Discussions continue to proliferate concerning the so-called “New Perspective on Paul” and the degree to which those associated with it have satisfactorily explained Paul’s concerns. This study examines Paul’s use of “zeal” language in three texts (Rom 10:2; Gal 1:14; Phil 3:6) as a way of entering this discussion and seeking to move the conversation forward by appropriately culling those insights from the New Perspective that are helpful while modifying what is unhelpful or imbalanced.

All three Pauline texts speak of a Jewish zeal that lacks some kind of knowledge or revelation. The New Testament scholar who has dealt with zeal in these texts in the most sustained way is James D. G. Dunn, who argues that Paul was drawing on a long and venerable tradition of Jewish zeal for the nation of Israel, a concern to maintain Israel’s distinction from the surrounding nations by defending and reinforcing Israel’s boundaries.

This study argues that while Dunn has certainly identified a concern that was very dear to Saul the Pharisee, and one that has been neglected in past generations’ readings of Paul’s former life, Dunn is emphasizing a secondary Pauline concern to the neglect of a primary one. He is zeroing in on an overly narrow understanding of Pauline zeal that does not sufficiently place zeal against the broader backdrop of general obedience to Torah that it had in Jewish tradition.

In what follows we first review the way select thinkers throughout the history of the church have understood Pauline zeal; second, look at zeal in the OT; third, examine zeal in Second Temple Judaism; and fourth, return to Romans 10, Galatians 1 and Philippians 3 to look closely at how Paul’s references to zeal function in these texts. We conclude that, along with a few others, Dunn has explicated Pauline zeal precisely inversely from the apostle’s core concerns. In the OT, the Jewish literature, and Paul’s letters, zeal consistently refers most immediately to general obedience to the law of God. This normally includes, and at times emphasizes, those dimensions of the law by which Jews would be set off from gentiles. Yet to focus on this ethnic element is to highlight the form in which zeal is manifested while neglecting its substance. Zeal in Romans 10, Galatians 1 and Philippians 3 is fundamentally vertical, and derivatively or secondarily horizontal.