Five Ways We Can Misread Paul and How to Avoid Doing So

Since we’re about to start Paul’s letters, I thought I’d share this. It’s an expansion of a handout I’ve used sometimes about five common ways we misread Paul with modern, Western eyes. (Misreading with Western Eyes is one of the Top 5 I books recommend)

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Latter-day Saints tend to be weak in Paul. Even if you’re fluent in NT Greek or using a good translation, he can be very hard to understand. As Peter said, “Some things Paul writes are difficult to understand.” (2Pe 3:16) We really don’t read Paul in any kind of context or depth, touching on his letters very selectively, and that seriously weakens our missionary work and understanding of the gospel, I think. Perhaps Paul seems really foreign because we only know him through the popular street-level Protestant Paul. And since Protestants love Paul, theological cooties and stuff.

So we approach his difficult letters already assuming he’s not really “Mormon.”And of course, he isn’t…. but neither is he a 21st-century Evangelical or a 16th-century Protestant, nor even a Catholic for that matter.

Even *Protestants* don’t really know the Biblical Paul. They know the Lutheran Paul. Matthew Bates, author of Salvation by Allegiance Alone  says that he had to

recognize the degree to which [his] ideas of faith, sin, repentance, works, “heaven,” the kingdom of God, and the like were constructed through sixteenth-century Protestant categories rather than first-century [categories].

Each of those English words— faith, sin, repentance, works, etc.—  carries cultural baggage today that doesn’t necessarily reflect how New Testament authors thought about and used them.

I think there are five main ways we misread Paul. Recognizing these is a good step towards understanding him better.

1. Inside Baseball

Reports of baseball games— or, if you speak baseball fluently, substitute “cricket,” “jai alai,” or “sepak takraw“— don’t explain baseball. They presume the reader already  understands the rules and goals of the game. Similarly, Paul’s letters were not written as chapters in a systematic exposition of Gospel basics, like  a doctrinal handbook, nor are they missionary documents meant to expound or convert. His letters were not tracts or General Conference talks. Paul is not explaining the Gospel to someone who’s never heard it at all, but presupposes knowledge and acceptance of it; thus much goes without being said, because it didn’t need to be.

Moreover, written at different times, with different purposes, and somewhat different styles, Paul sometimes changes his mind or seems to be at odds with himself. His letters are not entirely consistent. They are partial expressions of Paul’s thought.

2. Telephone

Every so often when  I hear my wife on the phone, the content will be strange enough that I want to say, “who are you talking to?!” With Paul’s letters, we are quite literally listening to half the phone call, half the conversation. We don’t know the context. These are occasional letters, and we don’t know the occasion, except for whatever Paul tells us or we can reasonably extrapolate from the content.

For example, we know Paul had very strong feelings about the sacrament, but only because of what he writes in 1 Corinthians 11, which he writes because the Corinthians were making such a hash of it. Were it not necessary to correct the Corinthians, we would never have known this information.

3. Manner

We read chapters and verses silently, breaking it down. Sometimes— especially in Church meetings— we only read a verse or two.
But Paul’s letters were meant to be read out loud in their entirety, and heard by the believers.

1 Thessalonians 5:27 “I solemnly charge you by the Lord to have this letter read before all the congregation.”

Colossians 4:16 “when this letter has been read among you, have it read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and see that you read also the letter from Laodicea.”

Notably, reading and writing were rare skills, and lacking the fine motor control of training and practice, Paul himself could not physically write very well. Note Col 4:18 and  Galatians 6:11, where Paul apparently takes the pen in his own hand to say “Look what large letters I use with my own hand!”
Paul’s letters were a) probably composed in a group and b) put into their particular form by various scribes. Sometimes these people get named at the end of the letter, along with a string of people they would say hello to on the receiving end.

Romans 16:22 “I Tertius, the writer of this letter, greet you in the Lord.”

4. Presentism

We tend to read Paul in our context, through our view of LDS Church history and doctrine, as if Paul is speaking directly to our contemporary culture, issues, and questions.

There are two competing principles here:
1) the Restoration Principle, i.e. “Paul and his audiences knew and understand as we do today, because that’s simply the Gospel and it’s been restored”)
vs.
2) the Line Upon Line Principle, i.e. “today we know and understand more about the Gospel, because more has been revealed to or clarified for us today than in Paul’s day. Progressive revelation. ”

I tend to think we should interpret more through the Line upon Line principle, but it varies based on topic and passage. Regardless, there is certainly much context to Paul’s letters that is very different from our day, and goes without being said. So much of Paul’s letters is devoted to reconciling and explaining the issues of Jew vs Pagan/Gentile, Jesus vs. Torah, and I can’t recall the last time our Elders Quorum got embroiled over circumcision. On the other hand, the issue of factions or cliques in Church units— though the dividing line changes— is certainly a live one today.

5 Cross-cultural Misreading

This could go under presentism, but it’s probably useful to separate it out.

American (and Western) culture in general is radically different from Paul’s mix of Jewish and Greco-roman cultures, and that leads us to misread it quite badly. One of these differences is individualism vs collectivism. Paul is speaking to a heavily collective society, whereas Europe is quite individualistic and America is off-the-charts on individualism. For example, reading Paul through individualist glasses, Martin Luther thought Romans was about individual salvation, but Paul was speaking of peoples.  Interpreting Romans within a different set of invisible cultural assumptions meant misinterpreting it.

the primary question being answered in these Pauline texts is not Martin Luther’s anguished “How may I, [an individual] sinner, find a gracious God?” but “Who belongs to the company of the righteous, to God’s saved people?” To read Paul as though he were answering the question, “What must I do to be saved?” is to misread the apostle’s main intent. Instead, those parts of his letters that deal with salvation or justification are usually answering the question, “How may Gentiles take part in God’s saving grace to Israel?”
-Yinger, New Perspective on Paul, linked below.

See my post here on the Bible and cultural assumptions, with suggested readings AND also  my post here about cultural assumptions in general (using Monopoly!), how they can lead us to see things in scripture that aren’t there.

Also, since I’m talking about presentism and cross-cultural reading, note that what the JST is often doing in Paul is  updating and recontextualizing; it’s not reproducing an ultimate-original text as much as modernizing for our context instead of Paul’s. For example,

some [modernizations of the JST] could be called cultural translations—the conversion of aspects of ancient culture unto modern counterparts to make them communicate better to modern readers. An example might include 1 Thessalonians 5:26, in which “Greet all the brethren with a holy kiss” is changed to “Greet all the brethren with a holy salutation” (see also Rom. 16:16; 1 Cor. 16:20; 2 Cor. 13:12). It is likely that the King James text here accurately represents Paul’s original word and intent. Yet to modern Western readers, unaccustomed to Mediterranean displays of friendship and brotherhood, Paul’s word might miscommunicate and misdirect, and thus the Prophet made a change.

-Faulring, Jackson, and Matthews, Joseph Smith’s New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts (my underlining)

How do we avoid misreading Paul?

First, study the background cultures and contexts! 

As the old scripture study manual said,

Lesson 11: Bridging the Cultural Gap

1. We must seek to understand the time and place where scripture originated.

2. Understanding culture will help in comprehending scriptures.

3. There are ways to improve your understanding of cultural influences on scriptures.

Study the historical context and setting of scripture passages. Study the cultures that influenced the peoples of the scriptures. Study the geography, climates, and seasons of scriptural lands.

What we need to really understand Paul is not merely a good translation of the words he did say; we also need a good translation of all the things he didn’t need to say,  the contexts he shared with his audience, the culture, setting, etc.

Second, be aware of and seek both kinds of scriptural interpretation. 

[BYU professor Gaye] Strathearn explained that a two-fold interpretation is necessary to increase spiritual and practical understanding of the scriptures and their doctrines. She explained that readers need to understand how to interpret the text according to the text itself — including the authors who wrote it — as well as interpret the text in a way that is personal and applies to them currently as individuals and families.

–Church News

What we want to get from scripture is both an understanding of what Paul meant to his ancient audience, and something transformative and relevant for us today. Paul doesn’t have to be teaching current understandings of LDS doctrine, and we shouldn’t try to shoe-horn it in.

Third, try it like Paul’s audience!

That is, it’s often useful to get a 30,000 ft view by going fast; reading the whole Book of Mormon in 24-hours, for example, gives you the big picture.
Now, there’s something different here; translations that are good for personal study and dissection are not necessarily the best translations to read aloud or listen to.  I suggest that as part of your study of each letter, you either read out loud or listen to, an entire letter at a time! I don’t have much experience with this, and haven’t found any good articles on it, but I’d suggest the 1995 NASB and (tentatively!) the UK version of the NIV, read by Poirot.

Now, I have serious problems with the NIV, because it cheats in translation to reflect Evangelical ideas like inerrancy, and rejects the New Perspective on Paul.

However, in this limited sense of listening all at once, try it. The English is very accessible, which is important for the aural experience. But perhaps read along with the NRSV or another version that’s less Evnagelical-biased. Note what NT Wright says:

When the New International Version [NIV] was published in 1980, I was one of those who hailed it with delight. I believed its own claim about itself, that it was determined to translate exactly what was there, and inject no extra paraphrasing or interpretative glosses. This contrasted so strongly with the then popular New English Bible, and promised such an advance over the then rather dated Revised Standard Version, that I recommended it to students and members of the congregation I was then serving. Disillusionment set in over the next two years, as I lectured verse by verse through several of Paul’s letters, not least Galatians and Romans. Again and again, with the Greek text in front of me and the NIV beside it, I discovered that the translators had had another principle, considerably higher than the stated one: to make sure that Paul should say what the broadly Protestant and evangelical tradition said he said…. if a church only, or mainly, relies on the NIV it will, quite simply, never understand what Paul was talking about.
– Wright, Justification, pp. 51-53

So try the NIV audio for the effect of listening, but don’t rely on it alone for understanding.And regardless of what version you listen to, you’re going to get chapter breaks; Paul’s audience didn’t.

And if you’d like to hear the NT read in an Ancient Greek pronunciation, try here for fun.

Some useful resources on Paul:

Free stuff

• “The Occasional Nature, Composition, and Structure of Paul’s Letters” Eric Huntsman, here.
• “Scribes and Ancient Letters: Implications for the Pauline Epistles” Lincoln Blumell, here.  (And more in that volume.)
• The essays on Paul in this volume.
• My long essay on understanding Paul, grace, works, covenant, and faith in a first-century context.

Not free stuff

Beyond my three posts with NT recommendations, here are some that are Paul-specific.

• The notes from the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, or the longer multi-volume series they’re derived from (NT volumes here, OT volumes here).
  • Those notes are out-of-print with the good translation— the NRSV— and I’m not a fan of the NIV or NKJV. You can get them in Kindle, though I don’t know how the formatting works. However, you can get the notes or multi-volume series in Logos (OT, NT), and link them to whatever translations you want.
• N.T. Wright, Paul: A Biography
• NT Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective
• NT Wright’s commentary on Romans (together with Acts-1Corinthians in the New Interpreter’s Bible Series) is quite good.
  • Wright’s nuclear bomb of Pauline scholarship, about grace, faith, and the New Perspective on Paul is Paul and the Faithfulness of God. 1700 pages. Oof.
• Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, either Paul: His Story (shorter, newer) or Paul: A Critical Life
• Richard L. Anderson, Understanding Paul
  • This is an LDS book from 1984, available in cheap paperback from various places. It’s a little outdated and a little too LDS-biased for my taste, but still worth reading
• Yinger, The New Perspective on Paul: An Introduction
  • Since the 1970s, and the rediscovery of a lot of Jewish material relevant to the NT, understandings of Paul have shifted a lot. They’re disputed, particularly by those deep in Lutheran/Calvinist descent. This book is a decent balanced intro. See also my long post here.
• Thomas Wayment From Persecutor to Apostle: a Biography
  • • An LDS biography.
• Jim Faulconer, Life of Holiness: Notes and Reflections on Romans 1, 5-8
  • There’s a free draft of this that only dealt with chapter 1, from the Maxwell Institute here.
  • And of course, the New Testament volume from Faulconer’s Made Harder series— The New Testament Made Harder— with its background and thought questions, is available free here.
• One volume of the IVP Bible Dictionary series is devoted to Paul and his Letters. (This is the second edition, which just came out this year.) It’s a great resource, also available in Logos. Highly recommended

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