Torrey Seland, «Saul of Tarsus and Early Zealotism. Reading Gal 1,13-14 in Light of Philo’s Writings», Vol. 83 (2002) 449-471
One of the most consistent features in the portraits of Saul of Tarsus in the Acts of the Apostles and in the letters accredited to Paul, is the fervent zeal of his youth. The zeal of the young Saul has been dealt with in several studies, drawing on the issue of zealotry in Palestine, but the conclusions reached are rather diverse. The present study suggests that the often overlooked phenomenon of zealotry in the writings of Philo of Alexandria should also be considered. The material from Philo does not support the view that the early zealots formed any consistent movement or party, but that they were vigilant individuals who took the Law in their own hands when observing cases of gross Torah transgressions.
As to the ‘zeal’ for God/the Torah so prominent in the studies mentioned above, Horsley argues that there is very little evidence that a ‘zeal for the Law’ was an important factor in first-century Palestine, let alone as a passion for freedom from alien rule. Zeal for the Law was not a collective movement, but an individual feeling about the importance of other Jews’ Torah-observance, and was not directed against the foreigners or Roman rulers. "There is nothing to suggest that one who was zealous for the Torah was an ‘extreme nationalist’17.
Horsley draws heavily on sociological theories and models of banditry in order to understand the various groups and conflicts of the last decades before the War18. According to Horsley, neither the zeal for the Torah, nor the ‘Zealots’ are concepts very helpful for understanding the last decades before the War, and the Zealot party did not come into being before the years of the great War of 66-70 C.E.19.
4. Saul/Paul as a zealot in recent research
In Gal 1,13-14.23 and Phil 3,5 the zeal of Paul seems to be related to his persecutions of the early Christians. Earlier studies of the persecutions of Paul, however, did not always pay much attention to the character and role of his zeal. Psychological reasonings, e.g., explanations of Paul’s persecutions on the background of his supposed dissatisfaction with his life under the Law were sometimes offered, and/or he was supposed to persecute the belief he in fact was already convinced of20.
Klaus Haacker, however, in his 1975 article on the call of Paul, focused on Paul’s zeal as important for understanding his