Was Paul a “Chameleon” for the Gospel?

1st Corinthians 9 is frequently cited as evidence that Paul left Judaism and began Christianity. In The Weird Apostle, I contend that Paul remained a Torah-faithful Jew within Judaism as the Apostle to the Gentiles. What follows is an excerpt from chapter 7 in which I provide an alternative to the traditional understanding of this pivotal Pauline text. I welcome your comments and feedback in the comments section!

Most commentators agree Paul’s motive for observing the Torah as a follower of Jesus was to be a more effective evangelist to his Jewish brothers and sisters. Paul’s relationship with the Torah was flexible and adaptable—his observance depended on his company. If he was with Gentiles, he did not observe the Torah. If he was with Jews, he did.

According to this understanding of Paul, the gospel justified such inconsistency. The principal text for supporting the prevailing viewpoint of a Torah-malleable Paul is 1 Corinthians 9:19–23:

For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.

The highly influential Christian pastor and theologian John MacArthur offers standard commentary on this text: “Paul would be as culturally and socially Jewish as necessary when witnessing to Jews. He was not bound to ceremonies and traditions of Judaism. All legal restraints had been removed.”[1]

MacArthur and many other commentators draw this conclusion from 1 Corinthians 9:19–23[2] primarily because they understand Paul to be explaining his behavioral flexibility in relation to the Torah. According to this viewpoint, Paul acted like Jews when among Jews. He acted “under the law” to win those under the law—though he noted he was not under the law himself. He acted as one “outside the law” (presumably with reference to Gentiles) among those outside the law. And to the weak, he acted weak. Then, in verse 23, Paul delivered a big why for what he did: “For the sake of the gospel.”

Again, most Christians would decry the extreme tactics employed by the Atlanta Christian man toward the Jewish community in the earlier story.[3] However, the standard reading of 1 Corinthians 9:19–23 justifies missionary maneuvers involving significant behavioral elasticity.

But a growing chorus of biblical scholars are pushing back on this standard reading—and how we define Paul’s why. These scholars are asking some good, essential questions:

·       Is Paul’s flexibility in 1 Corinthians 9:19–23 best described as behavioral or rhetorical?

·       Doesn’t a Paul who acted Jewish over here and Gentile over there amount to a trickster?

·       If Paul kept kosher with Jews and ate non-kosher with Gentiles, wouldn’t such shifty activity have been discovered and criticized?

Personally, I agree that a Paul whose Torah observance (his what) was driven by purely evangelistic goals (his why) paints an unflattering picture of the apostle as a chameleon who changed colors based on his environment.

No matter how greatly Paul valued the gospel, can the apostle’s actions be defended if he presented himself as something he was not as a method of persuasion?

In response to the traditional portrait of Paul as a character who only kept the Torah when it was expedient to do so, a man and an unlikely movement have emerged that provide a convincing counternarrative to the chameleon Paul.

Nanos and the rise of Paul within Judaism

Dr. Mark Nanos. Before reading this book, I’m guessing you had not heard of him. Nanos is a game changer you need to know.

For a long time, Nanos[4] was like a talented musician who should have been performing in venues seating thousands but was only playing gigs in local joints for ten to twenty people who barely paid attention. Nanos and his perspective within Pauline studies should have a much larger stage by now. But that is changing. The “music” he and other scholars like him produce is getting more airtime.

Nanos is a Jewish historian who specializes in studying Paul within Judaism. He has led the charge in an expanding movement of Jewish scholars who have dedicated their academic pursuits to reframing Jesus, Paul, and the entire New Testament in its Jewish and inter-Judaism context. This academic emphasis on the Jewishness of the New Testament is picking up steam—for example, The Jewish Annotated New Testament, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, is now in its second edition.[5] In 2015, Nanos and Magnus Zetterholm served as general editors for the book Paul within Judaism,[6] a collection of cutting-edge essays that challenge traditional assumptions about Paul. Not only do these works represent significant developments in restoring Paul to his first-century context, but they also make Paul weird again.

Off in the distance, I can hear the voice of my grandfather, Johnny. “The Jewishness of Jesus? How could that be,” I’m sure he would say. “And the Jewishness of Paul? Impossible.”

Based on the vile persecution he received from Christians for being a Jew, in his wildest dreams Johnny never could have conceived of a day when Jews would seek to reclaim Jesus and Paul as characters within Judaism. But it’s happening—slowly but surely.

And it would blow Johnny’s mind that some scholars who identify as Christians[7] are part of this movement as well.

Back to the chameleon Paul . . . and was Paul a liar for the Gospel?

Nanos argues that 1 Corinthians 9:19–23 has been widely misunderstood, with significant implications for how Paul’s lifestyle is interpreted. Nanos sees major problems with the standard Christian view of this text, which he describes: “In order to win different groups, Paul is represented engaging in conduct that can be variously described as ‘mimicking,’ ‘imitating,’ ‘deceiving,’ ‘tricking,’ or ‘aping,’ the conduct of the other in Torah-defined terms, e.g., observing Torah among Jews and idol-related activity among non-Jews, but without sharing the others’ propositional convictions in either case.”[8]

For Nanos, such a way of understanding Paul’s what raises a major moral concern. Nanos is right. The traditional viewpoint makes Paul into a cunning deceiver who acted Jewish with Jews and Gentile-ish among Gentiles. And this shifty behavior was justified, according to the traditional Christian viewpoint, “for the sake of the gospel.”

But Nanos represents a minority of scholars who have countered the chameleon version of Paul in favor of an apostle whose what was consistent. In other words, Nanos posits that the adaptability described in 1 Corinthians 9:19–23 is about Paul’s rhetoric, not his lifestyle:

Instead of interpreting his explanation of his strategy in terms of adapting [to] the lifestyle of others, Paul is describing his argumentative strategy. He seeks to argue for the propositional truth of the gospel beginning from the premises of each kind of person and group among which he finds himself. This approach represents “rhetorical adaptability,” that is, varying one’s speech to different audiences by reasoning from their premises. The implications for behavior are completely different.[9]

According to Nanos, Paul’s evangelistic strategy involved adapting his rhetoric but not his behavior or lifestyle. In this way, Paul could speak to Jews and non-Jews while still being a Torah-faithful (and morally consistent) Jew within Judaism. This viewpoint is not only a sound and probable exegesis of 1 Corinthians 9:19–23, but it also frees Paul of the charges of being dishonest, cunning, and inconsistent.

Paul was not a trickster. And he wasn’t a chameleon. He was a Jewish man who was persuaded that the Messianic Era had dawned because of the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. He was also firmly committed to what he believed was a divinely ordained vocation to deliver this good-news message to diverse communities across the Roman empire. Such a mission required an immense capacity to adapt one’s rhetoric, demeanor, and methods of persuasion based on the audience at hand. But it did not require Paul to slyly modify his what to make himself blend in with his audience.

For my full treatment of this text, see chapter 7 of The Weird Apostle. There, I also include practical implications of the interpretation I present - especially as it pertains to Jewish-Christian relations.

[1] John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers), 1710.

[2] An excellent, thorough, non-supersessionist treatment of 1 Corinthians 9:20–23 is David Rudolph’s A Jew to the Jews.

[3] In The Weird Apostle, I tell a story about a Christian who infiltrated an Orthodox Jewish community in Atlanta by presenting himself as an Orthodox Jew for evangelistic purposes.

[4] For more on Mark Nanos, please visit www.marknanos.com.

[5] Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, The Jewish Annotated New Testament, Second Edition (New York, NY: Oxford University Press).

[6] Mark D. Nanos and Magnus Zetterholm, Paul Within Judaism (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press).

[7] There is a growing list of scholars who identify as Christians and are part of the Paul within Judaism movement. Early voices include Anders Runesson, Karin H. Zetterholm, William S. Campbell, Kathy Ehrensperger, Neil Elliott, and Gabriele Boccaccini. More recent names include Rafael Rodriguez, Genevive Dibley, Frantisek Abel, John Van Maaren, Christopher Zoccali, Brian Tucker, and Matthew Thiessen. David Rudolph, who identifies as a Messianic Jew, also writes within this paradigm.

[8] Mark D. Nanos, Reading Corinthians and Philippians within Judaism (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books), 103.

[9] Ibid., 99.