The Upper Register Blog

In a previous post I pointed out that there is a debate among New Testament scholars on the capability of Paul’s audiences. Some think they were largely illiterate converts from raw paganism. On this view, most of Paul’s allusions to the Old Testament Scriptures would have “befuddled” them. Others think that Paul’s audiences were a good deal more familiar with the Old Testament through their pre-Christian adherence to the diaspora synagogue as God-fearers or sympathizers with Judaism. 

Why is this important? Because if the latter view is correct, then the Septuagint is far more important as a background for analyzing the lexical semantics of Paul’s theological terms than secular Koine Greek. Here is what I wrote in a paper The Use of “Hellenistic Judaism” in Pauline Studies: 

“If Paul’s audiences were familiar with the Scriptures in Greek, then it stands to reason that we ought to pay more attention to the role of the Septuagint in influencing the semantic content of various Greek words used in the New Testament. Many of the lexemes used in the New Testament are non-technical terms the meanings of which are best defined by their usage in secular Koine Greek. However, there are certain terms, particular those with theological significance, whose meanings may be influenced by their usage in the Greek Bible as used by Greek-speaking Jews. For example, the old debate over whether ἱλαστήριον in Rom. 3:25 denotes the mercy seat receives fresh illumination when we presuppose a God-fearer base in the Christian community at Rome. The arguments fall into two main camps. Traditionally, commentators believed that the term should be interpreted in light of its usage in the Septuagint, where, in 21 of its 27 occurrences, it is used as a technical term for the mercy seat on the ark of the covenant. But ever since Deissmann, many scholars began to turn away from this interpretation, arguing that the absence of the definite article suggests that the term is merely a substantived, neuter form of the adjective ἱλαστήριος (’propitiating’), which is well attested in ordinary, secular Greek. On this view the word in Rom. 3:25 would best be translated ‘means of propitiation.’ Some have urged that this view best fits the largely Gentile character of the Roman church who, it was believed, would be unable to catch the allusion to the mercy seat. However, if we assume that the Gentile Christians in Rome were in contact with the Diaspora synagogues in Rome prior to their conversion, then the traditional view becomes less unlikely. It would be possible, in fact, to argue for a combined position in which the modern translation ‘means of propitiation’ is maintained, but at the same time acknowledging that Paul’s Septuagint-savvy audience would have been able to catch the allusion to the ἱλαστήριον that stood at the very heart of Israel’s cultic relationship with God. This conclusion is supported by the fact that Philo and the author of Hebrews (both of whom used the Septuagint as their Bible) employed ἱλαστήριον to refer to the mercy seat. This suggests that, for a wide cross-section of Greek-speaking Judaism, the Septuagint exercised a considerable influence upon the semantic domain of this particular lexeme. After Deissmann’s work proving that the Greek of the New Testament is ordinary Koine Greek rather than some specialized Semitic Greek, scholars have tended to downplay the role of the Septuagint in New Testament lexicography, believing that contemporary Koine usage is the final determinant of meaning. Deissmann’s work was a needed corrective in his day. But scholarship has over-corrected. The need now is to bring back a cautious use of the Septuagint to the discipline of New Testament lexicography.” (pp. 38-40) 

Christopher D. Stanley thinks that Paul’s audiences were largely illiterate Gentiles who converted to Christianity with no prior background in Judaism:

We can assume that except for the few people who had attended the synagogue as Jewish sympathizers, no one in Paul’s churches had any significant knowledge of the Jewish Scriptures before entering the Christian church … The idea that Paul expected his Gentile audiences to recognize and appreciate his many allusions and other unmarked references to the Jewish Scriptures appears to be mistaken … Paul grossly misjudged the capacities of his audience. As an educated Jew who was accustomed to thinking and arguing in biblical terms, Paul slipped naturally into biblical modes of discourse in the heat of his most argumentative letters without stopping to consider whether his audience, which was mostly Gentile and illiterate, could have understood his many references to the Jewish Scriptures. The bulk of Paul’s audience was probably befuddled by most of these references.

Christopher D. Stanley, Arguing with Scripture: The Rhetoric of Quotations in the Letters of Paul (London: T & T Clark, 2004), 45, 48-49. (To be fair, I should point out that the last quote on p. 49 appears as the second in a list of four possible explanations, but Stanley goes on to say that all four explanations contain elements of truth.)

But Margaret M. Mitchell writes:

There is probably some truth behind Luke’s picture of Paul finding adherents to his gospel among the ‘God-fearers’ or ‘devout,’ Gentiles who were already in some way associated with Jews, attending synagogue, learning Jewish sacred texts and lore or serving as benefactors, but not undergoing circumcision to become full converts … This can also explain how a message that relies so much on scriptural interpretation for its cogency and credibility could have been intelligible to Gentiles who would otherwise have been befuddled by claims about ‘the anointed one’, ‘the fulfillment of scripture’, and the necessity for deliverance from divine wrath.

Margaret M. Mitchell, “Gentile Christianity,” in The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 1: Origins to Constantine (ed. Margaret M. Mitchell and Frances M. Young; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 119.

It would appear that there is a bit of debate among scholars on this point. I throw my hat in with Mitchell and think Stanley is way off base. (Interestingly, both scholars use the word “befuddled.”)