All Israel will be saved, this is what Paul said in Roman 11:26. He also said: as it is written. This got my attention. Because actually it isn’t written in the Tenach. It triggered me when I was studying the resurrection.
Sanhedrin 90b
I came along this statement in Sanhedrin 90b: All Israel have portion in the world to come, for it is written, Thy people are all righteous; they shall inherit the land for ever, the branch of My planting, the work of My hands, that I may be glorified.’(Is.60:21) (To be clear: This is meant for the Jews and the land of Israel.)
And not only this statement of the Misnah says it, this saying is also found before every chapter of the Pirkei Avot. It seems to be very well known in the old times, inclusive the time of Paul. I don’t know where it is all to find, but it looks like that it is an old known saying from oral tradition. Hence it must be in the mind of Paul when he was about to wrote All Israel shall be saved. Otherwise how could he say this?
But why does he say: As it is written? For there is not that text in the written Tenach to find. That leaves us with a problem. If Paul had the written Torah in mind then it would be a derivative from Is.60:21.
Paul however gives us the following text: There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. (Rom.11:26-27)
But this text isn’t found either in de Tenach, And you also can’t make up from these words that ALL Israel will be saved. So what is Paul doing here?
One solution is that Paul had in mind the Oral Torah when he said All Israel will be saved, and was paraphrasing it and backing it up with the text of the Written Torah, what would be, then, Ps.14:7 (Oh that the salvation of Israel [were come] out of Zion! when the LORD bringeth back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, [and] Israel shall be glad.) and Is.27:9. (By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged…) This is not as clear as I would like, but it is satisfactory to some extend. I think that you have to know the Oral Torah to understand where he is referring to. I don’t know that.
But it let me stay with one question. Why doesn’t Paul refer to Is.60:21: Thy people are ALL righteous? Because there is referred to in the Talmud. Perhaps because at that time they were not as righteous as they had to be. Yet they had the state of unrighteousness, but they should become righteous in the future. In that sense quoting Is.60:21 wouldn’t benefit his case to state All Israel will be saved (in the future). But now, refering to the future, it makes sense to say that the Deliverer shall come out of Sion.
While I was thinking of it I came along Peter Tomson who dealt extensively with Law and Halakha issues used by Paul. He shows that Paul uses many halachic rules and sayings, only you have to know it to confirm. He said: “Once again this confirms the theological principle proposed earlier: halakha and Law polimic exists independently and are not mutual exclusive.” [1] The connection between the written Torah and the oral Torah was so obvious by the Jews he wrote to, that they easily could understand and proof it.
So we have something to do as Christians from the gentiles, learn the oral Torah. It’s too long neglected!
Does anyone know a (scholarly) article or book what deals with this topic?
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[1] Paul and he Jewish Law, Halakha in the Letters of the Apostle to the Gentiles, Peter J. Tomson, p.89.
October 5, 2011 at 01:24
Paul however gives us the following text: There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. (Rom.11:26-27)
But this text isn’t found either in de Tenach…
FWIW, Isaiah 59:20-21 (which corresponds to a significant portion of the text Paul cites here) is found in a famous prayer in the siddur: U’va l’Tziyon, which comes before the Aleinu in the daily Shacharit.
October 5, 2011 at 21:51
Yahnatan,
Thank you for your information. Is.59:20-21 is indeed worth to mention here. I forgot. But it also doesn’t fit with what Paul says.
I found the prayer you mention in my Hebrew Siddur :)
October 6, 2011 at 03:34
It’s an interesting question, where Paul gets this wording from. J. Ross Wagner in his Heralds of the good news: Isaiah and Paul “in concert” in the letter to the Romans speculates that Paul had access to a more Hebraicized version of the Septuagint text.
It seems like many scholars recognize the last phrase is a concatenation of Isaiah 27:9 onto the end, including Richard Hays (in Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul 46), Stanley Stowers (A Rereading of Romans 131), and James Dunn (Romans 9-16 691).
As to the reason why Paul does this, Luke Timothy Johnson argues (in Reading Romans 184) that the influence of LXX Ps. 13:7 (which says “Who will give from Zion the salvation of Israel)–the from Zion of that verse comes out in Paul’s “And a redeemer will come from Zion.” From there Johnson explains how he sees this Zion theme as the link, since the verses following Isaiah 27:9 deal with the “holy mountain” of Zion.
Seems like a stretch? You may still prefer Johnson’s reading to Dunn’s, who argues that Paul’s transformation of to Zion into from Zion reflects his conviction that a divine reversal has moved Israel from a place of primacy to a place of dependency on the educative effects of the Gentiles’ incoming.
In The Mystery of Romans, Mark Nanos leans heavily on a paper by Christopher Stanley: “‘The Redeemer Will Come ἐκ Σιὼν’: Romans 11.26-27 Revisited.” (Ed. Craig A. Evans and JAmes A. SAnders. Studies in Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity 1. Sheffield: JSOT Press. Pp. 118-42), who expounds the significance of these parallel passages (Is. 59:20-63:7 and 27:9). Nanos also writes:
October 7, 2011 at 13:18
Thanks a lot Yahnatan for the good references you gave! It surely will benefit studying the object. You made me think of the following.
Paul builds his case (in Rom.9-11) upon the Song of Moses. (Deut.32) The core text is to be found in Romans 10:19. In that song the story of the people of Israel is told. They’ll get in exile, over reign by a strange people, but in the end restored, both the people and the land. (Deut.32:43)
That “strange people” is shared the gospel but it didn’t mean that the people of Israel and the land are wiped out. Instead, Israel needs this people to move them to jealousy. (Deut.32:21)
So I think Isaiah 27 fits perfect in this context. It’s somewhat hard to say, but Israel reaches the state of dead with the holocaust. And now Isaiah says: “By this (this refers to the state of dead in Is.27:7) therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the fruit: that He takes away his sin.” (Is.27:9)
That correlates somewhat with: “And so (until the fullness of the Gentiles, i.e. through the exile and smitten state of the Jews and their land) all Israel shall be saved.” (Romans 11:26) To be clear, I do not think that the “dead of Israel” causes redemption, but the dead of its Messiah Yeshua.
October 10, 2011 at 03:16
Great thoughts bringing out the Deut 32 connection–now that you mention it, you’re right, I’d say there’s good evidence here that Paul has a strong Deut 32 eschatalogy. I’ll keep this in mind going forward.
Your thoughts on Isaiah 27, death, and redemption are worth mulling over further too…
October 21, 2011 at 06:04
only spiritual lsrael will be saved