Paul and the Resurrection of Israel

Highlights from Jason Staples's 2024 book on Paul

Jason Staples’s Paul and the Resurrection of Israel (2024) is the most stimulating book on Paul I’ve read in a long time, and a good book to talk about around Easter. Staples knows the literature thoroughly, but writes lucidly and clearly. His theological judgment is acute. He knows Paul is a thoroughly biblical theologian; that he teaches final judgment according to works; that he doesn’t polarize wrath and love, or law and gospel; etc. He trusts Paul’s use of Scripture and his theological consistency, and he’s willing to follow out the logic of the text, even if it leads to unexpected places. He cuts through a lot of academic nonsense by staring at the text, long and hard.

Staples’s book too packed to overview thoroughly, but I’ll hit some of the highlights to give the flavor.

1. Staples’s book on Paul builds on his earlier work, The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism (2021), where he argues against the notion that “Jew” and “Israel” are simply identical terms during the “intertestamental” period or in the first century. Rather, the terms continue to be marked by Old Testament history.

In Second Temple Judaism (from the restoration through the first century), “Israel is the name either for the tribes of the biblical northern kingdom or for the twelve-tribe covenantal people of YHWH; a totalizing adjective is sometimes used to clarify that the latter meaning is in view (e.g., ‘all Israel’).” Since neither the northern kingdom nor the whole people existed after the exile, “Israelite status thereafter became a matter of conflict and contestation” (374).

“Jew” doesn’t just mean “any member of one of the Twelve tribes,” but “continues to refer to a subset of Israel specifically derived from the kingdom of Judah either by descent, marriage, or (eventually) proselytism/conversion.” Since Judah is only one tribe among Twelve, Samaritans, who descended from the northern tribes, could claim “Israelite” status without claiming to be “Jews.” They didn’t want to be Jews (375).

The persistence of the divide between Jews and others of Israel informs the restoration eschatology: “Israel is the covenantal term for the full people of YHWH, but is also a scattered, fragmented, and incomplete entity at present. Only after YHWH fully restores and reunites his people will ‘all Israel’ be complete again” (375). Ezekiel’s promise that Yahweh would unite the staff of Judah with the staff of Ephraim remains unfulfilled; it’s something all are looking forward to, including the writers of the New Testament. Their concern isn’t merely with “Jew and Gentile,” but with three groups: Jews, Israel, and Gentiles.

2. Staples shows in second book that this understanding of Israel has far-reaching implications for Paul. Like others of his period, Paul hopes “all Israel will be saved,” which means the reunion and restoration of scattered tribes.