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.
considers the Zealots to have been aggressive already against Jesus and his teachings; Jesus might have been to the zealots a "no-less-dangerous quietist, hardly better than a collaborator and a traitor"26. Paul’s persecutions were of the same kind as the Zealots’ political struggles; "he persecuted the followers of Jesus for the same kinds of reasons that Zealots had to be hostile to Jesus himself, namely that not only did they not take part in the national struggle . . . but they were a threat to it"27. As no one else, Taylor has here set Paul squarely among the violent political ‘Zealots’, even designating him as a follower of the ‘Fourth Philosophy’, persecuting because of zeal those who stood apart from the national struggle28.
The last scholar to be mentioned here, M.R. Fairchild29, follows Horsley in arguing that we cannot continue to consider the zealots as a unified group or sect with a distinctive theology and a continuous leadership extending from the Maccabees to the end of the Great War (66-70 CE). Nevertheless, following Hengel, contra Horsley, he finds that there does seem to have been a zealotic ideology that was cultivated over the decades from the time of the Maccabees to the War. This ideology had adherents in various groups, even among the Essenes (as stated by Hippolyt, Refutatio 9,21), and was occasionally displayed in violent actions against Torah transgressors. In Gal 1,13-14 and Phil 3,5-6 Paul "makes his association with the Zealot movement clear"30, even claiming to be a radical zealot, exceeding his Pharisaic contemporaries31. Fairchild has several pertinent observations. It is important that he finds it possible to call Paul a zealot without thereby associating him with a zealotic party. I suggest we will find such a view corroborated if we draw upon the writings of Philo in our considerations.