Additional Notes §18
§18 Paul’s Former Code of Values (Phil. 3:4–6)
When Paul claims that he could put up a better record “in the flesh” than most people, if he still attached any importance to this sort of thing (which he does not), he means not only external ceremonies but a wide range of heritage, endowment, and achievement. The contemplation of this wide range once filled him with deep satisfaction, but this is no longer so.
3:4 / If an orthodox pedigree and upbringing, followed by high personal attainment in the religious and moral realm, ensured a good standing in the presence of God (as was implied by the people against whom Paul’s warning is directed), Paul need fear no competition. There is a close affinity between his words here and 2 Corinthians 11:21ff., where (“speaking as a fool”) he lists things in which he might boast, if boasting were appropriate, and then dismisses the idea of boasting in such things as utter madness. This suggests that the opponents whom he now has in view are of the same order as those whom he castigates in 2 Corinthians 11:12–15, and it would be easy to believe that the present warning was written about the same time as 2 Corinthians 10–13. Even if such people had not yet infiltrated the church of Philippi, they might well try to do so. It is not so certain as W. Schmithals thinks (Paul and the Gnostics, p. 73) that Paul’s language reflects an attempt already made to undermine his authority in the eyes of the Philippians.
3:5 / Paul now lists seven things which at one time would have given him confidence before God.
Circumcised on the eighth day, as every male Israelite child had to be, according to the terms of God’s covenant with Abraham (Gen. 17:12). He was a Jew by birth, not a proselyte from paganism who would have been circumcised at the time of his conversion.
Of the people of Israel. Having been born into the chosen race and admitted into the covenant community by circumcision, he inherited all the privileges that belonged to that community—privileges he enumerates in Romans 9:4, 5.
Of the tribe of Benjamin. Paul evidently attached some importance to his membership of this tribe; he mentions it also in Romans 11:1. Benjamin was the only son of Jacob born in the holy land (Gen. 35:16–18). When the Davidic monarchy was disrupted after Solomon’s death, the tribe of Benjamin, situated on the northern frontier of Judah, was retained as part of the southern kingdom. After the return from the Babylonian exile there were resettlements in Jerusalem and the surrounding territory of members of the tribe of Benjamin (Neh. 11:7–9, 31–36). From some of these Paul’s family may have traced its descent. His parents may have given him the name Saul (cf. Acts 7:58; 13:9; etc.) after Israel’s first king, the most illustrious member of the tribe of Benjamin in Hebrew history.
A Hebrew of Hebrews (Hebrew son of Hebrew parents). This implies something more than his being “an Israelite by birth,” as in 2 Corinthians 11:22, where he says of his opponents, “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I.” “Hebrews” in the special sense (as probably in Acts 6:1) were Jews who normally spoke Aramaic with one another and attended synagogues where the service was said in Hebrew (as distinct from Hellenists, who spoke only Greek). According to Luke, Paul heard the heavenly voice on the Damascus road address him in Hebrew (Acts 26:14) and could address a hostile Jerusalem crowd impromptu in Hebrew (Acts 21:40; 22:2); in both these places “Hebrew” may be used in a wider sense to include Aramaic. Unlike many Jews of the dispersion, Paul’s family apparently avoided as far as possible assimilation to the culture of their Tarsian environment.
In regard to the law, a Pharisee. The party of the Pharisees made special conscience of keeping the Jewish law in minute detail, although all members of the covenant community were under an obligation to keep it. The Pharisees, who first appear in history late in the second century B.C., seem to have been the spiritual heirs of the Hasidaeans or pious groups who played a noble part in defense of their ancestral religion when Antiochus Epiphanes (175–164 B.C.) set himself to abolish it (cf. 1 Macc. 2:42; 7:14; 2 Macc. 14:6). At an earlier date those pious groups receive honorable mention in Malachi 3:16–4:3; their devotion to the divine law is illustrated by Psalm 119.
The term Pharisees means “separated ones”; it has been variously explained, but among those so designated it probably emphasized their separation from everything that might convey ethical or ceremonial impurity. They built up a body of oral tradition which was designed to adapt the ancient precepts of the written law to the changing situations of later days and thus safeguard their principles against being dismissed as obsolete or impracticable. In this they were distinguished from their chief rivals, the Sadducees, who maintained the authority of the written law alone and who also rejected the Pharisees’ belief in the resurrection of the dead and in the existence of orders of angels and demons (cf. Acts 23:8). They banded themselves together in local fellowships. Josephus, who claims to have regulated his own life by Pharisaic rule from the age of nineteen, reckons that there were some six thousand Pharisees in his day (Ant. 17.42).
Paul’s membership in the party of the Pharisees is attested by Luke, who reports him as saying that “under Gamaliel (the leading Pharisee of his day [cf. Acts 5:34]), I was thoroughly trained” (Acts 22:3), as telling the younger Agrippa that “according to the strictest sect of our religion, I lived as a Pharisee” (Acts 26:5), and as claiming before the Sanhedrin to be “a Pharisee, the son of Pharisees” (Acts 23:6), implying that he was not the first member of his family to be associated with the party or (less probably) that he was the pupil of Pharisees.
As for zeal, …: zeal for God was an honorable tradition in Israel, and at this period was not confined to the party of militant nationalists who came to be known as the Zealots. The precedent for godly zeal had been set by Phinehas (Num. 25:7–13; Ps. 106:30, 31), Elijah (1 Kings 19:10, 14) and Mattathias, father of Judas Maccabaeus (1 Macc. 2:24–28). Paul describes himself in Galatians 1:13, 14, as having been “extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers,” more so than most of his youthful contemporaries, and provides supreme evidence of that devotion or zeal by the ruthlessness with which he “persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it.” If in 1 Corinthians 15:9 (cf. 1 Tim. 1:13, 14) his persecution of the church, viewed from a later Christian perspective, was the sin of all sins, rendering him quite unworthy of the grace that yet called him to be an apostle; nevertheless when he was actively engaged in the work of persecution he regarded it as his most acceptable service to God. When in Romans 10:2 he describes his fellow Israelites as “zealous for God,” adding that “their zeal is not based on knowledge,” he is drawing a pen portrait of the man he himself once was, endeavoring by his persecuting zeal to set up his own way of getting right with God.
In fact, as for legalistic righteousness, he says, I was faultless. This is Paul’s Christian assessment of his pre-Christian attainment, made from the perspective of nearly thirty years of apostolic ministry. No Jew could have achieved more in devotion to his ancestral heritage. The parents of John the Baptist are commended because of their “observing all the Lord’s commandments and regulations blamelessly” (Luke 1:6). High commendation indeed, and Paul also had earned it. To gain such commendation was once his ambition, but now the great reversal of accepted values had altered everything.
With Paul’s attainment may be compared that of the rich man who assured Jesus that he had kept all the commandments of God since his boyhood (Mark 10:20) or, more relevantly, Paul’s own claim before the Sanhedrin to have maintained a good conscience before God his whole life long (Acts 23:1; cf. 24:16). To conform with the righteousness required by the law called for infinite painstaking, but (as Paul had proved) it was not impossible. He made the grade, only to discover that it did him no good.
3:4 / The twofold I (I myself have reasons … I have more [reasons] …) is emphatic (Gk. egō). Cf. the repeated “So am I” (Gk. kagō=kai egō) of 2 Corinthians 11:22. W. Schmithals thinks Paul is defending himself against Gnostics who represent him as a mere man of flesh, lacking the Christ spirit, and therefore no apostle of Christ but at best an apostle of men (Paul and the Gnostics, pp. 90, 91). There is nothing in the text to support this. He is rather defending himself against Judaizers who try to diminish his status in order to exalt their own superior authority.
3:5 / Of the tribe of Benjamin. It is one of the “undesigned coincidences” between Acts and the Pauline letters that only in the latter do we read that Paul belonged to the tribe of Benjamin and only in the former do we read that his Jewish name was Saul. Early Christian writers traced a connection between Paul’s persecuting zeal and the words about Benjamin in Jacob’s blessing of his sons (Gen. 49:27): “Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; in the morning he devours the prey, in the evening he divides the plunder” (cf. Hippolytus, On the Blessing of Jacob, ad loc.; cf. ANF 5, p. 168).
A Hebrew of Hebrews: on Hebrews and Hellenists see C. F. D. Moule, “Once More, Who Were the Hellenists?” ExpT 70 (1958–59), pp. 100–102; F. F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Free Spirit, pp. 42, 43.
In regard to the law. lit., “according to law” (Gk. kata nomon). The omission of the definite article before “law” is common in Paul; it may reflect the Jewish tendency to treat the corresponding Hebrew word tōrāh almost as a proper noun, and therefore not requiring the article, when the law of Moses is meant.
A Pharisee: on the Pharisees see Josephus, War 2.162–66; Ant. 18.12–15. “Pharisees” most probably represents Aram. perîshayyâ, Heb. perûshîm, “separated ones” (especially in a moral sense). For the Hebrew word cf. a later rabbinical commentary, Leviticus Rabba, where the injunction, “Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy” (Lev. 19:2) is amplified: “As I am holy, so you also must be holy; as I am separate, so you also must be separate [perûshîm].” The Pharisees were particularly scrupulous is observing the Jewish food laws and the rules about tithing. They tithed garden herbs as well as grain, wine, and olives (cf. Matt. 23:23; Luke 11:42), and avoided eating food that was subject to tithing unless they were sure that the tithe had been paid on it. See W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism; E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism; and E. Rivkin, A Hidden Revolution.
3:6 / In Gal. 1:14 Paul calls himself a zealot (Gk. zēlōtēs) for the ancestral traditions; in Acts 22:3 he tells a Jewish audience in Jerusalem that, before his conversion, he “was just as zealous for God as any of you are today”; in Acts 21:20 the elders of the Jerusalem church tell Paul that all its members are zealots for the law. In none of these places is the noun used in its party sense (as it is, perhaps, in Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13). The party of the Zealots shared the principles of the Pharisees, but insisted in addition that it was impermissible for Jews living in the holy land to pay taxes to a pagan ruler (like the Roman emperor).