Conflict in Paul's Philippi: Identities of the Opponents

Much has been written on the identity of the agitators in 3:2, 18-19.⁸See for example Tellbe (Tellbe, 1994), Bloomquist (Bloomquist, 2007, 2016), Nanos (Nanos, 2009, 2015). The consensus interpretation has been that these were judaizers.⁹See Footnote 2 for the technical as well as wider meaning of the term and the definition used in this essay. The arguments for this interpretation take two forms: (1) a claimed parallel of 3:2 to the text in Gal 2:1-14¹⁰In Gal 2:14, Paul accuses Peter of compelling Gentiles to live like Jews. In a strict technical sense, Peter being a Jew was not a judaizer. In the wider meaning adopted in this essay, he was. The text itself, Phil 3:2, does not explicitly point to judaizers.; (2) that the epithets in 3:2¹¹τοὺς κύνας and τοὺς κακοὺς ἐργάτας. referred to judaizers, whether Christian Jews or Gentiles, and that τὴν κατατομήν was a pun on περιτομή, which is the usual New Testament word for circumcision.

With respect to the epithets, there is indeed a long tradition in Christian interpretation of assigning the epithet “dog” in 3:2 to Jews (Stow, 2006)¹²Note the confusion with respect to judaizers as proselytes or Jews..  The text in 3.2 is ostensibly a reversal of a Jewish slander directed to Gentiles. Nanos explains (Nanos, 2015):

“Paul’s warning in verse 2 to beware of the ‘dogs’ is taken to be a reversal of supposedly stereotypical Jewish slander of non-Jews as dogs, thus Paul’s denunciation of Jews and their influence is from a perspective calculated to appeal to his audiences’ resentment toward Jewish ethnoreligious arrogance.” (p190)

Tradition has it that the Jewish slander “dog” for Gentile originated from Matthew 15:26-27,¹³Also in Mark 7:27-28. an exchange between Jesus and a Canaanite woman:

“But she came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

Nanos (Nanos, 2009) traces this view to Chrysostom. He cites Homily X in Chrysostom’s “Homilies on the Episte of St. Paul to the Philippians.”

“But whom does he style ‘dogs’? There were at this place some of those, whom he hints at in all his Epistles, base and contemptible Jews, greedy of vile lucre and fond of power, who, desiring to draw aside many of the faithful, preached both Christianity and Judaism at the same time, corrupting the Gospel. As then they were not easily discernible, therefore he says, “beware of the dogs”: the Jews are no longer children; once the Gentiles were called dogs, but now the Jews. Wherefore? because as the Gentiles were strangers both to God and to Christ, even so are these become this now. And he shows forth their shamelessness and violence, and their infinite distance from the relation of children, for that the Gentiles were once called “dogs,” hear what the Canaanitish woman says, “Yea, Lord: for even the dogs eat of the crumbswhich fall from their masters’ table.”

However, Philippians predates Matthew. For Paul to have reversed the referent in Matt 15:26-27, he would have known about the event in question, either via oral tradition or from written material that is no longer extant. There is no data to validate this possibility. Further, there appears to be no evidence that Jews had been slandering gentiles as “dogs” prior to Paul as there is also no evidence in rabbinic tradition (albeit anachronistic) that describes Christian or non-Christian gentiles as “dogs” (Nanos, 2009). Despite the lack of data, the “reversal” thesis nevertheless became entrenched in the mainstream.¹⁴See Hawthorne’s commentary on Philippians (Hawthorne, 1983): “The Jews were in the habit of referring contemptuously to Gentiles as dogs – unclean animals with whom they would not associate if such association could be avoided… Paul now hurls this term of contempt back ‘on the heads of its authors’.”

As for circumcision, κατατομή in 3:2 is a hapax legomena that literally means “cutting into.” Circumcision is περιτομή¹⁵Περιτομή appears 36 times in the New Testament and is consistently translated into English as “circumcision.” or “cutting around.” Κατατομή would have had to have been a paronomasia in order to force it to mean “circumcision.”

Irrespective of the textual problems, the consensus interpretation must have had some persuasive points for it to have been accepted through centuries of scholarship and rarely without question until the late twentieth century. Zetterholm (Zetterholm, 2010) traces origins of the consensus to anti-Jewish bias on the part of Christian theologians in the second-century. While not stating it explicitly, Cohen (Cohen, 2002) would also agree with Zetterholm. Cohen analyzed a puzzling passage taken from Ignatuis’ To the Philadelphians 6:1-2, and interpreted it thus illustrating the anti-Jewish position of the early second-century church father (Cohen’s glosses in italics enclosed in parentheses):

(6.1) But if anyone expounds Judaism to you (that is, if anyone within the Christian community should attribute too much authority to the Jewish scriptures), do not listen to him; for (it is so much better to hear Christianity than Judaism that) it is (even) better to hear Christianity from a man having circumcision than from Judaism from a foreskinned man (not, of course, that there really is among you a circumcised man preaching Christianity or a foreskinned man preaching Judaism – this is simply my way of telling you that it is always and everywhere better to hear Christianity than Judaism); both of them (the would-be preacher of Judaism and the would-be preacher of Christianity), if they do not speak of (the real) Jesus Christ, are to me tombstones and graves of the dead on which nothing but the names of men is written. (6.2) Flee, then, the evil arts and plots of the ruler of this age, lest, wearied by his scheming, you grow weak in love; but all of you, come together with undivided hearts.

Zetterholm situates this anti-Jewish bias historically, speculating that it might have developed following the Jewish War when it would have seemed propitious for non-Jewish Jesus followers to distance themselves from their Jewish counterparts within the movement. He adds that church history witnessed the entrenchment of this viewpoint, that is, the intensification of the gap between Judaism and Christianity, the former taken to be inferior and superseded by the latter.¹⁶Augustine; Martin Luther and the Reformation. The Enlightenment further systematized this gap, e.g., the application by Ferdinand Christian Baur of Hegelian dialectic to trace the progression of Christian theological constructs.¹⁷Petrine versus Pauline Christianity the synthesis of which was taken to be the ideas of the Reformation, thus widening the Judeo-Christian gap. Within this perspective, Paul’s polemic in his letters was understood to be manifestations of his rejection of the Torah, for him and his followers. If this were true, then it would add credence to the identification of the opponents of 3:2, 18-19 as judaizers.

Tellbe takes what he calls a sociological-historical approach to rationalize the consensus interpretation (Tellbe, 1994). However, for his proposal to have merit, it must be taken as a premise that the 1:27-30 refers to opponents who were non-Christian polytheistic cult practitioners of the city, in other words, the practitioners of the legal Roman cults/religions versus the nascent Christian community. Further, he must also negate the possibility that the agitators in 3:2, 18-19 were non-Christian Jews. He does this by pointing out that: (1) there is no data to suggest that non-Christian Jews sought to have Gentile Christians circumcised; (2) there is no indication in the text that the agitators were denying Christ as non-Christian Jews might have; (3) there is no indication in the Pauline corpus that Paul presented non-Christian Jews as a danger to the well-being of the church; (4) that in view of his directness in 1 Thess 2:14-16, it is odd that Paul would use veiled language to refer to Jews. From this, he begins to give reasons why the opponents in 3:2, 18-19 must have been judaizers. Tellbe’s elaborated argument begins with questioning why the judaizer doctrine would have attracted Gentile Christians in Philippi, thus prompting Paul to pen a warning in the letter. He offers theological and sociological reasons. Theologically speaking, the Philippian Christians, steeped in the patronage system of their Roman-like city would have viewed God as the beneficent patron and the church body the clients.¹⁸For example, see Neyrey (Neyrey, 2005). Since clients in the patronage system are expected to identify with their patrons, Tellbe posits that the Gentile Philippian Christians would be favourable via circumcision to identify themselves with their new patron, the God of the Jews. From a sociological perspective, Tellbe posits that the Gentile Christians would desire to be identified with the Jewish community, because Jews in the Greco-Roman era were afforded a certain degree of tolerance and safety in the practice of their way of life within the Roman Empire.¹⁹See footnote 46 in Tellbe (Tellbe, 1994). See also McLaren (J. S. McLaren, 2005) who raises the possibility that in Herodian times, certain sectors of the Jewish community would have been permitted to offer sacrifices to Caesar in temples that Herod had built for that purpose. If true, this could have possibly been a motive for the Roman authorities to accord a degree of tolerance and safety to the Jewish community. The point therefore is that the Gentile Christians’ receptiveness to judaizer teaching was motivated by the desire for self-preservation in a hostile environment as per 1:27-30. To put it bluntly, an overt Jewish way of life, e.g., dietary laws and circumcision, would have essentially “fooled” the agitators of 1:27-30 into thinking that the Christians were Jewish and thus tolerated by the Empire. One wonders if the small number of resident Jews in Philippi²⁰Acts 16, Paul and Silas in Philippi, does not mention the existence of a synagogue in the city. The implication is that Jewish presence in the city was minimal. would diminish the plausibility of this thesis.

If 3:2, 18-19 were not judaizers, who might have they been? Nanos (Nanos, 2015) offers some intriguing connections with biblical text, with the practice of certain Roman religious cults, and with the culture of Greek philosophers.

First, Nanos connects 3:2 with the account of Elijah’s confrontation with the prophets of Baal in the time of Ahab and Jezebel:

“Paul is drawing… from 1 Kgs (sic) 18:1-22:40 in order to evoke God’s action by way of the flesh with which Paul contrasts his and his audience’s behavior (sic) in verse 3. In this story… ‘evil working false prophets’ (1 Kgs (sic) 18:19-19:1) ‘mutilate themselves’ in order to ‘persuade’ the gods (1 Kgs (sic) 18:28, which uses a verbal form of the same word used by Paul), and the house of Ahab and Jezebel is condemned to be eaten by dogs (1 Kgs (sic) 21:22-29).” (pp192-103)

Second, albeit anachronistic, Nanos suggests a connection between “evil workers” with Acts 16:16-21, the story of the slave girl who had a spirit of divination (πνεῦμα ⸀πύθωνα, literally, a python spirit) and was engaged in fortune-telling (μαντεύομαι). Nanos explains that the spirit of python means that the slave girl was able to speak in an alternate voice (when in a state of divinination), and this was called “belly-talking.” This then connects with Paul’s extended description of the opponents as “their god is the belly” (3:19). Lastly, Nanos raises the possibility that the epithet “dogs” in 3:2 were directed against the Cynics who in their practice emulated doggish behaviour and ethic of public shamelessness.²¹An exposition of Cynic philosophy is outside the scope of this essay. Of note is a certain similarity in the methods Cynics espouse to attain self-mastery to those of Paul’s stance on military and athletic style disciple and endurance necessary in the way of Christ.²²See Nanos (Nanos, 2015), p 209. Indeed, it is plausible that Paul had the Cynics in mind in penning 3:18-19. In sum, the connections of 3:2, 18-19 to the Gentile culture in Philippi with respect to cultic practice and philosophy, as well as to other loci in biblical text apart from references to judaizers, cannot be ignored.