Jewish Literary Treatments of the Apostle Paul: The Novels of Shalom Asch and Samuel Sandmel
2007; Oxford University Press; Volume: 27; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/mj/kjm011
ISSN1086-3273
Autores Tópico(s)Biblical Studies and Interpretation
ResumoJewish attitudes towards the Apostle to the Gentiles have been the subject of a number of studies in recent years. These have tended to focus on New Testament or Pauline studies, on theologians and religious leaders. Those conducting the surveys have been interested primarily in interfaith dialogue, but little or no interest has been paid to Jewish artistic or literary endeavors despite the fact that they have also engaged heavily with relevant theological issues. For those interested in Jewish-Christian relations in a wider cultural context, this bias towards the academy and scholarship is unfortunate. After all, non-scholars have as much to contribute to the inter-communal debates as anyone else. And, arguably, literary and artistic treatments of Paul offer a quite distinctive perspective on the dramatic events of the first-century ‘‘parting of the ways’’ and the controversial figure of Paul. Examples include Felix Mendelssohn’s oratorio St Paul (1836), Ludwig Meidner’s painting ‘‘Paul’s Sermon’’ (1919), Franz Werfel’s play Paul Among the Jews (1926), and Avraham Melnikoff’s sculpture ‘‘St Paul’’ (1935). One possible explanation is the marginal Jewish status of a number of the artists and writers concerned. While Jewishborn and maintaining a Jewish self-consciousness, some also exemplify what might be described as complex or multiple identities. But the fact that, along with so many other Jews in the modern world, they cannot easily be fitted into religious or national pigeon-holes is precisely what makes them so interesting when studying their empathetic interpretations of the similarly complex character of Paul. In the case of the Yiddish author Shalom Asch and the New Testament scholar and amateur novelist Samuel Sandmel, both were particularly pre-occupied with the so-called Gentile Problem, that is, the relationship of the non-Jewish world to the God of Israel and to the People of Israel. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that they were drawn to Paul and used their literary engagement as an opportunity to work through
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