Affiliation:
1. Duke University Divinity School, USA
Abstract
Scholars have long been perplexed by Paul’s statement in Rom. 11.11-14 that he magnifies his ministry to make Jews jealous and thus save some of them. After all, why would law-observant Jews be jealous of the salvation of supposedly law-free Gentiles? The problem is accentuated when we recognize that ‘jealousy’ (παραζήλωσις) and its cognate ‘zeal’ (ζῆλος) were connected with law-observance in Second Temple Judaism. To solve this problem, I consider how two contemporaries of Paul – Philo and Josephus – describe Gentiles’ attraction to Judaism through the Jews’ careful obedience to the Law. I argue in turn that Paul christologically reverses this schema such that the Gentiles’ obedience to the law by faith, the very goal of Paul’s apostleship (1.5; 15.18), is the means by which Paul hopes to provoke the Jews to jealousy and salvation.