Technical post alert: I am using this space to work out and invite feedback on my response to Kevin Grasso’s response to Matthew Thiessen’s interpretation of Romans 2:28-29. Due to time constraints, I am going to drop right into an ongoing and fairly technical discussion of the syntax of Romans 2:28-29, which reads as follows:
28 οὐ γὰρ ὁ ἐν τῷ φανερῷ Ἰουδαῖός ἐστιν οὐδὲ ἡ ἐν τῷ φανερῷ ἐν σαρκὶ περιτομή, 29 ἀλλ’ ὁ ἐν τῷ κρυπτῷ Ἰουδαῖος, καὶ περιτομὴ καρδίας ἐν πνεύματι οὐ γράμματι, οὗ ὁ ἔπαινος οὐκ ἐξ ἀνθρώπων ἀλλ’ ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ.
Most English translations render Romans 2:28-29 much like the NRSVue does:
For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision something external and physical. Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not the written code. Such a person receives praise not from humans but from God.
Those who translate the passage this way often conclude that Paul here redefines the term “Jew” as a reference to believers in Jesus regardless of their ethnicity.
In the fall of 2017, I was persuaded by Matthew Thiessen’s defense of a translation proposed earlier by Hans Arneson:
For it is not the outward Jew, nor the outward circumcision in the flesh, but the hidden Jew, and the circumcision of the heart in spirit and not in letter, whose praise [is] not from humans but from God.
I am not convinced by Thiessen’s larger argument that Rom 2:17-29 refers to a Gentile who calls himself a Jew, but Arneson’s translation seemed to offer a straightforward reading of a puzzling text, and to cohere well with a view that I find persuasive on other grounds: In this passage, Paul is not redefining who is and who is not a “Jew”; he is stating which Jews receive praise from God.
I offered a variation on the Thiessen - Arneson translation when I taught Romans in the fall of 2017, 2019, and 2021, and I would have been happy to continue doing so if Kevin Grasso had not argued on linguistic grounds that the Thiessen - Arneson translation is untenable. Here is my summary of Grasso’s argument:
(1) The negative particle οὐ at the beginning of verse 28 must negate what immediately follows. If the verb were negated, as required by Arneson's translation, the negative particle should come immediately before the verb ἐστιν rather than before ὁ ἐν τῷ φανερῷ Ἰουδαῖός. (2) The verb ἐστιν in verse 28 requires a predicate not just the dummy subject “it is,” and the relative clause that Arneson assigns to the verb as its predicate (a) is too far away at the very end of verse 29, (b) never appears as a predicate when it is used as a relative pronoun in the Greek New Testament and, (c) outside the NT, the relative pronoun οὗ always occurs before the verb when it is used as a predicate. (3) The linguistic principle of contrastive focus leads us to expect a positive statement in 29a corresponding to the negation in v. 28.
(You can watch Grasso’s own explanation on YouTube or read it in this Biblingo blog post.)
As a result, Grasso concludes, we have to take verses 28 and 29 as two contrasting statements about who, according to Paul, is a “Jew.” Grasso offers this translation:
“For it is not the outward one who is a Jew, nor is it the outward one in the flesh that is circumcision, but the one in secret is a Jew, and circumcision is circumcision of the heart by the spirit, not the letter, whose praise is not from humans, but from God.”
I find Grasso’s argument mostly compelling ... with one major exception. According to Grasso, the relative clause, “whose praise is not from humans, but from God” (οὗ ὁ ἔπαινος οὐκ ἐξ ἀνθρώπων ἀλλʼ ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ), “is best taken as ... describing the internal Jew”:
The assertion of the clause is not ‘It is the internal Jew whose praise is from God.’ Rather, the assertion is ‘The internal one (or Jew), whose praise is from God, is a Jew.'
My question has to do with the word order of the Greek text. Grasso concludes that the relative clause should go with “the internal one” and not with “Jew,” but he does not explain why the antecedent of the relative pronoun, οὗ, is ὁ ἐν τῷ κρυπτῷ (“the internal one” or “the one in secret”) and not Ἰουδαῖος (“Jew”).
I suggest that the antecedent is more likely to be Ἰουδαῖος (“Jew”), the word that follows ὁ ἐν τῷ κρυπτῷ, and which Grasso — correctly, I think — takes as the predicate of the verbless clause, ὁ ἐν τῷ κρυπτῷ Ἰουδαῖος (“the one in secret is a Jew”).
This way, we have a parallel structure in vv. 28 and 29, with Ἰουδαῖος standing in predicate position in both verses:
28 οὐ γὰρ ὁ ἐν τῷ φανερῷ Ἰουδαῖός ἐστιν / For not the one in the open is a Jew ...
29 ἀλλ’ ὁ ἐν τῷ κρυπτῷ Ἰουδαῖος, / but the one in secret [is a] Jew.
(Scholars who argue that Ἰουδαῖος is the subject in v. 28 and the predicate in v. 29 are influenced by the requirements of modern German and English translation more than by Greek syntax.)
Since the relative pronoun is more likely to refer back to its nearest antecedent, the final relative clause “whose praise is not from humans, but from God” (οὗ ὁ ἔπαινος οὐκ ἐξ ἀνθρώπων ἀλλʼ ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ) will qualify what Paul means by “Jew”: Paul is not speaking of Jews in general but of those who receive praise from God.
The repetition of “Jew” as the predicate in both verses suggests that it qualifies the assertions in both: The only Jews who will receive praise from God, according to Paul, are those who, as verse 29 explains in the clause I have skipped, are circumcised in the heart not merely in the flesh. (I take the contrast between the spirit and letter in v. 29 as a rhetorical rather than an absolute opposition. Paul is not denying that one physically circumcised can be circumcised in the heart.)
In then end, then, Thiessen is still correct to claim that “The central focus of Rom 2:28-29 is the praise of God, not true Jewishness or true circumcision” (2014: 377). With John Barclay, I take it that Paul is not redefining Jewishness as a category that now includes Gentile Christians rather than ethnic Jews. Paul’s point instead is that Jews who receive praise from God are those who have been circumcised in the heart not merely in the flesh.
Further Reading:
5 comments:
I find Grasso’s translation of οὐδὲ ἡ ἐν τῷ φανερῷ ἐν σαρκὶ περιτομή as “nor is the outward one in the flesh that is circumcision” odd, as the definite article most likely refers to περιτομή. I suggest a translation like this is preferable: “ … nor is the [circumcision] by what can be seen in the flesh circumcision.” Please feel free to correct me if I’m mistaken here. However, this post has given me a lot to think about.
Thanks for your serious engagement with my Youtube video, David. One of these days, I hope to turn it into an article (when I get a little more time).
Just a quick response. I am not sure it matters whether the antecedent of οὗ is 'the inward one' or the 'Jew,' since they are identified as the same individual (I would want to think through the implications of both, and, I confess, I haven't really done that yet). I would expect the subject of the clause to be more likely the antecedent, since subjects are often topics, but again, I am not sure it matters all that much.
I would like to hear more from you on why you think the final relative clause is still the "central focus." In a statement like this, you make the relative clause restrictive ("Paul is not speaking of Jews in general but of those who receive praise from God" or again "Paul’s point instead is that Jews who receive praise from God are those who have been circumcised in the heart not merely in the flesh"), but it seems far better to take it as a nonrestrictive relative clause, which by definition gives unnecessary information about a constituent (at least unnecessary for identifying the referent). So essentially, the rest of the verses are defining who a Jew is (how we actually determine the referent), but the last clause gives us additional information about the referent, which is not essential for actually identifying who the referent is. It is like saying "The bulldog is a canine, which UGA fans love" rather than "The bulldog is a canine which UGA fans love." In the former, you are saying something abut the bulldog with the relative clause, but that is not affecting the set of things being pointed to in the world. In the latter, the set of canines is actually restricted by the relative clause. In our passage, the nonrestrictive relative clause ("whose praise...") does not determine who is in the set of Jews. It just says something about the set that we have already established ('the one in secret'). Hope that makes sense.
I don't know what "central focus" really means, but that's not how I would describe the last clause from an information structure perspective, though that is something else I would want to think about more.
Anyway, thanks again for engaging seriously with my arguments.
Thanks for your comment, Paul. I think that Grasso's translation and your own are not that far apart in that both take the article ἡ as going with circumcision. On any reading, it is difficult to know how to render the references to circumcision and uncircumcision. In vv. 25-27, for instance, Paul alternates between using ἡ ἀκροβυστία as a way of referring to an uncircumcised person and as a reference to the state of being uncircumcised / foreskinned.
Thanks very much for your response, Kevin. My blog post was an attempt quickly to raise the question why you linked the relative clause with the subject (ὁ ἐν τῷ κρυπτῷ) not the predicate (Ἰουδαῖος). I take your point that a relative clause with an equative verb might be expected to modify the subject.
"Central focus" is Thiessen's wording, not my own. I do take the relative clause as restrictive, however. In the wider context, Paul's point, I think, is not so much who counts as a Jew--he is not concerned to redefine Jewishness--but who receives God's approval. According to v. 25, which sums up vv. 17-24, circumcision only profits those who practice the law. The second half of the chapter is only a particular intensification of the first half, according to which Paul's judging diatribe partner merits divine condemnation for doing the same things as those he condemns, κτλ.
"Paul's point, I think, is not so much who counts as a Jew--he is not concerned to redefine Jewishness--but who receives God's approval. According to v. 25, which sums up vv. 17-24, circumcision only profits those who practice the law. The second half of the chapter is only a particular intensification of the first half, according to which Paul's judging diatribe partner merits divine condemnation for doing the same things as those he condemns, κτλ."
I can see why you read it that way, but I wonder if the complexity of Paul's many supporting arguments has inadvertently muted his thesis statement. I think this is what is happening:
Part 1: Ἀποκαλύπτεται γὰρ ὀργὴ θεοῦ ἀπ’ οὐρανοῦ ἐπὶ πᾶσαν ἀσέβειαν (explained in 1:19-32)
Part 2: Ἀποκαλύπτεται γὰρ ὀργὴ θεοῦ ἀπ’ οὐρανοῦ ἐπὶ πᾶσαν ... ἀδικίαν ἀνθρώπων τῶν τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἐν ἀδικίᾳ κατεχόντων (explained in 2:1-3:8)
Notice the reappearance of ἄνθρωπος in 2:1 (not counting an adjectival use in 1:23) and relatively frequent mention of ἀδικία until 3:5 (but I would extend the section to 3:8). So there is a dual "theme" about how God's ὀργή is manifest to those who commit ἀσέβεια and ἀδικία, the former of which I don't think Paul would apply to Jews unless he was trying to be really tongue-in-cheek/insulting. Rather, the typically Jewish sin is ἀδικία, and in the case of his diatribe partner it is a particularly insidious, hypocritical kind.
So I think the subject of "God's approval" is only raised in defense of Paul's main point about God's ὀργή. His diatribe partner will not escape judgment, but rather will be judged _even_ by ἡ ἐκ φύσεως ἀκροβυστία τὸν νόμον τελοῦσα. Paul may be aware that, by this point in his career, his reputation may precede him to Rome, so he clarifies that confidence in περιτομή is not sufficient to escape the punishment for ἀδικία.
But I don't think he has switched to a new "central focus"; rather, he adds a new supporting argument to a staccato of inferential statements (γὰρ this and οὖν that)--but no new thesis statement. He is continuing to explain why the ἄνθρωπος ὁ κρίνων is subject to ὀργὴ θεοῦ ἀπ’ οὐρανοῦ. The ἄνθρωπος ὁ κρίνων mistakes God's patience for justification (2:4), but God will not be ἄδικος (3:5) when his wrath finally becomes tangible: Ὅπως ἂν δικαιωθῇς ἐν τοῖς λόγοις σου καὶ νικήσεις ἐν τῷ κρίνεσθαί σε. Notice that God is the one on trial here, as Paul draws out an implication of his interlocutor's position, presuming to judge others and himself even though it is God's prerogative.
Therefore, Paul's diatribe partner not only judges others, but he judges God's way of judging. Regrettably, if he wants to escape God's ὀργή, he must practice what he preaches. But Paul is laying the groundwork for explaining that keeping the law is not possible apart from heart circumcision, which is precisely why I think both theses ultimately function to commend the εὐαγγέλιον.
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