Paul Within Jewish Apocalyptic: Reframing the Apostle in His Historical Context

The Apostle Paul discipled the Gentiles he spoke to and wrote to, grounding them in the knowledge and hope of the God of Israel. This stands in sharp contrast to the long-standing theological tradition that claims Paul taught Gentiles apart from Israel’s hope—a view that has dominated much of church history.

A key goal in reading the New Testament, especially Paul’s letters, is to interpret them within their historical context—Second Temple Judaism. We will first consider Paul in his historical setting and then review relevant literature. This will allow us to see not only what I am presenting, but also how other scholars and modern studies of Second Temple Judaism have understood Paul.

One of the challenges with Paul is that he does not fit neatly into the mold of the average Jew of his time. Jesus and the apostles, for example, were seen as common men—Acts 4 describes Peter and John as “uneducated and ordinary.” Paul, however, was highly educated and unusual in his background. His writings, particularly his rhetoric about the death of the Messiah, the return of Jesus, and the gift of the Spirit, are highly technical and complex. This complexity has opened the door throughout history for individuals and movements to misinterpret Paul, taking him out of his historical context and reshaping his words to fit their own agendas.

Because of this, Paul can be harder to understand than figures like Jesus or Peter, whose teachings come across more directly in the Gospels and letters. Even in the first century this difficulty was recognized. In 2 Peter 3, Peter refers to Paul’s letters, noting that they contain “some things that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.” Already in that early period, proto-Gnostic movements were distorting Paul’s writings, a trend that has continued in various forms ever since.

In 2 Thessalonians 2:2, Paul warns believers not to be deceived “by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.” Already in his own lifetime, some were misusing apostolic authority—claiming Paul had spoken or written things he never did—in order to reshape the message about the return of Jesus.

This distortion only grew in the second century, especially with the rise of Gnostic movements. For example, Marcionrejected the Hebrew Scriptures entirely and argued that only Paul’s letters and portions of Luke’s Gospel could be trusted. He taught that the God of the Old Testament was merely a lesser creator (the demiurge) of the material world, while the Father of Jesus in the New Testament was a different, higher God. Marcion’s teaching, rooted in a selective reading of Paul, twisted the apostolic witness into a radically different narrative.

Throughout church history, Paul’s writings in particular have often been taken out of their Jewish and historical context, reinterpreted to support ideas foreign to his intent. This is partly because Paul is not as straightforward as some of the other apostles. His background, education, and style of argument set him apart.

Yet Paul himself makes his identity and commitments clear. In Philippians 3, he calls himself “a Hebrew of Hebrews” and “as to the law, a Pharisee.” In Acts 26, speaking before King Agrippa, he affirms: “My manner of life from my youth, spent from the beginning among my own nation and in Jerusalem, is known by all the Jews.” Far from abandoning his heritage, Paul identifies deeply with it. Understanding him requires us to read him first as a Jew speaking within the framework of Israel’s Scriptures, story, and hope.

In Acts 26:5–7, Paul testifies before King Agrippa: “They have known for a long time, if they are willing to testify, that according to the strictest party of our religion I have lived as a Pharisee. And now I stand here on trial because of my hope in the promise made by God to our fathers, to which our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship night and day.” Here Paul is clearly identifying himself within the Jewish tradition.

Likewise, in Acts 22:3, when addressing the council in Jerusalem, he says: “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God as all of you are this day.” Paul emphasizes his formation under one of the most respected rabbis of his day, showing that he was not only a Jew but one of the most highly trained Jews of the first century.

In this sense, Paul could be described as a “Jew of Jews”—a phrase he uses of himself in Philippians 3:5 (“a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee”). Compared to the other apostles, who were “common, uneducated men” (Acts 4:13), Paul’s training, education, and rhetorical skill set him apart. And yet God chose this most rigorously Jewish of men to be His primary messenger to the Gentiles. As Paul repeatedly identifies himself in his letters: “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God” (Romans 1:1), and “an apostle to the Gentiles” (Romans 11:13).

This framing helps us understand how Paul writes: he is always speaking as a Jew, formed by Israel’s Scriptures and traditions, even as he carries the gospel to the nations. The difficulty lies in understanding the historical and cultural framework from which Paul draws. He often uses terms and phrases that were commonly understood by Jews in the Second Temple period but not always explicitly defined in the Hebrew Scriptures.

For example, in 2 Timothy 4:1–8, Paul exhorts Timothy: “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season… I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that Day—and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.”

Here Paul uses a cluster of phrases—the day of judgment, his appearing, the kingdom, that Day, the resurrection of the dead, the righteous Judge—that were part of the shared language of late Second Temple Judaism. While the underlying concepts come from the Tanakh, these specific expressions functioned as shorthand or “catch phrases” that everyone in that world already understood.

This is why, for example, when John the Baptist declares, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:2), no one stops him to ask, “What is the kingdom of heaven?” or “What wrath is coming?” Such terms were already loaded with meaning from the apocalyptic and prophetic hopes of Israel.

In the same way, when Paul urges Timothy to “preach the word,” the word he has in mind is the Word of God already given—the Tanakh (what later church history has called the Old Testament). Paul grounds Timothy not in something novel, but in the Scriptures of Israel, now illuminated through the Messiah Jesus.

When Paul exhorts Timothy to “preach the word,” the Scriptures he has in mind are not different from what he has referenced elsewhere. They are the Scriptures understood within the message of the Messiah—the coming judgment, the Day of the Lord, the appearing of Christ, the Messianic kingdom, the death and resurrection of the Messiah, and the gift of the Spirit in light of those events. Paul frames his message and his exhortation to Timothy within the worldview of late Second Temple Judaism, a worldview that modern scholars commonly describe as Jewish apocalyptic.

The best way to understand Paul is to understand the worldview of the Jews of his time. Under the literature review notes, I list the main historical sources that help us reconstruct that worldview:

1. The Septuagint

The Septuagint (LXX) is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (Tanakh), completed around 200 BC. It shaped the thought world of many Jews in the Diaspora and was the version of the Scriptures most frequently cited in the New Testament.

2. The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha refers to works included in the Septuagint that were considered deuterocanonical in many traditions. While rejected by Protestant Christianity, they are still found in Bibles such as the NRSV and in special editions that include the Apocrypha. These writings reflect key theological currents in the Second Temple period.

3. The Pseudepigrapha

The Pseudepigrapha is a large body of Jewish writings that, unlike much of Greco-Roman or Diaspora literature, address the same themes we find in the New Testament—resurrection, judgment, Messiah, the kingdom of God. Chief among these are works like 1 Enoch and Jubilees, which were widely read and highly influential.

4. The Targums

The Targums are Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Scriptures, often with added commentary. They functioned less like literal translations and more like interpretive renderings—similar to how Eugene Peterson’s The Message paraphrases Scripture for modern readers. The Targums reveal how Jews of the late Second Temple period understood and applied the Bible in their own context.

5. Josephus

The historian Josephus provides an invaluable account of Jewish life, sects, and philosophy in the first century. While his categorizations of Jewish groups (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, etc.) can sometimes oversimplify, his works remain a critical resource for understanding the intellectual and cultural setting of Paul’s world.

6. The Dead Sea Scrolls

Discovered after World War II near Qumran, the Dead Sea Scrolls preserve the writings of a sectarian community by the Dead Sea. About 40% of the scrolls are biblical manuscripts from the Hebrew Scriptures. Around 30% are texts found in the Pseudepigrapha, with 1 Enoch and Jubilees being especially prominent. The remaining scrolls are sectarian writings unique to the community, which provide deep insight into the diversity of Jewish thought and apocalyptic expectation in Paul’s day. About 30% of the Dead Sea Scrolls consist of sectarian writings unique to the Qumran community. These texts are valuable, but because of their insular and sectarian nature, they do not fully represent mainstream Judaism of the Second Temple period. To use a modern analogy, they are somewhat like a charismatic cult within American evangelicalism today: while there is overlap with broader Christianity, the group is also distinct and unique to itself. In that sense, the Qumran writings are not representative of “common Judaism” but are nevertheless highly insightful for understanding the diversity of Jewish thought.

7. The Mishnaic and Talmudic literature

Beyond the Scrolls, we also have the Mishnaic and Talmudic literature produced in the centuries following the New Testament. These writings look back on the same general period, but they often project later rabbinic traditions anachronistically into the first century. This is not inherently wrong, but it does mean that by the time the rabbinic tradition was codified, apocalyptic thought had largely been suppressed or deemphasized. Still, these sources remain valuable for understanding how Jewish tradition developed after the destruction of the Temple.

We can use literature written around the second temple period to properly frame Paul squarely within his historical context. Paul is not setting himself against it. He is not erasing it or painting something entirely new over it. Rather, Paul is interpreting three central realities—the death of the Messiah, the gift of the Spirit, and the mission to the Gentiles—within that established Jewish apocalyptic worldview of the late Second Temple period. This approach to understanding Paul does the most justice to Paul, his letters, and the way he speaks about these things.

References

This study draws on John Harrigan’s teaching, Discipling Gentiles into the Hope of Israel.