A Jewish Paul with Matthew Thiessen

Matthew Thiessen (0:01)

I'm going to give a really brief analogy. Someone recently on social media posted a picture of those little tacky plaques you can get at craft stores, and it said, be sure to lick the bowl. And it's sort of like, really enjoy your food. Well, that's one thing when it's in the kitchen, this picture was taken right with it sitting on top of the toilet.

Well, the message becomes a very different message, a much more odious message, a disgusting message. And I think that's not actually really, it's not bad for thinking about Paul and James. If we get their audiences wrong, or we get the location wrong, we're gonna misunderstand.

Daniel McClellan (0:40)

Hey everybody, my name is Dan McClellan.

Daniel Beecher (0:42)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Daniel McClellan (0:43)

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma Podcast, where we try to increase the public's access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and also combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Daniel Beecher (0:57)

Oh, I'm excited. We got a great guest today. It's a beautiful day.

Life is good.

Daniel McClellan (1:03)

Yeah. And speaking of that guest we have with us today, friend of mine, Matthew Thiessen, who is the Associate Professor of Religious Studies at McMaster University, and oft confused for Reliant K singer.

Matthew is the author of, a couple years ago, Jesus and the Forces of Death, a wonderful book. Subtitle is The Gospel's Portrayal of Ritual Impurity Within First-Century Judaism. But more recently, a Jewish Paul, the Messiah's Herald to the Gentiles. And that's what we're here to talk about today. How are things going apart from your recent haircut, Matt?

Matthew Thiessen (1:44)

It's a gorgeous early fall day here in Ontario. So the leaves are slowly turning colors and it's awesome.

Daniel McClellan (1:49)

Awesome.

I bet it's very nice. A little briskness in the air.

Matthew Thiessen (1:55)

Yes, a little bit. Yep.

Daniel McClellan (1:56)

All right. Well, we're gonna get close to that soon. It's in the mid sixties today here, which is novel. It's been in the eighties or the seventies for the last little while.

Daniel Beecher (2:06)

That's like, I don't know, 20 or 11, I don't know what that is for you. I don't know how to translate that to, it's either 112 or six.

It's hard to know with centipede.

Daniel McClellan (2:17)

Something stone, right?

Matthew Thiessen (2:19)

Or shorts, I don't know.

Daniel Beecher (2:23)

All right, well, we've asked you here to discuss your new book.

It's fascinating. It's a super interesting dive into this cat, Paul, who seems to have been wandering around saying some stuff. Writing epistles, left and right. You never know what that guy was gonna do. Tell us a little bit about your book, about what the impetus was for you to write it and give us a jumping off point for it.

Matthew Thiessen (2:50)

Yeah, this really started about three and a half years ago, right when COVID hit.

Our semester here in Canada was ending and I had taken out a whole bunch of books at the library, was gonna do a new research project and realized I don't have any of the right books. I needed to get into the library to get the books I needed. So I thought, well, I've had a couple of people suggest, we need a book on Paul that sort of gives a new take on Paul, but that's accessible to whether it's undergrads or seminarians or clergy or just lay people who are interested in Paul. And so this really springs out of that time and a couple of people making this suggestion that this sort of school that gets called the Paul Within Judaism School, trying to make some of the work that these people have done more accessible to a broader audience.

Daniel Beecher (3:43)

Talk about that. I don't know the Paul Within Judaism idea. Like, I assume that he considered himself a Jew, but I don't know what that means. So talk about what that is.

Matthew Thiessen (3:55)

And yeah, so pretty much every scholar would say, oh, Paul, Paul was a Jew. And you hear it over and over again. You'll hear it on social media. And then often what happens is someone will come along and say, Paul was a Jew, but then he rejected this and this and this and this and this about Judaism. And it turns out to be sort of all the things, well, frankly, all the things that modern Christians generally reject about ancient Judaism themselves. And so, for instance, a very popular writer, biblical scholar and sort of theologian, Tom Wright, NT Wright, frequently says, Paul was Jewish, he just radically redefines circumcision, temple, what it means to be a Jew, et cetera, et cetera. And all you get is sort of 20th or 21st century Anglican Christianity at the end of it.