Um, all that to say, I’ve been reading obsessively for my thesis (and my typed-up bullet notes — done in size 10 font, with the margins of the pages pushed all the way out — are already longer than my thesis needs to be… this might be a problem).

Brevity is the essence of wit – that’s your mantra.

I agree with you that misreadings of the Graeco-Roman world in Paul’s day will lead us to misread the NT. For myself, I’ve been reading a lot of Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Suetonius, Tacitus, Livy, Dio Cassius, and a plethora of secondary sources (both NT scholars, and scholars who have specialized in the study of the Graeco-Roman era). I find this sort of study to be immensely fruitful for how I understand Paul.

Of course, the other side of this is reading up on Second Temple Judaism and, in particular, Jewish apocalypticism, which means reading the OT pseudepigrapha and those who specialize in that material.

Um, all that to say, I’ve been reading obsessively for my thesis (and my typed-up bullet notes — done in size 10 font, with the margins of the pages pushed all the way out — are already longer than my thesis needs to be… this might be a problem).

Slightly OT: I’m rereading a bunch of Roman history now as a function of this discussion though, and it should be fodder for more posts. I think a big mistake that a lot of Christian commentators make is to view the Greco-Roman world as a lump of Roman military might and Hellenic culture. It was not and many Romans weren’t eager to import Greek culture (cf: M. Porcius Cato), and I think that this creates some misreadings of the NT.

Further, Phil might be worth a second glance since Paul is exploring issues of citizenship within that epistle. In this regard I’ll simply refer you to the Tellbe work I already mentioned, and also to Oakes’ commentary on Philippians.

That said, I don’ think the drivers license analogy is very useful. A closer analogy would be somebody granted VIP, or privileged, status within contemporary structures of power. That is the sort of thing that people would — and did — brag about.

Re: (3) I was thinking of Paul’s appeal to citizenship to avail himself of legal privileges. He may be set on overturning the Roman order, but he’ll use their own laws against them. I imagine that it would be a different thing to reject an offer like that from wealthy believers (I’ve seen a rich family try to use the collection plate to force a pastor’s hand before) than it would for Paul to avail himself of a relationship into which he was born in situations where it may have gotten him a better hearing with pagan officials.

A few quick points:

(1) I wasn’t suggesting that Paul was vilifying his own Jewishness — rather, I was suggesting that your picture risks contributing to the picture crafted by those who vilify Paul as a Jew. This, however, is a secondary concern.

(2) My primary concern is how this position is related to the genuine Pauline epistles that we have. Unless you can demonstrate the connections, your hypothesis strikes me as interesting but unworkable because it seems to argue from silence (thus, it’s similar to what Jerome says — it makes us think, ‘hmmm, that’s an interesting thought’ but we can’t really go to far with it).

(3) I disagree with your suggestion re: Paul’s hypothetical pragmatism in relation to patron-client relations. I believe that Paul significantly challenges patron-client relationships — indeed, I think he creates communities based upon the notion of fictive kinship and, when truly applied, this would totally overturn the patron-client form of relating to one another (this, by the way, is the primary reason why Paul refused to be financially supported by the wealthy in Corinth — they were still caught up in a patron-client mode of thought, and he refused to treated as their client). Paul is decidedly not pragmatic when it comes to these things. (For more on this I refer you to deSilva’s Honor, Patronage, Kinship, & Purity and Tellbe’s Paul Between Synagogue and State, both of which are exceptional books.)

(4) Andrew’s comment needs to be clarified. While I agree that Paul was likely anti-Roman, he should not be called a “zealot”. Rather, he was a zealous (Shammaite?) Pharisee (Wright, by the way, isn’t alone in thinking this way, as scholars as diverse as Dunn, Bruce, Bornkamm, Donaldson, Gorman, Hurtado, and Marxsen also make this point). Of course, there are connections between the zealot movement and those who use the language of zeal — notably the willingness to use violence against pagans and compromised Jews –but to call Paul a zealot is to overstate the case (and I don’t think Wright actually ever does apply the word “zealot” to Paul).

“I think you’re psychological hypothesis regarding Paul’s motive for changing names is more problematical. When dealing with Paul, we need to ground our thoughts in the Pauline epistles, and I don’t think you’ll find much support for what you’re saying there (further, it also risks being a part of the so-called ‘Lutheran’ portrayal of Paul that vilifies Paul the Jew, while promoting Paul the Christian — something that Paul himself never seemd to do, as those like Krister Stendahl and the NPP have adequately demonstrated).”

Perhaps I should clarify, I don’t think he’s vilifying his Jewishness as much as he is acknowledging where he comes from as being a former slave. It’s not so much that he was anti-Jewish after he became Christian but rather that he was probably anti-Gentile and anti-Roman beforehand (cf: Andrew’s comment above about zealotry).

I also think, upon further reflection, that it’s erroneous to think of it as a name change for, if the slave hypothesis is true, Paul would have been part of his full name. It would be akin to you or I starting to blog under a middle name or a surname or for a contemporary example, Josephus insisting everyone call him Flavius.

The other reason that I could see for Paul going by his Roman name is pragmatic. Freedmen and their descendants were clients of the man that had freed them (and his descendants). The ability to do right by a large number of clients was a status thing for the Romans, by announcing the patron-client connection (in a society where that was paramount) Paul is looking to trade on that connection.