Against Paul (Makkot 23b)

There's a statement in yesterday's Daf by a little known sage (in fact he only appears once in the Mishnah and once in the Toseftah). Here's the quote, with Artscroll inferences in parenthesis:

R. Chananya ben Akashya says: The Holy One Blessed is He, desires to confer merit upon Israel (i.e. to increase their reward by providing them with many opportunities for mitzvah observance) therefore, He gave them Torah and mitzvot in abundance.

I haven't read anything about this to back up my claim, but I wonder if this statement is straight out of the history books.

We know that one of Paul's great changes during the birth of early Christianity was getting rid of the Halachic system. He writes:

What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet." But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death (Romans 7:7-10)

This statement is one of a number where Paul talks about the problems of commandments.  To summarize this statement (coupled with others), Paul felt that the flaw of the commandments were that we couldn't do them all and therefore, we would sin as we failed to observe our commandments. This sin would eventually lead to punishment. However, God, in his infinite grace (through Jesus) did away with the commandments and required us to have faith alone.

I can imagine the rabbis hearing this doctrine. For them commandments were paramount. So what did they do? They countered with a polemical text of their own. R. Chananya ben Akashya's statement is the anti-Paul statement. It's not that God loves us so he takes away the commandments. Rather it is because God loves us that he GIVES us the commandments! Moreover, God gives us many commandments so we might succeed in performing a lot of them (more brownie points).

For Paul the commandments were like SAT questions: to get them wrong would mean to deduct points. But for the rabbis, it's more like a Jewish summer camp color war: if you try hard and have the right spirit then everyone's a winner.

Hadran Aliech Masechet Makkot!