Light Among the Gentiles: Jewish Missionary Activity in the Second Temple Period

215 Pages·1991·9.87 MB·English

by  Scot McKnight

A LIGHT AMONG
THE GENTILES
Jewish Missionary Activity in '
the Second Temple Period
Scot McKnight
Fortress Press
Minneapolis
A LIGHT AMONG THE GENTILES
Jewish Missionary Activity in the Second Temple Period
Copyright © 1991 Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in
critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner
without prior written permission from the publisher. Write to: Permissions, Augsburg
Fortress, 426 S. Fifth St., Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440.
Scripture quotations unless otherwise noted are from the Revised Standard Version of the
Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the
National Council of Churches.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McKnight, Scot.
A light among the gentiles: Jewish missionary activity in the
Second Temple period / Scot McKnight.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8006-2452-1 (alk. paper)
1. Judaism-History-Postexilic period, 586 B.C.-2l0 A.D.
Historiography. 2. Proselytes and proselyting, Jewish. 3. Jews
History-586 B.C.-70 A.D.-Historiography. 4. Christianity
Origin. I. Title.
BM176.M38 1991 90-14063
296---dc20 CIP
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National
Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI
Z329.48-1984.
Manufactured in the U.S.A. AF 1-2452
95 94 93 92 91 2 3 4 6 7 8 9 10
Day Dowman
In memoriam
and
Jimmy Dunn

Contents
Acknowledgments IX
Introduction 1
Previous Approaches 1
The Focus of This Study 4
Defining Terms 4
The Context 7
The Procedure 8
1. Judaism and the Gentile 11
Jewish Attitudes toward Gentiles 11
Integrating Tendencies 12
Resistance Tendencies 19
Conclusions 25
2. Judaism and Proselytes 30
Favorable Attitudes toward Proselytes 31
Judaism and the Proselyte 34
Unfavorable Attitudes toward Proselytes and Proselytism 43
Conclusions 45
3. The Methods of Proselytizing 49
Eight Methods of Proselytizing 50
The Propaganda Techniques of Philo and Josephus 68
Is Rome an Exception? 73
Conclusions 74
4. The Requirements for Proselytes 78
Circumcision 79
Baptism 82
Sacrifice 85
Others 87
Conclusions 88
Vll
Vlll CONTENTS
5. Levels of Adherence to Judaism 90
General 91
Philo 92
Josephus 96
Rabbinic Statements 97
Conclusions 99
6. Jewish Missionary Activity in
the New Testament 102
Earliest Christian Traditions 103
Pauline Corpus 104
Matthew and His Tradition 106
Lukan Writings 108
Conclusions 115
Conclusions 116
Abbreviations 118
Notes 123
Bibliography 160
Index 185
Acknowledgments
T HIS BOO K HAS ITS 0 RIG INS in a side interest of mine in Jewish
literature of the first-century period that began during my doctoral
work on the missionary discourse in Matthew 9:35-11:1 at the Univer
sity of Nottingham. Because of the kind graces of the administration of
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, I was able to devote part of a
sabbatical in the fall of 1987 to writing up the results of my previous
work. I express my gratitude to President K. M. Meyer and Deans
W. C. Kaiser, Jr., and B. J. Beitzel for their continuing support of
academic scholarship.
Since that first draft, many colleagues, some of whom have become
my friends as a result of this work, have read portions or the entirety
of the manuscript. I wish to express my thanks to these critics: B. D.
Chilton (Bard College), D. Senior and C. Osiek (Catholic Theological
Union), S. J. D. Cohen Oewish Theological Seminary), L. H. Feldman
(Yeshiva University), A.-J. Levine (Swarthmore College), D. E. Aune
(St. Xavier College), and M. Wise (University of Chicago). I am grateful
especially to Larry Hurtado (University of Manitoba) for making
detailed comments on the entire work. His comments have often found
their way into the book without specific documentation, and he will
surely detect his own ideas at places. I am also grateful to Norman Golb
(University of Chicago) for inviting me to read a paper to his seminar
and to R. D. Chesnutt (Pepperdine University), A. T. Kraabel (Luther
College), and R. Riesner (Tiibingen) for making available to me copies
of articles that I could not otherwise obtain.
The librarians of many collections have shown their customary
expertise in locating difficult-to-find materials: I mention especially
Eleanor Warner (Rolfing Library, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School),
C. C. Broyles (Tyndale House), and the wonderful staff at the Univer
sity of Nottingham, especially Tony Barker and Glenis Pickering.
Other libraries that have been most helpful are Garrett Evangelical
Theological Seminary, Seabury-Western, Northwestern University,
and St. Mary of the Lake. Such a trail of assistance makes one aware of
the community that is needed to do scholarly work.
My community has at its center a supporting family. I express my
gratitude to my wife, Kristen, for her patience during a decade while
IX
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I lived at times among ancient synagogues and curious authors. Our
children, Laura and Lukas, have kept us sane and tied to tasks other
than our research. During that time they came to love the charitable
wife of Tom Dowman, the president of the Carlton Rotary Chapter,
a philanthropic organization that looked after our family during our
first year in Nottingham. Day Dowman adopted our children as a sur
rogate grandmother and taught them how to speak English properly,
while their other grandmothers missed them for two years. Tragically,
at the end of our stay in England, Day passed away because of cancer.
We miss her but remember her with the utmost of affection.
Further, I express my deepest appreciation to Professor James D. G.
Dunn, formerly of the University of Nottingham, who even after a
relocation to Durham University, continued to supervise my work and
offer his incisive observations. In making this work public I am again
reminded of the debt I owe him, and, as a small token of that debt, I
dedicate this book to him along with Day Dowman.
Finally, I am deeply grateful to Mr. Timothy Staveteig, of Fortress
Press, for his painstaking carefulness in handling the details of this
book. He and the editorial team at Fortress impressed me time and
again with their precision and attention to detail. Their work has
improved the quality of this book in no small measure. In addition, I
express my thanks to my graduate assistants who have chased down
bibliography and helped with the indexes; in particular, I am thankful
to D. Scott Wagoner and Matt Williams.
Scot McKnight
Introduction
THE REV I S E R 0 F E. Schiirer's magnum opus, The History of the
Jewish People in the Age Qf Jesus Christ, states: "No full and satisfactory
study of proselytism in the Graeco-Roman period has yet been written,
and fundamental uncertainties remain as to both the numerical scale
and the conditions of acceptance of both proselytes proper and 'God
fearers."'l It is my purpose to present an inductive examination and to
propose a theory that may throw some light on one area of this dark
corner of Second Temple Judaism, namely, the nature and extent of
Jewish missionary activity. Thus, although this monograph surveys the
evidence from the ancient world on Jewish missionary activity, it does
so to elucidate only one aspect of those data.
Scholars agree that earliest Christianity was a missionary movement
of major proportions, but the question of the origin of the missionary
impulse in earliest Christianity remains unsettled. In particular, did this
later movement derive its missionary zeal from its parent religion,
Second Temple Judaism? Many have concluded so. According to D.
Georgi, "The spread of Judaism ... thus compares quite favorably with
the missionary successes of the early church. This is especially true
when one considers that the mission of the Jesus-believers, unlike that
of Jews before them, received a soil already prepared. Indeed, the
church came to inherit the successes of J udaism."2 A survey of some
approaches may indicate the context of the present inquiry.
Previous Approaches
Discussions of Jewish missionary activity have been neither plentiful
nor comprehensive, although many scholars have expressed judgments
regarding such matters as "God-fearers," baptism, and the abundance of
proselytes.
The dominant research into the question of Jewish missionary activ
ity has emerged from the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule and perhaps finds
its most poignant expression in one of the earliest works on the subject,
A. Bertholet's Die Stellung der Israeliten und der Juden zu den Fremden
. (1896). Among the most important and influential works after Bertholet
(given here in shortened titles) are A. von Harnack, Mission (1904-5);
1