legalism. (2) Paul’s theology emphasized participation in and unity with Christ more than forensic justification through penal substitution. Adding to this core, Dunn would argue that Paul criticized works of the law because they were boundary markers that excluded Gentiles.[5] In Wright’s works, he has emphasized continuity with Israel’s story and justification as a means of joining God’s covenant people through Christ.[6] Others, believing that even Sanders and the New Perspective have remained too Bultmannian, have insisted that we read Paul as remaining within Judaism and not seeing Christianity as a new or separate thing at all.[7]
From the viewpoint of Evangelical biblical theology, Sanders’s work requires careful evaluation. Bultmann’s stereotypical portrayal of Judaism as a legalistic religion unfortunately miscolors many believers’ reading of the entire Old Testament. In some ways, covenantal nomism does well to describe the election and salvation of Israel and the law’s function as an obedient response of God’s people to his grace. But Sanders overgeneralizes in his examination of Jewish sources, many of which have vastly different perspectives on the law and some of which are indeed legalistic in outlook.[8] For his part, Paul repeatedly describes the law as functioning to condemn humanity, which is unable to keep it perfectly (e.g., Rom 7:7–8:8; Gal 2:15–3:29). Paul’s theological logic does indeed run from plight to solution, especially in Romans.[9] The solution to human inability and guilt before the law remains the atoning death of Jesus Christ, who took on the punishment of sinners on the cross and whose perfect righteousness is imputed to believers through faith.
In the end, Sanders gave Pauline studies a monumental work that every student of Paul should encounter. Without understanding Sanders, students cannot understand the current state of the discipline. Sanders liberated the discipline from Bultmannian bondage, but from an Evangelical perspective, he did not lead Pauline studies into the promised land. Evangelical scholars might say that Sanders identified the plight of Pauline studies correctly, but he did not offer a solution that rings true to Paul’s letters, the foundational texts for the Protestant doctrines of total depravity and justification by faith alone. In short, this is what I find wrong in Sanders: it is not biblical Christianity.
Joshua Caleb Hutchens
Gateway Seminary (August 2025)
TL;DR
Sanders altered the course of Pauline studies by upending the Bultmannian consensus that Judaism was legalistic, leading to the establishment of the New Perspective on Paul.
According to Sanders, Judaism operated under covenantal nomism, where God’s grace initiated the covenant with Israel and obedience to the law maintains the covenant, rather than legalistically earning righteousness.
Paul rejected Judaism, according to Sanders, because it wasn’t Christianity. Christ’s death was not a solution to the plight of man’s inability to keep the law but an epoch-changing cosmic event that broke the power of sin.
Because Christ’s death is epoch changing, believers are saved through participation in the death and resurrection of Christ rather than through forensic justification.
Evangelical critique of Sanders has focused on the following issues: (1) Sanders overgeneralizes the Jewish sources and ignores their legalistic tendencies. (2) He downplays human inability and sinfulness in Paul’s letters. (3) He focuses on participation in Christ at the expense of justification by faith.
[1] E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1977).
[2] Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, trans. Robert Morgan (Waco, TX: Baylor, 2007), 1:3–10.
[3] Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, 1:227–31.
[4] N. T. Wright, Paul and His Recent Interpreters (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 64.
[5] E.g., James D. G. Dunn, “Echoes of Intra-Jewish Polemic in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians,” JBL 112, no. 3 (1993): 459–77; The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998); The New Perspective on Paul (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).
[6] E.g., N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991); What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997); Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (IVP Academic, 2009); Paul and the Faithfulness of God, Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013).
[7] Mark D. Nanos and Magnus Zetterholm, eds., Paul within Judaism: Restoring the First-Century Context to the Apostle (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015).
[8] Mark A Seifrid, Justification by Faith: The Origin and Development of a Central Pauline Theme (Leiden: Brill, 1992); D. A. Carson et al., Justification and Variegated Nomism: The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001).
[9] Frank Thielman, From Plight to Solution: A Jewish Framework for Understanding Paul’s View of the Law in Galatians and Romans, NovTSup 61 (Leiden: Brill, 1989).
