Are the “gentiles” in Romans the lost tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel?

In some recent comments on a post about the salvation of “all Israel” Alfred encouraged me to look at the argument of Jason Staples that the “fulness of the nations” (Rom. 11:25) is a reference to the northern kingdom of Israel or Ephraim, and that the salvation of “all Israel” must consist in the reunification of the two kingdoms. Staples’ book is The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism: A New Theory of People, Exile, and Israelite Identity. I haven’t read it, but I have looked at his JBL article “What Do the Gentiles Have to Do With ‘All Israel’?: A Fresh Look At Romans” (2011). I have quoted a few passages from the article and briefly given my reasons for disagreeing. It may not make much sense if you are not familiar with Staples’ work—or even if you are, quite possibly.

“All Israel”

As James M. Scott has shown, “In the OT the expression ‘all Israel’ relates exclusively to the tribal structure of the descendants of Jacob/Israel,” while also consistently referring to the twelve tribes in Jewish literature of the Second Temple period. So, in a technical sense, “Israel” necessarily includes Jews but is not limited to the Jews, while “all Israel” more specifically refers to all twelve tribes as a whole. (375-76)

I question whether this applies in practice in Paul’s historical purview. The phrase is used for the whole community of returning exiles from the southern kingdom settling in and around Jerusalem:

And the priests and the Levites and those who were from his people were settled in Jerusalem and its vicinity, and… all Israel were in their villages. (1 Esd. 5:45)

Similarly, in the Hellenistic period it seems that “all Israel” corresponded to “Jews” or “Judeans”:

And they all came to the land of Judea in peace, and they mourned for Jonathan and those with him and were very afraid, and all Israel mourned with great mourning. (1 Macc. 12:52; cf. 2:70; 9:20; 13:26)

And all Israel has forsaken your law and turned away in order not to hear your voice. And the curse and the oath written in the law of Moses, the servant of God, have come upon us, because we have sinned against him. (Dan. 9:11)

There is no objection, therefore, to understanding “all Israel” to refer to the Jews as Paul experienced them—in the land, centred on Judea and Jerusalem, and in the diaspora. The usage is not “technical” but pragmatic.

The distinction between “Israelites” and “Jews” is preserved by Josephus for historiographical reasons and by the Qumran community for ideological reasons (376-77). Paul has a different agenda—not the reunification of Israel but the annexation of the Greek-Roman world.

I think it is significant that in Romans the polemical focus is not on Rome as the oppressor and enemy of his people, as is the case in the Qumran literature and a text like 4 Ezra. It is the ethical-religious culture of the Greeks that is the object of his criticism, not the military-imperial might of Rome.

The followers of Jesus are identified symbolically with the twelve tribes of Israel without raising the realistic expectation that the lost tribes would be restored through their mission. None of the disciples is a gentile or in any respect identifiable with the ten tribes.

A new covenant with Israel and Judah?

Significantly, Gentiles are not mentioned in Jeremiah’s prophecy; the covenant will be made only with Israel and Judah. Thus, if Paul thought that the new covenant was being fulfilled, he would have been expecting the miraculous return of the northern tribes. Instead, he strangely obsesses over the “mystery” of the circumcision-free justification of the Gentiles—while still insisting that he is preaching the fulfillment of the new covenant. It is in pondering this paradox that all the pieces snap together: Paul’s “mystery” is that faithful Gentiles (those with “the law written on their hearts”; see Rom 2:14-15) are the returning remnant of the house of Israel, united with the faithful from the house of Judah (cf. the “inward Jews” of Rom 2:28-29). (380)

The “covenant” in Isaiah 59:21, quoted by Paul in Romans 11:27, is not Jeremiah’s “new covenant” but the assurance that YHWH will not renege on the promise to eradicate injustice from Zion.

It is not the law that is written on the hearts of the righteous gentiles but the “work of the law,” and “law” here may not even be Torah but the “law” of the gentile’s conscience. This is not a new covenant argument.

So I don’t see that there is a “new covenant” paradigm at work here forcing an identification of Paul’s gentiles with the northern tribes.

Not my people

Once a part of God’s elect nation, Ephraim has become “not my people,” indistinct from the non-chosen nations—that is, they have become “Gentiles” (what does “not my people” mean if not “Gentiles”). (381)

Paul speaks of the “Israelites”—his “kinsmen according to the flesh” (Rom. 9:3-4). But ‘not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named” (9:6-7). Those who are children of Abraham without being his physical descendants—“children of the flesh”—cannot be Israelites in distinction from Judeans. They must been non-Israelite, non-Jewish gentiles.

So when he says later that God has prepared vessels of mercy, “even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles” (9:24), the division is straightforwardly between Israelites/Jews and gentiles. So I think we have to assume that he has, purposefully or otherwise, reapplied the Hosea quotation to the context of his mission to the gentiles.

Paul would never have called gentiles “Israelites”

Before protesting that Paul would never have called Gentiles “Israelites,” one should remember that the circumcision controversy makes sense only if the debate is over full Israelite status. If Gentiles were to be saved simply as Gentiles (i.e., as the fulfillment of the nations flocking to Jerusalem at the eschaton), circumcision which marks a status transition from “Gentile” to “Israelite”—would have been entirely unnecessary. (382)

There is an important distinction to be made between, on the one hand, the nations which participate as nations in the eschatological reorganisation of the ancient world around a judged and restored Jerusalem and, on the other, the gentiles who become part of the covenant community through faith in Jesus and reception of the Spirit. There is also a subcategory of gentiles who are found to be righteous on the day of God’s wrath against the Greek world (Rom. 2:10, 14-16).

So this civilisation as a whole will be judged and transformed. But in the meantime, believing gentiles receive the Spirit and are included in the covenant people, which now becomes a sign of, or witness to, the future confession of Jesus as Lord by the nations. Communities of justified Jews and gentiles embody the truth that God is not God of the Jews only but also of the nations (cf. Rom. 3:28-30).

Arguably, then, the “church,” as reformed Israel with ingrafted gentiles, was expected to function in the age of ethical monotheism to come in an extended sense as Zion or the temple or as YHWH’s priesthood for the nations, their “Lord” being acknowledged as supreme above all other political-religious and spiritual powers.

The hardening of the two houses of Israel?

Thus, Paul explains that the rebellion of both houses of Israel has been the agent of salvation for the Gentiles. It is the hardening not only of the Jews but also of their northern brothers (long ago) that has brought about Gentile salvation—both houses of Israel have indeed been hardened in order for the Gentiles to come in (11:25) and, ultimately, for “all Israel” to be saved. (384)

I don’t see how this is sustainable in view of the argument in Romans 11:11-13. Because Israel stumbled, “salvation has come to the nations,” so as to make Israel jealous. Then Paul speaks to the gentiles, who must be distinct from “Israel”: “I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous” (Rom 11:13-14).

So we go Israel → make jealous → gentiles, then gentiles → make jealous → Jews. I struggle to see how we can either identify “Israel” as the northern tribe with the gentiles or differentiate between “Israel” and the “Jews.”

Also in Romans 1:16 salvation is for Jew and Greek, not Jew and Israelite (cf. 3:29; 10:12), and I would argue that the emphasis on same-sex sexual activity makes it clear that he is thinking of mainstream Greek culture, not Israelites who have lost themselves in a Greek world.

Finally, Paul identifies himself both as Jew (3:9; 9:24) and as Israelite (9:3-4; 11:1). But he is from the tribe of Benjamin (Rom. 11:1; Phil. 3:5), therefore not from the scattered northern tribes. Why would he do this in a section of the letter which purportedly assumes a programmatic distinction between the two houses of Israel?

The olive tree of Israel

Paul’s reminder about Gods capacity to reincorporate cut-off branches is made even more poignant by the realization that the branches now being incorporated from the Gentiles are wild olive branches. That is, these branches are from the long-forgotten and uncultivated house of Israel, having been broken off and mixed among the Gentiles so long ago. So Paul points out that if God is restoring the previously cut-off branches of Israel from the nations, he can much more easily reincorporate the more recently removed branches. (385)

Here Staples introduces a layer of allegorical meaning that is part neither of the figure nor of its interpretation. There is no basis for the claim that the wild olive branches were from trees grown from branches taken from ancient Israel.

The subordination of the wild olive branches does not fit the reunification theme: they share unnaturally in the root of the tree—in the promises made to the patriarchs; they remain in tension with the natural branches; there is no suggestion of a shared heritage.

The fulness of the nations

The puzzling connection between the ingathering of τὸ πλήρωμα τῶν ἐθνῶν and the salvation of “all Israel” suddenly makes sense, since “all Israel” must include Ephraim’s seed. (387)

The phrase to plērōma tōn ethnōn in Romans 11:25 is unlikely to be an allusion to “fulness of the nations” in Genesis 48:19. The Septuagint has plēthos ethnōn, which looks like part of a formulaic expression denoting many descendants. Abraham will be the “father of a multitude (plēthous) of nations” (Gen. 17:4*). God will multiply (plēthunō) Ishmael and he will be father of twelve nations (Gen. 26:4). He will multiply Abraham and make him a gathering of nations (Gen. 48:4). Isaac prays that God will bless Jacob and “multiply” (plēthunai) so that he will be gatherings of nations (Gen. 28:3; cf. 35:11; 48:4).

Paul’s to plērōma tōn ethnōn is a departure from this idiom, probably signifying the number of gentiles that need to come in before Israel’s heart is softened. There are certainly other ways of explaining the “causal relation” between the ingathering of gentiles and the salvation of “all Israel” (388).

One hardening or two?

Paul starts from the original hardening of the northern kingdom, which caused them to be exiled by the Assyrians and intermingled with the nations. Judah’s partial hardening then leads to the restoration of these lost tribes, necessarily opening the door to the Gentiles (since Ephraim is no longer ethnically distinct)—the Gentiles are gathered in as the result of this twofold hardening that has occurred in both houses of Israel. (387)

The “partial hardening” of Israel (11:25), however, refers back to branches cut from the cultivated olive tree; no distinction is made between two versions of “Israel,” so “all Israel” (11:26) can only refer to the cultivated tree and the branches that have been cut from it.

In the end…

So in the end, we must ask whether it is conceivable that Paul thought of the incorporation of gentiles as a surrogate for the incorporation of Ephraim. Would he really have viewed the arbitrary body of gentile believers as proper representatives of “Israelites” with a clear and important tribal identity? Why does he nowhere discuss the matter explicitly? Why is the exile of the northern tribes not part of the Abraham story in Romans? Why does he not differentiate between believing gentiles who are Ephraim and believing gentiles who are the nations which will be ruled by Jesus (Rom. 15:12)? Is it really plausible to say that he is “simultaneously proclaiming the salvation of the Gentiles and the return of the northern kingdom—as the same event” (388)?