Paul
Apostle of the Heat Set Free
‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there the heart is free’
(2 Corinthians 3:17, Basic English Version)
F. F. Bruce
DIGITAL LIBRARY
Copyright © 1977 F. F. Bruce
First published 1977 by Paternoster
Revised (second) Edition 1980
This Digital Edition 2005
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TO MY GRAND-DAUGHTERS
HELEN, ANNA, ESTHER AND WINONA MARY
AND MY GRANDSONS
PETER, FREDERICK, ALAN AND PAUL
bearing in mind T. R. Glover’s comment on a Roman Emperor’s
condemnation of the Apostle to the Gentiles—that the day was
to come when men would call their dogs Nero and their sons
PAUL
Contents
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. The Rise of Rome
2. The Jews under Foreign Rule
3. “Of No Mean City”
4. “This Man is a Roman Citizen”
5. “A Hebrew Born of Hebrews”
6. “When the Time had Fully Come”
7. The Beginning of “The Way”
8. Persecutor of the Church
9. Paul Becomes a Christian
10. Paul and the Jerusalem Tradition
11. Paul and the Historical Jesus
12. Paul and the Exalted Christ
13. Paul and the Hellenistic Mission
14. Man of Vision and Man of Action
15. Conference in Jerusalem
16. Church Extension in Cyprus and Asia Minor
17. The Gentile Problem
18. “What the Law could not do”
19. Flesh and Spirit
20. Antioch to Philippi
21. Christianity in Thessalonica
22. Paul and the Athenians
23. The Church of God at Corinth
24. Corinthian Correspondence
25. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper in Pauline Thought
26. Ephesus: Open Door and Many Adversaries
27. Paul and the Life to Come
28. Farewell to Macedonia and Achaia
29. The Gospel according to Paul
30. Last Visit to Jerusalem
31. Caesarea and the Appeal to Caesar
32. “And So We Came to Rome”
33. Paul and Roman Christianity
34. The Letter to Philemon
35. Principalities and Powers
36. The Quintessence of Paulinism
37. The Last Days of Paul: History and Tradition
38. Concluding Reflections
Chronological Table
Select Bibliography
Indexes
Index of People, Places and Writings
Index of Subjects
Index of References:
Classical Writers
Jewish Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha
Dead Sea Scrolls
Josephus
Philo
Other Jewish Writings
Christian Writings
List of Illustrations
The Publishers apologise for the quality of the illustrations, which have had to be
reproduced digitally from the original edition. We have nevertheless included them,
since we feel that a sub-standard illustration is better than no illustration at all.
Tarsus: St. Paul’s Gate
Damascus: The Street Called Straight today
Jerusalem and the temple area today, seen from the Mount of
Olives
Athens: A bronze tablet at foot of Areopagus recording Paul’s
speech
Athens: The Acropolis
Corinth: Gallio’s bema
Ephesus: The theatre
Caesarea: The theatre
Rome: Appian Way
Rome: Inscriptions from Church of St. Praxedis and Church of
St. Sebastian
Rome: Catacombs of St. Sebastian: graffiti invoking Peter and
Paul
Rome: St. Paul-Without-the-Walls: facade and porch, showing
statue of Paul
Rome: St. Paul-Without-the-Walls: inscription above Paul’s
tomb
Rome: Tre Fontane: Church of St. Paul, exterior
Rome: Tre Fontane: Church of St. Paul, interior
Page of P46, showing Galatians 6:10–18 and Philippians 1:1. P46
is the oldest known manuscript of Paul’s letters (c. A.D. 200);
it is one of the Chester Beatty biblical papyri in the Chester
Beatty Library, Dublin
Acknowledgements
THE AUTHOR AND PUBLISHERS ARE GRATEFULE TO THE
FOLLOWING for help in supplying illustrations: Abbazia delle
Tre Fontane, facing pp 449, 464; Barnaby’s Picture Library,
facing pp 97, 352; Colin Hemer, facing pp 129, 256, 257;
Pieterse Davison International, facing p 465; Bastiaan
VanElderen, facing pp 96, 128, 288, 289; Pontifical Commission
of Sacred Archaeology, facing pp 353, 384.
Preface
THIS WORK IS DESIGNED TO GIVE A CONTINUOUS
PRESENTATION of material which has been delivered in
lectures or published piecemeal in written articles over many
years.
When I entered on my present appointment in the University
of Manchester in 1959, one of the lecture-courses already
prescribed in the syllabus for the Honours School of Biblical
Studies was entitled “The Missionary Career of Paul in its
Historical Setting”. My lectures for this specially congenial
course have provided the nucleus of the following chapters. I
had not previously been a stranger to Paul’s life and thought,
but in the past eighteen years I have devoted more time and
attention to this field of study than to any other. I have not
attempted to expound Paul’s teaching systematically but rather
to treat its main themes in their historical context, as Paul
himself had occasion to develop them in his letters.
Year by year since I came to Manchester I have given a
public lecture in the John Rylands Library (since 1972 the John
Rylands University Library of Manchester). Most of these have
dealt with some aspect of Pauline studies. They have
subsequently been published in the Library’s Bulletin. The
substance of eight of them is reproduced in the following
pages: “St. Paul in Rome, 1”, BJRL, March 1964 (Chapters 4,
31 and 32), “St. Paul in Rome, 2”, Autumn 1965 (Chapter 34),
“St. Paul in Rome, 3”, Spring 1966 (Chapter 35), “St. Paul in
Rome, 4”, Spring 1967 (Chapter 36), “St. Paul in Rome, 5”,
Spring 1968 (Chapter 37), “Paul and the Historical Jesus”,
Spring 1974 (Chapter 11), “Paul and the Law of Moses”, Spring
1975 (Chapter 18), “Christ and Spirit in Paul”, Spring 1977
(Chapter 12). For permission to reproduce these in revised or
adapted form I am indebted to Dr. F. W. Ratcliffe (University
Librarian and Director) and Dr. Frank Taylor (Principal Keeper
and Editor of the Bulletin).
Acknowledgment is also made to the Editor of The
Expository Times for permission to reproduce in Chapter 22 an
expanded version of my paper “Paul and the Athenians” which
appeared in that journal for October 1976.
A specially grateful expression of indebtedness must be
made to my secretary, Miss Margaret Hogg, who with her
customary diligence and cheerfulness has typed the whole
work and given valuable help with proof-reading and with the
compilation of the index. Her beautiful and accurate typescript
has made the printer’s task incomparably easier than it would
have been if he had been faced with the problem of deciphering
my manuscript—a problem which she has tackled with
confidence and success.
1977
F.F.B
Abbreviations
AJA American Journal of Archaeology
Ant. Antiquities (Josephus)
AV Authorized (King James) Version
BC The Beginnings of Christianity, ed. F. J. Foakes
Jackson and K. Lake (London, 1920–33)
BGU Berliner Griechische Urkunden
BJ De Bella Iudaico (Jewish War) (Josephus)
BJRL Bulletin of the John Rylands (University) Library,
Manchester
BZNW Beiträge zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche
Wissenschaft
CD Book of the Covenant of Damascus (= Zadokite
Work)
CIG Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum
CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum
CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum
DACL Dictionnaire d’Archéologie chrétienne et de Liturgie
EQ The Evangelical Quarterly
E. T. English Translation
Ev. Th. Evangelische Theologie
HDB Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible (5 volumes)
Hist. Eccl. Historia Ecclesiastica (Eusebius)
HJP History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus
Christ, E. T. (E. Schürer)
ibid. ibidem (“in the same place”)
ICC International Critical Commentary
IGRR Inscriptiones Graecae ad Res Romanas Pertinentes
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JRS Journal of Roman Studies
JTS Journal of Theological Studies
loc. cit. loco citato (“at the place cited”)
LXX Septuagint (pre-Christian Greek version of Old
Testament)
MAMA Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua
MT Massoretic Text
Nat. Hist. Naturalis Historia (Pliny the Elder)
NEB New English Bible
n. s. new series
NTS New Testament Studies
OGIS Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae (ed. W.
Dittenberger)
op. cit. opus citatum (“the work cited”)
Q Qumran
1QH Hodayot (Hymns of Thanksgiving) from Qumran Cave
1
1QIsa Complete scroll of Isaiah from Qumran Cave 1
1QIsb Incomplete scroll of Isaiah from Qumran Cave 1
1QM Milḥamah (War scroll) from Qumran Cave 1
1QpHab Pesher (commentary) on Habakkuk from Qumran
Cave 1
1QS Serek (Rule of the Community) from Qumran Cave 1
4QpNah Pesher (commentary) on Nahum from Qumran Cave 4
QDAP Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities of
Palestine
RE Realencyclopädie für die klassische
Altertumswissenschaft (A. F. von Pauly and G. Wissowa)
RHPR Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses
RSV Revised Standard Version
s.v. sub voce (“under the word”)
TB Babylonian Talmud
TDNT Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, i–ix
(1964–74), E. T. of TWNT (Theologisches Wörterbuch
zum Neuen Testament), i–ix (1933–74), ed. G. Kittel and
G. Friedrich
TJ Jerusalem (Palestinian) Talmud
ZAW Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
ZDPV Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins
ZNW Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft
ZTK Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche
Introduction
NO EXCUSE IS OFFERED FOR THE PUBLICATION OF YET
ANOTHER book on Paul save the excuse offered by the second-
century author of the Acts of Paul: it was written amore Pauli,
for love of Paul. For half a century and more I have been a
student and teacher of ancient literature, and to no other
writer of antiquity have I devoted so much time and attention
as to Paul. Nor can I think of any other writer, ancient or
modern, whose study is so richly rewarding as his. This is due
to several aspects of his many-faceted character: the attractive
warmth of his personality, his intellectual stature, the
exhilarating release effected by his gospel of redeeming grace,
the dynamism with which he propagated that gospel
throughout the world, devoting himself single mindedly to
fulfilling the commission entrusted to him on the Damascus
road (“this one thing I do”) and labouring more abundantly
than all his fellow-apostles—“yet not I, but the grace of God
which was with me”. My purpose in writing this book, then, is
to share with others something of the rich reward which I
myself have reaped from the study of Paul.
1. Paul the letter-writer
Of all the New Testament authors, Paul is the one who has
stamped his own personality most unmistakably on his
writings. It is especially for this reason that he has his secure
place among the great letter-writers in world literature—not
because he composed his letters with a careful eye to stylistic
propriety and the approving verdict of a wider public than
those for whom they were primarily intended, but because they
express so spontaneously and therefore so eloquently his mind
and his message. “He is certainly one of the great figures in
Greek literature”, said Gilbert Murray;1 and a greater Hellenist
even than Murray, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff,
described him as “a classic of Hellenism”. Paul, he said, did not
directly take over any of the elements of Greek education, yet
he not only writes Greek but thinks Greek; without realizing it,
he serves as the executor of Alexander the Great’s testament
by carrying the gospel to the Greeks.
At last, at last, once again someone speaks in Greek out of a fresh inward
experience of life. That experience is his faith, which makes him sure of his hope.
His glowing love embraces all mankind: to bring them salvation he joyfully
sacrifices his own life, yet the fresh life of the soul springs up wherever he goes.
He writes his letters as a substitute for his personal activity. This epistolary style
is Paul, Paul himself and no other.2
No mean tribute from a Hellenist of Hellenists to one who
claimed to be a Hebrew of Hebrews!
Paul’s letters are our primary source for his life and work;
they are, indeed, a primary source for our knowledge of the
beginnings of Christianity, for they are the earliest datable
Christian documents, the most important of them having been
written between eighteen and thirty years after the death of
Jesus. Some writers have no doubt used the letter-form to
conceal their true thoughts; Paul’s transparent honesty was
incompatible with any such artificiality. He tries, where
necessary, to be diplomatic, whether he is writing to his own
converts or to people personally unknown to him; but even so
he wears his heart on his sleeve.
This spontaneity was no doubt facilitated by Paul’s practice
of dictating his letters instead of writing them out himself. As
he dictates, he sees in his mind’s eye those whom he is
addressing and speaks as he would if he were face to face with
them. Even if he made use of amanuenses, the style is his own,
especially in the “capital epistles” (a designation conveniently
used for the letters to the Galatians, Corinthians and Romans).
Where the amanuensis was one of his close associates, like
Timothy or Luke, some greater stylistic discretion may have
been allowed to him. But when Paul warmed to his theme, it
been allowed to him. But when Paul warmed to his theme, it
can have been no easy task for any one to write down at his
dictation. If his amanuenses followed the customary procedure,
they would take down what Paul dictated with a stylus on wax
tablets, possibly using some system of shorthand, and then
transcribe the text in longhand on to a papyrus sheet or roll.
Because of the self-evident spontaneity of Paul’s letters, any
account of him which is irreconcilable with their evidence must
be suspect. From the first century we have one account of Paul
composed (it appears) in complete independence of his letters;
that is the account given in the Acts of the Apostles (a work
which was designed as the second part of a history of Christian
origins whose first part we know as the Gospel of Luke). This is
our principal secondary source for the life and work of Paul,
and the present work is based on the conviction (for which
arguments have been set out elsewhere)3 that it is a source of
high historical value. The differences between the portrait of
Paul drawn in his undisputed letters and that drawn in Acts are
such differences as might be expected between a man’s self-
portrait and the portrait painted of him by someone else for
whom he sat either consciously or (as in this instance)
unconsciously. The Paul of Acts is the historical Paul as he was
seen and depicted by a sympathetic and accurate but
independent observer, whose narrative provides a convincing
framework for the major epistles at least and may be used with
confidence to supplement Paul’s own evidence.4
2. Paul and the expansion of Christianity
It is, however, not only as a man of letters but perhaps even
more as a man of action that Paul has made his mark on world
history. Consider, for example, two historical phenomena which
would be surprising if they were not so familiar.
First, Christianity arose as a movement within the Jewish
community, not in the lands of the dispersion but in the land of
Israel. Its Founder was a Jew, and so were his disciples, who in
the years following his departure from them proclaimed only to
Jews the good news with which he entrusted them. Yet in little
more than a generation after his death Christianity was
recognized by the authorities of the Roman Empire as a
predominantly Gentile cult, and to this day there are parts of
the world where the antithesis Jew/Christian is simply another
way of stating the antithesis Jew/Gentile.
Second, Christianity arose in south-western Asia, among
people whose vernacular was Aramaic. Yet its foundation
documents have come down to us in Greek, the language in
which they were originally written; and over many centuries
now it has been regarded, for better or worse, as a
predominantly European religion.
Both of these phenomena, which in fact are but two aspects
of one and the same phenomenon, are due principally to the
energy with which Paul, a Jew by birth and upbringing, spread
the gospel of Christ in the Gentile world from Syria to Italy, if
not indeed to Spain, during the thirty years or so which
followed his conversion to Christianity about A.D. 33. The
energy with which he undertook and accomplished his
commission may be illustrated by one phase of his apostolic
ministry—the decade between A.D. 47 and 57. Here is Roland
Allen’s summary:
In little more than ten years St. Paul established the Church in four provinces of
the Empire, Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia and Asia. Before A.D. 47 there were no
Churches in these provinces; in A.D. 57 St. Paul could speak as if his work there
was done, and could plan extensive tours into the far West without anxiety lest
the Churches which he had founded might perish in his absence for want of his
guidance and support.5
His confidence was justified: they did not perish, but grew and
prospered.
Paul was not the only preacher of Christianity in the Gentile
world of that day—there were some who preached it in
sympathy with him and others who did so in rivalry to him6—
but he outstripped all others as a pioneer missionary and
planter of churches, and nothing can detract from his
achievement as the Gentiles’ apostle par excellence.
3. Paul the preacher of free grace
But Paul’s pre-eminent contribution to the world has been
his presentation of the good news of free grace—as he himself
would have put it (rightly), his re-presentation of the good news
explicit in Jesus’ teaching and embodied in his life and work.
The free grace of God which Paul proclaimed is free grace in
more senses than one—free in the sense that it is sovereign and
unfettered, free in the sense that it is held forth to men and
women for their acceptance by faith alone, and free in the
sense that it is the source and principle of their liberation from
all kinds of inward and spiritual bondage, including the
bondage of legalism and the bondage of moral anarchy.
The God whose grace Paul proclaimed is the God who alone
does great wonders. He creates the universe from nothing; he
calls the dead to life; he justifies the ungodly. This third is the
greatest wonder of all: creation and resurrection are consistent
with the power of the living and life-giving God, but the
justifying of the ungodly is prima facie a contradiction of his
character as the righteous God, the Judge of all the earth, who
by his own declaration “will not justify the ungodly” (Exodus
23:7). Yet such is the quality of divine grace that in the very act
of extending it to the undeserving God demonstrates “that he
himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith
in Jesus” (Romans 3:26).
Paul’s understanding of God is completely in line with Jesus’
teaching. The God who, in one parable after another, freely
forgives the sinner or welcomes the returning prodigal does
not exercise the quality of mercy at the expense of his
righteousness: he remains the self-consistent God whose very
self-consistency is the reason sinners “are not consumed”
(Malachi 3:6) or, in the words of another Old Testament
prophet, “he does not retain his anger for ever because he
delights in steadfast love” (Micah 7:18).
But grace is manifested not only in God’s acceptance of
sinners but in the transformation of those thus accepted into
the likeness of Christ. The words of Thomas Erskine have
frequently been quoted to the effect that, “in the New
Testament, religion is grace, and ethics is gratitude”.7 If this
dictum were turned into Greek, one word, charis, would serve
as the equivalent of both “grace” and “gratitude”; for the
gratitude which divine grace calls forth from its recipient is
also the expression of that grace imparted and maintained by
the Holy Spirit, through whom the love of God is poured out
into the hearts of believers. Jesus had cited the two
commandments enjoining love to God and love to one’s
neighbour as those on which “all the law and the prophets
depend” (Matthew 22:40); so for Paul the free activity of this
divine love in the lives of those redeemed by grace represented
“the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10). Therefore, he
insisted, the gospel of free grace did not annul the essential
law of God, but rather established it (Romans 3:31).
Love is a more potent incentive to doing the will of God than
legal regulations and fear of judgment could ever be. This at
least was grasped by that strange second-century Christian
Marcion, whose devotion to Paul’s teaching was not matched
by his understanding of it. Marcion cut the gospel off from its
past and its future, denying the Christian relevance of the Old
Testament and of coming judgment. Paul, for his part, did not
jettison the Old Testament (as we call it): for him its writings
constituted the holy scriptures (Romans 1:2), the only holy
scriptures he knew. He called them “the law and the prophets”
(Romans 3:21) and described them as “the oracles of God”
(Romans 3:2). They found their fulfilment and had their
meaning made plain in Christ; when people read them without
using this key to unlock their significance, “a veil lies over their
minds” (2 Corinthians 3:15). Paul attached the greater value to
them because they bore witness to the message of justification
by faith in Christ: the gospel which in them was “preached
beforehand to Abraham” (Galatians 3:8) was the gospel which
Paul was commissioned to proclaim; it was no recent invention.
Neither did Paul repudiate the idea of coming judgment. In a
moral universe divine retribution must be reckoned with; “else
how could God judge the world?” (Romans 3:6). But Marcion
was unrealistically radical as Paul was not. Let it be counted to
was unrealistically radical as Paul was not. Let it be counted to
him for righteousness, nevertheless, that he grasped Paul’s
message of salvation by grace—grasped it as many more
“orthodox” Christians of his century did not.
Tertullian, for example, writing his treatise Against Marcion
after Marcion’s death, challenges him dramatically to say why
he did not abandon himself to an extravaganza of sin since he
did not believe that the God and Father whom Jesus revealed
would judge mankind.8 “Your only answer”, says Tertullian,
apostrophizing Marcion, “is Absit, absit (‘Far from it, far from
it’)”—and on such an answer he pours scorn. But at this very
point Tertullian shows that it is he, and not Marcion, who is out
of tune with Paul. The Latin absit which Tertullian puts into
Marcion’s mouth appears to be the equivalent of the Greek mē
genoito (“God forbid” in older English versions of the New
Testament), which Marcion, whose language was Greek,
probably used.
But if Marcion repelled such a challenge as Tertullian’s with
mē genoito, he was using these words in precisely the sense in
which Paul used them when replying to the question: “What
then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under
grace? Far from it!” (Romans 6:15). Marcion, like Paul, realized
that for one who through faith had received the new life (which
was nothing less than Christ’s risen life shared by him with the
believer) to go on in sin was a moral contradiction in terms:
“How can we, who died to sin, still live in it?” (Romans 6:2).
Paul, unlike Marcion, knew that he must one day give an
account of his stewardship to the Lord who commissioned him;
but it was not the prospect of his appearance before the
tribunal of Christ that deterred him from sin. He who had
formerly attained the standard of righteousness prescribed by
the Mosaic commandments could not be content with a lower
standard now that he was “under law to Christ” (1 Corinthians
9:21). Rather, since it was no longer he that lived but Christ
that lived in him, the perfection of Christ was the goal to which
he now pressed forward. Tertullian may have known this;
perhaps he was simply trying to score a debating point against
Marcion. Even so, he was inviting the retort: “And is your only
reason for abstaining from sin your fear of the wrath to come?”
Marcion probably, and Paul certainly, knew the love of Christ
to be the all-compelling power in life. Where love is the
compelling power, there is no sense of strain or conflict or
bondage in doing what is right: the man or woman who is
compelled by Jesus’ love and empowered by his Spirit does the
will of God from the heart. For (as Paul could say from
experience) “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there the heart is
free” (2 Corinthians 3:17).
CHAPTER 1
The Rise of Rome
1. Rome through eastern eyes
IN THESE DAYS OF WORLD SUPER-POWERS IT IS NOT
EASY TO ENVISAGE how a single city could have acquired an
adequate power-base to extend its authority over a wide area
and establish a large empire. Yet in world history many cities
have in their day become imperial states. There were several at
various times in the Euphrates-Tigris valley: the best known of
these was Babylon, which in the eighteenth century B.C.
achieved this kind of power under the great Hammurabi and
later, in the sixth century B.C., dominated not only its
Mesopotamian neighbours but the lands to the west as far as
the Mediterranean and the Egyptian frontier. The
Mediterranean Sea itself has witnessed the rise and fall of a
succession of imperial cities. In the fifth century B.C. the
Athenian Empire held sway not only over the Aegean Sea but
over a large area of the Eastern Mediterranean and as far west
as Sicily, while for three centuries Carthage—itself a colony of
the Phoenician city-state of Tyre—controlled the Western
Mediterranean until her rival, Rome, compelled her to
relinquish all her overseas dominions after defeating her in the
Second Punic War at the end of the third century B.C. During
the Christian era the city of Venice was able to “hold the
gorgeous East in fee” from Crusading times until the
seventeenth century.
But of all the cities which have dominated the Mediterranean
lands none has exercised such an abiding influence on them,
and on others far removed from the Mediterranean, as Rome.
Rome’s swift rise to power made a deep impression on men’s
minds in antiquity. A Greek politician named Polybius, who was
taken to Rome as a hostage in 167 B.C. and had the good
fortune to win the friendship of Scipio Aemilianus, the leading
Roman general of his day, wrote a historical work (still of
exceptional value, in so far as it survives) in order to trace the
steps by which the city of Rome, in a period of fifty-three years
(221–168 B.C.), became mistress of the Mediterranean world—
a thing unique in history.1 Less accurate, but informative
because of its vivid reflection of the idealized image of Rome
current in the Near East towards 100 B.C., is the picture given
in 1 Maccabees 8:1–16, where we are told how Judas
Maccabaeus, seeking what support he could find in his struggle
against the Seleucids, sent an embassy to Rome:
Now Judas heard of the fame of the Romans, that they were … well-disposed
toward all who made an alliance with them, and that they were very strong. Men
told him of their wars and of the brave deeds which they were doing among the
Gauls, how they had defeated them and forced them to pay tribute, and what they
had done in the land of Spain to get control of the silver and gold mines there,
and how they had gained control of the whole region by their planning and
patience, even though the place was far distant from them. They also subdued
the kings who came against them from the ends of the earth, until they crushed
them and inflicted great disaster upon them; the rest paid them tribute every
year. Philip,2 and Perseus3 king of the Macedonians, and the others who rose up
against them, they crushed in battle and conquered. They also defeated
Antiochus the Great, king of Asia,4 who went to fight against them with a
hundred and twenty elephants and with cavalry and chariots and a very large
army. He was crushed by them; they took him alive and decreed that he and
those who should reign after him should pay a heavy tribute and give hostages
and surrender some of their best provinces, the country of India and Media and
Lydia. These they took from him and gave to Eumenes the king [of Pergamum].
The Greeks planned to come and destroy them, but this became known to them,
and they sent a general against the Greeks and attacked them. Many of them
were wounded and fell, and the Romans took captive their wives and children;
they plundered them, conquered the land, tore down their strongholds, and
enslaved them to this day.5 The remaining kingdoms and islands, as many as ever
opposed them, they destroyed and enslaved; but with their friends and those who
rely on them they have kept friendship. They have subdued kings far and near,
and as many as have heard of their fame have feared them. Those whom they
wish to help and to make kings, they make kings, and those whom they wish they
depose; and they have been greatly exalted. Yet for all this not one of them has
put on a crown or worn purple as a mark of pride, but they have built for
themselves a senate chamber, and every day three hundred and twenty senators6
constantly deliberate concerning the people, to govern them well. They trust one
man each year to rule over them and to control all their land; they all heed the
one man, and there is no envy or jealousy among them.
This account has many detailed inaccuracies, the most
astonishing of which is the statement at the end that they
entrust supreme power to one man each year: in fact, to
prevent the concentration of power in one man’s hands they
elected two collegiate chief magistrates (consuls) year by year,
each of whom had the right of veto over the other’s
proceedings. Nevertheless, it does give us a fair idea of what
was thought of the Romans in Western Asia at the time;
experience of their oppressiveness at close quarters gave
currency to a much less favourable picture after two or three
decades.7
2. From hill-settlements to world empire
Rome was originally a group of pastoral and agricultural hill-
settlements in the Latin plain, on the left bank of the Tiber. At
an early stage in her history she fell under Etruscan control,
but after a generation or two succeeded in shaking off this
yoke. The Etruscans retired to the right bank of the Tiber.
Rome’s career of world conquest began with her crossing of
the Tiber to besiege and storm the Etruscan city of Veii (c. 400
B.C.). From that time on Rome became first the mistress of
Latium and then of Italy. Intervention in a Sicilian quarrel in
264 B.C. brought her into conflict with the Carthaginians, who
had substantial commercial interests in Sicily. The result was
the two Punic Wars (264–241 and 218–202 B.C.), in the second
of which Rome came within an ace of annihilation; but after the
decisive defeat of Hannibal at Zama, in North Africa, she
emerged as undisputed mistress of the Western
Mediterranean.
Rome was to have no respite after her exhausting struggle
against Hannibal and his forces: the Second Punic War was
scarcely over when she found herself engaged in war with
Macedonia, one of the states which inherited part of
Alexander’s empire. In 195 B.C. she restored to the city-states
of Greece the freedom which they had lost to Philip,
Alexander’s father, nearly a century and a half before: this
restored freedom, indeed, was strictly limited, as Rome
constituted herself the protector of the liberated cities. But no
other power could intervene in their affairs with impunity:
when the Seleucid kingdom (another of the succession states to
Alexander’s empire) attempted to do so in 192 B.C., it was not
only repulsed but invaded by the Roman legionaries, and found
itself incurably crippled and impoverished. Rome lost no
opportunity of encouraging opposition to Seleucid interests,
whether in Ptolemaic Egypt (yet another of the succession
states) or among the Jewish insurgents led by Judas
Maccabaeus and his brothers (from 168 B.C. onwards).
These moves led to Rome’s increasing involvement in the
Near East. In 133 B.C. the last king of Pergamum, an ally of
Rome, died and bequeathed his territory (the western part of
Asia Minor) to the Roman senate and people. The bequest was
accepted, and the territory became the Roman province of
Asia. Roman rule was not universally popular, and in 88 B.C. an
anti-Roman rising was fomented in the province by Mithridates
VI, king of Pontus (on the Black Sea coast of Asia Minor), who
himself cherished imperial ambitions in that area. The result
was a war between Rome and Pontus which dragged on for a
quarter of a century; when, at the end of that period, Roman
arms triumphed under the generalship of Pompey, Pompey was
faced with the task of reconstructing the whole political order
of Western Asia. He occupied Judaea in 63 B.C., having given
Syria the status of a Roman province in the preceding year.
For thirty years and more after Pompey’s settlement the
Roman world was torn between rival aspirants to supreme
power, but the naval victory of Actium (31 B.C.), which meant
the downfall of Cleopatra, the last sovereign of Ptolemaic
Egypt, with her Roman ally Antony, left Octavian, adopted son
and political heir of Julius Caesar, master of the Roman world.
With consummate statesmanship Octavian, who in 27 B.C.
assumed the style Augustus, preserved the republican
framework of the Roman state but concentrated the reality of
power in his own hands. In Rome he was content with the title
princeps, first citizen of the republic; but in the eastern
provinces he and his successors were recognized for what they
were in fact—the heirs to the dominion of Alexander and the
dynasties among which his empire was partitioned—kings of
kings, like the great oriental potentates of old.
Under the control of Rome, then—first of the original Rome
and then, from the fourth century onwards, of the New Rome
established at Constantinople—the peoples of the Near East
continued to live until the Arab conquest of the seventh
century.
CHAPTER 2
The Jews under Foreign Rule
1. From Cyrus to Vespasian
CYRUS, THE FOUNDER OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE (559–
529 B.C.), AND his successors were the most enlightened
imperialists the ancient world had seen up to their day. They
saw the wisdom of keeping their subject-nations contented.
Instead of deporting them forcibly to distant regions in order to
break their will or capacity to rebel, as the Assyrians and
Babylonians had done, they allowed them to live in their
homelands (unless they themselves preferred to live
elsewhere). Instead of compelling them to worship the gods of
the master-race, they encouraged them to practise their
ancestral religion and even on occasion extended financial aid
to this end. There is evidence for this policy in Egypt (which
they conquered in 525 B.C.) and among the Greek settlements
of Western Asia Minor as well as in their dealings with the
exiles from Judaea whom they authorized to return to their
native territory from which they had been uprooted by the
Babylonians. There were two levels of administration of the
province of Judaea under the Persians. The Persian king was
represented by a governor, who might be a Jew himself (as
Nehemiah was) or a non-Jew. The governor was responsible for
safeguarding the imperial interests, like the maintenance of
security and the collection of tribute. But the internal
administration of Judaea was in the hands of the high priest—
always a member of the family of Zadok. Judaea under the
Persians comprised a limited area centred on Jerusalem; it was
organized as a temple-state, and Jerusalem itself was given the
status of a holy city.1 There were other temple-states similarly
constituted within the Persian Empire, and they preserved this
constitution when the Persian supremacy was superseded by
that of the Greeks and Macedonians after the conquests of
Alexander the Great (336–323 B.C.). When Alexander’s empire
was broken up after his death, Judaea found itself subject first
to the dynasty of the Ptolemies, ruling from Alexandria, and
then (after 198 B.C.) to that of the Seleucids, ruling from
Antioch in Syria. But Jerusalem and Judaea retained their
sacral constitution, apart from intervals when attempts were
made to abolish or modify it, until the outbreak of the Jewish
revolt against Rome in A.D. 66.
The most notable attempt to abolish the sacral constitution
of Jerusalem and Judaea was made by the Seleucid king
Antiochus IV (175–164 B.C.) who, largely for reasons of
external security, tried to assimilate his Jewish subjects in
culture and religion to the Hellenistic way of life followed
throughout his dominions. Judaea lay on the frontier between
his kingdom and Egypt, and this became a sensitive frontier
after the Romans assumed the rôle of protectors of Egypt
against Seleucid ambitions in 168 B.C. Antiochus’s policy was
ill-advised and ended in failure. The Jews, under Judas
Maccabaeus and his brothers, put up a resistance which led to
their regaining religious freedom in 164 B.C. and, twenty-two
years later (thanks largely to civil strife within the Seleucid
kingdom), to the gaining of political independence. For nearly
eighty years Judaea was ruled by the native Hasmonaean
dynasty of priest-kings.
When Judaea fell under Roman control in 63 B.C., the
Hasmonaean kingship was abolished but the sanctity of
Jerusalem was preserved. For a time the Romans preferred to
control Judaea indirectly through Jewish rulers—in particular,
through Herod the Great (37–4 B.C.), who violated its temple
constitution more ruthlessly than did any Gentile overlord, with
the exception of Antiochus IV. But when, in A.D. 6, Judaea was
made a Roman province, it was given the same kind of two-tier
administration as it had enjoyed under Persian and Graeco-
Macedonian rule. The Roman Emperor appointed a provincial
governor, called a prefect or procurator, who was responsible
for maintaining peace and order and for ensuring the efficient
collection of the “tribute to Caesar”. But the internal affairs of
the Jews in Judaea were administered by the high priest
together with a council of seventy elders (the Sanhedrin) over
which he presided ex officio. The high priest and his colleagues
naturally recognized that supreme power was wielded by
Rome, and made it their business to maintain reasonably good
relations with the governor. This was no easy task at times,
because of the inexperience or insensitivity of some of the
governors. Yet, as a last resort, the high priest and his
colleagues had channels of communication with Rome, so that
they could go over the governor’s head and lodge a complaint
which might lead to his being severely reprimanded or even
dismissed from office. One of the best examples of this
interplay between the two seats of authority in the province is
the action and reaction between the chief priests and Pontius
Pilate in the gospel records of the trial of Jesus.
Despite the fact that their internal interests were in the
hands of their own religious establishment, many of the Jews of
Judaea found Roman rule irksome. For one thing, they had to
endure double taxation: tribute to Caesar had to be paid over
and above their temple dues (which included considerably
more than the tithe, or ten per cent. income tax).2 The chief
priests and leading members of the Sanhedrin were wealthy, to
a point where they had insufficient appreciation of the
economic stress under which their poorer fellow-countrymen
lived; they knew, moreover, that the continued enjoyment of
their wealth depended on the maintenance of the existing
order. Their consequent modus vivendi with the occupying
power did nothing to endear them to the common people.
Some of the provinces of the empire assimilated Roman
civilization so thoroughly that their inhabitants came to think of
themselves as Romans, and their descendants to this day speak
a language which has developed from “vulgar Latin”.3 The Jews
of Judaea were perhaps the least assimilable of all Rome’s
subject-nations. This was due to their unique and exclusive
religion, the practice of which was guaranteed to them by
imperial decrees, as it had been safeguarded by earlier
imperial overlords. Under these earlier Gentile rulers, it had
never been suggested that the Jews’ payment of tribute to them
was in some way offensive to the God whom they worshipped.
In so far as this payment of tribute to foreigners was given a
religious significance, it tended to be interpreted as a token of
Yahweh’s displeasure with his people: if he allowed foreigners
to rule over them, the payment of tribute to those foreigners
was an act of submission to divine judgment. But when Judaea
became a Roman province in A.D. 6 and its population incurred
liability to pay tribute direct to the emperor, a new doctrine
was voiced—that for the people of Israel, living in the holy land,
to acknowledge a pagan ruler by paying him tribute was to be
guilty of high treason against the God of their fathers, Israel’s
true king. The principal teacher of this new doctrine was Judas
the Galilaean, who at that time led a rising against the Roman
government of the new province.4 The rising was put down, but
the teaching lived on, and became a dominant feature of the
policy of the Zealots. The party of the Zealots, which made no
distinction between what we should call politics and religion,
became active from about A.D. 44 onwards, and although it did
not initiate the revolt against Rome of A.D. 66, it soon took over
the leadership of the ensuing war.5
The insurgents continued throughout the war to hope
against hope. They had taken up the struggle in vindication of
the crown rights of Israel’s God: he could not let them down.
They relied upon an ancient oracle—perhaps a combination of
oracles—which they understood to be due for fulfilment just
then, according to which world dominion was to pass from the
Gentiles into Jewish hands.6 An initial victory over much
superior Roman forces imbued them with the confidence that
the successes of Judas Maccabaeus (who, with his associates,
had been similarly activated by zeal for God) would be
repeated in their experience. The internecine fighting
throughout the empire, and in Rome itself, which marked the
“year of the four emperors” (A.D. 69).7 made them think that
Gentile imperialism, embodied in the Roman state, was
undergoing its death-throes. But in the event it was the Jewish
commonwealth, in the form which it had taken since the return
from the Babylonian exile six centuries before, that collapsed.
The temple in Jerusalem was burned, the city was sacked and
laid in ruins, its sacred status was abolished, the chief-priestly
establishment was no more, the sacrificial order was at an end.
The annual half-shekel which adult Jews throughout the world
had hitherto paid for the maintenance of the temple, under the
protection of the Roman authorities, had henceforth to be paid
into a special fund—the fiscus Iudaicus—for the support of the
temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline hill in Rome.
But even in Judaea the situation of the Jews might have been
worse. Permission was obtained for the institution of a new
Sanhedrin of scholars for the codification of religious law, and
indeed Jewish religious life flourished all the better for the
disappearance of the temple and its ritual.
2. The Jews of the dispersion
Then as now, however, there were many more Jews living
outside Judaea than within its frontiers, and (apart from the
business of the fiscus Iudaicus after A.D. 70) those Jews of the
dispersion suffered no disabilities in relation to Roman law as a
result of the war. There were anti-Jewish riots and pogroms in
a number of cities in Syria and Egypt, but that was another
matter. In fact, a succession of edicts issued by the highest
authorities had secured to Jews throughout the Roman Empire
quite exceptional privileges, and these were not rescinded.
The history of the Jewish dispersion can be traced back to
the beginning of the sixth century B.C. At that time we have
ample evidence of Jewish settlements in Egypt8 and a hint of
others in Asia Minor as far west as Sardis, capital of the
kingdom of Lydia (the Sepharad of Obadiah 20). A large
number of the exiles in Babylonia settled in their new home
and did not avail themselves of permission to return to Judaea.
Under Persian rule they were to be found in all the territories
of the Persian Empire, even on the shore of the Caspian Sea;9
and Alexander’s conquests enabled them to spread even
farther afield.10 There was a Jewish population in Alexandria
from its foundation in 331 B.C.; by the first century A.D. Jews
formed a majority in two out of the city’s five wards. About 300
B.C. the first Ptolemy settled a body of Jews in Cyrenaica to
help ensure the loyalty of that province.11 A century later, the
Seleucid king Antiochus III, with a similar purpose, moved
many Jews into Phrygia and Lydia, and after he wrested Judaea
and Coelesyria from the Ptolemies he encouraged Jewish
settlement in Antioch, his capital, and other cities of his
kingdom.12 In Rome itself there was a Jewish colony even
before the incorporation of Judaea into the empire in 63 B.C.,
and it was greatly augmented in the years that followed.13 It is
estimated that by the beginning of the first century A.D. there
were between 40,000 and 60,000 Jews in Rome—about as
many, probably, as in Jerusalem itself.14 The discovery and
examination of six Jewish catacombs in Rome have greatly
increased our knowledge of Jewish life in the city. The Jews of
Rome appear to have been concentrated on the right bank of
the Tiber (Trastevere), where most of the eleven synagogues
attested by inscriptions were probably situated.15
The extent of the Jewish dispersion in the apostolic age is
indicated in Luke’s catalogue of the “Jews, devout men” who
were present in Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost in A.D. 30,
from the “Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of
Mesopotamia” in the east to the “visitors from Rome, both Jews
and proselytes” in the west (Acts 2:5–11).16
CHAPTER 3
“Of No Mean City”
1. The province of Cilicia
WHEN PAUL WAS ARRESTED DURING HIS LAST VISIT
TO Jerusalem (A.D. 57) and brought before the military tribune
who commanded the auxiliary cohort in the Antonia fortress,
the tribune imagined that he was an Egyptian agitator who had
recently attempted some kind of coup in the neighbourhood of
the city. Realizing his error when he heard Paul speaking
idiomatic Greek, he asked who he was and received the reply,
“I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city”
(Acts 21:39).
Cilicia, the territory bordering the Mediterranean in South-
East Asia Minor, comprised two quite different areas. There
was the fertile plain in the east called Cilicia Pedias, between
the Taurus range and the sea; the trade route from Syria to
Asia Minor ran through it, crossing Mount Amanus by the
Syrian Gates and crossing the Taurus range by the Cilician
Gates into Central Asia Minor. To the west of that lay the
rugged coastland of Cilicia Tracheia (Rough Cilicia), where the
Taurus range comes down to the sea.
In Hittite records the Cilician territory is called Kizzuwatna;
it was linked by treaty to the Hittite Empire and was later
incorporated in it until the downfall of that empire c. 1200 B.C.
In the Iliad the Cilicians are mentioned as allies of the Trojans:
Hector’s wife Andromache was a Cilician princess.1 In the
ninth century B.C. Cilicia fell under the control of the
Assyrians, who called it Hilakku (probably the “Helech” of
Ezekiel 27:11). From the early sixth century B.C. Cilicia was
ruled by a succession of native kings bearing the dynastic title
Syennesis; they continued to rule under the overlordship of the
Persian Empire until c. 400 B.C., when they were replaced by
satraps.2 In 333 B.C. Cilicia became part of the empire of
Alexander, who won his decisive battle of Issus there in that
year.3 After his death it was controlled by the Seleucids,
although for a time the possession of part of the coast of Cilicia
Tracheia was contested by the Ptolemies. When the Romans
forced Antiochus III to give up most of his territory in Asia
Minor (188 B.C.), Eastern Cilicia remained part of the Seleucid
Empire for several decades more, but the breakdown of
Seleucid control in the second half of the second century B.C.
and the consequent exploitation of Cilicia Tracheia as a base
for robbers and pirates led the Romans to take an increasingly
direct part in the concerns of that area. Part of Western Cilicia
became a Roman province in 102 B.C., and after Pompey’s
brilliant victory over the pirates in 67 B.C. the whole of Cilicia
was reduced to provincial status, with Tarsus as its capital.
From about 25 B.C. Eastern Cilicia (including Tarsus) was
united administratively with Syria, which had become a Roman
province under Pompey in 64 B.C. Western Cilicia was allotted
to a succession of client kings. When the last of these kings
abdicated in A.D. 72, Eastern Cilicia was detached from Syria
and united with Western Cilicia to form the province of Cilicia.
For the whole of Paul’s lifetime, however, the area of Cilicia in
which his native city stood was part of the united province of
Syria-Cilicia, a situation implied in Paul’s statement that some
three years after his conversion, following a brief visit to
Jerusalem, he “went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia”
(Galatians 1:21).
2. The city of Tarsus
Tarsus, the principal city of the fertile plain of East Cilicia,
stood on the river Cydnus, about ten miles from its mouth, and
some thirty miles south of the Cilician Gates (on the road
between the modern towns of Mersin and Adana). It was a
fortified city and important trade entrepôt before 2000 B.C. In
the second millennium B.C. it is mentioned in Hittite records as
a leading city of Kizzuwatna. It was destroyed during the
incursions of the Sea Peoples c. 1200 B.C. and some time later
was settled anew by Greeks. It was captured by the Assyrian
king Shalmaneser III in 833 B.C. and again by Sennacherib in
698 B.C. Under the Persians it was the capital of the client
kingdom, and later of the satrapy, of Cilicia. It began to issue
its own coinage in the fifth century B.C. In 401 B.C. Cyrus the
Younger, with the Ten Thousand, spent twenty days in the city
on his way east to claim the Persian crown, and exchanged
gifts with King Syennesis, whose palace was in Tarsus.4
Alexander the Great saved the city from being fired by the
retreating Persians in 333 B.C. Under his Seleucid successors
it assumed the name of Antioch-on-the-Cydnus, a name which
appears on its new coin issue in the reign of Antiochus IV (from
171 B.C. onwards). This new coin issue seems to coincide with
a reorganization of the city’s constitution, which conferred on it
a greater degree of municipal autonomy.5 In 83 B.C. it fell into
the power of Tigranes I, king of Armenia, the ally and son-in-
law of Mithridates VI, but passed into Roman hands as a result
of Pompey’s victories, and became the capital of the province
of Cilicia, while it retained its autonomy as a free city (67 B.C.).
Cicero took up residence in the city during his proconsulship of
Cilicia in 51–50 B.C. When Julius Caesar visited the city in 47
B.C. it adopted the name Iuliopolis in his honour. After
Caesar’s death and the defeat of the anti-Caesarian party at
Philippi in 42 B.C., Tarsus enjoyed the favour of Antony, who
controlled Rome’s eastern provinces. It was there in 41 B.C.
that the celebrated meeting between Antony and Cleopatra
took place, when she was rowed up the Cydnus in the guise of
Aphrodite:
From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthroned i’ the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And made a gap in nature.6
When Augustus ruled the whole Roman world, Tarsus enjoyed
further privileges, including exemption from imperial taxation.
In the later part of Antony’s domination of the Near East, and
for some years after, Tarsus had suffered under the
maladministration of a nominee of his named Boethus.
Augustus entrusted the administration of the city to one of its
most illustrious sons, Athenodorus the Stoic, who had been his
own tutor. When Athenodorus returned to Tarsus, he expelled
Boethus and his associates, and reformed the civic
administration. It may have been at this time that a property
qualification of 500 drachmae was fixed for admission to the
roll of citizens.7 Athenodorus and his successor, Nestor the
Academic (tutor of Marcellus, the nephew of Augustus), also
exercised great cultural influence in Tarsus.
According to the geographer Strabo, writing probably in the
early years of the first century A.D., the people of Tarsus were
avid in the pursuit of culture. They applied themselves to the
study of philosophy, the liberal arts and “the whole round of
learning in general”—the whole “encyclopaedia”—so much so
that Tarsus in this respect at least surpassed even Athens and
Alexandria, whose schools were frequented more by visitors
than by their own citizens. Tarsus, in short, was what we might
call a university city. Yet people did not come from other places
to study in its schools: the students of Tarsus were natives of
the city, who frequently left it to complete their education
elsewhere and rarely returned to it.8 Athenodorus was one of
those who left it, but in later years he did return.
A less flattering picture of Tarsus than Strabo’s is given by
Philostratus in his Life of Apollonius (the Neopythagorean
sage). According to Philostratus, Apollonius, who was born
early in the Christian era at Tyana in Cappadocia, went to
Tarsus at the age of fourteen to study under the rhetorician
Euthydemus. He was much attached to his teacher, but was
dismayed to find the general atmosphere of Tarsus not at all
conducive to study, for the people were addicted to luxury,
levity and insolence, and “paid more attention to their fine
linen than the Athenians paid to wisdom”. So he left Tarsus for
a more congenial environment.9
This account should not be taken too seriously, however; in
this work Philostratus was a romancer rather than a serious
biographer and, writing about A.D. 200, he was probably
influenced by Dio Chrysostom, who in two orations delivered
early in the second century A.D. had castigated the Tarsians for
their lack of moral earnestness.10
The prosperity of Tarsus was based on the fertile plain in
which it stood. Linen woven in Tarsus from the flax which grew
in the plain is repeatedly mentioned by ancient authors (like
Philostratus). Reference is made also by Roman writers to a
local material called cilicium, woven from goat’s hair, from
which were made coverings designed to give protection against
cold and wet.
When Paul claimed to be “a citizen of no mean city”, he
plainly had good cause to describe Tarsus thus. If his words
mean (as they appear to do) that his name appeared on the roll
of citizens of Tarsus, this would indicate that he was born into
a family which possessed the citizenship. The property
qualification for citizenship, laid down perhaps by
Athenodorus, has been mentioned already. Dio Chrysostom
implies that by organizing itself thus as a timocracy, Tarsus
debarred linen-workers and other tradespeople from
citizenship, but there seems to be no reason why some
tradespeople might not have qualified for it on the strength of
their property, Paul is said by Luke to have been a “tent-
maker” (skēnopoios), by which we may understand that he was
engaged in the manufacture of wares from the local cilicium,
but he appears to have belonged to a well-to-do family.
Questions about his Tarsian citizenship have arisen more
from his being a Jew than from his being a tent-maker. The
citizen body, as in other cities of the Greek type, was
presumably organized in tribes or phylai. Since the common
life of the tribe or phylē involved religious ceremonies which
would have been offensive to Jews, it has been suggested that
the Jewish citizens of Tarsus were enrolled in a tribe of their
own, solemnized by ceremonies of the Jewish religion. This may
indeed have been so, although we have no explicit evidence to
this effect. In many Gentile cities Jewish settlers lived as
resident aliens, but in some, such as Alexandria, Cyrene, Syrian
Antioch, Ephesus and Sardis, they enjoyed citizen rights, and
they could well have done so as a distinct group in Tarsus.11
CHAPTER 4
“This Man is a Roman Citizen”
1. Citizen rights
IN TARUS, THEN, PROBABLY IN THE FIRST DECADE OF
THE CHRISTIAN era, Paul was born. The privilege of Tarsian
birth and civic status was, however, outweighed by the fact
that he was born a Roman citizen.
The same military tribune in Jerusalem to whom Paul
introduced himself as a Jew of Tarsus was surprised to be
informed later that Paul was also a Roman citizen. “Tell me”,
he said to Paul, “are you a Roman citizen?” When Paul said
“Yes”, the tribune answered, “I bought this citizenship for a
large sum”.1 “But I”, said Paul, “was born a citizen” (Acts 22:27
f.).
If he was born a Roman citizen, his father must have been a
Roman citizen before him. Roman citizenship was originally
confined to freeborn natives of the city of Rome, but as Roman
control of Italy and the Mediterranean lands extended, the
citizenship was conferred on a number of other people who
were not Roman by birth, including certain select provincials.2
But how did a Jewish family of Tarsus acquire this
exceptional distinction? The members of this family, by all
accounts, were not assimilationist Jews who compromised with
Gentile ways: this much is implied by Paul’s claim to be “a
Hebrew born of Hebrews” (Philippians 3:5). We just do not
know how it obtained Roman citizenship. Cilicia fell within the
sphere of command of more than one Roman general in the
first century B.C.—Pompey and Antony, for example—and the
grant of citizenship to approved individuals was included in the
overall authority (imperium) conferred on those generals by
law. Presumably Paul’s father, grandfather or even great-
grandfather had rendered some outstanding service to the
Roman cause. It has been suggested, for example, that a firm of
tent-makers could have been very useful to a fighting
proconsul.3 But no certain evidence is available. One thing is
certain, however: among the citizens and other residents of
Tarsus the few Roman citizens, whether Greeks or Jews by
birth, would constitute a social élite.
As a Roman citizen, Paul had three names—forename
(praenomen), family name (nomen gentile) and additional name
(cognomen). Of these we know only his cognomen, Paullus. If
we knew his nomen gentile, we might have some clue to the
circumstances of the family’s acquisition of the citizenship,
since new citizens commonly assumed their patrons’ family
name—but we are given no hint of it. His cognomen Paullus
may have been chosen because of its assonance with his Jewish
name Saul (Heb. Shaʾul), which in the Greek New Testament is
sometimes spelt Saoul but more frequently Saulos, the latter
form rhyming with Greek Paulos.
If the circumstances in which Paul’s family acquired Roman
citizenship are obscure, many other questions relating to his
citizenship are hardly less so. On more than one occasion, for
example—at Philippi and, some years later, at Jerusalem—he
appealed to his rights as a Roman citizen. The former occasion
was when he protested at having been summarily beaten with
rods by the lictors who attended the chief magistrates of
Philippi (a Roman colony), without being given a proper trial
(Acts 16:37).4 On the latter occasion he invoked his rights in
order to be spared a scourging (much more murderous than a
beating with rods) to which the military tribune already
referred to was about to have him subjected in an effort to
discover why his presence and movements in the temple
precincts had provoked a riotous outburst among the Jerusalem
populace.5 Paul voiced his protest to the centurion in charge of
the men detailed to carry out the scourging, and the centurion
in alarm went to the military tribune: “What are you about to
do?” he said. “This man is a Roman citizen” (Acts 22:26).
Hence the interchange between, the tribune and Paul quoted at
the beginning of this chapter.
Wherever he went throughout the Roman Empire, a Roman
citizen was entitled to all the rights and privileges which
Roman law provided, in addition to being liable to all the civic
duties which Roman law imposed. A citizen’s rights and
privileges were laid down in a long succession of enactments—
most recently the Julian Law on the public use of force (lex
Iulia de ui publica)6—going back traditionally to the Valerian
Law (lex Valeria) passed at the inception of the Republic (509
B.C.). These rights and privileges included a fair public trial for
a citizen accused of any crime, exemption from certain
ignominious forms of punishment, and protection against
summary execution. To none of these privileges could a non-
citizen subject of Rome lay legal claim.
2. Citizen registration
But when a man claimed his citizen rights—when he said
ciuis Romanus sum (“I am a Roman citizen”), or its equivalent
in Greek—how did he prove his claim? In the absence of any
provision for verification on the spot, it must have been
tempting for a man in a tight corner to make the claim even
when he had no title to it, and hope to get away with it.
Certainly it was a capital offence to claim falsely to be a Roman
citizen, but how was the official before whom the claim was
made to know whether the claim was true or not?
A new citizen might have a duly witnessed copy of his
certificate of citizenship; auxiliary soldiers received such a
document when they were enfranchised, and civilians may have
been given something of the same sort.7 But Paul was not a
new citizen. He might, however, produce a diptych, a pair of
folding tablets, containing a certified copy of his birth
registration. Each legitimately born child of a Roman citizen
had to be registered within (it appears) thirty days of his birth.
If he lived in the provinces, his father, or some duly appointed
agent, made a declaration (professio) before the provincial
governor (praeses prouinciae) at the public record-office
(tabularium publicum). In the course of his professio the father
or his agent declared that the child was a Roman citizen; the
professio was entered in the register of declarations (album
professionum), and the father or agent would receive a copy,
properly certified by witnesses. This certificate recorded the
professio in the third person, in indirect speech, and it would
include the words: ciuem Romanum esse professus est (“he
[the father or agent] declared him [the child] to be a Roman
citizen”). It may have been customary for a Roman citizen who
was constantly on the move to carry this certificate around
with him.8 If so, we can envisage Paul as producing it when he
had to claim his citizen rights. But could another copy have
been readily procured if the original one was lost? If Paul
carried his around, the chances of his losing it were
considerable—for instance, on the occasion when he spent a
night and a day adrift at sea (2 Corinthians 11:25). On the
other hand it may have been more usual to keep these
certificates in the family archives; we cannot be sure.9 There is
a further point to consider; this registration of Roman citizens
at birth was apparently enacted by two fairly recent laws—the
lex Aelia Sentia of A.D. 4 and the lex Papia Poppaea of A.D. 9. If
Paul was born even a year or two before the earlier of these
enactments, would he necessarily have been registered in this
way? The fact that such questions can be asked but not
answered emphasizes how limited our knowledge is.
Paul’s most momentous invoking of his privileges as a Roman
citizen came at a late stage of his career, when he found
himself on trial before the procurator of Judaea and “appealed
to Caesar”—i.e. appealed to have his case transferred from the
provincial court to the supreme tribunal in Rome (Acts 25:10
f.). The details and implications of this appeal will engage our
attention in due course.10
CHAPTER 5
“A Hebrew Born of Hebrews”
1. Paul’s Jewish heritage
MORE IMPORTANT BY FAR IN PAUL’S OWN EYES THAN
HIS Tarsian birthplace and his Roman citizenship, and more
important by far for our understanding of him, was his Jewish
heritage. When, from a Christian perspective, he looks back on
the natural advantages in which at one time he had taken
pride, he begins: “circumcised the eighth day, of the people of
Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as
to the law a Pharisee …” (Philippians 3:6).
Here, to the statement that he came “of the people of
Israel”—i.e. that he was a Jew by birth—he adds further details
indicating more particularly what kind of Jew he was.
First, he belonged to the tribe of Benjamin (a claim repeated
in Romans 11:1). The tribal territory of Benjamin originally lay
immediately to the north of the much larger area of Judah:
Jerusalem, although formally allocated to Benjamin, actually
formed an enclave between the two. When the united
monarchy was disrupted after Solomon’s death, Benjamin was
drawn by the gravitational pull of Judah and Jerusalem into the
southern kingdom. The people of Benjamin naturally tended to
lose their tribal identity, but some at least did not allow it to be
obliterated, and even after the return from exile there were re-
settlements both in Jerusalem and in the adjacent Judaean
territory of people who continued to be known distinctively as
“the children of Benjamin” (Nehemiah 11:7–9, 31–36). It was
probably from some of these that Paul’s family traced its
descent.
His parents’ choice of Saul as his Jewish name may be
associated with their tribal connexion. The most outstanding
Benjaminite in Hebrew history was Saul, the first king of Israel.
If this consideration weighed with Paul’s parents, it is possible
to recognize an “undesigned coincidence”1 in the fact that it is
only from Acts that we know that his Jewish name was Saul,
while it is only from his letters that we know that he belonged
to the tribe of Benjamin. Early Christian writers loved to trace
in Paul’s activity as a persecutor of the infant church the
fulfilment of words in the patriarch Jacob’s blessing of his sons:
“Benjamin is a ravenous wolf …” (Genesis 49:27)2—but this
ingenious fancy has nothing to do with sober exegesis.
In the second place, he describes himself as “a Hebrew born
of Hebrews”. In Paul’s writings, as certainly in Luke’s,
“Hebrew” is probably a more specialized term than “Israelite”
or “Jew”. On another occasion, in a reference to visitors to
Corinth who tried to undermine his position in the eyes of his
converts there, he says, “Are they Hebrews? So am I”—and the
context suggests that “Hebrews” has a more restricted sense
than “Israelites” or “descendants of Abraham” (2 Corinthians
11:25). In Acts 6:1 “Hebrews” is used in contradistinction to
“Hellenists”, although both Hebrews and Hellenists were Jews
(in this instance, Jewish disciples of Jesus, members of the
primitive Jerusalem church). The distinction was probably
linguistic and cultural: the Hebrews, in that case, attended
synagogues where the service was conducted in Hebrew and
used Aramaic as their normal mode of speech, while the
Hellenists spoke Greek and attended synagogues where the
scriptures were read and the prayers recited in that language.
Many of the Hellenists in Jerusalem would have roots in the
lands of the dispersion, like the Cyrenians, Alexandrians, and
people from Cilicia and Asia who attended the synagogue
mentioned in Acts 6:9.3 In the dispersion throughout the
Graeco-Roman world, on the other hand, the Hellenists would
be the majority of resident Jews while the Hebrews would be
recent immigrants from Palestine or members of families which
made a special point of preserving their Palestinian ways. We
know from inscriptions in Rome and Corinth that each of these
cities contained a “synagogue of (the) Hebrews”:4 such a
designation may point to a meeting-place for Palestinian (and
probably Aramaic-speaking) Jews, over against others used by
Greek-speaking Jews. Paul’s contemporary, Philo of Alexandria,
himself a Hellenistic Jew, employs the word “Hebrews” to
denote those who speak Hebrew5 (and in Jewish Greek
literature of the first century A.D., including the New
Testament writings, “Hebrew” in a linguistic sense is broad
enough to embrace Aramaic).
A Jew born in a Greek-speaking city like Tarsus would
naturally be expected to be a Hellenist. Paul might be called a
Hellenist in that Greek was manifestly no foreign language to
him, but the designation on which he insists is not Hellenist but
Hebrew. Moreover, this insistence is not based on his
upbringing and education in Jerusalem: the phrase “a Hebrew
born of Hebrews” indicates that his parents were Hebrews
before him. It is difficult to know how much credence to give to
Jerome’s statement that Paul’s family came originally from
Gischala in Galilee.6 According to the record of Acts, he could
address a Jerusalem audience in Aramaic (Acts 21:40; 22:2)
and from the fact that the heavenly voice on the Damascus
road addressed him in Aramaic—“in the Hebrew language”
(Acts 26:14)—it is a fair inference that this was his mother
tongue.
It appears, then, that while Paul was born into a Jewish
family which enjoyed citizen rights in a Greek-speaking city,
Aramaic and not Greek was the language spoken in the home
and perhaps also in the synagogue which they attended. Unlike
many Jews resident in Anatolia, this family was strictly
observant of the Jewish way of life and maintained its links with
the home country. Paul would have been given little
opportunity of imbibing the culture of Tarsus during his
boyhood: indeed, his parents made sure of an orthodox
upbringing for him by arranging for him to spend his formative
years in Jerusalem.
According to the most probable punctuation of Acts 22:3, the
exordium of his Aramaic address to a crowd of hostile Jews in
the outer court of the Jerusalem temple, he was (a) “a Jew,
born at Tarsus in Cilicia”, but (b) “brought up in this city”
(Jerusalem) and (c) “educated at the feet of Gamaliel according
to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for
God …”.7 The last part of this account is in essential agreement
with his more general statement in Galatians 1:14: “I advanced
in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so
extremely zealous was I for the traditions of our fathers”. He
would have entered the school of Gamaliel at some point in his
‘teens, but his parents saw to it that even his earlier boyhood
was spent under wholesome influences in Jerusalem.
Thirdly, by his own account, Paul was “as to the law a
Pharisee”. This account is consistent with his statement
reported in Acts 22:3 that he was “educated at the feet of
Gamaliel”, who was the leading Pharisee of his day, and with
his declaration before the younger Agrippa: “according to the
strictest party of our religion I have lived as a Pharisee” (Acts
26:5). Even more emphatic is his claim before the Sanhedrin to
be “a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees” (Acts 23:6). The natural
sense of this is that his father or remoter ancestors were
associated with the Pharisees; it is just possible, thought less
probable, that “a son of Pharisees” means “a pupil of
Pharisees”.
2. The Pharisees
Who, then, were the Pharisees? They first appear by name
about the middle of the second century B.C. In his account of
the governorship of Jonathan (160–143 B.C.), brother and
successor to Judas Maccabaeus, Josephus says that about this
time there were three schools of thought among the Jews, the
Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes, and that while the Essenes
were strict predestinarians and the Sadducees insisted that all
things happened in accordance with men’s free will, the
Pharisees occupied a middle position in which room was
afforded for both divine predestination and human choice.8
These in fact were probably not the most important points in
which the three groups differed one from another, but Josephus
was prone to speak of Jewish religious parties as if they were
Greek philosophical schools, and drew attention to those
features in which he thought Greek and Roman readers would
be interested.
Later on he says that Jonathan’s nephew, John Hyrcanus,
who ruled Judaea for about thirty years (134–104 B.C.), was at
first a disciple of the Pharisees, but that he took offence at the
blunt outspokenness of one of their number and broke with
them, allying himself instead with their rivals, the Sadducees.9
The Pharisees thus formed a kind of opposition party for
several decades, and suffered harsh repression, especially at
the hands of Alexander Jannaeus (103–76 B.C.).10
Josephus does not trace the spiritual ancestry of the
Pharisees, but it is very probable that they arose within the
ranks of the ḥasîdîm or “godly people”, who are referred to in
the books of Maccabees as “Hasidaeans” (1 Maccabees 2:42;
7:14; 2 Maccabees 14:6). The origin of these Hasidaeans is
probably to be sought among the godly people in Judaea who,
some decades after the return from exile, banded themselves
together in order to encourage one another in the study and
practice of the sacred law in the midst of what they saw as
moral and religious declension. In the book of Malachi we are
told that “those who feared Yahweh spoke to one another;
Yahweh heeded and heard them, and a book of remembrance
was written before him of those who feared Yahweh and
thought on his name. ‘They shall be mine’, says Yahweh of
hosts, ‘my special possession on the day when I act, and I will
spare them as a man spares his son who serves him’ ” (Malachi
3:16 f.). And those whose names were entered in the book of
remembrance would not only be spared on that coming day but
would be the executors of his judgment on the ungodly: “for
you who fear my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with
healing in its wings.… And you shall tread down the wicked, for
they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when
I act, says Yahweh of hosts” (Malachi 4:3).
These people’s passionate devotion to the law of their God is
well illustrated in Psalm 119, the composition of one who has
well illustrated in Psalm 119, the composition of one who has
endured hardship and persecution for his loyalty to the divine
“testimonies”, but continues to find them a light to his path and
sweeter than honey to his taste. They deplored the inroads of
Hellenistic ways into Jewish life under the Ptolemies and
Seleucids, and were despised as antiquated spoil-sports by
those of the younger generation, even within the priestly
families, who ardently welcomed the new fashion. But when
Hellenism showed its unacceptable face, in the action of
Antiochus Epiphanes which bade fair to extinguish Jewish
religious and national identity, it was the Hasidaeans who
showed themselves the truest patriots. Some of them offered
passive resistance to the Seleucid forces, and won the crown of
martyrdom. Others, and these perhaps the majority, made
common cause with the Hasmonaean family—Judas
Maccabaeus and his brothers—and their followers when they
raised the standard of revolt and initiated guerrilla warfare
against the Seleucids.
The guerrilla warfare was more successful than could have
been expected. The king and his counsellors realized that their
Judaean policy had been ill-advised, and by the end of 164 B.C.
they reversed it, permitting the Jews once more to practise
their ancestral religion and restoring the temple in Jerusalem
to the worship of the God of Israel. Many of the Hasidaeans
were disposed to be content with this, since the free practice of
their religion was the object of their resistance. They did not
immediately break off their alliance with the Hasmonaeans, but
they no longer collaborated so enthusiastically in the fight for
political independence, especially as this fight increasingly
involved the aggrandisement of the Hasmonaean power. When
Jonathan accepted the high-priesthood in 152 B.C. by the gift of
a pretender to the Seleucid throne, one body of Hasidaeans—
that which developed into the community of Qumran—was so
outraged by this usurpation of the ancestral dignity of the
house of Zadok that it not only refused to acknowledge him as
high priest but refused to worship in the temple which was
polluted by the illegitimate action of Jonathan himself and his
heirs and successors.11
When at last political independence was gained, the high-
priesthood was confirmed to the Hasmonaean family by the
decree of a popular assembly.12 But many of the Hasidaeans
who could not go so far as the intransigent minority which
opted out of public life because of its objection to the
Hasmonaean assumption of the sacred office were not at all
happy about it. When Josephus tells of the breach between the
Pharisees and John Hyrcanus, he says that what gave John
mortal offence was the suggestion that he should be content
with political and military leadership and give up the high-
priesthood.
Were the Pharisees, then, Hasidaeans? It appears that they
were, or at least that they took their rise within the
Hasidaeans’ fellowship and should indeed be recognized as
their mainstream development. The designation Pharisees is
associated with a Hebrew and Aramaic root meaning
“separate”. The Greek word Pharisaioi (“Pharisees”) is
evidently borrowed from Aramaic perîšayyâ, “the separated
ones”. It has been held by some that they received this name
because of their separation from the alliance with the
Hasmonaeans, but perhaps it has a more general meaning, and
denotes their policy of strict separation from everything which
might convey moral or ceremonial impurity. Such separation
was the negative side of the holiness to which they felt
themselves specially called. This is spelled out in a later
rabbinical commentary on Leviticus, where the injunction, “You
shall therefore be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy” (Lev.
19:2), is amplified: “As I am holy, so you also must be holy; as I
am separate (Heb. pārûš), so you also must be separate (Heb.
perûšîm)”.13
The Pharisees exercised great care in observing the sabbath
law and the food restrictions, thus perpetuating the principles
of the Jewish martyrs under Antiochus IV, who endured torture
and death rather than commit apostasy in these matters. They
scrupulously tithed the produce of the soil—not only grain,
wine and oil but garden herbs as well—and refused to eat food
that was subject to the tithe unless the tithe had actually been
paid on it.14
In their study of the law they built up a body of
interpretation and application which in due course acquired a
validity equal to that of the written law, being treated by a
legal fiction as originating with Moses on Sinai along with the
written law. The purpose of this oral law—“the tradition of the
elders”, as it is called in the Gospels (Mark 7:5)—was to adapt
the ancient prescriptions to the changing situations of later
days and so guard them from being dismissed as obsolete and
impracticable. There were differing schools of interpretation
among the Pharisees, but they all agreed on the necessity of
applying the written law in terms of the oral law. This
distinguished them from their principal theological opponents,
the Sadducees, who believed (in theory, at any rate) that the
written law should be preserved and applied without
modification, no matter how harshly its literal enforcement
might bear on people.
We are imperfectly informed about Sadducean theology,
because no first-hand account of it has come down to us. What
we are told relates only to the points on which they differed
from the Pharisees. We learn, for example, that unlike the
Pharisees they said that there was “no resurrection, nor angel,
nor spirit” (Acts 23:8). The belief in bodily resurrection, as the
Pharisees held it, is attested among the martyrs under
Antiochus; it is to be distinguished from the idea (expressed,
for example, by Ben Sira) that the most desirable kind of
immortality was posterity’s remembrance of a good man’s
virtues, especially when they were reproduced in his
descendants.15 The Sadducees may well have thought this idea
more consistent with the earlier scriptures—although some of
them were surprised one day in Jerusalem about A.D. 30 to
hear a visitor from Galilee deduce the hope of resurrection
from the divine utterance which came to Moses from the
burning bush.16 As for the Sadducees’ disbelief in angels and
demons, what they rejected was probably the concept of
opposed hierarchies of good and evil spirits, each hierarchy
headed by seven named archangels and arch-demons. They
may have recognized an affinity between these Pharisaic
beliefs and those of the Zoroastrian religion; indeed, one
scholar has suggested that “Pharisee” originally meant
“Persianizer” and that it was an uncomplimentary designation
invented by the Sadducees for their opponents.17 This is
improbable, but it is conceivable that the Sadducees satirically
reinterpreted “Pharisee” as “Persianizer”. The Sadducees
certainly regarded themselves as maintaining the old-time
religion and looked on the Pharisees as dangerous innovators—
modernists, in fact.
The Pharisees emerged into a position of influence when
Alexander Jannaeus was succeeded by his widow Salome
Alexandra; her reign of nine years (76–67 B.C.) was
remembered in rabbinical tradition as a miniature golden age.
Herod paid them respectful attention in the earlier part of his
reign; as late as 17 B.C. he exempted them from an oath of
allegiance which he exacted from the rest of his subjects.18 But
soon afterwards he began to resent their recalcitrance, and
when in 7 B.C. he imposed a fresh oath of allegiance, to
Augustus and himself, he fined those Pharisees—the great
majority—who refused to be sworn.19 When, towards the end of
his life, a number of Pharisaic disciples, at the instigation of
their teachers, pulled down the great golden eagle which he
had placed over the temple gateway, he took an atrocious
vengeance on them.20
Under the Roman administration the Pharisees were
represented in the Sanhedrin; although they were in a
minority, Josephus says, yet their influence with the people was
such that the chief-priestly and Sadducean majority was
obliged to respect their views.21 Many, perhaps most, of the
scribes—the professional expositors of the law and the
prophets—were disciples of the Pharisees and gave currency to
their interpretations.
The Pharisees organized themselves in local fellowships.
Such a fellowship was called a ḥabûrāh; each member of a
ḥabûrāh was a ḥābēr to the other members. Josephus, who tells
us that from his nineteenth year onwards he regulated his life
by the Pharisees’ rule, estimates their number at about
6,000.22
Because of their meticulous concern for the laws of purity
and tithing, they could not associate easily with those, even
among their fellow-Jews, who were not so particular in this
regard as they themselves were. These latter included the
great majority of the Jewish population of Palestine, peasants
and artisans, who could not devote so much time or interest to
the study of those laws as the Pharisees did. The Pharisees
therefore tended to hold aloof from the “people of the land”,23
as they called them, for such people, they were convinced,
were incapable of true piety.24 On the other hand, the
Pharisees themselves were criticized as too half-hearted in
their pursuit of holiness by the sectarians of Qumran, who
pressed their own “separation” to the point of isolation (not to
say insulation) and, with Isaiah 30:10 at the back of their
minds, called the Pharisees “seekers after smooth things” or
(as the phrase may alternatively be rendered) “givers of
smooth interpretations”.25
Although a certain family likeness no doubt characterized
the whole Pharisaic movement, there were wide varieties
within the movement—varieties associated partly with diverse
schools of interpretation and partly with diverse temperaments
and motives. One frequently quoted passage in the Talmud,
admittedly of much later date, distinguishes seven types of
Pharisee, of which only one, the Pharisee who is a Pharisee for
the love of God, receives unqualified commendation.26
3. Pharisaism in Paul’s day
At the beginning of the Christian era there were two leading
schools of legal interpretation, founded respectively by
Shammai and Hillel. The school of Shammai is traditionally
credited with a stricter interpretation than the school of Hillel
—stricter not only in the application of individual laws but in
the approach to the law in its entirety. Whereas the
Shammaites regarded the breach of one law (by action or by
omission) as a breach of the law as such, the Hillelite attitude
was rather that divine judgment had regard to the
preponderance of good or bad in a man’s life viewed as a
whole.
One of the best known sayings of Hillel was his reply to a
man who asked him to summarize the whole law in as few
words as possible. “What is hateful to yourself”, said Hillel, “do
not to another; that is the whole law, all the rest is
commentary.”27 This citing of the negative golden rule as an
epitome of the law could be interpreted in ways which many
Pharisees would have thought dangerous. Even if this was not
Hillel’s intention, it might have encouraged someone to argue,
when faced with one particular commandment of the law, that
that commandment was binding only in so far as it prevented a
neighbour’s suffering ill or promoted his good. This, according
to a prevalent view among the rabbis, introduced an illicit
subjective criterion; far better that people, when confronted
with a commandment of the law, should obey it simply because
it was a commandment of the Holy One: theirs not to reason
why.28
What kind of Pharisee was Paul? The question is not easily
answered. According to Acts 22:3, he was educated in the
school of Gamaliel, and later tradition makes Gamaliel the
successor of Hillel as head of his school, if not indeed his son or
grandson.29 But those earlier traditions which reflect some
direct memory of the man and his teaching do not even
associate him with the school of Hillel. Instead, they speak of
others as belonging to the school of Gamaliel, as though he
founded a school of his own.30
There is some difficulty in distinguishing traditions about
this Gamaliel from those about a later teacher of the same
name (Gamaliel II, c. A.D. 100), but those traditions which
presuppose that the temple is still standing certainly relate to
the elder Gamaliel. “When Rabban Gamaliel the elder died,” it
was said, “the glory of the Torah ceased, and purity and
‘separateness’ died”31—which is almost as much as to say that
he was the last of the true Pharisees, since “separateness”
(Heb. perîšût) is a formation from the same root as “Pharisee”
and might even be translated “Pharisaism”. Among the rulings
with which he is credited is one liberalizing the law of
remarriage after divorce.32
Both in the rabbinic traditions and in the New Testament
Gamaliel appears as a member of the Sanhedrin. At an early
stage in the life of the Jerusalem church, Luke relates, the
apostles were charged before this court with disobeying its
previous directive to them not to teach publicly in the name of
Jesus. When some members of the court were for taking
extreme measures against them, “a Pharisee in the council
named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, held in honour by all the
people”, reminded his colleagues of other movements in the
recent past which had seemed to be dangerous for a short
time, but quickly collapsed, and he added (Acts 5:38 f.):
So in the present case I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone. If
this plan or undertaking is of men, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be
able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!
This is certainly sound Pharisaic doctrine. Men might
disobey God, but his will would triumph notwithstanding. The
will of men was not fettered, but what they willed would be
overruled by God for the accomplishment of his own purpose.33
In the words of a later rabbi, Yohanan the sandal-maker, “every
assembling together that is for the sake of heaven will in the
end be established, but any that is not for the sake of heaven
will not in the end be established.”34 That Gamaliel should take
the line ascribed to him by Luke is what we might have
expected.
But if it was Gamaliel’s line, it was certainly not Paul’s. In
most matters indeed, including, for example, the resurrection
hope and the techniques of biblical exegesis, Paul was probably
an apt pupil and faithful follower of his teacher.35 It has indeed
been thought that an unnamed pupil of Gamaliel who
manifested “impudence in matters of learning” and tried to
refute his master was no other than Paul.36 If this is so (and it
is quite uncertain), then the tradition reflects disapproval of
Paul’s later departure from the rabbinical path; it preserves no
reminiscence of Paul’s actual behaviour while he sat at
Gamaliel’s feet. But in one respect Paul did deviate from his
master’s example: he repudiated the idea that a temporizing
policy was the proper one to adopt towards the disciples of
Jesus. To his mind, this new movement posed a more deadly
threat to all that he had learned to hold dear than Gamaliel
seemed able to appreciate. Moreover, Paul’s temperament
appears to have been quite different from Gamaliel’s: as
against Gamaliel’s statesmanlike patience and tolerance, Paul
was characterized, on his own confession, by a
superabundance of zeal37—which, indeed, he never entirely
lost.
Since the cherished object of his zeal was the ancestral
traditions—the ancient law of Israel and its interpretation as
taught in the school of Gamaliel—we should not be surprised to
learn that he was dissatisfied with the Hillelite view that a bare
preponderance of good over bad in a man’s life was sufficient
to win him a favourable verdict on the day of judgment. On this
point at least he seems to have inclined rather to the
Shammaite view that the law was to be kept in its totality. That
this was Paul’s attitude is implied at a later date when he tells
his converts in Galatia, who were being pressed to adopt
certain legal requirements of Judaism, that they need not
imagine that, if they chose this way of acceptance with God,
they could pick and choose among the divine commandments:
“I testify … to every man who receives circumcision that he is
bound to keep the whole law” (Galatians 5:3). Such an attitude
to the law determined Paul’s hostile assessment of the
followers of Jesus and their teaching.
CHAPTER 6
“When the Time had Fully
Come”
1. The expected deliverance
THE COMING OF THE ROMANS TO JUDAEA AND THE
DOWNFALL OF the native Hasmonaean dynasty compelled
religious Jews to re-think their situation and try to interpret it
with reference to the divine purpose. Some of the
Hasmonaeans’ supporters had remained content with their
regime for the greater part of its duration. Under John
Hyrcanus (134–104 B.C.) many of his subjects, believing that
they discerned in him a rare combination of the three offices of
prophet, priest and king,1 were disposed to think that with him
the messianic age had dawned. True, the great prophets of
Israel had foreseen the embodiment of the national hope in a
prince of the house of David, but in the earlier years of
Hasmonaean rule there was little sign that the house of David
had any further part to play in the life of Israel, whereas
freedom from the Gentile yoke had been secured under the
leadership of a priestly dynasty. Might it not be God’s will that
the expected Messiah or “anointed one” of the end-time should
be a priest of the tribe of Levi rather than a king of the tribe of
Judah?2
But the military ambition and barbarity of Alexander
Jannaeus (103–76 B.C.) alienated the best part of the nation
from the Hasmonaean cause, and when, after the death of his
widow and successor, Salome Alexandra, in 67 B.C., civil strife
broke out between their two sons, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus,
even the supporters of the Hasmonaean cause were divided. It
was this civil strife that provided the Romans with the
opportunity to occupy Judaea.
The religious groups in Judaea, who had suffered under the
Hasmonaeans, saw in their dethronement at the hands of the
Romans a divine judgment for their general injustice and
particularly for their usurpation of dignities that were not
legally theirs. If the Qumran community disapproved of their
assumption of the high-priesthood, which belonged exclusively
to the family of Zadok, and saw in the Romans the executors of
divine retribution on them for this offence, another pious
group, apparently akin to the Pharisees, reckoned that they
were being punished for having “laid waste the throne of
David”.3 This latter group has left us as the expression of their
aspirations the collection of eighteen poems conventionally
called the Psalms of Solomon.4 These poems show clearly—as
indeed the Qumran literature testifies in some degree—that the
hope attached to the house of David had not been allowed to
die out entirely in Israel, and with the collapse of the
Hasmonaean dynasty and consequent dissipation of any hope of
a messianic priesthood associated with it, the Davidic hope no
longer had this rival to contend with.
While the authors of the Psalms of Solomon, like the men of
Qumran, recognized in the Roman occupation the judgment of
God on the Hasmonaeans, they cherished no illusions about the
Romans and were not surprised to find them more oppressive
and rapacious than the Hasmonaeans at their worst. Pompey’s
sacrilegious insistence on entering the holy of holies when he
stormed the fortified temple area in 63 B.C. was regarded as
exceptionally shocking, and when he was assassinated in Egypt
fifteen years later it was felt that nemesis had overtaken him at
last.5 But the Romans were foreigners, and would dominate the
holy land only so long as God permitted. The day of their
expulsion would come—and come by divine action. There were
varying views about the identity of the divine agent or agents
in their expulsion, but one substantial body of opinion expected
the Messiah of David’s line to be raised up quite soon for this
very purpose. This expectation finds ardent expression in the
seventeenth of the Psalms of Solomon;6 it can be recognized
also in some of the canticles in Luke’s nativity narrative. Thus,
when Gabriel visits Mary to announce the birth of her son
(Luke 1:32 f.), he says:
The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David,
and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever,
and of his kingdom there will be no end.
Similarly Zechariah (father of John the Baptist) celebrates the
impending deliverance in his hymn of praise (Luke 1:68 ff.):
Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has visited and redeemed his people,
and has raised up a horn of salvation for us
in the house of his servant David …
For Mary the fulfilment of this promise means the scattering of
the proud in the imagination of their hearts, the putting down
of the mighty from their thrones and the exaltation of “those of
low degree” (Luke 1:51 f.); for Zechariah it similarly means
“salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate
us” (Luke 1:71).
When, in 40 B.C., the Romans decided to govern Judaea
through a Jewish king, it would have taken exceptional powers
of mental penetration to discern messianic traits in Herod.
Herod may have cherished messianic pretensions himself, and
was possibly encouraged in this by some of his supporters, but
the general Jewish attitude to him was hostile. He figures in
one apocalyptic work, produced twenty or thirty years after his
death under the title The Assumption of Moses (because its
contents told of Moses’ purported farewell charge to Joshua
and assumption into heaven), as an “insolent king”—possibly in
fulfilment of the picture of the “king” of Daniel 11:36, who
“shall do according to his will”—who wipes out the remnant of
the Hasmonaeans and spares neither old nor young in his
wicked fury.7
2. The expected deliverer
Towards the end of Herod’s reign Jesus was born—Jesus,
acclaimed by his first followers as the expected redeemer of
Israel. Although Luke’s nativity canticles heralded him as the
promised prince of the house of David, and the same status is
given to him in Christian preaching from early days, he does
not appear to have made this claim for himself. He did not
repudiate the designation “son of David” when it was given to
him by others, but his one recorded reference to the
widespread belief that the Messiah would be the son of David
sets a question-mark against it.8 Davidic descent plays no part
in John the Baptist’s description of the Coming One who was to
baptize with the Spirit. Paul, for his part, does quote part of a
confessional formula which spoke of Jesus as “descended from
David according to the flesh” (Romans 1:3),9 but in his own
understanding and exposition of the significance of Jesus the
Davidic descent plays practically no part.
In what sense, then, was Jesus recognized as the redeemer
of Israel? When, in his early thirties, he emerged from the
obscurity of his home in Nazareth and began his public
ministry, the burden of his preaching was that the kingdom of
God had drawn near—that it was already present in measure in
his works of mercy and power.10 When his hearers heard him
speak of the kingdom of God, they would naturally think of the
divine order which, according to the visions in the book of
Daniel, would supersede a succession of pagan world-empires
and in which rule would be exercised by the “saints of the Most
High” (Daniel 7:18, 27).
There were others in Israel in the first century A.D. who
thought along these lines, and whose conception of the rule of
the saints boded ill for those who were not included among the
“saints”. They could have found inspiration, for example, in the
“saints” of Psalm 149:5–9, with the “high praises of God” in
their mouths and two-edged swords in their hands,
to wreak vengeance on the nations
to wreak vengeance on the nations
and chastisement on the peoples,
to bind their kings with chains
and their nobles with fetters of iron.
According to Luke, when Jesus shared the passover supper
with his apostles the evening before his death, he made it plain
that it was they who were to bear rule in the kingdom of which
he spoke (Luke 22:28–30):
You are those who have continued with me in my trials; as my Father
appointed a kingdom for me, so do I appoint for you that you may eat and
drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes
of Israel.
But those for whom Jesus appointed this rôle had learned from
him how it was to be discharged—not in dominating others but
in serving them. In this saying he speaks of the kingdom as “my
kingdom”, and this brings us to the close relation in his
teaching between the kingdom of God and the eschatological
figure of “the Son of man”.
In Daniel’s vision of the new kingdom, it is conferred on “one
like a son of man” (a human figure in distinction from the wild
beasts which denote the pagan empires); it is in the
interpretation of the vision that the “saints of the Most High”
appear, forming the counterpart to the “one like a son of man”
in the vision itself, Jesus did not make an outright identification
of the saints of the Most High with the Son of man; his
disciples were the “little flock” to whom the Father was to give
the kingdom (Luke 12:32), but they constituted the “little flock”
by virtue of their association with the shepherd—or, to change
the metaphor, with the Son of man. When Jesus spoke of the
Son of man, he meant “the ‘one like a son of man’ ” to whom
was given “dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples,
nations, and languages should serve him” (Daniel 7:13 f.). As
his ministry advanced, it became increasingly clear that he
accepted the mission of the Son of man as something which he
was personally called to fulfil.11 This was a costly calling: as
the kingdom of God had to suffer violence before it was
inaugurated in power, so the Son of man had to “suffer many
things and be treated with contempt”12 in order to be invested
with kingly glory. In this confidence he went to his death: “the
Son of man goes as it is written of him” (Mark 14:21). But his
investiture with kingly glory would involve no change of
character: then as now he would remain “servant of all”, for it
is in such self-giving service that true kingly glory consists.13
In so far as Jesus acknowledged the title Messiah, it was in
these terms that he acknowledged it. When he was brought
before the high priest and his colleagues and asked if he was
the Messiah, he replied that he was, since that was the term
they chose to use, but that he himself chose to speak of himself
as the Son of man, who (although standing there deserted and
humiliated) would be vindicated by God before their eyes. And
in his vindication it would be seen that he was the one in whom
God had visited and redeemed his people.14
Jesus’ preaching of the kingdom of God did not take place in
a vacuum. Galilee, where he spent most of his life, was ruled by
Herod Antipas, a creature of Rome; Judaea and Samaria were
ruled by the prefect Pontius Pilate, directly appointed by the
Roman Emperor. The temple establishment in Jerusalem was in
the hands of the Sadducean house of Annas; taxes had to be
paid for its maintenance in addition to the tribute exacted by
Rome. The popular teachers expounded the religious law
according to the “tradition of the elders”. The message of Jesus
was so radical that it challenged all those authorities at once.
He did not challenge the Roman occupation like those who
tried to meet force with force. That would have meant
accepting the Romans’ own conception of power, the only
question at issue being who wielded the power. But when he
bade the children of the kingdom cultivate righteousness and
mercy, poverty and meekness, purity of heart and peace among
men, when he taught them to turn the other cheek and go the
second mile and requite their enemies by doing them good,
when he insisted that the will of God was fully done in the
performance of acts of love,15 he turned accepted canons
upside down and posed a more deadly threat to the basis of
imperial power than those who offered it armed resistance. At
the same time he set such little store by material wealth that
he made no issue of the payment of tribute to Caesar,16 any
more than he did of the payment of the annual half-shekel to
the temple.17 But in the end it was the temple establishment
and the Roman prefect between them who were responsible for
his death.
As for his attitude to the law, it was in some respects not
dissimilar to Hillel’s. If Hillel said that everything else in the
law was but a commentary on the negative golden rule, Jesus
said much the same thing about the rule in its positive
formulation: “whatever you wish that men would do to you, do
so to them; for this is the law and the prophets” (Matthew
7:12).18 To the same effect he singled out from the 613
precepts of the law two positive precepts beginning with the
injunction “you shall love”—“you shall love the Lord your God
…” (Deuteronomy 6:4) and “you shall love your neighbour as
yourself” (Leviticus 19:18)—as the first and second
commandments of the law on which all the others depended
(Mark 12:28–31; cf. Matthew 22:35–40).19
So far Jesus would have commanded considerable agreement
among rabbis of the Hillelite school. But in his application of
these principles to practical issues he seemed to treat the law
with a sovereign freedom which even a Hillelite would have
found disturbing.
This was seen with special clarity in his attitude to the
sabbath law. The original wording of that law instituted the
sabbath as a day of rest, on which no work should be done.
“Work” was not defined; presumably it related primarily to the
recurring activities of agricultural life: “in ploughing time and
in harvest you shall rest” (Exodus 34:21).20 From time to time,
even within the period of the written law, it was necessary to
define “work” more precisely, until by the first century A.D. we
have thirty-nine categories of work distinguished, first of all (it
appears) in the school of Hillel, all of them prohibited on the
sabbath.21 The school of Shammai had a stricter interpretation,
and that in force at Qumran is known to have been stricter
still.22 But Jesus did not trouble himself with definitions of
work; rather, he reminded his hearers of the original purpose
of the sabbath institution—to promote the relief and well-being
of men and women—and insisted that any action (such as
healing the sick) which furthered this purpose was done most
appropriately on the sabbath.23
He laid down the same principle when he was asked for a
ruling on the law of divorce. What was the “indecency” or
“unseemliness” (Deuteronomy 24:1) in a man’s wife which
justified him in divorcing her? The Hillelites interpreted it
liberally, of a wide range of defects, the Shammaites
interpreted it more narrowly, of pre-marital unchastity, but
Jesus, going back behind Moses to the creation narrative,
argued from the terms of the institution of marriage that
divorce was no part of God’s original intention. To the minds of
his male hearers, this ruling was so stringent as to be
impracticable: “if such is the case of a man with his wife,” they
replied, “it is not expedient to marry” (Matthew 19:10). But the
effect of his ruling was to correct a social imbalance which
worked for the detriment of women, who had little opportunity
for initiative or redress in this matter; from their point of view
it was a liberal ruling.
Many of Jesus’ strictures on the scribes and Pharisees of his
day were probably directed at members of the school of
Shammai. It was they in particular who could be reproached
for “loading men with burdens hard to bear” and doing nothing
to relieve them (Luke 11:46). But the milder Hillelites, too,
must often have found him disconcerting.
One specially perplexing feature of Jesus’ conduct, in the
eyes even of liberal Pharisees, was his readiness to associate
with people who did not even attempt to respect the law,
whose lives were in scandalous conflict with its basic
principles. He did not associate with them as a condescending
benefactor performing a pious duty; he gave the impression
that he enjoyed their company—indeed, that he chose it by
preference, accepting invitations to eat with them and so
incurring the reproach of being “a glutton and a wine-bibber, a
friend of tax collectors24 and sinners” (Luke 7:34). When he
was taxed with giving offence to godly people by such
behaviour, he defended himself by saying that it was sick
people, not healthy ones, who needed a doctor, and that it was
sinners that he came to call. Not only so, but he maintained
that God himself acted thus, bestowing his gifts with
undistinguishing regard on good and evil alike, even on the
ungrateful and selfish. And in parable after parable he drove
this lesson home, emphasizing the welcoming grace extended
by God to the inadequate and undeserving, the despised and
alienated, the insecure and underprivileged. In his teaching
and in his example, Jesus’ message was one of good news for
the outsider.25 When John the Baptist, imprisoned by Herod
Antipas in the Peraean fortress of Machaerus, sent messengers
to Jesus to ask if he really was the Coming One whose advent
John had announced (Jesus’ ministry was so unlike the
judgment which John had described the Coming One as
executing), Jesus told them to go back and tell John what they
had seen and heard while they were with him, but especially to
tell him this: “the poor have good news preached to them”
(Luke 7:22).
In these words John was sure to recognize the language of
Isaiah 61:1, where an unnamed speaker claims to have been
anointed with the Spirit of God for this very purpose: “to bring
good news to the poor”. Would John acknowledge that Jesus
was the one of whom the prophet spoke? If so, he would not
feel that Jesus was letting him down by failing to inaugurate
“the day of vengeance of our God” forthwith.26
It is most probable that Jesus identified this Spirit-anointed
speaker of Isaiah 61:1 with the one whom God introduces
earlier in the same book (Isaiah 42:1) with the words:
Behold my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my Spirit upon him …
—words echoed by the heavenly voice which came to Jesus at
his baptism.27 This servant is given a mission to discharge both
for Israel and for the Gentiles; the fulfilment of the mission
involves him in unjust persecution, humiliation and death, but
by accepting all this obediently as God’s will for him he
accomplishes the divine purpose, which coincides with his own
dearest desire. This purpose includes, the forgiveness of many,
whose sins the servant bears. Indeed, much of what Jesus says
about the predestined suffering of the Son of man is best
understood if in his mind he identified the Son of man with the
Isaianic Servant of the Lord: in the light of what is said of the
latter figure one can appreciate all the more the gospel logion
that “the Son of man came not to be served by others but to be
a servant himself, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark
10:45). This was the spirit in which Jesus accepted death. And
it was this spirit to which Paul was to refer in days to come
when he spoke of “the mind which was in the Messiah Jesus,
who … emptied himself, taking the form of a servant”
(Philippians 2:5–7) or described Jesus as being “delivered up
for our trespasses” (Romans 4:25).28 Before Gamaliel’s pupil
came to this assessment of the ministry and death of Jesus, a
revolution had to take place in his life and thought. But when it
took place, he could sum up the significance of those events in
the affirmation that “when the time had fully come, God sent
forth his Son …” (Galatians 4:4).
CHAPTER 7
The Beginning of “The Way”
1. He is risen!
WHEN, AFTER HIS EXECUTION, THE BODY OF JESUS
WAS SAFELY entombed, the chief priests and temple
authorities no doubt felt that they could breathe freely. There
was now no risk of a popular rising in support of a discredited
leader, and as for his closest followers, their inglorious flight
when he was arrested made it clear that no more would be
heard from them. They would disappear into the welcome
obscurity of the occupations which they had so rashly left in
order to follow the ill-starred Nazarene. Some members of the
establishment who were not devoid of decent feelings would
have agreed that it was sad that the Nazarene had ventured
into Judaea and become a focus for such dangerous enthusiasm
in and around Jerusalem. But such enthusiasm had to be
nipped in the bud. If ever the end justified the means, it was
then. Perhaps even the coincidence that the Roman penalty of
crucifixion, to which Jesus had been sentenced, came within
the meaning of the declaration of Deuteronomy 21:23, that “a
hanged man is accursed by God”, could be overruled for good:
it would discredit the Nazarene and his claims in the eyes of
truly religious Jews more effectively than anything else.
Many of the religious Jews, Pharisees and others, who
disagreed with the policies of the chief priests and the Roman
administration and deplored the manner of Jesus’ execution,
may nevertheless have experienced their own sense of relief at
the removal of such a disturbing presence.
All these calculations were shattered by Jesus’ return to life.
No one saw him leave the tomb, but on the third day from his
death and burial, and for several days after that, he appeared
to many of his followers in a manner which left them in no
doubt that he was “alive again after his passion” (Acts 1:3).
Twenty-five years after the event Paul could summarize the
facts as he had been told them, reminding his converts at
Corinth that Christ, having died,
was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he
appeared to Cephas [Peter], then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than
five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some
have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.
This summary (1 Corinthians 15:4–7) raises one or two
interesting critical problems to which Paul himself elsewhere
helps to provide a solution.1 But it is sufficient at the moment
to observe the variety of the resurrection appearances—
occasionally to individuals, at other times to groups, and once
to quite a large number. The followers of Jesus were taken
completely by surprise when he appeared to them thus, and the
experience made all the difference in life to them. In addition
to those who were most closely associated with him during his
ministry, members of his family, who had not hitherto been
conspicuous in their support of him or approval of his activity,
also saw him in resurrection, and were henceforth prominent
among his followers.
The resurrection faith, to which the “Easter event” gave
birth, was followed by an inflow of new life and new power, in
which they quickly recognized the gift of the Holy Spirit with
which, as John the Baptist had announced, the Coming One of
whom he spoke would baptize his people.2 Jesus was the
Coming One: now, raised and exalted by God, he had poured
out the promised gift on his disciples. The immediate effect of
this outpouring was an urge to bear public and personal
witness that Jesus, the crucified one, had been vindicated by
God, and to proclaim forgiveness and the blessings of the new
age thus inaugurated for all who yielded their allegiance to
him. They soon won an impressively large body of adherents,
who formed with them a new religious fellowship in Jerusalem
—the fellowship of disciples of Jesus, knit together in unity by
the newly imparted Spirit. They followed what they called the
Way—the way of faith and life initiated by Jesus. This
expression was not unprecedented in Israel: it is found, for
example, in the writings of the Qumran community as a
designation for that community’s faith and life. One scholar,
indeed, has argued that it was from the Qumran community
that the disciples of Jesus took it over—in the first instance, in
Damascus (because it is in a Damascene context that it first
appears in a Christian sense).3 But there is no need to posit
such borrowing: it is characteristic of minority groups that
abbreviated expressions of this kind become current within
them as part of their esoteric vocabulary, and “the way” is a
shortened version of “the true way” or “the right way”.
It is convenient to refer to the fellowship as the church of
Jerusalem, even if the term “church” is strictly an anachronism
when used of the earliest period of its existence. In addition to
being called disciples, its members were variously described as
the believers, the saints or the poor. Those of them who had
landed property sold it and put the proceeds into a common
pool, from which a daily distribution was made to the needier
members. By the time this common fund was exhausted, other
sources of supply began to become available, as the gospel
spread farther afield and converts in other provinces were
taught to regard it as a privilege to send material aid to the
mother church.4
Many Pharisees soon recognized that the revived “Jesus
movement” was not such a menace to pure religion as they had
feared. Jesus’ disciples appeared to be much less radical in
their attitude to the law and sacred tradition than he himself
had been. Their leaders attended the temple services and
conducted themselves in general as observant Jews, enjoying
popular good will. If they proclaimed Jesus as Messiah, it was
at least counted to them for righteousness that the basis of
their proclamation was the claim that he had been raised from
the dead. Their firm grasp of the doctrine of resurrection was
commendable, even if their witness to the resurrection of Jesus
was held to be misguided.
was held to be misguided.
For this very emphasis on resurrection, however, they
incurred the further disapproval of the Sadducean chief-
priesthood, who in any case were gravely shaken by this
renewal of public agitation (as they reckoned it) in the name of
one who they had hoped would soon be forgotten.5 The Jesus
movement was reaching alarming proportions, and many of
them felt that if drastic measures were not taken to suppress it,
it would get hopelessly out of hand. On one occasion when the
apostles were arrested and brought before the Sanhedrin,
charged with disobeying an earlier order of the court to stop
preaching and teaching in the name of Jesus, it was the
Pharisaic leader Gamaliel, as we have seen, who persuaded his
colleagues to regard their offence as a technical one and treat
them leniently.6
Some Pharisees, indeed, joined the disciples; if they were
persuaded by the apostles’ witness that Jesus had indeed risen
from the dead and was therefore the Messiah, they could add
this belief to what they already held, without giving up their
essential Pharisaism with its devotion to the law.7 If the chief
priests maintained their implacable opposition to the
movement, many of the ordinary priests, humble in character
as in social status, were disposed to join it.8
2. Primitive christology
At quite an early period in their new corporate existence as
companions of the Way, the disciples found themselves
assessing the place of Jesus in the unfolding of the divine
purpose. With increasing clarity they saw his identity and rôle
adumbrated in the ancient scriptures, especially as he himself
had taught them how to understand those scriptures. In the
apostolic speeches of the early chapters of Acts there are quite
a number of interlacing christologies—explanations of the
person and work of the crucified and exalted Jesus in terms of
biblical prophecy. He was the anointed prince of the house of
David;9 he was the humiliated and vindicated servant of the
Lord;10 he was the promised prophet like Moses.11 Nor was he
identified only with personal figures of prophecy; impersonal
images also were pressed into service. He was “the stone
which the builders rejected” which, according to Psalm 118:22,
had become the capstone of the pediment.12
These christological interpretations of Hebrew prophecy are
not to be set down as constructions of the author of Acts; their
primitive character is shown by the fact that they are
presupposed in several strands of New Testament thought, and
seem therefore to lie behind them all. The theme of the
rejected stone, for example, was early combined with other
“stone” oracles in the Old Testament to produce a composite
testimonium which is appropriated and variously exploited in
the Pauline corpus, in 1 Peter and in the Gospel of Luke.13
We must not think that these “christologies” were originally
kept separate, as though a Davidic christology, a servant
christology, a prophet christology and a “stone” christology
stood side by side, each developed independently by one group
or school within the new movement. They have been
interwoven with each other throughout the history of Christian
thought, and such evidence as we have indicates that it was so
from the beginning.14
Even more important, however, than these “christologies” in
themselves was the acknowledgment of Jesus as Lord in a
sense which implied universal sovereignty. His exaltation
pointed to him as the one designated “my lord”, to whom the
divine oracle of Psalm 110:1 was addressed: “Yahweh says to
my lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your
footstool’.” The first impetus to this interpretation of the oracle
was provided by Jesus’ own allusion to it in his reply to the high
priest’s question about his identity: “you shall see the Son of
man seated at the right hand of the Almighty” (Mark 14:62).
His words had been vindicated in the event, for God had made
the crucified Jesus “both Lord and Messiah” (Acts 2:36).
From early days the concept of Jesus being enthroned at the
right hand of God became a commonplace of Christian thought
and language: there are few strands of New Testament
teaching in which it does not appear. (Then, as now, the
expression was understood as a figure of speech for supreme
God-given authority.) And when it was asked how he was
engaged at the right hand of God, the answer was soon
forthcoming: he was engaged in a ministry of intercession. The
fourth servant song ends with the statement that the servant
“bore the sin of many, and made intercession for
transgressors” (Isaiah 53:12); moreover, Jesus had spoken of
the Son of man as exercising such a ministry in the presence of
God. “Every one who acknowledges me before men”, he had
said, “the Son of man also will acknowledge before the angels
of God” (Luke 12:8). So, in what appears to be a quotation of a
primitive and widespread Christian confession, Paul speaks of
Jesus as the one “who is at the right hand of God, who indeed
intercedes for us” (Romans 8:34). The picture, says H. B.
Swete, is not that of “an orante, standing ever before the
Father with outstretched arms, … pleading our cause in the
presence of a reluctant God”, but that of “a throned Priest-
King, asking what He will from a Father who always hears and
grants His request.”15
The primitiveness of the ascription to Jesus of the title
“Lord” is shown by its currency in the Aramaic form maran or
maranā as well as in the Greek kyrios: indeed the Aramaic
invocation maranā–thā (“Our Lord, come”), used probably in
the eucharistic commemoration, antedated the beginnings of
Gentile Christianity and made its way (like the liturgical Amen
and Hallelujah) untranslated into the vocabulary of Greek-
speaking churches.16
The early currency of the invocation maranā–thā bears
witness to the disciples’ lively expectation of Jesus’ parousia,
his advent in glory, to consummate the kingdom inaugurated
by his death and resurrection. One of the most primitive
eschatological passages in the New Testament comes in Peter’s
exhortation to the people of Jerusalem to repent and turn
again, so that their sins may be blotted out and “that times of
refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord”, with the
sending of Jesus, their foreordained Messiah, “whom heaven
must receive until the time for establishing all that God spoke
by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old” (Acts 3:19–21).
Here it is implied that early repentance on the part of the
people of Jerusalem (perhaps as representing all Israel) would
speed the parousia. This form of the expectation was soon
superseded by others, but the expectation itself lived on as a
potent hope throughout the apostolic age, not least in the
thought of Paul.
3. Activity and death of Stephen
It would be strange if Jesus’ radical attitude to the law and
religious tradition in general had not survived at all among his
followers.17 Survive it did, and remarkably enough (so far as
our records provide information), among the Hellenists rather
than among the Hebrews.
The Hellenists in the primitive church of Jerusalem soon
came to be recognized, by themselves and by the Hebrews, as a
distinct group within it, on both economic and theological
grounds. We are imperfectly informed about them, but we have
some knowledge of two of their early leaders, both
exceptionally gifted men—Stephen, outstanding in theological
debate, and Philip, active as an evangelist. Stephen attracted
attention by his critical attitude to the temple. At a time when
the leaders of the church were attending its services daily, he
took seriously Jesus’ prediction of its downfall, and maintained
that such a permanent structure was no part of the divine plan
for a pilgrim people. The ideal was rather a movable tent-
shrine such as the ancestors of Israel had in the wilderness, not
fixed to one specially sacred locality. He further maintained
that the coming of Jesus had profoundly changed the status of
the Mosaic law.
He appears to have defended these theses vigorously in the
Hellenistic “synagogue of the freedmen”, as it was called,
which was attended by Jews who had come to Jerusalem from
Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia and Asia.18 We may wonder
whether Paul the Cilician, Hebrew though he was rather than
Hellenist, visited this synagogue and heard what Stephen had
to say.
The upshot of Stephen’s outspoken expression of these
radical views was that he was charged before the Sanhedrin
with blasphemy—more particularly, blasphemy against the
temple. An earlier attempt to procure a conviction against
Jesus on this very charge had failed because of conflicting
testimony;19 on this occasion there was no possibility of failure,
because Stephen’s reply to the charge was a repetition and
elaboration of his argument, delivered with something like
prophetic fervour. The death-sentence was inevitable, as
Stephen knew well. But as he faced the adverse verdict of the
court, he invoked the superior advocacy of “the Son of man,
standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56).20
When Judaea became a Roman province in A.D. 6, the Jewish
administration was deprived of capital jurisdiction, which the
prefect reserved to himself.21 In one area, however, capital
jurisdiction was left with the Sanhedrin: that was in cases
affecting the sanctity of the temple. Where that sanctity was
violated, by word or action, the Jewish authorities were
empowered to execute their own law.22 The penalty for
blasphemy was death by stoning,23 and this penalty was
carried out against Stephen.24
His trial and execution gave the chief-priestly establishment
an opportunity to launch a thorough-going campaign of
repression against the church. The general populace of
Jerusalem were as much shocked by an attack on the temple as
their ancestors had been when Jeremiah delivered one over six
centuries before.25 The apostles still enjoyed popular favour to
such a degree that no action against them was possible, but
many members of the church, and in particular those who were
most nearly associated with Stephen, were compelled to leave
Jerusalem and, indeed, the whole area in which the writ of the
Sanhedrin ran. Two results of this dispersion were: first, that
the gospel was carried by those Hellenists to territories outside
Palestine; secondly, that the church of Jerusalem became much
more uniformly Hebrew in its composition and outlook. But it is
this campaign of repression that first brings Paul into close
involvement with primitive Christianity.
CHAPTER 8
Persecutor of the Church
1. Campaign of repression
BY HIS OWN REPEATED ACCOUNT, PAUL’S FIRST
RELATION TO the young Christian movement was that of a
persecutor.1 “I am the least of the apostles”, he could say in
later days, “unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted
the church of God” (1 Corinthians 15:9). “You have heard of my
former life in Judaism”, he reminds his Galatian converts, “how
I persecuted the church of God beyond all measure and tried to
destroy it” (Galatians 1:13). It would be unnecessary to ask
where this persecuting activity took place, were it not that
some have tried to locate it anywhere but in or around
Jerusalem—in Hellenistic communities in and around
Damascus, for example.2 But in those early days, where would
one find the church of God if not pre-eminently in Jerusalem? It
was “the churches of Christ in Judaea” who heard it said, a few
years after his conversion, “Our former persecutor is now
preaching the faith he once tried to destroy” (Galatians 1:23),
and while this report may conceivably have been referring to
him as the persecutor of Christians in general, it is more
natural to understand it of his record as a persecutor of
Christians in fairly close touch with the churches of Judaea.
The news that he was now preaching the Christian faith came
from Syria and Cilicia, but it was not the new converts from
those parts who described him as “our former persecutor”.
There is nothing in the evidence of Paul’s letters on this
score which conflicts with the testimony of Acts. According to
this testimony, he associated himself with Stephen’s accusers,
guarding the outer garments of the witnesses as, in conformity
with the ancient law, they threw the first stones at his
execution.3 Then he took part enthusiastically in the campaign
of repression against the church of Jerusalem, “breathing
threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” (Acts
9:1), arresting and imprisoning men and women, endeavouring
to make them renounce their faith when they were brought
before synagogue courts, and pursuing refugees beyond the
frontiers of Judaea in an attempt to bring them back to face
trial and punishment. Luke’s record certainly agrees with
Paul’s own evidence that he persecuted the church beyond all
measure and provides a commentary on his statement that this
activity was the measure of his zeal for the law and the
ancestral traditions.
An out-and-out zealot for those traditions such as he declares
himself to have been would certainly have offered vigorous
opposition to any tendency to “change the customs delivered
by Moses”.4 Gamaliel might counsel patience and moderation
but, as Paul viewed the situation, it was too serious for such
temporizing measures. If Stephen saw the logic of the situation
more clearly than the apostles, Paul saw it more clearly than
Gamaliel. In the eyes of Stephen and Paul alike, the new order
and the old were incompatible. If Stephen argued, “The new
has come; therefore the old must go”, Paul for his part argued,
“The old must stay; therefore the new must go”. Hence the
uncompromising rigour with which he threw himself into the
work of repression.
Paul might have agreed that on one conceivable condition
the customs delivered by Moses might be changed. It is
possible that he had been taught that Messiah, when he came,
would change the customs or even abrogate the law. There was
an ancient Jewish chronological scheme, probably going back
beyond the time of Paul, which divided world history into three
ages of two thousand years each—the age of chaos, the age of
law (beginning with the revelation to Moses on Sinai) and the
messianic age. These three ages would be followed by the
eternal sabbath rest.5 Those who accepted this scheme might
well have believed that the validity of the law was but
temporary, lasting only to the dawn of the messianic age. If
Paul had been brought up to accept it, then no doubt he would
have expected the law to be superseded by a new order when
Messiah came.
But that Jesus of Nazareth could be the expected Messiah, as
his disciples maintained, was out of the question. It is unlikely
that the status, career and teaching of Jesus conformed in any
way with Paul’s conception of the status, career and teaching
of the Messiah—but that was not the conclusive argument in
Paul’s mind. The conclusive argument was simply this: Jesus
had been crucified. A crucified Messiah was a contradiction in
terms. Whether his death by crucifixion was deserved or
resulted from a miscarriage of justice was beside the point: the
point was that he was crucified, and therefore came within the
meaning of the pronouncement in Deuteronomy 21:23, “a
hanged man is accursed by God”. True, the pronouncement
envisaged the hanging until sundown, on a tree or wooden
gibbet, of the dead body of an executed criminal, but as
formulated it covered the situation in which someone was
hanged up alive.6 It stood to reason, therefore, that Jesus could
not be the Messiah. The Messiah, practically by definition, was
uniquely endowed with the divine blessing—“the Spirit of the
LORD shall rest upon him” (Isaiah 11:2)—whereas the divine
curse explicitly rested on one who was crucified. A crucified
Messiah was worse than a contradiction in terms; the very idea
was an outrageous blasphemy. In later years Paul
acknowledged that in preaching a crucified Messiah he was
preaching something which was “a stumbling block [a
skandalon] to Jews” (1 Corinthians 1:23) and showed, by
quoting Deuteronomy 21:23, how necessary it was in his eyes
to demonstrate from Scripture why one who (as he had come to
realize) was indubitably the Messiah must nevertheless die
under “the curse of the law” (Galatians 3:13).7 But when he
was first confronted by people who publicly affirmed that the
crucified Jesus was the Messiah, his course was clear: they
were guilty of blasphemy, and should be dealt with accordingly.
No heed could be paid to them when they supported their
affirmation by the claim that Jesus had come back from the
dead and appeared to them. In making this claim they were
either deceivers or self-deceived, for none of the arguments
which they used for Jesus’ messiahship could stand against the
one irrefragable argument on the other side: a crucified man
could not conceivably be the elect one of God.
The law and the customs, the ancestral traditions, and
everything that was of value in Judaism, were imperilled by the
disciples’ activity and teaching. Here was a malignant growth
which called for drastic surgery. The defence of all that made
life worth living for Paul was a cause which engaged all the
zeal and energy of which he was capable. When the chief
priests and their associates launched their attack on the
disciples, Paul came forward as their eager lieutenant. Their
motives may have been partly political, while his were entirely
religious, but their action provided him with the occasion to
protect the interests of the law. If the principal threat to those
interests came from Stephen’s party, then let that party be
attacked and suppressed first of all; but the disciples of Jesus
as a whole, however outwardly observant of the law they might
be, undermined it by proclaiming their crucified master as
Messiah.
2. Mission to Damascus
Paul’s own narrative implies that his conversion to the faith
which he was attempting to wipe out took place at or near
Damascus:8 the narrative of Acts tells us what took him to
Damascus. The violence of the persecution drove many of the
disciples, especially the Hellenists, out of Judaea, but even so
they were not necessarily out of reach of the Sanhedrin. When
the Jewish state won independence under the Hasmonaeans, it
had powerful patrons in the Romans, who let the countries
surrounding Judaea know this and demanded that Judaea
should be granted the rights and privileges of a sovereign
state, including the right of extradition. Thus, a letter delivered
by a Roman ambassador to Ptolemy VIII of Egypt in 142 B.C.
concludes with the requirement: “if any pestilent men have fled
to you from their country [Judaea], hand them over to Simon
the high priest, that he may punish them according to their
law” (1 Maccabees 15:21).9 Those rights and privileges were
confirmed anew to the Jewish people (even though they no
longer constituted a sovereign state), and more particularly to
the high-priesthood, by Julius Caesar in 47 B.C.10 Paul in his
crusading zeal resolved that the high priest should exercise his
right of extradition against the fugitives, and procured from
him “letters to the synagogues of Damascus, so that if he found
any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them
bound to Jerusalem” (Acts 9:1).
It appears that there was already in Damascus a community
of followers of the Way, with whom the fugitives from Judaea
could hope to find refuge. These Damascene disciples were not
the subjects of the extradition papers which Paul carried; he
may not even have been aware of their presence there. It was
the refugees whom he had come to apprehend,11 no doubt
hoping that if he could accomplish this purpose satisfactorily in
Damascus, he could repeat the procedure in other foreign
cities.12 But the first disciple of Jesus with whom he had to do
in Damascus was a member of this local community, one
Ananias, “a devout man according to the law, well spoken of by
all the Jews who lived there” (Acts 22:12).
Until the last moment of his pre-Christian career, then, Paul
showed himself to be (in his own words) “as to zeal a
persecutor of the church” (Philippians 3:6).
CHAPTER 9
Paul Becomes a Christian
1. On the Damascus road
WITH ASTONISHING SUDDENNESS THE PERSECUTOR
OF THE church became the apostle of Jesus Christ. He was in
mid-course as a zealot for the law, bent on checking a plague
which threatened the life of Israel, when, in his own words, he
was “apprehended by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:12) and
constrained to turn right round and become a champion of the
cause which, up to that moment, he had been endeavouring to
exterminate, dedicated henceforth to building up what he had
been doing his best to demolish.
What caused this revolution? His own repeated explanation
is that he saw the once-crucified Jesus now exalted as the risen
Lord. “Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” he asks indignantly
when his apostolic credentials are questioned (1 Corinthians
9:1), referring to the same occasion as that mentioned later in
the same letter (1 Corinthians 15:8) where, after listing earlier
appearances of Christ in resurrection, he adds, “Last of all …
he appeared also to me” (perhaps in the sense, “he let himself
be seen by me”). The resurrection appearance granted to him,
he insists, was as real as the appearances witnessed by Peter,
James and many others on the first Easter and the days
immediately following. When, in 2 Corinthians 4:6, he says that
“God … has shone in our hearts to give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ”, his
language perhaps implies a reminiscence of the same event—
more particularly of that great “light from heaven, brighter
than the sun” which flashed about him as he and his
companions approached Damascus, according to the evidence
of Acts (9:3; 22:6; 26:13).
of Acts (9:3; 22:6; 26:13).
The evidence of Acts corroborates Paul’s claim to have seen
the risen Christ but also insists time and again that he heard
him speak. “The God of our fathers”, he is told by Ananias of
Damascus, “appointed you to see the Just One and to hear a
voice from his mouth” (Acts 22:14; cf. 9:17). Whatever
variations there are in Luke’s three accounts of Paul’s
conversion, all three agree that about midday, as he was
approaching Damascus, he “heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul,
Saul, why do you persecute me?’ And he said, ‘Who are you,
Lord?’ And he said, ‘I am Jesus [of Nazareth], whom you are
persecuting’ ” (9:4 f.; 22:7f.; 26:14 f.).
Some verbal communication, beyond the heavenly vision in
itself, is implied in Paul’s statement that “he who had set me
apart before I was born, and had called me by his grace, was
pleased to reveal his Son in me, in order that I might preach
him among the Gentiles” (Galatians 1:15 f.). Objective as the
revelation was, it was experienced inwardly as well as
outwardly: it was granted, as Paul puts it, not merely “to me”
but “in me”. He speaks as if the call and commission were part
of the one conversion experience.1
No single event, apart from the Christ-event itself, has
proved so determinant for the course of Christian history as the
conversion and commissioning of Paul. For anyone who accepts
Paul’s own explanation of his Damascus-road experience, it
would be difficult to disagree with the observation of an
eighteenth-century writer that “the conversion and apostleship
of St. Paul alone, duly considered, was of itself a demonstration
sufficient to prove Christianity to be a divine revelation”.2
With no conscious preparation, Paul found himself
instantaneously compelled by what he saw and heard to
acknowledge that Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified one, was
alive after his passion, vindicated and exalted by God, and was
now conscripting him into his service. There could be no
resistance to this compulsion, no kicking out against this goad3
which was driving him in the opposite direction to that which
he had hitherto been pursuing. He capitulated forthwith to the
commands of this new master; a conscript he might be,4 but
henceforth also a devoted and lifelong volunteer.
Attempts to account for Paul’s experience in physiological or
psychological terms are precarious, and inadequate to boot
unless they take adequately into consideration the fact that it
involved the intelligent and deliberate surrender of his will to
the risen Christ who had appeared to him—the risen Christ
who, from this time on, displaced the law as the centre of
Paul’s life and thought.
“Blinded with excess of light”, Paul was led into Damascus,
to the house of one Judas in the “street called Straight” (a
name which survives to this day in the Darb al-Mustaqim),
where presumably arrangements had been made for him to
lodge. There he was visited by Ananias, one of the local
disciples of Jesus, who greeted him as a brother and a fellow-
disciple. Immediately Paul recovered his sight and was
baptized in the name of Jesus. The man who had set out for
Damascus to work havoc among the disciples there now found
himself welcomed into their fellowship.
2. The covenanters of Damascus
Damascus has been claimed to be the oldest continuously
inhabited city in the world. It is mentioned in the biblical story
of Abraham (Genesis 14:15; 15:2), who indeed is said in later
(Hellenistic) tradition to have reigned in Damascus.5 In
patriarchal times it was an Amorite centre, but came into the
power of the Aramaeans about 1200 B.C. In the period of the
Hebrew monarchy it was the capital of an Aramaean kingdom
which waged intermittent war with the kingdom of Israel until
both were overrun and annexed by the Assyrians in the late
eighth century B.C. It was subject successively to the Assyrian,
Babylonian, Persian and Graeco-Macedonian empires.
Throughout the third century B.C. it lay on the frontier
between the Ptolemaic and Seleucid realms, and was claimed
by both. When, as a result of their victory at Paneion in 200
B.C., the Seleucids extended their realm south to the Egyptian
frontier, Damascus passed decisively into their power.
In the period when the Seleucid empire was rapidly
disintegrating, Damascus was seized by the Nabataean king
Aretas III (c. 85 B.C.). The Nabataeans were Arabs; their
homeland was the territory between the Dead Sea and the Gulf
of Aqaba, and Petra was their capital. The Nabataean kingdom
was incorporated in the Roman Empire as the province of
Arabia in A.D. 106, but in its heyday it was a power to be
reckoned with, posing a recurrent threat to the Hasmonaean
and Herodian rulers of Palestine. The Nabataeans did not
retain Damascus for long. During the Mithridatic wars it was
taken from them by Tigranes I of Armenia (72/1 B.C.). He lost it
in 66 B.C. to the Romans, in whose control it thereafter
remained (apart from the brief Parthian occupation of Syria in
40–39 B.C.), as one of the cities of the Decapolis,6 under the
general supervision of the governors of Syria. It was from
Damascus that Pompey’s lieutenant Scaurus set out in 64 B.C.
to intervene in the quarrel between the Hasmonaean brothers
Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, both of whom sought Roman
support—which led inevitably to Pompey’s occupation of
Judaea the following year. In the time of Tiberius the territory
assigned to Damascus extended west to border on that of
Sidon.
Under the Seleucids Damascus had become largely
hellenized. Its tutelary deity was identified with Dionysus, who
came to figure in its foundation legend. It was planned on the
Hippodamic grid pattern7 and appears to have had the
installations essential to a Hellenistic city: when, for example,
Herod the Great presented it with a gymnasium,8 this was
presumably designed to replace an earlier one. Greek may well
have been the language most commonly used in Damascus in
Paul’s time; yet Aramaic would also be heard in its streets—this
being the language not only of the desert-dwellers to the east
but also (probably) of its Jewish colony. This colony was a
sizeable one, even if we do not accept at face value Josephus’s
estimate that 10,000 or even 18,000 Jews were massacred in
Damascus in A.D. 66.9
Damascus, which plays a part in Muslim eschatological
tradition as the place to which Jesus will descend to destroy
Antichrist,10 may well have figured in this way in a branch of
Christian tradition from which the Muslims took over the
expectation. Any such Christian tradition would be too late to
have first-century relevance; it could, however, have had
Jewish antecedents. In some strands of Jewish tradition, too,
Damascus or the surrounding territory figures as the place
where Gentile dominion will be finally overthrown, and while
most of these strands are of late attestation, there is one which
dates back to pre-Christian times.11
Two imperfect manuscripts of early mediaeval date,
discovered towards the end of the nineteenth century in the
genizah of the ancient synagogue of Fostat (Old Cairo), were
recognized to be copies of a composition provisionally called
the Zadokite Work or the Book of the Covenant of Damascus.12
Not until the discovery of the Qumran texts in 1947 and the
following years was it realized that this composition came from
the same community as those others. Not only did the contents
match those of some of the Qumran documents, but additional
fragments of the same composition, centuries older than the
Cairo manuscripts, were identified among the Qumran finds.
The composition was called the Zadokite Work because of the
place of esteem which it gives to Zadok and his dynasty (the
legitimate high-priesthood in Israel); it was called the Book of
the Covenant of Damascus because it speaks of “those who
enter the new covenant in the land of Damascus”,13
presumably the same people referred to as “the repentant of
Israel who went out from the land of Judah and sojourned in
the land of Damascus” under the leadership of “the expositor of
the law”.14 The “land of Damascus” was evidently a district
where this covenant community spent some time in the early
period of its existence; Damascus also figured in its expectation
of the end of the age then current, for another “expositor of the
law” was expected to come to Damascus then15—in company, it
appears, with the Davidic Messiah.16
“Damascus” has been held by some scholars to be a code-
name for the community’s place of exile17—a code-name
chosen because they interpreted their emigration as the
fulfilment of the prophecy of Amos 5:26 f., quoted in the
strange form: “I have exiled the tabernacle of your king and the
pedestal of your images from my tent to Damascus”.18 But the
form of the quotation—not to speak of its interpretation—is so
strange as to suggest that it was adapted to fit the fulfilment:
the interpreters, that is to say, sought a text to suit their
migration to Damascus and found it in Amos 5:26 f.19
The covenanters regarded the “Teacher of Righteousness”
(who was no longer alive) as the first leader and organizer of
their community. If Damascus be taken literally, the question
arises of the relation of this community to that of Qumran,
which also venerated the Teacher of Righteousness as its first
leader and organizer. The means of reconstructing the history
of the community are too scanty to make any firm answer
possible.20 Perhaps the community as a whole resided in “the
land of Damascus” for some years: at one time the attractive
suggestion was made that it resided there during the thirty
years or more of its abandonment of the Qumran centre at the
end of the first century B.C. (driven thence, perhaps, by the
Parthian invasion), but the palaeography of the Qumran
fragments of the Zadokite Work points to a date several
decades earlier. Another possibility is that one branch of the
community lived in the land of Damascus for a time while the
main body lived at Qumran. The troubles under Alexander
Jannaeus might provide an appropriate historical setting, but
we do not know. There is serious reason to believe, however,
that those who betook themselves to the land of Damascus did
so “in order to anticipate there the appearance of the Messiah,
or, in general, the inauguration of the messianic drama”.21
3. With the disciples at Damascus
We may wish we knew something about the antecedents of
the community of Jesus’ disciples at Damascus—that is, if we
are right in inferring from Luke’s record that such a community
had been established there before the arrival of refugees from
Judaea after the death of Stephen. Unfortunately, we have no
evidence to guide us and are driven to speculate. One scholar
has ventured the speculation that the founders of the
community were actually members of the holy family, brothers
and other relatives of Jesus, and that they settled in the region
of Damascus because they expected Jesus to be speedily
manifested in glory there.22 This cannot be disproved—there is
no reason why one should wish to disprove it—but equally it
cannot be proved. The most that can be said is that the
community was probably Galilaean rather than Judaean in its
provenance, if only because Galilee (where Jesus had more
disciples during his ministry than he had in Judaea) lay so near
to Damascus and the other cities of the Decapolis. We know
that a generation or two later there were several Jewish-
Christian settlements in and around the Decapolis, but they are
scarcely relevant to this much earlier settlement in
Damascus.23
Still more speculative is the possibility of contact, or even
mutual influence, between these disciples in Damascus and the
covenanters attested in the Zadokite Work; and most
speculative of all is the question how far, if at all, Paul’s
thinking was indebted to these new friends among whom he
first enjoyed Christian fellowship. It has been pointed out that
the Qumran texts and the Pauline letters share a twofold
concept of divine righteousness—the personal righteousness of
God and the righteous status which he freely bestows on those
who trust in him24—but here we should probably recognize a
parallel development; Paul’s doctrine, as we shall see, was
shaped in the light of his own quite exceptional experience of
law and grace, The antithesis of flesh and spirit is also common
to Paul and Qumran, but this too is distinctively developed by
Paul.25
It was not to the disciples in Damascus, nor indeed to the
disciples anywhere else, that Paul was indebted for the basic
elements in his theology. In this regard his own claim about the
gospel which he preached may safely be admitted: “I did not
receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a
revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:12). It did not come in
its fulness all at once, of course, but, as Paul saw it, it was all
implicit in the Damascus-road revelation. It was this that put a
new perspective on all his previous experience and training.
Formerly, all the elements in his life and thought were
organized around the central focus of the law. When the
revelation of Jesus Christ showed him in a flash the bankruptcy
of the law, the law could no longer be the magnet which drew
all those elements together in a well-defined pattern. With the
removal of the magnet they would have been dispersed and
disorganized, had the law not been immediately replaced at the
centre by the risen Lord, around whom Paul’s life and thought
were reorganized to form a new pattern. Inevitably it took time
for him to think through all that was involved in this
reorganization—in fact, the remainder of his mortal life was
insufficient for him fully to explore what he called “the
surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians
3:8). But he could at least declare his new faith in the
affirmation “Jesus is the risen Lord” or “Jesus is the Son of
God”; indeed, Luke says that he quickly declared it in the latter
words in the synagogues of Damascus to which he had been
accredited by the high priest for a very different purpose.26
Paul himself says that on receiving the revelation he “did not
confer with flesh and blood” but “went away to Arabia and
returned again to Damascus” (Galatians 1:16 f.), so perhaps his
preaching in the Damascene synagogues should be dated after
he returned from his Arabian journey (of which Luke has
nothing to say).
Why did Paul go away to Arabia? A common answer is that
he went into the desert to reflect on his new situation, perhaps
to commune with God in the vicinity of “Horeb, the mount of
God”, where Moses and Elijah had communed with him in days
gone by.27 This may indeed have been part of his purpose, but
probably his three days of blindness in Damascus had been
sufficient for his mind to be reorientated. The implication of his
own narrative relates his Arabian visit rather closely to his call
to preach Christ among the Gentiles; the point of his reference
to it in writing to his Galatian converts is to underline the fact
that he began to discharge this call before he went up to
Jerusalem to see the apostles there, so that none could say that
it was they (or any other authorities on earth) who
commissioned him to be the Gentiles’ apostle.
By “Arabia” in this context we naturally understand the
Nabataean kingdom, which was readily accessible from
Damascus. At this time it was ruled by Aretas IV (9 B.C.—A.D.
40). If Paul preached the gospel to the subjects of Aretas, we
may wonder where he found a point of contact in their outlook
which could dispose them to listen with some interest to his
message that the crucified Jesus had been vindicated and
exalted by God as universal Lord; but we should not
underestimate Paul’s resourcefulness and versatility. It
certainly appears from a piece of evidence elsewhere in his
correspondence that it was not simply a quiet retreat that Paul
sought in Arabia. In a later reminiscence he recalls a
humiliating experience from his early Christian days: “At
Damascus the ethnarch of King Aretas guarded the city of the
Damascenes in order to seize me, but I was let down in a
basket through a window in the wall, and escaped his hands” (2
Corinthians 11:32 f.). The “ethnarch of King Aretas” was
probably the representative of the king’s subjects who were
resident in Damascus, just as the Jewish colony in Alexandria
appointed an ethnarch to be their representative and
spokesman before the civic and imperial authorities there.28
But why should the Nabataean ethnarch take this hostile action
against Paul, if Paul had spent his time in Arabia in silent
contemplation? If, on the other hand, he spent his time there in
preaching, he could well have stirred up trouble for himself and
attracted the unfriendly attention of the authorities. Since the
Nabataean territory came up almost to the walls of Damascus,
the ethnarch, with an adequate body of his fellow-nationals to
help him, may have watched the city gate from the outside, so
as to arrest Paul if he left the city. By the help of his friends,
however, he left Damascus in such a way as to avoid the
ethnarch’s notice.29 It was probably now, in the third year after
he set out for Damascus on his anti-Christian errand, that he
paid his first visit to Jerusalem since his conversion.
CHAPTER 10
Paul and the Jerusalem
Tradition
1. Paul goes up to Jerusalem
THE NEWS OF PAUL’S CONVERSION MUST HAVE
REACHED Jerusalem long before he himself arrived there. But
it was hardly credible. The Ethiopian could more easily change
his skin or the leopard its spots than the arch-persecutor
become a believer. Might it not be part of a deep-laid plot to
gain acceptance within the Christian fellowship so as to deal it
a more effective death-blow? The simple-minded and warm-
hearted disciples of Damascus might welcome him impulsively
as one of themselves, but if he came to Jerusalem it would be
best to keep him at arm’s length until his bona fides could be
established beyond any doubt.
According to Luke, it was Barnabas whose good offices
brought Paul and the leaders of the Jerusalem church together.
Although Paul says nothing of this, it is antecedently probable
that someone acted as mediator, and all that we know of
Barnabas suggests that he was the very man to act in this way.
Barnabas first appears in Luke’s narrative as an outstandingly
generous contributor to the common fund set up in the
primitive Jerusalem church; he is said to have been given this
sobriquet by the apostles (in addition to his personal name
Joseph) because of his encouraging character.1 And throughout
the apostolic record, Barnabas lived up to this reputation:
wherever he found a person or a cause needing to be
encouraged, he supplied all the encouragement he could. How
he was able to assure himself that Paul’s conversion was
genuine we are not told, but he was probably in touch with
those believing Hellenists who sought refuge in Damascus; he
may even have been with them for some time. At any rate his
interposition on Paul’s behalf in Jerusalem is completely in
character. When Paul sorely needed a friend in Damascus,
Ananias filled this rôle, and equally now Barnabas befriended
him when he stood in similar need in Jerusalem. His old friends
would now repudiate him as a renegade, and new friends could
be made only with difficulty in the community which he had
harried so ruthlessly. Luke’s introduction of Barnabas here is
too particular for it to be regarded as simply part of his
generalizing summary of Paul’s present visit to Jerusalem; he
draws on precise information when he says that “Barnabas
took him, and brought him to the apostles” (Acts 9:27).
Not to all the apostles, indeed: where Luke generalizes, Paul
is specific, and makes it plain that he met only two of them. “I
went up to Jerusalem to get to know Cephas”, he says, “and
remained with him fifteen days; but I saw none of the other
apostles except James the Lord’s brother” (Galatians 1:18 f.).
Then he adds a solemn asseveration of the accuracy of his
narrative: “In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not
lie!” (Galatians 1:20). Evidently some variant account of Paul’s
movements and contacts about this time was circulating among
his Galatian friends,2 and he swears that his own account is the
true one.
2. Paul meets Peter and James
Cephas—the Aramaic Kēphā (“rock” or “stone”) equipped
with the Greek termination–s—is Paul’s regular designation for
the apostle who is better known to us as Peter (i.e. Petros, the
Greek equivalent of Aramaic Kēphā). The purpose of Paul’s
going to Jerusalem on this occasion was to make the
acquaintance of the leading apostle—and not merely to make
his acquaintance but to inquire of him (for this is the force of
the verb historēsai which he uses).3 For Peter was a primary
informant on matters which it was now important that Paul
should know—the details of Jesus’ ministry and the “tradition”
of teaching which derived from him. There is in some quarters
considerable resistance to the idea that Paul was interested in
acquiring information of this kind, but even if Paul had no such
interest (which is incredible), what would Peter talk about
during those fifteen days? Peter could impart to Paul much
information of the kind he sought, more indeed than James
could, but there was one thing, he insists, which neither Peter
nor James did or could impart to him, and that was his
apostolic commission, which he had already received direct
from the risen Lord on the Damascus road. His object in going
up to Jerusalem was to establish bonds of fellowship with the
leaders of the mother church and obtain from them information
which could be obtained nowhere else.
Whatever else he obtained by way of information, he himself
indicates in another place two facts at least which he learned.
We have already quoted the list of Jesus’ resurrection
appearances of which Paul reminds his Corinthian readers.4 In
that list two individuals are mentioned by name as having seen
the risen Christ, and two only: “he appeared to Cephas” and
“he appeared to James” (1 Corinthians 15:5, 7). It is no mere
coincidence that these should be the only two apostles whom
Paul claims to have seen during his first visit to Jerusalem after
his conversion.
The resurrection appearance to Peter is independently
attested in Luke 24:34. The appearance to James reappears,
with what are probably legendary embellishments, in the
Gospel according to the Hebrews,5 but the tradition thus
embellished is quite probably not derived from Paul.
James, with other members of the family of Jesus, does not
appear to have been a follower of his before his death; indeed,
the family as a whole appears to have viewed Jesus’ public
activity with aloofness, not to say hostility. Yet after Jesus’
resurrection his mother and brothers are found in association
with the apostles and other disciples. The brothers became
figures of note in the church at large, and James in particular
occupied an increasingly influential position in the church of
Jerusalem. If we look for some explanation of their sudden
change in attitude towards Jesus, we can find it in the
statement that in resurrection he appeared to James.
Peter and James appear to have been the respective leaders
of two distinct groups within the primitive church of Jerusalem.
The group led by Peter met in the house of Mary, the mother of
John Mark: it was to this group that Peter made his way, a few
years after this, when he unexpectedly escaped from Herod
Agrippa’s prison; and when he took his leave of them he said,
“Tell this to James and to the brethren” (Acts 12:17)—meaning
presumably the brethren more closely associated with James.
It may be concluded, then, that during Paul’s fifteen days
with Peter in Jerusalem he called on James and heard his side
of the story. If Peter told him how the risen Lord had appeared
not only to himself but also to “the twelve” and again to “more
than five hundred brethren at one time”, James told him how
he had appeared not only to him but also to “all the apostles”.
For Paul, “the apostles” were not restricted to “the twelve”; he
counts James as an apostle, according to the most probable
sense of Galatians 1:19, “I saw none of the other apostles
[apart from Cephas] except James the Lord’s brother”.6 If the
qualification of an apostle was to have been commissioned by
the risen Christ, then James apparently had the same claim to
the designation as Paul himself had.
This series of resurrection appearances, together with the
preceding statements “that Christ died for our sins in
accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was
raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures” (1
Corinthians 15:3 f.), Paul says he “received” by way of
tradition, as in turn he delivered it to his converts.7 Tradition
was a living and growing thing in the first-century church: the
tradition which Paul delivered was fuller than what he
received, for he was able to amplify the record of appearances
of the risen Lord with his personal testimony: “Last of all, as to
one untimely born, he appeared also to me” (1 Corinthians
15:8).8 This does not exhaust what Paul claims to have received
by tradition—the tradition included an account of words and
actions of the historical Jesus (pre-eminently his words and
actions at the institution of the Lord’s Supper) and some guide-
lines and principles of Christian conduct9—but it has special
importance as an outline of early Christian preaching, a
kerygmatic outline, to use modern theological jargon. Whatever
differences might develop between Paul’s preaching and that of
the Jerusalem leaders, they were agreed on this: “whether then
it was I or they”, he says to the Corinthians at the end of this
outline: “so we preach and so you believed” (1 Corinthians
15:11).
3. Revelation and tradition
It was almost certainly during these fifteen days in Jerusalem
that Paul received this outline. But this raises the question of
the relation between his insistence in Galatians 1:12 that he
did not “receive” his gospel from man, since “it came through a
revelation of Jesus Christ”, and his statement in 1 Corinthians
15:3 (and elsewhere) that he did “receive” it. The Greek verb
rendered “receive” in both places is paralambanō, which
implies receiving by tradition, especially when it is
accompanied by the correlative verb paradidōmi,10 which
implies handing on what one has thus received. Evidently Paul
was aware of a sense in which he had not received the gospel
by tradition, and a sense in which he had. What, then, was the
relation in his mind between the gospel as revelation and the
gospel as tradition?
The gospel as revelation was what accomplished his
conversion. Others had confessed Jesus as the risen Lord
before he did, but it was not their testimony that moved him to
make that confession his own. Their testimony moved him
rather to oppose them with might and main: it was blasphemy
in his ears. The one thing that could have convinced Paul that
Jesus was indeed the risen Lord was the Damascus-road
revelation: the risen Lord appeared to him in person and
introduced himself as Jesus. This was henceforth the heart of
his gospel: he owed it to no witness on earth but to that
“revelation of Jesus Christ”.11
Wrapped up in that revelation, as Paul proceeded to unpack
it, was much that was distinctive of the gospel as he
understood and proclaimed it. His concept of the church as the
body of Christ, for example, and of individual Christians as
members of that body, may go back to the implication of the
risen Lord’s complaint: “why do you persecute me?” With this
was bound up his understanding of Christian existence “in
Christ”—an existence in which social, racial and other barriers
within the human family were done away with. Among those
barriers none was so important in Paul’s eyes as that between
Jew and Gentile. If before his conversion he looked upon it as
one that had to be maintained at all costs, after his conversion
he devoted himself to demolishing it, doing in practice what
had been done in principle by Christ on the cross.12 This
insight was implicit in his call to preach Christ among the
Gentiles, which was contemporaneous with his conversion. As
he himself, a Jew by birth, had received new life in Christ
through faith, apart from the works of the law, so they, Gentiles
by birth, could similarly receive new life in Christ through faith,
apart from the works of the law, and thus enjoy an equal status
in the redeemed community with himself and other believing
Jews. Through Paul’s ministry in particular “the mystery hidden
for ages and generations” was disclosed in all its fulness—the
mystery which, as he told the Colossians, was summed up in
the message: “Christ in you [in you Gentile believers as well as
in Jewish believers], the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:26 f.). In
other words, he viewed himself as chosen by heavenly grace in
order that the saving purpose of God, conceived in Christ
before all worlds, might be made effective in Christ through his
ministry, and might in due course be consummated when
everything in the universe was reconciled and united in Christ.
We may say then, in general, that those aspects in Paul’s
ministry which were distinctively his belong to the gospel as
revelation, while those elements which he shared with others
(apart from his unmediated recognition of Jesus as the Son of
God) belong to the gospel as tradition, and in the first instance,
to the information he received in Jerusalem when he went up
to the information he received in Jerusalem when he went up
there to make inquiry of Peter in the third year after his
conversion.
We have already considered the account of appearances of
the risen Christ which he says that he received—evidently on
that occasion. But the series of resurrection appearances is
preceded by three clauses which he includes in what he
received and then delivered to his converts “as of first
importance”—(a) “that Christ died for our sins in accordance
with the scriptures”, (b) “that he was buried”, (c) “that he was
raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures”. The
fact that each of these three clauses, like the fourth which
follows (“and that he appeared …”), is introduced by the
conjunction “that” indicates that Paul presents them as
successive quotations from his source.
(a) Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.
Does the whole of this clause belong to the tradition, or does
part of it represent Paul’s interpretation of the tradition? The
words “in accordance with the scriptures” certainly correspond
to a primitive emphasis in the gospel story, an emphasis which
is recognizable in every area of New Testament teaching—in
the non-Pauline letters as clearly as in the Pauline, in the
speeches of Acts and in all the strands which have been woven
together to produce the material of the four Gospels. The
earliest Gospel, for example, introduces itself with prophetic
quotations and represents Jesus as submitting to his captors
with the words, “Let the scriptures be fulfilled” (Mark 1:2f.;
14:49). That Christ died “in accordance with the scriptures”
was part of the early apostolic witness. When Peter, in the
temple court at Jerusalem, says with reference to the
condemnation of Jesus that “what God foretold by the mouth of
all his prophets, that his Christ should suffer, he thus fulfilled”
(Acts 3:18), his words are summarized in Luke’s idiom but
express a primitive belief. If we ask where in the prophetic
oracles it was foretold that the Christ was to suffer, an answer
is offered by this same speech, which begins with the
announcement that “the God of our fathers glorified his servant
Jesus” who was disowned by his people—an echo of the fourth
Isaianic Servant Song, where the Servant who has been
“despised and rejected by men” is “exalted and lifted up” by
God (Isaiah 52:13; 53:3; cf. Acts 3:13).13
But what of the statement that Christ died “for our sins”—
could that belong to the tradition which Paul received,
especially to the Jerusalem tradition? It is pointed out that if
the early speeches in Acts reflect the Jerusalem tradition, the
expiatory significance of the death of Christ is not a prominent
feature in them; in fact the one speech in Acts where it does
find expression is Paul’s speech to the elders of the Ephesian
church, whom he exhorts “to feed the church of God which he
purchased with the blood of his beloved one”(Acts 20:28).14
Now clearly Paul, in writing as he does to the Corinthians,
may have reproduced what he received in his own words and
with his own emphasis. But his is not the only New Testament
tradition to attach expiatory importance to the death of Christ.
The writer to the Hebrews portrays Christ as priest and victim
in one, who by his self-offering “made purification for sins”
(Hebrews 1:3); the readers of 1 Peter are reminded that they
were “ransomed … with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Peter
1:18 f.); the readers of 1 John are assured that “the blood of
Jesus … cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7), and the seer of
Patmos speaks of Christ as “him who loves us and has freed us
from our sins by his blood” (Revelation 1:5).15 Above all, the
earliest Gospel reports Jesus as telling his disciples that “the
Son of man came … to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark
10:45)—a form of words which, in a Jewish context at that time,
implies an atonement for their sins, whether or not it echoes
the prophet’s language about the Servant who “makes himself
an offering for sin”, thus causing “many to be accounted
righteous” (Isaiah 53:10 f.).16
Thus, even if those are right who maintain that Luke
presents a theologia gloriae rather than a theologia crucis, the
wide spread of the theologia crucis in the New Testament
writings indicates that it is not peculiar to Paul but is more
probably pre-Pauline, going back in fact to Jesus’ own
understanding of his death.
In the early speeches of Acts, however, forgiveness of sins is
linked with faith in Christ. “To him”, says Peter in the house of
Cornelius, “all the prophets bear witness that every one who
believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name”
(Acts 10:43). If the atoning virtue of his death is not expressly
mentioned in such utterances, it is difficult to see how it could
be absent from the thought of those who made forgiveness of
sins dependent not on repentance in general but specifically on
faith in the crucified and exalted Jesus. And when we find Jesus
plainly identified with the Isaianic Servant of Yahweh, it is
unlikely that those who made this identification did not draw
the natural conclusion from the Servant’s bearing “the sin of
many” when he “poured out his soul to death”17 (Isaiah 53:12)
—the natural conclusion being that this was what Jesus did.
We cannot, then, too readily assume that the phrase “for our
sins” is Paul’s epexegetic gloss on the statement that “Christ
died” and that it could not have belonged to the tradition which
he received.
Some scholars have detected a Semitic (more specifically, an
Aramaic) substratum beneath the Greek text of the clause,
“Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.”18
Others doubt this, on the highly improbable ground that the
Greek phrase “in accordance with the scriptures” has no
Aramaic equivalent. Such questions are precarious and
unimportant. In whatever language Paul received the tradition,
he delivered it to his converts in Greek, and was under no
compulsion, when he did so, to reproduce Aramaic idiom or
anything of the sort.
One element in the debate about a Semitic substratum is the
absence of the Greek definite article before the word
“Christ”.19 This really proves nothing one way or the other.
Much more significant is the use of the designation “Christ”,
whether with or without the article. It reminds us that the
gospel from the beginning proclaimed Jesus as Messiah. If a
pagan said “Christ died”—as when Tacitus, for example, says
“Christ was executed”20 he would be making a simple
statement of fact, not a theological affirmation for him “Christ”
would be nothing more than an alternative name for Jesus. But
for a first-century Jew to say “Christ died” involves an
assessment of the person who died, an acknowledgment that
Jesus was the Lord’s anointed. This first clause in the tradition,
then, enshrines three theological propositions: that Jesus was
the Messiah, that he died for his people’s sins, and that this
death of his took place in fulfilment of prophetic scripture.
(b) Christ … was buried. This second clause may be an
appendix to the first (“Christ died …”) as the fourth clause (“he
appeared …”) is appended to the third (“he was raised …”).21
Even so, the fact that the burial is given a clause to itself
suggests that it was an independent feature in the tradition.
Why should this be so? The fact of burial sometimes receives
special mention in order to underline the reality and finality of
death. “David both died and was buried”, says Peter on the day
of Pentecost, “and his tomb is with us to this day” (Acts 2:29).
But more than this is implied in the present context: the burial
sets the seal on the death, no doubt, but it also provides the
background for the resurrection. The resurrection was the
reversal of the death and burial, and Paul’s giving the burial
separate mention points to the motif of the empty tomb. “What
he has to say about the resurrection of Jesus in 1 Cor. 15”,
wrote S. H. Hooke, “clearly implies that he did not believe that
the body of the Lord remained in the grave. The absence,
however, of any reference to the fact that the grave was empty,
shows that he did not regard it as a proof of the
resurrection”.22 The emptiness of the tomb in itself might
simply mean that the body had been removed. But if the body
had still been there, that would have constituted a refutation of
the resurrection claim, no matter how confidently the disciples
maintained that the risen Lord had appeared to them. Hence
the separate clause: “he was buried”.
(c) Christ … was raised on the third day in accordance with
the scriptures. It may be that this third clause makes two
distinct statements about the resurrection of Christ: first, that
it took place “on the third day”, and second, that it took place
“in accordance with the scriptures”.23 If this is so, then we are
not obliged to find Old Testament scriptures which could point
to resurrection on the third day. Such scriptures have indeed
been adduced, but their relevance is doubtful. There is the
frequently cited passage in Hosea 6:2, “after two days he will
revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live
before him”—but it is hardly a natural testimonium of the
Messiah’s resurrection. Even less natural as such a
testimonium is Isaiah’s assurance to Hezekiah: “on the third
day you shall go up to the house of Yahweh” (2 Kings 20:5). As
for Jonah, he is not said to have emerged from the fish’s belly
“on the third day”, although his remaining there for “three
days and three nights” appears as a resurrection testimonium
in another and non-Pauline context (Matthew 12:40). The
waving of the sheaf of first fruits before God on “the morrow
after the sabbath” (Leviticus 23:9–21) may influence Paul’s
statement later in the same chapter that “Christ has been
raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen
asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20);24 but that is part of Paul’s own
exposition of the subject, and “the morrow after the sabbath”
was not necessarily “the third day” after Passover (although it
may have been so in the year of Jesus’ death and resurrection).
If the third day be dissociated from the phrase “in
accordance with the scriptures”, then we are less restricted in
identifying those Old Testament passages to which the
tradition may have made appeal. If the fourth Servant Song
provided a testimonium for the death of Christ, it could also
have provided a testimonium for his resurrection (as it clearly
does for his exaltation): the Servant who “was cut off out of the
land of the living” is promised that he will “prolong his days”
and “see light25 after the travail of his soul” (Isaiah 53:8, 10 f.).
Then there are other testimonia adduced in the speeches of
Acts: for example, “thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades,
nor let thy holy one see corruption” (Psalm 16:10, quoted in
Acts 2:27; 13:35). This expression of confidence, ascribed to
David, is seen in the apostolic preaching to have found its
fulfilment in Messiah, the son of David, by whose resurrection
God made good to his people “the holy and sure blessings of
David” (Acts 13:34, quoting Isaiah 55:3).26 Such testimonia,
depending for their relevance on the identification of Jesus as
the son of David, might be expected to figure in the Jerusalem
tradition.
The statement that it was “on the third day” that Christ rose
is based not on any Old Testament scripture but on historical
fact. Such an expression as “after three days” (not to speak of
“three days and three nights”), used in predictions of the
resurrection before the event (e.g. in Mark 8:31), might have
the general sense of “in a short time”; but after the event we
regularly find it dated “on the third day”, because it was
actually on the third day that the tomb was found empty and
Jesus first appeared in resurrection to Peter and others. It was
these appearances that certified that he was risen: “The early
Christians did not believe in the resurrection of Christ because
they could not find his dead body. They believed because they
did find a living Christ.”27
Jerusalem commends itself as the fountain-head of the
tradition which Paul says he received. Nothing that he might be
told in Damascus or anywhere else could compare in authority
with what Peter and James could provide. To the end of his
active life, whatever tensions might develop between him and
the Jerusalem leaders, Jerusalem remained in Paul’s eyes the
headquarters of the faith; the church in that city was the
mother-church and was to be esteemed as such. It was to the
disciples in Jerusalem that the Spirit of Christ was first given
after his exaltation, and if Paul received the same Spirit in
Damascus, that bound him the more closely to the original
Spirit-baptized community. His receiving of the Spirit was one
aspect of the revelation which dawned upon him on the
Damascus road and during the days immediately following, but
in the fellowship of the Spirit he gladly assimilated the
tradition delivered to him in Jerusalem by those who were
apostles before him.
When all this has been said, however, about the gospel as
revelation and the gospel as tradition, it should be added that
for Paul the gospel was more than a body of affirmations or
factual data. The gospel was also for him, it has been said, “an
on-going entity ‘in’ which one can ‘be’ or ‘stand’ ” (cf. 1
Corinthians 15:1), God’s powerful agency for the salvation of
believers (cf. Romans 1:16); it was “the field of God’s activity
as it touches man’s life”;28 it was God’s comprehensive plan for
the redemption of all creation (cf. Rom. 8:19–23); it was the
Christ-event in its total outreach. Within this gospel’s field of
force Paul himself stood; to its service he knew himself called
and consecrated;29 in its saving dynamism he participated, and
this participation carried its own reward with it (cf. 1
Corinthians 9:16–23).
4. Paul leaves for Syria and Cilicia
When the fifteen days in Jerusalem were up, Paul departed,
he says, for “the regions of Syria and Cilicia” (Galatians 1:21)—
that is, for his native territory (the united province of Syria-
Cilicia). Luke gives us further details: short as his visit was,
Paul’s life was threatened by the Hellenists, presumably his old
associates who had formerly mounted the attack on Stephen
and others and who now regarded their lost leader as a traitor
to the cause. Paul did not remain in hiding in Peter’s lodging
during his visit to Jerusalem. It is in the context of this visit that
we should most naturally place his visit to the temple referred
to in Acts 22:17–21, when the risen Lord appeared to him again
and confirmed afresh that his vocation was to the Gentiles, not
to his fellow-Jews in Jerusalem.30 Perhaps his return to
Jerusalem as a Christian filled Paul with a burning desire to
witness to his former companions, but he was assured that he
was the last person to whose testimony they would listen, For
his own safety, then, his new friends took him down to
Caesarea and saw him on board a ship bound for Tarsus (Acts
9:29 f.).
This detail, like the earlier reference to Barnabas, does not
appear to be part of Luke’s generalizing summary here. At any
rate, when Paul’s new friends saw the sail of his ship
disappearing beneath the horizon, they probably breathed a
sigh of relief and returned to Jerusalem with a sense of
relaxation. Paul in his persecuting days had been a thorn in
their flesh, but they were to learn that Paul the Christian also
could be a disturbing presence, and trouble was liable to break
out every time he visited Jerusalem. For the present, however,
as Luke says, “the church … had peace” (Acts 9:31).31
CHAPTER 11
Paul and the Historical Jesus
THE SPEAKER WHO INTRODUCED HIMSELF ON THE
DAMASCUS road as “Jesus, whom you are persecuting”, was
recognized by Paul as the exalted Son of God, identical
nevertheless with that Jesus of Nazareth who had been
crucified some three years before. Those to whom Jesus had
previously appeared in resurrection had known him well in
earlier years: the one whom they henceforth came to
acknowledge as risen Lord and Saviour was the one with whom
they had been acquainted as the Galilaean teacher. Paul had
not been acquainted with Jesus before his crucifixion; he first
came to know him as the risen Lord. His perspective on the
“historical Jesus” was inevitably different from that of the
original disciples. In speaking of the “historical Jesus” we do
not try to distinguish, as do some scholars of today, between
Jesus as he really was and what can be known of Jesus by the
methods of historical science.1 But it is of interest to discover,
as far as possible, the extent of Paul’s knowledge of, and
interest in, the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.
1. Historical allusions
While Paul’s apostolic claim was discounted by some on the
ground that, unlike the Jerusalem apostles, he had not been a
follower of Jesus during his Palestinian ministry, Paul is,
notwithstanding, our earliest literary authority for the
historical Jesus. He does not tell us much about him, in
comparison with what can be learned from the Gospels, but he
does tell us a little more than the bare facts that Jesus was
born, lived and died. Jesus, he says, was a descendant of
Abraham (Galatians 3:16) and David (Romans 1:3), who, lived
Abraham (Galatians 3:16) and David (Romans 1:3), who, lived
under the Jewish law (Galatians 4:4); he was betrayed, and on
the night of his betrayal instituted a memorial meal of bread
and wine (1 Corinthians 11:23–25); he endured death by
crucifixion (Galatians 3:1, etc.), a Roman method of execution,
although Jewish authorities shared some degree of
responsibility for his death (1 Thessalonians 2:15); he was
buried, rose the third day, and was thereafter seen alive on
several occasions by eyewitnesses varying in number (from one
occasion to another) between one by himself and five hundred
together, the majority of whom were alive to attest the fact
twenty-five years later (1 Corinthians 15:4–8).
Paul knows of the apostles of Jesus, of whom Cephas (Peter)
and John are mentioned by name as “pillars” of the Jerusalem
church fifteen to twenty years after his death, and of his
brothers, of whom James is similarly mentioned as a “pillar”
(Galatians 2:9; cf. 1:19). He knows that many of those apostles
and brothers were married men; Cephas (Peter) is specially
named in this regard (1 Corinthians 9:5), and this provides an
incidental point of agreement with the gospel story of Jesus’
healing of Peter’s mother-in-law (Mark 1:30 f.). On occasion he
quotes sayings of Jesus, and at some of these we shall look
more closely.
Even where he does not quote actual sayings of Jesus, he
shows himself well acquainted with the substance of many of
them. We have only to compare the ethical section of the
Epistle to the Romans (12:1–15:7), where Paul sets out the
practical implications of the gospel in the lives of believers,
with the Sermon on the Mount, to see how thoroughly imbued
the apostle was with his Master’s teaching. Moreover, there
and elsewhere Paul’s chief argument in his ethical instruction
is the example of Jesus himself. And the character of Jesus as
Paul understood it is consistent with the character of Jesus as
portrayed in the Gospels. When Paul speaks of “the meekness
and gentleness of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:1) we recall the
claim of the Matthaean Jesus to be “meek and lowly in heart”
(Matthew 11:29). The self-denying Jesus of the Gospels is the
one of whom Paul says that “Christ did not please himself”
(Romans 15:3); and just as the Jesus of the Gospels called on
(Romans 15:3); and just as the Jesus of the Gospels called on
his followers to deny themselves, so the apostle insists that it is
our duty as followers of Christ “to bear the infirmities of the
weak, and not to please ourselves” (Romans 15:1). When Paul
invites his Philippian friends to reproduce among among
themselves the mind which was in “Christ Jesus”, who took
“the form of a slave” (Philippians 2:5–7), we may think of him
who, according to Luke, said to his disciples at the Last
Supper, “I am among you as the servant” (Luke 22:27), and
who on the same occasion, according to John, performed the
humble service of washing their feet (John 13:3 ff.).
In short, what Paul has to say of the life and teaching of the
historical Jesus agrees, so far as it goes, with the outline
preserved elsewhere in the New Testament and particularly in
the four Gospels. Paul is at pains to insist that the gospel which
he preaches rests on the same factual basis as that preached
by the other apostles (1 Corinthians 15:11)—a claim the more
noteworthy because he was a companion neither of the earthly
Jesus nor of the original apostles, and vigorously asserts his
independence of the latter (Galatians 1:11 ff.; 2:6).
Tarsus: St. Paul’s Gate (see p. 32)
Damascus: The Street Called Straight today (see p. 76)
At the same time, there are some of the most familiar facts
about Jesus that we could never have learned from Paul’s
letters: that he habitually taught in parables, that he healed the
sick and performed other “signs”. From those letters we should
know nothing of his baptism and temptation, of his Galilaean
ministry, of the turning-point at Caesarea Philippi, of the
transfiguration or of the last journey to Jerusalem. While we
find clear and repeated references in them to Jesus’ crucifixion,
we should know nothing from them of the events which led up
to it.
2. The new perspective
That the Christ-event marked an epoch in the history of
salvation is common ground to Paul and the Evangelists.
According to Mark, Jesus inaugurated his Galilaean ministry
with the announcement: “The appointed time has been fulfilled
and the kingdom of God has drawn near” (Mark 1:15).
According to Paul, “when the time had fully come, God sent
forth his Son … so that we might receive adoption as sons”
(Galatians 4:4 f.). The substance of the two announcements is
the same, but there is a change of perspective; Good Friday
and Easter Day have intervened, and the original Preacher has
become the Preached One.2 This change of perspective is
anticipated in Jesus’ own teaching. While the kingdom of God
had drawn near in his ministry, it had not been unleashed in its
fulness. Until Jesus underwent the “baptism” of his passion, he
was conscious of restrictions (Luke 12:50). With the passion
and triumph of the Son of Man, however, those restrictions
would be removed and, as he told his hearers on one occasion,
some of them would live to see “the kingdom of God come in
power” (Mark 9:1).
For Paul, this coming in power is an accomplished fact. Jesus
has been “designated Son of God in power, according to the
Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead” (Romans
1:4). The divine power which raised Jesus from the dead is now
at work in his followers, conveyed to them by his indwelling
Spirit; the same indwelling Spirit provides the assurance that
the work of renewal, so well begun, will be successfully
consummated. Hostile spiritual forces, already disabled, must
be destroyed; by the destruction of death, the last of those
forces, the coming age of resurrection glory will be achieved (1
Corinthians 15:25 f.), but its blessings are enjoyed here and
now through the Spirit by those who have experienced faith-
union with Christ (2 Corinthians 5:5). “Therefore”, says Paul,
“if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed
away, behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
This change of perspective, then, can be viewed in two ways.
Absolutely, it can be dated in terms of world-history, around
Absolutely, it can be dated in terms of world-history, around
A.D. 30; empirically, it takes place whenever a man or woman
comes to be “in Christ”. And when it takes place thus
empirically, one’s whole outlook is revolutionized. “Wherefore
we henceforth know no one after the flesh: even though we
have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know him so no
more” (2 Corinthians 5:16).
These words have played a crucial part in much discussion of
Paul’s relation and attitude to Jesus. What is meant by this
knowledge of Christ “after the flesh”, which for Paul and his
fellow-Christians is now a thing of the past?
Few, if any, nowadays take the line followed at the beginning
of this century by Johannes Weiss among others. He thought
that Paul’s language reflected “the impression received by
direct personal acquaintance”, that Paul had most probably
seen and heard Jesus in Jerusalem during Holy Week and that
it is this kind of knowledge that Paul was disparaging by
contrast with the new knowledge that he had now received
“according to the Spirit”.3
Whether Paul ever did see or hear Jesus before the
crucifixion is not the question at issue.4 The question at issue is
whether his language in 2 Corinthians 5:16 could have any
reference to such seeing or hearing, and it is best answered in
Rudolf Bultmann’s words: “that he even saw Jesus and was
impressed by him … is to be read out of 2 Cor. 5:16 only by
fantasy.”5 But Professor Bultmann’s own interpretation of the
text can be read out of it only if it be first read into it. For him,
the knowledge of Christ “after the flesh” which Paul
depreciates is much the same thing as an interest in the
historical Jesus: “it is illegitimate to go behind the kerygma,
using it as a ‘source’, in order to reconstruct a ‘historical Jesus’
with his ‘messianic consciousness’.… That would be merely
‘Christ after the flesh’, who is no longer”.6
This point of view is so prevalent, especially in Germany
(probably under Bultmann’s influence), that nowadays we are
familiar with statements like this: “Paul had no interest in the
historical Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:16!).” But the point which is
thus made by reference to 2 Corinthians 5:16, and reinforced
by an exclamation mark, however valid it may be in its own
way, is not the point that Paul is making here. Still less is Paul
concerned to disparage the knowledge of Jesus enjoyed by the
twelve because of their companionship with him during the
ministry, in comparison with his own present knowledge of the
exalted Lord.7 Whatever differences there might be between
himself and the twelve, they, like him, were now “in Christ”;
they, like him, now possessed the Spirit, as he could not but
agree. The contrast he is making is that between his former
attitude to Christ (and to the world in general) and his present
attitude to Christ (and to the world in general), now that he is
“in Christ”. The point is brought out excellently in the New
English Bible: “With us therefore worldly standards have
ceased to count in our estimate of any man; even if once they
counted in our understanding of Christ, they do so now no
longer.”
But a further question arises. When Paul speaks of his
former knowledge of Christ “after the flesh”, does he refer to
his former conception of the Messiah, which has been radically
changed now that he has come to acknowledge the Messiah in
Jesus; or does he refer to his former hostility to Jesus of
Nazareth and his followers—a hostility which has now been
displaced by love?
More probably, he means that his former conception of the
Messiah was “worldly” and wrong. Now that he has learned to
identify the Messiah with Jesus, crucified and risen, his
understanding of the Messiah has been revolutionized. The
conception of the Messiah now takes character from the person
of Jesus.
This is exactly opposite to the view of William Wrede,
according to whom Paul had an antecedent idea of the Messiah
as a “supramundane, divine being” which he retained after his
conversion. He had no knowledge of, or interest in, the
historical Jesus and his authentic message, but was moved by
his Damascus road experience to transfer to the Jesus of his
vision all the qualities which hitherto belonged to his ideal
Messiah.8 On the contrary, when Paul’s Damascus road
experience taught him that Jesus was Lord and Messiah, he
thenceforth dismissed from his reckoning the “Christ” whom he
had previously known “according to the flesh”. By the same
token, of course, his estimate of the historical Jesus was
revolutionized, even if this is not what is uppermost in his mind
in 2 Corinthians 5:16.
Since his first encounter with Jesus, like his continued
experience of him, impressed on him that Jesus was the risen
Lord, this aspect remained primary in his consciousness. Yet
the risen Lord, with whom he enjoyed immediate acquaintance,
was in his mind identical with the historical Jesus, with whom
he had not enjoyed such acquaintance. Hence perhaps his
characteristic word-order “Christ Jesus”—the enthroned Christ
who is at the same time the crucified Jesus.
3. The gospel tradition
It is Paul’s immediate acquaintance with the risen Lord, from
his conversion onward, that forms the basis of his gospel as
direct revelation, as he expresses it in Galatians 1:12. On the
other hand, when he elsewhere speaks of his gospel as
tradition, “received” by him from those who were “in Christ”
before him, he speaks of a message which begins with the
historical Jesus. Whatever further dimensions may be
recognized in the preaching of Christ crucified, which stands in
the forefront of the “tradition”, his crucifixion roots him firmly
in history.
One sample of this “tradition” is the narrative in 1
Corinthians 11:23–25 of Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist “on
the night when he was betrayed”. Paul here reminds the
Corinthian Christians of something which he “delivered” to
them when he planted their church five years previously. His
narrative goes back ultimately to the same source as the
institution narrative of Mark 14:22–25, although it has come
down along a separate line of transmission. Paul’s narrative,
even in its written form, is about ten years earlier than Mark’s;
even so, Mark’s may preserve some more archaic features.
Thus, Jesus’ words in Mark 14:25, “I shall not drink again of
the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the
kingdom of God”, may be paraphrased or summarized in Paul’s
own words “until he comes” in 1 Corinthians 11:26. Again,
some features of Paul’s narrative, such as the injunction “do
this in remembrance of me”, are akin to the longer reading of
Luke 22:17–20—an interesting textual problem with a bearing
on eucharistic origins, but hardly essential to our present
concern. Paul’s version was probably that which was current in
the communities where he first enjoyed Christian fellowship.
Since it related what “the Lord Jesus” did and said, it was a
tradition ultimately “received from the Lord” and accordingly
delivered by Paul to his converts. The core of the narrative
would have been preserved with but little change because it
was constantly repeated in church meetings as often as
Christians “ate this bread and drank the cup”, together with
the passion story as a whole: “you proclaim the Lord’s death”,
says Paul (verse 26).9
Not only from its repetition at celebrations of the Lord’s
Supper did the passion story early acquire firm outlines, but
also from its repetition in the proclamation of the gospel.
According to Paul, “Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as
crucified” (Galatians 3:1) when the gospel was preached, and
equally on every such occasion Christ was “preached as raised
from the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:12).
That this preaching of Christ crucified and risen belonged to
the tradition shared by Paul with the earlier apostles is evident,
as has been said already, from his summary of resurrection
appearances in 1 Corinthians 15:3–11.10 Apart from that, the
empty tomb and the resurrection appearances mark the
transition from the historical Jesus to the exalted Christ. Paul’s
gospel as tradition bridges whatever gulf may be felt to
separate the one from the other, for it includes both within its
scope, and affirms their continuity and identity.
4. The teaching of Jesus
One aspect of Paul’s dependence on the teaching of Jesus is
the relation between the message of Jesus’ parables and Paul’s
doctrine of justification by faith.
That salvation was to be found in Jesus Christ was a
proposition to which Paul and his judaizing opponents would
equally have subscribed. They might even have agreed that
salvation was to be found in him alone. But on what conditions
was the salvation found in Christ alone to be secured? This was
the crucial question. No doubt Jesus did sit very loose to the
traditions of the elders,11 but when it was a question of the
admission of Gentiles to the fellowship of his disciples, could
Paul or anyone else adduce a single utterance of his which
suggested that circumcision could be dispensed with? (Indeed,
when we consider the important part played by the
circumcision question in the development of the early church,
we may be impressed by the absence from our gospel tradition
of any attempt to find a dominical ruling to which one side or
the other could have appealed.) Paul might have appealed to
the spirit of Jesus’ teaching, or (as he did) to the logical
implication of the gospel,12 but people like his opponents would
be satisfied with nothing less than verbatim chapter-and-verse
authority; and this was not forthcoming.
From the perspective of nineteen centuries’ distance, despite
our ignorance of many elements in the situation that were well
known to the protagonists, we can probably present an
objective argument in defence of Paul’s claim that the message
he preached was the authentic gospel of Christ. It is this: two
things on which Paul pre-eminently insisted—that salvation was
provided by God’s grace and that faith was the means by which
men appropriated it—are repeatedly emphasized in the
ministry of Jesus, and especially in his parables, regardless of
the strata of gospel tradition to which appeal may be made.
When we reflect on the almost complete lack of evidence in
Paul’s letters that he knew the parables of Jesus,13 we may
wonder how Paul managed to discern so unerringly the heart of
his Master’s message. We may suspect that this discernment
was implicit in the “revelation of Jesus Christ” which,
according to him, was the essence of his conversion
experience.
The response of faith regularly won the approval of Jesus,
sometimes his surprised approval, as when it came from a
Gentile,14 and was a sure means of securing his help and
blessing; in face of unbelief, on the other hand, he was
inhibited from performing works of mercy and power.15 “Faith
as a grain of mustard seed”16 was what he desired to see, but
too often looked for in vain, even in his own disciples.
As regards the teaching of the parables, the point we are
making can be illustrated from two, belonging to two quite
distinct lines of tradition—Luke’s special material and
Matthew’s special material.
In the Lukan parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32),
the father might very well have adopted other means for the
rehabilitation of his younger son than those described (with
approval) by Jesus. When the black sheep of the family came
home in disgrace, the father, having a father’s heart, might
well have consented to give him a second chance. Listening to
his carefully rehearsed speech, he might have said, “That’s all
very well, young man; we have heard fine phrases before. If
you really mean what you say, you can buckle to and work as
you have never worked before, and if you do so, we may let you
work your passage. But first you must prove yourself; we can’t
let by-gones be by-gones as though nothing had happened.”
Even that would have been generous; it might have done the
young man a world of good, and even the elder brother might
have been content to let him be put on probation. But for Jesus,
and for Paul, divine grace does not operate like that. God does
not put repentant sinners on probation to see how they will
turn out; he gives them an unrestrained welcome and invests
them as his true-born sons. For Jesus, and for Paul, the
initiative always rests with the grace of God. He bestows the
reconciliation or redemption; men receive it. “Treat me as one
of your hired servants”, says the prodigal to his father; but the
father speaks of him as “this my son”. So, says Paul, “through
God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an
God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an
heir” (Galatians 4:7).
In the Matthaean parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard
(Matthew 20:1–16), the last-hired workmen did not bargain
with their employer about their pay. If a denarius was the fair
rate for a day’s work, those who worked for the last hour only
might have expected a small fraction of that, but they accepted
his undertaking to give them “whatever is right” and in the
event they received a denarius like the others who had worked
all day. The grace of God is not to be parcelled out and
adjusted to the varieties of individual merit. There was, as T.
W. Manson pointed out, a coin worth one-twelfth of a denarius.
“It was called a pondion. But there is no such thing as a twelfth
part of the love of God.”17
This is completely in line with Paul’s understanding of the
gospel. If law is the basis of men’s acceptance with God, then
the details of personal merit and demerit are of the utmost
relevance. But the great blessings of the gospel had come to
Paul’s Gentile converts, as they knew very well, not by the
works of the law but by the response of faith—the faith which
works by love.18 And when we speak in terms of love, we are on
a plane where law is not at home.
A comparison of Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith with
Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God has been made by
Eberhard Jüngel, in his book Paulus und Jesus.19 It is in the
parables of Jesus especially, he insists, that the kingdom of God
comes to expression, and the hearers’ response to the parables
is their response to the kingdom of God. Jesus’ parabolic
teaching is more than mere teaching; it is a “language-event”,
a Sprachereignis, in the terminology of Jüngel’s teacher Ernst
Fuchs.20 That is to say, the parabolic teaching is itself an event
confronting the hearer and challenging him to give a positive
reply to the demand of the kingdom of God. With Fuchs, Jüngel
sees in the parables Jesus’ christological testimony to himself,
if only in veiled form. During the ministry, Jesus’ action and
attitude supplied the parables with a living commentary
sufficient to convey their meaning to those who responded in
faith; later, the church felt it necessary to supply its own verbal
commentary. The eschatological note which sounds in the
parables is heard in Paul’s teaching about justification by faith.
“The law was our custodian until Christ came”, says Paul, “that
we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we
are no longer under a custodian; for in Christ Jesus you are all
sons of God, through faith” (Galatians 3:24–26). In other words,
as he says to the Romans, “Christ is the end of the law, that
every one who has faith may be justified” (Romans 10:4).21
Jüngel relates “the end (telos) of the law” to the fact that in
Christ the eschaton has arrived. In the preaching of Jesus and
the teaching of Paul he finds the same relation between
eschatology and history, the same emphasis on the end of the
law, the same demand for faith. The difference lies in the fact
that the eschaton which for Jesus lay in the near future was
present for Paul.
It would be more accurate to say that, for Paul, the period
through which he was living was not yet the absolute eschaton
or telos (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:24) but its threshold—that period
“between the times” during which the presence of the Spirit in
the people of Christ confirmed to them their status and
heritage as sons of God (Galatians 4:6): “through the Spirit, by
faith, we wait for the hope of righteousness” (Galatians 5:5).
But already, with the coming of Christ and the completion of
his redemptive work, the age of law had come to an end for the
people of God.
When Paul calls Christ “the end of the law” he is expressing
a theological insight. But this insight was based on sound
historical fact: many of Paul’s fellow-Pharisees who engaged in
debate with Jesus during his ministry must have felt that, on a
practical level, his conduct and teaching involved “the end of
the law”—not only because of his rejection of their oral
traditions but because of the sovereignty with which he treated
such elements of the written law as the sabbath institution and
food regulations. True, as we have seen, he does not appear to
have made any pronouncement on the circumcision question.
But when we consider how he related the law as a whole to the
basic requirements of love to God and love to one’s neighbour,
and insisted on the paramountcy of heart-devotion, “truth in
the inward parts”, righteousness, mercy and faith,22 the
conclusion is inescapable that he would not have included
circumcision among the weightier matters of the law. If no
word of his on the subject has survived (apart from the
incidental ad hominem argument in the course of a sabbath
debate in John 7:22 f.), it is simply because the issue did not
arise in the situation of his ministry. When, later, it did arise in
the situation of the Gentile mission, it is difficult to deny that
Paul’s position was in keeping with Jesus’ general attitude to
the externalities of religion.
Paul, like Jesus, shocked the guardians of Israel’s law by his
insistence on treating the law as a means to an end and not as
an end in itself, by his refusal to let pious people seek security
before God in their own piety, by his breaking down of barriers
in the name of the God who “justifies the ungodly” (Romans
4:5) and by his proclamation of a message of good news for the
outsider. In all this Paul saw more clearly than most of his
Christian contemporaries into the inwardness of Jesus’
teaching.
5. Incidental contacts
But there are more incidental passages in Paul’s letters
which link up with sayings of Jesus recorded here and there in
the Gospels.
In 1904 Arnold Resch thought he could detect allusions to
925 such sayings in nine of the Pauline letters along with 133
in Ephesians and 100 in the Pastorals.23 At the other extreme
we have Rudolf Bultmann maintaining that “the teaching of the
historical Jesus plays no role, or practically none, in Paul”
(“and”, he adds, “John”).24 A few dominical utterances, he
concedes, may be echoed in Paul’s hortatory sections,25 and he
recognizes two such utterances in regulations for church life (1
Corinthians 7:10 f.; 9:14). Moreover:
The tradition of the Jerusalem Church is at least in substance behind the “word of
the Lord” on the parousia and resurrection in 1 Thess. 4:15–17, though it is not
certain whether Paul is here quoting a traditionally transmitted saying or
whether he is appealing to a revelation accorded to him by the exalted Lord.26
Here we must share Professor Bultmann’s hesitation. But the
two citations of Jesus’ teaching in Pauline regulations for
church life will repay further attention.
(a) Divorce and remarriage. In answering the Corinthians’
questions about marriage, Paul cites Jesus’ ruling on divorce as
binding on his followers. “To the married I say, not I but the
Lord, that the wife should not separate from her husband (but
if she does, let her remain single or else be reconciled to her
husband)—and that the husband should not divorce his wife” (1
Corinthians 7:10 f.).
While this is not a verbatim quotation, its relation to Mark
10:2 ff. is fairly plain. When Jesus was asked if it was
permissible for a man to divorce his wife for any cause, he
appealed back from the implied permission of Deuteronomy
24:1–4 to the Genesis record of the creation of man and the
institution of marriage (Genesis 1:27; 2:24) and concluded:
“What therefore God has joined together, let not man put
asunder”.27 But what Paul echoes is the more explicit reply
given later by Jesus when the disciples asked him for a fuller
explanation: “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another,
commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband
and marries another, she commits adultery” (Mark 10:11 f.).
We need not stay to consider whether the words about the
wife’s initiating divorce proceedings are a later addition made
in the light of the circumstances of the Gentile mission or refer
(as I suspect) to the case of Herodias, so topical a scandal at
the time of Jesus’ Galilaean ministry.28 It is noteworthy that
Paul (in the Lord’s name) forbids the wife to separate from her
husband before he forbids the husband to divorce his wife.
Perhaps this sequence was dictated by the way in which the
Corinthians framed their question at this point. “Should a
Christian wife separate from her husband?” No, she should not;
she should continue to live with him as his wife. “But what if
she has already separated from him?” Then let her remain
celibate or else be reconciled to her husband. Perhaps she
separated from her husband because she acquired a distaste
for married life—or at least for married life with him. But if she
finds the consequent abstention irksome, it is out of the
question for her to marry someone else; let her go back to her
husband. Having dealt with that aspect of the question which
may have been uppermost in the minds of his correspondents,
Paul repeats the substantive clause in Jesus’ ruling: the
husband must not divorce his wife.29
(b) The labourer deserves his wages. The Corinthian
Christians could not understand why Paul refused to accept
financial support from them when, as they knew, he accepted it
from other churches. One reason for his policy was that he
suspected that, if he accepted money from the church in
Corinth, his opponents there would seize the opportunity to
accuse him of mercenary motives. But he could not win: since
he determined to give them no such opportunity, they argued
that his unwillingness to accept money proved that he was
none too confident of his apostolic status, and did not feel
himself entitled to the privilege which Peter and his colleagues,
together with the brothers of Jesus, enjoyed, of living at the
expense of those for whose spiritual well-being they cared. He
replies that he is indeed an apostle in the fullest sense—the
existence of the Corinthian church is proof enough of that—and
that he certainly has the right of living at his converts’ expense,
but chooses to exercise his liberty by not availing himself of
that right. That it is indeed a right he argues on the basis of
natural and divine law, but pre-eminently on the ground that
none less than “the Lord commanded that those who proclaim
the gospel should get their living by the gospel” (1 Corinthians
9:14). This “command” appears in our gospel tradition in the
Matthaean commission to the twelve (Matthew 10:10), “the
labourer deserves his food”, and in the Lukan commission to
the seventy (Luke 10:7), “the labourer deserves his wages.”30
Of these two forms, it is the latter that comes closer in sense to
the “command” that Paul mentions. It is nowhere suggested
that he would refuse to eat food in the home of one of his
Corinthian friends. It was not food but wages, monetary
payment, that he declined.
In a recent and valuable study, Dr. David Dungan discusses
at some length why Paul, in quoting this “command” of the
Lord, nevertheless deliberately disobeys it. He concludes that
Paul either “initially turned this regulation into a permission”
of which he was free to avail himself or not, or else “simply
inherited this alteration ready-made”. Either way, “this
alteration is based on the realization that this regulation was
no longer appropriate in every case”.31 It should rather be said
that the “regulation” from the outset had the nature of a
“permission”. Paul had been brought up to believe that the
teaching of the Torah should not be made a means of livelihood
or personal aggrandisement. “He who makes a worldly use of
the crown of the Torah will waste away”, said Hillel;32 and so
Paul, whether he was a Hillelite or not, was by manual
occupation a tent-maker. But he claimed for others the right
which he chose to forgo for himself: “Let him who is taught the
word share all good things with him who teaches” (Galatians
6:6).
It should further be noted that Hillel’s dictum comes quite
close to an injunction of Jesus included in his commission to the
twelve, according to the Matthaean account: “You received
without pay; give without pay” (Matthew 10:8).33 If Paul had
known this injunction, he might have quoted it to justify his
personal policy. Even in his dealings with other churches, he
found it embarrassing to accept and acknowledge personal
gifts of money.
(c) Eat what is set before you. One of the questions raised in
the Corinthians’ letter to Paul concerned the eating of the flesh
of animals which had been consecrated to pagan divinities. A
Christian with conscientious scruples about such food could
bar it from his own house, but what was he to do when he was
eating out? Naturally, no direct answer to this question would
be expected in the teaching of Jesus; it was one which could
arise only in a Gentile environment. Paul’s answer is: “If one of
the unbelievers invites you to a dinner and you are disposed to
go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question
on the ground of conscience” (1 Corinthians 10:27).
But even here we have an echo of words of Jesus. In his
instructions to the seventy disciples in Luke 10:8, Jesus says:
“Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is
set before you.”34 No such injunction appears in Jesus’
commission to the twelve, in any of the three accounts of it,
whereas in the commission to the seventy the injunction
appears twice, albeit in different terms (cf. Luke 10:7: “remain
in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide”).
The mission to the twelve was restricted to Israel, explicitly so
in Matthew 10:5 f. and by implication in Mark 6:7–11 and Luke
9:1–5. But the mission of the seventy, which is peculiar to Luke,
has often been thought to adumbrate the wider Gentile mission
which he records in his second volume. Whereas twelve was
the number of the tribes of Israel, seventy was in Jewish
tradition the number of the nations of the world.35
If Paul here is quoting from Jesus’ Instructions to the
seventy, he is generalizing from a particular occasion to a
recurring situation. And that he is indeed quoting from those
instructions—or at least from the tradition of Jesus’
commissions to his disciples—is rendered the more probable by
his appeal, which we have already considered, to that same
tradition in defence of the principle that the preacher of the
gospel is entitled to get his living by the gospel.
(d) Tribute to whom tribute is due. Jesus’ ruling on the
subject of divorce, at which we have already looked, was given
as an answer to a question which (according to Mark 10:2) was
put to him “in order to test him”. The same evangelist records
another question which was later put to him with a similar
motive: “they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of
the Herodians, to entrap him in his talk; and they came and
said to him, ‘Teacher, … is it lawful to pay tribute to Caesar, or
not?’ ” (Mark 12:13 f.).
Paul deals with the payment of tribute in the debatable
paragraph Romans 13:1–7, but here he does not invoke the
Lord’s authority as he does with regard to divorce, or support
Lord’s authority as he does with regard to divorce, or support
for missionaries. Besides, whereas Jesus’ answer to the
question about the tribute money draws a distinction between
rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s and rendering to God
what is God’s, Paul sees in the rendering of Caesar’s dues to
Caesar one form of rendering to God what is due to God, for
the secular authorities are God’s servants, and resistance to
them involves resistance to God. Therefore, he says, “render to
all of them their dues, tribute to whom tribute is due …”
(Romans 13:7).
Even if Paul makes no reference to Jesus’ words here, may
he have had them at the back of his mind? It is possible to
understand his “render to all of them their dues” as a
generalization of Jesus’ answer in Mark 12:17: “Render to
Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s”.36 But if
Paul’s words are a generalization of Jesus’ answer, the
generalization goes much farther here than with regard to
other words of Jesus to which attention has been paid in this
chapter. It was one thing to answer the question implied
behind Romans 13:1–7: “Should Christians in Rome and the
Empire generally, subjects of Caesar, render obedience and
tribute to him and to his subordinate officials?” Paul’s answer
is “Yes, because Caesar and his subordinates exercise authority
by divine appointment, and they perform God’s service when
they maintain law and order, protecting the law-abiding and
executing judgment against criminals.” It was quite another
thing to answer the implications of the question put to Jesus in
Jerusalem, against the background of the rising of Judas the
Galilaean in A.D. 6 and the insurgent movement which
perpetuated his ideals. Judas and his followers maintained that
it was high treason against the God of Israel for his people in
his land to acknowledge the sovereignty of a pagan ruler by
paying him tribute. Jesus’ questioners hoped to impale him on
the horns of a dilemma; no such dilemma confronted Paul. To
Paul the issue was clear, and his apostolic experience had
given him repeated opportunities of appreciating the benefits
of Roman rule. He was not so simple-minded as to imagine that
the imperial authorities could never contravene the ordinance
of God and issue decrees to which Christians would be bound
to refuse compliance, although he does not raise that issue
here. But even here he makes it plain that the duty of
obedience to the secular powers is a temporary one, lasting
only to the end of the present “night”; in the “day” which is “at
hand” a new order will be introduced in which “the saints will
judge the world” (Romans 13:12; 1 Corinthians 6:2).
6. The law of Christ
Paul could have been taught in the school of Gamaliel that
the whole law was comprehended in the law of love to one’s
neighbour; we recall how in an earlier generation Hillel
summarized the whole law in the injunction: “Do not to another
what is hateful to yourself.”37 But when Paul speaks of the
bearing of one another’s burdens as the fulfilment of “the law
of Christ” (Galatians 6:2), we may reasonably infer that he
knew how Christ had applied the commandment of Leviticus
19:18: “you shall love your neighbour as yourself”. Moreover,
the injunction “bear one another’s burdens” seems to be a
generalizing expansion of the words immediately preceding it:
“If a man is overtaken in a trespass, you who are spiritual
should restore him in a spirit of gentleness” (Galatians 6:1).
This is remarkably reminiscent of words of Jesus occurring in a
series of community rules preserved by the First Evangelist
only: “If your brother sins,38 go and tell him his fault, between
you and him alone; if he listens to you, you have gained your
brother” (Matthew 18:15).
Further features of “the law of Christ” may be discerned in
Romans 12:9–21, with its injunctions to sincere and practical
love, so close in spirit (as has been said already) to the Sermon
on the Mount. Mutual love, sympathy and esteem within the
believing brotherhood are to be expected, but this section
enjoins love and forgiveness towards those outside the
brotherhood, not least towards its enemies and persecutors.
“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them”
(Romans 12:14) echoes Luke 6:28: “bless those who curse you;
(Romans 12:14) echoes Luke 6:28: “bless those who curse you;
pray for those who abuse you”. So Paul, speaking elsewhere of
his own practice, can say: “When reviled, we bless; when
persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we try to conciliate”
(1 Corinthians 4:12 f.).
“Repay no one evil for evil” (Romans 12:17) breathes the
same spirit as Matthew 5:44 and Luke 6:27: “Love your
enemies, do good to those who hate you.” So does the
quotation from Proverbs 25:21 f. in Romans 12:20, where it is
probably significant that Paul leaves out the last clause of the
original. “If your enemy is hungry”, he says, “feed him; if he is
thirsty, give him drink; for by so doing you will heap burning
coals on his head”—but he does not add “and the Lord will
reward you”. Perhaps the figure of the “burning coals”
originally suggested intensified retribution, but in this new
context it receives a nobler significance: Treat your enemy
kindly, for this may make him ashamed of his hostile conduct
and lead to his repentance. In other words, the best way to get
rid of an enemy is to turn him into a friend and so “overcome
evil with good” (Romans 12:21).
The theme is resumed in Romans 13:8–10, after Paul’s words
about the duty of Christians to the civil authorities. After
saying, with reference to the authorities, “Render to all of them
their dues, … honour to whom honour is due” (Romans 13:7),
he goes on, more generally: “Let the only debt you owe anyone
be the debt of neighbourly love; the man who has discharged
this debt has fulfilled the law” (Romans 13:8). This is supported
by the quotation of Leviticus 19:18 (“You shall love your
neighbour as yourself”) as the sum of all the commandments—
and this places Paul squarely within the tradition of Jesus. For
Jesus set this commandment next to that of Deuteronomy 6:5
(“You shall love the LORD your God …”) and said: “On these
two commandments depend all the law and the prophets”
(Matthew 22:37–40; cf. Mark 12:28–34). Paul quotes the
second great commandment here and not the first because the
immediate question concerns a Christian’s duty to his
neighbour. The commandments in the second table of the
decalogue, most of which are quoted in Romans 13:9, forbid
the harming of one’s neighbour in any way; since love never
harms another, “love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans
13:10).
When in the next paragraph (Romans 13:11–14) Paul speaks
of Christian life in days of crisis, he once more echoes the
teaching of Jesus. When Jesus told his disciples of the critical
events preceding the coming of the Son of Man, he said: “when
these things begin to take place, look up and raise your heads,
because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:28). Those
who hoped “to stand before the Son of Man” must therefore be
vigilant (Luke 21:36). “It is high time now”, says Paul, “for you
to wake from sleep; for salvation is nearer to us now than when
we first believed” (Romans 13:11). To Paul, at the beginning of
A.D. 57, it was plain how the crucial events of the next decade
or so were casting their shadow before. Their course and
outcome could not be foreseen in detail, but Jesus’ words, “he
who endures to the end will be saved” (Mark 13:13), were to
verify themselves in the experience of his people who passed
through these crises. With the trial comes the way of
deliverance (1 Corinthians 10:13). Meanwhile the sons of light
must live in readiness for the coming day, renouncing all the
“works of darkness” (Romans 13:12).
In another place where Paul deals with the same subject, he
tells his readers that, since they are sons of light, the day of the
Lord, which comes “like a thief in the night”, will not take them
by surprise (1 Thessalonians 5:2–5). This too takes up a note of
Jesus’ teaching: “if the householder had known at what hour
the thief was coming, he would have been awake and would not
have left his house to be broken into. You also must be ready;
for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect”
(Luke 12:39 f.).39
Paul’s exhortation in Romans 13 concludes with the
command in verse 14 to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ”. This
expresses more directly what he speaks of elsewhere as putting
on “the new man” (Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:24).40 The
Christian graces—making up the “armour of light” which he
tells his friends to wear instead of gratifying unregenerate
desires (Romans 13:12)—are the graces which he knew to have
been displayed in harmonious perfection in Jesus. While Paul
did not know the written Gospels as we have them, his tradition
ascribed the same ethical qualities to Jesus as are portrayed in
the Gospels,41 and he commends those qualities, one by one or
comprehensively, as an example for his converts and others to
follow.
Jerusalem and the Temple area today, seen from the Mount of Olives (see p.
144)
Athens: A bronze tablet at foot of Areopagus recording Paul’s speech (see p.
238)
CHAPTER 12
Paul and the Exalted Christ
IF, AS HAS BEEN SAID ABOVE, “THE EMPTY TOMB AND
THE resurrection appearances mark the transition from the
historical Jesus to the exalted Christ”,1 it is implied that the
exalted Christ is continuous and personally identical with the
historical Jesus. This continuity and personal identity were
maintained by Paul. While, however, the historical Jesus was
known to him only by hearsay and tradition, he claimed a direct
and profound personal acquaintance with the exalted Christ.
1. The glory of that light
Paul makes little attempt to describe the form in which the
exalted Christ appeared to him on the Damascus road, perhaps
because words were inadequate for the purpose. Radiant light
is the outstanding feature of the appearance as Paul recalls it.
When, for example, he speaks of the ministry of the new
covenant with which he was then entrusted, he contrasts it
with the inferior ministry committed to Moses by setting over
against the fading glory reflected on Moses’ face the unfading
glory associated with the gospel.2 He describes the dawn of
faith as “seeing the light of the gospel of the glory (doxa) of
Christ, who is the image (eikōn) of God”—“for”, he goes on, “it
is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has
shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4, 6). As the
old creation was inaugurated by the shining of light to dispel
the darkness which lay “upon the face of the deep” (Genesis
1:2 f.), so the new creation was inaugurated by the shining of
light to dispel the blindness of unbelief; and Paul’s choice of
this figure was probably dictated by his own experience. We
recall the reference in Acts 9:3 to the “light from heaven”
which “flashed about him” on the Damascus road; in the
parallel account of the experience in Acts 22:11 Paul himself
says that he could not see “because of the glory of that light”,
and in all three records of the incident in Acts it is made fairly
clear that in that light the risen Christ appeared to him (9:17;
22:14; 26:16).
While Paul had no doubt about the personal identity of the
earthly Jesus and the heavenly Christ, he equally had no doubt
that the heavenly Christ’s mode of existence was different from
that of the earthly Jesus. When he affirms that “flesh and blood
cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 15:50)—i.e.
the resurrection order—he makes it plain that this is as true of
the Lord as of his people. The earthly Jesus was a man of
woman born who endured a real death; but the risen Christ,
while still man, was now vested with heavenly humanity, a
different order of humanity from that of this present life. “The
first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is
from heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:47). While the creation
narrative of Genesis 2:7 tells how “the first man, Adam,
became a living soul”, the character of the new creation is
disclosed in the affirmation that “the last Adam became a life-
giving spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:45). The risen Christ, for Paul,
exists no longer in a body of flesh and blood but in a “spiritual
body” (1 Corinthians 15:44).
Those who, even while living on earth in mortal bodies, are
by faith united to the risen Christ have something of this new
order of existence communicated to them. This is a different
kind of personal union from those which bind human beings
together in their present life. The closest personal union in this
life is that between man and woman, described in the words of
the creation narrative as their becoming “one flesh” (Genesis
2:24)—“but”, says Paul, “he who is united to the Lord becomes
one spirit with him” (1 Corinthians 6:17). It is difficult to
dissociate “one spirit” in this sense from the “one Spirit” in
whom all the people of Christ are united into one body with
him, just as it is difficult to dissociate the “life-giving spirit”
him, just as it is difficult to dissociate the “life-giving spirit”
that Jesus became in resurrection from the Spirit of life that
indwells his people. To this we shall return.
If even while in mortal body a believer in Christ becomes
“one spirit” with him, this unity is to become more fully
experienced in resurrection. For the “spiritual body” worn by
the risen Lord is the prototype for his people, who are to share
his resurrection and have their present bodies of humiliation
transmuted into the likeness of his body of glory (Philippians
3:21). “As we have borne the image of the man of dust”, says
Paul, “we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” (1
Corinthians 15:49). It was as the “man of heaven” that Jesus
appeared to Paul on the Damascus road, we gather, vested with
his body of glory; but when Paul attempts to describe what he
saw, the only vocabulary he can use is that of light.
Paul looked forward to the parousia of Christ, his
manifestation in glory; but the appearance of Christ at his
parousia would be of the same character as his appearance on
the Damascus road, except that it would not be a momentary
flash but a more enduring experience, and that it would be
accompanied by the instantaneous glorification of his people—
whether by the resurrection of those who had died or the
transformation of those still alive. The revelation of the Son of
God would be attended by the simultaneous “revelation of the
sons of God” (Romans 8:19), a prospect also described as their
liberation from bondage to decay and futility, their adoption as
sons, the redemption of their bodies (Romans 8:20–23). This is
the climax of their salvation, the consummation of God’s
eternal purpose of grace towards them.
“In this hope”, says Paul, “we were saved … But if we hope
for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Romans
8:24 f.). The subject-matter of this chapter relates to the
present period of hope—the interval between the past event of
Christ’s death and resurrection and the future event of his
parousia.
2. The exalted Lord
Paul may well have been brought up to think of the days of
the Messiah as an interval separating this age from the age to
come, the resurrection age.3 But whether he had entertained
the belief in such an interval before his conversion or not, the
logic of the Christ-event imposed it on him now. Only, the days
of the Messiah were not characterized by Messiah’s reigning
from an earthly throne, like the throne of his father David, but
by his reigning from the right hand of God. The oracle of Psalm
110:1, “Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your
footstool”, is one of the most primitive Christian testimonia. If,
as was widely held, this oracle was addressed to the Messiah,4
then, since in the eyes of his followers Jesus was the Messiah,
the oracle was fulfilled in him.
Paul does not often use the expression about the right hand
of God; when he does so, it is probably because it had already
become familiar to Christians when they confessed their faith
in the Christ “who died, … who was raised from the dead, who
is at the right hand of God, …”—as Paul puts it in Romans 8:34,
apparently quoting such a confession of faith. (That is the only
place where the expression occurs in his “capital” epistles; it
appears also in Colossians 3:1 and Ephesians 1:20.) Like his
fellow-Jews, he knew “the right hand of God” to be a metaphor
denoting supreme authority, but he may have preferred to use
it sparingly lest some of his Gentile hearers or readers should
imagine that it had physical or local significance. It is, of
course, difficult to think or speak of exaltation or supremacy
without the use of spatial imagery. Christian astrophysicists
who recite the historic creeds are not charged with
inconsistency for employing the terminology of the three-
decker universe; this terminology provides serviceable
metaphors for the expression of transcendence, or of
communication in both directions between God and man. Even
in the first century such terminology was recognized by many
thinking people as metaphorical, and among those thinking
people Paul is entitled to be included.
Instead of referring to Christ as being seated at God’s right
hand, Paul speaks of him as “highly exalted”,5 endowed with
“the name which is above every name” (Philippians 2:9).6 The
“name which is above every name” is the designation “Lord”. It
is the divine purpose, says Paul (or the source which he
quotes), that “every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is
Lord” (Philippians 2:11). The Greek noun he uses is kyrios,
which because of the Septuagint usage lent itself happily to
this exalted connotation. In the Septuagint it is used not only to
render such a Hebrew word as ʾādôn (“lord”) but also to render
the ineffable name of the God of Israel—the name which we
commonly reproduce as Yahweh. Thus the Septuagint of Psalm
110:1 uses kyrios twice—“The kyrios said to my kyrios”—just as
most of our English versions use “Lord”: “The LORD said to my
lord”. But the Hebrew text means “Yahweh’s oracle to my lord
(ʾādôn)”. The person addressed by the psalmist as “my lord”
was probably the Davidic king, so that the later messianic
interpretation was not inappropriate.7 But in the Septuagint
the person addressed in the oracle is designated by the same
word as Yahweh himself: in that sense he shares “the name
which is above every name”.
The wording of Philippians 2:10 f. is based on Isaiah 45:23,
where Yahweh swears by himself: “To me every knee shall bow,
every tongue shall swear”.8 Here, however, it is in Jesus’ name
that every knee shall bow, and it is Jesus’ lordship that every
tongue shall confess. Nor is this by any means the only
instance in the New Testament where an Old Testament
passage containing kyrios as the equivalent of Yahweh is
applied to Jesus.9 In any case, the title Lord in the highest
sense that it can bear belongs distinctively to the risen and
exalted Jesus, and not for Paul only. Luke’s testimony is to the
same effect: his account of Peter’s address in Jerusalem at the
first Christian Pentecost ends with the quotation of Psalm
110:1 and the peroration based on it, calling on all the house of
Israel to know assuredly that God has made the crucified Jesus
“both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:34–36).
To Paul, however (and to other early Christians), the
acknowledgment of Jesus as Lord in the highest sense which
that title can bear was far from being the result of a linguistic
accident; it was far, too, from being but an ex officio
designation of the Messiah. It was the most adequate term for
expressing what he (and his fellow-believers) had come to
understand and appreciate of Jesus’ person and achievement
and his present decisive rôle in the outworking of God’s
purpose of blessing for the universe.10
If it be asked if this use of the title “Lord” goes back to the
earliest Aramaic-speaking phase of the church’s life, the
answer is Yes. The Aramaic equivalent of Greek kyrios is mar,
as in the invocation maranā–thā (“Our Lord, come”), which
found its way untranslated into the vocabulary of Greek-
speaking Christians (1 Corinthians 16:22)—more particularly,
into the eucharistic liturgy (Didache 10:6).11 That mar could be
used (as kyrios was) to denote the God of Israel is shown by the
targum on Job from Cave 11 at Qumran, where the form mārē
appears as an equivalent of Shaddai, and in the Aramaic
fragments of 1 Enoch from Cave 4, where maranā (9:4) and the
emphatic state maryā (10:9) are used with reference to God.12
The title “Son of God” is also given to Jesus in a distinctive
sense in resurrection: he was “designated Son of God in power,
according to the Spirit of holiness, by his resurrection from the
dead” (Romans 1:4). In Paul’s thought, of course, he did not
begin to be Son of God at the resurrection: speaking of his
coming into the world Paul says that “God sent forth his son,
born of a woman” (Galatians 4:4). But during his earthly life he
was the Son of God, comparatively speaking, “in weakness”;13
as the risen Lord he is the Son of God “in power”.14
Like the title “Lord”, “Son of God” was also confirmed by an
oracular testimonium—by Psalm 2:7, where Yahweh addresses
his anointed one in the words; “You are my Son; today I have
begotten you”.15 But (like the title Lord “Son of God” is for Paul
much more than a designation which Jesus, as Messiah, bears
ex officio;16 it expresses the unique personal relation which
Jesus bore to God, as indeed it appears to have done for Jesus
himself.17
Luke seems to recognize the special place that the
designation of Jesus as Son of God had in Paul’s ministry, for
designation of Jesus as Son of God had in Paul’s ministry, for
whereas he makes other preachers of the apostolic message in
its early days proclaim Jesus as Lord and Messiah, he sums up
Paul’s earliest public testimony to Jesus in the words, “He is
the Son of God” (Acts 9:20). Perhaps the language in which
Paul himself describes his call and commission, “God … was
pleased to reveal his Son in me, that I might proclaim him
among the Gentiles” (Galatians 1:15 f.), implies that an
appreciation of Jesus as the Son of God was inherent in his
conversion experience.
Although Paul makes infrequent use of the metaphor “the
right hand of God”, he takes the oracle of Psalm 110:1
seriously as a messianic testimonium, and in fact in 1
Corinthians 15:24–28 he gives a fuller exposition of it than does
any other New Testament writer. “Sit at my right hand”, ran
the oracle, “till I make your enemies your footstool”—and Paul
undertakes to identify these enemies. They are not flesh-and-
blood enemies; they are “principalities and powers”, forces in
the universe which work against the purpose of God and the
well-being of man. It is to forces of this order that Paul has
referred earlier in 1 Corinthians as the “rulers of this age” who,
in ignorance of the hidden wisdom decreed by God from ages
past for his people’s glory, “crucified the Lord of glory” (1
Corinthians 2:6–8). Pontius Pilate and others may have played
their historic part in this, but without realizing it they were
agents of those hostile forces in the spiritual realm. Now,
thanks to the victory of the cross and the reign of the risen
Lord, those forces are being progressively destroyed. The last
and most intractable of those forces is death, which is to be
destroyed at the final resurrection of which the resurrection of
Christ is the first instalment.
“Sit at right hand”, said the oracle, “till I make your enemies
your footstool”—so, says Paul, “Christ must reign till God has
put all his enemies under his feet” (1 Corinthians 15:25). But
when all those enemies are subjugated, including death itself,
then the reign of Christ is merged in the eternal reign of God.
The reign of Christ, “the age of the Messiah”, is thus an
intermediate phase between the present age and the endless
age to come, or from certain points of view it may be regarded
age to come, or from certain points of view it may be regarded
as the overlapping of the two, a phase in which the present age
is not fully ended and the age to come has not been fully
established.
A further word must be interjected here about those
principalities and powers. A close examination of what Paul has
to say about them shows that, to his way of thinking, they are
largely those elemental forces that dominate the minds of men
and women and are powerful so long as men and women
believe in them and render them allegiance. But when their
minds are liberated by faith in the crucified and risen Christ,
then the bondage imposed by those forces is broken, their
power is dissolved and they are revealed as the “weak and
beggarly” nonentities that they are in themselves. To mention
two of the most potent, the strength of sin and the fear of death
could bind men and women’s lives in an iron grip, but those
who enjoyed the liberation effected by Christ knew that sin had
no more dominion over them and that even death, in advance
of the coming resurrection, could be greeted as pure gain. The
destruction of the principalities and powers may be expressed
in figurative language, but the reality is the enjoyment of
inward release and freedom experienced by the believer.18
In the passage already quoted from Romans 8:34, where
Paul seems to echo a primitive confession of faith in “Christ
Jesus who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at
the right hand of God”, he continues with the clause: “who
indeed intercedes for us”. The reigning Christ, that is to say, is
not passively waiting for the Father to fulfil his promise to
make his enemies his footstool; he is actively engaged on his
people’s behalf. The confessional words are placed by Paul in a
forensic context, in imitation of a recurring Old Testament
motif19: he begins with the challenge, “Who shall bring any
charge against God’s elect?” and affirms that no one will dare
to fill the rôle of the Old Testament sāṭān20 and attempt to
prosecute them in the heavenly court because God himself is
their justifier and the Christ who died and rose is present as
counsel for their defence.
The ascription of an intercessory ministry to the ascended
Christ may be based on Isaiah 53:12, where the humiliated and
vindicated Servant of the Lord is said to have “made
intercession for the transgressors”;21 it is not peculiar to Paul
among the New Testament theologians, for in 1 John 2:1 “Jesus
Christ the righteous” is presented as his people’s “advocate
with the Father”, while the theme is elaborated by the writer to
the Hebrews in his portrayal of Jesus as the enthroned high
priest, who “is able for all time to save those who draw near to
God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for
them” (Hebrews 7:25).22
In other words, Christ’s active concern for his people is not
exhausted by his death on their behalf; in his new order of
existence he is still their friend and helper, supplying spiritual
sustenance to meet their varied need.
3. The Lord and the Spirit
But when Paul deals with this supplying of the present
spiritual need of the people of Christ, he does so for the most
part in terms of the activity of the Spirit, to the point where
much that he says about the ministry of the ascended Christ
can be paralleled by what he says about the ministry of the
Spirit. The love, for example, which the Spirit pours out into
the hearts of believers (Romans 5:5) is no abstraction; it is
described in 1 Corinthians 13 in almost personal terms, as
though the character of Christ were being portrayed. Similarly,
in 2 Corinthians 3:18 the Spirit’s function in the lives of
believers is to transform them progressively into the image of
Christ, “from one degree of glory to another; for this comes
from the Lord who is the Spirit”.
This phrase, “the Lord who is the Spirit”, is based on a
midrashic interpretation which Paul has just been giving of the
narrative in Exodus 34:29–35. Moses, his countenance shining
from his confrontation with the divine glory, wore a veil to
conceal the radiance from his fellow-Israelites, but removed it
when he “went in before the LORD”. Paul takes this to mean
that each time Moses went into the presence of God he was
“re-charged” with the divine glory, and veiled his face when he
went out so that the Israelites should not see that this glory
was a fading one which required repeated renewal. The fading
glory on Moses’ face is contrasted, as we have seen, with the
unfading “glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Corinthians
4:6), by way of pointing the contrast between the inferior glory
of the law, introduced for a limited period and destined to pass
away, and the surpassing glory of the gospel, “the dispensation
of the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:8).
But even in the Exodus narrative Paul sees the gospel age
adumbrated: as Moses removed the veil from his face when he
“went in before the LORD” (Exodus 34:34), so, “when a man
turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now [Paul adds] the
Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:16 f.).23 That is to say, “the LORD”
in the Exodus narrative corresponds to the Spirit in this new
order, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom of
access to the divine presence “with unveiled face”.24 Access to
God in the dispensation of law, he implies, was difficult and
hedged about with restrictions and inhibitions; access to God in
the dispensation of the Spirit is free and unreserved.
The statement, “the Lord is the Spirit”, has been taken to
assert an identity between Christ as Lord and the Spirit of God,
but this is probably not Paul’s intention. The statement is
rather Paul’s interpretation of Moses’ entering the divine
presence, or his adaptation of Moses’ experience to that of the
believer under the new covenant. What the Lord was to Moses,
the Spirit is to the believer; yet in saying “the Lord is the
Spirit” and in his later reference to “the Lord who is the
Spirit”—literally “the Lord the Spirit”—Paul suggests, not
indeed the identity, but certainly the close association that
exists between the ascended Christ and the Spirit in the
believer. His language, in the circumspect words of George
Smeaton, a nineteenth-century Scottish theologian, “shows
how fully he apprehended their joint mission, and how
emphatically he intimates that Christ is never to be conceived
of apart from the Spirit, nor the Spirit conceived of apart from
Him”.25 In our own day Ernst Käsemann is more forthright, if
less circumspect, and describes the Spirit as “the earthly
praesentia of the exalted Lord”.26
But this is Professor Käsemann’s comment not on “the Lord
who is the Spirit” but on a statement to which we have already
alluded: that Jesus in resurrection became “a life-giving Spirit”
(1 Corinthians 15:45). And whatever may be said of “the Lord is
the Spirit”, prima facie an identity of the risen Christ with the
Spirit would seem to be affirmed in the clause: “the last Adam
became a life-giving Spirit”. Elsewhere Paul knows of only one
life-giving Spirit, and that is “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus”
(Romans 8:2), the Spirit whose indwelling power quickens
mortal bodies (Romans 8:11), the Spirit whose life-giving
property is set in contrast with the death-dealing effect of the
law (2 Corinthians 3:6), the Spirit through whom the believer’s
inner being is renewed from day to day even while the outer
being disintegrates (2 Corinthians 4:16), the Spirit whose
presence within is the guarantee of the believer’s investiture
with a heavenly and imperishable body (2 Corinthians 5:5).
True, in using the phrase “life-giving spirit” of the last Adam,
Paul may be moved by the desire to find an appropriately
balancing phrase to the “living soul” predicated of the first
Adam in Genesis 2:7. But the phrase chosen to describe the last
Adam is particularly suitable in view of two crucial articles of
faith which Paul repeatedly emphasizes: (i) that Christ, by his
resurrection from the dead, is the first-fruits of the resurrection
harvest in which all his people will share, and (ii) that the Spirit
has been given to his people here and now as the pledge and
first instalment of their eventual participation in their Master’s
resurrection life and glory. Here and now “he who is united to
the Lord becomes one Spirit with him” (1 Corinthians 6:17).
This is another balancing phrase, chosen by Paul as a
counterpoise to the “one flesh” which man and woman become
in marital union (Genesis 2:24), but it is not chosen for stylistic
reasons only. It expresses a recurring theme in Pauline
thought: “he who is united to the Lord” by faith derives from
him eternal life now and the hope of glory to come; but since it
him eternal life now and the hope of glory to come; but since it
is through the Spirit that the life and hope are mediated, “he
who is united to the Lord becomes one Spirit with him”—and
with all those who are similarly united to him.
4. The image of God
Paul, as we have seen, associates “the light of the gospel of
the glory of Christ” with the fact that Christ is “the image of
God”. If the former phrase recalls his Damascus road
experience, what about the latter phrase? Was there something
about the appearance of the risen Christ which instantaneously
impressed him as being the image of God? Did he, for example,
see “a likeness as it were of a human form” as Ezekiel did when
he saw “the likeness of the glory of the LORD” (Ezekiel 1:26,
28) and recognize that it was Jesus by the words which he
heard him speak? We cannot be sure; it is difficult to know
what meaning the expression “the image of God” would have
had for Paul. Yet when he speaks of seeing “the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” he uses
language which practically amounts to seeing in Christ the
image of God.27
Paul is not the only New Testament writer to present Christ
in these terms: the Fourth Evangelist records the progressive
revelation of God in the ministry of the incarnate Word, until it
finds its climax on the cross; and the writer to the Hebrews
speaks of the Son of God as “the effulgence of his glory and the
very stamp of his being” (Hebrews 1:3). But it is in Paul that
the presentation of Christ as the image of God is worked out
most fully and consistently, with its corollary of the increasing
transformation of the people of Christ into that same image by
the power of the indwelling Spirit,28 until nothing remains of
the earthly image in those who finally display the image of the
heavenly man.29
Man, according to the Old Testament, was made in God’s
image (Genesis 1:26 f.) and for his glory (Isaiah 43:7): in the
order of creation he is, as Paul says, “the image and glory of
God” (1 Corinthians 11:7).30 It is difficult to dissociate Paul’s
portrayal of the risen Christ as the second man, the last Adam,
from his view of Christ as the image of God and the revealer of
his glory. What the first man was, imperfectly, in the old
creation, Christ is, perfectly, in the new creation—the
resurrection order.
It is tempting to go farther and relate another aspect of
Paul’s christology to this appreciation of Christ as the image of
God. In the Alexandrian book of Wisdom, which was evidently
known to Paul, wisdom is not only personified but described as
the “image” (eikōn) of God’s goodness.31
One thing is certain: that Paul, in common with some of his
fellow-theologians among the New Testament writers,
identified Christ with the wisdom of God and ascribed to him
certain activities which are predicated of personified wisdom in
the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. When, for example,
Paul speaks of the “one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are
all things and through whom we exist” (1 Corinthians 8:6), or
describes him as “the image of the invisible God” in that “all
things were created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:15
f.), this identification of Christ with divine wisdom underlies
such statements, just as it underlies the affirmation of John 1:4
that “all things were made through him” (i.e. the incarnate
Word) and that of Hebrews 1:2 that the Son of God is the one
“through whom also he made the worlds”.32 But here it is not
particularly the risen Christ that is in view: it is the eternal
Christ, whose entry into the world of mankind was no
involuntary experience but a deliberate act of condescension:
“being in the form of God, … he emptied himself and took the
form of a servant” (Philippians 2:6 f.);33 “though he was rich,
yet for your sake he became poor” (2 Corinthians 8:9).
If this aspect of Paul’s christology is not related to his vision
of Christ as the image of God, then it is difficult to relate it to
Paul’s subsequent personal experience of Christ. Before his
conversion he probably identified divine wisdom with the
Torah, the “desirable instrument”34 by which God made the
world, if not the goal for which he made it.35 After his
conversion the centrality of the Torah in Paul’s thought and life
was displaced by the centrality of Christ, and this might
suggest the transference to Christ of properties and activities
previously ascribed to the Torah. But this is less likely: Christ
displaced the Torah in Paul’s scheme of things, but, far from
being its equivalent, he was for Paul “the end of the law”
(Romans 10:4).36 But he was not the end of divine wisdom; he
was its very embodiment.
It is probably significant, however, that the pre-existent
Christ is not associated by Paul with the Spirit as the risen
Christ is: for Paul, the Spirit is distinctively the herald and sign
of the new age, coming into his purview first of all in relation to
Christ’s being “designated Son of God in power according to
the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead”
(Romans 1:4). Why the phrase “Spirit of holiness” should be
used here rather than Paul’s more usual “Holy Spirit” is a
matter for inquiry, but it is a literal translation of the Hebrew
construction for “holy spirit”37 and so cannot be distinguished
in meaning from “the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the
dead”, whose residence in the lives of the people of Christ is
the pledge of their resurrection too (Romans 8:11). The Spirit
of Christ, as Albert Schweitzer put it, “is the life-principle of
His Messianic personality”;38 it is the living Christ himself who
is his people’s hope of glory and it is in him that the hope is to
be realized: “When Christ who is our life appears”, says Paul,
“then you also will appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:4).
When the people of Christ in resurrection share fully in the
image of their exalted Lord, the Spirit’s present ministry has
been fulfilled. But the Spirit who fulfils this present ministry is
the Spirit that came upon Jesus before he came upon his
followers: for Paul, in other words, the exalted Lord whose
risen life and power are conveyed to his people by the
indwelling Spirit is identical and continuous with him who lived
among men as a servant, the crucified one, the historical Jesus.
CHAPTER 13
Paul and the Hellenistic
Mission
1. Paul returns to the Greek world
WITH HIS RETURN TO “THE REGIONS OF SYRIA AND
CILICIA” Paul was irrevocably committed to the Hellenistic
world. He had been sent or brought to Jerusalem in his youth
by his parents in order to be immunized against the infection of
the Hellenistic world—that “place of evil waters” (as the sage
Abtalyon called it a generation or more before the birth of
Paul), which brought death to those who drank from them and
caused the name of God to be profaned.1 Now he had come
back to this ill-omened territory to claim it and its inhabitants
for his new master.
Judaea, and even Jerusalem, formed part of the Hellenistic
world.2 Greek was spoken alongside Aramaic (and possibly
Hebrew) in the holy city itself3 and, as we have seen,
Hellenistic Jews had their synagogues there in which the
scriptures were read and worship was conducted in Greek. The
pagan influences of Hellenism were kept at bay from the circle
in which Paul received his education, but even the sages knew
Greek and were capable of giving their pupils prophylactic
courses in Greek language and culture. Simeon the son of
Gamaliel is said to have had many pupils who studied “the
wisdom of the Greeks” alongside as many others who studied
the Torah,4 and it need not be doubted that Gamaliel the elder
also had such pupils. It is quite probable that Paul acquired the
rudiments of Greek learning in Gamaliel’s school. But from his
return to Tarsus throughout the rest of his active life he was
exposed to the Greek way of life in one city after another, for
he no longer led a cloistered existence, but lived for the most
part as a Gentile among Gentiles in order to win Gentiles for
the gospel.5 The knowledge of Greek literature and thought
that his letters attest was part of the common stock of
educated people in the Hellenistic world of that day; it
bespeaks no formal instruction received from Greek teachers.
The direction of his faith and life was by now too firmly fixed—
first by his Jewish upbringing and then by his submission to
Jesus as Lord—for Hellenism to exercise a decisive influence on
his mind. We can recognize in his writings concepts and
expressions, drawn especially from popular Stoicism, which
were in the air at the time and which he freely pressed into
service in a Christian context;6 but while he preached the
gospel to the Hellenes, it was no hellenized gospel that he
preached. His proclamation of deliverance and life through
Christ crucified brought his gospel into basic conflict with
accepted standards of Hellenistic value and gave it the quality
of “folly” which it had in the eyes of those of his hearers who
made their assessments by what Paul called “the wisdom of the
world” (1 Corinthians 1:20 ff.).
For about ten years from his arrival back in Tarsus only the
scantiest information has been preserved about Paul’s
movements and experiences. He himself makes it clear that he
spent those years in evangelization: this was the period during
which the Judaean churches heard reports of how their former
persecutor was “now preaching the faith he once tried to
destroy” (Galatians 1:23).7 If, by his own account (Galatians
1:22), he was personally unknown to those churches—from
which the church of Jerusalem cannot be excluded—that was
because his former persecution had been directed more
particularly against the Hellenistic disciples, few of whom now
remained in Judaea.
It is possible that during these years he endured some of the
hardships which he later lists in 2 Corinthians 11:22–27 as
credentials of his apostolic commission. When, for example, he
speaks of having on five occasions “received at the hands of the
Jews the forty lashes less one”8—none of these occasions being
mentioned elsewhere either by himself or by Luke—they must
be assigned to a stage in his Christian career when he still
submitted to synagogue discipline. Presumably he could have
claimed exemption from this discipline on the ground of his
Roman citizenship, but that would have meant in effect the
denial of his Jewishness and the renunciation of his regular
policy of using the synagogue as his preliminary base of
operation. So long as he made a practice of visiting the
synagogue as an observant Jew in each new city to which he
came, he was obliged to accept its discipline, until he finally
withdrew from it. It may well be that some of his experiences of
the thirty-nine lashes belong to this Cilician phase of his life.
Whether more of the “countless beatings”9 and other instances
of harsh treatment to which he refers in the same context can
also be located in this phase it is not possible to say with any
certainty.
2. Jewish missionary enterprise
There is evidence of considerable proselytizing activity
among the Gentiles in the earlier part of the first century
A.D.10 “Love your fellow-creatures”, said Hillel, “and draw
them near to the Torah.”11 The conversion to Judaism of the
ruling house of Adiabene, east of the Tigris, about A.D. 40, is
the most conspicuous instance of proselytization known to us
from this period, and illustrates the missionary activity of Jews
whose business made them travel from time to time in foreign
parts.12 Among the groups from the dispersion listed by Luke
as being present in Jerusalem for the festival of Pentecost in
A.D. 30 were “visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes”
(Acts 2:10). One of the seven leaders of the Hellenistic section
in the primitive church of Jerusalem was “Nicolaus, a proselyte
of Antioch” (Acts 6:5).13 Philip, another of the Hellenistic
leaders, baptized an Ethiopian proselyte or God-fearer who was
travelling home from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and sent him
“on his way rejoicing” (Acts 8:27–39), while Peter about the
same time baptized the God-fearer Cornelius, a Roman
centurion stationed in Caesarea, together with his household.14
God-fearers were Gentiles who attached themselves in varying
degrees to the Jewish worship and way of life without as yet
becoming full proselytes. To become a full proselyte, a member
by conversion of the Jewish religious community, a male
Gentile was normally required to submit to circumcision, in
addition to undergoing a ceremonial bath (“proselyte
baptism”), offering a sacrifice and undertaking to keep the law
of Moses.15 For this reason it was easier for Gentile women to
become proselytes: the three last requirements sufficed for
them. But proselytes and God-fearers, especially God-fearers,
were present in large enough numbers throughout the
provinces of the Roman Empire to provide a nucleus for the
churches which Paul planted in one city after another.
The presence of those proselytes and God-fearers throughout
the provinces was the product of Jewish religious witness and
missionary activity among the Gentiles. Those Jews who shared
in this activity took seriously Israel’s mission, promulgated
through the prophet of consolation, to be Yahweh’s witnesses
in the world and declare his praise among the nations (Isaiah
43:10–12, 21). It has been suggested by some that Paul himself,
before his conversion, had conceived a desire to take a leading
part in this activity, to bring Gentiles into obedience to the
law.16 This cannot be proved. But if there is any truth in the
suggestion, then it would serve as a background for his new
vocation to proclaim Christ among the Gentiles—the law being
displaced in his plan of missionary campaign, as it was in his
personal life, by the crucified and exalted Jesus.
3. The gospel comes to Syrian Antioch
Paul was far from being the only Christian missionary in
Syria and Cilicia during those years, The Hellenistic disciples
who had shaken the dust of Jerusalem and Judaea from their
feet, considering perhaps that the severe persecution they had
undergone after Stephen’s death would bring on the city and
region divine retribution which nothing could avert, settled in
the surrounding territories and began to propagate their faith
there.17 If a high estimation of the holiness of Jerusalem had
earlier brought them from their original homes to settle there,
their disillusionment was all the greater when the holy city
drove them out. If, as they now found, pagan or semi-pagan
environments would provide them with greater freedom to
serve God and maintain their witness to his saving act in
Christ, the place of such environments in the divine scheme
must be reappraised. Philip, one of Stephen’s colleagues in the
Jerusalem church, who seems to have taken over the
Hellenistic leadership after Stephen’s death, initiated a
remarkably successful Christian mission in a Samaritan city,
and then took up residence in the largely Gentile city of
Caesarea Maritima.18 Other Hellenistic fugitives travelled
farther afield—some, quite probably, to Alexandria and Cyrene,
from which a number of them had originally come, and others,
of whom Luke tells us more particularly, to Phoenicia and
Syria, as far north as Antioch.
Antioch on the Orontes (modern Antakya in the Hatay
province of Turkey), standing at the foot of Mount Silpius, some
eighteen miles upstream from its seaport Seleucia Pieria, was
founded in 300 B.C. by Seleucus Nicator, first ruler of the
Seleucid dynasty, and named by him after his father Antiochus.
As the capital of the Seleucid empire it rapidly became a city of
importance, and when Syria became a Roman province in 64
B.C. Antioch was the seat of administration and residence of
the imperial legate.19 It remained the provincial capital when
Eastern Cilicia was united with Syria in 25 B.C. It was at this
time the third largest city in the Roman world, planned on the
grid pattern, surpassed in population only by Rome and
Alexandria. Julius Caesar, Augustus and Tiberius enlarged and
adorned it, while Herod the Great contributed colonnades on
both sides of the main street and paved the street itself with
polished stone.20 It was a centre of commerce as well as a
political capital; the products of Syria passed through it on
their way to the rest of the Mediterranean lands. Since it was
near the frontier between the settled Graeco-Roman world and
the Orient, it was more cosmopolitan than most Hellenistic
cities.
Jews formed part of the population of Antioch from its
foundation onward, even before Judaea itself was governed
from Antioch (as it was during the first half of the second
century B.C.). In 145 B.C. the city had experience of Jews in
another rôle than that of settlers and merchants, for Demetrius
II, involved in civil war with a rival contender for the Seleucid
throne, whose forces occupied most of Antioch, enlisted the
support of three thousand soldiers from the army of Jonathan
the Hasmonaean, who showed their skill in urban fighting and,
after working considerable and perhaps unnecessary
destruction, helped to regain control of the city for the king.21
By the beginning of the Christian era, proselytes to Judaism are
said (by Josephus) to have been specially abundant in
Antioch;22 one of them, Nicolaus, became in turn a convert to
the faith of Jesus and is listed, as was mentioned above, among
the Hellenistic leaders in the church of Jerusalem.23
To this city of Antioch, then, came a number of Hellenistic
refugees from Jerusalem, including (Luke tells us) some men
whose original homes were in Cyprus and Cyrene.24 The
refugees were active propagandists for their faith, although for
the most part they confined their propaganda to their fellow-
Hellenists—Greek-speaking Jews—but when these men of
Cyprus and Cyrene came to Antioch, they conceived the idea of
letting the local Greeks, pagans though they were, share in
their good news. Large numbers of those Greeks hailed the
good news as something which exactly met their need. In their
great city there would have been many competing cults and
mystery religions which held out the promise of salvation from
the power of evil or from a sense of estrangement in an
unfriendly world. When the visitors told their good news of
salvation through Christ, the terms in which they spoke would
not be entirely unfamiliar to their hearers; but there was
something about the Christ whom they proclaimed as saviour
which was peculiarly attractive and not paralleled in any of the
lords or saviours celebrated in those other cults. Perhaps they
spoke of him as one who existed in the form of God before he
came to earth as man, who as man accepted humiliation and
death, and was accordingly exalted by God above all creation
and endowed with the title “Lord” (kyrios) in the highest sense
which it was capable of bearing. This possibility hangs on the
view that the hymn in honour of Christ which Paul incorporates
in Philippians 2:5–11, widely believed to be pre-Pauline,25 was
current as early as the Hellenistic mission in Syrian Antioch.
The hymn in any case harks back to the fourth Servant Song
which, as had been said already,26 gave rise to an important
strand of christological thinking in the early Jerusalem church.
It is natural that the designation “Christian” should first have
been given to the followers of Jesus in Antioch, and by Gentiles.
As the Herodians in the Gospels were adherents of Herod,27 so
the Christians (christianoi) were adherents of Christ (such
forms consisting of the stem of a personal name followed by an
originally Latin suffix, -ianus). Greek-speaking Jews at that date
would not have referred to Jesus as Christ, for that was still a
title (christos, the “anointed” one, corresponding to the Semitic
messiah);28 to refer to him thus would have been to
acknowledge him as Messiah. But in Gentile ears Christ was
simply an alternative name for Jesus; it had no such
associations for them as it had for Jews. Christos sounded
exactly like a fairly common slave-name, Chrēstos (Latin
Chrestus), and among Greeks and Romans there was
considerable confusion between, the two spellings,29 as also
between christianoi and chrēstianoi. Even in Acts 11:26, where
it is mentioned that “in Antioch the disciples were for the first
time called Christians”, a few Greek witnesses to the text
(including the first hand in Codex Sinaiticus) exhibit the
spelling chrēstianous (accusative plural) instead of
christianous. The latter is certainly what Luke wrote, but the
former may well represent what some of the Antiochenes
thought they were saying.
The leaders of the Jerusalem church at this stage appear to
have exercised a general supervision or, indeed, control over
the spread of the gospel into adjacent territories. For example,
when Philip’s recent preaching in a Samaritan city won a large
number of converts there,30 Peter and John came from
Jerusalem and welcomed these new converts into the messianic
fellowship.31 A similar situation faced them now, when news
came to Jerusalem of the revolutionary extension of the gospel
among the Gentiles of Antioch. Who could tell what wild
syncretism, so congenial to Antioch, might not develop from it
if proper direction were not given? A delegate was accordingly
sent to Antioch to see what was going on. The results might
have been disastrous if the wrong type of delegate had been
chosen; fortunately, the man who was sent was Barnabas, the
“encourager”.32 No doubt the forward movement at Antioch
presented features which some members of the church of
Jerusalem would have found deeply disturbing, but Barnabas
found much cause for satisfaction. “When he came and saw the
grace of God, he was glad”, says Luke (Acts 11:23), so he
settled down at Antioch and gave the Hellenistic missionaries
and their converts the sympathetic encouragement and wise
guidance that they needed. Before long, a large and growing
church was established in Antioch—a church which, with the
rapid progress of the gospel among the Greek population, was
bound very quickly to have more members of Gentile birth than
of Jewish birth.
In this situation, Barnabas began to feel the need of a
colleague to share the responsibility of supervising the life and
activity of this new church, and his mind turned to Paul. He
knew of Paul’s vocation to the evangelizing of Gentiles, and
perhaps heard reports from time to time of what Paul had been
doing in this regard in Cilicia. All that he knew of Paul
convinced him that there was no man more suitable to join him
in his work at Antioch, so he journeyed to Tarsus to find him,
and persuaded him to return to Antioch with him. If we say that
Paul was thus (about A.D. 45) brought back into the main
stream of Christian action, Paul would not necessarily have
agreed; wherever he was would have been the main stream in
his eyes at any particular time. But he was brought into the
main stream of recorded Christian action (so far as records are
extant), for it is now that he reappears in Luke’s narrative,
after his departure for Tarsus at the end of his brief visit with
Peter in Jerusalem. The evangelization of Antioch and the path
of Christian advance from that city would be of special interest
to Luke if, as tradition asserts, he was himself an Antiochene by
birth.33
CHAPTER 14
Man of Vision and Man of
Action
1. A strange experience
TOWARDS THE END OF THE LARGELY UNCHRONICLED
INTERVAL between Paul’s return to Tarsus and his call to
Antioch he had a strange experience which left its mark on him
for the rest of his life. He gives some account of it in 2
Corinthians 12:2–10, where he says that it happened fourteen
years before the time of writing. Since the time of writing was
about A.D. 56, the date of the experience would have been A.D.
42 or 43. The experience belongs to the category which is
commonly designated ecstatic, but it is difficult to come to a
definite conclusion about its nature because Paul himself
describes it in such vague terms. What he says is that “whether
in the body or out of the body”—a question to which he can
give no answer—he found himself rapt to the extraterrestrial
realm variously called “paradise” and “the third heaven”1 and
there heard things impossible and impermissible to put into
words.
This type of experience, described in this kind of language, is
not unparalleled in Paul’s world. We have a literary parallel in
the account of Enoch’s bodily transportation into the celestial
realms and his return to earth (1 Enoch 12:1 ff.; cf. 71:1 ff.).
But whereas we are told quite particularly what Enoch saw and
heard, Paul gives no such details: what he heard was
incommunicable. In his account of the experience itself he
stands outside it and relates it as if it had happened to a third
party—to “a man in Christ” whom he once knew or, even more
vaguely, to “So-and-so”. Only when the normal mode of
vaguely, to “So-and-so”. Only when the normal mode of
existence has been resumed and he describes the sequel does
he continue the narrative in the first person singular.
As a parallel from real life rather than apocalyptic literature
we have the story of four rabbis—Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Elisha
ben Abuyah and Aqiba (all of whom flourished in the earlier
part of the second century A.D. and so were two generations
younger than Paul)—who entered Paradise. Ben Azzai looked
and died, Ben Zoma looked and went mad, Elisha ben Abuyah
became an apostate. Only Aqiba survived the experience
unscathed.2 What exactly is meant by their entry into Paradise
is a matter of debate, but some mystical experience is probable
in their case as in Paul’s. The point of the story is that such an
experience is perilous and liable to leave its mark indelibly on
one who undergoes it.
Paul did not escape from this experience of his unscathed,
but because of the spirit in which he accepted its disagreeable
consequences, they became a blessing to him instead of a curse
(2 Cor. 12:7–10):
To keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, I was given a
splinter in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being
too elated. Three times I besought the Lord about this, that it should leave me;
but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in
weakness.” I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of
Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with
weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am
weak, then I am strong.
The sequel to Paul’s mystical experience was a distressing,
indeed humiliating, physical ailment which he feared at first
might be a handicap to his effective ministry but which in fact,
by giving his self-esteem a knock-out blow and keeping him
constantly dependent on the divine enabling, proved to be a
help, not a handicap. Many guesses have been made about the
identity of this “splinter in the flesh”; their very variety proves
the impossibility of a certain diagnosis. One favourite guess has
been epilepsy—a guess which, if substantiated, would put Paul
into the company of such men of action as Julius Caesar and
Napoleon—but it is no more than a guess.3 Whatever it was, it
was probably the “bodily ailment” from which he suffered when
he first visited the Galatians—an ailment which was a “trial” to
them as well as to him and which might have been expected to
repel them or make them spit in aversion, whereas on the
contrary they welcomed him “as an angel of God” (Galatians
4:13 f.). His thrice-repeated prayer for the removal of the
ailment was answered, not by his deliverance from it, but by
his receiving the necessary grace to bear it—not simply to live
with it but to be thankful for it. If his ministry was so effective
despite this physical weakness, then the transcendent power
was manifestly God’s, not his own.4 Infirmities like this were
welcomed, together with the other hardships which were part
of the apostolic lot, if they were the condition on which the
power of the risen Christ operated through him. They
constantly reminded him not so much of his own inadequacy as
of the total adequacy of Christ, in whom, when he was
personally most weak, he knew himself to be most strong.
2. Paul’s “mysticism”
Such a record as this very naturally raises the question
whether or not Paul can be described as a mystic. That he can
be so described has been believed and affirmed by some
students of the man and his writings whose names carry
exceptional weight in the theological world. We have only to
think of such titles as Albert Schweitzer’s The Mysticism of
Paul the Apostle5 or Johannes Schneider’s Die Passionsmystik
des Paulus6—the wording of the latter title being borrowed
from Adolf Deissmann, who used it of Paul’s interpretation of
Christian existence in terms of dying and rising with Christ.
For Deissmann, Mystik (“mysticism”) was a term applicable “to
every religious tendency that discovers the way to God through
inner experience without the mediation of reasoning”.7
A more positive definition was offered by Evelyn Underhill,
for whom mysticism was “the name of that organic process
which involves the perfect consummation of the Love of God:
the achievement here and now of the immortal heritage of
men”.8 This definition may cover Paul’s religious experience, if
we bear in mind that for him the love of God was mediated and
indeed embodied “in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39).9
According to Albert Schweitzer, Paul’s mysticism is unique
because, in spite of its high intellectual level, it does not take
the form of direct union with God but rather of union with
Christ. “In Paul”, he says, “there is no God-mysticism; only a
Christ-mysticism by means of which man comes into relation to
God.… This ‘being-in-Christ’ is the prime enigma of the Pauline
teaching: once grasped it gives the clue to the whole”.10
When Schweitzer says that there is no “God-mysticism” in
Paul, he concludes that Paul could not have used with approval
the quotation from Epimenides which in Acts 17:28 he is said
to have recited in his speech before the Athenian Areopagus:
“In him we live and move and have our being”.11 On this two
things should be said. First, the so-called mysticism of the
Pauline epistles belongs to the new creation, the order of
redemption; in the Areopagitica it is man’s relation to God in
the order of the old creation that is in view. Second, whatever
was the force of the preposition “in” intended by Epimenides,
Luke represents Paul as quoting his words to prove that God is
the creator of all men and that they accordingly are his
offspring. This is not really a form of “God-mysticism” and in
any case does not conflict with Paul’s statement that in the
order of redemption, or, as he puts it, “in Christ Jesus”,
believers are “all sons of God through faith” (Galatians 3:26).
Moreover, the locution “in God” is not foreign to the Pauline
vocabulary: we recall the twofold mention of “the church of the
Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (1
Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Thessalonians 1:1) and the reference in
Ephesians 3:9 to “the mystery hidden for ages in God who
created all things”—although this last reference cannot be
understood in terms of “God-mysticism”; it means something
like “in the mind (or purpose) of God”.12
But such phrases as “in Christ Jesus” (quoted above) or “in
Christ” or “in the Lord” are characteristic of Paul, and it is the
concept which they express that is often in view (as with
concept which they express that is often in view (as with
Schweitzer) when people speak of “Pauline mysticism”.
If these expressions have a mystical significance, then they
signify a communal or corporate mysticism. There is little
enough in Paul’s writings that savours of “the flight of the
alone to the Alone”.13 Even when he introduces the strange
personal experience described in 2 Corinthians 12:2–10 by
saying that it happened to “a man in Christ”, he uses a phrase
which is applicable to all other Christians and binds him
together with them.
The corporate significance of “in Christ” and similar phrases
is brought out well by the New English Bible, which
occasionally uses such terms as “incorporate” and
“concorporate” to express it. In other words, “in Christ” and
similar expressions convey the same thought as Paul elsewhere
conveys by speaking of Christians as fellow-members of the
body of Christ—a mode of thought which he develops along
fresh and influential lines of his own—although one may be
doubtful about the propriety of describing it in terms of the
“mystical” body of Christ.
The body of Christ (the believing community as a whole),
together with its members one by one, is vitalized by the life of
the risen Christ and energized by his Spirit. Incorporation into
this body is effected by personal faith in Christ, sacramentally
sealed in baptism and sustained by the eucharist.14 For Paul,
baptism symbolizes the believer’s dying and rising with Christ:
“the man we once were” (Romans 6:6) has died in his death
and the “new man”, bearing the Christ-likeness, has come alive
in his resurrection. The external washing in water has an
inward and spiritual counterpart: “in one Spirit we were all
baptized into one body, whether we were Jews or Greeks,
slaves or freemen; and we were all watered with one Spirit” (1
Corinthians 12:13).15
It is plain, however, that for Paul dying and rising with Christ
was not only a matter of sacramental theology or church
doctrine but of personal experience. He thought of his entry
into Christian life in these terms: “I have been crucified with
Christ”, he writes to the Galatian churches, and adds: “it is no
Christ”, he writes to the Galatian churches, and adds: “it is no
longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now
live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me
and gave himself up for me” (Galatians 2:20). This personal
appropriation of the love manifested to mankind in the self-
sacrifice of Christ was as real as his awareness of personal
faith-union with Christ and of that faith-union as the source of
his Christian life. With even greater intensity he describes
himself in his apostolic service as “always carrying about in the
body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be
manifested in our bodies. For [he adds] while we live we are
always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life
of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh” (2 Corinthians
4:10 f.).
3. Sharing the messianic sufferings
When Paul thought of himself in particular as “a man in
Christ”, a member of his body, it was more often than not to
take seriously his special responsibility towards fellow-
members of the same body. The sufferings of the Messiah (a
feature of rabbinical expectation) were, in Paul’s view, the
sufferings to be borne by the Messiah. Jesus accordingly had
suffered on earth, enduring death by crucifixion to procure his
people’s liberation from spiritual bondage. In his present
exaltation he was, naturally, immune from such sufferings as
he had endured on earth; yet (as Paul had learned on the
Damascus road)16 he still counted as his own the sufferings
endured by his people for his sake. According to Luke’s record,
the risen Lord said of the newly-converted Paul, “I will show
him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts
9:16), and Paul’s own account confirms the magnitude and
variety of hardships which he experienced in the course of his
apostolic ministry. He did not resent these things; “we rejoice
in our sufferings”, he said (Romans 5:3), not only because of
their character–building power but also because he was thus
able to realize his ambition of sharing Christ’s sufferings,
“becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain
the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:11).
Nor was his motive in gladly accepting this share in the
sufferings of Christ purely self-regarding. He seems to have
held that the more of these sufferings he personally absorbed,
the less would remain for his fellow-Christians to endure. “I
rejoice in my sufferings for your sake”, he writes to the
Colossians, “and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in
Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church”
(Colossians 1:24).17 To the same effect he tells his friends in
Corinth that “if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and
salvation” (2 Corinthians 1:6). As Jesus had offered up to God
as an atonement “for many” the injuries inflicted on him, so
Paul accepted his injuries and trials the more readily in the
hope that thus his converts and other fellow-believers would be
spared the like. “So, then”, he says, “death is at work in us
[that is, ‘in me’], but life in you” (2 Corinthians 4:12).
4. Life in the Spirit
The bestowal of the Spirit of God, or the Holy Spirit, in the
New Testament is primarily an eschatological phenomenon in
the sense that it is presented as the fulfilment of Old Testament
promises associating this bestowal with the age of renewal.
Ezekiel, for example, during the exile, declares that when God
restores his people’s fortunes, he will give them a new spirit,
his own spirit, so that, cleansed from their moral and religious
defilement, they may thenceforth do his will from the heart
(Ezekiel 11:16–20; 36:24–27). A post-exilic oracle announces
that in the days of restoration God will pour out his spirit on
“all flesh” (Joel 2:28 f.). The context suggests that “all flesh”
refers in the first instance to Israel, although its ultimate range
may be wider. The context further indicates that the chief
effect of this outpouring of Yahweh’s spirit will be an
unprecedented exercise of the gift of prophecy, even by slaves
and slave-girls, not to mention freemen and freewomen.
Not long before the dawn of the Christian era, we find this
expectation taken up in the Qumran community. Part of the
community’s preparation for the new age was its provision of a
“foundation” for the spirit of holiness (or holy spirit). The
community is pictured as a living temple, in which the lay
members constitute the outer compartment, the holy place,
while the priestly members constitute the inner shrine, the holy
of holies. This living temple seems to be envisaged as a
dwelling-place for the spirit of holiness, where the offering of
obedient lives and praising lips is an acceptable substitute for
the animal sacrifices of the old order.18
Not only so, but in the community the spirit of holiness is the
fount of knowledge. The spirit that formerly spoke through the
prophets, God’s “anointed ones” by whom he taught his
people,19 is now available to dwell not only within the
community as a whole but also within individual members,
making known to them, and especially to their leaders, the
interpretation of the prophets words and the way in which
God’s hidden purpose was about to be accomplished at the
impending end-time. “I, as instructor”, runs one of the Hymns
of Thanksgiving, “have come to know thee, O God, by the spirit
which thou hast placed within me, and by thy holy spirit I have
listened faithfully to thy wonderful secret counsel.”20
In the gospel narrative Jesus receives the Holy Spirit at his
baptism21 as the necessary endowment for his messianic
ministry which involved baptizing others with the same
Spirit.22 There are hints in the Synoptic tradition that Jesus
knew that he was operating under limitations during his
Palestinian ministry,23 and these become more explicit in the
upper-room discourses of the Fourth Gospel, where Jesus’
departure means the coming of the Spirit and the empowering
of his followers to accomplish greater works then he himself
had done.24 We are thus prepared for something like Luke’s
account of the descent of the Spirit at the first Christian
Pentecost, accompanied by the signs of the new age on a
greater scale than had been seen during Jesus’ ministry.25
This general understanding of the presence and power of the
Spirit is presupposed in Paul. For him, the Spirit has come: his
indwelling presence is experienced by the people of Christ both
corporately and individually: the church and the individual
believer may equally be spoken of as a temple of the Holy
Spirit.26 And this concept is no mere theologoumenon; it is
something which is experienced intensely and makes an
immense difference to present existence. The Spirit pours the
love of God into the hearts of believers27 and brings them
increasingly into conformity with the character of Christ.
“Where the Spirit of the Lord is”, says Paul, “there is freedom.
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord,
are being changed into his image from one degree of glory to
another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2
Corinthians 3:17b, 18). What this “image” amounts to in
practical experience is spelt out in the ninefold “fruit of the
Spirit” in Galatians 5:22 f.—“love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control”.
These were the qualities which marked the historical Jesus, and
Paul desires to see them reproduced in his converts—and, of
course, in himself. Some of those qualities, he knew, did not
come to him naturally. He was too fond of portraying the
Christian life as a strenuous exercise—a race to be run, a battle
to be fought (especially against himself)28—for us to suppose
that victory came to him “sudden, in a minute”.29
The tension could not be completely resolved so long as he
lived at once in the present age (temporally) and in the age to
come (spiritually)—that is, so long as he lived on earth in
mortal body. But he found the secret of victory in the liberating
“law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:2). The
central principle of this “law of the Spirit” is the love of God in
Christ—first descending vertically and implanted in the heart
by the Spirit and then flowing out into the lives of others. The
canticle of love in 1 Corinthians 13 is an eloquent celebration
of this truth.
5. Fellowship and “mysteries”
Despite what has been said about “corporate mysticism” in
Paul’s thought, it is probably true that the mystic, as commonly
conceived, tends to be self-sufficient in his religious life, or at
least can well be self-sufficient when circumstances require.
He may be gregarious and friendly; he may attach high
importance to life in society, but he does not depend on it for
his religious sustenance. Paul insisted on the common life in
the body of Christ, in which the members were interrelated and
interdependent, each making a personal contribution to the
good of the others and of the whole;30 yet, when necessity so
dictated, he could maintain his spiritual existence apart from
external aids, human or material. “I have learned the secret of
being content (autarkēs)”, he says, “in whatever state of life I
am” (Philippians 4:11). Yet this autarkeia is not Stoic self-
sufficiency: it is so complete a dependence on the Christ who
lives within him that all else is, by comparison, expendable: “I
can do all things”, he adds, “in him who strengthens me”
(Philippians 4:13). At the same time he makes it plain that the
well-being of his friends meant much for his personal sense of
well-being: it is life itself for him to know that his Thessalonian
converts “stand fast in the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 3:8); “you
are in my heart”, he tells the Corinthian Christians, “to die
together and to live together” (2 Corinthians 7:3). He looked
forward with special joy to the day of Christ because he hoped
then to present his converts to the Lord who commissioned him
as the visible evidence of his discharge of his trust: “For what
is our hope or joy or crown of exultation before our Lord Jesus
at his parousia? Is it not you?” (1 Thessalonians 2:19).31
Phenomena such as glossolalia, to which Paul makes special
reference in one of his letters, are not necessarily bound up
with mysticism: the one may exist without the other. When Paul
says that the person speaking with tongues “utters mysteries in
the spirit”, he does not mean that he is communicating special
revelations: in fact, he is not communicating anything, “for no
one understands him” (1 Corinthians 14:2). This last clause,
indeed, is another way of saying that he “utters mysteries”.
Paul himself can practise glossolalia, but we should never have
guessed it had he not, in dealing with this and similar
phenomena in Corinth, divulged the fact; and he divulges it in
order to play it down.32 Clearly he regarded it as an exercise of
little value or importance. To his way of thinking, it is the
source and content of an utterance that are important, not the
bare fact of its being an “inspired” utterance. He knew that the
phenomenon could be paralleled in paganism: hence it was
necessary to understand what was being uttered.33
When he himself, on the other hand, imparts “mysteries”—
new revelations—he does so in intelligible language. How he
received those mysteries is not so clear. It was not by simple
reflection on the problems of Christian faith and life: when he
gives the results of such reflection he does not claim to be
imparting a mystery. Thus he can say, when introducing new
teaching about the coming resurrection, “Lo! I tell you a
mystery” (1 Corinthians 15:51)—the “mystery” or revelation
being that at the resurrection not only will the dead be raised
immortal but the living will exchange perishable for
imperishable bodies to cope with the environment of a new
order. But when he goes on to think of the state of the
individual (of himself, more particularly) between death and
resurrection, he expresses his own conviction—“we know” (2
Corinthians 5:1, 6)—arising from a confrontation with what had
seemed to be certain and imminent death, but he has no
revelation, no “mystery”, to impart.34
His “mysteries”, which he treats as direct communications
from the risen Lord through the Spirit, may have been given to
him in the course of visionary or ecstatic experiences; but we
cannot be sure, since he does not tell us. In the one experience
of this kind which he does relate in some detail, the words
which he heard were, as we have seen, incommunicable. The
“mysteries” which he was granted were not private
experiences for his own spiritual enrichment; they were
revelations of the divine purpose and its fulfilment to be
imparted for the upbuilding and healthy functioning of the
whole Christian fellowship.
6. The evidence of Acts
If we turn from Paul’s letters to the evidence of Acts, it
confirms in general the impression made by the letters.
“Visions and revelations of the Lord” (to quote Paul’s words in
2 Corinthians 12:1) are not lacking in Luke’s account of Paul’s
career. In his letters Paul refers repeatedly to his conversion
experience, the central feature of which was the appearing of
the risen Lord, but he gives a minimum of narrative detail. The
narrative of Acts gives three fuller and more graphic accounts
of his experience,35 differing in some details but essentially in
agreement, which certainly mention the fact of Paul’s seeing
the risen Lord but lay chief stress on the call which he received
to be his witness and herald.
Attempts have been made to explain the physiological
features of the conversion story in Acts, but they are even less
successful than attempts so to explain his ecstatic rapture to
the third heaven and the ensuing “splinter in the flesh”. If
Luke’s threefold account of the event can be accommodated
within our definition of mysticism, then Paul’s conversion might
be called a mystical experience, provided that such a
description does not call into question the objective reality of
the vision which he saw and the voice which he heard.
When Paul revisited Jerusalem after his conversion, his call
to evangelize the Gentiles was reaffirmed in another vision of
the risen Lord. “I was praying in the temple,” he says (Acts
22:17 ff.), “and fell into a trance, in which I saw him saying to
me, ‘Make haste, get out of Jerusalem without delay, because
they will not accept your testimony about me.’ ‘Lord’, said I,
‘they know that I was the one who, in synagogue after
synagogue, used to imprison and flog those who believed on
you. They know that when your witness Stephen shed his blood
I stood by approving and guarded his executioners’ clothes.’36
‘Begone’, said he, ‘I will send you far away to the Gentiles’.”37
Again, the kind of experience here described by the Paul of
Acts is by no means out of keeping with the impression gained
from his letters. Both seeing and hearing are implied, as they
are in the incident at a critical juncture in his ministry at
Corinth, when “the Lord said to Paul in a vision by night: ‘Do
not be afraid: speak and let no one silence you. I am with you:
no one will harm you by any attack. I have a multitude of
people in this city’ ” (Acts 18:9 f.).
Similarly, when he was placed in protective custody during
his last and most perilous visit to Jerusalem, “the Lord stood by
him and said, ‘Take courage; as you have borne witness to me
in Jerusalem, you must bear witness in Rome also’ ” (Acts
23:11). It was not the Lord himself, but (as Paul puts it) “the
messenger of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve” that
stood by him during the last night of his adventurous voyage
from Asia to Malta and said, “Have no fear, Paul. You must
stand before Caesar, and see, God has spared for your sake the
lives of all your ship’s company” (Acts 27:23 f.).
The perspective of Acts does not expose as some of Paul’s
letters do the deeper inner springs of his spiritual life, but
provides some hint of them from the viewpoint of an associate
and admirer whose own pattern of religious experience may
have been different from Paul’s—the “once-born” pattern,
perhaps, as against the “twice-born” pattern, in the special
sense in which those terms were used by F. W. Newman and
William James.38 Yet Luke’s perspective is not inconsistent with
the self-portrait in Paul’s own writings.
7. Vision and apostleship
Paul’s Christian life, then, began with an experience in which
the risen Lord appeared to him and spoke to him, and its
subsequent course was marked by further experiences of a
similar kind, attested both by himself and by Luke.
While to others the “visionary” inception of Paul’s Christian
career might throw doubt on the validity of his claim to be an
apostle, to Paul it was the basis of that claim. There was no
difference in his eyes, apart from the lapse of time, between
the risen Lord’s appearance to him and his earlier appearances
to the original apostles. He could and did appeal to the
remarkable achievement of his Gentile mission, to the record of
what Christ had accomplished through him, as confirmation of
his apostolic claim,39 but that was an ad hominem argument: in
his own consciousness it was the personal call of the risen
Christ that made him an apostle.40 We may wonder if he would
have begun to entertain doubts on this point if his missionary
endeavours had been unsuccessful, but that is a hypothetical
question. Paul, it seems, never had occasion to suspect that he
might have been “seduced”, as Jeremiah did when his message
proved so consistently unacceptable to his people, although
Paul’s call is recorded in terms reminiscent of Jeremiah’s call
to his prophetic ministry.41 When Paul says that God had set
him apart for his life’s work, to preach Christ among the
nations, “before I was born” (Galatians 1:15)—he echoes, as we
have seen, the inaugural oracle to Jeremiah. And when his
apostolic credentials were challenged, he might well have said,
as Jeremiah said in a similar situation, “in truth the LORD sent
me … to speak all these words” (Jeremiah 26:15).
Even more impressive is the parallel with the language of
Isaiah 49:1–6, where the Servant of Yahweh summons the
coastlands and distant peoples to hear him as he proclaims:
Yahweh called me from the womb,
from the body of my mother he named my name …
And now says Yahweh,
who formed me from the womb to be his servant …
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to restore the preserved of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
It is not by chance that in Acts 13:47 Paul and Barnabas, in the
synagogue of Pisidian Antioch, quote this last couplet as their
authority for turning to the Gentiles with the gospel.42 As for
Paul, others might undertake that part of the Servant’s
vocation which had to do with Israel; he knew himself called to
fulfil that part of it which involved the carrying of God’s saving
light among the Gentiles, near and far.
It was with the assurance of his divine commission, then,
that Paul embarked upon his programme and carried it out
stage by stage to Central Asia Minor, to the Aegean world, to
Illyricum and then on to Rome and (in intention at least) to
Spain. Many others were engaged in Gentile evangelization,
but none with the overall strategic planning conceived in Paul’s
mind and so largely executed by his dynamic energy. This
energy was the fruit of his conviction that he was a figure of
eschatological significance, a key agent in the progress of
salvation history, a chosen instrument in the Lord’s hands to
bring Gentiles into the obedience of faith as a necessary
preparation for the ultimate salvation of all Israel and the
consummation of God’s redeeming purpose for the world. If
this conviction, and the experience which gave birth to it, can
be called mysticism, then it is mysticism of a very exceptional
order.
Perhaps R. C. Tannehill has the answer. Defining mysticism
as “the doctrine that the individual can come into immediate
contact with God through subjective experiences which differ
essentially from the experiences of daily life”, he adds: “By this
definition Paul may be spoken of as, among other things, a
‘mystic’ (cf. his visions, 2 Cor. 12:1–4), but he does not have a
mystical theology.”43 This last point is well taken: Paul’s
theology was not based on experiences which might be
described as mystical: it is based on Jesus, the fulfiller of God’s
promise and purpose of salvation; Jesus, the crucified and
exalted Lord; Jesus, the divine wisdom, in whom God creates,
maintains and brings to consummation everything that exists;
Jesus, who here and now lives within his people by his Spirit.
To the exposition of this theology not only prophetic scripture
but also rabbinical exegesis and primitive Christian tradition
make their contributions, but the whole is fused into a new
compound in the alembic of Paul’s passionate embracing of
“the allsurpassing knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord”
(Philippians 3:8). And this knowledge did not encourage
contemplative quietism; it constituted an insistent call to
lifelong action.
CHAPTER 15
Conference in Jerusalem
1. Leaders in Antioch
THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY IN SYRIAN ANTIOCH
QUICKLY became a metropolitan church rivalling in size the
church of Jerusalem. If the church of Jerusalem was the
mother-church of Christians in general, the church of Antioch
was the mother-church of Gentile Christians in particular.
The little we know about the leaders of the church of Antioch
suggests that they were men of interesting antecedents and
relationships and makes us wish we knew more about them. As
it is, we can at best make intelligent guesses. In addition to
Barnabas and Paul, Luke names three leaders at Antioch, and
associates all five together as “prophets and teachers” (Acts
13:1). The three were Symeon surnamed Niger, Lucius of
Cyrene and Manaen, sometime companion of Herod the
tetrarch.
As for Symeon, his Latin sobriquet Niger (“black”) could
imply an African origin for him as well as for his colleague
Lucius. The New Testament record knows of an African of this
name—Simon (the hellenized form of Symeon) of Cyrene,
whose services were commandeered to carry the cross of Jesus
to the place of execution. When Mark the evangelist relates
this incident, he identifies Simon of Cyrene for his readers of
the next generation, primarily in Rome, as “the father of
Alexander and Rufus” (Mark 15:21). We know of one Rufus in
the Christian community of Rome about A.D. 57—that “Rufus,
eminent in the Lord”, to whom Paul sends greetings by name in
Romans 16:13. This presupposes indeed that the greetings of
Romans 16 are intended for Rome and not (as many hold) for
Ephesus;1 but if Paul’s friend Rufus did live in Rome the
coincidence of his name with that of one of the sons of Simon of
Cyrene may be more than a mere coincidence. Then what
significance lies in the fact that Paul sends greetings not only
to Rufus but also to “his mother and mine”? The implication is
that there was a time when the mother of Rufus had proved
herself a mother to Paul. A writer of historical fiction might
picture Paul as lodging, during his years in Antioch, in the
home of Simon of Cyrene alias Symeon surnamed Niger and as
being mothered by his host’s wife.2 But one who is not setting
out to write fiction must be content with noting possibilities
and beware of going beyond the evidence, tantalizingly scanty
as it is.
Whatever may have been the provenance of Symeon
surnamed Niger, Lucius of Cyrene has his clearly indicated,
and it is not outrunning the evidence to think of him as one of
the men of Cyprus and Cyrene who started Gentile
evangelization in Antioch. The name Lucius appears in one
other place in the New Testament—in Romans 16:21, where
Paul sends greetings to his readers from one Lucius, whom he
includes among his “kinsmen”, which may mean fellow-
Christians of Jewish birth. This Lucius may be identical with
our Lucius of Cyrene; there is no means of being sure. He is
probably not identical with Paul’s companion Luke (Lucas),
“the beloved disciple”, as he is called in Colossians 4:14, and
the traditional author of the Third Gospel and Acts. Luke
probably belonged to Antioch, and his name could well be a by-
form of Lucius,3 but the context in which he is mentioned in
Colossians 4:14 suggests that he was a Gentile Christian, not a
Jewish Christian.4 Nevertheless, the identification of Lucius of
Cyrene with Luke the evangelist is found at quite an early date5
and has been defended by scholars in more recent times.6
It is thought-provoking to find that one of the leaders of the
Antiochene church had been a companion of Herod Antipas,
tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea from 4 B.C. to his deposition in
A.D. 39. The word that Luke uses for Manaen’s relationship to
Herod Antipas (syntrophos) is attested in the sense of “intimate
friend” or “courtier”,7 but the version of 1611 may well be right
in saying that he “had been brought up with Herod the
tetrarch”. Antipas was the youngest son of Herod the Great,
and Manaen could have been the son of a family known to the
king who was chosen to come to the palace and be brought up
with the prince, as his playmate and schoolmate, and
occasionally, it may be, as whipping-boy. If we try to identify
the family to which Manaen belonged, conjecture must come in
(as with Symeon surnamed Niger) to take the place of
evidence. Manaen is a Greek spelling of the Hebrew name
Menahem. One conjecture which has been ventilated is that he
was the grandson of an Essene named Menahem, who was
honoured by Herod the Great for having predicted his rise to
royal estate.8 However that may be, if the author of Luke-Acts
was a member of the church of Antioch at that time, the fact
that a former associate of Herod Antipas now occupied a
position of influence in that church may point to one possible
source from which he could have derived some of his special
information about the Herods and their entourage.
2. Famine in Judaea
For all the differences between the church of Jerusalem and
the church of Antioch, they recognized their common bond and
there was considerable coming and going between the two. On
one occasion a deputation of prophets from the Jerusalem
church visited Antioch. One of them, Agabus by name,
possessed by the spirit of prophecy, foretold that there would
be great scarcity throughout the Roman world. “This took
place”, Luke adds, “in the days of Claudius” (Acts 11:28), and
in fact we have the testimony of Suetonius that the principate
of Claudius (A.D. 41–54) was marked by a succession of
droughts and poor harvests.9 One of the resultant famines was
specially severe in Judaea; it was on this occasion—in the
procuratorships of Cuspius Fadus and his successor Tiberius
Julius Alexander (c. A.D. 46)—that Helena, queen-mother of
Adiabene and a proselyte to Judaism, bought grain in Egypt
and figs in Cyprus for the relief of her co-religionists in Judaea,
while her son, King Izates, sent money to the Jewish authorities
in Jerusalem for distribution among the poor.10 It was probably
about the same time that the church of Antioch sent to the
leaders of the Jerusalem church a sum of money which they
had been collecting ever since they heard the prophecy of
Agabus. Their brethren in Jerusalem, they knew, would not be
able to afford the high cost of food in famine conditions without
such Christian aid. The conveying of the money was entrusted
to Barnabas and Paul.11
In later years the organizing of financial relief from Gentile
Christians to the Jerusalem church was a major concern of
Paul’s;12 it may well be that he had played a leading part in
organizing this gift in Antioch. This may be the point of a
remark he makes when he reports a special request made to
Barnabas and himself by the leaders of the Jerusalem church.
3. Interview with the Jerusalem leaders
This report comes at the end of an account which Paul gives
in Galatians 2:1–10 of an occasion when he and Barnabas went
up to Jerusalem from Antioch. The occasion may be the same as
the famine-relief visit mentioned by Luke; we cannot be sure.
The implication of Paul’s account is that this was the second
visit which he paid to Jerusalem after his conversion. The first
was that which he paid “after three years” to spend a fortnight
with Peter (Galatians 1:18); this one took place “after fourteen
years” (Galatians 2:1). Fourteen years from the earlier visit or
fourteen years from his conversion? Once more we cannot be
sure; the construction of the phrase “after fourteen years” is
different from that of the phrase “after three years”, but it is
not clear what significance, if any, lies in the difference of
construction.13 One thing emerges clearly from Paul’s
narrative: he is leaving out no material phase of his relations
with the Jerusalem leaders, and it is unlikely that he had paid
another visit to Jerusalem between the two expressly described
and dated in the letter to the Galatians. He was concerned to
argue that at no point between his conversion and the writing
of the letter had the Jerusalem leaders conferred on him any
authority which he did not possess already by direct
commission of the risen Christ. Had he omitted from his
retrospect an intervening visit, somebody would have been
sure to spot the omission and draw unfavourable conclusions
from it. After the fourteen years, he says (Galatians 2:1 f.):
I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. I went
up by revelation; and I laid before them (but privately before the men of repute)
the gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, lest somehow I should be running
or had run in vain.
When Paul speaks of going up to Jerusalem “by revelation” it
is improbable that he has the prophecy of Agabus in mind. The
Paul of Acts was not over-responsive to other people’s
revelations which affected himself,14 and the Paul of the
epistles—not least the Paul of this epistle—is so constantly
aware of his unmediated authorization by Christ that it is
natural to conclude that, when he did anything by revelation,
the revelation was personally received. Whether this visit had
any other purpose than to meet the leaders of the Jerusalem
church he does not say; he does say that he and Barnabas had
a private conference with those leaders—the “men of repute”,15
as he calls them, who turn out to have been James the Lord’s
brother with Peter and John. At this conference he set before
them the gospel as he was accustomed to preach it to Gentiles,
and the reason which he gives for doing so gives us pause: it
was, he says, “lest somehow I should be running or had run in
vain”. There is nothing surprising in the athletic metaphor: this
is not the only place where Paul describes his apostolic service
as a race to be run.16 But there is certainly cause for surprise
in the implication of his statement that, failing the recognition
by the Jerusalem authorities that the gospel he preached was
the authentic gospel, his apostolic service would have been,
and would continue to be, fruitless. It is certainly not implied
that, if this recognition had been withheld, Paul would have
changed his mind about the gospel he preached or changed his
method of presenting it. A gospel received by direct revelation
is not to be modified out of deference to any human authority.
What Paul was concerned about was not the validity of his
gospel but its practicability. His commission was not derived
from Jerusalem, but it could not be effectively discharged
except in fellowship with Jerusalem. A cleavage between his
Gentile mission and the mother-church in Jerusalem would be
disastrous for the progress of the gospel: the cause of Christ
would be divided, and all the devotion with which Paul had thus
far prosecuted his apostolate to the Gentiles, and hoped to go
on prosecuting it, would be frustrated.
4. Demarcation of mission fields
As it was, however, everything seemed to turn out well at the
conference. The Jerusalem leaders recognized not only that
Paul’s gospel was the authentic gospel, but also that his
vocation, unlike theirs, was to preach it to the Gentiles. The
men of repute, he says (Galatians 2:6–9):
added nothing to me. On the contrary, they saw that I had been entrusted with
the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel
to the circumcised (for he who worked through Peter for the mission to the
circumcised worked through me also for the Gentiles). So, when they perceived
the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, the men of repute as
pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go
to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.
The Jerusalem leaders were reputed to be “pillars”—pillars,
perhaps, in the new temple of living stones which Jesus spoke
of founding, a distinction which was not confined to their status
in the church of Jerusalem, but betokened a claim to special
recognition wherever the name of Christ was confessed.17 The
order in which Paul names them suggests that James had now
attained a position of primacy, in Jerusalem at least, in which
he was beginning to overshadow the Twelve themselves. No
longer is he mentioned almost incidentally alongside Peter, as
in Paul’s account of his earlier visit to Jerusalem.18
Paul does not commit himself to acceptance of their status as
“pillars”. He affirms, however, that they “added nothing” to
him—neither to the subject-matter of his gospel nor to his
authority to preach it. What was settled at the conference, he
says, was an amicable demarcation of the two mission-fields.
But there is one exceptional feature of usage in his account of
this agreement. Whereas he regularly refers to the prince of
the apostles by his Aramaic name Cephas, its Greek equivalent
Peter (Petros) appears twice in this account, and then “Cephas”
takes over again. The most probable explanation (though by no
means the certain explanation) of this feature is that the
passage containing the form “Peter” is an extract from a more
or less official record of the conference, the reference to Paul
being changed to the first personal pronoun singular so as to
integrate the quotation into the construction of its context.19 If
this explanation be accepted, we have first Paul’s adapted
quotation:
they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as
Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised (for he who worked
through Peter for the mission to the circumcised worked through me also for the
Gentiles)—
and then his repetition and continuation of the same situation
in his own words:
when they perceived the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John,
the men of repute as pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of
fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.
The difference in Peter’s name is not the only difference
between the two passages. In the former Paul and Peter are set
over against each other; in the latter it is not Paul only, but
Paul and Barnabas, whose call to evangelize the Gentiles is
acknowledged, and it is not Peter only, but James, Cephas and
John, who are to discharge an apostleship to Jews. One
suggestion in this regard is that the extract represents the
situation at the time of the conference, while Paul’s re-wording
which follows, and indeed his general language about the “men
of repute”, reflects the situation as it had developed in the
interval between the conference and the writing of the letter.20
In the event not Peter in particular, but the triumvirate as a
whole, undertook the responsibility for directing and executing
the mission to Jews, with James becoming more and more
primus inter pares and issuing directives which even Peter felt
bound to obey.21
It is possible that the agreement about the demarcation of
the two mission-fields concealed one or two unobserved
ambiguities which did not come to light until a later date, when
they caused some tension between Paul and Jerusalem.
First, were the terms of the demarcation sufficiently clear?
Was it to be interpreted geographically or communally? Either
way, it must have been difficult to define the boundaries of the
two mission-fields. Jews and Gentiles were to be found in
practically every city in the eastern Mediterranean world. It
was almost certainly not envisaged that the Jerusalem leaders
should be debarred from evangelizing the Jews of (say)
Ephesus or Corinth or Rome. But since the churches planted in
due course in those cities comprised both Jewish and Gentile
converts, some dovetailing or overlapping of the two spheres of
missionary action was inevitable. Again, it was probably not
envisaged that Paul should be debarred from visiting
synagogues in Gentile cities. According to the narrative of Acts,
it was in synagogues that he regularly found the nucleus of his
churches—mainly among the God-fearing Gentiles who
habitually attended the services of worship there. But this
could constitute a fruitful source of misunderstanding, unless
entire mutual confidence was maintained between the two
parties to the agreement.
Next, misunderstanding could arise from Paul’s own account
of the conference. Some, on hearing it, might well say to him,
“So you did receive the recognition of the Jerusalem leaders!”
To this his reply would probably have been: “I did not receive
their recognition as though my commission was previously
defective without it; they recognized that I had already been
called to this ministry, but they did not in any sense confer on
me the right to exercise it.” Paul and Barnabas had been
energetically engaged for several years in Gentile
evangelization, but whereas Barnabas undertook this work in
Antioch as commissioner of the Jerusalem church, Paul had
been engaged in it long before Barnabas brought him to
Antioch as his colleague in the work there. The nature of the
recognition which Paul received at this conference in Jerusalem
could easily have been misunderstood or misrepresented by
any one who was unable or disinclined to distinguish between
various forms of recognition. Perhaps the Jerusalem leaders
would not have given precisely the same account of the matter
as Paul does. In our more sophisticated days we are familiar
with the device of calculated ambiguity in ecclesiastical as in
other agreements; but such ambiguity as inhered in the
Jerusalem agreement was probably not deliberate but
inadvertent. Even so, we may see as our narrative progresses
the kind of misunderstanding to which it could lead.
It has just been suggested that Paul would have seen a
distinction between Barnabas’s commission and his own.
Nevertheless, he nowhere says anything that could imply a
depreciation of Barnabas’s commission alongside his. His
concern was to assert the authentic and unmediated character
of his own apostleship; for the rest, he uses the designation
“apostles” in a fairly wide sense—a wider sense, certainly, than
Luke gives it.22 He does not explicitly call Barnabas an apostle,
but he does so by implication in a passage where he is stoutly
defending his own apostleship and sets Barnabas and himself
on one side over against “the other apostles and the brethren
of the Lord and Cephas” on the other (1 Corinthians 9:5 f.).
Luke, for his part, reserves the designation “apostle” almost
exclusively for the Twelve: the one occasion on which he uses it
of Paul is the exception that proves the rule, for there he
speaks of “the apostles Barnabas and Paul” (Acts 14:14) in a
context which suggests that he viewed them as apostles in the
sense of commissioners from the church of Antioch—which
indeed they were on the occasion referred to (cf. Acts 13:3). To
be sure, when Paul in his letters argues for the validity of his
apostleship by an appeal to his achievements, the record of
Acts provides abundant independent confirmation of his
argument;23 nevertheless, Luke nowhere gives him the title
“apostle” in the sense in which Paul claims it for himself—
which reminds us that the choice of a word is less important
than the meaning attached to it.
5. “Remember the poor”
We return to the Jerusalem conference. Paul ends his
account of it by mentioning one condition which the three “men
of repute” pressed on Barnabas and himself (Galatians 2:10):
only they would have us remember the poor, which very thing I was eager to do.
There are two verbs in this sentence. The former, “remember”,
is present subjunctive in Greek and may suggest continued
action; the latter, “was eager”, is aorist indicative, which in
appropriate contexts (of which this is perhaps one) can be
rendered by the pluperfect in English.24
“Only”, said they, “please continue to remember the poor”; and in fact I had
made a special point of attending to this very matter.
If this rendering gives the right emphasis, then the leaders’
request that Paul and Barnabas should continue to remember
“the poor” is illuminated by Luke’s account of the carrying by
these two of the famine relief which the Antiochene church
provided for their brethren in Jerusalem in time of famine. The
phrase “the poor” may denote the poorer members of the
Jerusalem church; it might, on the other hand, be a designation
for that church as a whole.25 In later times there was a body of
Jewish Christians, claiming to represent the church of
Jerusalem in dispersion, which was called the Ebionites; this is
derived from Hebrew hāʾebyōnîm, “the poor”, which could well
underlie the Greek phrase used in Galatians 2:10, especially if,
as seems probable, Paul is echoing the language of the
Jerusalem leaders.26 How seriously Paul continued to
“remember the poor” will be shown in the sequel. But even
here there was a possibility of misunderstanding: what Paul
regarded as a voluntary gesture of Christian charity and
fellowship was perhaps viewed by the mother-church as a
tribute due from her daughter-churches among the Gentiles.27
6. The circumcision issue
One issue which might have been expected to arise at the
conference has not been mentioned yet. That is the issue of the
circumcision of Gentile converts, which soon became the
subject of an animated debate. Did it arise on this occasion?
The answer to this question is not clear. Paul does make a
reference to it, but while his Galatian readers, who knew
something of the background of his reference, no doubt
grasped his meaning, his modern readers find it more difficult
to do so. This is partly because we know less of the background
than his first readers did, partly because his construction is
fractured and partly because there is a variant reading which
changes the sense by omitting a material “not”.28
Immediately after telling how he laid his gospel before the
Jerusalem leaders, lest he “should be running or had run in
vain”, Paul goes on (Galatians 2:3–5):
But even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though
he was a Greek. But because of false brethren secretly brought in, who slipped in
to spy out our freedom which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us
into bondage—to them we did not yield submission even for a moment, that the
truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.
Then he goes back to the “men of repute” and affirms that they
“added nothing” to him.
Titus, a Greek Christian, who accompanied him from Antioch
to Jerusalem on this occasion, was “not compelled to be
circumcised”. To us, though probably not to Paul’s first readers
(who knew whether Titus had been circumcised or not), this
statement is ambiguous. It may mean (i) that Titus was not
circumcised or (ii) that Titus was circumcised, not by
compulsion, but voluntarily, or perhaps by a temporary
concession on Paul’s part—on the principle, presumably, of
reculer pour mieux sauter. The editors of the Western text of
the Pauline corpus appear to have understood it the latter way,
for they make Paul say, “to them [to the false brethren] we
yielded submission for a moment, that the truth of the gospel
might be preserved for you”. How the circumcision of a Gentile
convert could have been imagined by any one, especially by
Paul, to help towards preserving the gospel of free grace for
other Gentile converts, is something which passes all
understanding. F. C. Burkitt might ask, “who can doubt that it
was the knife which really did circumcise Titus that has cut the
syntax of Galatians 2:3–5 to pieces?”29—but to this question, as
to many others beginning with the rhetorical “who can doubt
…?” an effective answer is “I can”; and so, it is evident, can
many exegetes who have dealt with the passage. “If he was
circumcised”, T. W. Manson comments on Burkitt’s argument,
“the fact would be well advertised in Galatia by Paul’s
opponents, and the involved and stumbling verbiage of these
verses would be worse than useless as camouflage for that
nasty fact.”30
The last-named scholar has pointed the way to a more
satisfactory understanding of the abrupt reference to the false
brethren: it is a parenthesis, referring to a later development,
and introduced here because Paul is reminded of this
subsequent occasion by his reference to Titus.31 At the time of
the Jerusalem conference, he says, so far was the circumcision
question from presenting any difficulty that although Titus, a
Greek, was in Jerusalem with Barnabas and himself, no
pressure was brought to bear to have him circumcised. The
circumcision issue, he adds in a parenthesis which lacks a
principal clause, became acute at a later date on account of
“false brethren” who infiltrated the Gentile churches and tried
to impose a yoke of legal bondage in place of the Christian
freedom which they enjoyed. This later development may be
linked with Luke’s statement in Acts 15:1, that “some men
came down from Judaea [to Antioch], and were teaching the
brethren, ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom
of Moses, you cannot be saved’.”32 It was to those infiltrators
that Paul refused to concede an inch, so as not to prejudice his
converts’ gospel liberty. Having concluded his parenthesis on
this note, he returns to the point where he had left off and
continues to tell what happened at the Jerusalem conference.
That the question of circumcising Titus or any other Gentile
convert was not raised during this visit is quite consistent with
the evidence of Acts. The Gentile mission in Antioch had been
proceeding for some years before visitors from Judaea tried to
insist on the circumcision of the converts. Similarly, when
Cornelius, the Roman centurion of Caesarea, and his household
believed the gospel and received the Spirit, they were baptized,
but no one seems to have suggested that they should be
circumcised. Although Peter, on returning to Jerusalem, had to
defend his visit to them, his fellow-apostles, when they
accepted his defence, did not say, “Well, it is all right provided
they accept circumcision.”33 In Acts as in Galatians the
question of circumcising Gentile converts did not arise until
later. When it did arise, those who raised it were steadfastly
resisted by Paul and others who, with him, could not allow the
truth of the gospel to be compromised by an infusion of
legalism. But if it did not arise at the conference described in
Galatians 2:1–10, that conference cannot be identified with the
Council of Jerusalem described in Acts 15:6–29, for on the
latter occasion circumcision was the main issue under debate.
The conference of Galatians 2:1–10 may well have coincided in
that case with the famine-relief visit of Acts 11:30, although
this cannot be positively affirmed. Before circumcision became
a burning issue, the Gentile mission had a further advance to
record.
CHAPTER 16
Church Extension in Cyprus
and Asia Minor
1. Barnabas and Paul in Cyprus
THE ANTIOCHENE MINISTRY OF BARNABAS AND PAUL
WAS NOT confined to the city or church of Antioch. Antioch
had a vast hinterland, which might be as ripe for evangelization
as Antioch itself was. The missionaries who first brought the
gospel to Antioch had preached it in Syria and Phoenicia on the
way there: Paul had preached it in Cilicia before Barnabas
brought him to Antioch. But beyond Cilicia there was the main
land-mass of Asia Minor, through which ran the road to
Ephesus and the west. And west-by-south-west from Antioch,
some 90 miles (150 kilometres) out in the Mediterranean, at its
nearest point, lay the island of Cyprus. The men of Cyprus who
had taken part in the evangelization of Antioch did not neglect
their native island, but there was in Antioch one man of Cyprus
who was set on evangelizing it more systematically, and that
was Barnabas. Paul, for his part, may already have seen in his
mind’s eye the possibilities which Asia Minor presented for
gospel penetration and expansion, and the time was to come
when he and Barnabas would part company, Barnabas devoting
himself to his native Cyprus and Paul to Asia Minor and the
lands farther west.
To begin with, however, they undertook their project of
missionary outreach together. Luke tells how the leaders of the
church of Antioch were directed by the Holy Spirit—
presumably through a prophetic utterance—to release
Barnabas and Paul for this further ministry to which they had
been called. The two men went down to the port of Seleucia
and set sail for Cyprus with the blessing of the church and its
leaders.1 The church regarded them as its representatives and
commissioners; it was their home base, and to it in due course
they returned to report “all that God had done with them” (Acts
14:27).
When they set out, they took as their attendant Barnabas’s
young cousin, John Mark of Jerusalem. The house of John
Mark’s mother Mary was the meeting-place of one group in the
Jerusalem church—the group which was led by Peter.2
Barnabas and Paul took John Mark back to Antioch at the end
of their famine-relief visit to Jerusalem: Barnabas in particular
discerned in him qualities which could be developed and
profitably exercised in the Christian mission.
Cyprus was settled in antiquity by Phoenicians and Greeks:
from one of the Phoenician settlements, Kition (modern
Larnaka) on its south-eastern shore, it derived the name Kittim
by which it was known to the Hebrews. Since the sixth century
B.C. it had been controlled by the Persians and the Ptolemies,
among others. The Romans annexed it in 58 B.C. and two years
later added it to the province of Cilicia. After various changes it
became a separate imperial province, governed by a legatus
pro praetore, in 27 B.C., but five years later Augustus handed it
over to the jurisdiction of the Roman senate, and from that date
it was, like other senatorial provinces, administered by a
proconsul. At the time of Barnabas and Paul’s visit the
proconsul was Sergius Paullus, member of a noble Roman
family with a record of public service over several generations.
We know, for example, of one Lucius Sergius Paullus who was
a curator of the Tiber in the principate of Claudius;3 we know
of another of the same name (probably his son) who occupied
an important office in Galatia (perhaps the governorship of that
province) a generation later,4 and of yet another of the same
name who was consul at Rome about A.D. 150 and again in
168.5 It has been widely supposed that the proconsul of Cyprus
could have been identical with the first of these,6 but he is
more probably to be identified with the Quintus Sergius Paullus
whose name has been deciphered in fragmentary form on a
Greek inscription from Kythraia in North Cyprus.7
The missionary party landed at Salamis, a Greek settlement
on the east coast, founded in the sixth century B.C. and for long
the principal city of Cyprus. Like most other Cypriot cities, it
had a Jewish community. Barnabas and Paul visited the
synagogues of Salamis and preached the gospel in them, with
unrecorded results. The preaching of the gospel in synagogues
would be largely a matter of expounding the scripture lessons
in terms of their Christian fulfilment.
From Salamis they made their way by the road which ran
along the southern shore of the island, until they arrived at
New Paphos, the provincial seat of government. (New Paphos
was a Greek settlement; Old Paphos, originally a Phoenician
settlement, lay about seven miles or twelve kilometres to the
south-east. Old Paphos was a traditional centre of the cult of
Aphrodite, who was hence referred to as “the Paphian”.)8 Here
they were summoned before Sergius Paullus, who presumably
wished to satisfy himself that their activity presented no threat
to public order. In several parts of the empire around this time
unrest was being stirred up in Jewish communities by travelling
agitators.9 Evidently the proconsul was satisfied on this score;
indeed, he was quite favourably impressed by the missionaries
and their message, despite the attempts of a Jewish member of
his entourage to dissuade him from paying them serious
attention.10 (Luke describes this Jew as a “false prophet”,
which might simply refer to his speaking against the gospel,
but the fact that he goes on to call him a magos suggests that
he had a reputation for some form of esoteric wisdom.)11
2. The gospel comes to Phrygia
From Cyprus the missionary party sailed north-by-north-west
to the mainland of Asia Minor, to the port of Side, perhaps, or
Attaleia (modern Antalya) farther west, and made their way to
the city of Perga, about six miles inland, situated on the coastal
road from Ephesus to Tarsus. It was the chief city of Pamphylia
(the territory between the Taurus range and the
Mediterranean), which at this time was joined with Lycia on its
western frontier to form a united Roman province. There were
Jewish settlements in Pamphylia, so some evangelistic activity
in Perga may be implied in Luke’s mention of the place, but the
only incident he records is John Mark’s departure here from his
two senior companions and his return to Jerusalem. The reason
for his departure and return is not stated, but perhaps he had
not reckoned on the more extended journey into the highlands
of the province of Galatia on which Paul and Barnabas were
about to embark.
The Roman province of Galatia covered a large area in the
heart of Asia Minor. It derived its name from the former
kingdom of Galatia, founded by the Galatians or Gauls who in
the third century B.C. invaded the peninsula and settled in
territory which had formerly belonged to Phrygia. In due
course the Galatian kings became allies of Rome. When in 25
B.C. the last of these kings, Amyntas, fell in battle against
raiders from the northern Taurus, Augustus reorganized the
kingdom as an imperial province, in which he incorporated a
good deal of territory to the south which had never belonged
ethnically to Galatia—the regions of Eastern Phrygia, Pisidia,
Isaurica and Western Lycaonia. The principal cities of the
former kingdom of Galatia lay in the northern part of the
Roman province: Pessinus to the west, Tavium to the east, and
between them Ancyra (modern Ankara), the capital of the
kingdom and then of the province, as it is today of the Turkish
Republic. Whether or not Paul ever visited those northern cities
we have no means of knowing for certain: we have abundant
evidence for his interest in cities of South Galatia—that is, of
that part of the Roman province which Augustus added to the
realm of King Amyntas when he took it over.
It was to one of these cities, Pisidian Antioch, that Paul and
Barnabas came after travelling north from Perga for 100 miles
and more. Pisidian Antioch is referred to more precisely by
Strabo as “Antioch near Pisidia”; it was actually situated in the
region of Phrygia, over the border from Pisidia. The ancient
kingdom of Phrygia was now divided between the Roman
provinces of Asia and Galatia: it was in Galatic Phrygia (as we
may call it in distinction from Asian Phrygia) that Pisidian
Antioch lay. It lies near modern Yalvaç, on a plateau some 3600
feet high. Sir William Ramsay conjectured that Paul had caught
malaria in Pamphylia and sought to recuperate in this highland
region: he linked this conjecture with Paul’s reminder to his
Galatian converts that it was “because of a bodily ailment” that
he first came to them with the gospel (Galatians 4:13).12 This
can be neither proved nor disproved.
As its name indicates, Pisidian Antioch was a Seleucid
foundation (early third century B.C.), although the site was
inhabited long before Seleucid times. The position was well
chosen by the Seleucids to serve as a border fortress, and the
same strategic advantages probably moved Augustus in 6 B.C.
to give the city the status of a Roman colony, under the new
designation Colonia Caesarea. Army veterans were settled
there among the local population, the city became the military
centre for the surrounding territory, new roads were built
leading deep into Pisidia for the more effective romanization of
that region. The name Pisidian Antioch reflected the rôle
marked out for the city by Roman imperial policy.
A Roman colony was a settlement of Roman citizens,
designed to safeguard and promote Roman interests in an
environment of non-Roman inhabitants (incolae). The
administration of a Roman colony was modelled on that of
Rome itself, with two annually appointed collegiate magistrates
at its head. Epigraphic evidence in and around Pisidian Antioch
shows that one of the principal Roman families of the colony
bore the name Caristanius Fronto. One member of this family,
about a quarter of a century after the time with which we are
here concerned, married a Roman lady called Sergia Paulla,
possibly a daughter of that Lucius Sergius Paullus who held a
responsible post in the provincial administration.13
As in other Phrygian cities, there was in Pisidian Antioch a
considerable Jewish community, dating from the reign of
Antiochus III (223–187 B.C.).14 In accordance with their
practice in cities where there were Jewish communities,
Barnabas and Paul visited the synagogue of Pisidian Antioch on
the first sabbath after their arrival in that city, and were
invited by the governing body of the synagogue to address a
“word of exhortation” or homily to the worshippers after the
reading of the first and second lessons.15 At this point Luke
ascribes to Paul the outline of a homily, which probably
summarizes the way in which the gospel was presented to a
synagogue congregation, comprising Jews and God-fearing
Gentiles, against the familiar background of the history of
Israel. Paul, perhaps in allusion to the contents of the scripture
lessons for the day, reminds his hearers of the mighty acts of
God in the Old Testament narrative from the Exodus to the
reign of David, after which he goes on: “Of this man’s posterity
God has brought to Israel a Saviour, Jesus, as he promised”
(Acts 13:23). In this retrospect, though it begins with Moses
and the Exodus, there is no mention of the law: it is the
fulfilment of promise that is emphasized—even if here it is not
the promise made to Abraham (as in Galatians 3:6–18) but to
David. The link between David and Jesus is mentioned by Paul
in the preamble of his letter to the Romans, where Jesus is said
to have been “descended from David according to the flesh”
(Romans 1:3).16 After proceeding straight from David to Jesus,
Paul enlarges on the climax of salvation-history—the
preparatory witness of John the Baptist, the mighty acts of God
in Christ, crowned by his resurrection, in fulfilment of psalm
and prophecy.
It may be said that there is not much difference between
what Paul says in Pisidian Antioch and what Peter is reported
to have said in Jerusalem on the first Christian Pentecost. This
is so, but perhaps there actually was but little difference in
substance between the Petrine and Pauline presentations of the
gospel to Jewish audiences. If Paul, faced with a synagogue
congregation in the dispersion, did not speak as Luke makes
him speak at Pisidian Antioch, then let us be told how he did
speak. True, there is less “theology of the cross” in the account
of Jesus’ death in this speech than might be expected from
Paul, whether he was addressing Jews or Gentiles. And when
the Paul of Acts tells how the risen Christ “appeared to those
who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now
his witnesses to the people” (Acts 13:31), the historical Paul
would certainly have added, and (we may be sure) did add,
“Last of all … he appeared also to me” (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:8).
But a Pauline touch is introduced at the end of the homily.
Where other preachers in Acts proclaim that “forgiveness of
sins” is available through Jesus (cf. Acts 2:38; 10:43), Paul at
Pisidian Antioch not only says that “through this man
forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you”, but adds that “by him
every one that believes is justified from all things, from which
you could not be justified by Moses’ law” (Acts 13:38 f.). From
these words as they stand, indeed, the full Pauline doctrine of
justification by faith could not be deduced,17 but the words are
quite in line with Paul’s teaching in Romans 3:20–26, that God
“justifies him who has faith in Jesus” whereas “no human being
will be justified in his sight by works of the law”. The language
of Acts 13:39 need not be construed to mean that faith in
Christ takes over responsibility for a man’s salvation when
Moses’ law has done all that it can and can do no more—a most
un-Pauline sentiment, to be sure, but probably a non-Lukan one
too.18
The God-fearers in the congregation were specially attracted
by Paul’s message, and spread the news abroad among their
fellow-Gentiles. The result was that a week later there were
more Gentiles than Jews present at the synagogue service. The
leaders of the Jewish community were displeased and visited
their displeasure on the two missionaries. But many of the
Gentiles accepted the salvation through faith in Christ which
the missionaries proclaimed and formed a Christian group in
separation from the synagogue—the first of the churches of
Galatia.
From Pisidian Antioch the missionaries moved on to Iconium
(modern Konya), nearly ninety miles (about 150 kilometres)
east-by-south-east, then as now an important road-junction.
Xenophon (c. 400 B.C.) knew it as “the last city of Phrygia”19
and into the second and third centuries A.D. its inhabitants
considered themselves Phrygians,20 but it lay at the western
end of the Lycaonian Plain, so near to the frontier between the
regions of Phrygia and Lycaonia that several Greek and Roman
writers of this period refer to it (inaccurately) as a city of
Lycaonia.21 The Emperor Claudius had recently permitted the
city to use his own name as an honorific prefix, so it was called
for a time Claudiconium (we may compare the use of “King’s”
as a prefix or “Regis” as a suffix with same English place-
names).
The missionaries’ experience in Iconium appears to have
been almost a carbon copy of that in Pisidian Antioch, except
that they were able to stay longer in Iconium than in the other
city. At last a riot of such intensity was stirred up against them
that they had to leave Iconium and cross the regional border
into Lycaonia, but not before a distinct Christian community
had been established there as earlier in Pisidian Antioch. The
memory of Paul in particular impressed itself on the people of
Iconium: Iconium, a century later, is the centre of the fictitious
adventures recounted in the Acts of Paul and Thekla.22
3. Problems of Gentile evangelization
At the conference which Barnabas and Paul attended with
the Jerusalem leaders it was probably no part of the agreement
that the two missionaries to the Gentiles should abstain from
visiting synagogues in the cities to which they came. But it may
not have been envisaged on either side that events would turn
out as they did in Pisidian Antioch and Iconium, so that it would
be necessary to detach Gentile God-fearers from the
synagogues which they attended and form them into separate
congregations.
Certainly many more Gentiles than Jews were converted to
Christianity under Paul’s preaching, but if he regularly made
the synagogue his first base of operations, more Jews than
Gentiles would probably hear the gospel from him at the
outset, in one city after another. He himself takes it for granted
that the gospel is to be presented “to the Jew first” (Romans
1:16). Was there not the possibility that in some synagogue the
whole congregation would respond positively to his preaching?
Would the Jerusalem leaders not have regarded this as a
breach of the agreement, in spirit at least? (Two or three years
later the synagogue congregation at Beroea in Macedonia gave
him a favourable hearing, but it is implied that this was an
exceptional occurrence.) Paul might have said that, if only the
Jews accepted the gospel themselves, it would be for them to
evangelize the neighbouring Gentiles; but in fact he knew that
the direct evangelization of Gentiles was his prime vocation.
According to Luke, he and Barnabas claimed at Pisidian
Antioch that in this respect they were discharging the
commission laid by Yahweh on his Servant (Isaiah 49:6):
I have set you to be a light for the Gentiles,
that you may bring salvation to the uttermost parts of the
earth.
As for Luke’s report of the hostile response of the Jewish
leaders in Pisidian Antioch and Iconium, it is consistent with
Paul’s own account of those Jews who “drove us out, and
displease God and oppose all men by hindering us from
speaking to the Gentiles that they may be saved” (1
Thessalonians 2:15 f.).23
Conscious as he was of his call to be the Gentiles’ apostle,
Paul looked on the God-fearers who were in the habit of
attending synagogue services as a providentially prepared
bridgehead into the wider Gentile world. By listening to the
reading and exposition of the scriptures those Gentiles learned
to worship the “living and true God” and became familiar in
some sense with the hope of Israel. But they were told that
they could not participate in this hope, or share the privileges
of the people of God, unless they were prepared to become
proselytes to Judaism—an issue to which, no doubt, their
Jewish friends confidently looked forward. Now, however, these
Gentiles were assured by Paul that the hope of Israel had been
fulfilled by Jesus, and that through faith in him they could
receive the saving grace of God on equal terms with Jewish
believers, and become members of the new messianic
fellowship of the people of God in which the religious
distinction between Jew and Gentile was obliterated. It was as
natural for God-fearing Gentiles to embrace the blessings of
the gospel on these terms as it was for Jews to decline them on
these terms. Only by visiting the synagogue could Paul
establish contact with these God-fearers, but the almost
inevitable result of his policy was a breach with the synagogue.
It was probably impossible for one who concentrated on
Gentile evangelization to be at the same time an effective
missionary to Jews; hence the division of mission-fields agreed
upon at the Jerusalem conference was a wise decision.
Paul came to accept this situation, but he did not find this
acceptance easy. While he knew himself to be apostle to the
Gentiles by divine vocation, yet the salvation of his own kith
and kin was specially close to his heart, As he put it later, in his
epistle to the Romans, if their salvation could be bought at the
cost of his own, he would willingly pay the price—willingly be
“accursed and cut off from Christ” for their sake (Romans 9:3).
In time, however, he found reassurance in the hope that his
very activity in Gentile evangelization might serve indirectly to
expedite the salvation of his fellow-Jews. There came to his
mind a passage in the Song of Moses where God says to his
rebellious people, “I will make you jealous of those who are not
a nation” (Deuteronomy 32:21), and he interpreted it in the
light of the new gospel situation. “Those who are not a
nation”24 were Gentiles. When, through Paul’s own ministry,
Gentiles were availing themselves in ever-increasing numbers
of the blessings brought to mankind by Israel’s Messiah—
blessings which fulfilled the promises made to Israel’s
ancestors and were applicable, in the natural course of events,
“to the Jew first”—this spectacle would stir the Jews to
jealousy. It would suddenly dawn upon them that they had a
prior claim to those blessings which Gentiles were so eagerly
enjoying, and they would assert their own right to a share in
them. The ingathering of the Gentiles would thus lead, in the
unfolding of the divine purpose, to the salvation of Israel, and
Paul learned to “magnify his ministry” because of this more
remote sequel over and above its immediate effect in producing
among other nations “the obedience of faith” (Romans 10:19;
11:13–27; 16:26).
4. Cities of Lycaonia
The first city of Lycaonia to which Barnabas and Paul came
was Lystra, now the mound of Zostera, near Hatunsaray, about
18 miles (30 kilometres) south-by-south-west from Iconium.25
Like Pisidian Antioch, Lystra was made a Roman colony by
Augustus; the two colonies were linked by a military road
which did not pass through Iconium and although they were
separated by 100 miles they appear to have maintained cordial
relations with each other.
There were some Jewish residents in Lystra, with whom the
missionaries had dealings—Timothy, for example, the son of a
Jewish mother and a Greek father, seems to have been one of
their converts during this visit26—but the one incident recorded
by Luke brings Barnabas and Paul into direct contact with
pagan Lycaonians, not the Roman citizens of the colony but the
indigenous incolae. These latter, impressed by Paul’s healing of
a congenitally lame man, concluded that their city was being
favoured with a visit by two gods in human form: “Barnabas
they called Zeus, and Paul, because he was the chief speaker,
they called Hermes” (Acts 14:12). The conjoint worship of
these two deities, or of their Anatolian counterparts, is
variously attested in legend and inscription for that part of Asia
Minor.27 The local priest of Zeus Propolis—Zeus whose temple
stood facing the city gate—initiated appropriate sacrificial rites
in honour of the two visitors. For a time they did not realize
what was afoot, because everyone was speaking Lycaonian—a
language which they did not understand (though they may have
recognized that it was different from the Phrygian speech
which they had left behind in Iconium). But when the truth of
the situation dawned on them, they were horrified and
(addressing the people in Greek) urgently begged them to
desist (Acts 14:14–17):
Men, what is this you are doing? We are only human beings, with the same
nature as yourselves, but we have come to bring you good news. Turn away from
this futile worship; seek the living God, He is the God who made heaven, earth
and sea with all that is in them. In the ages that are past he has allowed all
nations to follow their own ways; yet he has not left you without any clue to his
being and character: he sends you rain from heaven and seasons of fruitfulness,
and satisfies you with food and joy.
If Luke, in his account of the synagogue service at Pisidian
Antioch, has given us a sample presentation of the gospel to
Jews and God-fearers, here he has given us, in still more
summary form, a sample of the approach to untutored pagans
(later he gives a sample of the approach to “tutored” pagans
when he brings Paul to Athens).28
Barnabas and Paul’s protest to the men of Lystra takes them
up in the midst of their religious practice and points them to a
worthier form of worship—the worship of the living God, who
created the universe and makes provision for man’s need. The
terms in which God is presented as Creator had been used for
generations in Jewish testimony to pagans: “I am a Hebrew”,
said the prophet Jonah to the storm-tossed mariners; “and I
fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the
dry land” (Jonah 1:9). “He gives food to all flesh”, said the
psalmist, “for his steadfast love endures for ever” (Psalm
136:25).
No attempt was made on this occasion, as later by Paul at
Athens,29 to identify the Creator with Zeus: the Zeus who was
worshipped at Lystra was too anthropomorphically conceived
to provide the link with monotheism that the Zeus of Stoic
poets and philosophers provided. Zeus and Hermes alike had to
be displaced by the God who made heaven and earth and sent
seasonal rain and harvests year by year.
In the summary given by Luke no expressly Christian note is
struck, but preparation is made for the gospel by the statement
that God “in the ages that are past” had allowed all nations to
follow their own ways—that is, their own religious ways. Now,
it is implied, a change has taken place—the change
accomplished by the saving work of Christ. What is only
implied in this summary is stated plainly in Paul’s later speech
at Athens, as it is also stated plainly and at greater length in
his letter to the Romans, where God, who had given the Gentile
world over to the consequences of its idolatry,30 is shown to
have provided by the self-offering of Christ a new way of
approach to himself in which Gentiles as well as Jews might
enjoy the forgiveness of sins previously committed in the time
of God’s forbearance together with the righteous status open to
all who had faith in Jesus.31
If some of Barnabas and Paul’s converts at Lystra had been
involved in the attempt to pay divine honours to the two
missionaries it could have been said of them, as was said later
of Paul’s Gentile converts in Thessalonica, that they “turned to
God from idols to serve a living and true God” (1 Thessalonians
1:9).
For all the enthusiasm with which they were greeted at first,
Barnabas and Paul found public opinion at Lystra turning
against them. Apart from those who believed the good news
they brought, the people who had tried to offer them sacrifice
must have been offended when their worship was refused.
Accordingly, when Lystra was visited by some of the people
who had stirred up trouble for the missionaries in Pisidian
Antioch and Iconium, it was not difficult for them to exploit this
sense of grievance. In the ensuing riot Paul in particular was
badly knocked about: when, years later, he says to his friends
in Corinth, “once I was stoned” (2 Corinthians 11:25), this was
the occasion he had in mind. He must have been knocked
unconscious, for those who stoned him “dragged him out of the
city, supposing that he was dead” (Acts 14:19). But as the new
converts gathered round to see what could be done for him,
consciousness returned and he went back into the city with
them. Whatever his physical disabilities were, Paul had an
extraordinarily tough and resilient constitution and remarkable
staying-power: “often knocked down but never knocked out”
(as his words in 2 Corinthians 4:9 have been paraphrased).
When he speaks of bearing on his body “the marks of Jesus”—
the stigmata which indicated who his master was, just as slaves
sometimes had their owner’s name branded in their flesh
(Galatians 6:17)—it is very probable that he includes among
them the indelible scars resulting from his ill-treatment at
Lystra.
Next day Barnabas and he set out for Derbe, situated on the
mound of Kerti Hüyük, about 60 miles south-east of Lystra, or
else (as some think) at Devri Şehri, about two and a half miles
south-east of Kerti Hüyük.32 According to the lexicographer
Stephanus of Byzantium, the name of Derbe was derived from
the Lycaonian word for “juniper”. Like Iconium, Derbe had the
name of Claudius as an honorific prefix; well into the second
century at least it was known as Claudioderbe. It lay near—
perhaps even beyond33—the frontier between the Roman
province of Galatia and the client kingdom of Commagene
(governed by Rome’s ally Antiochus IV from A.D. 41 to 72), a
frontier which cut the old territory of Lycaonia in two. This was
the farthest stage of Barnabas and Paul’s present journey:
having preached in Derbe and made some converts there they
retraced their steps, visiting and encouraging the members of
the newly-planted churches of Lystra, Iconium and Pisidian
Antioch. Luke’s statement that they now “appointed elders” in
those churches (Acts 14:23) has been questioned, as
presupposing a stage of church administration more
characteristic of the Pastoral Epistles.34 Luke may use the
terminology of the Pastoral Epistles, but if Paul, some years
later, could tell the Thessalonian church to give due respect to
its “leaders and counsellors” (1 Thessalonians 5:12 f.) and
indicate to the Corinthian church which of its members were
worthy of recognition because of their “special service to the
people of God” (1 Corinthians 16:15–18), there is no reason
why Barnabas and he should not have taken appropriate action
at this earlier date in respect of those who had begun to
develop the qualities of leadership in the young churches of
South Galatia. In addition to giving them what help was
necessary in this regard, they urged them to stand firm in their
new-found faith and not to be dismayed by hardship and
persecution, for these were inseparable from Christian
existence in this age: “through many tribulations we must enter
the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).
They then continued their journey to the coast, back through
Perga to Attaleia, where they took ship for the mouth of the
Orontes, and so returned to Syrian Antioch. Thanks to their
enterprise since they had set out, the church of Syrian Antioch
was now a mother-church in her own right, with several
flourishing daughter-churches, mainly Gentile in composition
like herself.
CHAPTER 17
The Gentile Problem
1. Repercussions in Jerusalem
NEWS OF THE EXPANSION OF GENTILE CHRISTIANITY
NATURALLY brought pleasure to the church of Antioch, but it
was received with mixed feelings in Jerusalem. It was good,
certainly, that so many Gentiles had come to acknowledge
Jesus as Lord. But when the Jerusalem leaders had shaken
hands with Barnabas and Paul, they had scarcely envisaged
such a rapid influx of Gentile believers. Hitherto they had tried
to maintain some measure of control over the extending
Christian mission, but this was henceforth going to prove more
and more difficult. It does not appear that they were
specifically consulted about Barnabas and Paul’s recent
mission to Cyprus and South Galatia.1 Any concern which they
felt about this should not be put down merely to a desire to
keep the reins of power in their own hands. There was an
important question of principle at stake, as they saw it: with
such an increase in the number of Gentile Christians, to a point
where they must soon outnumber Jewish Christians (if they had
not done so already), how were the church’s ethical standards
to be safeguarded? Jews in general had no great opinion of
Gentile morality,2 and the church’s ethical standards were
based on the peculiarly demanding requirements of Jesus.
Jesus may have relaxed various non-ethical prescriptions of
Jewish tradition, such as those relating to food restrictions and
sabbath observance, but he sharpened the ethical
prescriptions, carrying them back beyond overt speech and
action to the hidden motives and emotions of the heart,3 and
insisting on “the weightier matters of the law, justice and
mercy and faith” (Matthew 23:23). His disciples were taught to
practise a righteousness exceeding “that of the scribes and
Pharisees” (Matthew 5:20)—no easy matter. But it was evident
that Gentiles would have a hard task to bring their practice,
especially in relations between the sexes, up to the ordinary
Jewish level, let alone that of the scribes and Pharisees. What
could be done to protect Christian standards?
It was all very well for Barnabas and Paul to forge ahead
with Gentile evangelization, but meanwhile the Jerusalem
leaders had to discharge their own responsibility to commend
the gospel to their fellow-Jews. The discharge of this
responsibility would not be rendered any easier by reports that
large numbers of Gentiles were entering the new fellowship on
what must have seemed to be very easy terms. The whole issue
of the approach to Gentiles was a delicate one in the Jerusalem
situation. During the brief reign of Herod Agrippa as king of
the Jews there had been a short but sharp campaign against at
least one section of the Jerusalem church, in which the
apostles, far from being unmolested as they had been in the
earlier persecution which followed Stephen’s death, were now
the principal targets of attack. James the son of Zebedee had
been executed and Peter would have shared his fate had he not
escaped from prison and gone into hiding.4 This attack on the
apostles was not unconnected with the recent first steps in
Gentile evangelization, such as Peter’s visit to Cornelius in
Caesarea5—first steps which, cautious though they were,
apparently lost the apostles much of the public goodwill which
they had formerly enjoyed in Jerusalem.
Herod Agrippa’s attack came to an end with his sudden
death in A.D. 44, but fresh trouble for the church sprang up
from another quarter. Judaea reverted to the control of Roman
procurators, under whom during the next eight years there was
a succession of militant actions led by men who might be
generally described as Zealots, even if they did not all adopt
this designation. Josephus, less politely, calls them brigands or
impostors.6 Most important of these insurgent leaders were
two sons of Judas the Galilaean, James and Simon by name,
who were caught and crucified by Tiberius Julius Alexander
(procurator c. 46–48).7 Such insurgents were not only fiercely
anti-Roman; they showed hostility also to those Jews whom
they suspected of collaborating with the Romans.8 Those
principally guilty in this last respect were members of the
chief-priestly establishment, but even a pious body of humble
Jews, like the Jerusalem church, would incur their disfavour if
they, or their associates elsewhere, were thought to be building
bridges to the Gentile world.
On religious and political grounds alike, then, the Gentile
mission was bound to pose problems for the Jerusalem church
and its leaders. Some members of the church suggested a
simple solution: Gentile converts to Christianity should comply
with the same requirements as Gentile converts to Judaism—
they should be circumcised (if they were men) and undertake
to keep the law of Moses. This would not only limit the intake
of Gentiles into the church; it would ensure that those who did
enter it would have to observe an acceptable ethical standard.
Even the Zealots could have no valid argument against the
admission of Gentiles on these terms. If this suggestion were
adopted, however, it would have a disconcerting effect on the
large number of Gentiles who had already been admitted to
Christian fellowship without any such requirements—in
Caesarea, Antioch, and places farther afield. Nevertheless, the
suggestion commended itself to many, and some were disposed
to insist on it, especially those who had links with the
Pharisees. How far they could count on the support of the
leadership of the Jerusalem church is uncertain: the apostles
had already compromised themselves in the eyes of such
rigorists, but they may have hoped for the approval of James
the Just, who was respected by all the people for his piety and
self-denial.9
2. Confrontation at Antioch
Some of these people visited Antioch and tried to impose
their line on the Gentile Christians there: “Unless you are
circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be
circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be
saved” (Acts 15:1). This may well be the situation to which Paul
refers when he speaks about the “false brethren” who
infiltrated the Gentile-Christian fellowship “to spy out our
freedom which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring
us into bondage” (Galatians 2:4). This, too, provides a setting in
which we can place the incident which Paul recounts in
Galatians 2:11–14:
When Cephas came to Antioch I opposed him to his face, because he stood
condemned. For before certain men came from James, he ate with the Gentiles;
but when they came he drew back and separated himself, through fear of the
circumcision party. The rest of the Jews who were there joined in this play-acting;
matters went so far that even Barnabas was carried away into joining their play-
acting. But when I saw that they were deviating from the straight path of gospel
truth, I said to Cephas in front of them all, “If you, Jew as you are, live in the
Gentile and not the Jewish way, how is that you try to compel the Gentiles to live
tike Jews?”
The picture that Paul here gives of Peter’s habitual practice
agrees with the picture that Luke gives in Acts. From his vision
on the flat roof of Simon the tanner’s house in Joppa and from
his experience with Cornelius and his household at Caesarea
Peter had learned that he “should not call any one common or
unclean” (Acts 10:28). Having broken decisively with his
former practice and eaten with Gentiles at Caesarea, he
continued to eat with Gentiles thereafter as opportunity
offered. So, when he visited Syrian Antioch some time,
probably, after Barnabas and Paul’s return from Asia Minor, he
had no difficulty in enjoying table fellowship with Gentile
Christians there. This was as true of ordinary social meals as of
the special meal of bread and wine which Christians took as the
memorial of their Lord and as a sign of their joint participation
in him; in fact, no practical distinction could be made between
the two, since the memorial bread and wine were normally
taken in the context of a social meal. It is Peter’s habitual
practice that gives point to Paul’s charge of “play-acting”
(hypokrisis) against him when he withdrew from table
fellowship with Gentile Christians and ate with Jewish
Christians only. Had Paul been confronted with a convinced
Judaizer, an advocate of the circumcision of Gentile converts,
he would have rebuked him too, but in different terms: he
would not have charged him with “play-acting”, for such a man,
even if his conduct amounted to “perverting the gospel of
Christ” (Galatians 1:7), would be acting in accordance with his
true convictions. But Peter was no judaizer; in the company of
Gentile Christians he was quite happy to live like a Gentile
himself. Why, then, did he suddenly charge his course?
This question could be answered more adequately if Peter’s
own account of the incident had been preserved alongside
Paul’s, and more particularly if we knew exactly the part played
by “certain men” who “came from James”. These are not
identified by Paul with the “false brethren” whose infiltration
he deplores; they appear rather to have been commissioned by
James to deliver a personal message to Peter. One variant
reading, indeed, refers in the singular to “a certain person”
who “came from James”.10 The message conveyed to Peter
could have been to the effect that news of his free and easy
intercourse with Gentiles at Antioch had come to Jerusalem
and was causing scandal to many good brethren there, besides
hampering the mission in which James and others were
engaged among their Jewish neighbours.11 The reported
conduct of the prince of the apostles was being exploited by
unsympathetic scribes and Pharisees to the detriment of the
Christian cause in Judaea, and might even provoke violent
reprisals from those militants who condemned fraternization
with non-Jews as treasonable.12
It is not difficult to appreciate Peter’s dilemma, or to see how
he could have defended his change of course. Though he could
not emulate Paul’s versatility, he too was endeavouring to be
“all things to all men” for the gospel’s sake.13 For him, as for
Paul, the interests of the gospel were paramount, and if the
interests of the gospel in Judaea were being prejudiced by his
way of life in Antioch, he was prepared to alter that way of life.
In his eyes, as in Paul’s, there was nothing in the non–ethical
realm, such as food, which should be regarded as inherently
“unclean”, but he might have decided, as Paul was to put it at a
later date, “not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that
makes your brother stumble” (Romans 14:13–21). A major
Jewish objection to eating with Gentiles was that, in doing so,
one would almost certainly infringe the Jewish food-laws.14 If,
then, Peter’s practice in Antioch was a stumbling-block to
members of the Jerusalem church whose consciences were
scrupulous and unemancipated, he might well think it right to
discontinue it for their sakes.
Paul, for his part, was equally concerned on this occasion to
safeguard the interests of the gospel and to avoid putting a
stumbling-block in the path of his fellow-Christians. The aspect
of the gospel that meant most to him was the Gentile mission,
and the fellow-Christians whose interests he had most at heart
were Gentile Christians. Whatever Peter’s motives were, Paul
would have regarded them as negligible in comparison with the
progress of the Gentile mission and the wellbeing of Gentile
Christians. Even worse, if possible, than Peter’s action in itself
was the effect of his example on other Jewish Christians, and
when even Barnabas—the last man of whom it might have been
expected—was persuaded to join in withdrawing from table-
fellowship with Gentiles, what must the Gentile Christians have
thought? They could draw only one conclusion: so long as they
remained uncircumcised, they were at best second-class
citizens in the new community. In that case they might either
repudiate the message which (despite what Paul said)
consigned them to second-class status in comparison with their
fellow-believers of Jewish birth, or they might decide that
(despite what Paul said) their best policy was to go the whole
way of the proselyte and accept circumcision, since only so
could they become first-class citizens. If they took the latter
course, this would be what Paul meant when he said that Peter
was trying “to compel the Gentiles to live like Jews”. Either
way, the good which had apparently been achieved at the
Jerusalem conference would be undone; the truth of the gospel
would be hopelessly compromised. In Christ, Paul believed and
affirmed, there was “neither Jew nor Greek” (Galatians 3:28),
whatever distinctions might persist in the world at large. The
middle wall of partition between them had been demolished by
the work of Christ; Paul would not stand idly by and see it
rebuilt, whether as a religious or as a social barrier. The only
logical reason for preserving it as a social barrier would be its
continuing validity as a religious barrier, and to recognize such
a continuing validity, even if it were only in outward behaviour,
would be to nullify the grace of God. If God’s redeeming grace
was to be received by faith, and not by conformity with the law
of Moses, then it was available on equal terms to Jew and
Gentile, and to make a distinction in practice between Jewish
and Gentile believers, as Peter and the others were doing, was
in practice to deny the gospel.
What the immediate outcome of this confrontation between
Paul and Peter was cannot be known with certainty. Perhaps
the Galatian Christians, to whom Paul relates the incident,
were aware of the sequel; perhaps the situation was still fluid
when Paul wrote. Such information as we can glean about
Peter after this does not suggest that he persisted for long in
this charade of “separate tables”. Peter was more conservative
than Paul, no doubt, but since at heart he was in basic
agreement with Paul he probably resumed his more liberal
course when the awkward situation at Antioch was a thing of
the past. At any rate, Paul here does not say how Peter
responded to his rebuke, for his account of the rebuke merges
into a more general comment on the principles involved, for the
benefit of his Galatian readers.
3. The letter to the Galatians
Since there is no document in the New Testament more
indisputably Paul’s than the letter to the Galatians, it is strange
that there is no unanimity on its date, or even on the identity of
“the churches of Galatia” to which it is addressed. If there is no
unanimity, the reason must be that the evidence is not
unambiguous. It was evidently written by Paul to warn his
Galatian converts against certain “trouble-makers”15 who were
urging upon them a line of teaching and course of action
which, as he saw the situation, threatened to undermine the
gospel which he had brought to them and which they had
accepted. But even on the character and policy of these
“trouble-makers” there is disagreement.
The view adopted here—provisionally, not dogmatically—is
that the letter was written shortly after the confrontation at
Antioch, to the churches recently planted by Barnabas and Paul
in cities of South Galatia, and that the “trouble-makers” were
visitors to those churches who were insisting, as others of the
same outlook did at Antioch, that it was necessary for Gentile
converts to be circumcised. That circumcision was a major
plank in their religious platform is plain even on a superficial
reading of the letter. Along with circumcision, the Galatian
Christians were beginning to adopt other Jewish customs, such
as the observance of holy days. It is a natural conclusion, then,
that the “trouble-makers” were judaizers, and this indeed has
been the general opinion. In more recent times the opinion has
been expressed by some scholars that the “trouble-makers”
were inculcating a form of gnosticism.16 This is a term which is
capable of a wide range of meaning. Strictly it denotes a lop-
sided and over-intellectualized development of Christian
teaching which is well attested in the second century, but in so
far as first-century anticipations of it can be traced, they may
be described as incipient gnosticism. Such incipient gnosticism
is presupposed (and deprecated) in 1 Corinthians17 and
Colossians.18 It may be that the “trouble-makers” in Galatia
told their hearers that they were imparting to them the true
knowledge (gnōsis) of God; this might be the point of Paul’s
remark in Galatians 4:9, “now that you have come to know God,
or rather to be known by God”. But the incipient gnosticism
which has been discerned in this letter is much more likely to
have arisen in the minds of modern interpreters from a
misunderstanding of some of Paul’s arguments in it than to be
part of the propaganda of the “trouble-makers.”19
If the “trouble-makers” were judaizers—or even if they were
gnostics—the first response to their teaching would have been,
“But this is not what we were taught!” Such a response would
have provoked the question: “Who taught you?” If they replied,
have provoked the question: “Who taught you?” If they replied,
“Barnabas and Paul”, then they would be told that the authority
of Jerusalem was superior to Barnabas and Paul’s—in fact, that
Barnabas and Paul had no authority apart from that conferred
on them by the leaders of the Jerusalem church.
Paul, says Luke, was recognized as “the chief speaker” by
the men of Lystra (Acts 14:12), and they probably shared this
recognition with the men and women in other South Galatian
cities. It is probable that the “trouble-makers” saw that it was
Paul’s authority in particular that had to be diminished in the
eyes of the Galatian Christians. If so, they showed wisdom,
even if they did not know of Barnabas’s recent action in Syrian
Antioch. In any case, it is Paul’s own authority that he defends
in his letter because, whatever might be said of the source of
Barnabas’s authority, Paul claimed to have received his,
without human mediation, from the risen Christ.
Paul devotes a good part of the letter to an autobiographical
outline, in which his main point seems to be to prove that at no
time between his conversion and the date of writing the letter
had the Jerusalem leaders an opportunity of conferring any
authority on him: rather, they recognized the authority which
he already possessed and by virtue of which he had been
energetically discharging an apostolic ministry for several
years. This presupposes that the “trouble-makers” maintained
that his authority was derived from Jerusalem and therefore
dependent on Jerusalem. But, if they were judaizers, could they
maintain that Paul had derived his gospel from Jerusalem and
yet find fault with a gospel so derived? Does not their criticism
of the gospel which, as they insisted, Paul received from the
Jerusalem leaders, imply that they rejected the authority of the
Jerusalem leaders—that, consequently, they were not judaizers
but more probably gnostics?
Not necessarily. Their argument may well have run along
these lines: “Paul has no authority of his own, no gospel of his
own, apart from what he has received from Jerusalem. But he
has not given you the whole Jerusalem gospel. The Jerusalem
believers, with their leaders, revere the law of Moses; every
man among them has been circumcised. Of course they did not
receive circumcision when they accepted Jesus as the Messiah,
because they were circumcised already. But you were
uncircumcised when you believed the gospel; if you are to be
on the same footing as the Jerusalem Christians and to be
acknowledged by them as fellow-heirs of salvation, fellow-
members of the people of God, you must be circumcised too. If
Paul told you otherwise, he had no authority to do so. His
gospel is all right so far as it goes, but it Is defective: be ruled
by us, and have the deficiencies made good at once”.
Paul’s position on the circumcision question was clearcut
because he had thought it through; the Jerusalem leaders had
not as yet had any occasion to think it through, and so their
position was not so clearcut. The conversion of Cornelius, and
even the ingathering of Gentile believers at Antioch, had been
treated by them, on an ad hoc basis. When, as a result of the
current agitation, they were compelled to think it through, they
reached the same conclusion as Paul, in so far as they came to
agree that circumcision was not to be imposed oh Gentile
Christians. As Paul saw the new situation introduced by the
coming of Christ, circumcision was no longer of any account. A
man might be circumcised or uncircumcised: it made no
difference in his relation to God.20 What Paul did oppose was
the idea that, by submitting to circumcision as a religious
obligation, a man could acquire merit in God’s sight. Similarly,
the observance of certain days or of various food restrictions
was neither here nor there, unless it was thought that such
observance was necessary to win divine approval. These were
features of the old order of law, which had been superseded by
the new order of grace. Once Paul had relied on these and
other forms of legal obedience for his justification before God:
now he had found a more excellent way. But if, as those people
maintained, “justification were through the law, then Christ
died to no purpose” (Galatians 2:21); in fact, if the law were
still in force, as the way of justification, then the age of the
Messiah had not yet dawned, and so Jesus could not be the
Messiah.21 No wonder that Paul pronounced an anathema on
the bearer of a message which led to this conclusion. Such a
message was no gospel, whatever it might be called; it was a
travesty of the true gospel.
Moreover, if justification came through the law, then it must
be through the whole law. Let no one imagine that the
requirements of the law could be satisfied by such a token
performance as circumcision. If a man had himself circumcised
as a religious obligation, the obligation which he undertook
thereby involved the keeping of the law in its entirety. Paul
knew from his own experience what that meant: the Galatian
Christians had not begun to appreciate it, and even the visitors
who were pressing circumcision on them were far from keeping
the whole law in any serious sense. One could not pick and
choose among the ordinances of the law; it was all or nothing.
The law pronounced an explicit curse on all who failed to keep
it in its entirety.22 The gospel showed how men and women
could be redeemed from that curse by faith in Christ, who by
the manner of his death absorbed the curse in his own
person.23
Again, no one should be misled by the idea that the law, by
virtue of its antiquity, had a greater claim to veneration than a
message so recent as the gospel. The gospel was the fulfilment
of God’s promise to Abraham, which antedated the law by
centuries. Abraham, whose faith in God was counted to him for
righteousness, was the prototype of all who were justified by
faith.24 The law was a parenthetical dispensation, introduced to
serve a temporary purpose, but now rendered obsolete by the
coming of Christ, the true offspring of Abraham, in whom the
promises and their fulfilment were embodied.
The Galatians did not realize what a retrograde step they
were being encouraged to take: a step back from freedom to
bondage, from maturity to infancy, from the status of sons to
the status of servants. They had come of age in Christ: why
should they want to revert to the apron-string stage? The
beginning of their Christian life had been attended by
manifestations of the presence and power of the Spirit: were
they now to seek the perfection of Christian life in ordinances
of an outmoded regime, related not to the Spirit but to the
of an outmoded regime, related not to the Spirit but to the
flesh?
But the majority of the Galatian Christians were converts
from paganism, who had never lived under the Jewish law; how
could their submission to the yoke of the law be described as a
reversion to their former state? The answer to this question
reveals perhaps more sharply than anything else how radical
was Paul’s reorientation to the law which had once been the
centre of his devotion. By putting themselves under the law the
Galatians would be subjecting themselves to the same stoicheia
or “elements” under which they had formerly lived as pagans.
So Paul, counting himself in along with his converts from
paganism, says, “when we were infants” (that is, before we had
attained the age of spiritual majority through faith in Christ),
“we were slaves to the stoicheia of the universe”; but how, he
asks (now that they have attained the age of spiritual majority),
“how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly
stoicheia, whose slaves you want to be once more?” (Galatians
4:3, 9). Then he immediately gives an example of what he
means: “you observe days, and months, and seasons, and
years” (Galatians 4:10). If the observance of such special
occasions by way of religious obligation was a form of servitude
to the stoicheia, then the stoicheia are best identified with the
planetary bodies by which the calendar was regulated.
According to the creation narrative, the heavenly luminaries
were ordained not only to give light on earth but also to be “for
signs and for seasons and for days and years” (Genesis 1:14).
Pagan religion to a large extent deified the heavenly
luminaries; Judaism regarded them as instruments serving
their Creator’s will. But those who felt themselves compelled to
pay special veneration to a calendar regulated by those
luminaries were in effect giving them the same status as the
pagans did—treating them as elemental powers. Elemental
powers indeed they were so long as they dominated men’s
minds, together with other forces which had the same effect,
like the weight of outworn tradition or the pressure of current
opinion, but those whose minds were emancipated by the
gospel from their domination knew all such influences to be in
themselves “weak and beggarly”, unable to exercise control
where their control was not admitted. But why should people
who had experienced the emancipating grace of the gospel
submit to those elemental powers all over again? To consent to
such bondage afresh was to fall from grace, to cut oneself off
from Christ and his liberating gospel. “For freedom Christ has
set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a
yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).
As regularly in the Gentile mission-field, it was necessary to
deal with some converts from, paganism who misinterpreted
gospel freedom to mean licence to do whatever they chose, to
indulge their old propensities unchecked. There is an
occasional word of admonition for them too in this letter, but it
has the nature of an aside: “you were called to freedom,
brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for
the flesh” (Galatians 5:13). The burden of the letter, however,
is the warning against exchanging Christian freedom for legal
bondage: that was the main danger at this time in the churches
of Galatia. Paul pours out his urgent and affectionate concern
for his new-born children in the faith, his hot indignation
against those who were upsetting them and leading them
astray, and at times his bewilderment at the ease with which
they allowed themselves to be hoodwinked. He was one of
those men of powerful intelligence who find it difficult to
understand how others cannot see a logical argument as
clearly as they can themselves, especially when they can be
presumed to share the same premises—premises which, in this
case, the Galatians had learned from Paul himself. “Who has
cast a spell on you?” he asks in his perplexity (Galatians 3:1).25
4. The apostolic decree
We do not know what immediate effect the letter had in the
churches of Galatia. But the agitation caused in the church of
Syrian Antioch by the insistence of the circumcision party led
that church to send a deputation to Jerusalem to have the issue
settled, if possible, once for all. The apostles who were present
in the city together with James and his fellow-elders of the
Jerusalem church held a meeting—commonly referred to as the
Council of Jerusalem—to consider the question and reach a
decision. The Council of Jerusalem, as described by Luke in
Acts 15:6–29, was not an inter-church meeting, despite the
presence of the delegates from Antioch; it was a meeting of the
leaders of the Jerusalem church. No one could have foretold
with confidence the outcome of the meeting. The circumcision
of Gentile converts was vigorously advocated by some members
of the church. But thanks to Peter’s advocacy of the line he had
defended when he was questioned about his visit to Cornelius
and to James’s judicious summing-up, the Jerusalem leaders
confirmed their previous practice and gave that confirmation
official expression in a written document addressed to the
church of Antioch and her daughter-churches in Syria and
Cilicia, often called the apostolic decree: circumcision was not
to be required of Gentile converts.
It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden
than these necessary things: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to
idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication. If you keep
yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.26
The decision against imposing circumcision on Gentile
Christians must have given great satisfaction to the church of
Antioch, and not least to Paul. He was not likely to change his
practice or policy whichever way the verdict went, but his work
would have been rendered immeasurably more difficult if
Jerusalem had gone on record as insisting on circumcision. No
longer would it be possible for “trouble-makers” to visit his
churches and claim that the circumcision of Gentile believers
was the official policy in the church of Jerusalem.27 That
question was now closed. In fact, an argument for the early
dating of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, which has been
followed here, is that if the Council of Jerusalem, as reported
by Luke, had already taken place, Paul could hardly have
refrained from mentioning its decision on the main issue with
which the letter is concerned. True, he was not disposed to
invoke the authority of the Jerusalem church, but a bare
statement of historical fact would have been an effective
argument for the cause which he was defending.
Although the apostolic decree did not impose circumcision, it
did lay down certain requirements for Gentile converts to
observe. These requirements may have been intended to
facilitate social intercourse between Jewish and Gentile
Christians. Some Gentile practices were specially offensive to
Jews, and if these practices were given up, Jewish Christians
would feel that an obstacle in the way of table-fellowship and
the like with their Gentile brethren had been removed. Three of
the requirements have the nature of food-restrictions:28 the
fourth—abstention from fornication—is apparently ethical.
While the collocation of ethical and non-ethical requirements
may seem strange to us, it would not necessarily have seemed
so to Jewish Christians; they were familiar with the
juxtaposition of such (to us) disparate requirements in the law.
Perhaps, however, fornication in the decree does not mean
general sexual laxity but has a more technical sense. The most
elementary teaching given to converts from paganism almost
certainly made it dear that fornication and similar practices
were incompatible with the Christian way. Even so, the
Jerusalem leaders may have felt that no harm would be done by
underlining this in the decree. But fornication could bear a
more technical sense of marital union within the prohibited
degrees of consanguinity or affinity laid down in the Hebrew
“law of holiness” (Leviticus 18:6–18).29 There are one or two
other places in the New Testament where fornication may have
this technical sense—e.g. the concession “except on the ground
of fornication” added in the Matthaean version of Jesus’
prohibition of divorce for his followers (Matthew 5:32; 19:9).
There may have been some unions which did not flout Gentile
convention but would have been scandalous in Jewish eyes.
As for the food-restrictions, these resolve themselves into
two: Gentile Christians were to abstain from eating the flesh of
animals which had been sacrificed to pagan divinities and flesh
from which the blood had not been completely drained (the
phrase “and from what is strangled”, which is missing in some
authorities for the text, simply denotes one form of flesh with
the blood still in it). Eating with blood was absolutely tabu for
Jews: it is expressly forbidden in Leviticus 17:10–14 and even
earlier, in the commandments enjoined on Noah and his family
(Genesis 9:4).30 People who had been brought up in the Jewish
way of life could not be expected to accept such food at Gentile
tables. To eat the flesh of animals which had been sacrificed in
pagan temples was regarded as participation (however
remotely) in idolatry: this also must be avoided. If a Jewish
Christian suspected that the meat set before him in a Gentile
house, or the meat shared with a Gentile Christian at a
fellowship meal or love-feast, had come from such a tainted
source, it would be impossible to sit with him at a common
table. Many Gentile Christians were perfectly willing to make
practical concessions of this kind: indeed, over wide areas of
the Christian world the terms of the apostolic decree were
observed for many centuries as essential to the Christian way
of life.31
What of Paul? Where the principles of the gospel were not at
stake he was the most conciliatory of men. He repeatedly urged
Christians with robust consciences to be specially considerate
of their fellow-Christians whose consciences were less
emancipated than their own, even, to the point of curbing their
personal freedom in the interests of Christian charity, and he
was careful to show them a good example in this regard.
He was familiar with an argument, voiced at times by his
own Gentile converts, that since sexual activity belonged
entirely to the sphere of the body, it was as morally and
religiously neutral as food to truly “spiritual” men.32 But he
disagreed completely. Anything which involved personal
relations, especially at such a deep level as sexual union, was
of the utmost moral and religious importance, and of quite a
different order from food. Where fornication was concerned,
Paul’s own teaching was at one with that of the apostolic
decree. People who persisted in this kind of practice must not
be tolerated in the church, whether fornication was understood
as ordinary commerce with harlots or in the more technical
sense, as with the man in the church of Corinth some years
later who was openly cohabiting with his father’s wife—a
breach of the permitted limits of affinity which flouted even
pagan convention (1 Corinthians 5:1).
Where food laws were concerned, Paul’s conscience was
completely emancipated. He knew from the teaching of Jesus
that no species of food was religiously impure or contaminated
in itself;33 any such impurity or contamination attaching to it
had its origin not in the food but in the human mind. But he
was anxious not to upset those who were more scrupulous in
this respect than he himself was. He would happily accept the
food restrictions specified in the apostolic decree if this would
facilitate fellowship between Christians, and recommend their
acceptance to others on the same ground. But such acceptance
must be voluntary, not compulsory, and it must be intelligent,
based on the dictates of Christian charity and not on the idea
that there was something wrong and impermissible per se
about certain kinds of food. It is noteworthy that when, in later
years, he was asked to give a ruling on this matter, he appealed
to first principles and never to the apostolic decree.
The dictates of Christian charity, on which Paul bases his
ruling, are summed up by him as “the law of Christ”, in
fulfilment of which his people should, among other things,
“bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2). When he warns
some members of the Galatian churches not to exploit their
Christian freedom “as an opportunity for the flesh”, this is the
corrective which he applies to such licence: “but through love
be servants of one another” (Galatians 5:13). The “law of
Christ” is a repromulgation of the injunction of Leviticus 19:18,
“You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Galatians 5:14).34
But when “law” is used in this way, it cannot be understood
“legally”: the law of love is incapable of being imposed or
enforced by external authority. Rather, it is the spontaneous
principle of thought and action in a life controlled by the Spirit
of Christ; it is willingly accepted and practised. Paul was
persuaded that the freedom of the Spirit was a more powerful
incentive to the good life than all the ordinances or decrees in
the world.
CHAPTER 18
“What the Law could not do”
1. Paul’s experience of the law
PAUL’S DAMASCUS-ROAD EXPERIENCE, IN A SENSE,
CONTAINED within itself the totality of his apostolic message.
But that totality was, naturally, not grasped by him in all its
detail immediately. Further “revelations of the Lord” brought
home to him the fuller significance of that initial crisis when
God “was pleased to reveal his Son” in Paul; his increasing
knowledge of Christ enabled him to appreciate more and more
that “wisdom of God in a mystery”, foreordained before the
ages for his people’s glory and now at length disclosed in the
gospel (1 Corinthians 2:7). The Damascus-road revelation
coincided with his call to preach Christ among the Gentiles, but
not until he was fully launched on his career of Gentile
evangelization could he understand what this call entailed. His
contretemps with Peter and Barnabas at Antioch and his
involvement in the Galatian controversy taught him much that
he could not otherwise have learned. The essence of his gospel
was not affected by these experiences, but his comprehension
of it was enriched, as was his appreciation of the ways in which
it was to be effectively presented and defended. Justification by
faith, so vigorously asserted in the letter to the Galatians, was
implicit in his conversion, but now it became in his hands a
fighting doctrine—not only a principle for which to contend but
a weapon with which to contend.
Speaking of his Christian standing by contrast with his
earlier situation, he describes himself as “not having a
righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is
through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God which
depends on faith” (Philippians 3:9). His exchanging his former
depends on faith” (Philippians 3:9). His exchanging his former
quest for a righteous status in God’s sight through keeping the
law for the way of acceptance made available in the gospel
suggests that he found his former quest inadequate. But its
inadequacy was realized in an instantaneous flash, not by a
process of growing disillusionment.
To keep the whole law was no easy task, but it was not
impossible. The rich man who assured Jesus that he had kept
all the commandments of the decalogue from his youth1 was no
hypocrite, and no more was Paul when, looking back on his
earlier life from the perspective of twenty to thirty years
Christian experience, he says that “as to righteousness under
the law” he was “blameless” (Philippians 3:6).
The law was God’s law; it was the revelation of his will. To
keep the law was to do the will of God, To be born under the
law was an immense privilege. Unlike Gentiles, who lacked this
privilege, a Jew who was “instructed in the law” could know
God’s will “and approve what is excellent”; he was qualified to
be “a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, a
corrector of the foolish, a teacher of children” (Romans 2:18–
20). The words are Paul’s, and he spoke from experience. Yet at
the time when he wrote he had embraced another way. No
longer did he rely upon the law and boast of his relation to God
as one who had been born a Jew; no longer did he make his aim
the attainment of that righteousness before God which was
based on keeping the law. He had found a new way of
righteousness, based on faith in Christ.2 Allegiance to a person
had displaced devotion to a code—which was, indeed, not
merely a code but more a way of life.
There were many disciples of Jesus in the early church who
thought it quite possible—and indeed eminently desirable—to
combine faith in Christ with the pursuit of righteousness
through keeping the law, but Paul regarded this attitude as an
impossible compromise. No one had kept the law with greater
devotion than Paul, and the law, far from securing his
righteousness before God, actually led him into sin. It was his
devotion to the law that made him such a zealous persecutor of
the church: his persecuting zeal was but one aspect of his zeal
for the law. He persecuted the church with a good conscience:
right up to the moment of his confrontation with the risen
Christ no shadow of doubt appears to have entered his mind
that what he was doing brought pleasure to God. But with the
revelation on the Damascus road came the recognition that
Jesus was the Messiah; the crucified Jesus was the risen Lord.
Then the followers of Jesus had been right after all, and Paul
had been terribly wrong. Instead of pursuing the path of
righteousness, as he thought, he had been persistently, albeit
unwittingly, committing the sin of sins—attacking the witnesses
of the Messiah and, through them, attacking the Messiah
himself. But he had relied on the law! Given the law and Paul’s
passionate resolution to keep it, what other course could he
have followed? His disillusionment with the law when he
understood where his devotion to it had led him is reflected in
his words: “I through the law died to the law, that I might live
to God” (Galatians 2:19).3 When it is pointed out that Paul’s
attitude to the law is so completely out of step with the general
rabbinic attitude as to be unique, we cannot but agree; but his
experience was unique.
2. Christ the end of the law
It is plain that Paul believed and taught that the law had
been in a major sense abrogated by Christ. “Christ is the end of
the law”, he wrote, “that every one who has faith may be
justified” (Romans 10:4). The age of law, which was never
designed to be other than a parenthesis in God’s dealings with
mankind (Galatians 3:19; Romans 5:20a), had been superseded
by the new age, which might be variously called “the age of
Christ”, with reference to Christ’s reigning at the right hand of
God (1 Corinthians 15:25, quoting Psalm 110:1), or “the age of
the Spirit”, with reference to the Spirit’s presence with the
people of Christ on earth as the pledge of their eternal
inheritance in the resurrection life (Romans 8:10 f.). Was it
purely the impact of the Damascus-road event that forced this
conclusion on Paul, or had he been in some degree prepared
conclusion on Paul, or had he been in some degree prepared
for it in his earlier training?
There are some scholars who have argued for such a
preparation. In particular, Rabbi Leo Baeck maintained in an
influential essay that Paul had been brought up to accept a
doctrine of three epochs of world-history which implied that
the reign of law would come to an end with the dawn of the
messianic age.4
The doctrine of the three epochs is said to be a teaching of
the school of Elijah—an expression which, according to W.
Bacher, has a similar meaning in relation to haggadah to that
of “a commandment of Moses from Sinai” in relation to
halakhah—both expressions denote great antiquity.5 The
doctrine, in that case, was current long before Paul’s time.
But in fact we cannot be sure if Paul had been brought up to
accept this doctrine. If he had, then the logic of the situation
was plain: the epoch of the Messiah had set in, and therefore
the epoch of the law was past. But even if he had not, his
personal situation involved a logic of its own: Jesus was shown
to be the Messiah, and he had accomplished for Paul and in
Paul something beyond what the law had accomplished.
Whereas the law had led him, all unconsciously, along a path
contrary to God’s will, his new faith in Jesus as Messiah and
Lord brought him consciously into a state of righteousness
before God and peace with God. His former zeal for God had
been an unenlightened zeal. So long as he was ignorant of the
“righteousness that comes from God” and sought to establish
his own, he could not submit to God’s way of setting men right
with himself. But now, as he learned, “Christ is the end of the
law, that every one who has faith may be justified” (Romans
10:2–4).
The affirmation that “Christ is the end of the law” has been
variously understood. The word “end” (telos) can mean “goal”
or “terminus”, and here it probably means both. Christ, for
Paul, was the goal of the law in the sense that the law was a
temporary provision introduced by God until the coming of
Abraham’s offspring in whom the promise made to Abraham
was consummated; the law, in other words, “was our custodian
until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith”
(Galatians 3:19, 24). But Christ was also, for that reason, the
terminus of the law: if, as Paul says, the law was a temporary
provision, the coming of Christ meant that the period of its
validity was now at an end.
Some of Paul’s interpreters have tried to modify the
starkness of this statement; others have tried to sharpen it, or
at least to extend its scope. To be sure, if Jewish Christians
continued to observe various customs prescribed by the law as
part of their inherited way of life, Paul raised no objection: he
himself conformed to those customs from time to time when he
judged it appropriate to do so.6 But what he is concerned with
in his statement that “Christ is the end of the law” is the place
of law in man’s approach to God; the prima facie meaning of
the statement is: now that Christ has come there is no more
place for law in man’s approach to God.7 To the thinking of
many, this is a hard saying, which lies open to the charge of
antinomianism—a charge which Paul met and rebutted in his
own day.
The traditional Lutheran doctrine of the threefold use of the
law envisages it (i) as a means of preservation, (ii) as a
summons to repentance, (iii) as guidance for the church.8 In so
far as the first use involves the administration of law by
magistrates for the restraint of evil and the maintenance of
good order, this is not an aspect of the gospel; what Paul has to
say about this subject may be seen in Romans 13:1–7. The
second use is recognized by Paul as a fact of experience
—“through law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20)—but
not, it appears, as an aid to gospel preaching. It may be held,
as a principle of pastoral theology, that confrontation with the
law is a salutary means of leading the sinner to acknowledge
his inability and cast himself on the mercy of God. But there is
no evidence that Paul ever used the law in this way in his
apostolic preaching. His hearers, whether Jews or Gentiles,
were in bondage, as he saw it, and his message was one of
liberation. In fact, when he urges his Gentile converts in the
churches of Galatia not to “submit again to a yoke of slavery”
(Galatians 5:1), he implies that by placing themselves under
the yoke of the law they would be reverting to the same kind of
bondage as they had endured in their pagan past. It appears,
indeed, that the angels through whom the law was ordained
(Galatians 3:19)9 are equated with the “elemental spirits of the
world” (Galatians 4:3, 8) which impose their yoke on the minds
of men outside of Christ, whether they be Jews or Gentiles.10
As for the third use of the law, Paul’s thoughts on the
guidance of the church may sometimes be expressed by means
of the term “law”, but when he speaks of “the law of the Spirit”
or “the law of Christ” he uses “law” in a non-legal sense.11
In the Reformed tradition derived from Geneva, it has
frequently been said that, while the man in Christ is not under
law as a means of salvation, he remains under it as a rule of
life.12 In its own right, this distinction may be cogently
maintained as a principle of Christian theology and ethics, but
it should not be imagined that it has Pauline authority.
According to Paul, the believer is not under law as a rule of life
—unless one thinks of the law of love, and that is a completely
different kind of law, fulfilled not by obedience to a code but by
the outworking of an inward power. When Paul says, “sin will
have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but
under grace” (Romans 6:14), it is the on-going course of
Christian life that he has in view, not simply the initial
justification by faith—as is plain from the point of the
antinomian retort which Paul immediately quotes: “What then?
Are we to sin because we are not under law But under grace?”
(Romans 6:15).
Again, it is sometimes said that Christ is the end of the
ceremonial law (including not only the sacrificial cultus but
circumcision and the observance of the sacred calendar) but
not of the moral law.13 Once more, this is a perfectly valid, and
to some extent an obvious, theological and ethical distinction;
but it has no place in Pauline exegesis. It has to be read into
Paul, for it is not a distinction that Paul himself makes.
As for the sharpening of Paul’s assertion that Christ is the
end of the law, we may think of Karl Barth’s insistence that
Christ is the end of religion14 (which may be accepted or
refused according to our understanding of the amorphous word
“religion”), or of Ernst Fuchs’s paraphrase “Christ the end of
history”—by which he means that Christ, as the eschaton in
person, achieves for faith the cessation of history (including
especially salvation-history) and the beginning of real life.15
But this is the expression of an existentialist interpretation of
the gospel which, however well founded it may be, goes beyond
what Paul meant.16
3. Man under the law
We have quoted Romans 6:14: “sin will have no dominion
over you, since you are not under law but under grace,” The
implication of these words is as astounding for traditional
theological ethics today as in the first century. To be under law
—not only the law of Moses but the law of God—means to be
under the dominion of sin. To be under grace—the grace of God
brought near in Christ—is to be liberated simultaneously from
the rule of law and the dominion of sin. So Paul had proved in
his own life.
The close association in Paul’s mind between sin and the law
is illustrated by the parallel analogies of the slave-market
(Romans 6:12–23) and the marriage bond (Romans 7:1–6). In
the former analogy a slave is bound to obey his master; but if
the slave dies, or passes by purchase into the ownership of
another master, the will of his former master is no longer
binding on him. In the latter analogy a woman is bound by law
to her husband so long as he lives; but when he dies she is no
longer so bound and can legally marry another husband. The
second master in the former analogy, like the new husband in
the latter analogy, is Christ; but in the former analogy the old
master is sin (personified), whereas in the latter analogy the
old husband is the law (also personified). One and the same
transition liberates the soul from slavery to sin and from the
yoke of the law. No wonder that Paul goes on to picture an
objector as asking if “the law is sin” (Romans 7:7). Paul cannot
objector as asking if “the law is sin” (Romans 7:7). Paul cannot
agree: the law is God’s law; every one of its commandments is
“holy and just and good” (Romans 7:12). Yet we can see how
the objector thinks he is carrying Paul’s argument to its logical
conclusion. According to Paul, the law not only brings sin to
light; it forbids sin, indeed, but it stimulates the very thing it
forbids. In fact, says Paul, “the power of sin is the law” (1
Corinthians 15:56).
The analogy of the marriage bond in Romans 7:1–6 is
followed by one of the most controversial exegetical problems
in the Pauline corpus. In Romans 7:7–25 Paul describes the
bearing of the law on the life of a man, or on the life of man
generically, and uses the first person singular throughout. This
use of the first person singular makes the passage ostensibly
autobiographical, but is it really autobiographical? Does Paul
use “I” dramatically in order to make the experience of the man
described more vivid, or does he use “I” representatively,
portraying the experience of mankind in terms of his own
experience? The latter view was favoured by T. W. Manson:
“We may call it autobiography if we like, but here Paul’s
autobiography is the biography of Everyman.”17
The passage falls into two sections: (a) verses 7–13, in which
the first-personal experience is related in the past tense; (b)
verses 14–25, which it is related in the present tense.
It is more particularly in the former of these two sections
that Paul’s autobiography is the biography of Everyman.
“Everyman” in this sense is equivalent to the Old Testament
“Adam”, and Paul, in effect, is re-telling the Genesis fall story
in the first person singular. “I was once alive apart from the
law”, he says, “but when the commandment came, sin sprang
to life and I died.… Sin, finding opportunity in the
commandment, beguiled me and by it killed me” (Romans 7:9,
11). Adam and his wife lived a carefree life until they were
tested by the commandment banning the fruit of the tree of
knowledge: that very commandment, brought to their
remembrance by the tempter, directed their attention to the
forbidden fruit and made it so irresistibly attractive that they
ate it. Sin, which is personified in Paul’s account, is given the
ate it. Sin, which is personified in Paul’s account, is given the
concrete form of the serpent in the Genesis narrative: as Eve
complains “the serpent beguiled me” (Genesis 3:13), so Paul
says “sin beguiled me”. The sentence pronounced in advance
on the taking of the forbidden fruit was death—“in the day that
you eat of it you shall die” (Genesis 2:17)—and Paul says that
he “died” when sin sprang to life: “sin … killed me”. Again, the
particular form of sin that Paul specifies in this section is
covetousness—“sin, finding opportunity in the commandment,
wrought in me all kinds of covetousness” (Romans 7:8), the
“commandment” in question being the last commandment of
the decalogue: “Thou shalt not covet” (Exodus 20:17;
Deuteronomy 5:21). Although the prohibition of the forbidden
fruit in the fall narrative is not part of the law of Moses, it
could well be regarded as an anticipatory instance of the
commandment against covetousness. And it could be argued
that covetousness is the quintessential sin.
To a large degree, moreover, the fall narrative in Paul’s eyes
presents in encapsulated form the experience of mankind
before and after the promulgation of the law of Moses, as he
expounds that experience in Romans 5:12–21.18 Although men
were sinful by nature before the law was promulgated, says
Paul, sin was not accounted to them in the absence of any law:
nulla poena sine lege (there is no penalty apart from an explicit
law, i.e. one can be punished only for the breach of an explicit
law). The introduction of law not only brought with it the
recognition of sin and the incitement to sin but also
accountability for sin and consequent liability to the death-
penalty passed on sin. “When the commandment came, sin
sprang to life and I died” (Romans 7:9). Even apart from the
law sinful man needed the grace of God, but it took the law to
render him aware of that need.
In Romans 7:7–13, then, Paul repeats in terms of individual
experience both the fall narrative and the more general history
of mankind before the law and under the law. To understand
him, we must forget all that we know of law-codes in the
ancient Near East antedating the Exodus; all the pre-Mosaic
history accessible to Paul was contained in Genesis and the
earlier part of Exodus. Before the time of Moses there was no
law in the sense that no law is recorded in scripture. (If we
bear in mind the place occupied in rabbinical thinking by the
Noachian regulations of Genesis 9:1–7, which were held to be
binding on Gentiles as well as Jews, we may ask what part they
played in Paul’s scheme of things; from the fact that nowhere
in his extant writings is there any reference to them, as indeed
there is none to Noah himself, we may conclude that they
played little or no part.)19
But what element of purely personal reminiscence enters
into Paul’s account in Romans 7:7–13? Does he recall what
happened when, in his early teens, he became conscious of his
personal obligation to keep the law? Is there any personal
significance in the fact that the one commandment of the
decalogue which he cites to illustrate his argument is that
which forbids not an outward act or word but an inward
attitude or appetite—covetousness? Even if an affirmative
answer is to be given to these questions, we have no other
record of Paul’s early development which would give us
anything approaching certainty. His emphatic assertions that
throughout his pre-Christian career he maintained without
fault the standard of righteousness demanded by the law20 lead
us to conclude that, whatever his first reaction may have been
to the realization of his duty to keep the whole law, he quickly
learned to live with that duty and preserve a blameless
conscience before God.
This last consideration excludes one popular interpretation
of Romans 7:14–25, where Paul moves from the past into the
present tense—the interpretation which envisages Paul as
being increasingly uneasy in conscience as his persecuting
career went on. This section is often quoted as one of the
classic descriptions in world literature of the divided mind21—
the mind of the man who finds himself impelled by a power
greater than his own, the power of what Paul calls indwelling
sin, to do not the good that he approves and wants to do but
the evil that he hates and does not want to do. This is indeed a
picture of man under the law, acknowledging that the law’s
requirements are good but deploring the powerlessness of the
law to ensure that its requirements are translated into action.
But it is not a picture of Paul’s conscious mind while he himself
lived under the law. There is no hint that Paul, before his
conversion, was the victim of such an inward conflict as he
describes here; on the contrary, all the evidence is against it. It
may be that Augustine and Luther’s discovery that Paul spoke
so directly to their condition led to the assumption that, before
his conversion, he must have endured the same kind of
spiritual disturbance as they endured before theirs,22 and to
the ascribing to Paul of the “introspective conscience of the
West”, as Professor Krister Stendahl has put it.23 If Paul’s
conversion was preceded by a period of subconscious
incubation, this has left no trace in our surviving records. The
goads against which, as he was told on the Damascus road, it
was fruitless for him to kick (Acts 26:14) were not the prickings
of an uneasy conscience over his persecuting energy but the
new forces which were now driving him in the opposite
direction to that which he had followed until then. For Paul, in
the words of E. K. Lee, “the true meaning of sin was not
discovered at the feet of Gamaliel but at the foot of the
cross”.24
In my inmost being, says Paul (whether speaking personally
or symbolically), I approve of the law of God—indeed, I delight
in it, like the psalmist who sings “Oh, how I love thy law!”
(Psalm 119:97)—“but”, he adds, “I see in my members another
law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to
the law of sin which dwells in my members” (Romans 7:23). In
this sentence the word “law” is used three times. The first two
occurrences denote two opposed principles which wage war
within Paul, comparable (we may say) to the evil and good
inclination in Jewish anthropology. But what is “the law of sin”
to which the former principle makes him captive? Perhaps it is
the domination or dictate of sin, which in the previous Chapter
(as we have seen) is personified as a slave-master; this is
rendered the more probable by the language in which Paul
sums up the contents of Romans 7:14 ff.: “So then, I of myself
serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve
serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve
the law of sin” (verse 25b). There the law of sin and the law of
God are set in sharp contrast.
And yet it may be asked if there is not a sense in which “the
law of sin” could be an aspect of the law of God. Earlier in
Chapter 7 Paul has spoken of the way of freedom from law, and
he returns to this in 8:2: “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death”. Can the
law of God, which is by definition holy, be described as “the law
of sin and death”? Yes, in so far as it stimulates sin and passes
sentence of death on the sinner. As Paul has said in an earlier
letter, “the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2
Corinthians 3:6). What is this but the antithesis of Romans 8:2
between “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” and “the law of sin
and death”? If Paul speaks of “the law of the Spirit of life in
Christ Jesus”, he does so as much for the sake of the verbal
antithesis with “the law of sin and death” as for anything else:
the law of the Spirit is the Spirit’s vitalizing principle or power.
What Paul is doing in Romans 7:7–25, in so far as his
description is truly autobiographical,25 is voicing a Christian
perspective on his existence under the law, both in the earlier
section where he uses the past tense and in the later section
where he uses the present tense. Maurice Goguel is probably
right in discerning in the exclamation of the later section,
“Wretched man that I am!” (Romans 7:24a),26 no “abstract
argument but the echo of the personal experience of an
anguished soul” and also in assigning the experience of this
section to the period immediately following Paul’s
conversion.27 We can readily believe that a man of Paul’s
imperious zeal found it no easy matter to win the victory over a
hasty tongue, a premature judgement, a resentment at the
encroachment of others on the sphere of his own service. These
things were not specifically forbidden by the law; it was by the
standard of Christ that their sinfulness was revealed to Paul.
He can entreat his friends “by the meekness and gentleness of
Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:1), but these qualities did not come to
him naturally. The man who knew the importance of self-
discipline, “lest after preaching to others I myself should be
disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:27), the man who pressed on to
gain “the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus”
(Philippians 3:14), knew that that “immortal garland” was to be
run for “not without dust and heat”.28 But the victory which
eluded him who sought it under the law or by his own strength
was quickly won when he learned to rely on the aid of the
Spirit.
The tension which finds expression in Romans 7:14–25 is the
tension necessarily set up when one lives “between the
times”—in two aeons simultaneously.29 How can one who exists
temporally in “the present evil age” nevertheless enjoy
deliverance from it and live here and now the life of the age to
come? By the aid of the indwelling Spirit, who not only makes
effective in the believer the saving benefits of Christ’s passion
but also secures to him in advance the blessings of the age to
come.
4. Liberation from the law
It is, then, “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” that
liberates a man from “the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2).
“For”, Paul continues, God has done what the law could not do,
because of the powerlessness of the human nature on which it
operated; he has sent his Son to accomplish a work as man and
for man that could not otherwise have been accomplished, “in
order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in
us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the
Spirit” (Romans 8:3 f.). The law belongs to the old age, the age
of man’s spiritual powerlessness (which is expressed by Paul’s
characteristic use of the noun “flesh”); the Spirit is the earnest
of the new age, in which man, liberated from the bondage
which is inevitable under the old age, can “do the will of God
from the heart” (Ephesians 6:6)30 or, as Paul expresses it
elsewhere, produce “the fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22 f.).
The transition from the old age to the new—from the
weakness of the “flesh” to the power of the Spirit—is brought
about by the coming of Christ. The ineffectiveness of the law
was due to the inadequacy of the “flesh”—weak human nature
—to keep it. But in this human nature, “in the likeness of sinful
flesh” (Romans 8:3), the Son of God entered our world. He
came as true man of woman born, he lived “under law”
(Galatians 4:4), but triumphed where others failed. Not only did
he himself do the will of God from the heart (thus embodying
the new covenant) but on behalf of others he endured the curse
pronounced by the law on law-breakers (by accepting the form
of death which, according to the law, incurred the divine
curse)31 and thus redeemed from that curse those who were
under law, so that they might through faith receive the
promised Spirit and adoption as sons in the family of God
(Galatians 3:10–14; 4:4–6).
Thus by Christ’s incarnation and his offering himself for the
sin of others, God (says Paul) “condemned sin in the flesh”
(Romans 8:3)—condemned it in human nature as a whole—and
inaugurated the new age of spiritual freedom, the age, we may
say, of the new covenant.
For in Romans 8:1–4 Paul echoes the sense, if not the very
language, of the new covenant oracle of Jeremiah 31:31–34. In
that oracle there is no substantial difference in content
between the law which Israel failed to keep under the old
covenant and the law which God undertakes hereafter to place
within his people, writing it “upon their hearts”. The difference
lies between their once knowing the law as an external code
and their knowing it henceforth as an inward principle. So for
Paul there was no substantial difference in content between the
“just requirement of the law” which cannot be kept by those
who live “according to the flesh” and the just requirement
fulfilled in those who live “according to the Spirit”. The
difference lay in the fact that a new inward power was now
imparted, enabling the believer to fulfil what he could not fulfil
before. The will of God had not changed; but whereas formerly
it was recorded on tablets of stone it was now engraved on
human hearts, and inward impulsion accomplished what
external compulsion could not. So far as the written
requirements of the law were concerned, Paul in his pre-
Christian days had kept them punctiliously, but his keeping
them all did not add up to doing the will of God from the heart.
For the sum of the commandments was love, and this was
something which became possible to him only when the divine
love was poured into his heart by the Spirit (Romans 5:5). The
reference to the Spirit should remind us that Paul’s teaching
here points to the fulfilment not only of Jeremiah’s “new
covenant” oracle but also of the companion oracles in Ezekiel
11:19 f. and 36:25–27, where God promises to implant within
his people a new heart and a new spirit.
It is to this new heart, “a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 11:19;
36:26), that Paul refers when he says that the message of the
new age is written “with the Spirit of the living God, not on
tablets of stone but on tablets which are hearts of flesh” (2
Corinthians 3:3). A written law-code was an inadequate vehicle
for communicating the will of God; the will of God was given
that form only for a temporary purpose—to make quite clear to
man the inability and sinfulness to which he was prone in the
flesh—that is, in his creaturely weakness. Doing the will of God
is not a matter of conformity to outward rules but of giving
expression to inward love, such as the Spirit begets. Hence,
says Paul, “the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2
Corinthians 3:6). The written code kills, because it declares the
will of God without imparting the power to do it, and
pronounces the death-sentence on those who break it. The
Spirit gives life, and with the life he imparts the inward power
as well as the desire to do the will of God.
Because it is the promulgation of God’s will, the law is “holy
and just and good” (Romans 7:12); because of its effect on man,
it might even be described as “the law of sin and death”
(Romans 8:2). But the Spirit is holy in both respects—both as
being the Spirit of God and as creating holiness in man. It is
the Spirit who renews the minds of the people of God so that
they not only approve but do his will—everything, that is, which
is “good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2). The
holiness which the Spirit creates is nothing less than
transformation into the likeness of Christ, who is the image of
transformation into the likeness of Christ, who is the image of
God; and this cannot be effected by external constraint: “where
the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17
f.). The purpose of the law, that men should be holy as God is
holy (Leviticus 11:44 f., etc.), is thus (according to Paul)
realized in the gospel.
This may be what Paul means in Romans 3:31 where, after
presenting God’s way of justifying sinners, Jews and Gentiles
alike, on the same principle of faith, he asks “Do we then
overthrow the law by this faith?” and answers his own
question: “By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.”
In the immediate context, in which Paul goes on to expound the
narrative of Abraham’s faith which was reckoned to him for
righteousness (Romans 4:1–25),32 it might appear that the law
which is upheld by the gospel of justification by faith is the
Torah in the wider sense—the Pentateuch, and more
particularly the Genesis account of Abraham. That is so, but
Paul goes on farther to show that the law in its stricter sense,
as the embodiment of God’s will, is upheld and fulfilled more
adequately in the age of faith than was possible “before faith
came”, when law kept the people of God “under restraint”
(Galatians 3:23). Only in an atmosphere of spiritual liberty can
God’s will be properly obeyed and his law upheld.
5. The law of love
If the law of the Spirit is the law of love, then it is identical
with what Paul elsewhere calls “the law of Christ”—“Bear one
another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Galatians
6:2). By “the law of Christ” he may mean “the law which Christ
exemplified” or “the law which Christ laid down” when he said
that the whole law and prophets depended on the twin
commandments of love to God and love to one’s neighbour
(Matthew 22:40).33 This reinterpretation of the law is echoed
by Paul when he says that “the whole law is fulfilled in one
word: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’ ” (Galatians
5:14) or that “love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore
love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10).
But the law of love is a different kind of law entirely from
that which Paul describes as a yoke of slavery. Love is
generated by an inner spontaneity and cannot be enforced by
penal sanctions. Reference was made above to the “third use”
of the law in Lutheran tradition—its use to provide guidance for
the church.34 So far as Paul is concerned, guidance for the
church is provided by the law of love, not by the “law of
commandments and ordinances” (Ephesians 2:15). In his
letters he himself lays down guidelines for his converts and
others, often couched in the imperative mood, but these
guidelines mostly concern personal relations. Food sacrificed
to idols, for instance, is ethically and religiously indifferent;
what does matter in this or in any other activity is the effect of
my conduct and example on others. If I ignore their true
interests, he says, then I am “no longer walking in love”
(Romans 14:15). The same principle may be discerned in his
instructions about such diverse matters as sexual life or
behaviour in church.35
This insistence on the law of love, instead of prudential rules
and regulations, was felt by many of Paul’s Christian
contemporaries to come unrealistically near to encouraging
moral indifferentism; and many Christians since his day have
shared their sentiments. But, unlike Paul’s contemporary
critics, Christian moralists since Paul’s day have tended to hold
that, in insisting on prudential rules and regulations, they are
following the implications of his teaching, if not his express
judgements. But we should appreciate that Paul conforms no
more to the conventions of religious people today than he
conformed to the conventions of religious people around A.D.
50; it is best to let Paul be Paul. And when we do that, we shall
recognize in him the supreme libertarian, the great herald of
Christian freedom, insisting that man in Christ has reached his
spiritual majority and must no longer be confined to the
leading-strings of infancy but enjoy the birthright of the
freeborn sons of God. Here if anywhere Luther entered into the
mind of Paul: “A Christian man is a most free lord of all, subject
to none. A Christian man is a most dutiful servant of all, subject
to all.”36 “Subject to none” in respect of his liberty; “subject to
all” in respect of his charity. This, for Paul, is the law of Christ
because this was the way of Christ. And in this way, for Paul,
the divine purpose underlying Moses’ law is vindicated and
accomplished.37
CHAPTER 19
Flesh and Spirit
1. Flesh
FOR PAUL, TO BE “UNDER LAW” IS ONE WAY OF BEING
“IN THE flesh”. His use of the term “flesh” (sarx) plays such a
central part in his theology that it calls for careful examination.
The background of his terminology is provided by the Old
Testament, although the Old Testament usage is extended
along lines peculiarly his own.
In the Old Testament “flesh” is the basic material of human
and animal life. Apart from occurrences of the word in the
sense of animal life in general (as in Genesis 6:19)1 or the meat
of animals which may or may not be eaten (as in Exodus 12:8),
men are categorized as “flesh” in contrast to “the gods, whose
dwelling is not with flesh” (Daniel 2:11). When God imposes a
limit on the duration of human life, he says, “My spirit shall not
abide in man for ever, for he is flesh”2 (Genesis 6:3). Man, in
fact, is animated flesh: “all flesh” means “all mankind” (except
in a few places where it has the wider sense of “all animal
life”). “Flesh” may denote human nature in its weakness and
mortality: “he remembered that they were but flesh” (Psalm
78:39). It can be used of the human body, as when a man is
directed to “wash his flesh in water” (e.g. Leviticus 14:9), or of
the man himself in a more general sense, as in Psalm 63:1,
where “my flesh faints for thee” stands in synonymous
parallelism with the preceding clause, “my soul thirsts for
thee”—here both “my soul (Heb. nefeš)” and “my flesh (Heb.
bāśār)” are little more than alternative ways of saying “I”.
We turn, then, to Paul’s usage against this Old Testament
background.
First, he uses “flesh” in the ordinary sense of “bodily flesh”,
as in Romans 2:28, of literal circumcision (cf. Genesis 17:11),
by contrast with spiritual circumcision, the circumcision “of the
heart”,3 or in 2 Corinthians 12:7, where he describes his
physical affliction as his “thorn (splinter) in the flesh” (cf.
Galatians 4:13).4 More generally, when he speaks in Galatians
2:20 of “the life I now live in the flesh”, he means “in mortal
body”.
Next, he uses “flesh” in the sense of natural human descent
or relationship, as when Christ is said to be David’s descendant
or a member of the race of Israel “according to the flesh”
(Romans 1:3; 9:5), when Abraham is called “our forefather
according to the flesh” (Romans 4:1) and his biological
descendants are called “the children of the flesh” as against
“the children of the promise” (Romans 9:8; cf. Galatians 3:7;
4:23 ff.), or when the Jews are referred to as Paul’s “kinsmen
according to the flesh” (Romans 9:3) or simply his “flesh”
(Romans 11:14).5
In the third place, he uses “flesh” in the sense of “mankind”,
as in Galatians 2:16 and Romans 3:20, “no flesh shall be
justified by works of the law”, or 1 Corinthians 1:29, “so that no
flesh might boast in the presence of God”. Sometimes he
expresses the same idea by the phrase “flesh and blood”, as in
Galatians 1:16, “I did not confer with flesh and blood” (i.e. with
any human being).6
But most distinctively, he uses “flesh” in the sense of “human
nature”, in the following ways:
(a) Weak human nature. In Romans 6:19 Paul explains
himself by means of an analogy from everyday life “because of
the weakness of your flesh” (i.e. your natural understanding).
In Romans 8:3 he speaks of the law as unable to produce
righteousness because it was “weakened by the flesh” (i.e. by
the frail human nature with which it had to work). He speaks of
an occasion when, because of his anxiety over his friends at
Corinth, his “flesh (sarx) had no rest” (2 Corinthians 7:5); he
refers to the same experience in 2 Corinthians 2:13 by saying
“I had no rest for my spirit (pneuma)”—a remarkable instance
of the practically synonymous usage of two nouns which are
normally antithetical in his writings (and not in Paul’s writings
only, as is indicated by the familiar antithesis of Mark 14:38,
“the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak”).
(b) The human nature of Christ. The humanity of Christ is
shared by him with all mankind. But ours is “sinful flesh”,
because sin has established a bridgehead in our life by means
of which it dominates the human situation. Christ came in real
flesh—he lived and died in a “body of flesh” (Colossians 1:22)7
—but he did not come in “sinful flesh”, because sin gained no
foothold in his life; he is said therefore to have come “in the
likeness of sinful flesh”,8 so that, when he presented his life as
a sin-offering, God thus “condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans
8:3)—passed the death-sentence on it by virtue of the sinless
humanity of Christ.
(c) Unregenerate humanity. Paul at times denotes the sinful
propensity which belongs to his heritage “in Adam”9 as “my
flesh”. In “my flesh” in this sense nothing good resides; with it,
he says (perhaps speaking representatively) “I serve the law of
sin” (Romans 7:18, 25).10 Its surviving influence can be traced
even in the regenerate: the Corinthian Christians, for example,
are addressed as “men of the flesh”, despite their having
received the Spirit, because they are still prone to jealousy and
strife and judge men according to the standards of worldly
wisdom (1 Corinthians 3:1–4). The “works of the flesh”, listed
in Galatians 5:19–21 in contrast to the “fruit of the Spirit”,
include not only sensual vices like fornication and drunkenness
but mental attitudes like jealousy, anger and party spirit.
“Those who belong to Christ Jesus”, however, “have crucified
the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24)—a
statement similar to that of Romans 6:6, “our old man (NEB
‘the man we once were’) was crucified with him [Christ], so
that the sinful body [the sin-dominated nature that was ours ‘in
Adam’] might be destroyed”.11 That the “flesh” was crucified
with Christ and can yet be a menace to the believer is one
aspect of a paradox that recurs repeatedly in Paul’s writings.
Believers are said to have “put off the old man” and “put on the
new man” (Colossians 3:9 f.), while elsewhere they are
exhorted to do just that—to “put off the old man” and “put on
the new man” (Ephesians 4:22, 24). The “old man” is what they
once were “in Adam”, the embodiment of unregenerate
humanity; the “new man” is what they now are “in Christ”, the
embodiment of the new humanity. Therefore to “put on the new
man” is to “put on Christ”: if Paul can say that all who were
baptized into Christ “have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27), he
can also urge such people to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ”
(Romans 13:14) and thus be in practice what they already are
by the call of God.
Though “my flesh” (as Paul thus puts it) is still a reality to
the believer, he is no longer “in the flesh” in this sense. To be
“in the flesh” in this sense is to be unregenerate, to be still “in
Adam”, in a state in which one “cannot please God” (Romans
8:8). Believers were formerly “in the flesh” (Romans 7:5), but
now they are “not in the flesh, but in the Spirit”, if the Spirit of
God really dwells within them—and if he does not, they have no
title (according to Paul) to be called the people of Christ
(Romans 8:9).
Since, then, believers are no longer “in the flesh” but “in the
Spirit”, they should no longer live “according to the flesh” but
“according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:4 f., 12 f.). They have
exchanged their unregenerate outlook (“the mind of the flesh”)
for that which is proper to the children of God (“the mind of the
Spirit”); it is their duty henceforth to “make no provision for
the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Romans 8:5–7; 13:14).
The “flesh” is subject to the law of sin and death and so is
under sentence of death: “if you live according to the flesh, you
will die” (Romans 8:13); “for he who sows to his own flesh will
from the flesh reap corruption” (Galatians 6:8). Sin, of any
kind, is a “work of the flesh”, and results in death.
Sometimes the word “body” is used in place of “flesh”. What
are called “the works of the flesh” in Galatians 5:19 are called
“the deeds of the body” in Romans 8:13.12 So also “the body of
sin” (Romans 6:6) is a near-synonym of “sinful flesh” (literally
“flesh of sin”) in Romans 8:3. We may compare “this body of
death” in Romans 7:24, from which deliverance is so earnestly
sought.13 On the other hand, the “body” of Romans 8:10, which
is “dead because of sin”, is simply the mortal body of flesh and
blood, which at the resurrection is to be replaced by the
“spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:44).14 “Body” for Paul is an
altogether nobler word than “flesh”. When he says that “the
body is … for the Lord, and the Lord for the body”, calls the
believer’s body “a temple of the Holy Spirit”, and urges his
Corinthian converts to “glorify God” in their “body” (1
Corinthians 6:13, 19, 20), it would be inconsistent with his
usage to replace “body” by “flesh”, just as he speaks of the
redemption of the body (as in Romans 8:23) and not of the
resurrection of the flesh. The flesh, in the distinctive Pauline
sense, is doomed to die; the body is destined for immortality.
2. Spirit
In the Old Testament, as in the New, “spirit” is the antithesis
of “flesh”. “The Egyptians are men, and not God; and their
horses are flesh, and not spirit” (Isaiah 31:3). God, by
implication, is Spirit (cf. John 4:24); not only so, but the Spirit
of God energizes men and imparts to them physical power,
mental skill or spiritual insight (expressed pre-eminently in
prophetic utterance) that they would not otherwise have. So, in
Paul, the antithesis to “flesh” is “spirit”—not so much the
human spirit as the Spirit of God.15
The Old Testament prophets foretold a coming age which
would be marked in a special way by the activity of the Spirit of
God. Two strands of this expectation are specially important. In
one, the activity of the Spirit is associated with a coming figure
—variously depicted as the ideal ruler of David’s line (Isaiah
11:1 ff.) and as the humble and self-sacrificing Servant of the
Lord (Isaiah 42:1 ff.)—who would be anointed with the Spirit in
order to discharge a ministry of mercy and judgment for Israel
and the nations. In the other, the promise is given that in days
to come the same Spirit will be poured out on “all flesh”, so
that the gift of prophetic utterance will no longer be confined
to a chosen few but will be widespread (Joel 2:28f.).16
These two strands of expectation are brought together in the
New Testament with the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry.
The Spirit came upon him in power at his baptism, so that he
could identify himself with the speaker of Isaiah 61:1 f.: “The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to
preach good news to the poor …” (Luke 4:18 f.). At the same
time, John the Baptist pointed to him as the coming One who
would baptize with the Holy Spirit (Mark 1:8; John 1:32–34).
Jesus, then, receives a special endowment of the Spirit of God
and in turn imparts this Spirit to others.
When and how this impartation of the Spirit to others would
be effected might be a matter of debate, but two of the
Evangelists unambiguously view it as dependent on the passion
and triumph of Jesus. “As yet the Spirit had not been given”,17
says the Fourth Evangelist, referring to Jesus’ ministry in
Jerusalem, “because Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:39),
while the author of Luke-Acts, in one of the most remarkable
“undesigned coincidences” of the New Testament, narrates the
outpouring of the Spirit by the exalted Jesus on the first
Christian Pentecost, together with the sequel to that
outpouring, in a manner which practically documents the
detailed fulfilment of the promise of the Spirit given by Jesus in
the upper-room discourse of John 14–16.18
The picture given in Acts of the presence and activity of the
Spirit is probably true to the general experience of the
primitive church, or at least to that major segment of it which
had links with the original community of believers in Jerusalem.
The Spirit enables the disciples to bear witness and proclaim
the gospel with convicting effect and to perform signs and
wonders in the name of Jesus;19 he speaks through prophets in
the church;20 when the apostles and their colleagues reach a
common mind, his is the primary authority invoked in its
promulgation;21 it is he who directs the course of missionary
activity.22
This picture is assumed throughout the Pauline letters, but
further and distinctive emphases are added. If in the upper-
room discourses of the Fourth Gospel the Spirit is to recall to
the disciples’ minds the teaching of Jesus and makes its
meaning plain to them, as well as to lead them into all the truth
and show them things to come,23 in Paul he communicates the
life and power of the risen Christ to his people. For Paul, as for
Luke and John, the age which follows the departure of Jesus in
visible form from earth is the age of the Spirit, but for Paul the
age of the Spirit supersedes the age of law. The law means
bondage, while the Spirit brings freedom; “the written code
kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6).
Thanks to the coming of the Spirit, the people of God, who
were formerly in their infancy, restrained by the leading-strings
of the law, have now come of age. “If you are led by the Spirit”,
says Paul, “you are not under law” (Galatians 5:18), for the
leading of the Spirit is not a restraining, but a liberating, force:
“all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (Romans
8:14). He is therefore called “the Spirit of sonship” (Romans
8:15), the Spirit who enables them to claim and enjoy their
status as full-grown sons of God, in anticipation of that fully
manifested “adoption as sons” which will be theirs on the day
of resurrection—that “revealing of the sons of God” for which
the created universe eagerly waits. On that day, says Paul,
creation will be “set free from its bondage to decay and obtain
the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21); but
the children of God themselves exult in that liberty here and
now by the power of the indwelling Spirit. By the power of that
same Spirit they can address God confidently and
spontaneously as Father: “when we cry ‘Abba! Father!’ it is the
Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are
children of God” (Romans 8:15 f.). It is, in fact, one and the
same Spirit who enables believers to call God “Father” and to
call Jesus “Lord” (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:3). But “Abba” was the
distinctive word for “Father” that Jesus had used (cf. Mark
14:36); that Christians—even Greek-speaking Christians—
should take over this Semitic form and use it in their devotions
is a token that the Spirit whom God has sent into their hearts is
not only “the Spirit of sonship” but “the Spirit of his Son”
not only “the Spirit of sonship” but “the Spirit of his Son”
(Galatians 4:6), the Spirit that indwelt and empowered Jesus
himself.
To be “in the Spirit” is for Paul the opposite of being “in the
flesh”. All believers, according to him, are “in the Spirit”: “you
are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit”, he tells the Roman
Christians, “if the Spirit of Christ really dwells in you. Any one
who has not the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him”
(Romans 8:9). The two following sentences begin with the
conditional clauses, “But if Christ is in you …” (Romans 8:10)
and “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells
in you …” (Romans 8:11). It appears, then, that there is no
difference between the indwelling of the Spirit and the
indwelling of the risen Christ, so far as the believer’s
experience is concerned, although this does not mean that Paul
identified the risen Christ and the Spirit outright. There is a
dynamic equivalence between them,24 but they are
nevertheless distinguished. The Spirit conveys the resurrection
life of Christ to believers (which may be a further reason for his
being called the Spirit of Christ), and in doing so he conveys
the assurance that they in their turn will rise in the likeness of
Christ’s resurrection—the assurance that “he who raised Christ
Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also
through his Spirit which dwells in you” (Romans 8:11). This is
one of the most distinctive Pauline insights regarding the
Spirit: it is because of this that he describes the Spirit as the
“first fruits” of the resurrection life (Romans 8:23), the “seal”
and “guarantee”—the arrhabōn or initial down-payment—of the
heritage of glory into which they will then be ushered (2
Corinthians 1:22; 5:5; Ephesians 1:13 f.).25 The Spirit not only
makes the benefits of Christ’s saving work effective in them,
but also enables them to appropriate and enjoy in advance the
benefits of the age to come.
For the present, then, they live in hope, but theirs is a living
and certain hope because it rests in the living Christ, dwelling
within them as their personal “hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27),
and is sustained by the power of the Spirit. The Spirit at the
same time aids their prayers, interpreting their deepest, even
inarticulate, aspirations and presenting them to God in an
intercessory ministry.26 He co-operates in everything for good
with those who love God,27 enabling them to live as befits the
children of God and liberating them from the law of sin and
death which dominates the children of “this age”.28
The Spirit is the sanctifying agency in the lives of believers:
he wages perpetual warfare against the flesh, but he is more
powerful than the flesh, and can put the flesh progressively out
of action in those lives which are yielded to his control. It is by
“the Lord who is the Spirit” that believers, “with unveiled face,
beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his
likeness from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians
3:17).29 This reproduction of the image of Christ in the lives of
his people is the Spirit’s most congenial ministry, and forms a
preparation for that day when Christ, their true life, will be
manifested, and they too “will be manifested with him in glory”
(Colossians 3:4), wearing in its perfection “the image of the
man of heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:49).
Nor is the Spirit’s ministry confined to believers’ individual
lives: in uniting them to Christ, he unites them one to another.
Paul’s conception of the church as the body of Christ is
inseparably bound up with his doctrine of the Spirit: “in one
Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks,
slaves or free—and all were watered by one Spirit” (1
Corinthians 12:13). In the narrative of Acts John the Baptist’s
promise that the Coming One would baptize with the Holy
Spirit is viewed as fulfilled on the day of Pentecost; indeed, the
authority of the risen Christ is cited for this (Acts 1:5; 11:16).
The “togetherness” of the church from Pentecost onwards is
emphasized in the narrative of Acts (cf. 2:44; 4:32) in a manner
which may be thought to pave the way for Paul’s teaching, but
it is Paul who gives distinctive expression to the idea of all
believers, whatever their race or social status, united in a
common life as fellow-members of a body, with the Spirit as the
source and principle of its corporate existence and its bond of
unity, each member discharging for the good of the whole that
function with which the energizing Spirit has endowed it. “To
each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common
good” (1 Corinthians 12:7).30 But the prime function of the
indwelling Spirit in the believing community, as in the
individual believer, is for Paul the reproduction of the Christ-
likeness in his people, until the whole body corporate attains
“the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Ephesians
4:13).31
CHAPTER 20
Antioch to Philippi
1. Paul and Silas set out for Asia Minor
NEXT TIME PAUL SET OUT FROM ANTIOCH FOR ASIA
MINOR IT WAS with another companion than Barnabas.
According to Luke’s account, there was some word of their
going together to revisit the churches which they had jointly
planted on their previous journey, but this plan foundered on
their inability to agree whether John Mark should accompany
them this time or not. Paul felt that Mark had let them down on
the former occasion when he left them at Perga and returned
home; Barnabas thought that he should be given another
chance. When they could not agree, they parted company:
Barnabas took Mark and went back to Cyprus.1 In the event,
this was probably the best thing that could have happened:
Mark developed unsuspected qualities of character and
usefulness under his relative’s encouragement, and Paul
himself at a later stage was to voice his appreciation of Mark’s
presence and help.2
But even if there had not been this disagreement, it is
doubtful if Paul and Barnabas would have been as happy in
each other’s company as they had once been. The old mutual
confidence must have been damaged on the occasion when, as
Paul says, “even Barnabas” followed Peter’s example in
withdrawing from the society of Gentile Christians at Antioch.3
Henceforth relations between the two men could not be the
same as before: “never glad confident morning again”. When
Paul has occasion to refer to Barnabas after this, he does so
with the warmth of old affection,4 but a change had set in
nevertheless.
In place of Barnabas, Paul chose a new fellow-traveller—
Silas or Silvanus, a member of the Jerusalem church. He first
appears in the record as one of the two messengers sent by the
Jerusalem leaders to carry the letter containing the apostolic
decree to Antioch.5 This in itself might suggest that he was
likely to be persona grata to Gentile Christians. Paul had
opportunity to take stock of him and to judge that he would
prove a kindred spirit. There might indeed be diplomatic
advantages in having as his companion a Jerusalem Christian:
if any one hoped to put Paul on the spot by asking what was
said or done at Jerusalem, here was a man from Jerusalem to
give an answer based on first-hand information. Moreover, if
Silas was, as the narrative of Acts implies, a Roman citizen like
Paul,6 Paul would not find himself in an embarrassing situation
where he could claim for himself civic privileges in which his
companion could not share. Silas’s two alternative names, Silas
and Silvanus, might bear the same relation to each other as
Saul and Paul—the former being the Jewish family name, the
latter the Roman cognomen.7
The two men set out, then, with the blessing of the
Antiochene church, first travelling north, perhaps through
Syrian Alexandria (modern Iskenderun), and then turning west
into Cilicia, probably along the road which led through
Mopsuestia, Adana and Tarsus. How many of the cities through
which they passed had been evangelized by this time is
unknown, but such communities of Christians as they found
were given copies of the Jerusalem letter. The letter was
addressed to the Gentile brethren throughout Syria and Cilicia
as well as in Antioch, and Silas was named in it as one of the
messengers appointed to deliver it.8 Evidently he continued to
discharge this responsibility until Paul and he left Cilicia.9
From Tarsus they turned north and crossed the Taurus range
by the Cilician Gates; when they had passed through these they
were out of Cilicia and into Cappadocia. Turning west they
followed a Roman road which brought them into the territory of
Rome’s ally, King Antiochus, and so to Derbe, the most easterly
point reached by Paul and Barnabas when they traversed South
Galatia from the opposite direction.10
2. Timothy joins the missionary party
In Derbe and Lystra Paul was able to greet friends and
converts, and in Lystra he renewed acquaintance with a young
man whose career was thenceforth to be interwoven with his
own. This was Timothy, son of a mixed marriage. His mother
was a Jewess, who had brought him up in the Jewish faith;11
but his father was a Greek, and so Timothy had never been
circumcised. Timothy had probably become a Christian when
Barnabas and Paul visited Lystra, and now older Christians
from Iconium as well as Lystra spoke enthusiastically of his
spiritual development and promise. A young man of such
qualities and gifts would make an admirable apprentice to Paul
if he was minded to give up whatever other ambitions he had
and join Paul in his apostolic ministry. Timothy was plainly so
attracted by Paul that he counted the world well lost for the
sake of accompanying such a man as his aide-de-camp. There
are hints in the Pastoral Epistles of prophetic utterances which
clearly marked out this course as the divine will for Timothy
and which were confirmed by a special spiritual endowment
received by him at the same time.12
There is ample evidence that Paul wholeheartedly
appreciated the selfless devotion with which Timothy
supported and served him for the rest of the older man’s life.
Here is how he speaks of him some year later when he
proposes to send him as his representative to the church of
Philippi (Philippians 2:19–22):
I have no one like him, who will be genuinely anxious for your welfare. They all
look after their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But Timothy’s worth you
know, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel.
Paul knew that Timothy was naturally diffident by
temperament: when he sends him, for example, as his
representative to the more turbulent church of Corinth, he has
to ask his friends there not to underestimate him but to put him
at his ease and see that he is not intimidated (1 Corinthians
at his ease and see that he is not intimidated (1 Corinthians
16:10 f.). But he had the utmost confidence in entrusting him
with responsible and delicate missions: Timothy, he knew,
would not misrepresent him.
But in order that Timothy might serve him most effectively in
these ways Paul decided that he should be circumcised. Luke’s
statement that Paul “took him and circumcised him because of
the Jews” of Lystra and its neighbourhood, “for they all knew
that his father was a Greek” (Acts 16:3), is cryptic enough, but
not so incredible as has sometimes been thought.13 Such an
action on the part of the writer to the Galatians is surprising
indeed (no matter what view be taken of the date of the letter),
but there is no point in ascribing to Paul a consistency which
his own acquaintances were far from seeing in him. Timothy
was not a Gentile Christian in the sense in which Titus was. By
birth, as the son of a Jewish mother, and by religious
upbringing Timothy was a Jew in all respects save the
admittedly material one of circumcision. To the Gentiles around
he was probably a Jew, but he could not be so in the eyes of the
Jews unless he received circumcision. In the social setting of
that place and time he was neither the one nor the other, and
Paul resolved to regularize his position by circumcising him. He
was now legitimized in Jewish eyes and shared Paul’s own
status as a Jewish Christian. Whether Paul was wise or not in
his action could be determined only by a more detailed
knowledge of the circumstances than is available, but the
action was not inconsistent with Paul’s own principles. Even in
writing to the Galatians he insists twice over that neither
circumcision nor uncircumcision matters in itself (5:6; 6:15);14
it is only when circumcision is undertaken as a legal obligation
that a man “is bound to keep the whole law” (5:3). In this same
letter, too, it is implied that Paul was charged with not always
maintaining the rigid line on circumcision which he adopted
with the Galatians. What does he mean by his rhetorical
question, “But if I, brethren, still preach circumcision, why am I
still persecuted?” (5:11), if not that some people told the
Galatians that he was not always so opposed to circumcision as
he was with them?15
As frequently when Paul’s actions and motives are under
consideration, it is necessary to distinguish a higher and a
lower consistency. Paul’s higher consistency appears in his
defence and promotion of the law-free gospel, for the sake of
which many lower consistencies might be ignored. If one so
thoroughly emancipated from legalism as Paul wishes for
certain proper purposes to perform a ritual act which in itself is
ethically indifferent, he will perform it, not by compulsion but
freely. If expediency suggests that someone who is a Jew in
every respect but circumcision (presumably because his Greek
father would not allow it when he was an infant) be
circumcised for his greater usefulness in the gospel, Paul will
circumcise him; in such a situation circumcision is nothing but
a minor surgical operation performed for a practical purpose. It
is natural that many people in Paul’s day did not appreciate the
difference between doing such things voluntarily and doing
them by way of religious duty, and accordingly charged Paul
with inconsistency.16 But there is a right as well as a wrong
way of being “all things to all men”, to use Paul’s own
expression (1 Corinthians 9:22).17
If we have been right about the date and destination of the
letter to the Galatians, then the churches of Lystra and
Iconium, which were specially interested in Timothy, had
received that letter only a few months before. What would they
make of Paul’s circumcising Timothy so soon after writing to
them as he had done on that subject? That the circumcision
was kept secret from them is incredible on every count.
Perhaps Paul’s action was not only performed “because of the
Jews that were in those places”, as Luke says (Acts 16:3), but
also served as an object-lesson for the Gentile Christians in
those places of the difference between circumcision as an act
of legal obedience, undertaken by people like themselves who
were under no such obligation, and circumcision as a practical
and religiously neutral expedient adopted in a most exceptional
case. If so, would they have taken the lesson to heart?
3. The call to Macedonia
Paul’s plan had been, after visiting his converts in South
Galatia, to follow the westward road to Ephesus. Perhaps he
had already thought of this city as a base from which the great
province of Asia could be evangelized. But this plan was not to
be put into effect yet. According to Luke, by the time he and his
two companions (Silas and Timothy) “went through the
Phrygian and Galatic region”, they had already “been forbidden
by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia” (Acts 16:6). This
language implies that a prophetic utterance—perhaps one of
those heard at Lystra18—had given this negative guidance
without indicating positively where they were to turn. One
possible course was to turn north and go to Bithynia, the
province in the north-west of Asia Minor, in which lay the cities
of Nicaea and Nicomedia.
If the negative guidance was granted at Lystra, they had to
go on to Iconium in any case. If by this time they thought of
Bithynia they could either cut out Pisidian Antioch and take the
road into the northern part of Phrygia Paroreios (the territory
lying north and south of the mountain range of Sultan Daǧ) or
they could go on to Pisidian Antioch (which, for the sake of the
church recently planted there, they probably did) and reach
northern Phrygia Paroreios from there by crossing Sultan Daǧ.
One way or the other, they would arrive at Philomelium
(modern Akşehir).
But what does Luke mean by “the Phrygian and Galatic
region”—a phrase which seems to mean “the region which is
both Phrygian and Galatic”? Almost certainly he means the part
of Phrygia which belonged to the Roman province of Galatia,
the region in which Iconium and Pisidian Antioch lay19—
Phrygia Galatica, as it might be called (although there is no
direct evidence that this was its official designation).20 Any
other interpretation of the phrase is fraught with difficulties,
especially an interpretation which envisages a visit on this
occasion to one or more of the cities of ethnic Galatia, in the
north of the province (Pessinus, Ancyra and Tavium).
Leaving Philomelium for the north-west, they would pass at
once into the Asian part of Phrygia and arrive in due course at
the important road-junction of Dorylaeum. To the north lay the
frontier of the province of Bithynia; to the west lay Mysia, the
north-westerly territory of the province of Asia. But when they
made to cross into Bithynia, “the Spirit of Jesus did not allow
them” (Acts 16:7). This may point to another prophetic
utterance, but the slight change in wording from the previous
occasion may point to another kind of monition—an inward
sense of inhibition, perhaps. There was only one way to go now:
since they could not take the north road into Bithynia, they
turned west, skirted the territory of Mysia, and reached the
Aegean coast at the port of Alexandria Troas (modern
Kestambol).21
Alexandria Troas stood on the site of the earlier Greek city of
Sigeia. It was founded (with the name Antigonia Troas) by
Alexander’s successor Antigonus and, after him (with the name
Alexandria Troas), by Lysimachus, king of Thrace (c. 300 B.C.),
and it had the status of a free city. In the New Testament it is
called simply Troas, which is also the name of the surrounding
district of the Troad (the district called after the ancient city of
Troy). Julius Caesar, it is said, toyed with the idea of making it
his imperial capital22—an idea taken up three and a half
centuries later by Constantine who, however, decided in favour
of a city on the European side of the narrow seas which here
divide Europe from Asia. Augustus showed his appreciation of
the importance of Troas by establishing a Roman colony there.
Some years later there was a church in Troas:23 whether it
was founded at this time or on a subsequent occasion is
uncertain. But when Paul and his two friends arrived here, two
things happened: they were joined by a fourth companion, and
at last positive guidance about their next move was granted.
The fourth companion was the author of Acts—or, if fine
distinctions are to be made, the author of the travel-diary
incorporated in the narrative of Acts.24 His joining the others is
indicated in the most unobtrusive manner—by a sudden switch
from the third person to the first person plural, from “they” to
“we”. There are three sections of Acts in which the story is told
in the first person plural and, interestingly enough, each of the
three is largely concerned with a journey by sea.25
The positive guidance came to Paul in the form of a night
vision. “A man of Macedonia stood beseeching him: ‘Come over
to Macedonia and help us’ ” (Acts 16:9). No need to inquire, as
some writers have done, how Paul knew that the man was a
Macedonian: his invitation, “Come over to Macedonia”, was
enough. Paul related his vision to the others, and
“immediately”, says the narrator, “we at once set about getting
a passage to Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to
bring them the good news” (Acts 16:10).
4. The gospel comes to Philippi
The first passage they could get for Macedonia took them in
a couple of days to Neapolis (modern Kavalla), the seaport of
Philippi: the ship put in for one night at the mountainous island
of Samothrace. Plainly they had a favourable wind; some of
them made the same voyage in the reverse direction seven or
eight years later and it took five days.26
At Neapolis the Via Egnatia, the great Roman military road
which linked the Adriatic with the Aegean and the Bosporus,
met the sea. Following this road for about ten miles (16
kilometres) in a north-westerly direction, they came to Philippi.
Philippi bore the name of Philip II of Macedonia (father of
Alexander the Great), who established it in 356 B.C. on the site
of the earlier settlement of Krenides. Luke describes it as “a
city of the first district of Macedonia”27 (with reference to the
division of Macedonia into four districts in 167 B.C. by its
Roman conqueror Lucius Aemilius Paullus); he adds that it was
a Roman colony (Acts 16:12). Although several cities mentioned
in the New Testament were in fact Roman colonies, Philippi is
the only one which is explicitly called a colony by any New
Testament writer; Luke apparently had a special interest in
Philippi.28 It became a Roman colony in 42 B.C., after the battle
of Philippi in which Antony and Octavian (later Augustus), the
political heirs of Julius Caesar, defeated the party led by
Caesar’s chief assassins, Brutus and Cassius. The victors
settled a number of their veteran soldiers here, and called the
new colony Colonia Victrix Philippensium. Twelve years later
Octavian (who had by this time disposed of his former ally and
subsequent rival Antony) settled a number of Antony’s
followers in Philippi, and renamed the colony after himself:
Colonia Iulia Philippensis (in which the title Augusta was
inserted when he was designated Augustus in 27 B.C.).
There does not appear to have been a synagogue in Philippi,
presumably because there was no Jewish community worth
speaking of. A properly constituted synagogue requires a
minyān or quorum of ten male Jews.29 But outside the city
walls, by the river Gangites, there was an unofficial place of
worship where a number of women—God-fearers and possibly
some Jewesses—met on sabbaths and holy days to recite the
appointed synagogue prayers and thanksgivings.30 The four
missionaries found this meeting-place one sabbath morning
soon after their arrival in Philippi, and sat down and talked to
the women, imparting the good news which they brought. The
leader of these women was Lydia, a God-fearer from the city of
Thyatira in the province of Asia, who was an agent for the sale
of the purple dye, derived from the juice of the madder root, for
which her native region was famed as early as Homer’s day.31
Since there was a Jewish colony in Thyatira, it was probably
there that she had become a God-fearer. As she listened to the
gospel, she was convinced of its truth and was baptized,
together with her household.32 Thereupon she insisted that the
missionaries should be her guests for the remainder of their
stay in Philippi.
This may prompt one to ask how the missionaries normally
supported themselves when hospitality such as Lydia’s was not
forthcoming. So far as Paul is concerned, the answer is not in
doubt: he supported himself, and his companions where
necessary, by his “tent-making”.33 Many rabbis practised a
trade so as to be able to impart their teaching without
charge.34 Paul scrupulously maintained this tradition as a
Christian preacher, partly as a matter of principle, partly by
way of example to his converts, and partly to avoid giving his
critics any opportunity to say that his motives were mercenary.
When, however, hospitality was spontaneously offered, as by
Lydia on this occasion, he gladly accepted it: it would have
been ungracious to refuse.
Luke’s account of their stay at Philippi illustrates some
aspects of the life of a Roman colony in the Greek world, with
its citizens so proud of being Romans and their two collegiate
magistrates rejoicing in the honorary designation of
“praetors”35 and attended, as were the two consuls in Rome
itself, by the lictors. The lictors bore as their badge of office the
bundles (fasces) of rods and axes which denoted the authority
of the magistrates whom they served.36 The two Philippian
praetors and their lictors make an appearance in the incident
of the fortune-telling slave-girl. This girl told fortunes by the
aid of a “pythonic spirit”, a pale imitation, we may suppose, of
the spirit that possessed the Pythian prophetess at Delphi so
that she became for the time being the mouthpiece of Apollo.37
The spirit that enabled the Philippian slave-girl to tell fortunes
was exorcized by Paul when she persisted in shouting
unsolicited testimonials after him and his companions through
the streets of the city. Her owners were naturally incensed at
this violation of property rights and accused Paul and Silas
before the praetors of being itinerant Jews who were troubling
this Roman city with their unwelcome and indeed illegal
propaganda.38 Paul and Silas were not only the leaders of the
missionary party but were full Jews and perhaps looked it
(Luke was a Gentile and Timothy a half-Gentile); they were thus
natural targets for anti-Semitic resentment. Without staying to
inquire into the grounds of the accusation, the praetors
ordered the two men to be soundly beaten (with the lictors’
rods) and locked up overnight—they would be expelled from
Philippi next day. But when the lictors arrived at the town jail
in the morning to take custody of them and expel them, they
were met with a protest—a protest which may have been made
the day before but, if so, went unheard or unheeded in the
public excitement. “We are Roman citizens”, said Paul and
Silas; “we have been beaten publicly without being granted a
trial”.39 Ordinary provincials might be treated summarily, but
Roman citizens had their legal rights and could appeal to
higher authority if those rights were infringed. The praetors
had to come in person and apologize to them, but even so they
requested them to move on: the responsibility of protecting two
unpopular Roman citizens was more than they felt able to bear.
Paul and Silas, with Timothy, moved on, but by the time they
did so they had gathered a promising young church together in
Philippi. The last converts they made before leaving the place
were the town jailer and his family. Luke seems to have been
left behind in Philippi; he disappears from the narrative of Acts
at this point and reappears at Philippi some years later.40 If the
letter to the Philippians (or at any rate the relevant part of it)
was written during this interval,41 Luke may well be the
unnamed “true yokefellow” whom Paul asks to help Euodia and
Syntyche “to agree in the Lord”, for these two women, he says,
“have laboured side by side with me in the gospel together with
Clement and the rest of my fellow-workers” (Philippians 4:2 f.).
Euodia, Syntyche and Clement are but names to us, but it is
plain that Paul set a high value on the friendship and activity of
many of his converts in Philippi.
They, for their part, maintained a warm affection for their
apostle, and showed it by sending him personal gifts from time
to time. Paul was not too happy about accepting such gifts from
his converts, but the generosity of his Philippian friends was so
unanimous and spontaneous that he could do no other than
accept their gifts in the spirit in which they were given and
view them as the outward expression of their faith and love,
and thus not only a donation to himself but an acceptable
offering to God.42
CHAPTER 21
Christianity in Thessalonica
1. Philippi to Thessalonica
FROM PHILIPPI PAUL, SILAS AND TIMOTHY JOURNEYED
west-by-south-west along the Via Egnatia, through Amphipolis
on the Strymon (capital of the first district of Macedonia) and
Apollonia, and arrived at Thessalonica, about 90 miles (150
kilometres) distant from Philippi.
The city and port of Thessalonica stood near the earlier city
of Therme, which gave its name to the Thermaic Gulf (now the
Gulf of Thessaloniki) on the west side of the Chalcidice
peninsula. It was founded about 315 B.C. by Cassander, king of
Macedonia, who named it after his wife Thessalonica, daughter
of Philip II and half-sister of Alexander the Great. Its original
residents were the former inhabitants of Therme and some
twenty-five other towns or villages in the area, whom
Cassander forcibly settled in his new foundation. When the
Romans divided Macedonia into four districts in 167 B.C.,
Thessalonica became the capital of the second district; when
they made Macedonia a province in 146 B.C., Thessalonica
became the seat of provincial administration. From 42 B.C. it
enjoyed the status of a free city, governed by its own
politarchs. (This title appears to have been peculiar to the chief
magistrates of Macedonian cities; it appears nowhere in Greek
literature apart from Acts 17:6, where it is used of the chief
magistrates of Thessalonica, but it is amply attested in
inscriptions belonging to our period for Thessalonica itself and
other Macedonian cities.)1 The Via Egnatia ran through the city
from N.W. to S. E., though not along the line of the
thoroughfare which bears the same name today.
In the largest city of Macedonia there was naturally a Jewish
colony with its synagogue. To the synagogue, then, Paul and
his two companions made their way, and for three successive
sabbaths Paul expounded the scriptures to the congregation,
arguing that they had found their fulfilment in Jesus. Some
members of the congregation believed: Jason, who became host
to the three missionaries while they were in Thessalonica, was
probably one of these. (Jason was, of course, a good Greek
name, but it was commonly adopted in the Hellenistic period by
Jews whose Hebrew name was Joshua or Jeshua.)2 Aristarchus
was evidently another,3 and Secundus may have been a third.4
There were several God-fearers also among those who adhered
to Paul; these included the wives of some of the principal
citizens of Thessalonica.5
When they were no longer welcome in the synagogue, the
missionaries continued their evangelistic activity among the
pagans of Thessalonica, and by the time they left the city the
Christian community which they had gathered appears to have
comprised, in the main, former pagans. This is the inference
most readily drawn from the words addressed to them not long
afterwards in 1 Thessalonians 1:9, “you turned to God from
idols to serve a living and true God”.
But, as the weeks went on, the missionaries found
themselves involved in trouble. The principal citizens might
have tolerated their wives’ attendance at synagogue: such
attendance, in fact, was at this time quite fashionable among
ladies of good family in many cities of the Roman Empire, not
least in Rome itself. But they would look quite differently on
their wives’ association with a very odd collection of
enthusiasts who (as it seemed to them) were hypnotized by
these strangers who had come to their city from goodness
knew where and who (they might be sure) meant no good. It
was their wealth that they were after, if not something more
discreditable still. That such things were being said is plain
from Paul’s apologia in 1 Thessalonians 2:3–12, where he
appeals to his converts’ personal memory of his colleagues and
himself as evidence that their preaching did not spring “from
error or uncleanness” and was not used craftily “as a cloak for
greed”. On the contrary, he says, “we worked night and day,
that we might not burden any of you, while we preached to you
the gospel of God”; and he calls them to witness that their
behaviour among them was “holy and righteous and
blameless”—calculated, indeed, to present to them an example
of the Christian way of life.
2. The charge of subversion
The synagogue authorities, for their part, would resent the
withdrawal from their services of men and women of repute,
and it was not difficult to translate their resentment into action
by directing the suspicion of the magistrates against the
visitors. With the aid of a gang of idlers around the city
marketplace or agora, they fomented a riot. The rioters hoped
to lay hands on the visitors and drag them to court but, unable
to find them, they contented themselves with doing so to Jason,
the visitors’ host, and some other converts. The charge which
they pressed against them was extremely serious—much more
serious, indeed, than is suggested by its traditional rendering
in the King James Version: “These that have turned the world
upside down are come hither also” (Acts 17:6). These words
have been worn quite smooth by frequent repetition; they have
been used as a text by preachers (more especially, perhaps,
younger preachers) who have applied them to themselves. But
the words imply subversive or seditious activity: “these men
who have upset the civilized world have now arrived here, and
Jason has harboured them. Their practices are clean contrary
to Caesar’s decrees: they are proclaiming a rival emperor,6
Jesus.”
The charge must be set in the context of widespread unrest
in the Jewish communities throughout the Roman Empire.
Jewish freedom-fighters7 were particularly active in Judaea
itself during the principate of Claudius, and their activity could
not be contained within the frontiers of their native province. A
militant messianism was working like a ferment among Jews of
the dispersion, and the custodians of law and order in the
imperial provinces and cities were not likely to draw a
distinction between it and the “messianism” of Paul and his
colleagues. In Rome itself there had been trouble of this kind
quite recently, so much so that Claudius had expelled the
Jewish community from the capital.8 At the beginning of his
principate he had sent a severe letter to the citizens of
Alexandria where, a short time before, there were fierce and
sanguinary riots between the Greek and Jewish communities.
In a passage specially intended for the Jewish community, he
gave this admonition:
Do not bring in or invite Jews who sail to Alexandria from Syria or down the Nile
from other parts of Egypt. If you do, this will make me very suspicious, and I will
punish them severely for fomenting a general plague throughout the whole
world.9
The immigrant Jews to whom he refers were probably being
invited by the Jews of Alexandria to join them so as to augment
their strength in the event of further attacks by their Greek
neighbours. But “Syria” would include Judaea, and some of the
illegal immigrants could have been militant messianists such as
disturbed the imperial peace elsewhere; this would account for
Claudius’s language about “a general plague throughout the
whole world” (and it so happens that the Greek term for
“world” in the copy of the emperor’s letter is the same term,
oikoumenē, as is used in the charge against Paul and his
friends in Acts 17:6).
Paul himself was careful to inculcate respect for imperial law
and order, but it could not be denied that, more often than not,
his coming to any city was a prelude to rioting and, in
particular, that the Jesus whom he proclaimed as sovereign
lord had been executed by sentence of a Roman court on a
charge of claiming to be king of the Jews. The wording of the
charge pressed against him before the Thessalonian politarchs
was skilfully thought out.
As for Caesar’s decrees, which he and his companions were
alleged to be flouting, these might be understood in a general
and comprehensive sense, or (more convincingly) with
reference to certain specific decrees.10 The dēmos or civic body
of Thessalonica, before which the rioters had hoped to drag
Paul and his associates, together with the politarchs, before
whom they voiced their complaint, may well have taken an
oath, as other cities in various parts of the empire are known to
have done, binding themselves to obedience to the emperor:
such an oath would empower them, and even require them, to
take up such a charge as was now being made. Moreover, in
Paul’s preaching in Thessalonica there was apparently a
markedly predictive element. His Thessalonian converts, who
turned to worship the living and true God, learned also, he
says, “to wait for his Son from heaven …, Jesus, our deliverer
from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:10), and it appears
that he taught them in addition something about the way in
which world events would unfold up to the parousia of Jesus.11
Now, prediction was an exercise of which one emperor after
another disapproved: prediction could too easily be used as a
political weapon. Augustus, in A.D. 11, had issued a decree
forbidding it;12 this decree was reinforced on pain of death by
Tiberius in A.D. 16.13 Paul’s prediction was centred on the one
whom he was accused of putting forward as a rival to the
emperor in Rome.
3. Paul’s hasty departure
It says much for the sanity of the politarchs that they did not
panic when they heard these serious charges. They decided
that the heat could be taken out of the situation if they made
Jason and his companions go bail for the missionaries’ good
behaviour—more particularly, for Paul’s—and this involved his
prompt quiet departure from Thessalonica. He left reluctantly,
but his hands were tied by the action of his friends, who indeed
had little option in the matter. The church which he and his
colleagues had just begun to establish required further
guidance and teaching for its consolidation, he felt, and he
wondered how it would fare in the aftermath of the riot and his
enforced departure. That its members would be exposed to
enforced departure. That its members would be exposed to
some persecution was certain. One can well imagine what the
leading citizens would say to their wives who had attached
themselves to this new group: “A fine lot these Jewish
propagandists are! They come here and entice you to leave the
synagogue and follow them, but the moment trouble arises, off
they go and leave their dupes to face the music!” Paul knew
very well that his converts would be exposed to this sort of
ridicule, and in some instances to worse than ridicule, and he
made one or two attempts to return to Thessalonica and
strengthen them, but these attempts were abortive: “Satan
hindered us”, he says (1 Thessalonians 2:18).
If we ask how it could be known which hindrances, like those
on the road to Troas, were tokens of divine guidance and
which, like the present ones, were evidence of Satanic
frustration, the apostolic answer would probably be that those
which turned out to further the progress of the gospel and the
wellbeing of the churches belonged to the former category and
those which worked to the detriment of those causes belonged
to the latter. Sometimes, indeed, a visitation of Satan could be
recognized—in retrospect, at least—as a means employed or
overruled for the furtherance of the divine purpose, as with
Paul’s “splinter in the flesh” which followed his ecstatic
transportation to paradise.14 But whether the satanic
hindrance on this occasion was an illness,15 or a continuation
of the political circumstances which had made him leave
Thessalonica, he does not seem to have discerned any divine
overruling here—not, at any rate, at the time of writing the
letter in which those words occur, the letter which has come
down to us as 1 Thessalonians.
4. The Thessalonian correspondence
There are two letters in the New Testament addressed to
“the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the
Lord Jesus Christ”; the relation between the two is not easy to
determine. There is a considerable community of subject-
matter between the two, but for the most part the treatment of
the common themes is fuller in 1 Thessalonians, Apart from one
near-apocalyptic paragraph (2 Thessalonians 2:1–12),16 2
Thessalonians has seemed to many readers to be a pale echo of
1 Thessalonians, and there has therefore been a tendency,
especially among German scholars, to dismiss it as unauthentic
—but it is difficult to see what purpose any one could have had
in view in composing it. Other suggestions have been that 1
Thessalonians was written to Gentile Christians in Thessalonica
and 2 Thessalonians to Jewish Christians,17 or that the
superscription of both letters, naming “Paul, Silvanus and
Timothy” as joint-authors,18 indicates that more than one of
them shared in the correspondence. There is really nothing in
the two letters which points to diversity of destination, and the
idea that a church planted by Paul comprised separate Jewish
and Gentile sections is antecedently improbable. “I adjure you
by the Lord”, says the writer of 1 Thessalonians (5:27), “that
this letter be read to all the brethren”—evidently, then, it was
intended for the whole church. And the “I” which forms the
grammatical subject of this direction cannot well be
distinguished from “I Paul” of 1 Thessalonians 2:18; when the
assurance of 2 Thessalonians 3:17, “I Paul write this greeting
with my own hand”, is also taken into consideration, the
natural conclusion is that, whoever acted as scribe, Paul took
personal responsibility for the contents of both letters.
Another possibility is that 2 Thessalonians is the earlier of
the two.19 Their traditional sequence implies nothing about
relative dating: the arrangement of letters in the Pauline
corpus is based mainly on descending order of length. One
argument in favour of treating 2 Thessalonians as the earlier
letter is that its recipients are described (1:4 f.) as actually
enduring persecution for their faith, whereas in 1
Thessalonians 1:6 and 2:14 such persecution is mentioned in
the past tense.
Paul’s Thessalonian friends got him safely away by night to
Beroea, a city about 60 miles west-by-south-west of
Thessalonica; from there he was escorted to Athens. In Athens
he was rejoined by Silas and Timothy, whom he immediately
sent back to Macedonia—Timothy to Thessalonica and Silas,
perhaps, to Philippi. By the time they returned to him, he had
moved on from Athens to Corinth.20 If Timothy was given 2
Thessalonians to deliver to the church at Thessalonica, then 1
Thessalonians was written in response to the news which he
brought back to Paul in Corinth, answering questions which the
Thessalonians had raised during Timothy’s visit, possibly
including some which were prompted by the letter which they
had received from Timothy’s hands.
The news which Timothy brought from Thessalonica greatly
relieved and cheered Paul. Far from being discouraged or
disillusioned by recent events, the new Christians in
Thessalonica had begun to propagate the gospel on their own
initiative, “so that”, as Paul tells them in the letter which he
wrote from Corinth on hearing Timothy’s report, “you became
an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia” (1
Thessalonians 1:7). They had had to put up with various
degrees of persecution—some petty, some severe—but this had
not damped their enthusiasm: “not only has the word of the
Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but
your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need
not say anything” (1 Thessalonians 1:8).
Even so, Timothy’s report indicated that there were some
matters on which they required more explicit teaching than
Paul had been able to give them before his hasty departure.
They had to be reminded of the importance of sexual purity and
the inviolability of the marriage bond—a lesson which converts
from Greek paganism frequently had difficulty in learning.21
The eschatological excitement which had infected even Gentile
believers was producing excesses, such as a disinclination to
carry on with their daily work; why trouble about such matters
if the present order of things was about to be wound up? Paul
had to refer them to his own example and urge them to do their
own work and earn their own living; otherwise they would
become spongers and forfeit the respect of outsiders.22
His unfinished instruction about the parousia gave rise to
another concern. Some of their number had died already:
would they be denied the blessings to be enjoyed by those still
living at the parousia? No, says Paul; far from being at a
disadvantage, they will have precedence, for when the parousia
trumpet sounds, “the dead in Christ will rise first” (1
Thessalonians 4:16).23 The expectation of the parousia should
not be an excuse for idleness but for vigilance and sobriety, for
“the day of the Lord”, he says (echoing a word of Jesus), “will
come like a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2).24
5. The day of the Lord and the man of lawlessness
The near-apocalyptic paragraph in 2 Thessalonians 2:1–12,
to which reference has already been made, says on the other
hand that the day of the Lord will be heralded by certain signs.
This has been thought to involve a contradiction so sharp as to
rule out the probability that both passages come from one
author.25 But it is noteworthy that the same apparent
contradiction is found in gospel reports of Jesus’ teaching
about the coming of the Son of Man. Whereas in Luke 17:22–
3726 it will come as suddenly as a lightning-flash, like the flood
in Noah’s day or the storm of fire and brimstone which
overwhelmed Sodom and its sister-cities, in Mark 13:5–32 it
will be preceded by the worldwide proclamation of the gospel
and a time of unprecedented tribulation. Yet the latter passage
is followed by a call to keep awake and be on the look-out, “for
you do not know when the time will come” (Mark 13:33–37),
and the former passage ends with the proverb, “Where the
body is, there the eagles will be gathered together” (Luke
17:37)27—which is as much as to say that where there is a
situation ripe for judgment, there the judgment will fall.
Presumably those whose spiritual eyes and ears were open
would recognize that such a situation was present and be
prepared for the ensuing judgment. The fact is that in the
earliest ascertainable forms of the gospel tradition these two
strands—suddenness calling for vigilance and the significance
of antecedent events—are interwoven, so that one need not be
surprised if they are similarly interwoven in Paul’s teaching.
If 2 Thessalonians was written before 1 Thessalonians, then
the statement that the day of the Lord would not come until
certain events had taken place might have stimulated the
Thessalonian Christians’ concern about the lot of those of their
number who died before it came. On the other hand, if 1
Thessalonians was written first, it might have unintentionally
provided ammunition for those who argued that, with the
coming day so imminent, there was no point in planning or
working in the short interval before it came, so that, to cope
with this unhealthy argument, Paul might well have said, “The
parousia is imminent indeed, but not so imminent as all that:
certain things must happen first” (2 Thessalonians 2:3–7):
That day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, with the revelation of the
man of lawlessness, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against
every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of
God, proclaiming himself to be God. Don’t you remember that, when I was still
with you, I told you this? And now you know what is restraining him, so that he
may be revealed in his proper time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at
work: only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. And then
the lawless one will be revealed, but the Lord Jesus will slay him with the breath
of his mouth and destroy him by the manifestation of his parousia.
Few passages in the New Testament can boast such a variety
of interpretations as this; yet in the historical context its
general sense is fairly clear. The verbal imagery is that of the
Antichrist expectation.28 Behind the figure of Antichrist, the
end-time opponent of God and his people, stands the primaeval
dragon of chaos,29 but in Hellenistic times this figure had
assumed more personal lineaments with the attempt of
Antiochus Epiphanes to abolish the worship of the true God and
replace it by that of the pagan deity of whom he himself was
acclaimed as the earthly manifestation. In the visions of Daniel,
Antiochus is the king who is to “exalt himself and magnify
himself above every god” (Daniel 11:36), while the pagan
apparatus which he instals in the temple is called, by a
mocking pun, the “abomination of desolation” (Daniel 11:31,
etc.).30 After three years’ profanation, the temple was cleansed
and restored to its original function; but the character and
action of Antiochus provided a precedent for an expected
Antichrist of the future.
In A.D. 40 it looked for a short time as if this expected
Antichrist had shown his hand. The Emperor Gaius, who took
his divinity very seriously, was stung by what he regarded as
insulting conduct on the part of the Jews of Jamnia (in western
Palestine) to an altar set up in his honour by their Greek
neighbours, and gave orders that his statue should be set up in
the Jerusalem temple. The legate of Syria was instructed to see
that it was done, and to lead two legions to Jerusalem in case
there was a revolt Judaea and the Jewish world in general were
thrown into consternation: this was the end, and the Jews
steeled themselves to resist the outrageous decree to the
death.31
The Jewish Christians were as deeply concerned as all their
Jewish brethren. Some of them called to mind certain words of
Jesus which appeared to them to have been spoken with direct
reference to this crisis. Speaking of trouble in days to come
which would herald the destruction of the temple and
desolation of Jerusalem, Jesus warned his followers in Judaea to
“flee to the mountains” when they saw “the abomination of
desolation standing where he ought not” (Mark 13:14).32 (That
the “abomination”, though expressed in Greek by a noun in the
neuter gender, is to be construed as personal may be inferred
from the anomalous masculine form of the participle “standing”
which qualifies it.)33 It may well be that at this time these
words of Jesus, together with some others of like import, were
circulated as a broadsheet among the faithful to prepare them
for the impending catastrophe. If so, this broadsheet was
subsequently incorporated in the Gospel of Mark.
In the event, the crisis under Gaius proved not to be the
fulfilment of Jesus’ prophecy: the decree was countermanded at
the last moment. Thirty more years were to pass before the
desolation engulfed Jerusalem and its temple. But the crisis
made a deep impression on the thinking of the early church,
and the prophecy of Jesus supplied a form of words which can
be recognized in Christian documents of the following decades,
including the passage quoted above from 2 Thessalonians. The
crisis had sharpened eschatological expectation among Jews
and Christians alike, and made its contribution to the militant
messianism which manifested itself in those years in many
Jewish communities around the Mediterranean.
The day will come, says Paul, when another potentate will
actually do what Gaius planned to do: he will not merely erect
his image but occupy a throne personally in the temple,
claiming to be the manifestation of the supreme God and
exacting divine honours exceeding those paid to any other
deity. Great numbers will be hypnotized into giving him the
worship he demands, but when he is at the height of his power
he will be brought down and destroyed by the parousia of
Christ. This will fulfil an ancient word of prophecy about the
Messiah: “with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked”
(Isaiah 11:4).
6. The restraining power
This sinister being, called Antichrist by other writers, is
designated by Paul “the man of lawlessness” because he is the
embodiment of lawlessness or anarchy. The “mystery” or
hidden power of anarchy had not yet revealed itself in its full
malignity. It was already at work beneath the surface, erupting
from time to time, as in those forces at Thessalonica which had
combined (but fruitlessly, as the event proved) to thwart the
progress of the gospel. At present, however, it was checked by
a restrainer; but one day this restraint would be removed, and
then “the man of lawlessness” would make his debut.
Paul writes as though he expected his readers to understand
what he had in mind: he had told them something of this while
he was still with them. But to later readers his words have
presented an enigma, and even today there is no agreement on
their meaning, especially on the identity of the restraining
power. One influential view, proposed in the first place by
Oscar Cullmann, is that the restraining power was Paul’s own
apostolic ministry, which (exhypothesi) had to be completed
before the parousia and attendant events took place.34 But if
this were so, why should Paul be so allusive, instead of
speaking plainly? It is much more probable that the restraint
was exercised by imperial law and order, embodied in the
emperor—“he who now restrains”. Paul had already begun to
appreciate the protection afforded to the gospel by the
organization and administration of the Roman Empire, curbing
the hostile forces of anarchy. If this is the true interpretation of
his words, it is easy to understand his allusiveness. If he had
spoken explicitly about the coming removal of the imperial
power, or of the emperor himself, and the letter had fallen into
the wrong hands, the consequences for Paul and his friends
alike could have been serious. Such language would have
seemed to confirm the charge brought against him before the
Thessalonian politarchs, of contravening the decrees of Caesar
and proclaiming a rival emperor.
The near-apocalyptic imagery of this and other passages in
Paul’s Thessalonian correspondence is not characteristic of the
main body of his writing. In his later letters he deals from time
to time with the same topics—resurrection, coming glory, and
the subjection of all other authority beneath the dominion of
Christ—but he deals with them in other terms.35 Since the
Thessalonian letters are among the earliest, if not absolutely
the earliest, of his extant writings,36 this may suggest that he
came increasingly to feel that apocalyptic imagery was not the
most adequate vehicle for expressing the Christian hope.
As for the restraining effect of the imperial order, beneficial
as this was for the cause of the gospel, Gaius’s brief spell of
madness ten years before had shown what could happen when
an emperor took his divinity too seriously: what had happened
before could happen again, and indeed would happen again—
more decisively and effectively than under Gaius. It is not
necessary to think that Paul was thinking specifically of
Claudius, although some have (most implausibly) envisaged a
concealed play on words between that emperor’s name and the
idea of restraint (via such Latin verbs as claudere, “to close”,
and claudicare, “to limp”).37 Still less is it necessary to connect
the removal of restraint with Claudius’s stepson and eventual
successor, Nero (who at this time was only thirteen or fourteen
years old). Paul was thinking much more of his own experience
of Roman justice: it was on the strength of this experience that
he could describe the imperial authorities several years later,
when Nero had already been emperor for over two years, as
“ministers of God” (Romans 13:6), and it was on the strength of
this same experience that, two or three years after that, he
appealed to have his case transferred from the jurisdiction of
the governor of Judaea to the emperor’s tribunal in Rome.38
CHAPTER 22
Paul and the Athenians
1. Visit to Beroea
PAUL HAD FOLLOWED THE VIA EGNATIA FROM
PHILIPPI TO Thessalonica, and he might have continued to
follow it from Thessalonica westward. It was to Macedonia that
he had been called, and the Via Egnatia ran on through
Macedonia to its Adriatic terminus at Dyrrhachium. Instead,
Paul left the main road and made for Beroea, which lay some
distance south of it. It is perhaps with reference to its being off
the Via Egnatia that Cicero describes Beroea as oppidum
deuium, “an out-of-the-way town”.1
Perhaps Paul had little choice in the matter: it was to Beroea
that his Thessalonian friends sent him and Silas. But an
interesting suggestion has been made to the effect that when
Paul first set out with his companions to travel from east to
west along the Via Egnatia he had conceived the plan of
following it to Dyrrhachium and then crossing the Adriatic to
Italy, and so to Rome.2 We know from his letter to the Roman
Christians, written six or seven years after this, that he had
often intended to visit them, but had been prevented thus far
(Romans 1:13; 15:22 f.). If this was one of those occasions,
what prevented him? Possibly he was unwilling to go to Rome
until the stigma of the charge of subversion at Thessalonica
had faded; but he could have had a more conclusive reason for
changing his plan if news reached him about this time of
Claudius’s edict expelling the Jewish community from Rome (c.
A.D. 49). This would have deprived him of his natural base of
operations in Rome. On the other hand, Claudius’s edict was
indirectly to prove a personal boon to him a month or two later,
when he came to Corinth and found there two of those recently
expelled from Rome, who promptly became his firm and
lifelong friends.3
Since he found himself in Beroea, however, he availed
himself of the opportunities for witness which were afforded
here. There was a Jewish synagogue in Beroea, so he and Silas
visited it and communicated the gospel to the congregation as
they had done at Thessalonica. The Beroean Jews gave them a
courteous and unprejudiced hearing: “they received the word
with all eagerness”, says Luke, “examining the scriptures daily
to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11). The result was that
several converts were won at Beroea, special mention being
made here, as at Thessalonica, of “not a few Greek women of
high standing” (Acts 17:12). One at least of the Beroean
converts is known to us by name—Sopater, the son of Pyrrhus,
who appears to have accompanied Paul and others to
Jerusalem seven years later as a delegate from the Beroean
church (Acts 20:4). If he is identical (as is probable) with
Sosipater of Romans 16:21, he was a Jewish convert, since Paul
there calls him one of his “kinsmen”.
But those who had stirred up trouble for Paul in
Thessalonica, hearing of his presence in Beroea, came and
stirred up similar trouble there. Plainly it was best that Paul
should leave Macedonia until the agitation in the province died
down, so his Beroean friends got him down to the coast and
accompanied him (presumably by sea) to Athens, which lay in
the province of Achaia. Between Beroea and Athens lay the
region of Thessaly, but the Beroean Christians judged (as the
Western text of Acts 17:15 says fairly explicitly) that Thessaly
would not be safe for Paul and did not leave him until they had
brought him to Athens.4 Then they returned, bearing
instructions from Paul to Silas and Timothy about rejoining
him.
2. Paul in Athens
Luke’s vivid account of Paul’s stay in Athens, for all the
accuracy of its local colour, has for a variety of reasons been
assessed sceptically by several students of his writings.
Happily, we have Paul’s assurance that he did spend some time
in Athens, and that for part of that time he was on his own: he
tells the Christians of Thessalonica how he sent Timothy back
to visit and help them, while he himself was “willing to be left
behind at Athens alone” (1 Thessalonians 3:1). From all that we
know of Paul, we can be certain that in Athens, as elsewhere,
he allowed no opportunity for apostolic witness to pass him by.
Luke describes some opportunities which he seized, and goes
into considerable detail about one of them.
No city in the Hellenic world could match Athens for those
qualities which Greeks counted most glorious. Athens, the
cradle of democracy, attained the foremost place among the
city-states of Greece early in the fifth century B.C., because of
the leading part she played in resisting the Persian invasions.
For the next half-century she controlled a powerful and wealthy
maritime empire, and after her defeat by the Spartans and
their allies in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 B.C.) was not
long in regaining much of her earlier influence. In the fourth
century she again took the lead in resisting Macedonian
aggression, and even after Philip’s victory at Chaeronea (338
B.C.) was generously treated by him and allowed to retain
much of her ancient liberty, which she enjoyed until the Roman
conquest of Greece in 146 B.C. The Romans, too, in
consideration of the city’s glorious past, permitted her to carry
on her own institutions as a free and allied city within the
empire. The sculpture, literature and oratory of Athens in the
fifth and fourth centuries B.C. have never been surpassed; in
philosophy, too, she took the leading place, being the native
city of Socrates and Plato and the adopted home of Aristotle,
Epicurus and Zeno:
Athens the eye of Greece, Mother of Arts
And Eloquence, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,
City or Suburban, studious walks and shades;
See there the Olive Grove of Academe,
See there the Olive Grove of Academe,
Plato’s retirement, where the Attic Bird
Trills her thick-warbl’d notes the summer long,
There flowrie hill Hymettus with the sound
Of Bees industrious murmur oft invites
To studious musing; there Ilissus rouls
His whispering stream; within the walls then view
The schools of antient Sages; his who bred
Great Alexander to subdue the world,
Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next:…
To sage Philosophy next lend thine ear,
From Heaven descended to the low-rooft house
Of Socrates, see there his Tenement,
Whom well inspir’d the Oracle pronounc’d
Wisest of men; from whose mouth issu’d forth
Mellifluous streams that water’d all the schools
Of Academics old and new, with those
Sirnam’d Peripatetics, and the Sect
Epicurean, and the Stoic severe.5
The persistence of the cultural influence of Athens in the
Hellenistic age is further to be seen in the fact that it was the
Attic dialect of Greek, spoken at first over a very restricted
area as compared with Ionic and Doric, that formed the main
basis of the Koinē.
Luke pictures Paul as viewing the temples, altars and images
of Athens through the eyes of one brought up in the spirit of
Jewish monotheism and the aniconic principles of the second
commandment of the decalogue. “What pagans sacrifice”, Paul
maintained, “they offer to demons and not to God” (1
Corinthians 10:20), and those who “exchanged the glory of the
immortal God for images resembling mortal man” or anything
else “exchanged the truth of God for a lie” because they
“worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator”
(Romans 1:23, 25). In the agora at the foot of the Acropolis,
where the citizens of Athens met to exchange the latest news,
there was no lack of men ready to enter into debate with him
about the nature of the divine being. Some of those professed
attachment to the Stoic or Epicurean schools of philosophy, but
none of them could come to terms with this strange visitor, so
passionately in earnest as he talked about Jesus, “designated
Son of God in power … by his resurrection from the dead” (as
Paul puts it in Romans 1:4). To some he appeared to be a
retailer of scraps of second-hand learning (a spermologos, as
they said, using an Athenian slang term);6 to others he
appeared to be commending foreign divinities, and so rendered
himself amenable to the jurisdiction of the court of the
Areopagus.
This body, the most venerable of Athenian institutions, going
back into the mists of legendary antiquity, had at one time
discharged the functions of a senate. With the growth of
democracy in Athens, its earlier powers were greatly reduced,
but it retained considerable prestige and continued to exercise
responsibility in the realm of religion, morals and homicide. It
derived its name from the fact that its original meeting-place
was on the Areopagus, the hill west of the Acropolis; in Roman
times, however, it held most of its meetings in the Royal
Portico (the stoa basileios) in the agora.
3. The Areopagus speech
Before this court, then, Paul was brought and invited to
expound his teaching. It is uncertain whether we are intended
to envisage him as addressing it in the Royal Portico or on the
Areopagus itself. The latter is the traditional view: the visitor to
Athens today can see the text of Paul’s address to the court
inscribed on bronze at the foot of the ascent to the hill.
Men of Athens, I see that in all respects you are very religious. As I was
walking through your city and observing your objects of worship I found an altar
bearing the inscription: “To an Unknown God”. I hereby declare to you the nature
of what you worship as unknown.
The God who made the world and everything that is in it is Lord of heaven and
earth and does not dwell in temples made by human hands. It is not because he is
in need of anything that he accepts service at men’s hands, for it is he who gives
to all men life and breath and everything else. He has made every race of men
from one stock, to occupy the whole face of the earth, and he has ordained the
allotted periods and the frontiers of their habitable territory. His purpose was
that they should seek God, so as to touch him and find him—though indeed he is
not far from each one of us. “For in him we live and move and have our being”, as
in fact some of your poets have said—“for we are also his offspring”. Since then
we are God’s offspring we ought not to think that the divinity is like an object of
gold or silver or stone, engraved by human art and design.
God has overlooked the period of your ignorance, but now he commands men
that all of them everywhere should repent, because he has set a day on which he
will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of
this he has provided a pledge to all by raising him from the dead.7
Some of the motifs of this speech have appeared earlier in
the short summary of Barnabas and Paul’s protest to the people
of Lystra who were preparing to pay them divine honours,8 but
the Areopagitica is fuller, more detailed and adapted to the
intellectual climate of Athens. At Athens, as formerly at Lystra,
the Paul of Acts does not expressly quote Old Testament
prophecies which would be quite unknown to his audience:
such direct quotations as his speech contains are from Greek
poets. But he does not argue from “first principles” of the kind
that formed the basis of various systems of Greek philosophy;
his exposition and defence of his message are founded on the
biblical revelation and they echo the thought, and at times the
very language, of the Old Testament writings. Like the biblical
revelation itself, his speech begins with God the creator of all,
continues with God the sustainer of all, and concludes with God
the judge of all.
4. The knowledge of the unknown God
He finds his text, his point of contact, in an altar-dedication
which illustrated the intense religiosity of the Athenians—a
quality which impressed many other visitors to their city in
antiquity. The dedication read: Agnōstō Theō (“To an Unknown
God”). Other writers tell us that altars to unknown gods were
to be seen at Athens:9 if it is pointed out that no other speaks of
an altar “to an unknown god” (in the singular), it may suffice to
say that two or more dedications “to an unknown god” might
be summarily referred to as “altars to unknown gods” (in the
plural).
Various tales were told to account for such anonymous
dedications: according to one tale, they were set up by the
direction of Epimenides, a wise man of Crete, one of the poets
quoted in the course of the speech.10 Whatever may have been
the original circumstances or intention of the inscription which
Paul took as his text, he interprets it as a confession of
ignorance regarding the divine nature, and says that the
purpose of his coming is to dispel that ignorance.
He proceeds, then, to instruct them in the doctrine of God.
First, God has created the universe with all that it contains; he
is Lord of heaven and earth. This is the very language of
biblical revelation: God Most High is “maker of heaven and
earth” (Genesis 14:19, 23); “the earth is the LORD’s and the
fulness thereof” (Psalm 24:1). No concessions are allowed to
Hellenistic paganism; no distinction is made between the
Supreme Being and a “demiurge” or master-workman who
fashioned the world because the Supreme Being was too pure
to come into polluting contact with the material order.
Second, God does not inhabit shrines which human hands
have built. Stephen’s defence makes this point to the
Sanhedrin with reference to the Jerusalem temple, built for the
worship of the living God; much more could Paul see fit to
impress it on the Areopagus in full view of the magnificent
temples which crowned the Acropolis, dedicated to gods that
were no gods. The higher paganism, indeed, acknowledged
that no material structure could accommodate the divine
nature: “What house fashioned by builders”, asked Euripides,
“could contain the form divine within enclosing walls?”11 But
the affinities of Paul’s language are biblical and not classical.
Third, God requires nothing from those whom he has
created. Here, too, parallels to Paul’s argument can be
adduced from classical Greek literature: Plato’s Euthyphro
comes to mind. But Paul stands right within the prophetic
tradition. The prophets and psalmists in their day had to refute
the idea that the God of Israel was in some degree dependent
on his people and their gifts: his people were completely
dependent on him. Thus in Psalm 50:9–12 he declines their
sacrifices in these terms:
I will accept no bull from your house,
nor he-goat from your folds.
For every beast of the forest is mine,
the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know all the birds of the air,
and all that moves in the field is mine.
If I were hungry, I would not tell you,
for the world and all that is in it is mine.
This is precisely Paul’s emphasis when he declares that, if God
accepts service from men, it is not because he cannot do
without it.12 Far from their supplying any need of his, it is he
who supplies every need of theirs.
5. The doctrine of man
Since the creator of all things in general is the creator of the
human race in particular, Paul moves on from the doctrine of
God to the doctrine of man.
First, man is one. The Greeks might take pride in their
natural superiority to barbarians; the Athenians might boast
that, unlike their fellow-Greeks, they were autochthonous,
sprung from the soil of their Attic homeland. But Paul affirms
that mankind is one in origin, all created by God and all
descended from a common ancestor. Before God, all human
beings meet on one level.
Second, man’s earthly abode and the course of the seasons
have been designed for his wellbeing. This too is a biblical
insight. The earth, according to Genesis 1, was formed and
furnished to be man’s home before man was introduced as its
occupant. Moreover, part of the forming and furnishing of
man’s home on earth consisted in the provision of habitable
zones to serve as living space for mankind and in the regulation
of “allotted periods”. The former provision is implied in
of “allotted periods”. The former provision is implied in
Deuteronomy 32:8:
When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
when he separated the sons of men,
He fixed the bounds of the peoples
according to the number of the sons of God.
The “allotted periods” are to be identified either with the
sequence of seed-time and harvest (as in the speech at Lystra)
or with the epochs of human history (as in the visions of
Daniel).
Third, God’s purpose in making these arrangements was that
men might seek and find him—a desire all the more natural
because they are his offspring and he aids them in the
attainment of his desire by his nearness to them. It is here that
the terminology of the speech shows closest Hellenistic
affinities, but to a different audience Paul could have expressed
the same thought by saying that man is God’s creature, made
in his image. To his Athenian audience he establishes his point
by two quotations from Greek poets which set forth men’s
relation to the Supreme Being.
The first quotation is based on the fourth line of a quatrain
attributed to Epimenides the Cretan, in which his fellow-
islanders are denounced for their impiety in claiming that the
tomb of Zeus could be seen in Crete:
They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one—
The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies!
But thou art not dead: thou livest and abidest for ever,
For in thee we live and move and have our being.13
The second comes from the poem on Natural Phenomena by
Paul’s fellow-Cilician Aratus, a poet deeply influenced by
Stoicism. This poem opens with a celebration of Zeus—Zeus the
Supreme Being of Stoic philosophy rather than Zeus the head
of the Greek mythological pantheon:
Let us begin with Zeus: never, O men, let us
leave him unmentioned. Full of Zeus are all the ways
and all the meeting-places of men; the sea and the
harbours are full of him. It is with Zeus that
every one of us in every way has to do,
for we are also his offspring.14
It is not suggested that even the Paul of Acts (let alone the
Paul whom we know from his letters) envisaged God in terms of
the Zeus of Stoic pantheism, but if men whom his hearers
recognized as authorities had used language which could
corroborate his argument, he would quote their words, giving
them a biblical sense as he did so. Paul’s concern was to
impress on his hearers the responsibility of all men, as God’s
creatures into whom he has breathed the breath of life, to give
him the honour which is his due. And this honour is not given
when the divine nature is depicted in material forms. Again we
hear the echo of Hebrew prophecy and psalmody when pagan
idolatry is under review (Psalm 115:4):
Their idols are silver and gold,
the work of men’s hands …
Finally, a call to repentance is issued. Their ignorance of the
divine nature was culpable, but God had mercifully overlooked
it. As the people of Lystra were told that God had hitherto
“allowed all the nations to follow their own ways”, with the
implication that now a fresh beginning had come about, so the
members of the Areopagus are told that the recent resurrection
of Christ is the pledge that by his agency God is about to
“judge the world in righteousness”—a further echo of the
Hebrew psalmists, who announce that God “will judge the
world in righteousness and the peoples in equity” (Psalm 98:9).
The “man whom he has appointed” to execute this judgment is
readily identified with the “one like a son of man” who, in
Daniel 7:13 f., is seen receiving world-wide authority from the
Ancient of Days, and therefore with the one to whom,
Ancient of Days, and therefore with the one to whom,
according to John 5:27, the Father has given “authority to
execute judgment, because he is Son of man”.
6. The Paulinism of the Areopagus speech
There are many features in this speech which have caused it
to be marked down quite confidently as non-Pauline. H. J.
Cadbury remarked that “the classicists are among the most
inclined to plead for the historicity of the scene of Paul at
Athens”15—Areopagus address and all. Outstanding among
such classicists was Eduard Meyer, who not only professed his
inability to understand “how any one has found it possible to
explain this scene as an invention”16 but even claimed to have
persuaded Eduard Norden to concede at least the possibility
that Luke reproduced the genuine content of Paul’s speech.17
Norden had argued against its authenticity in his Agnostos
Theos (1913), a work based on an exceptionally penetrating
analysis of the speech: the Attic flavour of the passage
betokened, to his mind, a literary construction made with the
aid of an external model. And a more illustrious classicist than
Norden or Meyer, the great Wilamowitz, had concluded that
the religious sentiment of the Areopagitica was not that of the
real Paul, who (unlike the composer of the speech) did not
directly take over any of the elements of Greek education.18
But it is theologians rather than classicists who have, one
after another, most categorically denied any association of the
Areopagitica with the Paul of the letters. Here, says one, the
Pauline emphasis on being “in Christ” by grace is replaced by a
pagan emphasis on being “in God” by nature.19 Instead of
setting forth the Pauline gospel, says another, the speech
anticipates the rationalism of the second-century apologists, in
its attempt to establish the true knowledge of God by an appeal
to Greek poets and thinkers.20 Its message, says a third, is set
in a context not merely of salvation-history but of world-history,
which is even more un-Pauline.21 According to a fourth, the
“word of the cross” is tactfully omitted, because it was known
to be “folly to Gentiles”22 (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:23).
Yet it is not too difficult to envisage the author of the first
three Chapters of Paul’s letter to the Romans making several of
the points which are central to the Areopagitica.23 The
differences in emphasis can be appreciated if it is remembered
that the letter was written to Christians while the speech was
delivered to pagans. In the letter Paul insists that the
knowledge of God, his “everlasting power and divinity”, is
available from his works in creation, to the point where men
are “without excuse, for although they knew God they did not
honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became
futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were
darkened” (Romans 1:19–21). Nevertheless God in his
forbearance had passed over these and other sins previously
committed, but now that he had manifested his way of
righteousness “through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe”
a new responsibility rested upon those to whom the gospel
came (Romans 3:21–26). If in the speech God’s purpose in
making himself known to men was that they might “touch him
and find him”, in Romans 2:4 his forbearance and kindness are
designed to lead them to repentance. Jesus Christ, through
faith in whom the divine pardon and gift of righteousness were
obtainable by men, was at the same time the one through
whom, on a coming day, according to Paul’s gospel, God would
“judge the secrets of men” (Romans 2:16).
Take the author of those words and bring him to Athens:
invite him to expound his teaching not to fellow-believers but to
cultured pagans. Remember that he has now for several years
been a successful evangelist in the pagan world—a fact which,
despite his own modest disclaimer in 1 Corinthians 2:2–5,
implies considerable persuasiveness in speech and approach,
including the ability to find and exploit an initial area of
common ground with his hearers, apart from which any
attempt at communication would be fruitless. How will he
address himself to such an audience? He will certainly try not
to alienate them in his first sentence or two. It is
underestimating Paul’s versatility, his capacity for being “all
things to all men”, to think that he could not have presented
the essence of Romans 1–3 to pagans along the lines of Acts
17:22–31. True, Luke did not hear Paul address the court of the
Areopagus, but he knew how Paul was accustomed to present
his praeparatio evangelica to such an audience, and
endeavoured, following the example of Thucydides, “to give the
general sense of what was actually said”.24
If it be borne in mind that this is Luke’s summary of a speech
which may in any case have been more praeparatio than
evangelium, then some of the objections to its substantial
authenticity may not appear to be insuperable. As has been
said already, the quotation “In him we live and move and have
our being” does not imply a “God-mysticism”;25 it is adduced
simply to confirm that God is the author and sustainer of our
life. The thought of being “in Christ” by grace would have been
meaningless to pagans. Epimenides and Aratus are not invoked
as authorities in their own right; certain things which they said,
however, can be understood as pointing to the knowledge of
God. But the knowledge of God presented in the speech is not
rationalistically conceived or established; it is the knowledge of
God taught by Hebrew prophets and sages. It is rooted in the
fear of God; it belongs to the same order as truth, goodness
and covenant-love; for lack of it men and women perish; in the
coming day of God it will fill the earth “as the waters cover the
sea” (Isaiah 11:9). The “delicately suited allusions” to Stoic and
Epicurean tenets which have been discerned in the speech,26
like the quotations from pagan poets, have their place as points
of contact with the audience, but they do not commit the
speaker to acquiescence in the realm of ideas to which they
originally belong. Unlike some later Christian apologists, the
Paul of Acts does not cease to be fundamentally biblical in his
approach to the Greeks, even when his biblical emphasis might
seem to diminish his chances of success.
The salvation-history of the Areopagitica finds its climax in
Christ, as does the salvation-history of the Pauline letters.27
The salvation-history of the letters is naturally more detailed
and comprehensive: the outline in Romans 1:18 ff. of the
progressive working of divine retribution against human sin
forms the backcloth to the unfolding of divine grace in the
gospel; the gospel itself was preached in advance to Abraham
and foreshadowed by the prophets, and was fulfilled in Christ.
To the “now God commands” of the speech corresponds the
“now is the acceptable time” of 2 Corinthians 6:2. As for world-
history, it plays no greater part here than it plays in Paul’s
letters: in both the life of humanity moves forward between the
poles of creation and judgment. “In the beginning, God” is
matched by “in the end, God”.
True, “the word of the cross” is absent from the speech. This
could be as much because the speech is more praeparatio than
evangelium as because Luke’s theologia gloriae has taken
precedence over Paul’s theologia crucis. The former possibility
used to be linked with Paul’s confessed decision, when he
moved on from Athens to Corinth, to “know nothing” among
the Corinthians “except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1
Corinthians 2:2), as though he realized that his tactics in
Athens were unwise. But Paul by this time was no novice in
Gentile evangelization, experimenting with this approach and
that to discover which was most effective. It is probable that
Paul’s decision at Corinth was based on his assessment of the
situation there.
7. The resurrection of the dead
There is nothing, however, to commend the suggestion that
“the word of the cross” was tactfully omitted from the
Areopagitica because it was known to be folly to Gentiles: any
mention of the cross could not have appeared more foolish to
these particular Gentiles than did the note on which the speech
concluded—the resurrection of the dead. God, it is stated, has
confirmed the certainty of the coming day of judgment by
raising from the dead the man through whom that judgment
will be delivered.
If the speech be treated realistically, some of the hearers
could be pictured as asking to be told more about this man—to
be told, in particular, what there was about him that
be told, in particular, what there was about him that
occasioned his being raised from the dead. If it is viewed
stylistically, then it is seen to end with a fitting peroration. But
the content of the peroration was totally uncongenial to the
majority of the hearers. If Paul had spoken of the immortality of
the soul, he would have commanded the assent of most of his
hearers except the Epicureans, but the idea of resurrection was
absurd. When the Athenian tragedian Aeschylus, half a
millennium before, described the institution of that very court
of the Areopagus by Athene, the city’s patron deity, he had
made the god Apollo say:
When the dust has soaked up a man’s blood,
Once he is dead, there is no resurrection28
—and the word for resurrection there (anastasis) is the word
which Paul used. To what purpose did this man come to Athens
with his talk of resurrection when every Athenian knew, on the
highest authority, that there could be no such thing?
Outright ridicule and polite dismissal were the main
responses to Paul’s exposition of the knowledge of God. One
member of the court of the Areopagus is said to have believed
his message—Dionysius, who shares with the apostle the
honour of having a street named after him in present-day
Athens, and who about A.D. 500 provided a pseudonym for the
author of a literary corpus of Neoplatonism and mystical
theology. Among the few others who adhered to Paul at Athens
special mention is made of a woman called Damaris, of whom
nothing more is known. Of those who were persuaded to
positive action by the Areopagus speech it might be said, as
was said of his Thessalonian converts, that they “turned to God
from idols to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his
Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus, our
deliverer from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:9 f.).
There is as little explicit mention of the theologia crucis in
these words of Paul as there is in the Areopagus speech, but it
would be precarious to infer that Paul was silent about the
cross at Thessalonica. But we hear of no church in Athens in
the apostolic age, and when Paul speaks of the “firstfruits of
Achaia” it is to a family in Corinth that he refers (1 Corinthians
16:15).29
CHAPTER 23
The Church of God at Corinth
1. Paul comes to Corinth
PAUL TRAVELLED FROM ATHENS TO CORINTH IN A
MOOD OF dejection. It had probably been no part of his
programme when he crossed the sea to Macedonia to turn
south into the province of Achaia. But he had been driven from
one Macedonian city after another, and it seemed that, for the
time being, there was no place for him in that province, despite
his previous assurance that God had called him to evangelize it.
True, his preaching in Macedonia had not been fruitless: he
had left small groups of converts behind him in Philippi,
Thessalonica and Beroea. But his mind was full of misgivings
about their well-being. No violence had been offered to him in
Athens, but the polite amusement which had greeted his
witness there was perhaps more difficult to take than violence:
violence at least showed that some impact was being made. So
far as positive response to his preaching was concerned,
Athens had been much less encouraging than the cities of
Macedonia. So he arrived in Corinth, as he says, “in weakness
and in much fear and trembling” (1 Corinthians 2:3). There was
no reason to suppose that Corinth would prove less
troublesome than the cities of Macedonia. Any traveller in the
Aegean world of those days must have known of Corinth’s
reputation; this city would provide uncongenial soil indeed for
the good seed of the gospel. In the event, Paul spent eighteen
months at Corinth—a longer time than he had spent in any city
since he parted company with Barnabas in Syrian Antioch—
and, by the time he left, there was a large and vigorous, though
volatile, church there. Luke tells how, shortly after Paul’s
arrival in Corinth, he had a vision one night in which the Lord
said to him, “Do not be afraid: speak, and do not be silent. I am
with you, and no one shall harm you by any attack; I have many
people in this city” (Acts 18:9 f.). Paul was reassured, and the
promise was fulfilled: he came to recognize that, while Corinth
had not figured on his own programme, it had a prominent
place in the Lord’s programme for him. His time in Corinth,
and his experiences with the Corinthian church during the
years which followed his departure from Corinth, did much to
deepen his human sympathy and to promote his pastoral
maturity.
2. Corinth
Corinth was an ancient city of Greece; its name, at least,
antedates the coming of the Dorian Greeks early in the first
millennium B.C.1 It was situated on the Isthmus of Corinth,
where it commanded the land-routes between Central Greece
and the Peloponnese and, through its harbours at Lechaeum on
the west of the Isthmus and Cenchreae or the east, early
became an entrepôt for Mediterranean trade. It was built on
the north side of the Acrocorinthus, which rises 1900 feet
(nearly 600 metres) above the plain and served the Corinthians
as their citadel. The citadel had an inexhaustible water supply
in the upper fountain of Peirene; the lower fountain of the same
name served the requirements of the city itself.2
Thanks to its commercial advantages, Corinth enjoyed great
prosperity in classical Greek times. It enjoyed a reputation for
luxury and its name became proverbial for sexual laxity.3 It was
a centre of the worship of Aphrodite, whose temple crowned
the Acrocorinthus. Her cult-statue was attired in the armour of
the war-god Ares, with his helmet for a foot-rest and his shield
for a mirror. At the foot of the citadel stood the temple of
Melicertes, patron of seafarers; his name is a hellenized form
of Melkart, the principal deity of Tyre. The Isthmian Games,
over which Corinth presided, and in which all the Greek city-
states participated, were held every two years;4 at them the
sea-god Poseidon was specially honoured. Corinth paid respect,
in Paul’s words, to “many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’ ” (1
Corinthians 8:5).
Corinth survived many crises in Greek history, but suffered
disaster in 146 B.C. By way of reprisal for the leading part it
had played in the revolt of the Achaian League against the
overlordship of Rome, a Roman army led by Lucius Mummius
razed the city to the ground, sold its population into slavery
and confiscated its territory to the Roman state. Little of the
Greek city remains visible today; the main exception is the
Doric temple of Apollo, dating back to the sixth century B.C.
The site lay derelict for a century; the city was re-founded in
44 B.C. by Julius Caesar as a Roman colony, under the name
Laus Iulia Corinthiensis. In addition to having its own colonial
administration, it was from 27 B.C. onwards the seat of
government of the Roman province of Achaia.
Roman Corinth quickly regained the prosperity of its
predecessor. At the narrowest part of the Isthmus a sort of
railroad of wooden logs, called a diolkos by the Greeks, was
constructed: on this smaller ships were dragged across the
three and a half miles (about six kilometres) between the
Corinthian Gulf on the west and the Saronic Gulf on the east.
With the old prosperity, the old reputation for sexual laxity
returned. The temple of Aphrodite was staffed by a thousand
female slaves, who are said to have made the place a tourist
attraction and enhanced its prosperity.5 This background helps
to explain the frequency of the admonitions against unchastity
in Paul’s Corinthian correspondence.
As Corinth was a Roman colony, its citizens were Romans,
probably freedmen from Italy, but the population was greatly
augmented by Greeks and Levantines, the latter including a
considerable Jewish community. The museum on the site of
Roman Corinth contains part of a stone lintel inscribed in
Greek, “Synagogue of the Hebrews”.6 While the style of the
lettering points to a date rather later than the apostolic age,
the synagogue to which it belonged perhaps stood on the site
of the synagogue which Paul visited soon after his arrival in
Corinth.
3. Priscilla and Aquila
In accordance with his regular practice, Paul maintained
himself in Corinth by his own manual labour, and he found
employment with a tent-making firm owned by a Jew, originally
from Pontus, named Aquila, and his wife Priscilla. The couple
had been until recently resident in Rome, which was possibly
Priscilla’s birthplace,7 but had been compelled to leave that
city because of Claudius’s edict expelling the Jewish colony
from Rome.8 They appear to have been a well-to-do couple, and
their tent-making business may have had branches in several
centres, with a manager in charge of the branches in those
places where they themselves were not actually resident. They
were thus able to move back and forth easily between Rome,
Corinth and Ephesus. After their initial meeting in Corinth,
Paul had no more loyal friends or helpers than Priscilla and
Aquila, “to whom”, as he put it some years later, “not only I but
also all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks” (Romans
16:4):9 their services to the Christian cause evidently far
exceeded their personal services to Paul. They are always
mentioned together, and more often than not Priscilla is named
before her husband;10 this may suggest that she was the more
impressive personality of the two. In none of Paul’s references
to them is there any hint that they were converts of his: all the
indications are that they were Christians before they met him,
and that accordingly they were Christians while they lived in
Rome—which may throw light on Suetonius’s statement that
the Jews were expelled by Claudius because of their constant
rioting “at the instigation of Chrestus”.11
4. First Corinthian converts
In Corinth, as in the cities which he had previously visited,
Paul attended the sabbath services in the synagogue for
several weeks and made it his first base of operations. As his
custom was, he argued that Jesus was the fulfiller of Hebrew
prophecy and, according to the Western text of Acts 18:4,
“inserted the name of the Lord Jesus” at appropriate points in
the scripture readings.12 A number of Jews and God-fearing
Gentiles were persuaded by his preaching; the former included
a ruler of the synagogue named Crispus13 and the latter
included the owner of a house next door to the synagogue,
whom Luke calls Titius Justus.14 If, as is probable, he is
identical with the Corinthian Christian described by Paul as
“Gaius, who is host to me and to the whole church” (Romans
16:23), then his full name Gains Titius Justus marks him out as
a Roman citizen.15 Paul singles out Crispus and Gaius, together
with one Stephanas and his family, “the firstfruits of Achaia”,
as the only ones of his Corinthian converts whom he baptized
personally.16 This would confirm that they were his first
converts in Corinth. After a few weeks Silas and Timothy joined
him, having completed their commissions in Macedonia, and
they were able to relieve him of part of his burden, including
the baptism of converts. They probably brought Paul a gift from
some of his Macedonian friends, which made it possible for him
to discontinue tent-making for a time and give himself entirely
to preaching and teaching.17
But the time came in Corinth as elsewhere when the Jewish
authorities decided that they had had enough of him, and
allowed him the use of the synagogue no longer. Conveniently
for Paul, his friend and convert Titius Justus put his house at
his disposal so that he might carry on the work which he had
started in the nearby synagogue. This house apparently
became not only Paul’s headquarters but also the first meeting-
place of the Corinthian church. Here Paul continued to
proclaim salvation through Christ crucified, and the number of
his converts grew rapidly; they now included not only Jews and
God-fearers but an increasing proportion of pagans.
Among the converts from paganism we should probably
include Erastus of Corinth. The name Erastus appears in
reference to Paul’s circle of friends and helpers once in Acts
(19:22) and twice in the Pauline corpus (Romans 16:23; 2
Timothy 4:20), but it is not at all certain that the same man is
meant on all three occasions. The Corinthian Erastus, however,
is mentioned in Romans 16:23 alongside Paul’s host Gaius
(Titius Justus) as sending his greetings to the people
addressed, and he is described as “city treasurer”(Greek
oikonomos, equivalent to Latin arcarius). On April 15, 1929,
archaeologists based on the American School at Athens
uncovered in Old Corinth a slab bearing a Latin inscription
which should probably be rendered: “Erastus, in consideration
of his aedileship, laid this pavement at his own expense.”18
When the pavement was repaired about A.D. 150, the inscribed
slab was removed from its original position. It may have been
first laid during the second half of the first century. The
possibility—some would say the probability—must be
recognized that the Erastus of the inscription is identical with
Paul’s Corinthian friend; if so, his service as city treasurer (the
post which he was occupying at the beginning of A.D. 57)
proved so satisfactory that some twenty years later he was
promoted to the dignity of aedile (curator of public works) and
marked his promotion by donating to the city the pavement of
which the inscribed slab formed part.19
Paul’s insistence on “knowing nothing” among the
Corinthians “except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1
Corinthians 2:2) had some regard to the intellectual climate of
the city. As he came to know something of the Corinthians’
reverence for current wisdom, he stressed that element in the
gospel for which current wisdom could have no place: what
more abject spectacle of folly and helplessness could be
imagined than a crucified man? A crucified deliverer was to
Greeks an absurd contradiction in terms, just as to Jews a
crucified Messiah was a piece of scandalous blasphemy. But as
Paul persisted in preaching Jesus as the crucified Saviour and
sin-bearer, the unexpected happened: pagans, as well as Jews
and God-fearers, believed the message and found their lives
transformed by a new, liberating power, which broke the
stranglehold of selfishness and vice and purified them from
within. The message of Christ crucified had thus accomplished
something which no body of Greek philosophic teaching could
something which no body of Greek philosophic teaching could
have done for them.
5. Gallio’s “judgment”
An attempt was made to stir up trouble for Paul at Corinth,
similar to the attempts made in Thessalonica and Beroea, but
less successful in the event.
In July of A.D. 51 (less probably, twelve months later),20
Lucius Junius Gallio came to Corinth to take up his
appointment as proconsul of Achaia. Gallio (originally named
Marcus Annaeus Novatus) belonged to a well-known Roman
family of Spanish origin: he was a son of Marcus Annaeus
Seneca, a distinguished professor of rhetoric, and a younger
brother of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Stoic philosopher and at
this time tutor to the future Emperor Nero. His change of
family name is due to his having been adopted as heir by his
father’s friend Lucius Junius Gallio.21
Not long after Gallio’s arrival in Corinth, some members of
the local Jewish community charged Paul before him with
propagating an illegal religion. It is not said if the charge
hinted at political implications in Paul’s preaching; perhaps he
was simply accused of introducing a cult of which Roman law
took no cognizance.22 In any case, Gallio quickly decided that
there was nothing in this charge which called for action on his
part. The accused man was as self-evidently Jewish as his
prosecutors were: this was a quarrel over the interpretation of
disputed points in Jewish law and theology. Crime and threats
to the imperial peace fell within his jurisdiction, but he had no
mind to arbitrate in a Jewish religious controversy.
Accordingly, without waiting to hear the defence which Paul
had prepared, he bade them begone from his tribunal.23 (The
stone platform which may well have served as Gallio’s tribunal
is still to be seen in Old Corinth.) The Corinthian bystanders,
pleased at seeing a snub administered to the leaders of the
Jewish community, seized the opportunity to assault the ruler
of the synagogue, Sosthenes by name, before the tribunal,
while Gallio turned a blind eye.24 (If this Sosthenes is the
Sosthenes whom Paul associates with himself in the
superscription of 1 Corinthians, then he too, like his former
colleague Crispus, became a Christian.)
Gallio’s refusal to take up the charge25 against Paul may
have constituted an important negative precedent. Certainly, if
he had taken up the charge and found Paul guilty of the alleged
offence, such an adverse ruling by an influential governor
would have been followed as a precedent by magistrates
elsewhere in the Roman Empire, and Paul’s apostolic work
would have been seriously handicapped. Gallio’s was no merely
local and municipal authority, like that of the Philippian
praetors or the Thessalonian politarchs. As it was, his inaction
in the matter was tantamount to a ruling that what Paul was
preaching was a form of Judaism, an association sanctioned by
Roman law. The time was fast approaching, thanks mainly to
Paul’s own activity as apostle to the Gentiles, when it would no
longer be possible for any Roman magistrate to regard
Christianity as a form of Judaism; but for the present Paul was
able to prosecute his ministry in Corinth and elsewhere without
molestation from Caesar’s representatives.
6. Paul leaves Corinth
In the spring of (probably) A.D. 52 he left Corinth with his
friends Priscilla and Aquila, and crossed the Aegean to
Ephesus, He visited the synagogue in Ephesus, and the Jews
there were so interested in what he had to say that they
expressed a desire to hear more, but he excused himself
because of a pressing engagement in Jerusalem. According to
the Western text of Acts 18:21, he had to be in Jerusalem for
the approaching festival—either Passover or Pentecost. His
Jerusalem engagement may have had to do with a Nazirite vow
which he had undertaken in Corinth—probably in response to
the promise of protection which he had received from the Lord
in a night-vision. As he left Corinth, he discharged part of his
vow by cutting his hair short before embarking at the harbour
of Cenchreae,26 but the completion of the vow required a visit
to the temple in Jerusalem, He therefore left Priscilla and
Aquila in Ephesus and set sail from there to Caesarea in
Palestine. He fulfilled his obligation in Jerusalem and paid his
respects to the mother church; then he went north to Syrian
Antioch, renewing acquaintance with his old friends there,
before he returned to Ephesus.
7. Apollos and his “school”
Meanwhile another visiting Jew came to the Ephesian
synagogue and took an active part in the exposition of the
scriptures; like Paul, he too taught that the scriptures had been
fulfilled by Jesus. Priscilla and Aquila listened to him with great
interest; they approved of all that he said, but became aware of
certain deficiencies (as it seemed to them) in his knowledge of
the gospel. He had an accurate acquaintance with the story of
Jesus, but knew nothing of baptism in Jesus’ name: the only
baptism known to him was that introduced by John the Baptist
(and possibly still administered by some of John’s disciples).
Accordingly, Priscilla and Aquila invited him to their home in
Ephesus, and there they “expounded to him the way of God
more accurately” (Acts 18:26).
This visitor was Apollos, a Jew of Alexandria in Egypt. Luke
applies to him the adjective logios, which meant “learned” or
“cultured” in classical Greek, but acquired the sense of
“eloquent” in Hellenistic and later Greek; the latter sense is
probably what Luke intends, but the former need not be
excluded. He is also described by Luke as “well versed in the
scriptures”, which suggests not only a mastery of the text but a
facility in exposition.
According to the Western text of Acts 18:25, Apollos (who in
this text receives his unabridged name Apollonius) had
received his instruction in the way of the Lord in his patris, his
home city (Alexandria). This implies that Christianity had
reached Alexandria by about A.D. 50, and this is highly
probable, no matter what evidence was available to the
Western editor when he made this addition.27 Whether or not
Apollos’s expository skill, over and above his ability to find the
fulfilment of the scriptures in Jesus, indicates his competence
in the allegorical method used by Philo, the great Jewish
philosopher of Alexandria (who had died probably a year or two
before the appearance of Apollos in our record), we have no
means of knowing. It is not at all unlikely, but must not be
taken, for granted.
How was it, we may ask, that, for all his accurate knowledge
of the story of Jesus, he was acquainted with no baptism but
John’s? To this it can only be said that the gospel had reached
him (whether in Alexandria or elsewhere) by a different road
from that traced in the main narrative of Acts and presupposed
in the letters of Paul—by a road, that is to say, which did not
start in Jerusalem. There were groups of believers in Jesus in
various parts of Palestine (even in Samaria),28 and some of
these may have engaged in missionary activity without having
experienced the pentecostal event which attended the
inception of the church of Jerusalem. It is certain that
Alexandrian Christianity, whatever the date and circumstances
of its inception may have been, was for some generations
regarded as defective by the standards of Jerusalem (in the
apostolic age) and Rome (in post-apostolic times).29 Further
speculation is fruitless, but the more accurate instruction
which Apollos received from Priscilla and Aquila would have
included something about baptism in the name of Jesus, with
its corollary (of which they themselves had learned from Paul)
of incorporation by the Spirit into the new community.
Apollos seems to have been one of the travelling Jewish
merchants of whom some others receive mention in the Near
Eastern history of this period for combining a readiness to give
religious instruction with whatever other business took them
from place to place.30 When he had completed his business in
Ephesus he crossed the Aegean to Corinth, armed with a letter
of introduction from his new friends in Ephesus to the
“disciples” in Corinth. Luke’s statement that it was to the
“disciples” in Corinth that this letter was addressed points to
the church in Corinth rather than the synagogue: however,
Apollos appears to have visited the synagogue on his own
initiative and argued, as Paul had done, that the Messiah
foretold in the scriptures was to be identified with Jesus—
though his exegetical method may have been different from
Paul’s.
Athens: The Acropolis (see p. 240)
Corinth: Gallio’s bema (see p. 254)
At any rate, he proved to be a tower of strength to the
Christian cause in Corinth, and many members of the
Corinthian church were greatly impressed by his gifts—some
going so far as to regard themselves as his disciples. Evidently
there was a quality about his ministry that made it more
appealing to them than Paul’s. Apollos’s eloquence may have
been contrasted with what Paul acknowledged to be his own
“contemptible” delivery (2 Corinthians 10:10), or conceivably
his imaginative allegorization may have been preferred to
Paul’s deliberate eschewing of “lofty words or wisdom” (1
Corinthians 2:1).
Others, out of a sense of loyalty to Paul, felt that they should
emphasize his unique claim, as founder of their church, to be
their teacher; so, over against the self-styled school of Apollos
there emerged another group whose watchword was “I belong
to Paul”.31 There does not appear to have been any difference
of principle between the Paul party and the Apollos party: when
Paul refers to the subject, he simply regards it as deplorable
that such party-spirit should exist at all. “What then is Apollos?
What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the
Lord assigned to each. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it,
but it was God who made it grow” (1 Corinthians 3:5 f.). In his
references to Apollos Paul shows no trace of reserve: every
mention he makes of him is marked by friendliness and
confidence. Apollos’s teaching evidently commanded Paul’s
approval. Towards the end of 1 Corinthians (written from
Ephesus in the spring of A.D. 55) he says, among other
personal notes: “As for our brother Apollos, I strongly urged
him to visit you with the other brethren, but it was plainly not
God’s will for him to come now; he will come when he has
opportunity” (16:12). The details of this postponed visit are
quite obscure to us (in fact, we cannot be sure if it was God’s
will or Apollos’s own will that stood in the way of his visiting
Corinth just then),32 but some recent contact between Paul and
Apollos in Ephesus is implied. Perhaps Apollos had left Corinth
in embarrassment at being set up as a party leader there in
potential rivalry to Paul. Paul was not too happy about some
Christian visitors who went to Corinth and tried to amplify the
teaching he had given to his converts there, but he plainly had
no misgivings about a visit by Apollos.
8. News from “Chloe’s people”
Paul first learned about the development of the “school” of
Apollos, and the rival “school” which claimed himself as patron,
from some Corinthian visitors to Ephesus to whom he refers as
“Chloe’s people” (1 Corinthians 1:11)—members of a well-to-do
household or house-church, presumably.33 They told him of yet
another group which invoked the name of Peter (whom Paul, as
usual, calls Cephas). Had Peter paid a visit to Corinth in Paul’s
absence? This is possible: Peter seems, from about A.D. 50
onwards, to have embarked on a more widespread ministry
than hitherto, concentrating probably (in accordance with the
Jerusalem leaders’ agreement with Paul and Barnabas) on
Jewish communities in various centres.34 If he visited the
synagogue in Corinth, he would no doubt also have greeted the
church there, which included converts from Judaism as well as
from paganism. We have already remarked on the impossibility
of maintaining a clear line of demarcation between the Jewish
and the Gentile mission-fields, and on the opportunities of
misunderstanding which were liable to arise between the two
parties to the agreement. Apollos was a free agent with no
apostolic status, and his activity in Corinth or any part of Paul’s
mission-field presented no threat to Paul’s authority, but it was
different with Peter. Doubt could easily have been cast on
Paul’s commission by any one who was so minded—he had
received it, by his own account, in a vision shared by no one
else, whereas Peter’s apostolic credentials were
unquestionable. If he said something which differed from Paul’s
teaching, which was more likely to be right? That the
Corinthian Christians had a special interest in Peter is
indicated by a reference which Paul makes to “the other
apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas”35—singling
out the last-named specifically (1 Corinthians 9:5). The point of
the reference is that those men, unlike Paul, were accompanied
by their wives on their missionary journeys, a fact of which, in
Peter’s case, the Corinthians may have been aware from
experience.36
If Peter did not visit Corinth in person, then some others may
have visited the city and church in his name, and tried to
impose his authority to a degree which he himself would not
have countenanced. What the Corinthian Christians were
pressed to accept on Peter’s authority is uncertain, but they
may have been urged to observe the food-restrictions in the
Jerusalem decree.37 Paul speaks of himself as laying the
foundation of Corinthian Christianity and of others coming
along and building further courses on it: “let each man take
care how he builds upon it”, he adds in a note of warning (1
Corinthians 3:10). As for apostolic credentials, Corinth is one
place where Paul has no need to present his: the existence of
the Corinthian church is evidence enough of his commission
—“the seal of my apostleship in the Lord”, he tells them (1
Corinthians 9:2).
But there were others in the church of Corinth, Paul’s
visitors told him, who had loftier ideas than those associated
with the names of leading servants of the exalted Christ: they
claimed the patronage of Christ himself—not in the sense in
which all Christians might do so but in a partisan sense. In
Paul’s eyes this was the most outrageous manifestation of party
spirit: “Is Christ divided?” he asks indignantly (1 Corinthians
1:13). What can be said of those people whose slogan was “I
belong to Christ”?
9. “Men of knowledge” at Corinth
The Corinthian church presents us with an example of the
subtle changes which the gospel was apt to undergo when it
was transplanted to a Gentile environment. Concepts and terms
which originally had one meaning tended to take on another
meaning from their new surroundings. Paul, for instance,
regarded the indwelling Spirit in the followers of Jesus as the
firstfruits of the heritage of glory which would be theirs in
fulness in the resurrection age. For some of his Corinthian
converts, on the other hand, the possession of the Spirit, the
heavenly essence, was the all-important matter: the crowning
achievement of Jesus was his impartation of the Spirit. His
crucifixion was significant not so much for the reason given by
Paul as for its being the means by which he outwitted and
overcame the “principalities and powers” which were hostile to
men and would have prevented them from enjoying the
heavenly gift. But now that they had received the heavenly gift,
they had “arrived”; the coming kingdom of which Paul spoke
was already theirs.38 What could the hope of bodily
resurrection add in the way of bliss to those who knew
themselves to be here and now “men of the Spirit”?39 If Paul
still retained his traditional Jewish belief in a future
resurrection of the body, there was no reason why they should
take over this belief from him; they were more thoroughly
emancipated. Paul did express a clearer insight, they conceded,
when he spoke occasionally of believers having died and risen
again with Christ in their baptism:40 that was all the
resurrection they needed. Let others know the exalted Christ
as he was proclaimed to them by Paul or Apollos or Peter: they
were in direct touch with him by the Spirit and had no need of
human intermediaries. We shall not be far wrong if we identify
the men who argued thus with the “Christ party” at Corinth.41
The same attitude manifests itself in the exaggerated
estimate placed by some Corinthian Christians on the more
spectacular and ecstatic “spiritual gifts” or charismata,
especially glossolalia. Paul did not rule out glossolalia as a
phenomenon inspired by the Spirit, but he was anxious to
convince his Corinthian friends that there were other
charismata which, while not so impressive as glossolalia, were
much more helpful in building up the Christian fellowship.
Glossolalia in itself was not peculiar to Christianity: Greece had
long experience of the utterances of the Pythian prophetess at
Delphi and the enthusiastic invocations of the votaries of
Dionysus. Hence Paul insists that it is not the phenomenon of
“tongues” or prophesying in itself that gives evidence of the
presence and activity of the Holy Spirit, but the actual content
of the utterances. Taking what may be intended as two extreme
examples, he points out that such an utterance as “Jesus is
Lord” is self-evidently prompted by the Holy Spirit, whereas
such an utterance as “Jesus is anathema”—perhaps the kind of
utterance which he had once tried to force Palestinian
believers to take upon their lips42—was equally self-evidently
prompted by a spirit of a very different order.43
It would be anachronistic to call these “men of the Spirit”
Gnostics; that is a term best reserved for adherents of the
various schools of Gnosticism which flourished in the second
century A.D. Their doctrine, however, might permissibly be
described as “incipient Gnosticism”. From Paul’s Corinthian
correspondence one can at least appreciate “into how
congenial a soil the seeds of Gnosticism were about to fall”.44
The “men of the Spirit” at Corinth certainly set much store by
wisdom (sophia) and knowledge (gnōsis), reckoning these
qualities (as Paul tells them) by current secular standards,
whereas (he maintained) in the gospel of Christ crucified God
had turned these standards upside down and made them look
foolish. The knowledge which they cultivated, if it was not
accompanied by Christian love, could not build up the Christian
community or strengthen its fellowship. It carried with it a
temptation to despise fellow-Christians who were thought to be
less enlightened and to treat with impatience their immature
scruples in such matters as food and sex. They themselves
regarded the body as a temporary provision and held that
bodily actions were morally and religiously indifferent.
Paul, the most liberal and emancipated of first-century
Christians, could go a long way with these “men of knowledge”.
He agreed with them that the flesh of animals which had been
sacrificed to pagan deities was none the worse for that, and
that Christians might say grace over it and eat it with a good
conscience; but, unlike them, he was always prepared
voluntarily to restrict his liberty in such matters if its exercise
might harm the conscience of a less emancipated Christian.
On the other hand, while food was ethically and spiritually a
matter of indifference, sexual relations were not: they had
profound and lasting effects on the personalities of those
involved.45 The “men of knowledge” had a saying, “Food for the
stomach and the stomach for food, but God will destroy both
one and the other”46—and they were inclined to add as a
corollary: “Sex for the body and the body for sex”. But the
corollary was inadmissible, according to Paul: food and
stomach would alike perish, it was true, but sexual
relationships affected not the body only but the whole person,
and the person would not share the fate of the mortal body.
Not long after he left Corinth he had occasion to send his
converts there a letter, now lost (which may be conveniently
referred to as “Corinthians A”), urging them not to tolerate
fornication and certain other vices within their fellowship,47
but it is plain that they found it difficult to put his advice into
practice, for in one subsequent letter after another he had to
repeat it, not simply by way of general exhortation but with
reference to specific cases. It was clearly no easy matter even
for regenerate Christians to break free from the besetting sin
of their city, especially when some “enlightened” members of
their community kept assuring them that it was not really a sin
at all.
How far some of these “enlightened” people were prepared
to go appears from an incident which was reported to Paul by
one or more of the visitors from Corinth who called on him at
Ephesus, and to which he reacted vigorously. A member of the
Corinthian church had begun to cohabit with his father’s wife.
Whether the father was alive or dead is not made clear, but
even in permissive Corinth such a relationship was generally
regarded as going too far, and its existence within the
membership of the church must inevitably damage the church’s
reputation. That was bad enough, but even worse was the fact
that many members of the church were disposed to be proud of
this situation, looking on it as a rather fine assertion of
Christian liberty, setting at naught the inhibitions of Jewish law
and pagan convention alike. Such conduct, if tolerated within
the church, would corrupt the whole fellowship, said Paul, as
surely as a little leaven would leaven the whole batch of dough.
The offender must be disowned, excluded from the membership
of the church, for the church’s health and also for his own
ultimate salvation.48
10. “Weaker brethren” at Corinth
It was not only against the perversion of Christian liberty
into licence that Paul had to put the Corinthian church on its
guard. Some of its members, perhaps by reaction against the
pervasive immorality of Corinthian life, or in anticipation of the
pervasive immorality of Corinthian life, or in anticipation of the
ascetic Gnosticism of the second century, thought it wise to
abstain from marriage and impose a severe regimen on the
body. Others had scruples about eating the flesh of animals
which had been sacrificed to idols, to a point where they would
make careful inquiries about any meat offered to them in case
it had been so used and, in case of doubt, would abstain from
meat. Such people would be disposed to listen sympathetically
to critics of Paul who disapproved of what they considered to
be his regrettable laxity in this and other matters relating to
food.
While Paul was foremost in restricting his liberty for the sake
of Christian charity, and recommended his example in this
regard to his converts, he insisted that such restrictions must
be voluntarily self-imposed, and saw in any attempt to impose
them from without a threat to the grace of the gospel and the
freedom of the Spirit. His policy in this regard comes to
expression in the replies which he gave to a number of
questions from the church of Corinth sent to him during his
Ephesian ministry.
CHAPTER 24
Corinthian Correspondence
1. The Corinthians’ letter to Paul
PAUL DEALT WITH THE NEWS HE RECEIVED FROM
CHLOE’S PEOPLE and other visitors in the letter which has
come down to us as 1 Corinthians. Since this had been
preceded by an earlier letter, no longer extant,1 which may
conventionally be called “Corinthians A”, our 1 Corinthians
may for certain purposes be referred to as “Corinthians B”.
Paul not only sent letters; he received them. None of the
letters he received has survived; this is our loss, because if we
had access to them they would probably be found to throw
some light on passages in his own letters which are obscure to
us because of our ignorance of the persons and circumstances
mentioned in them.
But we do at least know something about one letter which he
received—a letter from his friends and followers at Corinth,
brought to him in Ephesus by three members of the Corinthian
church (Stephanas, Fortunatus and Achaicus).2 In this letter
they assured him that they observed all the “traditions” which
he had delivered to them,3 and asked a series of questions to
which he replied one by one in the second (and major) part of 1
Corinthians (Chapters 7–16). Some of the questions were
perhaps stimulated by things which Paul had said in
“Corinthians A”.4
(a) Observing the traditions. The “traditions” which the
Corinthians assured Paul they continued to observe included
basic articles of faith and practice, which Paul himself had
“received” before he “delivered” them to his converts.5 (The
verbs “receive” and “deliver” in this kind of context are
practically technical terms for the passing on of tradition from
one individual or generation to the next.) These traditions were
summed up as “the tradition of Christ”,6 which comprised (i) a
summary of the Christian message, expressed as a confession
of faith, with special emphasis on the death and resurrection of
Christ; (ii) various deeds and words of Christ; (iii) ethical and
procedural rules for Christians. Much of this, as has been
suggested above, was imparted to Paul during his first visit to
Jerusalem after his conversion,7 and he imparted it in turn to
his converts.
When the Corinthians told him that they maintained these
traditions, he commended them; but added that he was reliably
informed that there were some which they had forgotten.8 The
growth of a spirit of division among them was something which
he did not commend: this manifested itself not only in the
development of rival schools of thought but in social cleavages
which took a particularly unpleasant form at the Lord’s table,
and made a mockery of their claim to have fellowship there
with their Lord and with one another. The memorial bread and
wine were taken in the course of a fellowship meal to which
each member or family made a contribution, but instead of
sharing what had been brought, the rich ate their own food and
the poorer members made do with the little they could afford,
so that, as Paul said, “one is hungry and another is drunk” (1
Corinthians 11:21). Such selfish conduct was an outrage on the
sacred occasion; those who participated in such an unworthy
spirit, far from deriving any grace from their participation,
were eating and drinking judgment upon themselves.
It is in this context that Paul gives us the earliest account
which we have of the institution of the communion meal (1
Corinthians 11:23–26):
For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on
the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he
broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of
me.” In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new
covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s
death until he comes.9
The last clause, “until he comes”, is in all probability an
integral part of what Paul “received”. It may hark back to
Jesus’ saying in the upper room that the next time he ate the
passover or drank the fruit of the vine would be in the
consummated kingdom of God;10 but in any case it reflects the
eschatological significance of the meal in the early church. It
not only commemorated Jesus’ passion but anticipated his
parousia: indeed, it may have been regarded as a “prophetic
action” helping to ensure the fulfilment of the prayer maranā-
thā (“Our Lord, come!”) which appears to have had its original
setting at the Lord’s table.11
It is in his reply to the Corinthians’ letter, in fact, that Paul
quotes most of the sayings of Jesus which are to be found in his
writings. In answering their questions about marriage, he
adduces Jesus’ prohibition of divorce;12 in defending his own
apostolic freedom, he invokes his ruling “that those who
proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel”;13 in
giving advice to a Christian invited to a meal in a non-Christian
home he echoes Jesus’ injunction to the seventy disciples to eat
what is set before them wherever they are offered hospitality.14
Another aspect of the tradition which he delivered to the
Corinthians was the gospel account of the death, burial and
resurrection of Christ, with a summary of the occasions on
which he had appeared in resurrection to one and another.
Paul had reason to know that this tradition, too, was being
taken with insufficient seriousness by those members of the
church of Corinth who denied any such thing as a future
resurrection.15 They had no thought of denying the past
resurrection of Christ, but Paul reminds them of the tradition
to this effect which they had received from him and insists that
the past resurrection of Christ and the future resurrection of
his people are so completely bound up with each other—
Christ’s resurrection being the presentation of the first fruits
and that of his people the completed harvest—that to give up
belief in the latter logically demands giving up belief in the
former, with consequent collapse of the Christian faith.16
The questions raised in the Corinthians’ letter covered a
wide range: marriage and related subjects, food sacrificed to
idols, spiritual gifts in the church, the relief fund which they
had heard he was organizing for their fellow-believers in
Jerusalem. These questions or groups of questions are readily
identifiable because Paul introduces his answers to them one
by one with the phrase “Now concerning”.
(b) Questions about marriage. The sexual laxity which was
part of the Corinthian way of life, and from which even the
church in Corinth was not immune, made some members of the
church feel that sexual relations, even within a marriage
already contracted, were best avoided altogether. Those who
felt like this may have been confirmed in their sentiment by the
consideration that the approaching end of the age ruled out the
long-term planning which was incumbent on those who
undertook the responsibilities of family life. They summed up
their view in the statement: “It is well for a man not to touch a
woman”17—with which some of them at least confidently
expected Paul to agree. They knew of his preference for the
celibate life, and thought that he would applaud this preference
in his converts. The Paul of later tradition does indeed applaud
this preference: in the apocryphal Acts of Paul he gets into
trouble because his female converts, if betrothed, refuse to be
married or, if married, discontinue normal relations with their
husbands.18 But the historical Paul takes quite a different line.
He surprises his Corinthian correspondents because, after
quoting their counsel of perfection as though he approved of it,
he immediately adds a “nevertheless” which explodes it.
Monogamy, he says, not celibacy, is the norm for Christians,19
even if there were no higher motive for it than the avoidance of
fornication, which was his correspondents’ aim. (This is said for
the sake of the ad hominem argument; it does not mean that
Paul could see no higher motive for marriage than the
avoidance of fornication.)20 Unless one had a special vocation—
a charisma, as he calls it21—for celibacy, any attempt to adopt
this condition was contrary to nature and would expose them to
the very kind of temptation which they abhorred. Paul goes as
far as he can with his converts in either the ascetic or the
libertarian direction, until he reaches a point where he calls a
halt, and profoundly qualifies his foregoing concession.22
As for the idea that husband and wife should refrain from
sexual union, Paul concedes that they may do so, for a limited
period, if both are agreed on it. He will not countenance a
unilateral abstention: that would be defrauding the other party
of his or her rights. After the agreed period of abstinence they
should resume normal relations: to adopt any other course
would be to court disaster.
For a Christian husband or wife divorce is excluded by the
law of Christ: here Paul has no need to express a judgment of
his own, for the Lord’s ruling on this matter was explicit. True,
Jesus’ ruling was given in the context of rabbinical debate and
Jewish social usage, in which the initiation of divorce
proceedings was a male prerogative: his ruling against such
proceedings was in a part a protection of the underprivileged
wife. Paul writes in a Gentile situation, and applies Jesus’
ruling to men and women alike: reconciliation, not
estrangement, is the course for Christians.
But the Gentile mission might frequently lead to a situation
which was not envisaged in Jesus’ Palestinian ministry and on
which, accordingly, no ruling of his was available. A husband or
a wife might be converted to Christianity, while the other party
to the marriage remained a pagan. What was to be done about
it? If the pagan partner is willing to go on living with the
Christian partner, said Paul, good and well. But, it might be
asked, would not cohabitation with a pagan pollute the
Christian? On the contrary, said Paul; continued cohabitation
with a Christian would “sanctify” the pagan, and the children of
such a union would share in that “sanctification”.23 Perhaps
Paul was guided in this judgment by the principle inherent in
an ordinance of the Jewish ceremonial law: “whatever touches
the altar shall become holy” (Exodus 29:37). In rabbinical
literature a proselyte after conversion to Judaism is described
as being “in holiness”.24 There was also the possibility that the
pagan partner might be won for the gospel through the other’s
witness: such a marriage had missionary potentialities.25
On the other hand, the pagan partner might refuse to live
with the Christian: what was to be done then? Let it be so, says
Paul; do not try to compel non-Christian husbands or wives to
stay or return against their will. Better agree to part in that
kind of situation than live together in contention. The deserted
partner is then no longer bound by the marriage contract.
Although no dominical authority is claimed for this “Pauline
privilege”, Paul plainly does not consider that it conflicts with
Jesus’ ruling. He deals with such unprecedented issues as a
wise pastor, having regard to the interests of the people
concerned and remaining faithful to the spirit and principle of
the “law of Christ”. Marriage, like the sabbath, was instituted
for human beings, and not vice versa.
Would it be permissible in that case for the Christian to enter
into a new marriage? Probably Paul would give the same
answer to that question as he gave to widows and unmarried
persons (including those couples who had resolved to live
together in virginity):26 “You will do better if you refrain from
marriage, but if you must marry, then marry: it is no sin!” Not
only did married people incur secular cares and anxieties from
which the unmarried were free: in times of persecution and
distress, which Paul saw to be impending, an unmarried man
was under less powerful temptation to compromise the faith
than a man with family responsibilities, whose wife and
children might suffer for his confession as well as himself. Paul
is prescribing iron rations for hard times, which presaged the
end of the present world-order. Jesus had spoken of a coming
crisis when the childless would be counted exceptionally
fortunate because of the calamities which it would bring.27
These were more practical arguments than Paul’s remark that
ideally much trouble would be avoided if everyone found the
celibate life as congenial as he himself did: celibacy, he
acknowledged, was for the few who knew themselves called to
it.
It is reasonably clear that Paul was a celibate throughout his
apostolic career. But what was his actual marital status? He
knew of other Christian leaders, from Peter downwards, who
were accompanied by their wives on their missionary journeys,
and he agreed that they were perfectly entitled to do so, and to
have their wives as well as themselves maintained by the
churches. Indeed, he claims the same right for himself, if he
were minded to avail himself of it, as he is not.28
This does not mean that he had a wife, but chose to forgo her
company during his apostolic visits to this place and that. We
may dismiss such a romantic fantasy as that he married Lydia,
the tradeswoman of Philippi, and that she is the “true yoke
fellow” whom he asks to help other Philippian women who had
co-operated with him in his gospel ministry (Philippians 4:3).29
But, granted that he was not married during his apostolic
activity, had he ever been married? It may be pointed out that
marriage was normal and, indeed, expected in pious Jews when
they came of age.30 True, Jesus had spoken of certain
exceptions—those who, as he said, had “made themselves
eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew
19:12)—among whom he may have included John the Baptist
and himself. But Paul was not presumably influenced by
considerations of this kind in his pre-Christian days. What
then? Was he a widower? Perhaps he was: the question has
received a positive answer from Joachim Jeremias, for
example.31 Rather more probable is the view that his wife left
him when he became a Christian: that when he “suffered the
loss of all things”32 for the sake of Christ he lost his wife too.
This cannot be proved, of course, but if something like this did
happen it might explain Paul’s specially sympathetic
understanding of the domestic situation in which the
unconverted partner walks out on the husband or wife who has
become a Christian: “in such a case the brother or sister is not
bound” (1 Corinthians 7:15). Paul, for his part, was not “bound”
either way: he knew that he could fulfil his commission more
wholeheartedly if he remained free from the marriage bond.
(c) Questions about food. The issue of food that had been
sacrificed to idols could not be considered in isolation in a
pagan city like Corinth: it was part of the wider problem of
idolatrous associations. The more enlightened members of the
church maintained that since “there is no God but one”, it
followed that “an idol has no real existence” (1 Corinthians
8:4), and that therefore food was neither better nor worse for
coming from an animal which had been sacrificed in a pagan
temple. Paul agreed; nevertheless, as he pointed out, for many
less enlightened Christians an idol had a real existence; it was
a demonic power to those who ascribed a measure of reality to
it, even if they did not worship it but rather abominated it. In
the eyes of such people, the food had been in some sense
contaminated by its association with the idol, and if they ate it
they might become demon-possessed. Paul shows considerable
sympathy with these “weak brethren”:33 he realized, as many
of the men of knowledge did not, that to a person who believes
in an idol or similar demonic being, it has real substance and
power—not independently but none the less effectively.
If an attempt had been made, possibly through the “Peter
party” at Corinth, to impose the Jerusalem decree on the
church, this would have provided an additional reason for
presenting the question to Paul.34
Quite apart from the doubtful propriety of subjecting his
Gentile churches to the authority of Jerusalem, it was not
Paul’s way to impose a rule but to help his converts to judge
such issues for themselves in the light of basic Christian
principles. One of the most important of these principles was to
consider the consciences of weaker brethren so as to assist
them gently to a better and more enlightened appreciation of
what their faith involved. Otherwise a Christian’s freedom was
not to be impaired by external restrictions. The Christian was
at liberty to buy what he chose for domestic use in the
Corinthian meat-market,35 without scrupulously inquiring
whether the meat came from a sacrificed animal or not.
Similarly, he was at liberty to accept an invitation to a meal in
the home of a pagan acquaintance—again, without making
scrupulous inquiries. If, on the other hand, his attention was
deliberately drawn to the fact that a particular dish was
hierothyton,36 the flesh of a sacrificed animal, as though his
response to this information was being treated as a test of his
Christian confession, he could properly ask to be excused from
eating it.37
But some members of the Corinthian church went much
farther than buying what might be sacrificed meat at the
butcher’s or eating it at the table of a pagan neighbour. Such a
neighbour might arrange a banquet in a pagan temple: should
the Christian accept an invitation to be present?38 Here it was
of little importance that the meat would certainly come from an
animal sacrificed to the god worshipped in that temple; it was
of great importance that the whole occasion would be under
the patronage of the god, and a Christian might well find
himself in an atmosphere where some compromise with
idolatry was inevitable. Was it conceivable, Paul asks, that the
same man should be a partaker of the table of the Lord one
evening and of the table of a demon another evening?39
Nonentities though false gods were, they were demonic powers
to their worshippers, and it was hardly possible to take part in
a feast in the temple of one of them without being influenced
for the worse. Even here Paul does not lay down the law but
appeals to his readers’ sense of fitness: “I speak as to sensible
men; judge for yourselves what I say” (1 Corinthians 10:15).
In a pagan city it was difficult to avoid all association with
idolatry, but it was foolish to enter deliberately into such
associations when there was no need to do so Paul reminds
them of the disastrous consequences of Israel’s association
with the Moabites in the apostasy of Baal-peor during the
wilderness wanderings, with the implication that now, as then,
such idolatry might well involve sexual immorality.40 “These
things”, he says, “were written down for our instruction …;
therefore let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest
he fall” (1 Corinthians 10:11 f.).
All things might be lawful, as the men of knowledge
affirmed, but (Paul added) “not all things are helpful”41—least
of all attendance at an idolatrous feast in a pagan temple.
(d) Questions about spiritual gifts. In the eyes of some
Corinthian Christians, the most important manifestations of the
indwelling Spirit were spectacular phenomena like speaking
with tongues. On this question too Paul’s opinion is sought. And
once again he starts to answer the question by going as far as
he can with the questioners. As for speaking with tongues, he
says—yes, I speak with tongues myself, more than any of you,
in fact; “nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five
words with my mind, in order to instruct others, than ten
thousand words in a ‘tongue’ ” (1 Corinthians 14:18 f.).
The physiology of glossolalia was unknown to Paul: it results
from the appropriate stimulation of what has been known since
1861 as “Broca’s area”, the centre for articulate speech in the
third frontal convolution of the dominant cerebral hemisphere.
What did concern him was its cultivation as a spiritual gift.
That it might be a vehicle of the Spirit of Christ he agreed, but
this could not be known unless the utterance was interpreted,
and the power to interpret glossolalia was itself a spiritual gift.
Only when an interpreter was available would glossolalia be
helpful to an assembled congregation; otherwise its value was
confined to private devotion (as Paul had presumably proved in
his personal experience).42
Prophecy, on the other hand, was a charisma of great value;
Paul warmly recommended its cultivation. By prophecy he
seems to mean the declaration of the mind of God in the power
of the Spirit, in a language understood by speaker and hearers
alike—as when a prophetic utterance at Antioch directed that
he and Barnabas should be released by the church there for a
more extended ministry.43 A stranger finding his way into a
church meeting where several people were speaking with
“tongues” would conclude that they were all mad; but if he
found his way there while they were prophesying one by one,
he would be convicted in conscience by what he heard and
acknowledge that God was present.44
Ephesus: The theatre (see p. 293)
Caesarea: The theatre (see p. 354)
Paul uses the analogy of a human body, in which the proper
functioning of each part contributes to the health of the whole,
to show that in the church, “the body of Christ”, a variety of
endowments and ministries was necessary for the general well-
being. It was foolish, therefore, for too many members of the
church to concentrate on the exercise of a few impressive
charismata when so many more, some of them obscure and
unspectacular but none the less valuable, were needed for the
common good. This figure of the body was to play an
increasingly important part in Paul’s thinking about the church
and her relation to the risen Lord.45
(e) Questions about the Jerusalem relief fund. One final
question dealt with a practical matter not arising from
controversies within the Corinthian church. They had heard
that Paul was organizing a relief fund in his Gentile mission-
field for the benefit of the Jerusalem church: how did he wish
them to set about contributing to it? Let each of you set aside
an appropriate sum week by week, said Paul; then, when I
come to supervise the collecting of the money, it will be ready
and there will be no undignified scramble to raise your
contribution. They should appoint their own delegates with
written accreditation to take the gift to Jerusalem; he might be
going there himself about the same time, in which case they
could accompany him. He had given similar instructions to
other contributing churches, including the churches of
Galatia.46
2. A painful visit and a stern letter
When Paul sent off this letter—1 Corinthians or “Corinthians
B”—he expected to follow it up with a personal visit. He
planned to stay on at Ephesus for a few more weeks at least—
until Pentecost (probably A.D. 55). Meanwhile he sent Timothy
ahead of him, and asked the Corinthians to make him feel at
home among them.47 After Pentecost he himself would cross
the Aegean to Macedonia,48 visit his churches there, and then
make his way south to Corinth, where he hoped to spend the
winter. Soon afterwards he modified this plan, and let the
Corinthians know that he would visit them twice—once on his
way to Macedonia and again on his way back from there.49
After the second of these visits he would set sail in the spring
for Palestine, along with delegates of the churches which were
contributing to the Jerusalem relief fund.
A number of factors made it impossible for this modified plan
to be carried out. One of these was news of further trouble in
the church of Corinth, which compelled Paul to pay it an urgent
visit. The letter recently received by the church had evidently
not been so effective as Paul had hoped in checking those
tendencies of which he expressed disapproval, and when
Timothy arrived he was quite unable to enforce Paul’s
directions. It may indeed have been Timothy who brought back
the news which made Paul decide that nothing would serve but
a direct confrontation with the church. A confrontation it
proved to be—a painful experience for Paul and his converts
alike. The opposition to Paul came to a head, and one member
of the church in particular took the lead in defying his
authority. The others took no effective action in Paul’s defence,
and Paul, deeply humiliated, left Corinth.50
But he could not leave the Corinthian situation as it was: he
composed a stinging letter to the church—“out of much
affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears” (2
Corinthians 2:3 f.)—and sent it to Corinth by the hand of Titus,
a stronger personality, probably, than Timothy. We may call
this letter “Corinthians C”; it is doubtful if any part of it
survives.51 When Titus set off with it, Paul immediately began
to be sorry that he had sent it. Its severe tone might produce
the desired effect, but it might on the other hand exacerbate
the situation. In it he assured the Corinthians of his love for
them, but demanded that they give evidence of the love which
they professed for him by acknowledging his apostolic
authority and taking disciplinary measures against the man
who had defied it. He assured Titus, as he gave him the letter
to take to Corinth, that the Corinthian Christians were sound at
heart, and that they would give proof of their true quality by
gladly rendering the obedience which the letter demanded. He
now had to wait and see if his confident assurance was well
founded or not.
3. Temporary reconciliation
On his return to the province of Asia he was assailed by
severe depression, and also, it appears, by extreme external
danger.52 The danger subsided, but the anxiety remained. He
went to the district around Troas,53 in the north-west of the
province, hoping to greet Titus there on his return by sea from
Corinth. While he waited for Titus, he found many encouraging
opportunities for evangelism, but his mind was so unsettled
that he could not take proper advantage of them. He waited
probably until navigation across the Aegean had ceased for the
winter, and since he now knew that Titus would have to take
the land-route through Macedonia, he himself set out for
Macedonia, still a prey to “fightings without and fears within”
(2 Corinthians 7:5).
But then Titus met him, and brought good news from
Corinth.54 The severe letter had been completely effective: the
Corinthian Christians were stung to such a pitch of indignation
in their zeal to vindicate themselves in Paul’s eyes and assure
him of their loyalty that they were now in danger of going to
the opposite extreme in making a scapegoat of the man who
had been foremost in defying Paul’s authority. There were still
some complaints that Paul’s changes of travel plans were
disconcertingly abrupt and unforeseen, but the general mood
was one of reconciliation. Titus was delighted with their
attitude and shared his delight with Paul. Paul immediately
sent a further letter, “Corinthians D”—our 2 Corinthians (or at
least 2 Corinthians 1–9)—in which he expressed his response to
Titus’s news in an outpouring of open-hearted affection. He
explains that his one reason for sending Titus instead of
coming back himself was his desire not to cause them further
pain. He urges them to forgive the offender because his
demand for disciplinary action against him was due to no
personal resentment but to a resolve to test the church’s love
and obedience. Now that they had satisfied him on this score,
they should extend full friendship and fellowship to the
offender; otherwise the dejection which he was suffering as a
result of their unconcealed disapproval might be his undoing—
and theirs.55
The sense of euphoria which Titus’s news had engendered in
Paul encouraged him to wear his heart on his sleeve and
enlarge on the hardships and the splendours of his apostolic
service. To be a minister of the new covenant, with its message
of liberation and life, was more glorious by far than to be a
minister of the old covenant, even were that minister Moses
himself, not to speak of some contemporaries of Paul who
proclaimed the continuing validity of the law in the gospel
age.56 Paul’s feeling of relief and relaxation encouraged him
also to raise afresh the question of the collection for Jerusalem.
During the period of strained relations it had not been
expedient to mention this. Now, however, he tells the
Corinthians how generously the Macedonian churches, despite
their deep poverty and recent endurance of persecution, have
given to this fund. He mentions, too, that he has been boasting
to the Macedonians about the promptness with which the
Corinthian church and other Achaian churches have got their
contributions ready. He will soon be on his way to Corinth with
representatives of the Macedonian churches, carrying those
churches’ donations; but meanwhile, to make sure that the
Corinthian donation will indeed be ready, he is sending Titus
back to them with two other friends, highly reputed among the
churches for their impartiality and probity, to help them to
complete what has been so well begun—the gathering together
of the sums of money already set aside for this purpose by
individuals or households.57
4. Challenge to Paul’s authority
But this second visit of Titus to Corinth was not so happy as
the former one. Some members of the church may have felt
that, for all his insistence on the voluntary character of the gift
for Jerusalem, Paul was really putting them on the spot, placing
them in a situation in which they had no choice but to make a
generous contribution if they were not to lose face—and make
Paul lose face—before the representatives of other churches.
A new feeling of resentment showed itself among some
members of the church, and it was fostered by certain visitors
to Corinth who did their best to undermine Paul’s prestige in
his converts’ eyes. Our knowledge of these visitors, and of the
atmosphere of the church at the time of their visit, is derived
solely from 2 Corinthians 10–13, which may have been sent to
Corinth a little later than Chapters 1–9, and could be called
“Corinthians E”.58 Since Paul had no need to identify those
visitors in writing about them to the Corinthians, it is not
surprising that conflicting opinions about their character are
held today. One view, first put forward by Wilhelm Lütgert in
1908, is that they were Gnostics of ecstatic temperament and
libertine ethics.59 But since they claimed to be “Hebrews” and
invoked the authority of the “superlative apostles”, it is more
likely that they came from Judaea. They represented
themselves as “men of the Spirit”, no doubt, but that does not
make them Gnostics: the issue between Paul and them was not
gnōsis, not spiritual gifts, but Paul’s apostolic exousia, his
authority and liberty.60
If, like some earlier visitors to the Corinthian church, they
brought credentials signed by the Jerusalem leaders, Paul had
the task of exposing the hollowness of their pretensions
without overtly questioning the authority or bona fides of those
who recommended them. He was concerned to avoid the
slightest appearance of a breach between his Gentile mission
and the Jerusalem church. It was not always easy to avoid the
appearance of such a breach, when the authority of Jerusalem
was so vigorously asserted in opposition to his own. The
interlopers argued that no teaching could be validated unless it
was authorized by Jerusalem. If Paul acted in independence of
Jerusalem, he lacked the commission of Christ which was
primarily vested in Jerusalem and which they accordingly
inherited; to cut oneself loose, as Paul did, from the source of
spiritual authority was to “walk according to the flesh” (2
Corinthians 10:2). If the church of Corinth wished to enjoy the
blessings of the Spirit, it must acknowledge the authority of
Jerusalem.
In Paul’s mind, these arguments did not affect his personal
status so much as the truth of the gospel and the nature of the
church. If his ministry bore the stamp of divine approval, if the
Corinthian church was the seal of his apostleship, then the
opposition of those intruders was opposition not merely to him
but to the Lord who commissioned him, to the Spirit who
empowered him, and to the gospel which he proclaimed: theirs
was therefore “another Jesus,61 … a different Spirit, … a
different gospel” (2 Corinthians 11:4). They might invoke the
authority of the “superlative apostles”62—it is not certain
whether this is their own designation of the Jerusalem leaders
or Paul’s ironical summing-up of their portrayal of those
leaders. (Even if none of the twelve was actually resident in
Jerusalem by this time, Jerusalem would still be regarded as
their home base; and James was permanently there.) But they
themselves were apostles of a very different kind. In so far as
they were entitled to be so called, they were “apostles” or
messengers of the Jerusalem church, whether they carried out
their instructions to the letter or (as is possible) exceeded
them. But they were usurping the functions of “apostles of
Christ”—men who, like Paul, were directly commissioned by
the risen Christ to undertake pioneer evangelism and to plant
churches, and whose commission was sealed, as Paul’s was at
Corinth, by the visible fruit of their labours. Far from being
messengers of Christ, however, those others were false
apostles in disguise, no true servants of Christ but servants of
Satan. Instead of pioneering a mission-field of their own (as
true apostles of Christ would have done), they preferred to be
parasites on “other men’s labours” (2 Corinthians 10:15).
They boasted of their impeccable Israelite pedigree and
pointed in support of their claims to “visions and revelations of
the Lord” (2 Corinthians 12:1). Paul makes no attempt to refute
these claims, because they are really irrelevant to the issue;
but if such credentials impress the Corinthians, he himself can
produce more impressive ones.63 What is more to the point—
though he is ashamed to have to say it (for his own converts
might have been expected spontaneously to defend him against
his detractors)—he has endured far more hardships in the
discharge of his ministry than they have done.64 If they assert
their authority among the Corinthian Christians by lording it
over them and living at their expense, Paul will exercise his
apostolic freedom by tending his converts with paternal care
and spending and being spent for them.
These intruders were not judaizers in the narrower sense;
they did not try to impose legal observances on Gentile
believers. They simply conceived it as their mission to impose
the authority of the mother church over the Christian world. It
was nothing to them that this contravened the agreement over
which the Jerusalem leaders had shaken hands with Paul and
Barnabas some years previously; if the “superlative apostles”
were so blind to their own best interests, they themselves
would secure for them the status which was their due. For a
time they clearly made some headway at Corinth. Ten or eleven
years later their policy must have collapsed in any case; the
dispersal of the Jerusalem church at the time of the Jewish
revolt against Rome which broke out in A.D. 66 put an end to
such authority as that church had enjoyed throughout the
Gentile mission-field. But there never came a time during
Paul’s life, so far as can be known, when he could feel that the
cause of gospel liberty had finally triumphed at Corinth. “Paul,
who learnt at Corinth what it is to be weak in Christ, shows
there perhaps more clearly than elsewhere his full stature of
Christian intelligence, firmness, and magnanimity.”65
CHAPTER 25
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper
in Pauline Thought
BAPTISM AND THE LORD’S SUPPER WERE TWO
CHRISTIAN institutions which Paul “received” from those who
were in Christ before him, and he “delivered” them as a matter
of course to the churches of his Gentile mission field.
1. Baptism
Since John the Baptist distinguished his own baptism in
water—a “baptism of repentance for the remission of sins”
(Mark 1:4)—from the baptism in the Spirit to be administered
by the stronger one who was to come after him, it might have
been expected that, when the first Christians experienced the
outpouring of the Spirit from the day of Pentecost onward, they
would discontinue water baptism as having been superseded by
something better. In fact they did not: they continued to
baptize converts in water “for the remission of sins” (cf. Acts
2:38), but this baptism was now part of a more comprehensive
experience which took character especially from the receiving
of the Spirit.1
This was the situation which Paul inherited, but his thinking
and practice integrated the water and Spirit baptism more
closely together. According to the narrative of Acts 19:1–7,
when he met twelve “disciples” at Ephesus who had received
John’s baptism—for the remission of sins, presumably—but who
knew nothing of the Holy Spirit, he concluded that their
baptism was defective. He therefore baptized them afresh,
“into the name of the Lord Jesus”, and laid his hands on them,
whereupon they gave audible evidence of having received the
whereupon they gave audible evidence of having received the
Spirit.
That Paul himself at his conversion was baptized and so had
his sins washed away is the testimony of Acts 22:16 (cf. 9:18).
When in his letters he reminds his Christian readers of the
meaning of their baptism he associates his own baptism with
theirs: “all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were
baptized into his death” (Romans 6:3); “in one Spirit we were
all baptized into one body” (1 Corinthians 12:13).2 At the same
time he gives baptism—theirs and his—a new depth of
meaning. Baptism, in Paul’s teaching, initiates believers into
their state of being “in Christ”, so that his historical death and
resurrection become part of their spiritual experience; the
baptism in the Spirit which the risen Lord then effects
incorporates them into one body with him—or, as Paul puts it
to the Galatians, “as many of you as were baptized into Christ
have put on Christ … you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians
3:27f.). Paul, who had learned so clearly the religious
inadequacy of the old circumcision, was not the man to ascribe
ex opere operato efficacy to another external rite; it was the
impartation of the Spirit in response to faith that made the
convert a new creation. We must beware of forcing Paul’s
thought and terminology into the mould of twentieth-century
Christian rationalism, but if it be realized that repentance and
faith, with baptism in water and reception of the Spirit,
followed by first communion, formed one complex experience
of Christian initiation, then what is true of the experience as a
whole may be predicated of any element in it. We may make
logical distinctions between this and that element, but such
distinctions need not have been present to the minds of Paul’s
Corinthian converts who knew that they had been “washed, …
sanctified, … justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and
in the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). It is unlikely that
they dissociated the washing from their baptism in water, but it
was the divine action in their lives that gave their baptism
effective meaning and caused Paul to use what has been called
the language of sacramental realism.3
Christians could no more be immunized by baptism (or the
Christians could no more be immunized by baptism (or the
eucharistic meal) against divine judgment on their
unfaithfulness than the Israelites during the wilderness
wanderings were protected by their “baptism” in the cloud and
in the sea (or their partaking of bread from heaven and water
from the rock) from the consequences of their idolatry and
immorality (1 Corinthians 10:1–11). At the same time, the
baptism of Christians constituted the frontier between their old
unregenerate existence and their new life in Christ: it marked
their death to the old order and their rising again to the new
order, so that for a baptized Christian to go on in sin was as
preposterous as it would be for an emancipated slave to remain
in bondage to his former owner (Romans 6:1–4, 15–23) or for a
widow to remain subject to “the law of her husband” (Romans
7:1–6). Paul knew himself to have been in bondage to sin
before his conversion in the sense that he was in bondage to
the law which (without his realizing it at the time) led him into
sin; the bondage to sin which many of his Gentile converts had
experienced took a different form. When Paul appeals to the
logic of baptism, he means that the power of the Spirit, which
is the source and stay of the new life, enables the believer to
shake off the old bondage, however its form might have varied
from one to another.
Paul gives his readers no ground for supposing that baptism
makes no practical difference or that it is an optional extra in
Christian life. He takes it for granted that all believers have
been baptized,4 just as he takes it for granted that they have all
received the Spirit.5 When he thanks God that he baptized none
but a handful of his Corinthian converts, saying that Christ did
not send him to baptize but to preach the gospel, he is not
belittling the importance of baptism.6 He indicates rather that
by leaving the work of baptizing to others he avoided giving
any one ground to charge him with setting up a church or party
of his own. It was into Christ’s name—that is, as followers of
Christ, not of Paul—that his converts were baptized or, as the
Colossian Christians are told, it was with Christ that they were
“buried … in baptism, in which you were also raised with him
through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the
dead” (Colossians 2:12). While Paul does not say of the
baptismal tradition, as he does of the eucharistic tradition, that
he received it “from the Lord”,7 he probably implies that he did
so receive it.
What had happened in the experience of individual believers,
incorporated by baptism into the new community, is applied in
Ephesians 5:25 f. to the community as such when Christ is said
to have given himself up for her, “that he might sanctify her,
having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word”8—
the “word” or utterance being either the pronouncing of the
holy name over the persons being baptized or (more probably)
the response in which they confessed their faith and invoked
the name of the Lord.9
2. The Lord’s Supper
Paul’s references to the Lord’s Supper are fewer than his
references to baptism; they are confined to 1 Corinthians. Few
as they are, however, they show how this institution, like that
of baptism, was integrated in his thinking with the concept of
the believing community as the body of Christ.
When he tells the Corinthians that he “received from the
Lord” the account of what Jesus did and said “on the night
when he was betrayed” (1 Corinthians 11:23), he does not say
when or where he received it. He received it “from the Lord” in
the sense that it is in the crucified and exalted Lord that all
true Christian tradition has its source, as it is by him that it is
perpetually validated.10 The probability is that he received it at
the outset of his Christian career, even before he went up to
Jerusalem to make the acquaintance of the leaders of the
mother-church—that he learned it, in fact, from the disciples in
Damascus, if it was in their fellowship that he first took the
memorial bread and wine.
Paul’s record of the institution of the Lord’s Supper is the
earliest one we have: a comparison of it with the others—that
in Mark 14:22–25 (reproduced, with minor changes, in
Matthew 26:26–29)11 and the shorter and longer forms which
are conflated in Luke 22:17–2012—indicates that at an early
date variations appeared in the transmission of the dominical
words. In the form known to Paul “This is my body” is
augmented by “which is for you”; “This is my covenant blood,
which is poured out for many” becomes “This cup is the new
covenant in my blood”, and the bread-word and cup-word alike
are followed by the injunction “Do this in remembrance of me”
(which is appended to the bread-word only in the longer Lukan
form).13 The memorial purpose of the meal is thus made quite
explicit, and when Paul adds, “as often as you eat this bread
and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he
comes”, he does justice also to the forward–looking perspective
which was present in the original setting.14 But the variations
make no material difference to the central intention: of the
institution narrative Paul might have said, much as he said of
his sharing the basic facts of the gospel with the other apostles,
“Whether then it was I or they, this is what we delivered; this is
what you received”.15
Paul’s distinctive contribution to eucharistic doctrine lies in
his emphasis on the meal as an occasion of communion
(koinōnia) and in his interpretation of the bread-word, “This is
my body”, to include Christ’s body corporate.
When he warns the Corinthian Christians against
participation in idolatrous feasts, he draws an analogy between
what happens there and what happens in the eucharist, in
order to show the absurdity of thinking they can “drink the cup
of the Lord and the cup of demons” (1 Corinthians 10:21). “The
‘cup of blessing’16 over which we say a blessing, is it not a
participation (koinōnia) in the blood of Christ? The bread which
we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?
Because there is one bread”, he adds, “we who are many are
one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Corinthians
10:16 f.). Communion with Christ, which they enjoyed together
at his table, excluded communion with a pagan divinity at his
table; and such communion with a pagan divinity excluded
communion with Christ.
But their membership in the body of Christ could be violated
at his own table by an unbrotherly attitude or conduct towards
fellow-members of his body. When they broke the bread which
was the token of the body of Christ they not only recalled his
self-oblation on the cross but proclaimed their joint
participation in his corporate body. If, then, they denied in
practice the unity which they professed sacramentally in the
eucharist, they ate and drank unworthily and so profaned the
body and blood of the Lord; if they ate and drank “without
discerning the body” they ate and drank judgment upon
themselves.17 To eat and drink “without discerning the body”
meant quite simply to take the bread and cup at the same time
as they were treating their fellow-Christians uncharitably in
thought or behaviour. So realistically does Paul regard such
“unworthy” participation that he warns those who are guilty of
it that sickness or death may befall them by way of self-
incurred judgment.18 Eucharistic participation in Christ, like
baptismal incorporation into Christ, is no solitary matter: both
involve sharing the common life in the body of Christ with all
other believers, and carry with them serious ethical corollaries
which Christians ignore at their peril.19
CHAPTER 26
Ephesus: Open Door and Many
Adversaries
1. Paul comes to Ephesus
AFTER HIS SHORT VISIT TO PALESTINE AND SYRIA IN
THE SPRING OF A.D. 52, Paul made his way back to Ephesus
by land. This time no obstacles or prophetic prohibitions
prevented him from completing his westward journey through
Asia Minor. On the way he is said to have passed through “the
Galatic region and Phrygia”, but as nothing is said of his
undertaking evangelism there but only of his “strengthening all
the disciples” (Acts 18:23), the area indicated is probably much
the same as that which he traversed with Silas and Timothy on
the earlier occasion, called “the Phrygian and Galatic region”
in Acts 16:6. Then he went on to Ephesus by way of the “upper
country” (Acts 19:1), which may mean that, instead of taking
the main road by the Lycus and Maeander valleys, he travelled
by a more northerly road and approached Ephesus from the
north side of Mount Messogis (modern Aydin Dǎglari).1
(Another suggestion is that the expression simply refers to the
hinterland of Ephesus, as when we say “up country”.)2
The province of Asia, as has been mentioned already, was
formed from the kingdom of Pergamum when Attalus III died in
133 B.C. and left his territory to the senate and people of
Rome. It comprised the regions of Mysia, Lydia, Caria, Lycia
and Western Phrygia. On its coast and off-shore islands there
had been Ionian Greek settlements from time immemorial.3 In
the first half of the sixth century B.C. the mainland settlements
were incorporated by Croesus into his expanding kingdom of
Lydia: when he was overthrown by Cyrus in 546 B.C. they
passed under Persian control. After an abortive revolt in 498
B.C., they regained their liberty for some decades following the
repulse of Xerxes’ invasion of Greece in 480–479 B.C., but
reverted to Persian rule by the King’s Peace of 387 B.C.4 They
were liberated again by Alexander in 334 B.C. and after his
death were ruled by one or another of the succession dynasties:
the chief cities, however, enjoyed a considerable measure of
civic autonomy, and continued to do so under the Romans.
Of these Ionian settlements the most illustrious was
Ephesus, at the mouth of the Caÿster (modern Küçük
Menderes). There had been a Carian settlement here before
the Ionians came, devoted to the cult of the great Anatolian
mother-goddess in her local manifestation.5 The Ionian
colonists intermingled with their Carian predecessors, and
shared in the worship of the great goddess. Her name Artemis
is pre-Greek. She first appears in Greek literature as mistress
and protectress of wild life;6 in Greece proper she was
worshipped as the virgin-huntress. The temple of Artemis at
Ephesus housed the many-breasted image of the goddess,
which was believed to have “fallen from the sky” (Acts 19:35)
and to be therefore of divine workmanship. An earlier temple
was burned down in 356 B.C.—on the night, it was said, when
Alexander the Great was born—by a young man who explained
that he had done this to perpetuate his name in history. It must
be confessed that he succeeded in his aim; his name,
Herostratus, is known to us solely for this act of arson.7 A new
temple, more magnificent than the one it replaced, was built
soon afterwards and ranked as one of the seven wonders of the
world. The city prided itself on its designation “Temple Warden
(neōkoros) of Artemis”;8 and on the fact that the cult of the
great goddess had spread out into the whole Greek world and
even beyond its frontiers: the silversmith Demetrius might well
speak of her as worshipped by “all Asia and the world” (Acts
19:27).9 Magnificent as the temple was—four times as large as
the Parthenon in Athens, supported by 127 columns, each of
them sixty feet high, and adorned by Praxiteles and other great
sculptors of antiquity10—it has almost completely disappeared;
only its foundations remain, and these were located with
difficulty by J. T. Wood in 1869 in a marsh at the foot of the hill
of Ayasoluk (now Selçuk).11
The chief remains of Hellenistic and Roman Ephesus stand
about a mile and a half south and south-west of the temple site.
Although the city was a seaport in New Testament times, it
now stands seven miles inland because of the silt carried down
by the Caÿster. From the top of the theatre one can still discern
the outline of the ancient harbour (rather as in aerial
photography), now a marshy waste at the end of the Arcadian
Way.12 The theatre, built into the western slope of Mount Pion
(Panayirdaǧ) in the city centre, is reckoned to have
accommodated over 25,000 people.
Pergamum remained the titular capital of the province, as it
had been of the kingdom of the Attalids, but Ephesus was the
greatest and most populous city—the greatest trading centre,
says Strabo, of all the Asian cities west of the Taurus.13
Ephesus, Pergamum and the other Greek city–states of the
province formed a confederation (the koinon of Asia); the
representatives of the cities who served on its council were
known as the Asiarchs. The Roman administration of the
province exercised its authority through regular assizes
(agoraioi) held in nine or more of the cities and presided over
by the proconsul. Liaison was maintained between the
municipality and the provincial government by the city
secretary (grammateus) or chief executive officer.
To this great city, then, Paul came in the late summer of A.D.
52 and stayed there for the best part of three years, directing
the evangelization of Ephesus itself and of the province as a
whole. Plainly he was assisted in this work by a number of
colleagues—like Epaphras, who evangelized the Phrygian cities
of the Lycus valley (Colossae, Laodicea and Hierapolis)14—and
so effectively did they work that, as Luke puts it, “all the
residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and
Greeks” (Acts 19:10). Indeed, the Christian history of the area
continued unbroken from those years until the Graeco-Turkish
exchange of populations in 1923.
2. Luke’s “pictures” of Paul in Ephesus
Luke does not appear to have been with Paul at any point
during his Ephesian ministry, and we have no connected
account of these years, for all their importance in the
expansion of the Gentile mission. Nor have we any
correspondence between Paul and his converts at Ephesus
which could help us to reconstruct his experiences with them
as the Corinthian letters help us to reconstruct his experiences
with the church of Corinth. But the vividness of some of the
Ephesian episodes reported by Luke has suggested to many
readers that he was indebted to eyewitness reports of these.15
A New Testament scholar of the present day has compared
Luke’s literary style to “a lecture with lantern-slides; the
pictures are shown one after another illustrating the story the
lecturer wants to tell while he makes the transition from one
plate to another by some general remarks”.16 Nowhere in Acts
is this analogy more apt than in the account of Paul’s Ephesian
ministry (Acts 19:1–41).
(a) Disciples at Ephesus. The first of these “pictures” has as
its subject Paul’s encounter, shortly after his arrival in
Ephesus, with a dozen men whom Luke calls “disciples” (Acts
19:1–7). When he uses the term “disciples” in this absolute
way, Luke normally means “disciples of Jesus”; that this is what
these men were is implied by the question which Paul put to
them: “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” He
assumed that they were believers—believers in Jesus, that is to
say—but suspected that there was something deficient in their
Christian experience, and discovered that they knew nothing of
the Holy Spirit. Further inquiry showed that the only baptism
of which they knew was John’s: in this they resembled Apollos.
Perhaps they acquired such knowledge of the Way as they
possessed from some person or persons who, like Apollos,
added an acquaintance with the story of Jesus to an initial
reception of John’s baptism. It was not necessarily in Ephesus
that they had been baptized: John’s followers may conceivably
have carried his teaching as far north as Asia Minor, but these
disciples could have come in touch with his teaching and
baptism elsewhere, possibly in Palestine. We are reminded
once more of the scantiness of our knowledge of the
dissemination of the gospel in various forms from its homeland
to other regions.
Paul impressed on these disciples the preparatory character
of John’s ministry. Their understanding of John’s ministry itself
was defective if they did not know of his testimony to the one
who was to come after him and administer baptism with the
Holy Spirit. Apollos had made what could be recognized as a
Christian commitment, and Luke’s statement that he was
“fervent in spirit” (Acts 18:25) may mean that he was “bubbling
over with the Spirit”17—an experience far exceeding anything
that these disciples knew. Accordingly Paul had them baptized
“into the name of the Lord Jesus” and laid his hands on them,
whereupon they received the Spirit and gave audible evidence
of their doing so by glossolalia and prophecy. This is the only
instance of re-baptism in the New Testament: there is no
suggestion that this had been required of Apollos. The apostles
themselves and their fellow-disciples, some of whom had
received John’s baptism, had no need to be baptized afresh
because the Spirit came upon them spontaneously at
Pentecost, but baptism with the imposition of hands was
apparently judged necessary to induce the pentecostal
experience in these disciples of Ephesus. Their baptism
betokened their full and intelligent commitment to the Christ
whose significance was made plain to them by Paul. Paul, it has
been validly pointed out, “was one of the greatest assets” for
the Jerusalem church,18 for either by his personal action (as
here) or under his influence (as when Priscilla and Aquila
instructed Apollos) versions of the gospel which were defective
by Jerusalem standards were brought into conformity with the
line maintained in common by Paul and the leaders of the
mother-church.
(b) Transference to the lecture-hall of Tyrannus. Luke’s
second “picture” is of Paul’s expulsion from the synagogue
after enjoying its hospitality for three months. The synagogue
authorities in Ephesus appear to have accommodated him
rather longer than did their colleagues in most other cities
visited by Paul. In Ephesus, indeed, the opposition to Paul’s
“arguing and pleading about the kingdom of God” in the
synagogue is not said to have come from the authorities
themselves but from some unspecified persons who “were
stubborn and disbelieved, speaking evil of the Way before the
congregation”19 (Acts 19:8f.). The opposition, at any rate, was
sufficiently powerful and vocal to make Paul withdraw from the
synagogue. He took his converts and fellow-Christians with
him, and they found another meeting-place in the lecture-hall
of one Tyrannus. It may be wondered whether it was his
parents or his pupils who first called him Tyrannus. His pupils
evidently attended his lectures in the cooler hours of the day
and then teacher and pupils alike went home towards noon for
their siesta; according to the Western text of Acts 19:9 it was
“from the fifth hour to the tenth”—from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.—that
Paul had the use of his hall and held public debate there.
Whatever be the textual basis for the Western reading, the
statement is quite probable, although it says much for the
staying-power of Paul’s hearers as well as of Paul himself if
they frequented the lecture-hall daily during the heat of the day
for two years. Paul for his part seems to have spent the early
morning, and possibly the evening, in manual labour: “these
hands”, he later reminds the elders of the Ephesian church,
“ministered to my necessities, and to those who were with me”
(Acts 20:34).
(c) Magical arts. In Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors,
Antipholus of Syracuse comes to Ephesus and refers to the
city’s reputation as a centre for the learning and practice of
magical arts:
They say this town is full of cozenage,
As, nimble jugglers that deceive the eye,
Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind,
Soul-killing witches that deform the body,
Soul-killing witches that deform the body,
Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks,
And many such-like liberties of sin.20
Its reputation in this respect is indicated by the fact that the
phrase “Ephesian writings” (Ephesia grammata)21 was
commonly used in antiquity for documents containing spells
and formulae like the lengthy magical papyri in the London,
Paris and Leiden collections or small amulets (like the mottoes
in Christmas crackers) to be rolled up and placed in small
cylinders or lockets worn round the neck or elsewhere about
the person.22 One of the latter, in the Princeton University
collection of papyri, begins with an odd series of letters
arranged in a special pattern:
—after which comes the petition: “Sovereign and good angels,
deliver … the son of Sophia from the fever which has him in its
grip, this present day, this very hour, now now, quickly
quickly.”23 The carefully arranged pattern with which the
amulet begins may represent an effort to express the name of
some divinity or demon. The great magical papyri are full of
such real or imagined names. These documents have come
down to us from all over the Near East, but Ephesus was
specially renowned for them.
It was not unnatural that in such a setting Paul himself
should be regarded as a magician of sorts: kerchiefs and
aprons which he wore while engaged in manual labour were
taken and applied to various sick and possessed people and
proved remarkably beneficial. The virtue, naturally, did not
reside in the pieces of cloth or leather but in the faith of those
who used them as medicaments. Others looked upon the name
of Jesus, so frequently on Paul’s lips, as a potent spell, and
tried to invoke it as such. The Paris magical papyrus contains
such an invocation, “I adjure you by Jesus the god of the
Hebrews”,24 and we have evidence of the similar use of other
Jewish names, including the divine names Sabaoth, Iao and
Iabe.
The last two are attempts at reproducing the ineffable name
of the God of Israel. A name of which very few knew the
pronunciation, or were permitted to utter it if they did, was by
all the standards of magic a name of great power. It was
believed that one of the few men to possess the secret was the
Jewish high priest, who uttered it when he laid the people’s
sins on the head of the scapegoat in the court of the Jerusalem
temple on the annual day of atonement.25 It is not surprising
then that some strolling Jewish exorcists should give
themselves out as members of a high-priestly family. Luke
mentions the seven sons of Sceva, billed as a “Jewish high
priest”, who undertook to exorcize a demon with the words: “I
exorcize you by Jesus whom Paul proclaims” (Acts 19:13 f.). But
the demon-possessed man turned on them with such ferocity
that they counted themselves fortunate to escape with their
lives. In the eyes of the public this served only to emphasize the
power of the name of Jesus: it was too dangerous a name to be
invoked by any who did not know the right way to use it. In no
other city which figures in Luke’s narrative could such an
incident seem so natural as in Ephesus.
But the power of the name of Jesus was manifested in the
way of which Paul approved when several practitioners of
magic were converted to Christianity and renounced their
magical arts. They gave practical proof of the change which
they had experienced by publicly divulging their secret spells
(thus depriving them of their potency) and burning their
papyrus scrolls, the value of which was estimated at 50,000
drachmae.
(d) Demonstration in the theatre. The most vivid of all the
Ephesian episodes reported by Luke describes the riotous
assembly in the great theatre of the city. The success of Paul’s
evangelistic activity meant a diminution in the number of
worshippers of the great goddess Artemis, and a consequent
diminution in the income of those craftsmen who depended
heavily on the Artemis cult for the sale of their wares. Among
these craftsmen the silver-smiths held a leading place. The
president of the guild of silversmiths at Ephesus, Demetrius by
name, called a meeting of his fellow-craftsmen and set before
them the seriousness of the situation on the religious and
economic planes alike. Demetrius and his colleagues, says
Luke, found a ready sale for “silver shrines of Artemis”—
miniature sanctuaries representing the goddess (perhaps with
her attendant lions) in a niche: her devotees would purchase
these and dedicate them in the temple. No silver miniatures of
this kind have survived, although silver replicas of her image
and terra-cotta models of her temple are known. An inscription
of A.D. 104, half a century later than the present incident, tells
how a Roman official presented a silver image of Artemis and
other statues to be set up in the theatre.26 The expression used
by Luke of Demetrius is similar to the designation neōpoios,
literally “shrine-maker”, which was actually used of a member
of the temple vestry (which seems to have comprised twelve
men).27 Demetrius may have been one of the goddess’s
vestrymen, then, as well as president of the local guild of
silversmiths.
Filled with a sense of outrage at the indignity inflicted on the
great goddess by these foreign preachers, the silversmiths and
their associates raised the cult-cry, “Great is Artemis of the
Ephesians!”28 Their indignation spread to the populace, who
rushed to the theatre and demonstrated there. They laid hands
on two of Paul’s companions, Gaius and Aristarchus, and
dragged them to the theatre with them.29 Paul himself was
about to go there too and do what he could to appease the
crowd, but some of the Asiarchs of Ephesus who were well-
disposed to him warned him to do no such thing.
The Jews of Ephesus felt very uneasy about the turn of
The Jews of Ephesus felt very uneasy about the turn of
events. Although they had no part in Paul’s activity, it was well
known that they were no believers in Artemis, and a pro-
Artemis demonstration might well develop into an anti-Semitic
rampage, the more so because Paul himself was so evidently a
Jew. A leading member of the Jewish community, Alexander by
name, tried to gain the attention of the crowd and dissociate
his community from Paul and the other missionaries; but the
crowd, recognizing him to be a Jew, howled him down and for
two hours kept up the cry, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”
At last the city secretary, thoroughly alarmed, secured
something like silence and warned his fellow-Ephesians that
the consequences of their riotous assembly might be very
serious. The Roman administration of the province would not
tolerate such behaviour, and might well deprive them of their
civic privileges. The honour and renown of the great goddess
were not at stake: the men with whom they were indignant had
committed no sacrilege. If they had any charge to being against
Paul or the others, let them make use of the law-courts.
Matters of concern to the city should be dealt with at a regular
meeting of the ekklēsia or civic assembly and not at an unruly
gathering like this. (That the regular meetings of the assembly
were held in the theatre is indicated by the inscription of A.D.
104 mentioned above, for it was during a meeting of the
assembly that the silver image of Artemis and the other statues
were to be set up there.)30 The secretary had good reason to be
concerned: he was “perhaps the most influential individual in
the city”,31 but for that very reason the Romans would hold him
specially responsible for the citizens’ conduct.
3. Dangers at Ephesus
This could have been a dangerous situation for Paul,
although the impression given by Luke is that, thanks to the
city secretary’s forceful interposition, it passed off more quietly
than might have been feared. Paul’s friends Gaius and
Aristarchus appear to have taken little harm apart from a
rough handling, unless those are right who see in Paul’s
description of Aristarchus as his “fellow-prisoner” (Colossians
4:10) an allusion to a period of imprisonment experienced by
Aristarchus (presumably in Paul’s company) about this time—
an unnecessary supposition. But if Paul was not seriously
endangered on this occasion, there were other occasions
during these years which put him in peril of his life. When
arguing with the Corinthian intelligentsia about the
resurrection hope, for example, he asks: “What do I gain if,
humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus?” (1
Corinthians 15:32). The phrase “humanly speaking” is
equivalent to “figuratively speaking” and shows that his
fighting with beasts is not to be taken literally (although the
author of the second-century Acts of Paul did take it literally
and told an engaging tale of Paul’s encounter in the arena with
a lion which he had previously befriended—and baptized!).32
But if the language is metaphorical, for what kind of experience
would such a metaphor have been suitable? Then, at a later
date, there is the reference in 2 Corinthians 1:8–10 to a mortal
peril which he had recently endured in the province of Asia:
death had seemed so imminent and certain that no escape
appeared possible, so that when he did nevertheless escape, he
greeted his deliverance as a miracle performed by “God who
raises the dead”. It is possible that this peril was an illness
which nearly proved fatal;33 but it is rather more probable that
it was due to human hostility, and that certain circumstances
made it advisable not to enter into unnecessary detail about it
in writing.
In this connexion political events in the province may have
some relevance. The proconsul of Asia at the time when Nero
succeeded his stepfather Claudius in the principate (October
13, A.D. 54) was Marcus Junius Silanus, member of a
distinguished Roman family allied by marriage to the imperial
house. Silanus was the first casualty of the new principate:
Nero’s mother Agrippina had him poisoned. This was done
without Nero’s knowledge or approval; but Agrippina bore a
grudge against Silanus’s family, and seized the earliest
opportunity of getting him out of the way. Moreover he was,
like Nero, a great great grandson of Augustus and there was
some muttering to the effect that, since Nero was not a direct
heir (Claudius’s own son Britannicus had a prior claim), the
people would be better off with Silanus as emperor.34
Agrippina entrusted the work of getting rid of Silanus to two
members of the imperial civil service in proconsular Asia—an
official of equestrian rank named Publius Celer and a freedman
named Helius, both of whom became increasingly influential in
the following years.35 When the city secretary of Ephesus told
the demonstrators in the theatre that the law-courts were
available if they had any specific accusation to bring against
Paul or his companions, he added, “and there are proconsuls”
(Acts 19:38). The proconsul of Asia presided at the provincial
assizes, but why should the secretary speak of “proconsuls” in
the plural? One possibility is that the incident took place in the
interval between the murder of Silanus and the arrival of his
successor. The secretary would scarcely have referred to Celer
and Helius as proconsuls, even if they did discharge some of
the proconsul’s administrative duties in the interregnum; in the
absence of one recognizable proconsul he may have used the
generalizing plural: “there are such people as proconsuls”
(NEB).
The theory has been propounded that Silanus had befriended
Paul, possibly acquitting him when he was prosecuted at the
assizes on a charge of temple-robbery, and that this fact
worked to Paul’s detriment after the fall of Silanus. But why
should Paul have been accused of temple-robbery? It has been
suggested that his organizing of the Jerusalem relief fund may
have been regarded by the leaders of the Jewish communities
in Ephesus and other Asian cities as an encroachment on the
collection of the annual temple-tax for the maintenance of the
temple in Jerusalem.36 Roman law specifically authorized the
collection of this tax and its conveyance to Judaea: indeed, in
that very province of Asia, a little over a century before, the
Roman governor Lucius Valerius Flaccus allegedly prevented
the export of the tax to Judaea and had to stand trial in Rome in
59 B.C. on this and other charges of financial malpractice.37
But the temple-tax was collected from Jewish communities;
Paul’s relief fund was launched for contributions from Gentile
churches. Even so, it could have been argued that Paul’s
Gentile converts were potential proselytes and hence potential
contributors to the temple tax, so that, by detaching them from
possible adherence to Judaism and encouraging them to
contribute to the maintenance of the Jerusalem church, Paul
was in effect robbing the Jerusalem temple. If this charge was
included in the general accusation of temple violation pressed
against Paul on his next visit to Jerusalem,38 and if it was likely
to be raised at Rome when his case was referred to the
emperor’s jurisdiction, Luke may have had a strong apologetic
reason for making no explicit reference to the Jerusalem fund,
despite the important part that it played in Paul’s strategy.39 (It
has been pointed out that when the city secretary in Ephesus
assured the crowd in the theatre that Paul and his friends had
committed no sacrilege, the term he used had the literal sense
of “temple-robbing”;40 but whatever the precise meaning of the
word might be, on his lips it could refer only to the temple and
cult of Artemis and so would be irrelevant to the present
question.) If a charge of “temple-robbery” was preferred
against Paul, it could well have been initiated by Ephesian
Jews.
Paul indicates in the course of one of his letters to Corinth
that alongside the wide-open opportunities for gospel witness
at Ephesus there were “many adversaries” (1 Corinthians
16:9). There are hints here and there that some of these
“adversaries” were persons of influence in the local Jewish
community. When, a year or two after his departure from
Ephesus, he had an opportunity of talking to the leaders of the
Ephesian church during a break in his last voyage from the
Aegean to Palestine, he reminded them of the trials which he
had had to endure in their city “through the plots of the Jews”
(Acts 20:19). Luke, to whom we are indebted for this
information, was probably present at this meeting and heard
what was said. It is Luke also who tells us that the hue and cry
against Paul during his last visit to Jerusalem, which almost led
to his being lynched on the spot, was raised by the “Jews from
Asia” who were present for the feast of Pentecost (Acts 21:27
ff.). And Alexander the coppersmith who, according to 2
Timothy 4:14, did Paul “great harm”, may be identical with that
Alexander who tried to dissociate the Jewish community of
Ephesus from Paul in the minds of the assembled rioters in the
theatre. It is not clear whether the “great harm” was done in
Ephesus itself or elsewhere. (Was he, for example, a leader of
those Asian Jews who stirred up such trouble for Paul in
Jerusalem?)41
If—and the if must be emphasized—Paul was arraigned on
this charge before Junius Silanus and was acquitted, his
opponents may have judged that they had a better chance of
success when Silanus was removed. If their second attempt
procured a conviction, this could have led to “so deadly a peril”
as Paul speaks of having undergone in Asia—a peril from which
he did not think he could escape with his life. The invocation of
his legal rights as a Roman citizen could have sealed his fate
more certainly in this situation, if it became known at Rome
that he had been protected by Silanus. But all this is a matter
of hypothesis.
It was most probably in the period of the Ephesian ministry
that Priscilla and Aquila “risked their necks” for Paul’s life, as
he expresses it in Romans 16:4. His reference to this incident is
(for us, whatever it may have been for the original readers)
tantalizing in its brevity and vagueness; but it clearly points to
an occasion when Paul himself was in mortal danger, and his
two friends hazarded their own lives in an effort to help him. In
the same context (Romans 16:7) he mentions Andronicus and
Junias (or Junia if a woman is meant), notable members of the
apostolic circle, whom he describes as his “fellow-prisoners”.
When and where had they shared an imprisonment with Paul, if
not at Ephesus?42
4. Ephesian imprisonment?
This opens the much-canvassed question whether Paul had
to endure a term of imprisonment, or even more than one,
during his Ephesian ministry. When in 2 Corinthians 11:23–27,
written shortly after the end of his Ephesian ministry, Paul
enumerates the hardships and hazards which he has
experienced in the course of his apostolic service thus far, he
includes among them “many imprisonments”. Like much else in
this catalogue, the reference to these imprisonments brings
home to us the immensity of the gaps in our knowledge of
Paul’s career. The narrative of Acts mentions only one occasion
before this period when Paul was imprisoned: that was when
he and Silas were locked up overnight in the town jail at
Philippi. We have no direct evidence that he was ever
imprisoned at Ephesus, but the possibility cannot be excluded.
The tower on a spur of Mount Coressus (Bülbüldaǧ) called St.
Paul’s Prison has no acceptable claim to this designation,
which nevertheless may reflect some tradition of his
imprisonment in Ephesus; but we cannot be sure how old the
tradition is. Such a tradition might be reflected also in the note
at the end of the Marcionite prologue to the Epistle to the
Colossians, stating that it was written by the apostle while in
bonds at Ephesus, but this may be little more than a slip:43 the
companion prologue to Philemon gives that epistle a Roman
provenance, and Philemon and Colossians were certainly sent
together from the same place at the same time.
The theory of one or more Ephesian imprisonments has been
taken up within the past century by a number of scholars who
have postulated such a setting for some of Paul’s “captivity
epistles”:44 G. S. Duncan, for example, dated Philippians during
a short imprisonment preceding Paul’s assumed acquittal by
Silanus,45 and P. N. Harrison dated Philemon and Colossians
(or at least what he took to be its authentic nucleus) “during a
brief period of house arrest by friendly Asiarchs …, to keep
Paul out of the reach of fanatical Jews, and avert a riot”.46
These datings, especially the latter, are doubtful.
Despite all these uncertainties arising from the scantiness of
our information, we can say that the evangelization of
proconsular Asia was one of the most fruitful phases of Paul’s
proconsular Asia was one of the most fruitful phases of Paul’s
missionary career and that his experiences during these years
—especially, perhaps, the deadly peril towards the end, from
which he was so unexpectedly delivered—had a profound effect
on Paul’s inner life.
CHAPTER 27
Paul and the Life to Come
1. Background of thought
THE SPIRITUAL CRISIS WHICH PAUL UNDERWENT
TOWARDS THE end of his Ephesian ministry as a result of his
almost miraculous escape from what seemed imminent death
has been described by one of the greatest New Testament
students of the twentieth century “as a sort of second
conversion”. It is pointed out in defence of this view that in the
letters which can be dated after this crisis there is “a change of
temper”; controversies are conducted in a more tolerant spirit,
there is a readier acceptance of his apostolic hardships, a
greater appreciation of the values of family life and “a
sustained emphasis on the idea of reconciliation”.1 It is
probably impossible to draw such a sharp line between Paul’s
attitude to life before this crisis and his attitude after it: if the
judgment expressed in an earlier Chapter is maintained, that 2
Corinthians 10–13 (“Corinthians E”) followed and did not
precede Chapters 1–9 (“Corinthians D”), then Paul was capable
of quite sharp and ironical polemic after his “second
conversion”.
Nevertheless, on a broad view of Paul’s spiritual
development, the thesis can, in general, be sustained; and
there is one area of his thinking in which the effect of the crisis
can be discerned with special clarity—his thinking about the
life to come.
Paul’s detailed views of the life to come before his
conversion cannot be established with complete certainty.
There was a wide variety of opinions in this field current in the
Judaism of his time—much wider than has been commonly
supposed. In Jewish literature of the period between 200 B.C.
supposed. In Jewish literature of the period between 200 B.C.
and A.D. 100, it has been pointed out:
statements on an immortality of the soul which excludes the resurrection of the
body are almost as common as those which explicitly state the resurrection of the
body, and the same proportions can be asserted for statements on the soul’s life
after death without exclusion of the body and texts which state the resurrection
without explicit reference to the body.2
It is plain that Paul inherited the belief in a coming
resurrection of the body which was widespread among the
Pharisees, but it should not be assumed too readily that the
Pharisaic doctrine of resurrection at the beginning of the first
century A.D. was uniform, or that it can be deduced without
more ado from later rabbinical teaching. The belief in
resurrection appears to have been one of the principal points of
theological difference between the Pharisees and the
Sadducees:3 the narrative of Acts records how Paul, appearing
before the Sanhedrin after his arrest in Jerusalem, threw the
apple of discord among its members by declaring that as a
Pharisee born and bred he stood on trial for “the hope of the
resurrection of the dead” (Acts 23:6). Still more explicitly, he is
said to have declared before Felix that he held the hope, shared
by his accusers—by his Pharisaic accusers, of course—“that
there is to be a resurrection of good and wicked alike” (Acts
24:15). It is curious—though it may be accidental—that in
Paul’s letters there is no clear reference to the resurrection of
the wicked.
The twofold resurrection is commonly believed to be first
attested in Daniel 12:2—“many of those who sleep in the dust
of the earth will wake, some to everlasting life, and some to the
reproach of eternal abhorrence”. But it is possible to render
these words otherwise: “many who sleep in the dust of the
earth will wake, and these are (destined) to everlasting life; but
those (the others, who do not wake) are (destined) to the
reproach of eternal abhorrence”4 (cf. Proverbs 10:7, “the
memory of the righteous is for a blessing, but the name of the
wicked will rot”).
Josephus’s account of the Pharisees’ teaching is based on
inside information, but it suffers from his eagerness to
assimilate it to the Greek outlook, especially in Antiquities xviii.
14: “They believe that souls have power to survive death and
that there are rewards and punishments under the earth for
those who have led lives of virtue or vice: eternal imprisonment
is the lot of evil souls, while the good souls receive an easy
passage to a new life.” Nothing here would cause much offence
to a Platonist. In his earlier work, his Jewish War, Josephus had
spoken more explicitly of the Pharisees’ belief in resurrection:
“They hold that every soul is incorruptible, but that the soul of
the good alone passes into another body, while the souls of the
wicked suffer eternal punishment”.5 Here it appears that the
bodily resurrection of the righteous only is contemplated—
although an uninitiated Greek or Roman reader might well
have taken Josephus’s words to imply a belief in
metempsychosis. Later in the Jewish War the Pharisaic belief
finds fresh expression, where Josephus represents himself as
trying to dissuade his comrades at Jotapata from committing
suicide to avoid falling into the hands of the Romans: “those
who depart this life in accordance with the law of nature
[which would be violated by suicide] … win eternal renown;…
their souls, remaining spotless and obedient, are allotted the
most holy place in heaven whence, in the revolution of the
ages, they return to find a new habitation in pure bodies”.6
The varieties of expectation among religious Jews in the last
two centuries B.C. are well illustrated by the intertestamental
literature. Ben Sira thinks that posterity’s remembrance of a
good man’s virtues is the most desirable immortality:7 the
author of Wisdom, influenced by Greek thought, thinks in terms
of the survival of souls—especially of “the souls of the
righteous” which “are in the hand of God”, so that no evil can
befall them.8 The martyrs in 2 Maccabees—an epitome of the
history of Jason of Cyrene—look forward to their resurrection
in the same bodies as those in which they suffer, with their
mutilated members restored;9 in 4 Maccabees—like Wisdom, a
product of Alexandrian Jewry—the same martyrs use the
language of Stoicism and exemplify the supremacy of Right
Reason over physical pain and death.10
From the second century B.C., however, the idea of the
Garden of Eden (Paradise) as a place of bliss for the righteous
and of Gehinnom as a place of fiery punishment for the wicked
after death took hold of popular imagination among the Jews—
partly, no doubt, under the influence of Iranian belief, in which
fire is a means of testing at the last judgment.11 In Pharisaism
the fire of Gehinnom for the ungodly is not always purely penal;
according to the school of Shammai those whose merits and
demerits were evenly balanced had first to purge their sins in
its flame and only so enter into Paradise.12 This implies the
idea of some sort of personal survival between death and
resurrection.
In a couple of Jewish apocalypses dating from the end of the
first century A.D. the souls of the dead, or at least of the
righteous dead, are kept in store-chambers or treasuries
between death and resurrection.13
The Qumran texts speak plainly enough of eternal life for the
righteous and annihilation for the wicked, but throw no clear
light on the question of resurrection. Those who hold fast to
God’s house “are destined for eternal life and all the glory of
man (? the glory destined for man) is theirs”;14 the disobedient
“have no remnant or survival”15 but suffer the doom of the
antediluvian sinners who “perished and became as though they
had never been”.16 The men of Qumran looked forward to the
day of requital when God would “render to man his reward”.17
His elect would inherit the lot of the holy ones—indeed, in their
community life they anticipated this inheritance, for God had
“joined their assembly to the sons of heaven, to be a council of
the community, a foundation of the building of holiness, an
eternal plantation for all time to come”.18 They are “adorned
with God’s splendour and will enjoy many delights with
everlasting peace and length of days”.19 When the last battle
between good and evil is fought, “there shall be eternal
deliverance for those belonging to the lot of God and
destruction for all the nations of wickedness”.20 But just how
the godly pass from mortal life, or from a martyr-death, to their
state of endless bliss is not so clear.
If we could be sure that the men of Qumran were Essenes,
then we might associate the former’s expectation of eternal
bliss with Josephus’s statement that the latter look for the soul,
consisting of the finest ether, to be released from the bonds of
the flesh and enjoy an elysian retreat.21 His description of this
retreat is not unlike the oasis in which, according to one of the
Qumran hymns, the godly man finds his abode—“beside a
fountain of streams in an arid land, … beside a watered garden
[in a wilderness]”.
No [one shall approach] the well-spring of life
or drink the waters of holiness
with the everlasting trees
or bear fruit with [the planting] of heaven
who seeing has not discerned
and considering has not believed
in the fountain of life.22
But Josephus’s tendency to conform Jewish beliefs and
practices to those rendered respectable by Greek philosophy
counsels caution once more in taking his information au pied
de la lettre. Hippolytus, whose account of the Essenes in the
ninth book of his Philosophoumena largely follows Josephus but
seems to be indebted to a further source, says that in addition
to the immortality of the soul they believed in the resurrection
of the body: the soul, he says, is regarded by the Essenes as
imperishable, resting after death in an airy and well-lighted
place, until it is rejoined by the resurrected body on the day of
judgment.23 Our ignorance of Hippolytus’s additional source
prevents us from adequately evaluating his information where
it contradicts that of Josephus, but a certain suspension of
judgment is plainly the wise course to adopt.
2. New perspective
Whatever Paul’s earlier position on immortality may have
been, it was decisively modified by his conversion to
Christianity. This conversion resulted immediately and
inevitably from his vision of the risen Lord, who called him to
be his apostle. What he had previously refused to admit—that
the crucified Jesus had been raised from the dead by the power
of God, as the earlier apostles maintained—was now borne in
upon him by testimony too compelling to be doubted. Jesus was
therefore the Messiah, the Son of God, the highly exalted Lord
—but, more especially for our present purpose, with Jesus’
rising from the dead the expected resurrection had begun to
take place. What had been for Paul previously the resurrection
hope was now, so far as Jesus was concerned, more than a
hope; it was a fait accompli. Since God had raised Jesus from
the dead, he would assuredly raise all his people in due course
—more specifically, at Jesus’ parousia, his advent in glory.24 At
least, he would raise those of them who had passed through
death before the parousia—whether they belonged to the
patriarchs and prophets of the old age or to believers of the
new age. But many believers of the new age would not require
to be raised from the dead, for they would still be alive at the
parousia. Here and now believers of the new age continued to
live in mortal bodies, but inwardly they already enjoyed a
foretaste of the coming resurrection life—eternal life—because
they were united by faith to the risen Christ, incorporated in
him. This incorporation was effected by the Spirit of Christ
whom they had received, and by his power the life of the risen
Christ was already imparted to all his people. In baptism,
indeed, they had died with Christ and been buried and raised
with him; at his advent they would share his manifested glory,
but by the indwelling Spirit they were able to anticipate the
hope of glory and live in the good of it.25 It was no mere
intimation of immortality that they thus received; it was an
initial experience of immortality, though the full experience
must await the parousia. Here and now they knew that “Christ,
once raised from the dead, will never die again: death no
longer has dominion over him” (Romans 6:9); and what was
true of him must be true of his people who through him
possessed as the gift of God the life of the age to come. “If the
Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells within
you”—so Paul’s argument runs—“then he who raised Christ
Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also
through his indwelling Spirit” (Romans 8:11).
These last quotations from Paul’s writings express the full
maturity of his understanding; but, while we can trace a
progression in his thought and language on this subject, his
central belief and teaching do not appear to have undergone
any essential change throughout his Christian career.
The main body of Paul’s correspondence that has been
preserved to us comes from a period lasting not more than
from ten to twelve years. So short a period may see but little
development in some men’s careers when they have reached
this stage of life, but Paul’s life during these years was so full
of intense activity and, latterly, a spell of enforced inactivity,
coupled with an ever deepening awareness of what it meant to
be Christ’s apostle among the Gentiles, that it would be
surprising if his experiences had no influence at all on his
outlook on the future.
3. The Thessalonians’ problem
At the beginning of this period Paul founded the church in
Thessalonica. Circumstances beyond his control, however,
forced him to leave the city before he had given his converts all
the teaching he believed they required. He had at least taught
them to wait expectantly for Jesus’ appearance from heaven to
deliver them from the end-time outpouring of wrath on the
ungodly;26 and such expectant waiting implied their survival to
witness this great event. But in the weeks and months that
followed Paul’s departure some of his converts died. The death
of believers before the parousia was something that the
Thessalonian church had not been prepared for, and a problem
was thereby created in their minds on which they sought
enlightenment. They seem, in fact, to have put two questions to
Paul:
a. At Christ’s parousia, what will be the lot of those believers
in him who have died before he comes?
b. When may the parousia be expected?
In answering the former question Paul assures them that
those of their number who have died before the parousia will
suffer no disadvantage when it take place; “we who are left
alive until the Lord comes shall not forestall those who have
fallen asleep”. On the contrary, when the Lord descends from
heaven with the shout of command, the archangel’s voice and
the trumpet blast, those who respond to his summons first will
be the dead in Christ; when they rise at his call, brought to life
with him who died and rose again, “then we who are left alive
shall join them, caught up in clouds to meet the Lord in the air”
(1 Thessalonians 4:14–18). This assurance is conveyed to them
“by the word of the Lord”—on the authority of an utterance of
Jesus himself (whether given before his death or subsequently
we need not now inquire). The language and imagery are those
associated with Old Testament theophanies of redemption and
judgment—we may think of the trumpet blast which calls home
the dispersed of Israel in Isaiah 27:13 and the clouds of heaven
on which one like a son of man is brought to the Ancient of
Days in Daniel 7:13—but what is here communicated in these
terms is new and distinctively Christian. Because Jesus died
and rose again, those who die believing in him cannot fail to
rise with him; and all his people must live forever with him.
As for the latter and more general question, when the
parousia would take place, Paul does little more than repeat
the words of Jesus, that it would come unexpectedly, “like a
thief in the night”.27 The call to the people of Christ therefore
is to “keep awake and sober”—“for God has not destined us for
wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1
Thessalonians 5:1–9).
4. The resurrection of the dead
Paul’s best-known contribution to the subject is his reply to
those members of the church of Corinth who held, as he put it,
that there was “no resurrection of the dead” (1 Corinthians
15:12). In these people’s eyes the doctrine of the reanimation
of corpses, as they took it to be, was perhaps an uncongenial
Jewish superstition which was a handicap to the acceptance of
the Christian message by thoughtful Gentiles. It was a pity,
they thought, that Paul had not been able to disencumber
himself of this as he had of so many other Jewish peculiarities.
Happily, they themselves were more completely emancipated.
What these Corinthians positively believed about the life to
come is more difficult to determine. They may simply have
believed in the inherent immortality of the soul, or in some kind
of assumption into glory at death or at the parousia; but there
are hints elsewhere in Paul’s correspondence with them that
they held what has been described as an “over-realized
eschatology”. Earlier in this letter he tells the Corinthian
Christians, ironically, that they have “arrived” ahead of time:
“You have come into your fortune already. You have come into
your kingdom—and left us out. How I wish you had indeed won
your kingdom; then you might share it with us!” (1 Corinthians
4:8). Presumably they thought that with the gift of the Spirit
they had received all that the religious man could desire. One
suggestion is that they anticipated the outlook of Prodicus, a
second-century Gnostic, whose followers claimed to be “by
nature sons of the first God” and therefore “royal sons far
above the rest of mankind”.28
If a gnostic link is sought, a more promising one may be
provided by the Epistle to Rheginus, a short Valentinian
treatise on resurrection, included in the “Jung papyrus” (one of
the Nag Hammadi codices) and published for the first time in
1963.29 According to this document,
The Saviour swallowed up death.… For he laid aside the world that perishes. He
changed himself into an incorruptible aeon and raised himself up, after he had
swallowed up the visible by the invisible, and he gave us the way of our
immortality. But at that time, as the apostle said, we suffered with him, and we
rose with him, and we went to heaven with him. But if we are made manifest in
this world wearing him, we are his beams and we are encompassed by him until
our setting, which is our death in this life. We are drawn upward by him like
beams by the sun, without being held back by anything. This is the spiritual
resurrection which swallows up the “psychic” together with the fleshly.30
The first editors of this document interpreted its contents in
terms of an over-realized eschatology such as that for which
Hymenaeus and Philetus are reprobated in 2 Timothy 2:17 f.:
“they have shot wide of the truth in saying that our
resurrection has already taken place, and are upsetting
people’s faith”. (Presumably the new life in Christ into which
they had already entered was all they desired.) More recently
Dr Malcolm Lee Peel has pointed out that there is an element
of not-yet-realized eschatology in the document: bodily death
must be undergone even by the elect, and it is followed by
resurrection, albeit a spiritual resurrection.31 But when the
transformation which follows death is described as a spiritual
resurrection, the word “resurrection” is used in an extended
sense, one which it does not bear in the New Testament. If the
deniers of the resurrection at Corinth held some form of
incipient Gnosticism (a possible, though not a necessary, view),
they may have anticipated some such view as that expressed in
the Epistle to Rheginus, for the “spiritual resurrection”
envisaged in the Epistle might for Paul hardly have been a
resurrection in the true sense of the word. In this “spiritual
resurrection” it is the inward and invisible “members” that
ascend, clothed in a new and spiritual “flesh”, for which the
appearance of Moses and Elijah on the mount of
transfiguration is cited as a precedent.
For Paul, the past resurrection of Christ involved a coming
resurrection for his people, and it would be a bodily
resurrection, as his was. True, the immortal resurrection body
would be of a different order from the present mortal body; it
would be a “spiritual” body whereas the present body was a
“natural” body—sōma psychikon, a body animated by “soul”.
This language is bound up with his distinction between life “in
Adam”, who in Genesis 2:7 is described as “a living soul”, and
life “in Christ”, who in resurrection has become “a life-giving
spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:45). But in this argument Paul goes
beyond the assurance he had given to the Thessalonian
Christians a few years earlier. Then, he declared that those
who survived to the parousia would enjoy no advantage over
the faithful departed; now he affirms, and that on the strength
of a special revelation, a “mystery” newly disclosed,32 that
those who survive will then undergo an instantaneous
transformation, so that they too will be adapted to the
conditions of the resurrection age. We may compare and
contrast the expectation found later in the first century in the
Apocalypse of Baruch where the bodies of the dead, raised
without change of form in order to receive equitable judgment,
are thereafter transformed in accordance with the verdict—
those of the justified being clothed in angelic glory, while those
of the condemned waste away in torment.33 According to Paul,
the dead—that is to say, the dead in Christ, who alone of the
dead come into his purview here—will rise in bodies which are
not liable to corruption, while the living will exchange mortality
for immortality.34 To much the same effect he tells his friends
at Philippi that from heaven “we await a Saviour, the Lord
Jesus Christ, who will change our lowly body and make it like
his body of glory” (Philippians 3:20 f.). Basic to his thinking
throughout is the conviction that Christ and his people are so
vitally and permanently united that his triumph over death
must be shared with them, not only in sacramental anticipation
but in bodily resurrection.
5. What happens at death?
But in all this nothing has been said about a question which,
to our way of thinking, is of the essence of this topic of
immortality: what happens at death? Not until 2 Corinthians
does Paul approach this question, so far as his extant
correspondence is concerned. This may have been due in part
to his expectation that he would survive until the parousia. In
the nature of the case he could not know that he would survive
until then, but in his earliest references to the subject he
associates himself with those who will survive: “we who are left
alive until the Lord comes shall not forestall those who have
died” (1 Thessalonians 4:15)—“those who have died” are
mentioned in the third person but the survivors are mentioned
in the inclusive first person plural. In 1 Corinthians 6:14 the
first person plural is used of those who will experience
resurrection: “God not only raised our Lord from the dead; he
will also raise us by his power”—but here no distinction is
drawn between those who have died and those who will still be
alive, for Paul is emphasizing that the body comes within the
scope of God’s redemptive purpose and that present bodily
actions have therefore a serious relevance for the future state
of Christians; by “us” he means “us Christians” in the most
general sense. No significant shift of perspective is involved in
1 Corinthians: “we shall not all die, but we shall all be
changed”, for at the parousia “the dead will rise immortal and
we [the living also] shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51 f.).
It is when we come to 2 Corinthians that we are conscious of
a change of perspective on Paul’s part. Probably not more than
a year separated the writing of the two letters, but the
experiences of that year affected Paul profoundly. In addition
to the “fightings without and fears within” to which he refers in
2 Corinthians 7:5, there was one specially serious danger
which overtook him in proconsular Asia, one from which he
could see no way out but death.35 Confrontation with death was
no new thing for Paul: “I die daily”, he could say some months
before this trouble befell him (1 Corinthians 15:31). But on this
occasion he felt like a man who had received the death-
sentence. On earlier occasions the way of escape had
presented itself along with the danger, but no such way could
be discerned this time, so that when at last, beyond all
expectation, escape did come, Paul welcomed it as little short
of resurrection from death.
Paul had frequently experienced the risk of death before, but
never before had he faced for a period what he believed to be
certain death. Whatever other changes this experience
occasioned in his outlook, it modified his perspective on death
and resurrection. For one thing, he henceforth treats the
prospect of his dying before the parousia as more probable
than otherwise. This change would no doubt have come about
in any case with the passage of time, but it was precipitated by
his affliction in Asia. Be it noted, however, that while it affected
his personal perspective, the “deferment of the parousia”
caused no such fundamental change in his thought as it is
sometimes held to have caused in the thought of the church as
a whole.36 Now it is as a personal confession of faith that he
says: “we know that he who raised the Lord Jesus to life will
with Jesus raise us too, and bring us to his presence, and you
[who are still alive] with us” (2 Corinthians 4:14).
But, if death before the parousia was now the more probable
prospect for Paul, what would be his state of existence (if any)
between death and the parousia? As we have seen, this
question did not exercise him before (so far as can be judged
from his extant writings); now in 2 Corinthians he tackles it.
But in tackling this question he could appeal to no “word of the
Lord” as he had done when clearing up the Thessalonians’
difficulty, nor had he any special revelation to guide him as
when he unfolded to the Corinthians the “mystery” that the
parousia would witness the transformation of living believers
as well as the resurrection of those who had fallen asleep.
Nonetheless he speaks with confidence: “we know”, he says (2
Corinthians 5:1). But what do “we know”? Not simply that for
the believer to depart is to be “with Christ”, which is “better by
far”, as he puts it in Philippians 1:23, but that, for this to be so,
some kind of new embodiment is necessary at death—and his
assurance is that such embodiment is available.
Paul evidently could not contemplate immortality apart from
resurrection; for him a body of some kind was essential to
personality. Our traditional thinking about the “never-dying
soul”, which owes so much to our Graeco-Roman heritage,
makes it difficult for us to appreciate Paul’s point of view.
(Except when immortality is ascribed to God himself in the
New Testament, it is always of the resurrection body that it is
predicated, never of the soul.) It is, no doubt, an over-
simplification to say that while for the Greeks man was an
embodied soul, for the Hebrews he was an animated body; yet
there is sufficient substance in the statement for us to say that
in this as in other ways Paul was a Hebrew born and bred. For
some, including several of his Corinthian converts,
disengagement from the shackle of the body was a
consummation devoutly to be wished; but if Paul longed to be
delivered from the mortality of this present earthly “dwelling”,
it was with a view to exchanging it for one that was immortal;
to be without a body of any kind would be a form of spiritual
nakedness or isolation from which his mind shrank. But he sees
the resurrection principle to be already at work in the people of
Christ by the power of the Spirit who indwells them; in some
sense the spiritual body of the coming age is already being
formed: while the “outward man” wastes away under the
attrition of mortal life and the hardships of apostolic service,
the inward man experiences daily renewal,37 so that physical
death will mean no hiatus of disembodiment but the immediate
enjoyment of being “at home with the Lord”.38
It is in 2 Corinthians 5:1–10 that Paul makes his most
personal contribution to the subject of immortality. The
number of articles and monographs devoted to the
interpretation of this passage is beyond counting, and shows no
sign of abating. Without waiting for the parousia, Paul begins
by stating his assurance that “if the earthly frame that houses
us today should be demolished, we have a building from God, a
house not made by human hands, eternal, and in heaven” (2
Corinthians 5:1). What is in these words called a “building” is
afterwards described in terms of a garment: “we yearn to have
our heavenly habitation put on over this one”—since, of course,
“being thus clothed, we shall not find ourselves naked” (5:2 f.).
But whether building or garment is spoken of, it is a body—the
new, immortal body—that is meant: “we do not want to have
the old body stripped off. Rather our desire is to have the new
body put on over it, so that our mortal part may be absorbed
body put on over it, so that our mortal part may be absorbed
into life immortal. God himself has shaped us for this very end;
and as a pledge of it he has given us the Spirit” (5:4 f.).
It is difficult to distinguish the new body to which Paul here
looks forward from the spiritual body to be received when the
last trumpet sounds, according to the teaching of 1 Corinthians
15. Attempts have indeed been made to explain the heavenly
body as a corporate entity, the body of Christ39; but believers
have already “put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27), and the Pauline
concept of the body of Christ and believers’ membership in it is
related to the present mortal existence rather than to the life to
come. If, however, the new body referred to here is the
spiritual body of 1 Corinthians 15, Paul no longer thinks of
waiting until the parousia before he receives it. Nor is it a
merely temporary integument that he hopes to receive at
death, pending his investiture with the resurrection body at the
parousia; it is the eternal “housing” which God has prepared
for him and his fellow-believers, and of which the present gift
of the Spirit is an anticipatory guarantee. So instantaneous is
the change-over from the old body to the new which Paul here
envisages that there will be no interval of conscious
“nakedness” between the one and the other.40 The change-over
takes place, as he says in 1 Corinthians 15:52, “in a moment, in
the twinkling of an eye”—only there the split-second
transformation takes place at the parousia, whereas here Paul
seems to imply that for those who do not survive until the
parousia the new body will be immediately available at death.
If he does not say so quite explicitly, this may be because he
has received no clear revelation to this effect.
Perhaps Paul’s pre-Christian conception of the life to come
had little to say about the state of affairs between death and
resurrection. The dead were dead, and that was that, but they
would be brought back to life by the power of God on the
resurrection day.
But, for Paul the Christian, the resurrection of Christ made a
vital difference to this pattern. For Christ, having died, had
already been brought back to new life by the power of God, and
by faith-union with him his people were already enabled to
share the power of his resurrection and walk in newness of life.
Was it conceivable that those who were united, right now in
mortal life, with the risen and ever-living Christ, should have
this union interrupted, even temporarily, by bodily death? We
have it on Dr Samuel Johnson’s authority that a man’s
expectation of imminent execution “concentrates his mind
wonderfully”,41 and it may have been precisely such
expectation that concentrated Paul’s mind on this question in
the months preceding the writing of 2 Corinthians, to the point
where he reached the conclusion set forth in this fifth Chapter.
It was not the nature of the resurrection body that caused him
chief concern, although he could not conceive of conscious
existence and communication with his environment in a
disembodied state. What he craved, and received, was the
assurance that absence from this earthly body would mean
being “at home” with the Lord, without any waiting interval.
The immediate investiture with the new body is valued only as
a means of realizing and enjoying a closer nearness and a fuller
communion with the Lord than had been possible in mortal life.
Therefore, says he, “we never cease to be confident” and
meanwhile we “make it our ambition, wherever we are, at
home or away, to be acceptable to him” (2 Corinthians 5:6, 9).
Appearance before the tribunal of Christ, to give account of
deeds done in mortal body, is still a future certainty; so also is
the participation of the people of Christ in their Lord’s glory
when he is manifested—that “revelation of the sons of God” for
which, according to Romans 8:19, “the created universe waits
with eager expectation”. The coming consummation is in no
way diminished, but those eschatological features which are
realized in life on earth at present do not cease to be realized
in the interval between death and the final consummation; they
continue indeed to be more intensely realized than is possible
during life on earth. Paul’s last word on the immortality of men
and women of faith is the logical outworking of his teaching on
their union with the living Christ.
CHAPTER 28
Farewell to Macedonia and
Achaia
1. Paul looks west
TOWARDS THE END OF THE EPHESIAN MINISTRY, SAYS
LUKE, “PAUL resolved in the Spirit to pass through Macedonia
and Achaia and go to Jerusalem, saying, ‘After I have been
there, I must also see Rome’ ” (Acts 19:21). That Paul did make
such plans about this time is corroborated in detail by what he
himself says in his letters; yet there is a difference in emphasis
between Luke and Paul. Luke has Rome in view as the goal of
his narrative, and underlines this rôle of Rome by making it
Paul’s own goal. Paul himself bears witness in his letter to the
Roman Christians, written shortly after this time, of his long-
cherished and often frustrated desire to visit their city; “I am
eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome”
(Romans 1:15). But in this letter Paul makes it plain that he has
no intention of making a prolonged stay in Rome. For one
thing, to settle in Rome, where there was already a thriving
Christian community, would involve him in “building on
another man’s foundation”1—something which formed no part
of his policy (we know what his attitude was to those who came
into his own mission-field and built on his foundation).2 For
another thing, Rome in his mind was a halting place, or at best
an advance base, on his way to Spain, where he planned to
repeat the programme which he had just completed in the
Aegean world (Romans 15:23 f.):
But now, since I no longer have any room for work in these regions, and since
I have longed for many years to come to you, I hope to see you in passing as I go
to Spain, and to be sped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your
company for a little.
The statement that he “no longer has any room for work in
these regions” throws light on Paul’s conception of his task.
There was certainly much room for further work in the area
already evangelized by Paul, but not (as he conceived it) work
of an apostolic nature. The work of an apostle was to preach
the gospel where it had not been heard before and plant
churches where none had existed before. When those churches
had received sufficient teaching to enable them to understand
their Christian status and responsibility, the apostle moved on
to continue the same kind of work elsewhere. So Paul travelled
along the Roman highways, the main lines of communication,
preaching the gospel and planting churches in strategic
centres. From those centres the saving message would be
disseminated; thus Thessalonica served as a base for the
further evangelization of Macedonia, Corinth for Achaia and
Ephesus for proconsular Asia.3 Paul’s time was limited, and
there was much ground to cover, if the prophecy of Jesus was
to be fulfilled, that before the final consummation “the gospel
must first be preached to all the nations” (Mark 13:10).4 If
Spain beckoned to him as his next mission-field, that was
probably because the other lands bordering on the
Mediterranean (including the North African coast west of
Cyrenaica) were already being evangelized. Narbonese Gaul
(the present-day Provence), part of which had been colonized
by Ionian Greeks centuries before and still maintained close
links with the Aegean world, came to be regarded as falling
within the sphere of the churches of Asia.5 But Spain, the
oldest Roman province in the west6 and a bastion of Roman
civilization in that part of the world, had not yet heard the
gospel and so must be evangelized as quickly as possible.
But Spain differed in one material respect from the provinces
which Paul had evangelized thus far: they were Greek-
speaking, but Spain was Latin-speaking. Paul would not have
been entirely unfamiliar with Latin.7 He knew it to be the
language of the Roman army and had heard it spoken in such
Roman colonies as Philippi and Corinth,8 even if his work was
carried out chiefly among Greek-speaking residents in those
cities. When he claimed his citizen rights, he may have done so
in the Latin form: ciuis Romanus sum.9 But to visit a country
where Latin was the medium of communication, and to preach
the gospel acceptably in that language, required special
preparation. This may explain Paul’s statement in his letter to
the Christians of Rome that he had by this time preached the
gospel “from Jerusalem and as far round as Illyricum” (Romans
15:19).10 The idea of visiting the nearest Latin-speaking
territory to his existing mission-field and undertaking
evangelism there may have been in his mind when he
expressed the hope to his Corinthian friends that, with the
increase of their faith, he might have an opportunity to “preach
the gospel in the lands beyond you” (2 Corinthians 10:15 f.).
The precise reference of these words may be unclear—they
might point to his further plans to visit Rome on the way to
Spain—but what he says to the Romans is plainer: by the time
he wrote to them from Corinth at the beginning (probably) of
A.D. 57 he had carried the gospel as far west as Illyricum.
Illyricum was the Latin name of the province bordering on
the Adriatic Sea. The Greek name of the territory was Illyria,
but in Greek usage Illyria stretched farther south than Roman
Illyricum, including Dyrrhachium, one of the western termini of
the Via Egnatia11 (which lay within the Roman province of
Macedonia). The Illyrians originally spoke an Indo-European
vernacular, belonging to the same group as the languages of
modern Albania. Illyricum came under Roman control in the
course of the second century B.C. In 59 B.C. it was allocated to
Julius Caesar along with Cisalpine (and later Narbonese) Gaul
as part of his proconsular province. Under Augustus its
northern frontier was extended to the Danube (c. 9 B.C.). In
consequence of a rebellion some years later, which was put
down by Tiberius, adopted son and heir-designate of Augustus,
the northern part, Pannonia, was detached and became a
separate province (A.D. 9); the southern part continued to be
known as Illyricum but also bore the name Dalmatia (which it
receives in 2 Timothy 4:10). It was an imperial province,
governed by a legatus pro praetore with legionary troops under
his command. In the early years of the principate of Tiberius
the legionary troops were employed to good purpose in road-
construction which opened up the mountainous interior of
Illyricum.
Had Paul used the form Illyria, his language could be
adequately explained as indicating an extension of his
Macedonian ministry as far west as Dyrrhachium; it is his use
of the Latin form Illyricum that suggests his crossing the
frontier into the Roman province of that name, and a reason for
his doing so—to familiarize himself with a Latin-speaking
environment—lies ready to hand. But apart from his bare
mention of Illyricum, nothing is known of his visit there.
2. After Ephesus
The period following Paul’s completion of his Ephesian
ministry is summed up by Luke in the briefest possible terms
(Acts 20:1–3a):
After the uproar [over the alleged threat to the cult of Ephesian Artemis]
ceased, Paul sent for the disciples and having exhorted them took leave of them
and departed for Macedonia. When he had gone through these parts and had
given them much encouragement, he came to Greece. There he spent three
months …
But the interval between his leaving Ephesus (probably in the
summer of A.D. 55) and his spending three months in Greece
(that is, in the province of Achaia and more particularly in
Corinth) appears to have been considerably longer than could
be gathered from Luke’s summary; eighteen months, indeed,
would not be an excessive estimate. The earlier part of the
period forms the setting for some of the correspondence
mentioned or preserved in our 2 Corinthians, with its travelling
to and fro between Corinth, Macedonia and the province of
Asia. Room must then be found for Paul’s journey to western
Asia. Room must then be found for Paul’s journey to western
Macedonia and Illyricum.
There are, moreover, allusions in the Pastoral Epistles to
visits paid to other places in the Greek world which, in the
opinion of some students of these documents, can best be fitted
into this period. The criticism and exegesis of the Pastoral
Epistles are beset by too many problems for certainty to be
attainable about these allusions, but some of the visits, it is
urged, could be more reasonably accommodated in this phase
of Paul’s career than relegated to the limbo period following
his two years under house-arrest in Rome.12 For example, the
reference in Titus 3:12 to his plan to winter in Nicopolis (a
Roman colony founded by Augustus in Epirus to commemorate
his victory at Actium) has been related, very precariously, to
his visit to Illyricum, on the ground that, being on the west
coast of Greece, Nicopolis would provide convenient winter-
quarters on his return from Illyricum.13
Even more precariously, it has been asked if Paul could have
spoken of having no more “room for work in these regions” if
Crete remained unevangelized—the implication being that his
travels during the period before he expressed himself in those
terms to the Roman Christians included a visit to Crete in the
company of Titus, whom he left behind to continue the
missionary work they had started together and to organize
church life in the island (Titus 1:5).14 But, inadequate though
our knowledge of his travels during this period is, it is very
difficult to fit a Cretan visit into them.
In so far as we can trace Paul’s movements from the close of
his Ephesian ministry, they may be tabulated, very tentatively,
as follows:15
A.D.
55 Spring Painful visit to Corinth; Paul
sends severe letter
(“Corinthians C”) by the hand
of Titus
Summer Deadly peril in Asia; Paul
leaves Ephesus
leaves Ephesus
Late Summer In Troas
October Paul leaves Troas for
Macedonia, meets Titus,
sends letter of reconciliation
(“Corinthians D”)
55–56 Winter-
spring
In Macedonia; news of
interlopers at Corinth; Paul
sends letter of rebuke
(“Corinthians E”)
56 Summer In Illyricum
Autumn In Macedonia (?)
57 January-
March
In Corinth
3. The collection for Jerusalem
One fact emerges clearly from those letters of Paul which
can be dated in this period—that he was greatly taken up
during these months with the completion of the contributions
to the Jerusalem fund made by his churches in Macedonia and
Achaia. It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance
which Paul attached to this work and to the safe conveyance of
the money to Jerusalem in the hands of delegates of the
contributing churches.
At an earlier stage in Paul’s career he and Barnabas had a
meeting with the leaders of the Jerusalem church at which it
was agreed that those two men, who had already made a good
beginning with the work of Gentile evangelization, should
continue to prosecute it, while the Jerusalem leaders would
concentrate their missionary activity on Jews. The Jerusalem
leaders added a special request that Barnabas and Paul should
continue to remember “the poor”16—a request which is best
understood against the background of the famine relief which
the church of Antioch had sent to the Jerusalem believers by
the hand of Barnabas and Paul. In reporting this request Paul
adds that this was a matter to which he himself paid special
attention. It was in his mind throughout his evangelization of
the provinces to east and west of the Aegean, and in the closing
years of that period he applied himself energetically to the
organizing of a relief fund for Jerusalem in the churches of
Galatia, Asia, Macedonia and Achaia.
We first learn about this fund from the instructions given to
the Corinthian Christians in 1 Corinthians 16:1–4; they had
been told about it and wanted to know more. From what he
says to them we learn that he had already given similar
instructions to the churches of Galatia—presumably in the late
summer of A.D. 52, when he passed through “the Galatic
region and Phrygia” on his way from Judaea and Syria to
Ephesus (Acts 18:22 f.). Thanks to Paul’s Corinthian
correspondence, more details are known about the organizing
of the fund in Corinth than in any of the other contributing
churches.
If Paul’s instructions to his converts in Corinth had been
carried out, then each householder among them would have set
aside a proportion of his income week by week for some twelve
months, so that the church’s contribution would have been
ready to be taken to Jerusalem in the spring of the following
year by the delegates appointed by the church for that purpose.
The tension which developed soon afterwards between many of
the Corinthian Christians and Paul perhaps occasioned a falling
off in their enthusiasm for this good cause. Next time Paul
wrote to them about it (in the aftermath of the reconciliation
resulting from the severe letter which he sent to them by Titus)
he expressed the assumption that they had been setting money
aside for the fund systematically ever since they received his
instructions, and told them how he had been holding up their
promptness as an example to the Macedonian churches. But
when one reads between the lines, it is plain that he had
private misgivings on this score; hence he sent Titus back to
Corinth with two companions17 to help the church to complete
the gathering together of its contributions “so that you may be
ready, as I said you would be; lest if some Macedonians come
with me and find that you are not ready, I should be humiliated
—to say nothing of you—after my confident boasting” (2
Corinthians 9:3 f.). As we have seen, some of them probably
felt that this was a subtle way of putting irresistible pressure
on them: he was “crafty”, they said, and got the better of them
“by guile” (2 Corinthians 12:16).
At the time when Paul sent Titus and his companions to
Corinth to see about this matter, he himself was in Macedonia,
helping the churches of that province to complete their share
in it. The political situation which made it impossible for Paul
to stay in Macedonia five or six years previously had now
passed; perhaps the change of emperor in A.D. 54 had
something to do with this.18 Even so, the Macedonian churches
had been passing through a period of unspecified trouble as a
result of which they were living at bare subsistence level, if
that; and Paul felt that he could hardly ask them to contribute
to the relief of fellow-Christians who were no worse off than
themselves. But they insisted on making a contribution, and
Paul was greatly moved by this token of divine grace in their
lives (2 Corinthians 8:2–4):
for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty
have overflowed in a wealth of liberality on their part. For they gave according to
their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own free will,
begging us earnestly for the favour of taking part in the relief of the saints—
and the secret of their generosity, he adds, was that, having
given themselves to the Lord, they took it as a matter of course
that their property (such as it was) was equally at his disposal.
He pays the Macedonian Christians this tribute in a letter to
the Corinthians in order to encourage the latter to give as
generously from their comparative affluence as the
Macedonians gave from their destitution.
Paul makes one further reference to this relief fund in his
extant letters, and this reference is particularly informative,
because it comes in a letter to a church which was not of Paul’s
planting and which therefore was not involved in the scheme
and indeed had no prior knowledge of it. Writing to the Roman
Christians to prepare them for his intended visit to their city on
the way to Spain, he tells them that the business of this relief
the way to Spain, he tells them that the business of this relief
fund must be completed before he can set out on his westward
journey (Romans 15:25–28):
At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem with aid for the saints. For
Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor
among the saints at Jerusalem; they were pleased to do it, and indeed they are in
debt to them, for if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings,
they ought also to be of service to them in material blessings. When therefore I
have completed this, and have “sealed” this fruit to them, I shall go on by way of
you to Spain.
The members of the Jerusalem church are the “saints” par
excellence, being at once the faithful remnant of Israel and the
nucleus of the people of God in the new age. If Gentile
believers can also be called “saints”, it is because they have
become “fellow citizens with the saints” of Jewish stock and
with them “members of the household of God” (Ephesians
2:19). The solidarity of Jewish and Gentile Christianity, in
particular the strengthening of fellowship between the church
of Jerusalem and the Gentile mission, was a major concern of
Paul’s, and his organization of the relief fund was in large
measure designed to promote this end. He knew that many
members of the Jerusalem church looked with great suspicion
on the independent direction taken by his Gentile mission:
indeed, his mission-field was repeatedly invaded by men from
Judaea who tried in one way or another to undermine his
authority and impose the authority of Jerusalem. But in
denouncing them Paul was careful not to give the impression
that he was criticizing the church of Jerusalem or its leaders.
On the other hand, many of his Gentile converts would be
impatient of the idea that they were in any way indebted to the
church of Jerusalem. Paul was anxious that they should
recognize their substantial indebtedness to Jerusalem. He
himself had never been a member of the Jerusalem church and
denied emphatically that he derived his gospel or his
commission from that church, yet in his eyes that church, as
the mother-church of the people of God, occupied a unique
place in the Christian order. If he himself were cut off from
fellowship with the Jerusalem church, his apostolic activity, he
felt, would be futile. Such was the part that Jerusalem played in
his thinking that, when he indicates to the Roman Christians
the limits of his ministry up to the time of writing, he says that
he has preached the gospel “from Jerusalem and as far round
as Illyricum” (Romans 15:19). That he should mention Illyricum
as the westernmost limit thus far is natural; but why should he
name Jerusalem as the place where he began?19 According to
his own account in the letter to the Galatian churches, he
began his ministry in Damascus and Arabia.20 Yet for Paul in
measure, as for Luke absolutely,21 Jerusalem is the starting-
place of the gospel; perhaps both of them recognized in this the
fulfilment of the oracle preserved in Isaiah 2:3 and Micah 4:2:
out of Zion shall go forth the law,
and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.`
Paul certainly had much more regard for Jerusalem than
Jerusalem had for Paul.
As for the suspicions entertained in the Jerusalem church
about Paul and his Gentile mission, what would be more
calculated to allay those suspicions than the manifest evidence
of God’s blessing on that mission with which Paul planned to
confront the Jerusalem believers—not only the monetary gift
which would betoken the Gentile churches’ practical interest in
Jerusalem but living representatives of those churches,
deputed to convey their contributions? Writing to his friends in
Corinth Paul holds out to them the prospect that their
Jerusalem fellow-Christians will be moved to a deep feeling of
brotherly affection for them “because of the surpassing grace
of God in you” (2 Corinthians 9:14). That all suspicions would
in fact be allayed was not a foregone conclusion—Paul asks the
Roman Christians to join him in prayers that his “service for
Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints” (Romans 15:31)—
but if this would not allay them, nothing would.
Perhaps Paul envisaged this appearance of Gentile believers
with their gifts in Jerusalem as at least a token fulfilment of
those Hebrew prophecies which spoke of the “wealth of the
nations” as coming to Jerusalem and of the brethren of its
citizens as being brought “from all the nations as an offering to
the LORD” on his “holy mountain” (Isaiah 60:5; 66:20).22 But if
Paul had those prophecies in mind, perhaps the Jerusalem
leaders had them in mind also, and drew different conclusions
from them. In the original context, the wealth of the nations is
a tribute which the Gentiles bring to Jerusalem in
acknowledgment of her supremacy. In Paul’s eyes the
contributions made by his converts to the Jerusalem relief fund
constituted a voluntary gift, an expression of Christian grace
and gratitude, but it is conceivable that the recipients looked
on them rather as a tribute due from the Gentile subjects of the
Son of David.23
There was, moreover, an intensely personal element in Paul’s
concern for this relief fund. The Gentile delegates were to
bring their offerings to Jerusalem, but the Gentile delegates
themselves were Paul’s own offering, presented not so much to
the mother-church as to the Lord who, many years before, had
called Paul to be his apostle to the Gentiles. A major phase of
Paul’s apostleship had now come to an end; before he
embarked on a new phase he would render an account of his
stewardship thus far. He looked on his stewardship as a
“priestly service” and desired that “the offering of the
Gentiles”, the fruit of that service which he was about to “seal”
in Jerusalem, might be “acceptable, sanctified by the Holy
Spirit” (Romans 15:16). There were those who stigmatized his
Gentile converts as unclean because they were uncircumcised
and therefore excluded from the people of God; Paul knew that
their hearts had been purified by faith, that they had been
washed, sanctified and justified “in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). They
were thus fitted to be a “pure offering” to that God whose
name, through the Gentile mission, had now become “great
among the nations”, as another Hebrew prophet had put it
(Malachi 1:11).
Paul had no thought of presenting this offering anywhere but
in Jerusalem. To Jerusalem, then, he took a representative
group of his Gentile converts. It may even have been in his
mind to render the account of his apostolic stewardship and re-
dedicate himself for the next phase of his ministry in those very
temple precincts where, years before, the Lord had appeared
to him in a vision and sent him “far away to the Gentiles” (Acts
22:21).24 His converts could not accompany him into the
temple, but there in spirit he could consummate “the offering
of the Gentiles” who had believed through his witness hitherto,
and seek grace and strength for the future.
He may indeed have hoped that on a later occasion, when his
contemplated evangelization of Spain was completed in its
turn, he might visit Jerusalem again with a fresh offering of
Gentiles from the western Mediterranean and render a further
account, perhaps the final account, of his stewardship. This, as
we know, was not to be; but Paul could not know what his
impending visit to Jerusalem had in store for him. He did
foresee the possibility of trouble; hence he bespoke the prayers
of the Christians in Rome that he might “be delivered from the
unbelievers in Judaea” (Romans 15:31). But the present visit to
Jerusalem might well witness a partial anticipation of the rôle
which Jerusalem was to fill in the end-time. For Jerusalem was
not only the place from which the gospel set out; it was also to
be the place from which the crowning phase of God’s saving
plan for the world would be displayed.25
Even the “unbelievers in Judaea”, from whom Paul half-
expected some opposition,26 might nevertheless be impressed
by the visible testimony of so many representative believers
from the Gentile lands in their midst.27 We know that at the
very time when Paul was preparing to sail for Judaea with his
converts and their gifts, he was pondering the relation, in the
divine programme, between his Gentile mission and the
ultimate salvation of all Israel: this also is a subject on which
he lays bare his thought in his letter to the Romans.28 This
letter was sent from Corinth, where he was the guest of his
friend Gaius at the beginning of A.D. 57, shortly before his
departure for Judaea. If, in telling the Romans about the
collection for Jerusalem, he refers only to the contributing
churches in Macedonia and Achaia, that was probably because
these two provinces were uppermost in his thought and action
at the time. He had colleagues in Asia Minor who could be
entrusted with completing the arrangements for gathering the
contributions in the churches there.
In the letter to the Romans, however, he sets this matter of
the collection for Jerusalem, with the problem of Jerusalem
itself, in the context to which, in his judgment, they properly
belong—the context of God’s saving purpose for mankind.
CHAPTER 29
The Gospel According to Paul
1. Righteousness by faith
WHEN PAUL, HAVING COMPLETED THE AEGEAN
PHASE OF HIS ministry, sent a letter to the Christians in Rome
to prepare them for his intended visit to the imperial city en
route for Spain, he judged it appropriate to devote the main
body of the letter to a systematic exposition of the gospel as he
understood and proclaimed it. Although he had no thought of
settling down in Rome and building on a foundation which he
himself had not laid, he hoped to have an opportunity to preach
the gospel in Rome during his limited stay, so as to “reap some
harvest” there as well as elsewhere in the Gentile world. “for”,
he adds, “I am not ashamed of the gospel” (meaning, I make
my boast in the gospel): “it is the power of God for salvation to
every one who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek;
for in it God’s way of righteousness is revealed through faith
for faith, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous
shall live’ ” (Romans 1:16 f.).1
The words of Habakkuk 2:4b (“the righteous shall live by his
faith”) had been quoted earlier by Paul, with this same
emphasis, in Galatians 3:11: “it is evident that no man is
justified before God by the law; for ‘He who through faith is
righteous shall live’.” The words are quoted in Galatians in the
course of a running argument, whereas in Romans they
introduce Paul’s exposition of the gospel and serve as its text.
The gospel which, as Paul insists in writing to the Galatians, is
the only gospel worthy of the name, is the same gospel as he
sets forth in Romans, but its presentation in Romans is more
orderly and detailed, for now he does not write under the
pressure of such passionate anxiety as he felt for his new-born
children in the Galatian churches who were being persuaded to
embrace, instead of the gospel which they had first accepted, a
different gospel, which was in fact no gospel at all. The relation
between the two documents has been summed up in
frequently-quoted words by J. B. Lightfoot:
The Epistle to the Galatians stands in relation to the Roman letter, as the
rough model to the finished statue; or rather, if I may press the metaphor without
misapprehension, it is the first study of a single figure, which is worked into a
group in the latter writing. To the Galatians the Apostle flashes out in indignant
remonstrance the first eager thoughts kindled by his zeal for the Gospel striking
against a stubborn form of Judaism. To the Romans he writes at leisure, under no
pressure of circumstances, in the face of no direct antagonism, explaining,
completing, extending the teaching of the earlier letter, by giving it a double
edge directed against Jew and Gentile alike. The matter, which in the one epistle
is personal and fragmentary, elicited by the special needs of an individual
church,2 is in the other generalised and arranged so as to form a comprehensive
and systematic treatise.3
In Galatians Paul has insisted that men and women are
justified in God’s sight by faith in Christ, not by keeping the
law, and that this justification is bestowed on them by God as a
gift of grace, not as a reward of merit. In Romans he sets this
teaching in a wider context but gives it the same fundamentally
important position as it had in Galatians. The argument that
the doctrine of justification by faith is a “subsidiary crater” in
the volcano of Pauline theology, that it is a weapon first
fashioned and used by him in his polemic against the judaizing
invaders of his Galatian mission-field,4 is put out of court by his
more dispassionate emphasis on it in the systematic exposition
of the gospel which he now imparts to the Roman Christians.5
Indeed, as has been said already,6 the doctrine was implicit in
the logic of Paul’s conversion, which revealed to him in a flash
the inadequacy of the law, to which he had hitherto been
devoted, as a basis for acceptance with God. In that same flash
he was assured of his acceptance with God on another basis—
the basis of God’s pardoning grace, blotting out the sin of one
who was quite unfit for his service because, as he says, “I
persecuted the church of God” (1 Corinthians 15:9), and calling
him into his service. Only so was it possible for him to
introduce himself to the Romans as one who had received
through Christ “grace and apostleship to bring about the
obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the
nations” (Romans 1:5).
2. The universal need
He sets the scene for the exposition of his gospel by
emphasizing the universal need for such a message if there is
to be any hope for mankind. Mankind is affirmed to be morally
bankrupt in God’s sight. In this respect Gentiles and Jews, for
all the differences between them, stand on one level.
The moral bankruptcy of the Gentiles was not difficult to
establish. Among the Jews a literary form had already been
standardized, as can be seen in the Alexandrian book of
Wisdom and the Letter of Aristeas, underlining the depravity of
“that hard pagan world”. Paul takes up this form and adapts it
to his own purpose, tracing in the pagan predicament the
outworking of a process of divine retribution in history. The
root of the trouble was idolatry, he says—the worship of
created things instead of the Creator.7 Nor was idolatry an
innocent error: the true knowledge of God was accessible to all
in his works of creation, so that those who chose not to give
him the unique allegiance which was his due had no excuse to
plead. From idolatry sprang all the other forms of deviancy,
including in particular those sexual perversions which in Jewish
eyes were the most offensive feature of pagan misconduct. The
principle of retribution8 is seen in God’s giving men up to the
natural consequences of their freely chosen course of action, to
a point where their conscience has become so insensitive that
they not only enjoy such behaviour but actually produce moral
arguments in support of it.
This picture is paralleled not only in other Jewish literature
but also in contemporary pagan literature. Greek and Roman
moralists could condemn current trends as roundly as Paul, but
that does not absolve them from their share in the general
guilt, as he sees the situation. In condemning others they
condemned themselves, for they were guilty of practices and
attitudes not so different in principle from those which they
deplored in others.9 And if the moralist who sat in judgment on
the pagan world was a Jew, not a Gentile, he was in no better
case. His responsibility was the greater, since he had received
the knowledge of God not only in the works of creation and the
inner voice of conscience but in the special revelation given in
the law of Israel. If he did not keep the law which he had
received, he was the more guilty: Gentiles who regulated their
lives by the limited sense of right and wrong which they had
“by nature” would win greater approval than Jews who, having
the much fuller unfolding of God’s will in the law, failed
nevertheless to live by it.10 It was a matter of common report
that the conduct of some Jews in the Gentile world brought the
name of their God into disrepute (we may think of the Roman
Jews whose embezzlement of a donation destined by a wealthy
proselyte for the Jerusalem temple led to the expulsion of Jews
from Rome by the Emperor Tiberius in A.D. 19).11 For all the
religious privileges received in the course of Jewish history—
privileges not to be despised by any Jew—Jews were as morally
bankrupt in God’s sight as Gentiles: “there is no distinction,
since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”
(Romans 3:22 f.).
3. The way of salvation
If there is to be any salvation for either Jews or Gentiles,
then, it must be based not on ethical achievement but on the
grace of God. What Jews and Gentiles need alike, in fact, is to
have their records blotted out by an act of divine amnesty and
to have the assurance of acceptance by God for no merit of
their own but by his spontaneous mercy. For this need God has
made provision in Christ. Thanks to his redemptive work, men
may find themselves “in the clear” before God; Christ is set
before them in the gospel as the one who by his self-sacrifice
and death has made full reparation for their sins. The benefits
of the atonement thus procured may be appropriated by faith—
and only by faith. Thus God, without abandoning his personal
righteousness, accepts all believers in Jesus as righteous in his
sight, regardless of whether they are Jews or Gentiles.12
The example of Abraham is instructive: it was by faith that
even he found acceptance with God. “Abraham believed God”,
says scripture, “and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”
(Genesis 15:6). Nor is Abraham an isolated instance; David
similarly proclaims the blessedness of “the man against whom
the Lord will not reckon his sin” (Psalm 32:1 f.).13 As for
Abraham, it is important to observe that his faith was reckoned
to him as righteousness long before he was circumcised: this
shows that the way of righteousness by faith is in no way
dependent on circumcision, but is open to Gentiles as well as
Jews. Abraham is thus the spiritual father of all believers,
irrespective of their racial origin. And the testimony that his
faith was reckoned to him as righteousness means that to all
who believe in God, whose saving power has been manifested
in the death and resurrection of Christ, their faith will similarly
be reckoned as righteousness.14
So then, believers in God receive his gift of righteousness,
and with it they receive also peace, joy and the hope of glory.
Above all, they receive his Spirit to indwell and empower them,
and by the Spirit their hearts are flooded with the love of God.
With all these blessings, with God himself as their exceeding
joy, they can cheerfully endure the afflictions that beset the life
of faith. And as for the hope of glory, if God’s love,
demonstrated in the self-giving death of Christ, has reconciled
them to himself, much more will the risen life of Christ, and
their participation in his risen life, ensure their salvation at the
last judgment.15
Once they were involved in the old solidarity of sin and
death, when they lived “in Adam” and shared the fruits of his
disobedience. Now that old solidarity has been replaced by the
new solidarity of righteousness and life, by which men and
women of faith are incorporated “in Christ”. The old humanity
is being dissolved; the new humanity, headed by Christ, the
“last Adam”, is taking shape, and the obedience of the last
Adam will accomplish more in blessing than the disobedience
of the first Adam accomplished in disaster.16 “For certainly”, as
John Calvin puts it, “Christ is much more powerful to save than
Adam was to ruin.”17
The law of Moses has nothing to do with this change of
relationship; it was introduced in order that man’s latent
sinfulness might be brought into the open, expressing itself
visibly in concrete transgressions of specific commandments.
This in fact is what happened; the law brought about an
increase of sin, “but where sin increased, grace abounded all
the more” (Romans 5:20).18
4. Freedom from sin
Let no one argue that therefore sin should go on increasing,
even in the believer’s life, in order that grace might abound
still more. (Paul had probably met people, even among his own
converts, who argued like this.) Such an argument betrays a
complete failure to grasp the meaning of the gospel and the life
of faith. Believers in Christ have entered on a new life: “how
can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:2). That is the
practical significance of their incorporation with Christ by
baptism: death with Christ to the old existence, resurrection
with Christ to “newness of life” (Romans 6:4). Instead of being
enslaved to sin, as they formerly were, believers are now
emancipated from sin.
If sin be personified as a slave-owner, his slaves are bound to
obey his orders while they are alive, but when they have died,
these orders have no further relevance for them. Or, to change
the figure slightly, when slaves are purchased from their
former owner by a new master who sets them free, their former
owner has no more authority over them. Sin has no longer any
authority over believers; they now belong to God, who has
liberated them from their former bondage. Sin was a harsh
master who dealt out death as his wages; God, by contrast,
bestows on his people the free gift of eternal life in Christ. For
bestows on his people the free gift of eternal life in Christ. For
one who by faith has been united to Christ to live in sin is a
moral contradiction in terms.
5. Freedom from law
The law might declare the will of God, but could not impart
the power to do it or break the thraldom of sin. It was therefore
possible to be under law, recognizing its divine majesty and
authority, and under the control of sin at the same time. But
the same act of grace that broke the chains of sin
simultaneously freed those who were under the constraint of
law. A dangerous doctrine, many must have thought; but Paul
makes his meaning plain: the grace of God liberates those who
are bound by sin, but law can never do so: paradoxically, law
may serve to bind the chains of sin more securely on the
sinner.19
The analogy of the marriage bond is evoked by way of
illustration. Referring to contemporary code and practice,
whether Roman or Jewish (but more probably Jewish than
Roman), Paul points out that a wife is legally bound to her
husband until death parts them. In the analogy of the slave-
owner and his slave, the slave-owner was sin, the slave, now
emancipated, was the believer. In the present analogy, the
believer corresponds to the wife, set free through death-with-
Christ from the tie which bound her to her former husband, the
law. Now that this tie has been broken, the believer is free to
enter into union with Christ. While the law stimulated the very
sins it forbade, those who are united to Christ produce the fruit
of righteousness and life. The analogy has its difficulties,20 but
the situation which it is intended to illustrate belongs to real
life; in particular, Paul himself had enjoyed the experience of
liberation from the law so as henceforth to “serve not under the
old written code but in the new life of the Spirit” (Romans 7:6).
With awareness of the law comes consciousness of sin. This
fact is enshrined in the primaeval story of the fall: the first
human pair enjoyed a carefree existence until the
commandment came which forbade them to eat the fruit of the
commandment came which forbade them to eat the fruit of the
tree of knowledge: the commandment was speedily followed by
the temptation to break it and so, as Eve said, the tempter
“beguiled me, and I ate” (Genesis 3:13). The same truth was
seen by Paul in the history of the race: the giving of the law
was designed to show men the path to life, but in the event
(because of the weakness of the human nature on which it
operated) it increased the sum-total of sin and so led to death.
So also, in the experience of the individual under the law
(dramatically described by Paul in the first person singular),
life was carefree until the law was brought to his attention;
then the awareness of such a commandment as “Thou shalt not
covet” immediately stimulated all kinds of covetousness. The
commandment is good, but sin exploits it to a bad end: as with
Eve, so once again, “sin, finding a point of vantage in the
commandment, beguiled me and by it brought about my death”
(Romans 7:11).
Man under the law lives in a state of tension. He knows what
is right; he approves what is right; but he lacks the power to do
what is right. Another power at work within him, the power of
indwelling sin, compels him against his will to disobey the
divine law. He longs for deliverance from this uncongenial
power, but finds none until it comes to him through Christ.
Until then, “I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but
with my flesh I serve the law of sin” (Romans 7:25b).
6. Freedom from death
But when the deliverance through Christ is experienced,
there is no need to continue any more in this condition of penal
servitude. For those who are in Christ receive his Spirit, and
the Spirit of Christ sets in motion a new power—the principle
of life—which frees them from the dictation of indwelling sin.
Those whose lives are directed by the Spirit are now able to
fulfil the requirements of God as they could never have done
under the law. In the very sphere which sin dominated—the
sphere of human nature—Christ won the victory over sin and
broke its domination, and this victory is made effective in his
people’s experience by the Spirit. The Spirit imparts a new
power, which triumphs over the old sinful propensities; the
Spirit maintains the new life-in-Christ in being and action here
and now, as on a coming day he will transform the mortality of
believers’ present bodies into immortality. The Spirit, thus
directing their lives, enables believers to live as the freeborn
sons of God; it is he who prompts them spontaneously to call
God “Father”. “When we cry ‘Abba! Father!’ it is the Spirit
himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of
God” (Romans 8:15 f.).21 The day is coming when the children
of God, liberated from all that is mortal, will be manifested to
the universe in the glory for which they were created; and on
that day all creation will be liberated from the frustration
under which it groans at present and will share the glorious
freedom of the children of God.
For that day all creation longs, as the children of God also
do, but amid their present restrictions they have the help and
intercession of the Spirit, and the assurance that he co-
operates in all things for their good,22 since their good is God’s
own purpose for them. God’s purpose, which cannot fail, is to
invest with final glory all those who from eternity were the
objects of his foreknowledge and foreordaining grace and
whom, in the fulness of time, he called as his people and
blessed with his gift of righteousness.
Paul concludes this phase of his argument with a call to
confident trust in God. God is on the side of his people; the
once crucified and eternally exalted Christ is their advocate in
God’s presence, and from his love no power in the universe,
here or hereafter, can separate them.23
7. Israel and the Gentiles in God’s saving purpose
At the outset of the letter Paul had said that God’s way of
righteousness on the ground of faith was presented in the
gospel “to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16).
But it was a matter of common knowledge that Jews for the
most part had not accepted the gospel, whereas Gentiles had
embraced it in large numbers. Some might argue that the Jews’
embraced it in large numbers. Some might argue that the Jews’
refusal to accept it frustrated the divine purpose. But Paul
rejects this conclusion. It has, he points out, been a recurring
feature of Israel’s history that some members of the nation had
responded to the call of God, while others (usually the majority)
had been disobedient. The gospel had been plainly set before
the Jewish people of Paul’s day, as the messages of the
prophets had been set before their ancestors, so none could say
that they had not heard it. Even so, there remained a chosen
remnant of Jewish believers in Christ, and as in earlier days so
now it was in the faithful remnant that the hope of the people’s
future was embodied.
If the order of proclamation was “to the Jew first and also to
the Greek”, the order of acceptance was “by the Gentile first
and (then) also by the Jew”. Paul set a high estimate on his
ministry as apostle to the Gentiles since through this ministry
not only were the Gentiles blessed directly but the Jews would
be blessed indirectly. The spectacle of Gentiles in large
numbers enjoying the blessings of the gospel would one day
stir the Jews to jealousy and move them to claim a share for
themselves in those blessings—the blessings which indeed
fulfilled the promises made to Abraham and the other
patriarchs of Israel. Perhaps the sight of so many Gentile
believers coming to Jerusalem with their gifts would precipitate
this response at the heart of their corporate life. Their present
phase of “hardening” or unresponsiveness to the gospel was
partial and temporary—partial, because some Jews (like Paul
himself) had already believed, and temporary, because in due
course they would all believe. Through the bringing in of the
full quota of Gentiles “all Israel will be saved” (Romans
11:26).24
There may be in this discussion (as perhaps in other
discussions in this letter) a more direct application to the
circumstances of the Roman Christians than appears on the
surface. The church of Rome was founded on a Jewish base.
Probably up to the time of Claudius’s expulsion edict of A.D. 49
all Roman Christians were of Jewish birth. When, after a few
years, the edict became a dead letter and Jews made their way
back to Rome, the Christian community in the city was
reconstituted, but now it included an increasing proportion of
Gentiles as well as Jews; and the Gentile members may have
tended to look patronizingly on their Jewish brethren as poor
relations, mercifully salvaged from the wreck of Israel. Paul
deprecates such an assumption of superiority, and describes
the relation of Gentiles and Jews in terms of the analogy of an
olive-tree—an analogy which may have been the more telling
because one of the Roman synagogues was called the
Synagogue of the Olive.25 The olive tree in this analogy is the
true Israel, the people of God; the branches are its individual
members. Because of unbelief some of the branches were cut
out, and their place was taken by branches from a wild olive or
oleaster—Gentile believers—who were grafted on to the stock
of Israel to share its vitality and nourishment.26 But these
newly engrafted branches had no cause for pride: by faith they
had been grafted in, but by unbelief they would be cut out like
many of the original branches. By now the analogy with
horticultural practice has been strained to the limit,27 but the
link snaps completely when Paul says that God can graft the
original branches which were lopped off back on to their parent
tree, to derive life from it anew. Paul seriously expects such a
miracle of grace in the spiritual realm, and illustrates it by
what would be a miracle in the natural realm. If Gentiles, by
the grace of God, have become members of the true Israel, how
much more may Jews, by that same grace, be restored to
membership in it.
Paul’s own sympathies were manifestly engaged in this
matter,28 but he does not present his forecast of Israel’s
restoration as the product of wishful thinking but as the
substance of a “mystery”29—an aspect of the divine purpose
formerly concealed but now divulged. This “mystery” was in
fact implicit in that “revelation of Jesus Christ” on the
Damascus road by which Paul received his vocation to preach
him to the Gentiles. The fulness of this implication was
something which he could not have grasped at the time, but in
the course of his apostolic experience it became increasingly
plain to him. His own apostolic ministry was the means in the
divine purpose for the accomplishment of this “mystery”. Isaiah
in his day had been cleansed and sent by God to people whose
hearts were “hardened” against his message by their very
hearing of the message (Isaiah 6:9 f.);30 so Paul had been
cleansed and sent by God, not directly to the people whose
hearts were hardened against the message, but to convey that
message and its saving benefits to others so that the people
with hardened hearts might begin to covet those benefits for
themselves and at last embrace the message with which the
benefits were bound up. Thus the history of salvation would be
consummated, and Paul had a distinctive part to play as God’s
chosen instrument in bringing about this consummation. In the
light of the initiatory revelation and its progressive unfolding in
his ministry he knew himself to be, under God, a figure (as has
been said already) of eschatological significance.31
Moreover, now that this mystery was revealed, it illuminated
certain prophetic sayings which, as now became clear, were to
find their fulfilment in this welcome dénouement. Quoting the
Septuagint version of Isaiah 59:20, he says:
The Deliverer will come from Zion,
he will banish ungodliness from Jacob—
except that, where the Septuagint says “for Zion’s sake”,32 Paul
says “from Zion”, deriving this perhaps from Psalm 14:7 (=
53:6), “O that delive`rance for Israel would come out of Zion!”
Then he adds, echoing Jeremiah’s oracle of the new covenant,
“and this will be my covenant with them, when I take away
their sins” (Romans 11:26 f.).33
Paul, that is to say, associates the consummation of God’s
plan of blessing for Israel, for which his own ministry was
paving the way, with a manifestation “out of Zion” of Israel’s
divine Redeemer—identical, perhaps, with the parousia itself. If
this is so, then the “life from the dead” of which Israel’s
acceptance is to be the immediate precursor (Romans 11:15)
could be the resurrection harvest.
could be the resurrection harvest.
What is emphasized above all, however, is God’s good will
towards all men, Jews and Gentiles alike. If, at an earlier stage
of his argument, Paul has concluded that “there is no
distinction, since all have sinned” and stand alike in need of
God’s grace, now he concludes that “there is no distinction
between Jew and Greek, … for God has consigned all to
disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all” (Romans
10:12; 11:32).
8. The Christian way of life
Paul follows up his exposition of the gospel with practical
exhortations. In view of all that God has done for his people in
Christ, their lives should be devoted to his service. They are
fellow-members of the body of Christ, and should discharge
their respective functions for the well-being of the whole. In all
their relations with others, let them show the forgiving mercy
of Christ. In this last injunction, Paul shows his familiarity with
the teaching of Jesus which has been preserved for us in the
Sermon on the Mount. Although these words of his antedate
the earliest of our Gospels, yet he knew much of their content
in an earlier form.
He next calls on his readers to render all due obedience to
the civil authorities; in their own sphere they too are servants
of God.34 This injunction may be a generalization of Jesus’
ruling, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” (Mark
12:17); but whereas Jesus’ ruling was given in response to a
question designed to face him with a dilemma in the delicate
situation of Judaea under Roman control, no such political
delicacy was involved in Paul’s advice to the Christians of
Rome. The very positive assessment of imperial administration
which he expressed reflects his own happy experience of this
administration in the provinces, as in the judgment of Gallio.
Paul was not so unrealistic as to suppose that the established
powers would always protect the interests of the gospel: he
would have assented as readily as Peter and his companions to
the declaration that, when they encroached on the things that
are God’s, “we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
There is no reason to suppose that he had abandoned the
outlook of 2 Thessalonians 2:3–12, according to which the
established order of government would one day be swamped by
the force of lawlessness, demanding divine honours for itself.35
But while the established order prevailed, discharging its
divinely conferred functions, protecting right and restraining
wrong, it should receive the prompt obedience of Christians.
The payment of taxes, for example, was part of their service to
God—part, indeed, of their “spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1).
The one debt that Christians should owe to others is the debt
of love. Again following the precedent of Jesus, Paul sums up
all the commandments of the law in the words: “Thou shalt love
thy neighbour as thyself” (Leviticus 19:18).36 “Love does no
wrong to a neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law”
(Romans 13:10). When law is summed up in these terms, the
meaning of “law” has been transformed: it is no longer
enforced from without but impelled from within, by the
operation of the Spirit of Christ.37 The law of love is thus the
law of Christ.
Paul warns of ominous times impending: it is the more
necessary for Christians to keep alert in mind and live as befits
their calling, to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 13:14)
—that is, to have those graces reproduced in their lives which
were seen in their perfection in his.
Then comes a call for special gentleness and consideration to
be shown to fellow-Christians, especially to those who are
“weak in faith” and unemancipated in conscience. There are
matters such as food-restrictions and the observance of special
days on which Christians do not see eye to eye. Those who have
no scruples in such matters should not despise those who have;
and those who have scruples should not sit in judgment on
those who have none. “Let every one be fully convinced in his
own mind” (Romans 14:5).38 It is to God that each believer
must ultimately render his account, and it is to God that he is
responsible for his conduct here and now. Christian liberty is a
precious thing, not to be limited by any man’s dictation, but it
should not be asserted at the expense of Christian charity.
Christ, his people’s supreme exemplar, always considered the
interests of others before his own;39 therefore his people, while
subject to none in respect of their liberty, should be subject to
all in respect of their charity.40
9. Final greetings
Paul then tells the Roman Christians of his impending visit to
Jerusalem with his converts and their gifts and of his intention
then to set out for Spain and stay a little time with them on the
way.41 He asks them to give a welcome to Phoebe, a minister of
the church in the port of Cenchreae, who may have been the
bearer of the letter;42 he sends greetings to a number of
friends whom he had come to know in various places and who
were now resident in Rome;43 he sends greetings also from his
companions who were with him as the letter was about to be
despatched, including Gaius his host and Erastus the city
treasurer, and from “all the churches of Christ” (Romans
16:16). “All the churches of Christ”—that is, the churches of
Paul’s own mission-field—were represented by their delegates
who had come to Corinth to join Paul in sailing to Judaea,44
where they were to deliver their churches’ gifts to their
brethren in Jerusalem.45
CHAPTER 30
Last Visit to Jerusalem
1. The voyage to Judaea
AMONG THE TRAVELLING COMPANIONS WHO JOINED
PAUL IN Corinth, or its Aegean port of Cenchreae, ready to sail
with him to Judaea, Luke mentions Sopater of Beroea, the son
of Pyrrhus; Aristarchus and Secundus from Thessalonica; Gaius
of Derbe and Timothy (originally from Lystra), and Tychicus
and Trophimus from the province of Asia1 (the latter of whom
was a Gentile Christian from Ephesus).2 It would be unwise to
attach sinister importance to the absence of a Corinthian name
from Luke’s list. The list may not be exhaustive; it may be
confined to those who had travelled to Corinth from other
places to join Paul. Paul had been spending several weeks with
Gaius, his host, and other Corinthian friends; moreover, he had
just told the Roman Christians how Macedonia and Achaia had
resolved to contribute to the Jerusalem relief fund.3 Achaia, for
Paul, meant Corinth and the places around it, and there is no
breath of a suggestion in his letter to the Romans that “Achaia”
had not carried out its resolve. We should, indeed, consider the
possibility that (in spite of some grumblings over Paul’s
“craftiness”4 in sending Titus to help with the organizing of
their contribution) the Corinthian church asked Titus to convey
their gift to Jerusalem; if so, the omission of the name of Titus
here is of a piece with its omission throughout the whole
narrative of Acts.5
Most of the party set sail from Cenchreae at the appointed
time, when the Aegean was open for navigation after the
winter. Paul, however, got wind of a plot against his life on
board the ship by which he had arranged to sail; accordingly,
he changed his plans, went north to Philippi, and found a ship
at Neapolis, the port of Philippi, bound for Troas, on which he
and Luke embarked “after the days of Unleavened Bread” (Acts
20:6). In A.D. 57 the festival of Unleavened Bread fell probably
during the week April 7–14.6 Paul hoped to be in Jerusalem for
Pentecost, which would begin in the last week of May, but the
realization of this hope would depend on the availability of
suitable shipping.
They reached Troas in five days; the prevailing winds
probably made the voyage longer than that from Troas to
Neapolis which they had completed in two days about eight
years previously.7 At Troas they found the rest of their
company, who had sailed from Cenchreae, waiting for them;
and there they remained for a week. Either the ship from
Neapolis was going no farther than Troas, in which case they
had to wait for a ship going in the direction they wished to
take, or it was to sail farther south and call at various points
along the west coast of Asia Minor, but had to stay some days
at Troas (as it did also at some later ports of call) unloading its
cargo and taking on a fresh one.
We are informed about the stages of this voyage in
considerable detail, since the narrator himself was on board
and kept a diary which was later embodied in the published
edition of Acts.8
In Troas there was a small community of Christians, formed
perhaps during Paul’s distracted and interrupted
evangelization of the city and its neighbourhood a year or two
before.9 Paul and his friends enjoyed the company of these
Christians while they remained at Troas, especially during the
evening before their departure (a Sunday), when they met to
break bread and Paul went on talking to them until midnight.
Luke remembered the occasion vividly because a young man of
the community in Troas, Eutychus by name, was overcome by
sleep while Paul was talking and fell down from the third-floor
window-ledge where he had been sitting. He was knocked
unconscious by the fall and his friends feared that he was dead,
but Paul hurried downstairs and embraced him (perhaps
applying some form of artificial respiration) and assured the
others, to their great relief, that Eutychus was still alive.
Next day the ship set sail, with most of the company aboard
(Luke included), but Paul went by land across the peninsula to
Assos (Behramkale). Perhaps he wanted to delay his departure
from Troas until the last minute to make sure that all was well
with Eutychus, and then took a road which he knew from his
previous visits to those parts, in the certainty that he would
reach Assos in time to board the ship there, since it would have
to round Cape Lectum (Bababurun).
At Assos, then (where the harbour, with its ancient
breakwater, is still in use), he was taken on board, and the ship
continued on its way, putting in at Mytilene (on the east coast
of the island of Lesbos), then (after negotiating the channel
between Chios and the Anatolian mainland) at Samos, and the
following day at Miletus, on the south shore of the Latmian
Gulf, at the mouth of the Maeander. (Between Samos and
Miletus the Western text inserts a mention of the promontory
of Trogyllium.)10
At Miletus the ship was due to stay in harbour for a few days,
so Paul sent an urgent message to Ephesus, some thirty miles
distant, asking the leaders of the church there to come and see
him at Miletus. He could not risk going to Ephesus himself, as
the ship might have left Miletus before his return. He had
deliberately chosen to travel by a ship which made the straight
run from Chios to Samos, across the mouth of the Ephesian
Gulf, so as to be sure of reaching Jerusalem by Pentecost, if
this were possible. At the same time he could not be so near as
he was to Ephesus without making some effort to get in touch
with his friends there.
Nothing is said of Christians in Miletus, although
presumably, like other cities in the province, it had “heard the
word of the Lord” in the course of Paul’s Ephesian ministry.11
The existence of a Jewish community in the city is attested by
an inscription in the theatre, allocating a section of the seats to
Jews and God-fearers.12
When the Ephesian leaders arrived Paul greeted them. Luke
has preserved a summary of what he said to them—a summary
of which Percy Gardner said that among all the Pauline
discourses in Acts this “has the best claim of all to be historic”.
While it is “altogether in the style of the writer of Acts”, yet, he
said, it “offers phenomena which seem to imply that he was
guided by memory in the composition”.13 Paul lays a solemn
charge on his hearers, who are variously described as elders,
shepherds and overseers (bishops),14 beseeching them to take
care of their fellow-Christians and protect them against
dangers which threatened them from without and within,
following the example which Paul himself had set them during
the years that he had spent with them. He himself would never
see them again, but God would supply them with all the
resources necessary for their pastoral ministry.
This is the only Pauline speech in Acts which is addressed to
Christians, so it is not surprising that it presents, to a far
greater degree than any of the other Pauline speeches,
features of affinity with the letters of Paul. In particular, here
only in Acts is explicit mention made of the saving efficacy of
the death of Christ. “Feed the church of God”, says Paul,
“which he purchased with the blood of his beloved one”15 (Acts
20:28). It is fruitless to argue that this is just a “turn of phrase”
introduced by Luke “to give the speech a Pauline stamp”;16 the
context in which the words appear confirms the judgment of C.
F. D. Moule:
This is Paul, not some other speaker; and he is not evangelizing but recalling
an already evangelized community to its deepest insights. In other words, the
situation, like the theology, is precisely that of a Pauline epistle, not of
preliminary evangelism.17
From Miletus the ship continued on its way to the islands of
Cos and Rhodes in the Dodecanese, and then put in at Patara, a
port on the Lycian coast of south-west Asia Minor.18 From here
it may have been proceeding farther east along the south coast
of the peninsula, but it could no longer serve the purpose of
Paul and his companions, so they transferred at Patara to
another ship bound for Phoenicia. This ship sailed in a south-
easterly direction from Patara to Tyre, passing Cyprus on the
port side, and laid up in the harbour at Tyre for seven days,
while it discharged its cargo. At Tyre, as previously at Troas,
the party seized the opportunity of fellowship with local
Christians. The origins of the church of Tyre are nowhere
expressly recorded, but they belong almost certainly to the
evangelization of Phoenicia by dispersed Hellenistic Christians
from Jerusalem after Stephen’s death.19 When the week was
up, all the members of the Tyrian church, with their wives and
children, escorted their temporary visitors to the beach, where
they bade each other farewell with prayer.
Their next port of call was Ptolemais (Akko), where the ship
which they had boarded at Patara may have reached its
terminus. They spent a day with the church there, and then
went on to Caesarea, whether by land or sea is not said
explicitly. Probably they had several days in hand before the
onset of Pentecost, so they were able to relax with their friends
at Caesarea, after quite a tiring voyage, before going up to
Jerusalem.
At Caesarea Paul had an opportunity of renewing old
acquaintance and introducing his new friends to those whom
he had known in earlier days. The Christian community in
Caesarea had grown since the conversion of Cornelius and his
household;20 it received an accession of strength when Philip
the evangelist (one of the seven Hellenistic leaders in the
Jerusalem church while Stephen was alive) made his home
there and brought up his family of four gifted daughters, each
one a prophet.21 (Half a century later, after Philip’s migration
to Phrygia, some of his daughters lived on into old age and
were highly reputed as informants on persons and events from
the early days of Palestinian Christianity.)22
At the end of their stay in Caesarea they were accompanied
by some of their fellow-believers from that city, and also by
Mnason, a Cypriot by origin and a foundation-member of the
mother church,23 who was to be their host in Jerusalem. It was
important to find a Jerusalem Christian willing to be host to so
many Gentile Christians, but Mnason, a Hellenist, readily
undertook this ministry. Perhaps the Caesarean Christians
made themselves responsible for this arrangement. If Mnason
was in a position to accommodate the party during their visit to
Jerusalem, the Jerusalem church was not completely denuded
of Hellenists after the dispersion which followed Stephen’s
death. To Jerusalem, then, they came, mounted perhaps on
mules or donkeys24 (the distance from Caesarea is 64 miles or
over 100 kilometres).
2. Premonitions of trouble
Before he started the voyage, Paul foresaw that this visit to
Jerusalem would be fraught with hazards. The misgivings at
which he hinted in his letter to the Romans were confirmed by
prophetic utterances in one Christian community after another
in the ports at which he and his companions put in during their
voyage. “The Holy Spirit testifies in every city”, he told his
Ephesian friends at Miletus, “that imprisonment and afflictions
await me” (Acts 20:23). Some of the Christians at Tyre urged
him “through the Spirit”—that is, under prophetic inspiration
—“not to go on to Jerusalem” (Acts 21:4). And at Caesarea he
had a visit from Agabus of Jerusalem, the prophet who, some
twelve years earlier, had come to Antioch and foretold the
famine that hit Palestine with special severity shortly
afterwards. On this occasion Agabus, in the tradition of the
great prophets of Israel, accompanied his prediction with a
symbolic action (Acts 21:11):
he took Paul’s girdle and bound his own feet and hands, and said, “Thus says the
Holy Spirit, ‘So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man who owns this girdle
and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles’.”
If his words have been precisely recorded, then they did not
tally completely with the event: it was the Gentiles who bound
Paul, after snatching him from his Jewish assailants. But their
main drift was plain enough: Paul’s life would be endangered if
he persisted in going on to Jerusalem. His friends therefore
begged him to give up any thought of carrying out his plan to
begged him to give up any thought of carrying out his plan to
visit the city with the delegates of the Gentile churches; these
could perfectly well hand over the gifts which they had
brought, and their hospitality during their stay in Jerusalem
was assured.
Paul, however, was as sure of divine guidance in resolving to
go to Jerusalem as his friends and well-wishers were in
beseeching him not to go. When they saw that his mind was
made up, and that nothing would shift him, they left off trying
to dissuade him and said “The Lord’s will be done” (Acts
21:14). In these words there may be an echo of Jesus’
submission to the will of God in Gethsemane25—a conscious
echo, so far as Luke was concerned, for there is a recognizable
literary parallel between his account of Jesus’ “setting his face
to go to Jerusalem”26 in the first part of his history and Paul’s
last journey to Jerusalem in the second part. To the repeated
passion-predictions in the Gospel correspond the repeated
forecasts of trouble for Paul in Acts, and in both sequences
there is the same insistence on the fulfilment of the divine
purpose.27 Thus Luke’s emphasis on Paul’s “going to Jerusalem
under the constraint of the Spirit” (Acts 20:22) is consistent
with Paul’s contemplation of his visit to Jerusalem in Romans
15:15–32 as something which was necessary to seal “the
priestly service of the gospel of God” which he had discharged
thus far.
3. James and the elders
Paul had asked the Roman Christian to join him in praying
that the relief fund which he had organized for Jerusalem might
be “acceptable to the saints” (Romans 15:32). This prayer at
least appears to have met with an affirmative answer.28 Writing
as one of Paul’s companions, Luke says that the brethren in
Jerusalem gave them a cordial welcome. The day after their
arrival in the city (Acts 21:18–20):
Paul went in with us to James; and all the elders were present. After greeting
them, he related one by one the things that God had done among the Gentiles
through his ministry. And when they heard it, they glorified God.
So well they might, for what Paul told them by word of mouth
was corroborated by the presence of so many of his Gentile
converts, representatives of hundreds if not thousands more; it
was corroborated also (although Luke, for reasons best known
to himself, passes this over in silence)29 by the gifts which,
presumably on this occasion, they handed over to James and
his fellow-elders on behalf of the churches which they
represented.
On earlier occasions when the church of Jerusalem figures in
any detail in Paul’s letters or Luke’s narrative, the apostles, or
some of them, play a leading part; this time they are
conspicuously absent. Probably Peter and his colleagues had
left Jerusalem to engage in missionary activity in the lands of
the Jewish dispersion, leaving the mother-church to be cared
for by James the Just and a college of elders—perhaps the
sanhedrin of the true remnant of Israel, as they considered
themselves to be. If James occupied the position of primus inter
pares among them that the high priest occupied in the official
Sanhedrin, this might account for the later legend that he wore
garments of priestly type and had the right to enter the
sanctuary.30
While James and his colleagues greeted Paul as a brother
and were impressed by the record of his achievement among
the Gentiles, they were afraid that his presence in Jerusalem
might be the signal for trouble. Apart from the hostility which
was inevitably felt towards such a renegade by the Jewish
religious establishment, many members of the church,
described as “zealots for the law” (Acts 21:20), disapproved of
his missionary policy and of the freedom with which he treated
the law and the traditions of Israel. It was bad enough that he
should so resolutely refuse to impose the law and the traditions
on his Gentile converts, but it was rumoured that he even
advised Jewish Christians of the dispersion to cease observing
their ancestral customs, including the circumcision of their
children. James and the other elders appear not to have
believed these rumours and indeed, while it is easy to see what
gave rise to them, it is equally easy to see that they were
distortions of the truth. Some people cannot readily distinguish
between the essential and the non-essential: if they abandon an
old order for a new one, they feel it necessary to give up
everything associated with the old order—neutral or even
helpful features as well as others. But this is to exchange a
positive form of legal obligation for a negative form. Thus, at
the opposite extreme from those Jewish Christians in Jerusalem
who followed the ancient customs as a matter of course there
may have been others elsewhere who discontinued them on
principle. Paul’s policy was different from both. Truly
emancipated souls are not in bondage to their emancipation.
Paul conformed to the customs or departed from them
according to the company, Jewish or Gentile, in which he found
himself from time to time, making the interests of the gospel
the supreme consideration.31 In Jewish company he would
naturally observe the Jewish food laws, from common courtesy,
not to speak of Christian charity, nor would he outrage Jewish
sentiment by violating the sanctity of holy days, however much
for his own part he esteemed all days alike.32 True, he was
dismayed when he heard that his Galatian converts had begun
to “observe days, and months, and seasons, and years”
(Galatians 4:10); but they were Gentiles, and had no good
reason for adopting the Jewish sacred calendar, least of all for
adopting it by way of religious obligation. Once Paul had
himself inherited the observance of that calendar by way of
religious obligation, but he had learned as a Christian to enjoy
complete freedom with regard to its observance or non-
observance.
It is certain that in Jerusalem, of all places, he would live as a
practising Jew, if only out of consistency with his declared
policy, to “give no offence to Jews or to Greeks or to the church
of God” and to “try to please all men in everything I do, not
seeking my own advantage, but that of the many, that they may
be saved” (1 Corinthians 10:32 f.). There were few “Greeks” in
Jerusalem, but both the Jews and the church of God in that city
Jerusalem, but both the Jews and the church of God in that city
would be scandalized if he failed to observe the “customs”.
But if Paul claimed liberty of action for himself in such
matters, why would he deny it to other Jewish Christians?
Provided they shared his attitude to the traditional practices of
Israel as no longer divine requirements but as voluntary
actions which might be undertaken or omitted as expediency
directed, they might freely go on with them. It was no more
necessary for them than for Paul to be in bondage to their
emancipation. If they wished, for what seemed to them to be
good and proper reasons, to circumcise their children, Paul
would remember that he had circumcised Timothy for what
seemed to himself to be good and proper reasons.33 His letters
give us no indication of his advice in these respects to Jewish
Christians, except that Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians
alike should respect each other’s scruples—or lack of scruples.
Not that the leaders of the Jerusalem church would have
been altogether happy about Paul’s libertarian attitude to these
questions; they would probably have disapproved of Jewish
Christians who voluntarily discontinued the “customs”. They
felt that they themselves had made all the concession that was
called for in the Jerusalem decree which exempted Gentile
Christians from circumcision, while stipulating a certain
minimum of “necessary things” which they should observe.34
Of this concession they now reminded Paul, as though to
reassure him that they had no thought of imposing the
“customs” on his Gentile converts.35 (The possibility should be
recognized that they were perhaps insufficiently informed
regarding Paul’s increasing reservations about the Jerusalem
decree.)36
As for the rumours and misrepresentations which were
circulating about Paul in Jerusalem, they had a practical
proposal to put to him—one which, they hoped, would
effectively squash them. Four members of the church had
undertaken a Nazirite vow, and the time had now come to
discharge it. This involved the cutting or shaving of their hair,
which had been allowed to grow long for the duration of the
vow, and the presentation of an appropriate offering in the
temple.37 There were some unspecified circumstances which
made it necessary for them to undergo ceremonial purification
before their vow could be discharged; this purification involved
the delay of a week.38 If Paul would associate himself with
these men, share in their purificatory ceremony and pay the
expenses incurred in the discharge of their vow, this would be
a demonstration to all that he was a practising Jew.
Paul probably did not share the optimistic naïveté of his
Jerusalem brethren, but if the course of action they suggested
would save them from the embarrassment of being associated
in the public eye with such a dubious character as he was
reputed to be, there was no reason why he should not fall in
with their plan. There is no ground for the idea that they
pressed it on Paul as a subtle way of humiliating him.39 As for
the propriety of a Nazirite vow, he himself had undertaken one
at Corinth five years before.40 To pay the expenses of others
who had undertaken such a vow was regarded as an act of
pious charity;41 certainly neither Paul nor (probably) the four
Nazirites took part in this ceremony as a means of acquiring
merit before God. It was an outward and visible sign of
thanksgiving to God for answered prayer.
4. Paul taken into custody
Whatever effect Paul’s visit to the temple with the four
Nazirites had on the many “zealots for the law” in the church of
Jerusalem, it brought Paul himself into the very danger against
which he had been forewarned by friends in Tyre, Caesarea
and elsewhere. Pentecost was coming on, and Jews from the
dispersion had arrived in Jerusalem to celebrate the festival.
Among them were some Jews from Ephesus and the
neighbourhood, who had come to know Paul well by sight
during his residence in proconsular Asia, and who disapproved
of him and all his works. They had seen him in Jerusalem with
an Ephesian whom they recognized—Trophimus, one of his
Gentile converts. Now, at the end of the Nazirites’ week of
purification, they found Paul in the temple precincts with them
—presumably in the Court of Israel42—and raised a hue and cry
against him, charging him with violating the sanctity of the
temple by taking Gentiles within forbidden bounds.
The outer court of the temple, enclosed by Herod the Great,
was called the court of the Gentiles because Gentiles were free
to enter it. This was the area which Jesus had “cleansed”
during Holy Week, in protest against those encroachments
upon it which diminished its use as “a house of prayer for all
the nations” (Mark 11:15–17). But Gentiles were prohibited, on
pain of death, from trespassing beyond the barrier which
separated the outer court from the inner courts, the sacred
area proper. Inscriptions in Greek and Latin were fastened at
intervals to this barrier, warning Gentile visitors against
proceeding farther.43 This was the one type of offence for
which the Romans allowed the Jewish authorities to retain
capital jurisdiction; they authorized the death penalty in this
regard even when the offender was a Roman citizen, so careful
were they to conciliate Jewish religious susceptibilities.44 Had
there been any foundation for the charge against Paul, his
Roman citizenship would not have saved him from the
consequences.
The immediate result of the Asian Jews’ outcry was that the
surrounding crowd turned on Paul and dragged him out of the
court of Israel down into the outer court, where they continued
to beat him up. The temple police closed the gates leading from
the outer court into the inner courts, so that the sanctity of the
sacred area might not be outraged by the crowd’s unseemly
violence. In the outer court Paul could not have survived the
violence long, but timely action was taken by the Roman
garrison posted in the Antonia fortress, which overlooked the
temple precincts from the north-west and communicated with
the outer court by two flights of steps.45 As soon as the military
tribune in charge of the garrison got wind of the tumult, which
was now spreading into the city, he sent a detachment of
soldiers down the steps into the midst of the rioters; they
dragged Paul away from his assailants and carried him
shoulder-high back up the steps, to prevent the assailants from
pulling him down. At the top of the steps stood the military
tribune, Claudius Lysias by name, who formally arrested Paul
and ordered him to be handcuffed to two soldiers and taken
into the fortress.
It was impossible to make sense of the crowd’s excited
accusations, but Paul had plainly done something to infuriate
the people. The tribune jumped to the conclusion that he was
an Egyptian adventurer who, some three years before, had
appeared in Jerusalem claiming to be a prophet, and led a band
of followers to the Mount of Olives. There he told them to wait
until, at his word of command, the walls of Jerusalem would fall
down flat; then they would march in, overthrow the Roman
garrison and take possession of the city. The procurator Felix
sent a body of troops against them who killed some, took others
prisoner, and dispersed the rest. The Egyptian discreetly
vanished.46 The feelings of those whom he had duped would
not be friendly towards him; now, thought the tribune, he had
reappeared and the people were venting their rage on him.
He was therefore surprised when Paul, before he could be
taken into the fortress, addressed him in educated Greek and
asked permission to speak to the crowd. Paul assured him that
he was no Egyptian, but a Jew from Tarsus, “a citizen of no
mean city” (Acts 21:39). The tribune gave him the permission
which he sought, and from his vantage-point at the top of the
steps, flanked by the soldiers to whom he was handcuffed, Paul
secured the crowd’s attentive silence for a time by addressing
them in their Aramaic vernacular.
He told them of his own zeal for God and strict devotion to
the ancestral law, and explained why he had adopted the
course which he now followed. As his speech is summarized by
Luke, it emphasizes those aspects in Paul’s story which might
make a special appeal to such hearers—his upbringing in
Jerusalem, his education at the feet of Gamaliel, his fanatical
persecution of “the Way”, the part played in his conversion and
call by Ananias of Damascus, “a devout man according to the
law”, and the subsequent confirmation of his call in the
Jerusalem temple itself, where the risen Lord appeared to him
in a vision and sent him “far away to the Gentiles” (Acts 22:3–
21).47
At this last word the crowd remembered its grievance and
the hubbub broke out afresh, so that the tribune, despairing of
finding out the cause of the trouble except by examining his
prisoner under torture, had Paul taken into the fortress and
gave orders for him to be scourged. Both Greek and Roman
legal systems had the idea that people were more likely to tell
the truth under torture, or the threat of it, but Greek law
generally exempted freemen from such treatment, and Roman
law exempted Roman citizens. Accordingly, as Paul was being
tied up for the lash, he asked the centurion in charge of the
operation if it was permissible to scourge a Roman citizen,
especially one against whom no crime had been proved in open
court. The centurion suspended the arrangements for
scourging and went to the tribune with the news that the man
was a Roman citizen. The tribune, in some alarm, sent in haste
to ask Paul if this was true. On being assured that it was, the
tribune looked at him doubtfully. “I know how much it cost me
to acquire the citizenship”, he said—perhaps with the
implication that Paul, who must by now have presented a very
dishevelled appearance, did not look as if he had one denarius
to rub against another. “Ah”, said Paul; “I was born a citizen.”
The tribune was duly impressed.48
A Roman citizen must be treated in accordance with due
legal procedure. Evidently Paul was being charged with an
offence against Jewish law, and the Sanhedrin was the proper
body to deal with such an offence. Paul, therefore was brought
before the Sanhedrin, which was presided over at this time by
a high priest of very doubtful reputation, Ananias the son of
Nedebaeus (A.D. 47–58).49 But until a charge was formally
made and it was ascertained whether or not the Sanhedrin had
jurisdiction in the case, the tribune maintained his
responsibility for Paul. If witnesses had come forward to say
that they had seen Paul take a Gentile into the inner courts,
then the case would certainly have fallen within the
competence of the Sanhedrin—but throughout the long drawn
out proceedings, from first to last, no such witnesses were
forthcoming. Paul might declare that in Christ the middle wall
of partition between Jew and Gentile had been broken down,50
but he knew that the material wall of partition in the temple
still stood, and he would have thrown away his hopes of getting
safely out of Jerusalem and visiting Rome and Spain if he had
done such a crazy thing as the Asian Jews alleged when they
raised the hue and cry against him.51
Since no accusers presented themselves before the
Sanhedrin at this stage, Paul took the opportunity to say a
word himself. He started off inauspiciously, with a rebuke to
the high priest for conduct unbefitting the president of the
supreme court of Israel, but when he had apologized to the
dignitary (if not to the man),52 he began again and enlisted the
good will of the Pharisaic members of the court by declaring
that the whole issue on which he stood before them rested on
the hope of resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus,
authenticated to Paul on the Damascus road when he received
the call to his present ministry, was bound up in his mind with
the general hope of resurrection which he shared with all the
Pharisees. In the absence of a clear charge against Paul on
which they could adjudicate, the Sadducees and Pharisees in
the Sanhedrin fell to arguing about the resurrection, the
Pharisees feeling that a man who was so sound on this
fundamental doctrine could not be altogether bad.
5. Paul sent to Caesarea
At last the tribune, finding that no progress was being made
with his problem of how to deal with this inconvenient Roman
citizen, had him taken back to the fortress. Meanwhile Paul’s
enemies, seeing that there was no legal way of getting him into
their hands, plotted to assassinate him next time he was
brought before the Sanhedrin. Paul’s nephew learned about
this plot—this is the only reference we have in any New
Testament document to any relative of Paul, and a tantalizingly
fleeting one it is53—and obtained access to Paul in the fortress
and told him what was afoot. Paul arranged for him to tell the
tribune what he had discovered. This made the tribune’s mind
up. He could no longer take personal responsibility for Paul’s
safety. There were issues here with which he could not cope: if
any one was to cope with them, let it be the provincial
governor.
Accordingly he sent Paul off by night, under armed guard, to
Caesarea, where the governor had his headquarters. When the
party reached Antipatris (Rosh haʿAyin) next morning, the foot-
soldiers returned, leaving seventy light-armed cavalry to escort
Paul on the remaining 27 miles to Caesarea. With Paul the
tribune sent a letter to the governor, explaining the
circumstances and representing his own rôle in the best light:
he had rescued Paul from his assailants in the temple, he said,
“having learned that he was a Roman citizen” (Acts 23:27).
Rome: Appian Way (see p. 374)
Rome: Inscriptions from the Church of St. Praxedis and the Church of St.
Sebastian (see p. 452)
The governor read the letter, asked Paul which province he
came from, and had him kept in custody in his headquarters at
Caesarea—the official praetorium which had been built by
Herod as his palace. The governor himself would henceforth
take charge of the proceedings.54
Paul had good reason to ask for the prayers of the Roman
Christians that he might “be delivered from the unbelievers in
Judaea” (Romans 15:31). Delivered he was, but in
circumstances which involved the loss of his freedom for the
next four years at least, and the postponement of his plan to
visit Rome. So ended his last visit to Jerusalem.
CHAPTER 31
Caesarea and the Appeal to
Caesar
1. Paul and Felix
CAESAREA, WHERE PAUL WAS TO SPEND THE NEXT
TWO YEARS, was built by Herod the Great between 20 and 9
B.C., on the site formerly called Strato’s Tower, in order to
serve as the principal Mediterranean port of his kingdom.
Because of the lack of natural harbours along the coast south
of the Bay of Haifa, he had an elaborate artificial harbour
constructed here, enclosed by a semicircular breakwater,
together with several other installations (excavated in 1956
and the following years) such as the temple of Augustus (in
whose honour the city received its name), a magnificent
theatre and a hippodrome.1 From the outset it was a
predominantly Gentile city, and for this reason the Roman
governors of Judaea from A.D. 6 onwards found it a more
congenial place for their normal residence than Jerusalem.
Herod’s palace in Caesarea served them as their headquarters
(praetorium). The name of an earlier governor of Judaea,
Pontius Pilate, was found in a Latin inscription in the theatre
when it was being excavated in 1961; there Pilate’s official title
is given as “prefect” (praefectus).2 It has been thought that the
title procurator came to be used of the governor of Judaea from
A.D. 44 onwards (although procurator is the title which Tacitus
gives to Pilate).3
The procurator who took Paul into custody at Caesarea,
Marcus Antonius Felix, was not the typical Roman provincial
governor. Prefects or procurators of third-grade provinces like
Judaea belonged regularly to the equestrian order (whereas
proconsuls of senatorial provinces and legates of imperial
provinces were drawn from the nobility, the senatorial order).
But Felix was a freedman (libertus), who had once been a slave
in the household of Antonia, daughter of Mark Antony and
Octavia, widow of Drusus (Tiberius’s brother) and mother of
the Emperor Claudius. His brother Pallas, who was likewise
one of Antonia’s emancipated slaves, rose to a position of high
responsibility and opportunity under Claudius, as chief
accountant of the public treasury (praepositus a rationibus)—
chancellor of the exchequer, one might say. It could well have
been his influence that helped to procure for Felix the
governorship of Judaea,4 but Felix had considerable native
ability, coupled with personal qualities which won for him the
entrée into the most exalted families. Each of his three
successive wives was of royal birth: one was a granddaughter
of Antony and Cleopatra,5 and his third wife, whom he had
married by the time his path crossed Paul’s, was Drusilla, the
youngest daughter of Herod Agrippa the elder and sister of
Agrippa II and Bernice.
From a statement of Tacitus it has been inferred that before
being appointed to succeed Ventidius Cumanus as procurator
of Judaea in A.D. 52, Felix had occupied an administrative post
under Cumanus in Samaria (which was part of the province of
Judaea).6 During this period he seems to have won the
confidence of Jonathan, the son of Ananus (Annas), an
influential ex-high priest, who pressed for Felix’s appointment
as procurator of Judaea when he was in Rome on a deputation
to voice Jewish grievances against Cumanus.7 It is to Tacitus
that Felix owes the unfavourable reputation of having
“exercised the power of a king with the mind of a slave”;8 but
allowance must be made for the prejudice with which Tacitus
would contemplate the exaltation of a man of such humble
origins. Felix’s entry upon his procuratorship of Judaea
coincided with the emergence of a new body of terrorists (alias
freedom fighters), the sicarii or dagger-men, who mingled with
crowds at festivals and the like and stabbed Jewish
“collaborationists” and others of whom they disapproved. One
of their first victims was the ex-high priest Jonathan.9 The
ruthless vigour with which Felix put down these and other
liberationist movements raised his credit in Rome, and even
when Pallas fell from favour in the imperial household in A.D.
55, shortly after Nero’s accession,10 Felix remained in office in
Judaea for four more years.
This, then, was the man to whom Paul was sent by the
military tribune in Jerusalem, and who henceforth had the
responsibility of investigating the complaints against him.
Proceedings against Paul were now taken up by the
Sanhedrin. Five days after Paul’s arrival in Caesarea, a
deputation from that body came down to state their case before
Felix. With them they brought an orator named Tertullus to
present it in the conventional terms of forensic rhetoric. Luke
quotes the exordium of Tertullus’s speech rather fully; it is a
fair example of the captatio beniuolentiae employed in
addressing such an official (Acts 24:2 ff.):
Your excellency! It is thanks to you that we enjoy unbroken peace; it is due to
your provident care that, in every way and in every place, improvements are
made for the good of this nation. We welcome this, sir, most gratefully. And now,
not to take up your valuable time, I crave your indulgence for a brief statement of
our case.
Then followed the indictment, asserting, as it passed from the
more general to the more particular, that Paul was a perfect
plague, a fomenter of discord among Jews throughout the
Roman Empire, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes,11
and that he had attempted to profane the temple. He was
caught in the act while committing this last offence, but when
the Jewish authorities had arrested him in accordance with
their special jurisdiction in such matters, the military tribune
had, with unwarranted force, snatched him from their hands.12
It is doubtful if the procurator of Judaea had any competence
to take up the general complaints, which were probably
designed to prejudice his mind against Paul. The particular
charge of temple profanation was a grave one, but there was a
serious defect in its presentation: no witnesses were produced
serious defect in its presentation: no witnesses were produced
to substantiate it. Paul was not slow to point this out when
Felix invited him to reply to the accusations (Acts 24:10 ff.):
Realizing that you have been governing this nation for many years, I make my
defence with confidence. As you may ascertain, it is not more than twelve days
since I went up to worship at Jerusalem. They did not find me disputing with any
one or stirring up a crowd, either in the temple or in the synagogues or anywhere
in the city. Neither can they produce evidence for the charges which they now
bring against me. This much I admit: according to the Way—the “sect” of which
they speak—I worship the God of our fathers. I believe everything laid down in
the law or written in the prophets, sharing the same hope in God as my accusers
cherish, that there will be a resurrection of just and unjust alike. So I always train
myself to maintain a clear conscience before God and men.
After an absence of several years I came to bring alms and offerings for my
nation. They found me in the temple purified, discharging this service, without
any crowd or disturbance. But it was some Jews from the province of Asia who
stirred up the trouble, and they ought to be here before you to state whatever
charge they have to lay against me. In their default, let my accusers themselves
say of what offence they found me guilty when I was brought before the
Sanhedrin, unless it lay in my open assertion as I stood among them: “the real
issue of my trial before you today is the resurrection of the dead”.
If Paul drew attention to the absence of the potential
witnesses for the prosecution, the procurator decided that
another material witness was absent, from whom he might
expect a more impartial account than the accusers or the
defendant were likely to give. Accordingly, having listened to
the Sanhedrin’s charge and to Paul’s reply, he adjourned
proceedings—perhaps with the Latin formula Amplius: “When
Lysias the tribune comes down”, he said, “I will decide your
case.”
Luke’s formulation of Paul’s defence contains the only
reference to the Jerusalem relief fund in the record of Acts, and
includes some other features of interest. Apart from the
insistence that no evidence was produced to substantiate the
allegation that he had violated the sanctity of the temple, the
contents of the speech might well have a greater relevance to
Paul’s later appearance before the supreme tribunal in Rome
than to his present appearance before the procurator of
Judaea, and the same thing might indeed be said of the more
general terms of Tertullus’s indictment. This raises the long-
debated question of the relation between Acts and Paul’s trial
in Rome. If it can no longer be held that Luke actually wrote his
record to brief the counsel for the defence, or otherwise to
serve as a document in the case,13 the possibility remains that
some material of this kind was used as source-material in the
composition of Acts. Charges, expressed or implied, that Paul
was a disturber of the peace in the provinces, that he had
diverted to a sectarian interest money which ought to have
gone to the maintenance of the temple or to the relief of the
Judaeans as a whole, and that he was propagating a new cult
which (despite Gallio’s ruling) had no right to share the
protection extended by Roman law to the Jewish religion,
would have been relevant indeed in a hearing before the
emperor, however little they may have fallen within the
jurisdiction of Felix.
We may suppose that Felix did hold a further hearing at
which Claudius Lysias was present to give his evidence,
although no record of it has been preserved. Even so, nothing
that Claudius Lysias could have said would have helped the
case against Paul, and if Felix had had regard simply to the
legalities of the situation, he might have discharged Paul there
and then. But he postponed such action—hoping, says Luke,
that Paul (or his associates) might try to persuade him by
bribery to do what it was in any case his duty to do. The fact
that Paul had so recently come to Jerusalem with “alms and
offerings” may have suggested to Felix that Paul had access to
sources of supply from which Felix himself might derive some
financial profit. Stringent as Roman laws against bribery
were,14 they were not sufficient to make many provincial
governors resist the opportunities for quick enrichment which
their office presented, and Felix was not the man to let such
opportunities pass—modest as they were in comparison with
those which his brother Pallas was able to exploit in Rome.15
His hopes of a bribe from Paul or his friends, however, were
not realized, so Paul remained undischarged.
2. Paul’s associates
Meanwhile, it may be asked, what happened to the Gentile
Christians who had accompanied Paul to Jerusalem? Two of
them seem to have stayed on in Judaea, Luke and Aristarchus;
perhaps they went to Caesarea so as to be near Paul and
perform what services they could for him.16 The others
probably made their way home as quickly and unobtrusively as
they could: the turn of events which they had witnessed in
Jerusalem may well have frustrated the realization of Paul’s
hopes that his Gentile churches would find that the collection
forged a bond of affection between them and their Judaean
brethren. Whether the Judaean brethren in their turn felt more
closely drawn to their Gentile fellow-Christians “because of the
surpassing grace of God” manifested in their generous gift (2
Corinthians 9:14) we have no means of knowing.
Neither have we any means of knowing if the Jerusalem
church or its leaders exerted themselves at all on Paul’s behalf
when they saw the predicament into which their well-meant
counsel had brought him. Probably they felt relieved when they
heard that he had been taken to Caesarea. This last visit of
Paul’s to Jerusalem had followed the pattern of earlier visits:
trouble had broken out once more. It would really be best if
Paul never came to Jerusalem again. Now that he was in
Caesarea, under Roman guard, he was probably out of
immediate danger, but in any case there was little that they
could do for him. Moreover, the high priest and Sanhedrin
were engaged in prosecuting him, and it would be unwise to do
anything which might unnecessarily attract their hostile
attention. It is easy to credit the Jerusalem church and its
leaders with unworthy motives, but some attempt should be
made to appreciate the extremely difficult situation in which
they found themselves. If they still took seriously their
commission to evangelize their fellow-Jews (and there is no
reason to suppose that they had ceased to do so), any public
association with Paul would have been a major handicap to its
prosecution. It is possible, indeed, that this association was one
of the grounds for the illegal execution of James the Just at the
instance of the high priest Ananus II during the interregnum in
the procuratorship which followed the death of Festus (A.D.
62).17
3. Two years in Caesarea
As for Paul himself, there are several scholars who hold that
it was from Caesarea that some, if not all, of his “captivity
epistles” were sent.18 We have seen that an Ephesian
provenance has been postulated for some of them;19 but
whereas an Ephesian imprisonment is but an inference
(however reasonable) from ambiguous data, there is no doubt
that Paul did undergo an imprisonment in Caesarea. In
Philippians 1:13 he says that it has become known throughout
the whole praetorium that his imprisonment is for Christ’s
sake. He was certainly kept under guard in the praetorium at
Caesarea, and this might be the praetorium which he mentions
in writing to the Philippians; however, praetorium is a word
with several meanings. Apart from its use to designate the
praetorian guard in Rome, it meant the commanding officer’s
headquarters in a military camp, or the headquarters of a
provincial governor (like the legate of Syria or the procurator
of Judaea) who had troops under his command. It does not
seem to have been used of the proconsular headquarters in a
province like Asia which had no standing army.20
As for the other group of captivity epistles—Philemon,
Colossians and Ephesians—we have to consider Paul’s request
to Philemon to get the guest-room ready for him, since he
hopes to be released and to pay him a visit:21 is it likely that he
thought of going back to proconsular Asia if he were set free
from his Caesarean imprisonment? It is just conceivable, if he
thought of taking the long land-route to Rome, instead of the
more direct sea-route, but not very probable. Reference has
been made above to the “unnecessary supposition” that it was
at Ephesus that Aristarchus was his fellow-prisoner, as he calls
him in Colossians 4:10.22 Since he appears to have been with
Paul at Caesarea, was it there that he shared his
imprisonment? Possibly; but he went in due course with Paul to
Rome, and could have shared his imprisonment there.
All that Luke tells us of Paul’s tedious period of custody in
Caesarea is that from time to time Felix called him to his
presence for conversation. For, strange as it appears, Felix,
according to Luke, had “a rather accurate knowledge of the
Way” (Acts 24:22). Nothing that is otherwise known about Felix
prepares the reader for this statement, but it must be linked
with his marriage to the youngest daughter of the elder Herod
Agrippa. Indeed, the Western text says quite explicitly that it
was Felix’s wife “who asked to see Paul and hear him speak, so
wishing to satisfy her he summoned Paul”.
At this time Drusilla was not yet twenty years old. As a small
girl she had been betrothed to the crown prince of
Commagene, but the marriage did not take place because he
refused to embrace Judaism. Then her brother, the younger
Agrippa, gave her in marriage to Azizus, king of Emesa (Homs)
in Syria, who was prepared to make the necessary sacrifice.
But when she was still only sixteen, Felix—with the help, says
Josephus, of a Cypriot magician named Atomos—persuaded her
to leave her husband and become his third wife. (There was no
question of his becoming a Jew in order to marry her.)23 She
bore Felix one son, Agrippa by name, who met his death in the
eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79.24
Thus summoned to take part in religious discussion with this
extraordinary couple, Paul not only expounded the Christian
faith and its relation to Judaism but also emphasized the ethical
implications of his message—righteousness, self-control and
future judgment. When Felix felt that the conversation was
taking too personal a turn for his comfort, he dismissed Paul
for the time being, but recalled him repeatedly—perhaps as a
change from the boredom of official life. Caesarea, we may
suppose, did not provide much in the way of diversion, but the
acrimonious communal strife between its Jewish and Gentile
residents gave him increasing trouble, and led at last to his
recall.
Although Caesarea had the constitution of a Gentile city, its
Jewish residents believed that they were entitled to isopoliteia
—equal civic rights with their Gentile neighbours—because the
city’s royal founder was a Jew. The dispute about these rights
led to rioting between the two communities, and when Felix’s
troops intervened to put down the rioting, they did so in a way
which, the Jews believed, favoured the Gentile cause against
theirs. This exacerbated the strife, and Felix sent the leaders of
the two communities to Rome to make their representations
before the emperor. The upshot was that the Jews’ claim to
isopoliteia was disallowed25—a grievance which became one of
the factors leading to the Jewish revolt against Rome in A.D. 66
—but at the beginning of the investigation Felix was summoned
to Rome and relieved of his procuratorship. He suffered
nothing worse than this because of the continuing influence of
his brother Pallas who, although he had been dismissed from
the civil service four years previously, retained considerable
personal power because of his great wealth and his contacts
with the people who mattered.26
Felix had earned the disapproval of the Jews in his province
for a variety of reasons and, most recently, for what was
interpreted as his anti-Jewish action in Caesarea. There was
not much he could do to redress the balance, but at least he
need not annoy the Sanhedrin gratuitously by releasing Paul.
“If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend” was an
argument which had been used effectively with one of his
predecessors,27 so Felix, “desiring to do the Jews a favour, left
Paul in prison” (Acts 24:27).
4. A new procurator
Felix was succeeded as procurator by Porcius Festus,28 who
inherited the responsibility of coming to a decision about Paul.
He was probably quite inexperienced in Jewish affairs and,
unlike Felix, he had no Jewish wife through whom he could
acquire “a rather accurate knowledge of the Way”. The new
governor’s inexperience could easily be exploited to Paul’s
disadvantage, especially if he endeavoured at the outset of his
period of office to establish good relations with the high priest
and Sanhedrin. This was precisely what Festus did. A few days
after his arrival in Judaea he went up to Jerusalem to make
their acquaintance, and after the appropriate exchange of
civilities they raised the question of Paul (no doubt among
other matters which Felix had left in an unsatisfactory state).
Festus agreed to re-open the case, so a deputation from the
Sanhedrin came down to Caesarea to restate their charges
against Paul. As before Felix, so now before Festus, Paul
returned a direct negative to each of their charges. His
situation was precarious. If the governor found that a prima
facie case had been made out against him on the ground of
sacrilege, he might have been handed over forthwith to the
Sanhedrin’s jurisdiction. The governor’s imperium was such
that he was not necessarily bound by his predecessor’s finding,
even if that finding had been placed on record. But Paul’s
accusers probably overplayed their hand by charging him
further (as they had done before Felix) with offences against
the imperial peace; this was something which belonged to
Roman jurisdiction and not to theirs.
However, in his desire to ingratiate himself with the Jewish
leaders, Festus proposed to transfer the inquiry to Jerusalem,
where the alleged sacrilege had been committed; he himself
would continue to keep it under his own control. He no doubt
regarded this as a reasonable proposal, but Paul did not think it
reasonable at all. If Festus began by making one concession to
the Sanhedrin, he might well go on to make more, and each
concession would expose Paul to further peril. Festus might
even treat the Sanhedrin as his consilium, his ad hoc advisory
body, as his imperium entitled him to do.29 There was one
course open to Paul as a Roman citizen to avoid this particular
peril, even if it was a course which might be attended by perils
of its own. It was not, he assured Festus, that he wished to
circumvent the law of Rome or escape the due reward of
anything he had done. If he were in fact guilty of a capital
crime, as his accusers maintained, he was prepared to suffer
the supreme penalty; but if there was no substance in their
charges, he must not be placed in their power. Let Roman
justice decide. As Festus was Caesar’s representative, the
tribunal before which Paul stood was Caesar’s, but since Paul
had not sufficient confidence in the provincial tribunal, he
appealed to the supreme tribunal: “I appeal to Caesar”, he
declared (Acts 25:11).
5. Appeal to Caesar
The citizen’s right of appeal (prouocatio) to the emperor
appears to have developed from the earlier right of appeal in
republican times to the sovereign Roman people. According to
Dio Cassius,30 Octavian in 30 B.C. was granted the right to
judge on appeal (ekklēton dikazein, in which A. H. M. Jones
recognized the Greek equivalent of ex prouocatione
cognoscere).31 It was in this period, too, that the lex Iulia de ui
publica (mentioned above) was enacted.32 This law forbade any
magistrate vested with imperium or potestas to kill, scourge,
chain or torture a Roman citizen, or even to sentence him
aduersus prouocationem (“in the face of an appeal”) or prevent
him from going to Rome to lodge his appeal there within a fixed
time.33 Professor Jones concluded that, from the date of this
enactment, a Roman citizen anywhere in the empire was
protected against summary magisterial punishment (coercitio),
although the provincial magistrate might deal with cases which
involved a plain breach of established statute law (which Paul’s
case manifestly did not).34 By the beginning of the second
century A.D. it evidently became the regular practice for
Roman citizens in the provinces, charged with offences extra
ordinem (not covered by the standard code of procedure), to be
sent to Rome almost automatically, without going through the
formality of appealing to Caesar.35 But there seems to have
been a gradual erosion of the citizen’s privileges with the
steady increase in the number of citizens throughout the
empire as the second century advanced36—a tendency which
reached its climax in A.D. 212 with the extension of the
franchise to all freeborn provincials under Caracalla. In this as
in other respects, when we think historically and not
theologically, the picture given in Acts is true to the dramatic
date of the book; the case of Paul’s appeal fits in with what we
know of conditions in the late fifties of the first Christian
century, and Luke’s account of it is worthy to be treated as a
substantial contribution to the available evidence.
It was with some relief that Festus heard Paul’s appeal to
Caesar: he himself would now be quit of the responsibility of
adjudicating in a case where he knew himself to be out of his
depth. One responsibility remained, however: he had to send to
Rome along with the accused man an explanatory statement
(litterae dimissoriae) outlining the nature of the case and its
history up to date. In drafting this statement he was glad to
have the timely aid of one who was reputed to be an expert in
Jewish religious affairs.
Not long after Paul’s appeal, the younger Agrippa and his
sister Bernice came to Caesarea to pay their respects to the
new procurator. After the death of his father, Herod Agrippa I,
in A.D. 44 the younger Agrippa, then seventeen years old, was
judged by Claudius and his advisers too immature to be
appointed king of the Jews in his place, but he was given a less
unmanageable district farther north to rule with the title of
king, and at the present time his kingdom comprised the
former tetrarchies of Philip and Lysanias, east and north of the
Lake of Galilee, together with the cities of Tiberias and
Tarichaeae west of the Lake, and Julias in Peraea, with their
surrounding villages. His capital was Caesarea Philippi (now
Banyas), which he renamed Neronias as a compliment to the
Emperor Nero. In addition to his royal dignity, he enjoyed from
A.D. 48 to 66 the privilege of appointing (and deposing) the
high priests of Israel.37
After the normal exchange of courtesies, Festus acquainted
Agrippa with his problem. The charges against Paul, he said,
seemed to revolve around “one Jesus, who was dead, but whom
Paul asserted to be alive” (Acts 25:19). Agrippa’s interest was
immediately aroused and he expressed a desire to meet Paul.
Festus was only too glad to arrange an interview, and next day
Festus was only too glad to arrange an interview, and next day
Paul was brought before Festus, Agrippa, Bernice and other
notabilities.
The speech which Paul made, according to Luke, in response
to Agrippa’s invitation to him to state his case, is as carefully
adapted to this setting as his speech to the turbulent crowd in
the temple court is to that setting. Luke, indeed, takes this
speech as the opportunity to present Paul’s apologia pro vita
sua. He is no doubt true to life when he portrays Paul as unable
to maintain complete objectivity in his statement. As Paul
warms to his theme that the gospel to which he is dedicated
consists of “nothing but what the prophets and Moses said
would come to pass” (Acts 26:22), he invites Agrippa to
endorse the logic of his argument; Agrippa laughs off the
invitation with the remark that Paul will not get him to play the
part of a Christian as easily as that. But Agrippa agreed with
Festus that Paul could not reasonably be convicted on any of
the serious charges brought against him. Indeed, said the king,
Paul might have been discharged on the spot had he not
appealed to Caesar, but for Festus to prejudge the issue now
by releasing him would have been impolitic, if not ultra vires.
But Agrippa presumably gave Festus the help he required in
drafting the litterae dimissoriae.
Paul did not appeal to Caesar while Felix was in office,
presumably because Felix had virtually decided on his
innocence and was simply postponing his formal acquittal and
release. One day, Felix’s procrastination would come to an end
and Paul would be discharged and be able to carry out his long-
cherished plan of travelling to Rome and the west. So Paul
might have hoped. But with the recall of Felix and his
supersession by Festus a new and dangerous situation was
developing for Paul; hence his momentous decision.
From what we know of Paul, we may be sure that the
uppermost consideration in his appeal to Caesar was not his
own safety, but the interests of the gospel. Seven or eight years
previously he had experienced the benevolent neutrality of
Roman law in the decision of Gallio, proconsul of Achaia, that
there was nothing illegal in his preaching.38 He might
reasonably expect a similarly favourable verdict from the
supreme court in Rome. Not only so: even a man of smaller
intelligence than Paul must have realized that the
consideration which moved Gallio would not be valid much
longer. Gallio had ruled in effect that what Paul preached was
a variety of Judaism, and therefore not forbidden by Roman
law. But, thanks in large measure to Paul’s own activity, it
would soon be impossible to regard Christianity as a variety of
Judaism, since it was now manifestly more Gentile than Jewish.
A favourable hearing from the emperor in Rome might win
recognition for Christianity, if not as the true fulfilment of
Israel’s ancestral religion (which Paul believed it to be), at least
as a permitted association (collegium licitum) in its own
right.39 Besides, if Caesar in person heard Paul’s defence, what
might the outcome not be?40 The younger Agrippa had politely
declined to admit the logic of Paul’s argument, but Gentiles had
regularly shown themselves more amenable to the gospel than
Jews, and a Roman emperor might be more easily won than a
Jewish client-king. It would be precarious to set limits to Paul’s
high hopes, however impracticable they may appear to us in
retrospect.
But would Caesar hear the case in person? This would not
follow from the fact that it was to Caesar that Paul appealed.
According to Tacitus, Nero announced at the beginning of his
principate that he would not judge cases in propria persona, as
his predecessor Claudius had done; and indeed, during his first
eight years he generally delegated them to others.41 A. N.
Sherwin-White is thus right in saying: “If Paul came to trial
some time after the period of two years mentioned in Acts
28:30, it is probable that his case was heard by someone other
than the Princeps.”42 This “someone other” might be the
praefectus praetorio, “representing the Emperor in his capacity
as the fountain of justice, together with the assessors and high
officers of the court”.43 But this is a matter on which we have
no information.
CHAPTER 32
“And So We Came to Rome”
1. Embarkation for Italy
SINCE PAUL WAS A PRISONER, HE HAD TO BE SENT TO
ROME UNDER guard. When a suitable opportunity came along,
he was put in charge (together with some other prisoners) of “a
centurion of the Augustan Cohort,1 named Julius” (Acts 27:1).
The centurion had a number of soldiers under his command to
assist him in the discharge of his duties.
Theodor Mommsen, followed by W. M. Ramsay, inferred
from these words that Julius was a member of the corps of
frumentarii—a corps of centurions who served as liaison
officers between Rome and the armies in the imperial
provinces, and who might well undertake as an additional duty
the escorting of prisoners from the provinces to Rome.2 There
is, however, no evidence that the frumentarii acted as liaison
officers or imperial police before the principate of Hadrian
(A.D. 117–138);3 their original duty, as their name implies, was
the organization of the transport of grain (frumentum) to
Rome.
The transport of grain from Egypt, the chief granary of
Rome, was of the highest importance: the shipping fleet
devoted to it was organized for the service of the Roman state
“as early as the Ptolemaic period.”4 It was indeed in a vessel
belonging to this service that the greatest part of Paul’s voyage
to Rome was completed. The ship in which Paul and the others
embarked at Caesarea was bound in the opposite direction to
that by which he and his companions had come to Palestine
two years before; it was making in the first instance for the
south-west coast of Asia Minor, but had to sail east and north
of Cyprus, under the lee of the island, the prevailing wind
being west or north-west. The ship put in at Myra, a port some
miles east of Patara; it was then to sail north along the west
coast of Asia Minor until it reached Adramyttium, on the
mainland opposite Lesbos, which was its home port. At Myra,
however, the centurion transferred his charges to a vessel of
the Alexandrian grain-fleet, bound for Italy, with a considerable
number of passengers on board.5 With a steady wind from the
west, the best route from Alexandria to Italy was by Myra,
which was in fact one of the chief ports serving the grain-fleet.
The sequel shows that the centurion exercised considerable
authority on board this vessel; he may well have been a
frumentarius in the earlier sense of the term.
Rome: Catacombs of St. Sebastian: graffiti invoking Peter and Paul (see p.
452)
Rome: St. Paul-Without-the-Walls: façade and porch, showing statue of Paul
(see p. 451)
The description of the voyage to Italy is a masterpiece of
vivid narrative. Martin Dibelius, drawing special attention to
the literary and stylistic features of the narrative, pointed to
the defects in “the older school of criticism, which thinks only
of the event and not of the account”.6 Equally defective would
be an approach which thought only of the account and not of
the event. True, the classical student will readily discern in this
narrative a well-established literary form which can be traced
back to Homer’s Odyssey, and the Old Testament student will
trace some affinities with Jonah’s Mediterranean voyage.7 But
attention must also be paid to the detailed contents of the
narrative, which has been described (and justly so) as “one of
the most instructive documents for the knowledge of ancient
seamanship”.8
Paul was accompanied on the voyage by his friends Luke and
Aristarchus. Luke’s personal participation has given us an
account of the voyage in the first person plural. Perhaps he
signed on as ship’s doctor. Aristarchus may have been entered
on the passenger list as Paul’s servant, or he may even have
shared his status as a prisoner under guard: we do not know.
Paul’s genius for friendship manifested itself at an early
stage in the voyage. He so won the confidence of the centurion
that by the time the ship on which they had embarked at
Caesarea put in at Sidon he was allowed to go ashore on parole
and visit his friends. Not only is Luke’s account of the voyage
instructive in the matter of ancient seamanship; it is valuable
also for its depicting of Paul’s personality in those trying
circumstances which are apt to bring out a man’s real quality.
2. Storm at sea
From Myra the going was slow and difficult, because of the
strong north-west wind that was blowing. The ship did not put
into port at Cnidus (on the Carian promontory of Triopium),
which they reached several days after setting out from Myra,
but ran for the eastern extremity of Crete (Cape Salmone) and
sailed under the lee of that island (along its south coast). The
first convenient shelter after rounding Cape Salmone was Fair
Havens (Kaloi Limenes), where they put in and waited for the
wind to change. Two leagues farther west lies Cape Matala,
beyond which the south coast of Crete trends suddenly to the
north and would provide no more protection against a north-
west wind.9
While they waited, they held a ship’s council, in which Paul—
perhaps because he was an experienced traveller—was invited
to participate. The safe season for Mediterranean navigation
was now at an end: Luke mentions that “the fast”—that is, the
Jewish day of atonement—“had already gone by” (Acts 27:9). In
A.D. 59 the Day of Atonement fell on October 5, and the
dangerous season for sailing had set in three weeks before.10 It
was plain therefore that they could not complete the voyage to
Italy before winter; the question was therefore debated where
they should stay until winter was past. Paul strongly urged
them to stay where they were in Fair Havens; there was a
neighbouring town, Lasea,11 where accommodation might be
available for the ship’s company. He foresaw danger and
disaster if they sailed farther.
The pilot and shipowner, however, thought that they should
make for the more commodious and better protected harbour
of Phoenix (modern Phineka),12 some 36 miles (60 kilometres)
west of Cape Matala. The centurion took their advice, and his
vote seems to have been the decisive one. Soon after this
decision was taken, the wind changed, and it appeared as if
they might gain the winter quarters they had in mind. But they
had scarcely rounded Cape Matala when the wind changed
again: a typhonic north-easter, known to sailors as Euraquilo,
rushed down upon them from Mount Ida and drove them out to
sea.13 They soon ran under the lee of the small island of Cauda
(Gavdos), some 23 miles to the south-west, and made speedy
and timely use of the brief spell of shelter thus afforded—
hauling the dinghy on board (it was normally towed astern),
undergirding the ship and letting down the drift-anchor.14
There was great danger that, if Euraquilo continued blowing
with gale force, it would drive them into the Greater Syrtis, the
quicksands west of Cyrene. But with the drift-anchor dragging
astern and the storm-sail set on the foremast, it was possible
for the ship to be laid-to on the starboard tack (with her right
side to the wind) and drift slowly, at a rate of about one and a
half knots, in a general direction of eight degrees north of
west. All the movable baggage and spare gear were thrown
overboard, followed after a day or two by the mainyard. At a
later stage the wheat cargo itself had to be jettisoned.
The storm raged for many days on end, blotting out the sky,
so that they had neither sun by day nor stars by night to guide
them. It was thus impossible to fix an accurate course, or even
to reckon the passage of time with any precision. The ship was
no doubt leaking badly, and they “could not tell which way to
make for the nearest land, in order to run their ship ashore, the
only resource for a sinking ship; but unless they did make the
land, they must founder at sea.”15 Hunger and thirst were fast
reducing their stamina; they had but little appetite in this
desperate plight, quite apart from the difficulty of preparing
food and the possibility that what food they had was spoiled or
lost. Sooner rather than later, it seemed, the ship was bound to
go down with all on board.
There is no implication in Luke’s narrative that Paul did not
share the general pessimism of the rest on board who
abandoned all hope of survival. He had faced death before and
was inwardly prepared for it: his ambition, as he put it on
another occasion, was “that with full courage now as always
Christ will be honoured in my body, whether by life or by
death” (Philippians 1:20). This was more important even than
bearing witness in Rome, which indeed he had been divinely
assured early in his Jerusalem imprisonment he would yet do. It
was he who had uttered the warning at Fair Havens that the
result of proceeding with the voyage would be “much loss, not
only of the cargo and the ship, but also of our lives” (Acts
27:10). That was the voice of practical common sense, not of
special revelation. But after ten or twelve days of drifting he
experienced a night-vision in which it was revealed to him not
only that he himself would survive to bear his witness before
Caesar but that for his sake the lives of all his shipmates would
be spared. (It is doubtful if Luke intended a contrast with
Jonah, whose presence on board endangered the lives of all his
shipmates.)
The fresh confidence with which he himself was thus
inspired he endeavoured to impart to the others. This ship
would be lost, he told them, but they themselves would be
saved, “though we have to be cast ashore on some island”16
(Acts 27:26). Sure enough, during the fourteenth night after
they left Fair Havens the sound of breakers off a rocky coast
gave warning of approaching land, and successive soundings
confirmed this. The sailors therefore dropped four anchors
from the stern to serve as a brake until daylight showed them
where they were. In the morning they slipped anchor and ran
the ship into a creek with a sandy beach. What they could not
know was that in the creek the ship “would strike a bottom of
mud graduating into tenacious clay, into which the fore part
would fix itself and be held fast, whilst the stern was exposed
to the force of the waves”.17 After the strains and stresses to
which the hull had been exposed it could not survive this fresh
battering for long, and soon began to break up. The centurion
issued a sauve qui peut order, and all reached land in safety.
3. Winter in Malta
Only when they landed did they find out where they were—
on Malta. The name of the island was originally given by
Phoenician sailors, in whose language melila meant “refuge”,
and as that word occurs in Hebrew with the same meaning,
Paul at any rate would recognize how apt the name was.18
As Luke has given a vivid portrayal of Paul’s helpfulness on
board the storm-tossed ship—keeping his head when all about
him were losing theirs, sharing with his shipmates his divinely-
imparted assurance that no life would be lost, urging them to
eat something in view of the exertions which they would have
to make in getting ashore from the wreck—so after the landing
he pictures him as a practical man, co-operating with others in
necessary work. The hospitable islanders light a fire to enable
the ship’s company to warm and dry themselves; Paul knows
(unlike many theologians) that a fire will not continue to burn
unless it is fed with fuel, and he joins in gathering sticks to
keep it going. When one of the “sticks” turns out to be a snake,
torpid through cold, which turns and fastens on his wrist when
the heat thaws it,19 the Maltese conclude that he has
committed some crime against heaven, and that Nemesis,
having failed to drown him, has caught up with him by means
of the snake.20 When Paul shakes off the snake and has plainly
taken no harm, they change their minds and conclude that he is
a god in disguise.
Paul was neither a god nor a superman, but his presence was
a blessing to many of the islanders during the winter. He was
still a prisoner, of course, but there was little danger that he or
the other prisoners would escape from Malta before the next
navigation season set in. He cured the father of Publius, the
“first man” of Malta,21 who was suffering from fever and
dysentery, and many other Maltese who had ailments of
various kinds came to him and Luke for treatment, so that, by
the time they were ready to sail to Italy, they were loaded with
gifts from their grateful patients.22
4. Rome at last!
The voyage to Italy was completed at the beginning of spring
in another ship of the Alexandrian state service, which had
wintered in Malta. It put in at Syracuse and Rhegium and then
set its passengers ashore at Puteoli (modern Pozzuoli), in the
Bay of Naples. There was a Christian group there, with whom
Paul was allowed to stay for seven days—presumably because
Julius had business which detained him in the area for that
length of time. Puteoli was the chief port of arrival in Italy of
merchant shipping from the eastern Mediterranean. If Julius
was a frumentarius in the original sense, he could well have
had to deal with the landing and storage of the ship’s cargo. (In
addition to the Christian group in Puteoli, there had been a
Jewish community there for the best part of a century.)23
The remainder of the journey to Rome was completed by
road; from Capua northward they travelled along the Via Appia.
But news of Paul’s arrival in Italy had reached Rome already—
no doubt the Christians in Puteoli had sent the message—and
he and his friends were still thirty or forty miles distant from
the capital24 when they were met by Roman Christians who
had walked out to greet them and escort them for the
remainder of their journey. Their presence and welcome
brought great encouragement to Paul. “And so”, says Luke,
“we came to Rome” (Acts 28:15).
In Rome, according to the Western text of Acts 28:16, the
prisoners (including Paul) were handed over to an official
called the stratopedarchos, the “camp-commandant”. One
witness to the Old Latin version of Acts25 (which is based on
the Western text) translates this title by princeps
peregrinorum. The existence of an official so designated is
attested by an African inscription of Trajan’s time;26 he was
evidently commandant of the castra peregrinorum on the
Caelian hill27—the headquarters of legionary officers on
furlough in Rome (and also, from the second century, of
frumentarii in their later rôle as liaison officers). But the
rendering princeps peregrinorum may be no more than an
intelligent guess; the stratopedarchos could have been the
commandant of some other camp—the castra praetoria, for
example, the headquarters of the praetorian guard near the
Viminal Gate, at the north-east corner of the city. The
praetorian camp-commandant (princeps castrorum) would have
been a much less exalted person than the prefect of the
praetorian guard (praefectus praetorio), who was a very
powerful officer of state.28 In any case, the longer Western
reading of Acts 28:16, which mentions the stratopedarchos,
cannot certainly be accepted as part of the original text, but all
forms of the text agree that Paul “was permitted to stay by
himself with the soldier who guarded him”. According to the
last sentence in Luke’s record, he stayed thus for two full years
“at his own expense” or “in his own hired dwelling” (the Greek
phrase may be translated either way). That is to say, he
remained under house-arrest, guarded by a soldier, instead of
being detained in the praetorian headquarters or any other
“camp”.29 He was thus able to receive visitors from near and
far and discharge his apostolic ministry, even in this restricted
situation, without let or hindrance.
Among the visitors whom he received at an early stage of his
detention Luke mentions a deputation of leading Roman Jews.
Their debate with Paul forms the final word-picture of Luke’s
narrative, plainly with programmatic intent. They manifested
prudent reserve in disclaiming any previous knowledge of Paul:
they had received no communication from Judaea to his
discredit, they assured him. They manifested the same prudent
reserve in disclaiming any first-hand acquaintance with
Christianity: “we desire to hear from you what your views are”,
they said; “for with regard to this sect we know that
everywhere it is spoken against” (Acts 28:22). The debate
completes the pattern of Jewish refusal of the gospel coupled
with Gentile acceptance of it, which has recurred earlier in
Acts. Paul speaks the definitive last word, after quoting the text
from Isaiah 6:10 about dull minds, deaf ears and closed eyes (a
widespread early Christian testimonium of Jewish unbelief):30
“Take knowledge, then, that this salvation of God has been sent
to the Gentiles; they will listen to it” (Acts 28:28).
5. Unanswered questions
Luke’s perspective on Paul’s apostleship and Gentile mission
is different from Paul’s own. But the depth of our ignorance
about the sequel to Paul’s arrival in Rome when Luke takes his
leave of us is ample testimony to the value of his record for the
period that it covers. What, for example, were Paul’s relations
with the Christians of Rome during his two years’ house-arrest?
Since they began so happily on the Appian Way, how did they
continue? And what happened at the end of this period?
Some assure us quite confidently that it ended with Paul’s
trial, conviction and execution; others, that it ended with his
release—either through acquittal after trial, or because the
case went against his accusers by default.
That Paul was executed at the end of the two years was
contended over sixty years ago by J. Vernon Bartlet.31 He
argued that the prosecutors gave notice within the statutory
time-limit (which he supposed, in the light of later usage, was
eighteen months) of their intention to proceed with the case;
that they arrived in Rome early in A.D. 62 and successfully
prosecuted Paul; that he was condemned to death as a
disturber of the peace of the provinces; that the earliest
readers of Acts would know from Nero’s record, without having
to be told explicitly, what the outcome of the prosecution would
be (the more so in view of the Jewish sympathies of Poppaea
Sabina, whose influence over Nero was then approaching its
peak); and that in fact there are ominous overtones in
Agrippa’s remark to Festus: “He might have been released if he
had not appealed to Caesar” (Acts 26:32).
If Paul was executed in A.D. 62, then his martyrdom was not,
as is commonly supposed, an incident in the imperial attack on
the Christians of Rome which followed the great fire of the year
64. This, of course, is no argument against dating his execution
in 62, if the evidence points in that direction. But if Paul’s two
years’ detention was followed immediately by his conviction
and execution, Luke’s failure to mention it is very strange.
Alternatively we have the view variously propounded by W.
M. Ramsay, Kirsopp Lake, and H. J. Cadbury, that the case
never came to trial because the prosecutors failed to appear
within the statutory period.32 This suggestion has some
antecedent plausibility. If the Sanhedrin had failed to persuade
Felix and Festus of the soundness of their case against Paul, in
spite of all the local pressure that could be brought to bear on
the procurator of Judaea, they would be even less likely to
succeed in Rome. Roman law was apt to be severe on frivolous
prosecutors. On the other hand, no prosecution would be so
frivolous as one in which the prosecutors failed to appear; and
Roman law insisted that they must appear.
The statutory period of eighteen months, which was assumed
by Bartlet on his side (provisionally) and by Ramsay and
Cadbury on theirs, turns out on examination to be based on the
wrong dating of a papyrus which records an imperial edict
fixing a time-limit of eighteen months for criminal cases
submitted to the emperor from the provinces, whether by way
of appeal or by reference as to a court of first instance. This
document was first published towards the end of last century;
Ramsay’s attention was drawn to it by J. S. Reid. But, as
Mommsen recognized, the edict belongs to the third century,33
and the “appeal” which it has in view is the later procedure of
appellatio against a sentence already passed, not the first-
century procedure of prouocatio, which prevented the court of
first instance from trying the case at all.34 In fact, there does
not appear to be first-century evidence for any procedure
permitting a case to lapse automatically by default. What
evidence there is suggests that everything was done to compel
the appearance of prosecutors and defendants and to prevent
the abandonment of charges. A prosecutor who did not appear
in court within a reasonable time would probably be penalized,
but that would not imply the automatic discharge of the
defendant.
The prolongation of Paul’s stay in Rome over two full years
could have been due to congestion of court business as much
as anything else; and if indeed he was discharged without his
coming to trial, this (as A. N. Sherwin-White points out) would
probably have been the result of an act of imperium on
Caesar’s part. “Perhaps Paul benefited from the clemency of
Nero, and secured a merely casual release. But there is no
necessity to construe Acts to mean that he was released at
all.”35 From the account of Paul’s night vision at sea, in which
he was assured that he would stand before Caesar,36 Luke
probably intends his readers to infer that Paul’s appeal did at
length come up for hearing, whatever the outcome was.
Since the evidence of Acts fails us here, we must look
elsewhere in our quest for further data relating to Paul’s
Roman captivity and its aftermath.
CHAPTER 33
Paul and Roman Christianity
1. Jews and Christians in Rome
“THE ROMANS HAD EMBRACED THE FAITH OF CHRIST,
ALBEIT according to the Jewish rite, although they saw no sign
of mighty works nor any of the apostles.”1 So wrote the
anonymous fourth-century Latin commentator on Paul, whom
by tradition and for convenience we call Ambrosiaster, in the
preface to his exposition of the Epistle to the Romans. By his
time2 the Romans as a whole had “embraced the faith of
Christ”, but when the faith of Christ was first embraced in
Rome those who professed it formed a tiny minority of the
city’s population. Even so, the preface as a whole suggests that
Ambrosiaster had access to a reliable tradition about the origin
of Roman Christianity and more particularly about the Jewish
milieu in which it arose. The tradition of the Roman church
claims the apostles Peter and Paul as joint-founders,3 but the
scanty evidence that we have confirms Ambrosiaster’s
testimony that Christianity came to Rome before any apostle
was seen in the city.
The beginnings of the Jewish community in Rome should
probably be dated not long after the establishment of
diplomatic relations between Rome and the Hasmonaean
regime in Judaea about the middle of the second century B.C.4
Its numbers were greatly augmented after the incorporation of
Judaea in the Roman Empire in 63 B.C. and Pompey’s triumph
two years later. When Cicero, in 59 B.C., was defending Lucius
Valerius Flaccus in Rome against the charge of having
hindered the conveyance of the temple-tax to Jerusalem during
his proconsulship of Asia, he lowered his voice dramatically at
one point so as not to be overheard by the Jews outside the
court-room, “for you know”, he explained confidentially to the
jury, “how numerous they are and how clannish, and how they
can make their influence felt”.5 This was rhetorical
exaggeration, but it exaggerated a situation with which his
hearers were acquainted. By the beginning of the Christian era,
it is estimated, the Jews of Rome numbered between 40,000
and 60,000.6
Our knowledge of the Jews of Rome is derived not only from
contemporary literary sources but also from the study of six
Jewish catacombs, three of which—one on the Via Portuensis
(the Monteverde catacomb), one on the Via Appia, and one on
the Via Nomentana—have supplied specially valuable
information.7 No Jewish synagogue from the imperial period
has yet been excavated in Rome, but the names of eleven are
known from inscriptions.8 Apart from the synagogue of the
Olive Tree, which has already been mentioned,9 some took
their names from the districts where they were situated (like
the synagogues of the Campenses and Suburrenses),10 from
the places from which their members originally came (like that
of the Tripolitani),11 or from patrons (like those of the
Augustenses and Agrippenses).12 The synagogue of the
Hebrews, in Rome as in Corinth,13 may have been so called
because the services were conducted in Hebrew.
A public scandal within the Jewish community in A.D. 19
brought about its expulsion from Rome by decree of the
Emperor Tiberius.14 Four Jews persuaded a wealthy Roman
proselyte, Fulvia by name, to make a munificent gift to the
Jerusalem temple but they misappropriated it. This was the
kind of scandal that Paul had in mind when he said that the
name of the God of Israel was blasphemed among the pagans
because of his worshippers’ behaviour.15 But in a few years the
Jews of Rome were as numerous as ever.
Claudius, at the beginning of his principate, found the
imperial peace troubled by disturbances in Jewish communities
here and there throughout the empire—pre-eminently in Egypt
but also, it appears, in Rome. He tried to deal with the troubles
in Rome by placing restrictions on Jewish communal
activities16 but eight years later17 took the drastic step of
expelling the Jews from Rome—an expulsion which had
repercussions, as we have seen, on Paul’s missionary activity at
the time in Macedonia and Achaia, especially in his forming a
lifelong friendship with two of the refugees, Priscilla and
Aquila.18
According to Suetonius, writing seventy years after the
event, the reason for this expulsion was the persistent rioting
in which the Roman Jews were involved “at the instigation of
Chrestus” (impulsore Chresto).19
This is usually (and probably rightly) interpreted as the
earliest indication we have of the arrival of Christianity in
Rome. It is not a certain interpretation: Chrestus was a
common enough slave-name. But if the reference were to an
otherwise unknown Chrestus, Suetonius would probably have
said impulsore Chresto quodam (“at the instigation of one
Chrestus”). The form of words he uses points to a well-known
bearer of the name, and the common confusion between
Christus and Chrestus (which by this time were homophones in
Greek) makes it easy to suppose that Christ is meant. We
cannot readily think that “Christ” is here used in the sense of
“Messiah”, as though the reference were to some kind of
messianic dispute in the Jewish community, with no necessary
involvement of Jesus of Nazareth: Christus (or Chrestus) was
not current in Latin paganism in that sense. This in itself would
rule out Robert Eisler’s fantasy that Simon Magus is meant,20
quite apart from the absence of evidence that Simon made
messianic claims. It is most likely that Suetonius had in mind
the well-known Christus (or Chrestus)—well-known, that is, as
the founder of the Christiani (or Chrestiani).21 True, the natural
implication of his words is that this man was actually in Rome
during the principate of Claudius, stirring up disorders within
the Jewish community.22 Perhaps Suetonius understood his
source in this sense; he did not take as much trouble to verify
his chronology as did his contemporary Tacitus, who knew that
Christ was executed in the principate of Tiberius.23 The
disorders may have arisen in the Jewish community because of
the recent arrival in its midst of disciples of Jesus.
One thing seems clear from other evidence—that Roman
Christianity was originally Jewish, and Jewish of a
nonconformist stamp. As late as the first quarter of the third
century, Christian practice in Rome, to judge by the manual of
church order (the so-called Apostolic Tradition) associated with
the name of Hippolytus, was characterized by features derived
from Jewish nonconformity;24 hence Ambrosiaster’s
qualification of primitive Roman Christianity as being
“according to the Jewish rite”.
Who first brought Christianity to Rome is unknown. It has
sometimes been thought that there is a special significance in
Luke’s including among those who listened to Peter’s
preaching in Jerusalem on the first Christian Pentecost
“visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes” (Acts 2:10); but
nothing is said in that context which would help us to decide
whether any of those believed his message or, if so, whether
any of them took it back to Rome. In the normal course of
travel, however, the gospel was bound to be carried to Rome
sooner rather than later, and in the first instance by Jewish
believers.
Another thing that seems clear is this: Priscilla and Aquila,
who had left Italy because of Claudius’s edict of expulsion
shortly before they met Paul in Corinth,25 appear to have been
Christians already. Paul nowhere calls them his children in the
Lord or implies in any way that they were converts of his.
It may be that the reminder to the recipients of the Epistle to
the Hebrews of the “former days” when they were exposed to
affliction and public abuse and “joyfully accepted” the
plundering of their property (Hebrews 10:32–34) is an allusion
to events in Rome in A. D. 49.26 But the Roman destination of
this “epistle” is itself speculative (however reasonable)27 and
should not be treated as though it provided evidence on which
to base further speculations.
If there were Gentile Christians in Rome before A.D. 49, they
would not be affected by the emperor’s edict, but we have no
would not be affected by the emperor’s edict, but we have no
indication that there were any. Eight years later, however, the
situation was quite different.
2. Gentile Christians in Rome
Too much weight should not be laid in this connexion on the
interesting case of Pomponia Graecina, the wife of Aulus
Plautius, conqueror of Britain. Tacitus reports that in A.D. 57
this lady was charged with “foreign superstition” and was
brought, in accordance with Roman tradition, before a family
court, over which her husband presided. She was acquitted of
the charge.28 Nothing in this report suggests that the “foreign
superstition” was Christianity. One commentator on Tacitus
remarks, with reference to the statement that she wore
mourning for forty years, that “the retirement and sobriety of a
Christian might well appear a kind of ‘perpetual mourning’ to
the dissolute society of the Neronian period”.29 But Tacitus
says quite explicitly that this mourning was due to the murder,
fourteen years previously, of her kinswoman Livia Julia, at the
instigation of the Empress Messalina.30 If she wore mourning
for forty years in all, she lived on into the principate of
Domitian (A.D. 81–96).
A stronger reason for associating Pomponia with Christianity
than Tacitus’s report about the “foreign superstition” is the
evidence that, by the end of the second century, some members
of her family (the gens Pomponia) were Christians. The
Cemetery of Callistus by the Appian Way, one of the oldest
Christian catacombs in Rome, contains inscriptions of this
period commemorating members of that family, one of whom
bore the name Pomponius Graecinus.31 But even from this we
cannot infer with any assurance that Pomponia Graecina was a
Christian four or five generations earlier.
For this same year (A.D. 57) we have, however, much more
positive evidence for the state of Christianity in Rome, in Paul’s
letter to the Roman Christians. Paul makes it plain that Gentile
as well as Jewish believers are included in “all God’s beloved
ones in Rome, saints by calling”, to whom his letter is
addressed (Romans 1:7). Whether by this time they
outnumbered their Jewish brethren in the city is uncertain, but
Paul finds it necessary to warn them not to give themselves airs
as though it were due to some superior merit of theirs that they
were enrolled among the people of God when so many natural
descendants of Abraham had declined to be so enrolled.32
3. The organization of Roman Christianity
Why does Paul address his letter “to all God’s beloved ones
in Rome, saints by calling” and not “to the church of God which
is in Rome” (following the precedent, say, of his Corinthian
letters)? We cannot infer forthwith that there was no church in
Rome organized on a city-wide basis. The letter to the
Philippians is addressed not to the church at Philippi but “to all
the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the bishops
and deacons” (Philippians 1:1), but that does not preclude us
from speaking of the church in Philippi. Indeed, the addition of
the “bishops and deacons” implies a well-administered church,
and when Paul, thanking the Philippian Christians for a gift,
recalls a time when, as he says, “no church entered into
partnership with me in giving and receiving except you only”
(Philippians 4:15), he makes it explicitly dear that he regarded
them as a church. “The saints and faithful brethren in Christ at
Colossae” to whom another Pauline letter is sent (Colossians
1:2) are not expressly called a church,33 but they were
evidently as much one as the sister “church of the Laodiceans”
(Colossians 4:16), the more so as the Christian community at
Colossae, like those in the other cities of the Lycus valley,
appears to have been planted by one man, Paul’s colleague
Epaphras (Colossians 1:7; 4:12 f.).34
If it is doubtful whether there was one centrally administered
church in Rome, this is not simply because the Christians there
are not called a church, but rather because of the probabilities
of the situation together with the evidence of Paul’s letter. On
the one hand, he expected that his letter would reach all the
Roman Christians,35 but it is unlikely that he thought of a
single occasion when they would all hear it read together.
Perhaps Phoebe carried it from one house-church to another.36
The Christians in Rome appear at this time to hare met as
groups in house-churches or other local meeting-places. Some
of the Jewish Christians may still have counted themselves as
adherents of one or another of the Jewish synagogues. The time
was fast approaching when they would no longer be able to
maintain a foot in either camp, so to speak, but some were not
disposed to sever their connexion with the synagogue until they
were compelled to do so. This was perhaps the situation of the
group addressed in the Epistle to the Hebrews. They had come
to faith in Christ several years before the time at which this
document was written (c. A.D. 63)37 and had endured
considerable persecution in consequence. But they were not
willing to burn their boats and identify themselves irrevocably
with Christ and his people, whom the synagogue as an
institution had by now repudiated, to exchange the security of
a collegium licitum for the uncertainty involved in a fellowship
which enjoyed no such protection. Hence the urgency of the
unknown writer’s call to them: “let us go forth to him outside
the camp, bearing the stigma that attaches to his name”
(Hebrews 13:13).
4. Evidence of the greetings in Romans 16
The Roman destination of the Epistle to the Hebrews cannot,
however, be taken for granted. This must be said also of the
destination of the last chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, in
which Paul sends greetings by name to twenty-six individuals
and five households or house-churches, in view of the weighty
arguments which have moved many exegetes to ascribe an
Ephesian destination to it.38 But two general points may be
made.
First, Paul was not in the habit of sending personal greetings
to members of a church with which he was well acquainted.
The only other letter in which he sends personal greetings is
that to the Colossians. He had not himself visited the church of
Colossae, but he had met elsewhere one or two people who
were now resident in Colossae (Nympha and Archippus, for
example)39 and he sends greetings to them by name, knowing
that others in the church would not wonder why they were not
mentioned (which might very well happen if he sent personal
greetings to some members of the church in Corinth or
Ephesus and not to others). So, in view of the ease of travel
throughout the Roman world of Paul’s day and the fact that all
roads led to Rome, it was but natural that many people whom
Paul had met in other places should now be resident in Rome
(including Epaenetus, his first convert in the province of Asia)40
and that he should send his personal greetings to them and to
others of whom he had heard, without risk of causing offence
to those whom he had never met and who were unknown to
him even by name.
Second, a number of the names of people to whom these
greetings are sent are better attested at Rome than at Ephesus.
This is largely due to the much larger number of inscriptions
available from Rome than from Ephesus; in any case it is, for
the most part, the names and not the individuals that are well
attested at Rome. (Such a name as Urbanus, occurring in Rom.
16:9, immediately bespeaks an association with the urbs.)
To come to particulars, greetings are sent, among others, to
“those in the Lord who belong to the household of Narcissus”
(Romans 16:11). This Narcissus has been commonly identified
with Tiberius Claudius Narcissus, a wealthy freedman of the
Emperor Tiberius, who exercised great influence under
Claudius but was executed at the instance of Agrippina soon
after Nero’s accession in A.D. 54.41 His goods being
confiscated, his slaves and retainers would pass into the
imperial household, being distinguished from other groups in
that household by the additional designation Narcissiani. Paul’s
greetings may have been intended for Christians among those
Narcissiani. We have no idea, of course, how he would know, or
know of, members of the Narcissiani. But if the tentative
identification is right, these were certainly “saints in Caesar’s
household” and may have been among those so described
whose greetings are sent by Paul to the church of Philippi
(Philippians 4:22).
Another group of “saints in Caesar’s household” has been
tentatively identified in “those who belong to the household of
Aristobulus”, to whom Paul sends greetings in Romans 16:10.
Aristobulus was a name particularly common in the Herod
family. One Herodian of that name, a younger brother of the
elder Agrippa (and called after their ill-fated father), lived in
Rome as a private citizen and, like his brother, enjoyed the
friendship of Claudius.42 If he bequeathed his property to the
emperor, then his slaves too would pass into the imperial
household and be distinguished as Aristobuliani. But we do not
know that he bequeathed his property to the emperor, although
such an action would be not at all unprecedented. It could then
be more than a mere coincidence that the next person to whom
Paul sends greetings bears the name of Herodion. Paul calls
Herodion his “kinsman”, meaning probably a fellow-Christian
of Jewish birth.43
Two other Christian groups are identified by the mention of
several of their members by name. They are (first) “Asyncritus,
Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas and the brethren who are
with them” (verse 14) and (next) “Philologus, Julia, Nereus and
his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints who are with them”
(verse 15). In the former group the name Patrobas will remind
the reader of Tacitus’s Histories that Nero had an influential
and unpopular freedman called Patrobius,44 of which Patrobas
is an abbreviated form: the Christian Patrobas was conceivably
a dependent of Nero’s Patrobius.45 The name Hermas (an
abbreviation of Hermagoras, Hermodorus, Hermogenes or the
like) was common enough: a generation or two later it was
borne by another Roman Christian, the author of the very
popular Shepherd.46 Roman ecclesiastical tradition, as far back
as the fourth century, gives the name Nereus to a Christian of
the last decade of the first century who, with his companion
Achilleus, was associated with Flavia Domitilla, niece of the
Emperor Domitian, after whom the Cemetery of Domitilla on
the Via Ardeatina is named.47 (This cemetery, incidentally,
contains burying-places of Christian members of the gens
Aurelia bearing the cognomen Ampliatus, a name appearing in
Romans 16:8.).48 In the latter group Philologus and Julia may
have been husband and wife or (like another pair mentioned in
the same list) brother and sister. Julia’s name suggests some
association with the imperial household. It is remarkable,
indeed, how many names occurring in Romans 16:5–15 are
found on inscriptions as names of members of the imperial
household, though community of name is no evidence for
identity of person.
Then we note at the head of the greetings a reference to
Priscilla (or Prisca, as Paul regularly calls her) and Aquila,
together with “the church in their house” (verses 3–5a). Since
they left Italy when Claudius expelled all Jews from Rome,
there is nothing surprising in their return to the capital when
the expulsion edict had lapsed. True, when last they were
mentioned by Paul (1 Corinthians 16:19) they were still in
Ephesus, to which they had gone with him from Corinth; but
Paul’s departure from Ephesus may have been their cue to go
back to Rome. Their return, indeed, could have been connected
with Paul’s own plan to visit Rome as soon as possible,49 and in
any case it is to be expected that they would keep in touch with
Paul by letter or otherwise. As they accommodated a Christian
congregation in their house in Ephesus, so they did also in
Rome. As for Epaenetus, Paul’s first Asian convert, to whom he
sends greetings immediately after greeting Priscilla and Aquila
(verse 5b), he may well have attached himself to those two and
accompanied them on their return to Rome.
The inclusion among those greeted by name of Andronicus
and Junias (or possibly the feminine Junia) raises interesting
questions—not only because Paul claims them as kinsfolk and
fellow-prisoners but even more so because he says that they
are “of note among the apostles” and “were in Christ before
me” (verse 7). They must have been very early Christians if
they were Christians before Paul, and if their being “of note
among the apostles” implies not merely that they were well
known to the apostles but that they were in some sense
apostles themselves, what does this mean? Perhaps they were
among the five hundred and more to whom on one occasion the
risen Christ appeared; J. B. Lightfoot hinted (he was too
cautious to do more) that they could have been among the
visitors from Rome who heard Peter preach in Jerusalem on the
day of Pentecost.50
As for “Rufus, eminent in the Lord” (verse 13), mention has
already been made of the possible implication of his
coincidence in name with one of the sons of Simon of Cyrene.51
If these greetings were sent to Rome by Paul, and the Gospel of
Mark was written a few years later for the Christians in Rome,
the possibility that one and the same Rufus is meant in both
documents becomes almost a probability.
The impression given by these greetings is of a decentralized
Christian community in Rome—indeed, the word “community”
may be more a spiritual interpretation than a practical fact.
The various groups may have differed one from another in
outlook, not to speak of differences in outlook within any one
group. The Pauline understanding of the gospel was probably
fostered especially in the house-church which enjoyed the
hospitality of Priscilla and Aquila. One scholar has identified
elsewhere in the letter to the Romans evidence of five different
outlooks among the potential readers, with special reference to
being strong or weak in faith and adopting various attitudes
towards debatable aspects of Christian conduct such as
observance of certain days or avoidance of certain foods, and
various attitudes, also, towards fellow-Christians taking a
different line in these matters.52 This correlation cannot be
established in any thorough-going way. Paul was certainly
aware of differences in attitude and practice which might set
up tensions if brotherly consideration were not exercised; this
is why he urges all the groups so earnestly to give one another
the same welcome as they had all received from Christ, “for the
glory of God” (Romans 15:7). Thus a sense of spiritual unity
would be fostered.
But if Paul found the Roman Christians decentralized in
organization, he did little to centralize them in this way;
indeed, had he wished to do any such thing, his opportunities
were limited. And half a century after his coming to Rome the
evidence of Ignatius and Hermas is that the Roman church was
still less centralized than many other churches were by that
time: it was not yet organized under the administrative
authority of a single bishop.53
5. Evidence of the letter to the Philippians
Our uncertainty regarding the Roman destination of some
New Testament documents is matched by our uncertainty
regarding the Roman provenance of others. Paul’s “prison
epistles” have traditionally been dated during his Roman
captivity but we have seen that, for some of them at least, an
Ephesian or Caesarean provenance has been defended.
If the “saints in Caesar’s household” whose greetings are
sent to the Philippian church were Roman Christians, as seems
most probable, then it is in Rome also that we may most
naturally seek the praetorium throughout which, according to
Philippians 1:13, it was generally known that Paul’s
imprisonment was for Christ’s sake. (It has been argued by
some students that the Epistle to the Philippians as we have it
comprises more than one letter sent by Paul to his friends in
Philippi,54 and this possibility should be kept in mind, even if it
does run counter to “bibliographical probability”.)55 Of all the
possible meanings of praetorium, the most appropriate in this
context is “praetorian guard”. The praetorian guard was the
emperor’s personal bodyguard, and since Paul by his appeal
had placed himself at the emperor’s disposal it was natural that
the soldiers who had charge of him in his lodgings, relieving
one another in succession, should be drawn from the
praetorian guard. Few of those soldiers had ever come across a
man like Paul before, and each of them would quickly learn
what had brought him to Rome.
Not only the praetorian guard, but “all the rest”, says Paul,
had come to know the reason for his imprisonment—“all the
rest” meaning, probably, all those who were in any way
rest” meaning, probably, all those who were in any way
concerned with arrangements to be made for the eventual
hearing of his case.
Moreover, the fact that Paul, despite the conditions of his
house-arrest, was able to preach the gospel freely to all who
came to see him encouraged many other Christians in Rome to
bear witness more boldly than they had done before, so that
Paul’s coming to Rome had in every way worked for the
advance of the gospel in the city. Not that this advance was
consistently promoted in a spirit of co-operation with Paul; the
differences in outlook among the various groups of Christians
in Rome meant that some groups were less sympathetic to Paul
than others: some, in fact, were downright antipathetic. So
much may be gathered from Paul’s own words that, while some
preached Christ in a spirit of good will, counting themselves as
his friends and partners, others did so in a spirit of envy and
rivalry, with no worthier motive than to rub salt into his
wounds, to add to the sense of frustration which he might well
feel in his restricted situation. But Paul reacts in a spirit of
contented relaxation: what mattered was that Christ was being
proclaimed, whether from worthy or unworthy motives—“and
in that,” he says, “I rejoice” (Philippians 1:15–18).
This is a far cry from the anathema which he invoked on
those trouble–makers who, several years earlier, had invaded
his Galatian mission-field and taught “a different gospel” to his
converts there. True, his ill-wishers in Rome were not intruding
into a sphere which was not their own, and it is not suggested
that there was anything defective or subversive in the content
of their preaching; even so, Paul has recognizably mellowed
and manifests more of the “meekness and gentleness of Christ”
than he was able to do when he invoked those qualities in his
remonstrance with disaffected members of the Corinthian
church.56 Perhaps his two years of imprisonment at Caesarea,
followed by his present house-arrest in Rome, had taught him
new lessons in patience.
For there was no way of knowing how long he would remain
under house-arrest, or when he would be summoned to appear
before Caesar. He more than half expected that when he did
appear, the outcome would be favourable: many friends, in
Rome and Philippi and elsewhere, were praying for this, and he
was convinced that for the welfare of his converts and the
furtherance of the gospel his acquittal and release would be
desirable.57 If he had his own preference alone to consult, he
was not so sure: it would be “far better” for him to set out on
his last journey and be at home “with Christ” (Philippians
1:23). It was difficult for him to choose between the two;
happily, the choice was not his, and his prayer was that, one
way or the other, Christ would be glorified.58
6. Evidence of the letter to the Colossians
At this stage the relevance of the letter to the Colossians to
Paul’s stay in Rome must be viewed as quite uncertain. But if
this letter was indeed sent from Rome it is necessary to take
account of the implication of the final greetings in which Paul
names Aristarchus, Mark (“the cousin of Barnabas”) and Jesus
surnamed Justus as the only men of Jewish birth who are with
him at the time as “fellow-workers for the kingdom of God”—
men, he adds, who “have been a comfort to me” (Colossians
4:10 f.). He has other companions who are of Gentile origin,59
but no other “men of the circumcision” apart from Timothy,
whose name is coupled with his own in the initial salutation of
the letter.60 This language may point, as J. B. Lightfoot
thought, to the “antagonism of the converts from the
Circumcision in the metropolis”61 and could be related to
Paul’s mention, in writing to the Philippians, of those who
“proclaim Christ out of partisanship” (Philippians 1:17).
Of the three Jewish Christians whom Paul names, Jesus
surnamed Justus is mentioned nowhere else. Aristarchus, who
is here described as “my fellow-prisoner”, had come with Paul
to Rome, and may at this time have been sharing his house-
arrest.62 The reference to Mark is of special interest, as his
path and Paul’s had not crossed, so far as the records inform
us, since the day that Barnabas took Mark and set sail with him
from Syrian Antioch to Cyprus after Paul’s refusal to have him
a second time as a missionary adjutant.63 Second-century
tradition links Mark with Rome, more particularly in
association with Peter.64
One way of reconstructing the situation which brought Mark
to Rome is to suppose that, shortly after the return of Jews to
the city about the year 54, Peter, accompanied by Mark, paid
his first visit to Rome to help the Christian members of the
Jewish community to re-establish their identity and witness.65
By the time of Paul’s writing to the Roman Christians at the
beginning of A.D. 57 Peter, and probably Mark, had left the
city; but Mark came back from time to time to maintain
contacts with Jewish believers in Rome, and was paying one of
these visits at the time when Paul wrote to the Colossians.
While Paul had looked on Mark with a critical eye at one time,
it is good to observe that now he includes him among the men
who had proved a “comfort” to him.66 Mark no doubt had
matured first under the wise and sympathetic guidance of
Barnabas and then as aide-de-camp to Peter; and, as we have
noted already, Paul for his part had mellowed.
But the question of a Roman provenance for the letter to the
Colossians requires an examination of the companion letter to
Philemon.
CHAPTER 34
The Letter to Philemon
PAUL’S LETTER TO PHILEMON IS SHORT ENOUGH TO BE
REPRODUCED in full, in a fairly free translation.
Paul, prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, to Philemon, our dear
friend and fellow-worker, with our sister Apphia and our fellow-soldier Archippus,
and the church that meets in your house: grace and peace be yours from God our
Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
I always thank God, my dear friend, when I remember you in my prayers, for I
hear good news of the love and loyalty which you show to our Lord Jesus and all
his holy people. So I pray that your Christian liberality, springing as it does from
your faith, may lead you effectively into the experience and appreciation of every
blessing which we have as fellow-members of Christ. Your love has brought me
great joy and comfort, my dear brother; you have refreshed the hearts of God’s
people.
That is why I am making this request of you; I am making it for love’s sake,
although I could quite well exercise my authority in Christ’s name and command
you to do the proper thing. Yes, I could command you as Paul, ambassador1 of
Christ Jesus; but I don’t do that: I prefer to ask you a favour as Paul, prisoner of
Christ Jesus.
The request I am making is for my son. My son? Yes, my son; I have acquired
one here, prisoner though I am. His name is Onesimus—profitable by name and
profitable by nature. I know that in former days you found him quite unprofitable,
but now, I assure you, he has learned to be true to his name—profitable to you,
and profitable to me.
Well, I am sending him back to you, though it is like tearing out my very heart
to do so. My own inclination is to keep him here with me, and then he could go on
serving me while I am a prisoner for the gospel’s sake—serving me as your
representative. But I do not want to do anything without your consent; I do not
want the good turn you are doing me through his service to be done by you willy-
nilly, but on your free initiative.
For aught I know, this was why you and he were separated for a short time, so
that you might have him to yourself for ever, no longer as a slave, but something
much better than a slave—a dear brother, very dear indeed to me, and surely
dearer still to you, since he is now yours not only as a member of your household
but as a fellow-believer in the Lord. You look on me as your partner, don’t you?
Well, Onesimus is my representative; give him the welcome you would give me.
Has he done you any wrong? Does he owe you something? Never mind; put that
down on my account. Here is my I.O.U., written with my own hand. “I will make it
good. Signed: Paul.”
(I scarcely need to remind you, of course, of the debt that you owe me; it is to
me that you owe your very life!)
Yes, my dear brother, let me have this profit from you as a fellow-Christian.
Refresh my heart in the name of Christ, to whom we both belong.
I write like this because I have every confidence in your obedience; I know you
will do more than I say. And, by the way, please get the guestroom ready for me;
I hope I shall soon be restored to you, thanks to your prayers.
Epaphras, my fellow-prisoner for the sake of Christ Jesus, sends you his
greetings; so do my fellow-workers Mark, Aristarchus, Demas and Luke.
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, all of you.
It is admittedly question-begging to discuss the letter to
Philemon in the context of Paul’s Roman imprisonment. Two
questions, in fact, are begged: Was this letter written by Paul,
and was it written in Rome?
2. Authorship
Was it written by Paul? Most critics have been content to
leave the Pauline authorship intact. The letter is too short for
the most efficient computer to yield a significant analysis of its
style and vocabulary.2 If its authenticity is questioned, it is
questioned mainly on account of the close association between
this letter and Colossians, which some find it difficult to accept
as Pauline. For Colossians and Philemon were plainly written at
the same time and place, sent to the same place, carried by the
same messengers. Practically the same companions of Paul
send their greetings in both; of the six who do so in Colossians,
five do so in Philemon. Apart from these, Archippus is
mentioned in both; and in both Onesimus arrives at the same
time as the letters.
Ernest Renan was so convinced of the genuineness of
Philemon that for its sake he was willing to admit the
genuineness of Colossians. “The Epistle to the Colossians”, he
wrote, “though full of eccentricities, does not embrace any of
those impossibilities which are to be found in the Epistles to
Titus and to Timothy. It furnishes even many of those details
which reject the hypothesis [of its pseudonymity] as false.
Assuredly of this number is its connection with the note to
Philemon. If the epistle is apocryphal, the note is apocryphal
also; yet few of the pages have so pronounced a tone of
sincerity; Paul alone, as it appears to us, could write that little
masterpiece.”3
But Renan was a romantic, and would have been reluctant as
such to abandon the authenticity of Philemon; a real biblical
critic must be made of sterner stuff. And such was Ferdinand
Christian Baur, in whose eyes only the letters to the Galatians,
Corinthians and Romans were authentically Pauline.
“What”, asks Baur, “has criticism to do with this short,
attractive, graceful and friendly letter, inspired as it is by the
noblest Christian feeling, and which has never yet been
touched by the breath of suspicion?”4 Yet, he goes on, apostolic
authorship cannot be taken for granted even here; and since
the other “captivity epistles” to which Philemon is so clearly
related are not Pauline, it follows that this epistle is not
Pauline; it is, in fact (says Baur), a Christian romance in
embryo, comparable in this respect to the Clementine
Homilies. The Clementine Homilies show how “Christianity is
the permanent reconciliation of those of who were formerly
separated by one cause or another, but who by a special
arrangement of affairs brought about by Divine Providence for
that very purpose, are again brought together; through their
conversion to Christianity they know each other again, the one
sees in the other his own flesh and blood.”5 So the Epistle to
Philemon suggests that perhaps Onesimus and his master were
separated for a short time in order that the latter might
thenceforth have Onesimus to himself for ever, no longer as a
slave, but as a dear brother.
W. C. van Manen, who rejected the authenticity of all
thirteen Pauline epistles (including even the four “capital
letters” which Baur admitted), added to Baur’s arguments
against the genuineness of Philemon some considerations of his
own. For one thing, the ambiguity of the direction speaks
against Pauline authorship, since the epistle is addressed by
Paul and Timothy to three individuals and a household church,
while the bulk of it is a personal letter from Paul to Philemon.
“This double form … is not a style that is natural to any one
who is writing freely and untrammelled, whether to one person
or to many.”6 More probably the unknown author has modelled
his composition on the letter of the younger Pliny to his friend
Sabinianus, interceding on behalf of a freedman of the latter
who has offended his patron and has sought Pliny’s good
offices to bring about a reconciliation.7 The author of Philemon
makes the freedman into a slave, and rewrites the letter so as
to portray the ideal “relations which, in his judgment, that is
according to the view of Pauline Christians, ought to subsist
between Christian slaves and their masters, especially when
the slaves have in some respect misconducted themselves, as
for example by secretly quitting their master’s service”.8
Such a combination of hypercriticism and naïveté is easily
recognized for what it is. There is no need to propound such
far-fetched explanations of a document which, in the judgement
of most critics as of most general readers, bears a much more
probable explanation on its face—namely, that is is a genuine
letter of Paul, concerning a slave called Onesimus, who
somehow needs the apostle’s help in restoring good personal
relations between him and his master, and that Paul quite
naturally takes the opportunity at the beginning and end of the
letter to send greetings to other members of the household.
Because of what they regard as the transparent genuineness of
this epistle, several scholars who are unable to accept the
whole of Colossians as Pauline feel constrained nevertheless to
salvage some of it for the apostle—enough, at least, to keep
Philemon company.9
3. Place of writing
But even if it was written by Paul, was it sent from Rome?
Here, debate has fastened on two points: (a) the length of the
journey that Onesimus must have made from his master’s home
to the place where Paul was in custody, and (b) Paul’s request
for the preparation of the guest-room in view of his expectation
of an early release and a visit to the Lycus valley. Do these two
points suggest that Paul was fairly near the Lycus valley at the
time (say in Ephesus, about 100 miles away) or much farther
distant (say in Rome, more than 1,000 miles away)?
The case has been debated one way and the other, by none
more ably than by Principal G. S. Duncan and Professor C. H.
Dodd. Principal Duncan’s argument for Ephesus, because it
was so much nearer to Colossae than Rome was, was answered
by Professor Dodd, who thinks the remoter city the more
probable. Principal Duncan replied to Professor Dodd, but the
question remains unresolved.
With regard to Onesimus’s choice of a place of refuge, “only
in the most desperate circumstances”, says Principal Duncan,
“such as the letter gives us no reason to assume, would a
fugitive from justice have undertaken over unknown and
dangerous roads a journey of a thousand miles by land,
together with two sea voyages extending over some five days,
especially when comparatively near at hand there was a city
with which he was no doubt already familiar, and which was of
sufficient size to afford him all the security that he was likely to
require.”10
With regard to the visit proposed by Paul in verse 22,
Principal Duncan goes on to say:
How natural such a visit would be at a time when his activities, temporarily
interrupted by imprisonment, were directed towards the evangelisation of Asia:
not far from him as he lay at Ephesus were those churches in the Lycus valley
which in some indirect way no doubt owed their origin to his missionary-work in
the province, but which he had never so far visited, and in at least one of which,
Colossae, the conditions gave him grave cause for anxiety. On the other hand,
how unlikely was he to contemplate such a visit, let alone give thought to the
provision of a lodging there, when he lay a prisoner at Rome … From Rome he
meant, not to turn back to the Lycus valley, but to advance into Spain.11
To the argument that Onesimus was more likely to have fled
to neighbouring Ephesus than to distant Rome, Professor Dodd
says:
This seems plausible. But a moment’s reflection may convince us that we are
here talking of things about which we know nothing. We cannot know either what
was in Onesimus’s mind or what his opportunities for travel may have been. If we
are to surmise, then it is as likely that the fugitive slave, his pockets lined at his
master’s expense, made for Rome because it was distant, as that he went to
Ephesus because it was near. But this meeting of the runaway slave with the
imprisoned apostle is in any case an enigma. Did he mean to go to Paul? Or was
he taken to him? Or was it the long arm of coincidence that brought about such
an improbable meeting? No secure argument can be based upon an incident
which we cannot in any case explain.12
To the argument that Paul’s request for a lodging at
Colossae comes more naturally if he was at Ephesus at the time
than if he was at Rome, he says:
This is a real point in favour of the Ephesian hypothesis. At the same time we
do not know that Paul would have held to his intention in the greatly changed
circumstances. Like all practical men, he was open to change his mind, as in fact
we know both from Acts and from the Epistles he not infrequently did. On the
Roman hypothesis, the emergence of the Colossian heresy may well have led Paul
to plan a visit to Asia before setting out on further travels, whether or not the
plan was ever fulfilled.13
These arguments of Professor Dodd, first publicly voiced in a
lecture delivered in the John Rylands Library, Manchester,
were taken up by Principal Duncan soon after they appeared in
print in the Library’s Bulletin (1934). On the first score
Principal Duncan added little to what he had said before (apart
from a footnote reference to J. Pongrácz’s suggestion that the
temple of Artemis would have afforded a place of refuge for
Onesimus at Ephesus); on the second score he conceded that
Paul might have changed his plans during his Roman
imprisonment and decided to visit Colossae. “But long before
he could have arrived at that remote and unimportant town in
the Lycus valley, must we not allow for the eager news
preceding him of his release, his journeyings eastwards, his
subsequent arrival at Ephesus or some such centre in Asia?
That one so situated should bespeak quarters at Colossae
suggests the air-mindedness of the twentieth century rather
than the rigorous conditions, which Paul himself knew so well
(2 Corinthians 11:25 ff.), of travel in the first.”14
On this last point it may be said that long before the air-
minded twentieth century most readers of the epistle, including
some who experienced travel conditions not noticeably less
some who experienced travel conditions not noticeably less
rigorous than those which Paul had to endure in the first
century, took it for granted that Paul did from Rome bespeak
quarters at Colossae. More important: it was not only the
Colossian heresy that caused Paul concern. The developing
situation in the province of Asia, as Paul learned of it from
Epaphras and other visitors, may well have seemed to him to
call urgently for his presence there as soon as he regained his
freedom (if indeed he did regain it). In other parts of the
province than the Lycus valley Paul’s opponents were
exploiting his enforced absence to his detriment and (as he saw
it) to the detriment of his converts and the cause of the gospel.
Even if things had not yet come to the pass described in 2
Timothy 1:15, where “all who are in Asia” are said to have
turned away from him, the beginnings of this trend could
certainly be traced during Paul’s custody in Rome, if not
earlier.
One slight pointer to Rome as the place of origin might be
the inclusion of Luke and Mark among Paul’s companions at
the time of writing. Luke was with Paul at Rome; we have no
evidence that he was with him at Ephesus. Mark is traditionally
associated with Rome, not with Ephesus.15 But this pointer, if
such it be, is far from conclusive.
Defenders of the view that the letter and its companion
letters were composed during Paul’s imprisonment at Caesarea
could point out that Luke was very probably with Paul at that
time; but (in spite of Lohmeyer’s arguments)16 Caesarea hardly
comes into the picture. One could understand Onesimus
making his way to Ephesus because it was near, or working his
passage to Rome because it was distant; but why should he go
to Caesarea?
The place from which the Epistle to Philemon was written
cannot, in fact, be determined from a study of this letter alone.
It must be determined, if at all, by taking into account the
evidence of the letters with which this one is most closely
associated—in the first instance, the letter to the Colossians.
When we look at Philemon by itself, the arguments for Ephesus
are weighty. But when we take Philemon and Colossians
are weighty. But when we take Philemon and Colossians
together, these arguments are outweighed by the arguments
for Rome as the place from which Colossians was written. This
question calls for separate treatment.
4. The case of Onesimus
The picture sometimes given of Paul’s meeting Onesimus as
a fellow-prisoner is rather misleading. Principal Duncan is
quite right in emphasizing “how very radically Paul’s condition
of imprisonment in Rome must have changed for the worse if,
following on two years spent in his own hired house (Acts
28:30), he was reduced to sharing the same prison-cell as a
fugitive slave.”17 But there is no need to conjure up any such
picture in our minds. The situation is more intelligible if we
think of Paul as still living under house-arrest in his lodgings—
albeit hand-cuffed to his military guard, and therefore
technically a prisoner (verses 1, 9) or “in chains” (verses 10,
13)—when Onesimus came to him.
In this case we might consider a suggestion made many
years ago by Professor E. R. Goodenough.18 He pointed out
that Athenian law permitted a slave in danger of his life to seek
sanctuary at an altar, and that that altar might be the hearth of
a private family. The head of the family was then obliged to
give the slave protection while he tried to persuade him to
return to his master; he would no doubt use his good offices to
try to mollify the master’s wrath. If the slave refused to return,
the householder’s duty was to put the slave up for auction and
hand over the price received for him to his former master. This
provision survived in Egypt under the Ptolemies, and well into
Roman imperial times, since it influenced Ulpian’s legislation
early in the third century A.D. Philo, who knew the Egyptian
practice, modified the Deuteronomic law of the fugitive slave19
to conform with it.20
Goodenough explained the case of Onesimus in terms of this
provision, but found it necessary then to suppose that Paul was
free at the time, and that the reference to his being “in bonds”
might be figurative.21 But if the apostle was under house-arrest
in his own lodgings, might not the place where he lived count
as a “hearth” or “altar” within the meaning of the law—always
supposing that Onesimus did avail himself of this legal
provision?
There is no way of deciding how in fact Onesimus made his
way to Paul. Perhaps Epaphras of Colossae, the evangelist of
the Lycus valley (Colossians 1:7), who was on a visit to Paul at
the time (Colossians 4:12) and who is indeed described as
Paul’s “fellow-prisoner” in Philemon 23, brought him to Paul
because he knew that Paul would help him in his predicament.
We cannot be sure. We may be quite wrong in supposing that
Onesimus was a runaway slave in the usual sense of the word.
It could, I suppose, be argued that his master sent him to Paul
to fulfil some commission, and that Onesimus overstayed his
leave—amore Pauli, perhaps (why not?)—and had to have a
note of excuse from Paul begging pardon for his unduly long
absence. Our ignorance of the details being what it is, the
possibilities which might be canvassed are numerous.
The letter throws little light on Paul’s attitude to the
institution of slavery. We get more formal teaching on this
subject in the “household tables” of Colossians and Ephesians,
and in remarks in other letters.22 What this letter does is to
bring us into an atmosphere in which the institution could only
wilt and die. When Onesimus is sent to his master “no longer as
a slave, but as a dear brother”, formal emancipation would be
but a matter of expediency, the technical confirmation of the
new relationship that had already come into being. If the letter
were a document on slavery, one could illustrate it copiously by
accounts of the conditions of slavery under the Roman Empire,
including an advertisement of 156 B.C. quoted by Professor
Moule in his commentary on Colossians and Philemon, in which
information is requested about a runaway slave and a
description is given not only of the slave himself but of the
goods which he had on him when last seen.23
5. Three questions
If the letter is not primarily a sociological document, what is
it? We may gain a clearer idea of its nature and purpose if we
ask three specific questions:
(a) What is Paul asking for?
(b) Did he get it?
(c) Why was the letter preserved?
Although formally these are three questions, materially they
are parts of one comprehensive question, covering the
character of the document and its place in the New Testament.
It will help us, moreover, to find an answer to this
comprehensive question and the more specific questions which
make it up if we look at one of the most important and
fascinating books ever written on this epistle—a book which
deals not only with these major questions but also with a
number of subsidiary ones.
In 1935 Professor John Knox, formerly of the University of
Chicago and later of Union Theological Seminary, New York,
published a little book entitled Philemon among the Letters of
Paul. The edition was a small one, and the book did not receive
the attention which it deserved. In 1959 it appeared in a new
and slightly enlarged edition. Meanwhile Professor Knox’s
views on Philemon had received wider currency in his
introduction and commentary on the epistle in The
Interpreter’s Bible.24
The milieu in which Professor Knox’s work took shape was
the Chicago New Testament school led by the late Edgar J.
Goodspeed. Goodspeed himself pioneered the view that the
corpus Paulinum of ten epistles (that is, lacking the three
Pastorals) was edited and published at Ephesus about the end
of the first century A.D., and that the document which we call
the Epistle to the Ephesians was composed by the editor to
serve as an introduction to the corpus.25 Other members of the
Chicago school undertook supporting studies with a bearing on
the central thesis, and Professor Knox’s book belongs to this
category.
He accepts the general Goodspeed position and asks the
pertinent question: Why was Philemon included among the
letters of Paul? His answer, briefly, is that Philemon mattered
supremely to a man who played a prominent part in the
publication of the corpus Paulinum. Who was that man? It was
Onesimus.
The argument runs thus. When Ignatius, bishop of Syrian
Antioch, was on his way to Rome to be thrown to the wild
beasts, about A.D. 110 or shortly after, the name of the bishop
of Ephesus was Onesimus.26 “What of that?” it might be asked.
Onesimus was a common enough name—especially a common
enough slave-name. “Profitable” or “Useful” was a name
bestowed on many slaves in accordance with a well-known
principle of nomenclature, not because a slave was actually
profitable or useful, but in the fond hope that the attachment of
this name of good omen to him would make him so. Why, then,
should one connect the Onesimus who was bishop of Ephesus
about A.D. 110 with the Onesimus who figures in the letter to
Philemon between fifty and sixty years earlier?
Because, says Professor Knox, Ignatius in his letter to the
church of Ephesus shows himself familiar with the Epistle to
Philemon; it is one of the rare places in patristic literature
where the language of our epistle is clearly echoed. Not only
so, but the part of Ignatius’s letter to Ephesus where the
language of Philemon is echoed is the part in which Bishop
Onesimus is mentioned—the first six chapters. In these six
chapters the bishop is mentioned fourteen times;27 in the
remaining fifteen chapters he is not mentioned at all, apart
from one general reference: “obey the bishop and the
presbytery with an undisturbed mind.”28
This consideration is impressive, if not conclusive. But there
is one point which I find particularly impressive. In verse 20 of
our epistle Paul, playing on the meaning of Onesimus’s name,
says, “Yes, my dear brother, let me have this profit from you
(onaimēn sou) as a fellow-Christian”. And Ignatius seems to
echo this expression with the intention of making the same play
on words when he says to the Christians of Ephesus, “May I
always have profit from you (onaimēn hymōn), if I am
worthy”.29
This indeed does not demand the identification of the two
Onesimi; it could simply be that the name of the contemporary
bishop of Ephesus reminded Ignatius of the Onesimus of
Philemon; as the earlier Onesimus, formerly unprofitable, was
henceforth going to be as profitable as his name promised, so
the second Onesimus was eminently worthy of his “well-loved
name”.30 But the identification is not impossible; it is (I should
say) not improbable. Whether the Epistle to Philemon was
written about A.D. 61, or some six years earlier (as those think
who date it in the course of Paul’s Ephesian ministry), a lad in
his later teens or early twenties when Paul wrote it would be in
his seventies by the time of Ignatius’s martyrdom—not an
incredible age for a bishop in those days.
Professor Knox is not so convincing, when he makes Paul
say, “The request I am making is for my son,31 whom I have
begotten here in prison as Onesimus”—as though Onesimus
were the new “Christian” name given him by his father in the
faith.32 This idea is too far-fetched; not only, as has been said,
was Onesimus a common slave-name, but Paul would not
designate the young man by a name which his master would
not recognize.
Apart from this, what has the possible identification of Paul’s
Onesimus with the bishop of Ephesus whom Ignatius knew to
do with the preservation of the Epistle to Philemon among the
letters of Paul? This, says Professor Knox: if (as the Goodspeed
school believes) Ephesus was the place where the corpus
Paulinum was edited about the end of the first century, then
the Onesimus of Ignatius’s letter was probably already bishop
of Ephesus and in a position of responsibility in relation to the
editing of the corpus. Why should he not have been the editor
himself? In that case we need look no farther for the reason for
the careful preservation of the epistle to Philemon. But if
Onesimus was editor of the corpus Paulinum, then (according
to the Goodspeed school) he would have been the author of the
Epistle to the Ephesians. If that were so, Paul certainly did a
wonderful piece of work the day he won Onesimus for Christ!
Professor Knox raises another interesting question. To whom
is the Epistle to Philemon addressed? To Philemon, of course, is
the natural answer. Yes, but not so fast. It is addressed not to
Philemon alone; it is addressed to “our dear fellow-worker
Philemon, our sister Apphia and our comrade Archippus, and
the church in your house”—“your” in the singular. This is a
place where it is useful to follow the Authorized and Revised
Versions and retain the distinction between the singular and
plural pronouns of the second person: “the church in thy
house”. In whose house? The house of the person who is
addressed in the second person singular from verse 4 to verse
24 of the epistle—Onesimus’s owner. And who was he?
Philemon, again, is the natural answer—the person first
mentioned among the addressees in verse 1 (just as the real
author of the epistle is the person first mentioned among the
senders in verse 1).
But Professor Knox does not think so. Onesimus’s owner,
according to him, was not Philemon but Archippus, the third
addressee.33 Why should Philemon have been Onesimus’s
owner any more than Archippus? Confirmation that Archippus
was Onesimus’s owner is sought in the cryptic reference to
Archippus in Colossians 4:17, where Paul bids the Colossian
church tell Archippus to see to it that he fulfils the ministry he
has received “in the Lord”. What Paul is doing there is enlisting
the support of the Colossian church in persuading Onesimus’s
master to do what Paul wants him to do.
Who then was Philemon? He was overseer of the churches of
the Lycus valley, who lived at Laodicea. Paul arranged that the
epistle should be delivered to Philemon first because he could
use his influence with Archippus; this was the “epistle from
Laodicea” which Paul asked the church of Colossae to procure
and read (Colossians 4:16).34
What can be said of this reconstruction? It is quite probable
that the cryptic reference to Archippus’s ministry had
something to do with the “letter from Laodicea”, since it comes
immediately after the injunction to procure and read that
letter. But one thing is certain: after the extraordinary delicacy
with which Paul makes his plea for Onesimus in the letter to
Philemon, it would be an incredibly flat-footed action to put
pressure on Onesimus’s owner by name in another letter which
was to be read aloud at a church meeting where the owner
would presumably be present.35 The reference to Onesimus in
Colossians 4:9, on the other hand, is unobtrusive: “Along with
Tychicus I am sending Onesimus, my trusty and well-loved
brother, who is one of yourselves.” No one could take exception
to that, although doubtless it would add just a little more
weight to Paul’s plea in the letter to Philemon. But there was
no need to put on the spot a man to whom Paul was writing
separately and saying, “I know you will do more than I say”;
any attempt to put him on the spot before the church of
Colossae would go far to neutralize the effect of Paul’s
diplomacy in the letter to Philemon.
And it would if anything be still more disastrous for Paul to
direct that the letter to Philemon should be read aloud to the
assembled church at Colossae. True, in the letter to Philemon
Paul sends greetings to “the church that meets in your house”
as well as to Philemon, Apphia and Archippus—but that does
not mean that the private contents of verses 4–22 were to be
divulged even to the household church with which these three
were associated, let alone the city church of Colossae.
What Archippus’s ministry was, which had to be publicly
enjoined on him in Colossians 4:17, must be a matter of
speculation; but there is no good reason to suppose that it is
relevant to our understanding of the letter to Philemon. Nor
was Archippus Onesimus’s owner. It is unlikely that this idea
would have occurred to any one but for a desire to link the
burden of the letter to Philemon with the ministry laid on
Archippus in Colossians 4:17. The first person addressed in the
letter to Philemon would naturally be the head of the house;36
Apphia and Archippus would naturally be members of his
family—his wife and his son perhaps. It was, then, in
Philemon’s house that the household church of verse 1 met,
and when Paul goes on to say, “I am making this request of
you” (verse 9), it is to Philemon that the request is addressed.
It is Philemon who is Onesimus’s master; the traditional title of
the epistle is no misnomer.
6. Three answers
We return to our three specific questions.
(a) What is Paul asking for? He is asking Philemon of
Colossae, one of his own converts,37 not only to pardon his
slave Onesimus and give him a Christian welcome, but to send
him back so that he can go on helping Paul as he had already
begun to do. Paul would have liked to keep Onesimus with him,
but would not do so without Philemon’s express and willing
consent—not only because it would have been illegal to do so,
but also, and especially, because it would have involved a
breach of Christian fellowship between himself and Philemon.
(b) Did he get it? Yes; otherwise the letter never would have
survived. That it survived at all is a matter calling for comment,
but if Philemon had hardened his heart and refused to pardon
and welcome Onesimus he would certainly have suppressed the
letter.
(c) Why was the letter preserved? Not only because it
accomplished its purpose so far as Philemon was concerned,
but also because Onesimus treasured it as his charter of
liberty. And there is much to be said for the view that
Onesimus did not remain a private Christian, but became in
due course one of the most important figures in the life of the
province of Asia—bishop of Ephesus, no less. It was in his
lifetime that the corpus of Pauline letters was first collected
and published, and wherever and by whomsoever this work
was carried out, Onesimus (if he was bishop of Ephesus) could
scarcely fail to get to know about it, and he would make sure
that his Pauline letter found a place in the collection.
CHAPTER 35
Principalities and Powers
1. The gospel in the Lycus valley
COLOSSAE, PHILEMON’S HOME CITY, WAS SITUATED
IN PHRYGIA, on the south bank of the river Lycus (modern
Çoruk Su), a tributary of the Maeander (Büyük Menderes). It
lay on the main road from Ephesus to the Euphrates, and
accordingly finds mention in the itineraries of the armies of
Xerxes and Cyrus the Younger, which marched along this road.
Herodotus, in the fifth century B.C., speaks of it as “a great city
of Phrygia”1; Xenophon, at the beginning of the following
century, describes it as “a populous city, wealthy and large”.2
But later in the pre-Christian era it diminished in importance
with the growth of neighbouring Laodicea and Hierapolis, and
at the beginning of the Christian era Strabo calls it a small
town.3 The site is now deserted, but the town of Honaz
(formerly a Byzantine fortress and seat of an archbishopric) lies
three miles to the south-east. In New Testament times its
population comprised indigenous Phrygians and Greek settlers,
together with a number of Jewish colonists who settled in
Phrygia from the time of Antiochus III (early second century
B.C.) onwards.
The western region of Phrygia in which Colossae and the
other cities of the Lycus valley lay formed part of the kingdom
of Pergamum, which was bequeathed to the Roman senate and
people in 133 B.C. by Attalus III, the last ruler of that kingdom,
and reconstituted by them as the province of Asia.
Christianity was introduced to the Lycus valley during the
years of Paul’s Ephesian ministry (c. A.D. 52–55). So vigorously
was evangelization prosecuted during those years that,
according to Luke, not only the people of Ephesus but “all the
residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and
Greeks” (Acts 19:10). While this work was directed by Paul, he
was assisted by a number of colleagues, and through their
activity churches were planted in some areas of the province
which Paul was unable to visit personally. Among these were
the churches of Colossae, Laodicea and Hierapolis, which
appear to have been planted by Paul’s colleague Epaphras; this
may be inferred from Paul’s references to him in Col. 1:7 f.;
4:12 f.
Within five years from Paul’s departure from Ephesus, he
found himself under house-arrest in Rome. Here, for a period of
two years, he was able to receive visitors in his lodgings
without difficulty.4 One of these visitors was Epaphras, the
evangelist of the Lycus valley. He brought Paul news of the
progress of the churches in that region. Much of his news was
encouraging, but there was one disquieting feature: at
Colossae in particular there was a strong tendency among the
Christians to embrace a form of teaching which (although they
themselves had no suspicion of this) threatened to subvert the
gospel of grace which they had recently believed and to replace
their Christian liberty with spiritual bondage. To safeguard
them against this threat Paul sent them the Epistle to the
Colossians.
2. Authorship and date
The statements in the foregoing paragraph are based on
several assumptions—two in particular: (a) that the letter to
the Colossians has Paul for its author; (b) that it was written
during his imprisonment in Rome.
(a) Authorship. On the point of authorship, Paul and Timothy
are named together in the opening salutation as senders of the
letter. It has been shown that most of the epistles in which
Timothy’s name is conjoined in this way with Paul’s present
some common literary features which mark them off from other
letters in the corpus Paulinum; a natural explanation of this
would be that in these letters Timothy served the apostle as his
amanuensis.5
But it has been urged against the Pauline authorship of this
epistle that such a gnostic heresy as it presupposes could not
have emerged before the second century A.D. There would be
substance in this argument if the “Colossian heresy” exhibited
the traits of fully developed Valentinianism or one of the other
gnostic systems described by Irenaeus and Hippolytus or
reflected in the Nag Hammadi papyri. But, as compared with
such second-century systems, the “Colossian heresy” must be
recognized as an incipient form of gnosticism. Evidence has
indeed been forthcoming in increasing measure of the currency
of incipient forms of gnosticism in the first century, especially
in areas where Judaism found itself involved in dominant trends
of Hellenistic and Oriental thought.
Some other arguments that have been brought against the
Pauline authorship of Colossians boil down to the feeling that
the author of Galatians, Corinthians and Romans could not
have adapted himself as the writer of Colossians does to the
situation with which this epistle deals. But this is seriously to
underrate Paul’s intelligence and versatility. The man whose
settled policy it was to be “all things to all men” for the
gospel’s sake (1 Corinthians 9:22 f.) was perfectly capable of
confronting what he regarded as the false gnōsis and worldly
askēsis taught at Colossae with the true gnōsis and spiritual
askēsis of Christ. For all his opposition, to the “Colossian
heresy”, he readily takes up its characteristic terminology with
a view to showing that the truth which it attempts to convey
and only succeeds in distorting is perfectly embodied in Christ,
the manifested “mystery of God” (Colossians 2:2).
It was pointed out some years ago by Dr. Henry Chadwick6
that Paul in this epistle is doing two things at once: he is acting
as the apologist for Christianity to the intellectual world of
paganism at the same time as he is defending gospel truth
within the church. His employment for apologetic purposes of
the technical terms of the “Colossian heresy” in what has been
called a “disinfected” sense7 goes some way to account for the
differences in vocabulary which have been discerned between
this epistle and Ephesians on the one hand and the Galatian,
Corinthian and Roman epistles on the other.
Some scholars—notably H. J. Holtzmann,8 Charles Masson9
and (most recently) P. N. Harrison10—recognizing indubitably
Pauline elements in Colossians, have tried to explain the
presence of elements felt to be un-Pauline by supposing that
Paul wrote a shorter Epistle to the Colossians. This shorter
epistle, the hypothesis proceeds, was drawn upon by the
Paulinist who wrote Ephesians; and the same Paulinist
subsequently inserted substantial interpolations into the
genuine Colossians in his own “inimitable style”,11 thus
producing our present enlarged Colossians. Holtzmann
attempted in this way to account for the curious phenomenon
that, in passages common to Colossians and Ephesians,
sometimes the one epistle and sometimes the other seems to be
earlier. But A. S. Peake’s criticism of Holtzmann’s argument
—“the complexity of the hypothesis tells fatally against it”12—is
equally valid against its more recent formulations.
P. N. Harrison incorporates with his formulation of this
hypothesis the view which he takes over from E. J. Goodspeed
that Ephesians was written by Onesimus; Onesimus, he
concludes, was also the interpolator of Colossians.13 Two of the
most substantial interpolations which Harrison discerns are the
passages in Colossians 1:9b–25 and 2:8–23, largely because of
the high proportion of hapax legomena which they contain. But
the argument from hapax legomena is precarious when applied
to these two passages, since in the former liberal use is made
of liturgical formulae, while the latter is above all others the
passage in which the vocabulary of the “Colossian heresy”
seems to be taken over and used in a “disinfected” sense.
In a more recent study Bishop Eduard Lohse agrees that the
thought of Colossians exhibits Pauline features, but finds
differences between its theology and that of the major Pauline
letters which rule out Paul as its direct, or even indirect author.
These differences pervade the non-polemical as well as the
polemical parts of the letter; they affect Christology,
ecclesiology, eschatology and baptismal doctrine, and are
ascribed to the emergence of a “Pauline school tradition”
which was based probably in Ephesus. Colossians, however,
belongs to a relatively early phase of this tradition: its
conception of the church, for example, is earlier than that of
Ephesians, and its understanding of the ministry more
primitive than that of the Pastoral Epistles. One might say,
indeed, that on Bishop Lohse’s own showing, Colossians is here
in line “with the major Pauline epistles, which occasionally also
mention teachers, prophets, and ministers of the word along
with the apostle, but at the same time describe teaching as the
entire community’s duty which every Christian, by virtue of the
charisma bestowed on him, may and should fulfill”.14 This last
statement goes beyond the evidence of the major epistles,
where “he who teaches” exercises one of the “gifts that differ
according to the grace given to us” (Romans 12:6 f.). The
question “Are all teachers?” (1 Corinthians 12:29) expects the
answer “No”, Yet the primitiveness of the understanding of the
ministry in Colossians may well serve as a positive argument
for a date within the apostle’s lifetime.
(b) Date. As for the question whether Paul’s imprisonment at
the time of writing Colossians (Colossians 4:3, 18) was his
Roman imprisonment or an earlier one, reference has been
made elsewhere to two criteria which, in default of more
explicit evidence, may help to determine the relative dating of
the Pauline epistles.15 These criteria have to do with the
development of Paul’s thought in certain fields. Here it is all
too easy to argue in circles, determining the development of his
thought from the order of his epistles, and then determining
the order of his epistles from the development of his thought.
But if we can establish some definite progression of thought on
the basis of those epistles which can be dated on independent
evidence, we may be able sometimes to suggest where, along
the line of progression thus established, the other epistles
should most probably be placed. Even so, we must beware of
imagining that we can assume anything in the nature of linear
progression when we are dealing with a mind like Paul’s.
The two criteria mentioned are Paul’s progression of thought
The two criteria mentioned are Paul’s progression of thought
in relation to (i) the eschatological hope and (ii) and the church
as the body of Christ.
The former of these criteria does not take us very far with
Colossians. In this epistle there is none of the apocalyptic
picture-language which we find in the Thessalonian epistles16
and in some degree in 1 Corinthians 15:51 ff., but the certainty
of the parousia as the hope of the people of Christ is as clear as
ever: “When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will
appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:4). This is very much in
line with Romans 8:18–25, where the revealing of the sons of
God in glory is the consummation for which the universe waits
with longing expectancy; and the portrayal of Christ in
Colossians 1:20 as the one through whom God plans to
reconcile the universe to himself is in line both with that
passage in Romans and with Philippians 2:10 f., where the
divine purpose is said to be that every knee should bow in
Jesus’ name and every tongue confess that he is Lord.
Much more decisive for the dating of Colossians is the other
criterion—Paul’s conception of the Church as the body of
Christ. A comparison of the setting forth of this conception in
Colossians with its setting forth in 1 Corinthians and Romans
suggests that Colossians marks a more advanced stage in
Paul’s thinking on the subject than do 1 Corinthians and
Romans. More will be said about this later in this chapter;
suffice it to note here that, whereas in 1 Corinthians and
Romans the common life of Christians is compared to the
interdependence of the various members of a body, the head
(or a particular part of the head) being one member among
others,17 in Colossians (and Ephesians) Christ is viewed as the
head of the body. This more advanced stage in Paul’s thinking
may reflect his reaction to the Colossian heresy; at any rate, it
is difficult to date it during his Ephesian ministry, about the
same time as 1 Corinthians and earlier than Romans. It follows
that an Ephesian imprisonment is out of the question as the
setting of Colossians; and if an Ephesian imprisonment is out,
we have to think of either Caesarea or Rome. As between these
two alternatives, Rome is the more probable on all counts.18
This argument would, of course, be rebutted if the theory of
two stages in the composition of Colossians were accepted; P.
N. Harrison, for example, assigns all the occurrences of “head”
and “body” in the epistle to the interpolator, and is thus able to
date the genuine nucleus in Paul’s Ephesian ministry, “during a
brief period of house arrest by friendly Asiarchs (Acts 19:31),
to keep Paul out of the reach of fanatical Jews, and avert a
riot”.19 But the bibliographical improbability of this theory is
such that it could be favourably considered only if powerful
evidence were forthcoming in its support—and for such
evidence we seek in vain.20
3. The “Colossian heresy”
We have no formal exposition of what is commonly called the
“Colossian heresy”; its character must be inferred from the
counter-arguments presented in our epistle.
But, it may be asked, do these counter-arguments point to
the existence of a “Colossian heresy”? Paul puts the Romans
and the Philippians on their guard against certain false
teachings and malpractices (Romans 16:17–20; Philippians 3:2,
18 f.) without necessarily implying that such things had
actually invaded the churches of Rome and Philippi; might he
not be doing the same thing in Colossians? “Were there”, in
short (as Professor Morna Hooker has asked), “false teachers
in Colossae?” She suggests, not that Paul is forewarning the
Colossian Christians against false teachers who might infiltrate
their ranks, but that he is arming them against the pressures of
contemporary society with its prevalent superstitions, just as “a
Christian pastor in twentieth century Britain might well feel it
necessary to remind those in his care that Christ was greater
than any astrological forces”.21
The answer to Professor Hooker’s question must in large
measure be a subjective one: as I read the letter, the
impression made on me makes me answer, “Yes; there were
false teachers in Colossae.”22
Basically, their teaching seems to have been Jewish. This
Basically, their teaching seems to have been Jewish. This
appears from the part played in it by legal ordinances,
circumcision, food regulations, the sabbath, new moon and
other prescriptions of the Jewish calendar. But it was not the
more straightforward Judaism against which the churches of
Galatia had to be put on their guard. That Judaism was
probably introduced into the Galatian churches by emissaries
from Judaea; the Colossian heresy was more probably a
Phrygian development in which a local variety of Judaism had
been fused with a philosphy of non-Jewish origin—an early and
simple form of gnosticism.
The synagogues of Phrygia appear to have been peculiarly
exposed to the influence of Hellenistic speculation and
consequent tendencies to religious syncretism.23 When the
gospel was introduced to the region, a Jewish-Hellenistic
syncretism would find little difficulty in expanding and
modifying itself sufficiently to fit the general framework of the
Christian story, and the result would be something not unlike
the Colossian heresy as we can reconstruct it from Paul’s reply
to it.
In this heresy a special place was apparently given to angels,
as agents both in creation and in the giving of the law.
As for the angelic agency in creation, one form of this belief
appears in Philo.24 Another form seems to be attested by Justin
Martyr, who refers to certain Jewish teachers who held that the
words “let us make man” (Genesis 1:26) and “as one of us”
(Genesis 3:22) imply “that God spoke to angels, or that the
human frame was the workmanship of angels”—whereas Justin
held that the plural pronoun “us” denoted the Father and the
Son.25 We may compare the statement in the Treatise on the
Three Natures, discovered among the Nag Hammadi texts:
“Some [Jewish sects] say that God is the creator of that which
exists; others say that he created through his angels.”26
The angelic agency in the giving of the law is mentioned by
Paul in his letter to the Galatians and by two other New
Testament writers; it is attested in contemporary Jewish
literature, as well as earlier in the Book of Jubilees and later in
rabbinical commentaries.27 In the Colossian heresy the keeping
of the law was regarded as a tribute of obedience due to those
angels, and the breaking of the law incurred their displeasure
and brought the law-breaker into debt and bondage to them.
Hence they must be placated not only by the legal observances
of traditional Judaism but in addition by a rigorous asceticism.
The angels through whom the law was given are described
as “elemental beings” (stoicheia), a term already used in the
same sense in Galatians 4:3, 9. But they are not only elemental
beings but dominant ones as well—principalities and powers,
lords of the planetary spheres, sharers in the divine plenitude
(plērōma) and intermediaries between heaven and earth. Since
they controlled the lines of communication between God and
man, all revelation from God to man and all worship from man
to God could reach its goal only by their mediation and with
their permission. Christ himself, it was evidently held, had to
submit to their authority on his way from heaven to earth, if not
indeed also on his way back from earth to heaven.
All this was presented as a form of advanced teaching for a
spiritual élite. The Christians of Colossae were urged to go in
for this progressive wisdom and knowledge (gnōsis), to explore
the deeper mysteries by a series of successive initiations until
they attained perfection (teleiōsis). Christian baptism was but a
preliminary initiation; those who wished to proceed farther
along the path of truth must put off all material elements by
pursuing an ascetic regimen until at last they became citizens
of the spiritual world, the realm of light.
Bishop Lightfoot, in his commentary on Colossians and
Philemon (1875), traced this species of Judaizing gnōsis back to
the Essenes,28 to whom he devoted three dissertations at the
end of the commentary,29 thus reverting to a subject which he
had already broached ten years earlier in his dissertation on
“St. Paul and the Three” in his commentary on Galatians.30
Quite apart from the relevance of his dissertations on the
Essenes to the theme of Colossians, Lightfoot shows his
characteristic sobriety and accuracy of scholarship in his
description of the Essenes and their doctrines—as may be seen
on the one hand by the contrast between his account and that
of C. D. Ginsburg’s essay on The Essenes, their History and
Doctrines, published in 1864,31 and now on the other hand in
the light of the vastly increased knowledge of the Essenes or a
related group available to us from the Qumran texts. In the
light of these texts, too, Lightfoot’s further thesis of a strong
Essene element in Ebionitism is reinforced.32
In relating the Colossian heresy to the Essenes Lightfoot
argues (a) that Essene Judaism was “gnostic”, characterized by
the intellectual exclusiveness and speculative tenets of
gnosticism; (b) that this type of Jewish thought and practice
had established itself in that area of Asia Minor in the apostolic
age; (c) that the Colossian heresy was a brand of gnostic
Judaism, because (i) it was clearly Jewish in its basis and (ii) it
was marked by several distinctive features of gnosticism; an
intellectual élite (which insisted on wisdom, knowledge, etc.),
cosmogonic speculation (with emphasis on angelic mediation,
the plērōma, etc.), asceticism and calendrical regulations.33
More recently many of these features reappear in a
catalogue of specific points of contact between the Qumran
texts and the Colossian heresy.34 Professor W. D. Davies, for
example, enumerates among these points of contact features of
phraseology,35 calendrical niceties, sabbath regulations, food
distinctions, asceticism, and emphasis on wisdom and
knowledge,36 involving a special understanding of the world, of
angelology, of the “spirit of truth” and the “spirit of error”, and
so forth.
Even so, we cannot without more ado identify the Colossian
heresy as a variety of Essenism or of the Qumran doctrine. For
one thing, we miss in the letter to the Colossians any reference
to an insistence on ceremonial washings, which appear to have
played an important part among the Essenes in general and at
Qumran in particular. When baptism is mentioned in
Colossians, it is mentioned not as the true counterpart to
heretical ablutions but in connection with the “circumcision
made without hands” (Colossians 2:11 f.)—perhaps by way of
showing that the literal rite of circumcision has been
superseded by the work of Christ. Instead, therefore, of talking
of specifically Essene influence in the Colossian heresy, it
might be better to use the wider term recently popularized by
Principal Matthew Black and talk of the influence of “non-
conformist Judaism” or “Jewish nonconformity”.37
Behind Colossians, and some other areas of New Testament
literature, several scholars have discerned a gnostic myth of
Iranian origin which they believe to have been current in the
Near East around the time when Christianity first appeared.38
The reflection of this myth in a New Testament document is
usually sufficient to stamp it as post-apostolic—sufficient
especially, if the document in question belongs to the corpus
Paulinum, to stamp it as non-Pauline or at least deutero-
Pauline. One distinctive feature of this myth is the association
or identification of Primal Man with the Redeemer-Revealer
who comes from the realm of light to liberate exiles from that
realm who have been imprisoned in material bodies in the
lower world of darkness, by imparting to them the knowledge
of the truth. Much of the material on the basis of which this
myth has been reconstructed—especially Mandaean and
Manichaean literature—is later than the apostolic age, and is at
least as likely to have been influenced by the New Testament
as to have exercised an influence upon it. It is possible to
defend the thesis that Primal Man and the Redeemer-Revealer
are nowhere brought together in gnosticism except under the
influence of the gospel, and one might even hazard the guess
that one of the earliest attempts to re-state the gospel in terms
of such a gnostic myth can be detected in the Colossian heresy.
4. The cosmic Christ
The whole elaborate structure of the Colossian heresy is
condemned by Paul as so much specious make-believe. Far
from representing a more advanced grade of religious truth
than that proclaimed in the apostolic preaching, it was at every
point inconsistent with that preaching. A system in which the
planetary powers played so prominent a part must needs
enthrone fate in place of God. If we may judge by the analogy
enthrone fate in place of God. If we may judge by the analogy
of parallel systems, Christ was probably held to have
relinquished successive portions of his authority to the
planetary powers as he passed through their spheres on his
way to earth, and if (as the Colossian heresy seems to have
taught) it was these powers that made him suffer on the cross,
that would be regarded as conclusive proof of their superiority
to him.
Paul’s reply to this “human tradition” (Colossians 2:8) is to
set over against it the tradition of Christ—not merely the
tradition which stems from the teaching of Christ but the
tradition which finds its embodiment in him.39 Christ, he says,
is the image of God, the one who incorporates the plenitude of
the divine essence, so that the elemental spirits have no share
in it at all. And those who are members of Christ realize their
plenitude in him; they need not seek, for they cannot find,
perfection anywhere else. It is in Christ that the totality of
wisdom and knowledge is concentrated and made available to
his people—not to an élite only, but to all. And he is the sole
mediator between God and mankind.
Far from the angels playing a part in creation, Christ is the
one through whom all things were created, including the
principalities and powers which figured so prominently in the
Colossian heresy. Why should people who were united by faith
with the creator of these powers think it necessary to pay them
tribute? Again, far from these powers demonstrating their
superiority to Christ, his death and resurrection reveal him as
their conqueror. When on the cross they flung themselves upon
him with hostile intent, he not only repelled their attack but
turned the cross into the triumphal chariot before which he
drove them as his vanquished foes.40 Why then should those
who through faith-union with him shared his death and
resurrection go on serving those elemental spirits which Christ
had conquered? The Colossian heresy, with all its tabus, was no
syllabus of advanced wisdom; it bore all the marks of
immaturity. Why should those who had come of age in Christ
go back to the apron-strings of infancy? Why should those
whom Christ had set free submit to this yoke of bondage?
In his reply to the Colossian heresy, Paul develops the
doctrine of the cosmic Christ more fully than in his other
epistles. Adumbrations of it certainly appear in some of his
other epistles. To Paul there was “one Lord, Jesus Christ,
through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1
Corinthians 8:6); this Christ was “the power of God and the
wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24), and God through the
Spirit had revealed to his people that hidden wisdom, decreed
before the ages for their glory, through ignorance of which the
cosmic powers41 had crucified the Lord of glory and thus
accomplished their own overthrow (1 Corinthians 2:6–10). And
the liberation from such hostile forces procured by Christ in his
death was not to be restricted to his people alone, but would in
due course reach out to the whole cosmos (Romans 8:19–22).
But what is suggested in passing in 1 Corinthians and Romans
is expounded more fully and systematically in Colossians. (This,
it may be added, is a further indication that Colossians is later
than these two epistles.)
The language in which Paul portrays Christ as the one in
whom and for whom the universe was created, and in whom all
things hold together, is generally recognized nowadays to be
based on an early Christian hymn or confession in which Christ
is celebrated as the Divine Wisdom.42
A Wisdom Christology can be traced in various strands of
first-century Christianity, the most notable evidence of it in the
New Testament being Colossians 1:15–17, John 1:1–3 and
Hebrews 1:1–3, three mutually independent passages. The root
of this Christology, on which Paul and the Fourth Evangelist
and the writer to the Hebrews alike drew, must be primitive
indeed; and in view of the presence of what form critics call
“wisdom sayings” among the verba Christi in the Synoptic
Gospels, it is not too hazardous to suggest that Christ’s
occasional speaking in the rôle of Divine Wisdom is a major
root of the Wisdom Christology of the Apostolic Age.
One Old Testament passage in particular has influenced
those New Testament contexts in which Christ, as the Wisdom
of God, is said to have created all things, and that is Proverbs
8:22ff., where Wisdom, personified speaks in the first person as
the beginning of God’s way, his darling first-born child and his
assessor when he created the world. The wording of this
passage underlies the description of Christ in Colossians 1:15
as “the first-born of all creation” and in Colossians 1:18 as “the
beginning” (archē). Later rabbinical exegesis adduced the word
“beginning” in Proverbs 8:22—“the beginning (Heb. rēʾšît) of
his way”—to explain the “beginning” (Heb. rēʾšît) of Genesis
1:1; that is to say, the “beginning” in which God created
heaven and earth was Wisdom (identified with the Torah). This
analogy explains the curious use of the preposition en in
Colossians 1:16a (“in him were all things created”) where we
might have expected the dia (“through”) of agency; the “in” is
the “in” of Genesis 1:1: if “in the beginning God created heaven
and earth”, Christ, as the Wisdom of God, is the beginning “in”
whom all things were created.43
But the hymn of Colossians 1:15–20 celebrates Christ not
only as head of the old creation but as head of the new
creation; this is the subject of the second strophe, beginning in
verse 18. In the new creation, too, Christ is the “beginning”,
not this time as the “firstborn of all creation” but as “first-born
from the dead”—i.e. by resurrection.44 If in relation to the old
creation he is “head” of every principality and power
(Colossians 2:10) in the sense of being their author and ruler,
in relation to the new creation he is “head” of his body the
church, not simply in the sense of ruler or origin but in the
sense that he is so vitally united with his people that the life
which they now live is derived from the life which he lives as
first-born from the dead. The cosmos is not called his body, and
to envisage an earlier form of the hymn in which the cosmos,
and not the church, was so called is an unwarranted exercise of
the imagination.45
Whatever form the hymn originally had, the description of
Christ as “the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:18)
is most probably Pauline. All our evidence points to Paul as the
originator of this way of expressing the church’s vital unity
with the church’s Lord, “the head, from whom the whole body,
with the church’s Lord, “the head, from whom the whole body,
nourished and knit together through the joints and ligaments,
grows with a growth that is from God” (Colossians 2:19). This,
as we have seen, marks an advance on the use of this
terminology in 1 Corinthians and Romans, where the church is
“the body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:27) or “one body in
Christ” (Romans 12:5), but Christ is not spoken of as the
church’s head.
A great variety of theories have been advanced regarding the
source of the conception of the church as the body of Christ.
Jewish,46 Gnostic47 and Stoic48 antecedents have been
suggested. But most probably we have to do with a survival of
the Hebrew concept of corporate personality.49 Christ and his
people are so conjoined that on occasion Christ and his people
together can be called “Christ”.50 This is not the only phase of
Paul’s thought where oscillation between individual and
corporate personality can be traced; but this phase was
probably impressed indelibly on his mind when on the
Damascus road he heard the challenge of the voice from
heaven: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4). Not
that Paul immediately interpreted these words in terms of head
and body, as Augustine later did;51 but the truth which they
expressed is the truth which Paul expressed in Colossians (and
Ephesians) when he speaks of the church as the body of Christ,
drawing life and all other resources from him who is her head.
The advance from the language of simile in 1 Corinthians
and Romans to the real interpersonal involvement expressed in
the language of Colossians and Ephesians may have been
stimulated by Paul’s consideration of the issues involved in the
Colossian heresy. Far from being subject to the principalities
and powers, he argued, Christ was their author and ruler by
the twofold claim of creation and conquest. But as he was head
of the old creation, so by his resurrection from the dead he was
head of the new creation too; and as Paul had already
repeatedly spoken of the church as the body of Christ, Christ’s
headship over the church could readily be conceived as an
organic relationship, in which Christ exercised the control over
his people that the head of a body exercises over its various
his people that the head of a body exercises over its various
parts. In this way not only is the living fellowship between the
members of the church brought out (as in the earlier epistles
referred to) but so is the dependence of all the members on
Christ for life and power, and his supremacy is vindicated
against a system of thought which threatened to cast him down
from his excellency. In consequence “body” is used in
Colossians and Ephesians in correlation with “head” rather
than (as in the earlier epistles) with “spirit”; but this is no valid
argument against identity of authorship.
5. The defeat of demonic powers
“Christ crucified, … the power of God and the wisdom of
God” (1 Corinthians 1:23 f.), the message preached to the
Corinthians, is the message which Paul proclaims as the
answer to the Colossian heresy. How foolish it was to pay
tribute to the angelic powers through which the law was given,
as though they controlled the way from God to man and back
from man to God! That way was now controlled by Christ, who
had subjugated these powers and reduced them to the status of
“weak and beggarly elemental spirits” (Galatians 4:9).
The lords of the planetary spheres may play but little part in
the world-outlook of man today—although the number of
readers of the popular press who accept the invitation to “plan
with the planets” suggests that they perhaps play a larger part
than we think. Yet man today is unprecedentedly aware of
powerful and malignant forces in the universe which he does
not hesitate to call “demonic”. He feels that they are operating
against his welfare but that he is quite unable to master them,
whether by individual strength or by united action. They may
be Frankenstein monsters of his own creation; they may be
subliminal horrors over which he has no conscious control. He
knows himself to be involved in situations from which his moral
sense recoils—but what can he do about them? If he and his
fellows are puppets in the hand of a blind and unfriendly fate,
what difference does it make whether they resist and be
crushed immediately, or acquiesce and be crushed a little
later?52
To this mood of frustration and despair Paul’s answer would
be his answer to the Colossian heresy. To be united to Christ,
he would say, is to be liberated from the thraldom of demonic
forces, to enjoy perfect freedom instead of being the playthings
of fate.
Indeed, archaic as some of Paul’s terminology is, his
essential message is easily translated into the language of
today. Whatever others might think, in his mind the
principalities and powers were no longer the archons who
governed the planetary spheres; he has “demythologized” them
to stand for all the forces in the universe opposed to Christ and
his people. Rudolf Bultmann has pointed out that “in our day
and generation, although we no longer think mythologically, we
often speak of demonic powers which rule history, corrupting
political and social life. Such language”, he continues, “is
metaphorical, a figure of speech, but in it is expressed the
knowledge, the insight, that the evil for which every man is
responsible individually has nevertheless become a power
which mysteriously enslaves every member of the human
race.”53 It may be suggested that this knowledge, this insight,
was present to Paul’s mind and expressed by him in terms of
the principalities and powers which, he affirmed, were unable
to separate believers “from the love of God in Christ Jesus out
Lord” (Romans 8:39).54
CHAPTER 36
The Quintessence of Paulinism
“THE QUINTESSENCE OF PAULINISM” WAS CHOSEN BY A.
S. PEAKE as the title of a lecture which he delivered in the
John Rylands Library, Manchester, on October 11, 1916—a
penetrating exposition of the thought and teaching of Paul.1
The same title is chosen for this chapter because it is a fitting
description of the first-century document which has been
preserved for us in the New Testament canon as the Epistle to
the Ephesians. This document in large measure sums up the
leading themes of the Pauline letters, and sets forth the cosmic
implications of Paul’s ministry as apostle to the Gentiles.
1. Introductory questions
No fresh contribution is offered here to the problem of the
authorship of Ephesians. Suffice it to say, with G. B. Caird, that
the epistle, “if not by Paul, is a masterly summary of Paul’s
theology by a disciple who was capable of thinking Paul’s
thoughts after him”2—to which one may add a note of surprise
that such a disciple has left no other trace, with the
observation that Paul’s Roman imprisonment provides the most
plausible dramatic life-setting for the letter.
Ephesians is not an easy document for New Testament
students to come to terms with. Markus Barth calls it “a
stranger at the door”3 of the Pauline corpus. E. J. Goodspeed
speaks of it as “the Waterloo of commentators”4—an
ambiguous expression. More promisingly, he describes the
epistle as “a great rhapsody of the Christian salvation”.5 It
reads, he says, “like a commentary on the Pauline letters”6—
which is true, but a trifle odd in a work which, a few lines
previously, has referred to it as “a mosaic of Pauline
materials”.7 A mosaic made up of fragments of a man’s writings
is not best calculated to provide a commentary on them.
In a book published in 1966 mention is made of an unnamed
writer who, “anxious to preserve. Ephesians for Paul”, says that
“Ephesians may look like a compilation of Pauline phrases, but
if looked at as a whole it has a unity”. “So”, say the authors of
the book, “has a pile of stones, no matter what kind or by
whom brought together—if looked at as a unity.”8 The analogy
is inexact: the structural unity of Ephesians is not like that of a
pile of stones but much more like that of its own “building fitly
framed together” (2:21). Such a careful literary structure,
indeed, is no proof of Pauline authorship; one could well
imagine its being used as an argument against Pauline
authorship. But an elaborately constructed work like this, with
its own inner unity, a work which Samuel Taylor Coleridge
could characterize as “the divinest composition of man”,9
cannot properly be compared to a cairn, or even to a mosaic
painstakingly pieced together with fragments from other
Pauline epistles.
2. Relation to other Pauline letters
“In form”, says Goodspeed, “it is an encyclical.”10 This is a
widely held view, and some support is given to it by the textual
phenomena of the salutation with which it commences, which
throw doubt on the originality of the words “at Ephesus”.11
Perhaps we may call it a general letter to Gentile Christians,
more particularly in the province of Asia—Gentile Christians
who (like the readers of 1 Peter) needed to be shown what was
involved in their recent commitment to the way of Christ. The
personal notes at the end of Ephesians link it with Colossians,12
and provide formal justification for considering the two epistles
in the same historical context.
Even apart from these personal references, Ephesians has
other close links with Colossians, material as well as verbal. If
in Colossians the cosmic rôle of Christ has been unfolded,
Ephesians considers the implications of this for the church as
the body of Christ—what is the church’s relation to Christ’s
cosmic rôle, to the principalities and powers, to God’s eternal
purpose? This change of perspective from Christ to the church
goes far to explain the different nuances with which such
keywords as “fulness” (plērōma) and “mystery” (mystērion) are
used in Ephesians as compared with Colossians.
Ephesians has manifest affinities also with 1 Corinthians; in
particular, it universalizes the teaching about the church which
in the earlier epistle is applied to the life of one local
congregation.
Nor should its relation to certain parts of Romans be
overlooked. If Paul in Romans emphasizes that “there is no
difference” between Jew and Gentile (Romans 3:22; 10:12),
either “in Adam” or “in Christ”, Ephesians emphasizes that all
the spiritual blessings which are available to men “in the
heavenly realm in Christ Jesus” are accessible on an equal
footing to Jews and Gentiles alike (Ephesians 1:3, etc.). If Paul
in Romans magnifies his office as apostle to the Gentiles
(Romans 11:13)13 and tells how he has discharged this
ministry, winning obedience from the Gentiles “from Jerusalem
and as far round as Illyricum” (Romans 15:15–21), Ephesians
presents him as “a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you
Gentiles” (Ephesians 3:1) and sees an astounding token of
divine grace in the fact that Paul, of all people, has been
chosen “to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of
Christ” (Ephesians 3:8).14
In the light of such affinities between Ephesians and other
outstanding letters in the Pauline corpus, it is not so easy to
accept the view, expounded principally by Heinrich Schlier,
that Ephesians is indebted for its dominant themes to gnostic
sources and only in two or three instances to the common stock
of primitive Christianity.15 This thesis calls for serious study
and evaluation, but 1 find it much less cogent than the
interpretation of Ephesians as an exposition of dominant
themes of Paul’s ministry.
3. Salvation by grace through faith
Among dominant Pauline themes justification by faith is the
one that comes most readily to many minds. Luther’s discovery
of justification by faith in the writings of Paul, and his use of it
as a touchstone to determine, if not the genuineness, at least
the value of everything handed down as sacred scripture, has, I
think, made it difficult for many of his followers to see much
else in Paul, and has inclined them to dismiss as non–Pauline,
or at best as deutero-Pauline, any document in the Pauline
corpus in which justification by faith does not play the central
part that it does in Galatians and Romans. How does Ephesians
fare in this regard? Certainly justification by faith is not a
central theme in Ephesians, but it underlies the argument of
the epistle, so much so that it is assumed rather than
expressed, apart from Ephesians 2:8 f.: “by grace you have
been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is
the gift of God—not because of works, lest any one should
boast.”
This salvation by grace through faith implies the justification
of the ungodly, the more so as the readers who had
experienced it, whether Gentiles or Jews by birth, were
formerly “dead in their trespasses and sins” and “by nature
children of wrath” (as truly as those whose moral bankruptcy is
exposed in Romans 1:18–3:20). While Paul usually speaks of
salvation in terms of its fulfilment at the parousia, he presents
it as a past event in Romans 8:24. The emphasis in Ephesians
2:8 f. is precisely the point that Paul has made in Romans 3:27
(“Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. On what
principle? On the principle of works? No, but on the principle
of faith”) and in 1 Corinthians 1:30 f. (God “is the source of
your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom, our
righteousness and sanctification and redemption; therefore, as
it is written, ‘Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord’ ”).
4. The parousia
Less prominence is given to the parousia, the manifestation
of Christ in glory. This theme is plain enough in Colossians (cf.
Colossians 3:4, “When Christ who is our life appears, then you
also will appear with him in glory”), but in Ephesians it is
present only by implication. When, for example, the purpose of
the church’s hallowing and cleansing is said to be its
presentation to Christ “in glory, without spot or wrinkle”
(Ephesians 5:26 f.), this presentation is most naturally
contemplated as coinciding with the parousia, as it certainly
does elsewhere in the Pauline corpus. The parousia is also “the
day of redemption” against which, according to Ephesians
4:30, the people of Christ are sealed with the Holy Spirit.16
5. The Holy Spirit
This brings us to a major Pauline doctrine which is
undoubtedly dominant in Ephesians—the doctrine of the Holy
Spirit. Central as it is to Paul’s teaching, this doctrine is
practically absent from Colossians,17 and in view of the affinity
between Colossians and Ephesians it is all the more striking to
note its dominance in Ephesians.
In the New Testament in general the presence of the Holy
Spirit is a sign that the last days have come, in accordance with
the words of Joel 2:28 quoted by Peter in Jerusalem on the first
Christian Pentecost: “And in the last days it shall be, God
declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh …” (Acts
2:16 ff.). The presence of the Spirit, moreover, is the witness
that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, the one who (in John the
Baptist’s words) would baptize with the Holy Spirit; in other
words, the new era which Jesus’ passion and triumph
inaugurated is the age of the Spirit to which the prophets
pointed forward. This emphasis on the Spirit’s vindicating
witness to Jesus as Messiah and Lord pervades the New
Testament; it is found in Acts,18 in the Johannine Gospel19 and
Epistles,20 and in 1 Peter.21 It is found also in Paul, in whose
eyes the age of the Spirit has superseded the age of the
Torah.22
But in addition to the general early Christian teaching on the
Spirit, which Paul had received, he makes at least two
distinctive contributions: (a) the Holy Spirit is the present
earnest of coming resurrection and glory23 and (b) it is in the
Holy Spirit that the people of Christ have been baptized into
one corporate entity.24 Both of these contributions, expounded
in Paul’s “capital” epistles (those to the Romans, Corinthians
and Galatians), are emphasized in Ephesians.
(a) The earnest of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is called in
Ephesians “the Holy Spirit of promise” (Eph. 1:13). This does
not mean, as the RSV and NEB render it, that he is “the
promised Holy Spirit” (true though that is, as witness Acts 1:4
f.; 2:33); the context rather indicates that to those whom he
indwells the Holy Spirit is himself the promise of resurrection
life and all the heritage of glory associated with it. The locus
classicus for this view of the Spirit is Romans 8:9 ff. There “the
Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead” will “quicken”
the mortal bodies of those who believe in Jesus. He is “the
Spirit of adoption” in the sense that he enables believers to
realize their privileges and responsibilities as sons of God
against the day when they will be publicly revealed as such.
This “revelation of the sons of God” (for which, as Paul says, all
creation eagerly waits in order to share “the liberty of the glory
of the children of God”) is called our “adoption as sons, the
redemption of our bodies”. And of this consummation believers
here and now possess the “first fruits” in the form of the Spirit.
To the same effect Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:5, where he speaks
of believers’ coming investiture with their “heavenly dwelling”,
says: “He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who
has given us the Spirit as a guarantee (arrhabōn).”
This insistence that the Spirit is for believers their “first
fruits” or “guarantee” appears in Ephesians 1:13, where they
are reminded—Gentiles as well as Jews—that on believing in
Christ they were “sealed” with the Holy Spirit of promise, who
is “the guarantee (arrhabōn) of our inheritance, pending God’s
redemption of his own possession”. (This collocation of “seal”
and “guarantee” in reference to the Spirit has already occurred
in 2 Corinthians 1:22: “God has sealed us and set the
guarantee of the Spirit in our hearts.”)25 Again, in Ephesians
4:30 the warning is given: “do not grieve the Holy Spirit of
God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption”—
here, as in Ephesians 1:14, the “redemption” is identical with
“the redemption of our bodies” mentioned in Romans 8:23.
When this sealing is regarded as taking place has been
debated with some animation, but most probably it coincides
with the occasion indicated in 1 Corinthians 12:13: “in one
Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks,
slaves or free—and all were watered with one Spirit”.
(b) The unity of the Spirit. This quotation of 1 Corinthians
12:13 brings us to Paul’s other distinctive contribution to the
doctrine of the Spirit, for it is summed up there. This baptism
in the Spirit—Christ himself being the baptizer, in fulfilment of
John the Baptist’s prophecy26—is not simply an individual
experience; it is the divine act by which believers in Christ are
incorporated into his body. Elsewhere Paul speaks of being
“baptized into Christ” (Galatians 3:27; Romans 6:3) or “putting
on Christ” (Galatians 3:27; Romans 13:14) with the plain
implication that incorporation into Christ is involved, but it is in
1 Corinthians 12:13, quoted at the end of the foregoing
paragraph, that the Spirit’s part in this experience finds
expression. And the i’s of 1 Corinthians 12:13 are dotted and
its t’s crossed in Ephesians 4:3, where the readers are enjoined
to be sure to “keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”.
This “unity of the Spirit” is the unity of the body of Christ into
which the people of Christ are brought by his Spirit for, in the
words which immediately follow, “there is one body and one
Spirit” (Ephesians 4:4).27
In Ephesians 2:19 ff. the church is portrayed rather as a
building than as a body (although, just as architectural
language is used of the body in Ephesians 4:12–16, so
biological language is used of the building in Ephesians 2:21);
but here too it is “in the Spirit” that the building takes shape,
as the individual components are bonded together by Christ the
“corner-stone”. Here too it is in that same “one Spirit” that
Jewish, and Gentile believers together have common access to
Jewish, and Gentile believers together have common access to
the Father (cf. Romans 5:2), or (by a change of figure)
constitute a holy dwelling-place or temple for God (an idea
anticipated in 1 Corinthians 3:16 f.).
6. The new man
These concepts of the body of Christ and the temple of God
are interwoven with the concept of the “new man”. In a
mingling of the architectural and biological figures, we read in
Ephesians 4:13 ff. of the full-grown man (anēr teleios), “the
measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”, which is the
climax of the church’s development as the body of Christ is
built up, growing up to match him who is its head. Christ as the
second man, the last Adam, the head and embodiment of the
new creation, meets us in Romans 5:12–19 and 1 Corinthians
15:20–28, 42–50. When believers’ putting on Christ is
mentioned in Romans 13:14 and Galatians 3:27, this (as we
have seen) is not so much a question of personal imitatio
Christi as of incorporation into Christ. So, when Colossians and
Ephesians speak of putting on the new man, “who is being
renewed in knowledge after the image of his creator”
(Colossians 3:10), “created after the likeness of God in true
righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24),28 the new man is
Christ himself—not Christ in isolation from his people, but
Christ in his people, the same Christ as Paul has in mind when
he tells his Galatian converts that he endures birth-pangs over
them “until Christ be formed” in them (Galatians 4:19).
When we bear these earlier Pauline references in mind,
there is no need to look to extraneous sources for the concept
of the “new” or “perfect” man. Neither need we be surprised
that the church in Ephesians is the church universal rather
than the local congregation.
Ephesians, as has been said above, universalizes the church
doctrine of 1 Corinthians, but the universal principle which
finds clear expression in Ephesians is already latent in 1
Corinthians, which is addressed not only to “the church of God
that is in Corinth” but also to “all those who in every place call
that is in Corinth” but also to “all those who in every place call
on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:1). The
oneness of the church is bound up with the fact that there is
one Spirit, one Lord and one God; it follows that there is one
people of Christ, indwelt by the one Spirit, confessing the one
Lord and through him worshipping the one God, and
comprising indifferently those who were formerly separated as
Jews on the one hand and Gentiles on the other.
There are plainly to be recognized in the New Testament
elements of what our German colleagues call
Frühkatholizismus—incipient catholicism. Chief among these
elements is the conception of the church throughout the world
as a unity, which characterizes Ephesians. But it has been too
generally accepted as axiomatic that incipient catholicism has
no place in authentic Paulinism, so that any document in which
it appears, even if it bears Paul’s name, cannot be a genuine
epistle of Paul.29
Like so many other theological axioms, this one calls for
scrutiny, and under scrutiny it loses something of its
plausibility. We might a priori have expected Paul to think of
Christians throughout his mission field as forming a unity.
“Israel after the flesh” did not exist only in local synagogues; it
was an ecumenical reality. The synagogue in any place was the
local manifestation of the whole “congregation of Israel”. The
same situation governed the new Israel.
What we should have expected a priori is confirmed by the
evidence in the “capital” epistles that Paul had a deep concern
for Christian unity—not only the unity of his own Gentile
mission but the unity which embraced his Gentile mission on
the one hand with the Jerusalem church and the Jewish mission
on the other.30
Moreover, all Christians, according to Paul, were baptized
“into Christ”, not merely into a local fellowship. All who were
baptized into Christ (and had thus “put on” Christ) inevitably
formed part of one spiritual entity. In baptism they had been
united with Christ in his death, to rise with him in the likeness
of his resurrection and so “walk in newness of life” (Romans
6:3–5). They had, in other words, become members of the body
of Christ, baptized into it “in one Spirit”. The Christians in
Corinth are reminded that they are Christ’s body, and
individually members thereof (1 Corinthians 12:27); similarly
those in Rome are told that “we” (that is, not the Roman
Christians alone but the Roman Christians in fellowship with
Paul and others), “though many, are one body in Christ, and
individually members one of another” (Romans 12:5).31 To
Paul’s way of thinking Christ could no more be divided between
the several congregations than he could be divided between
the factions within the congregation at Corinth. The explicit
appearance of the church universal in Colossians and more
particularly in Ephesians is a corollary of Paul’s understanding
of the phrase “in Christ” and all that goes with it.
Language such as Paul uses to the Corinthian and Roman
Christians about membership in the body of Christ could not be
locally restricted, even if the occasions that called forth the
“capital” epistles directed its application to the requirements of
local fellowship. All believers—in Corinth and Rome, in
Jerusalem and Ephesus, and everywhere else—had together
died with Christ and been raised with him; as participators in
his risen life they could not but constitute one Christian
fellowship.
7. From darkness to light
This experience of passing in Christ from death to life may
also be expressed in terms of passing from darkness to light,
and it is so expressed in Ephesians 5:7–14. “Once you were
darkness, but now you are light in the Lord”, the readers are
told, in language which has affinities elsewhere in the Pauline
corpus,32 as also in the Johannine writings33 and in the Qumran
literature. The point is driven home by the quotation of the
tristich:
Awake, O thou that sleepest,
And from the dead arouse thee,
And Christ shall dawn upon thee.
Although this is introduced by the phrase “Therefore it (he)
says”, as though it were holy writ, it is no precise Old
Testament quotation, and has often been regarded as part of an
early Christian baptismal hymn. The rhythm, it has been said,
is similar to that of initiation formulae used in various mystery
cults,34 but the content is entirely Christian.35 In the context of
Ephesians 5:14, where the light reveals all things as they truly
are, these words constitute a call to the sinner to abandon his
old course and embrace a new way of life; they express the
experience which, according to Paul, is sacramentally realized
in baptism: “we were buried with him through baptism into
death, in order that, as Christ was raised from the dead
through the Father’s glory, so we too should walk in newness
of life” (Romans 6:4).
8. The broken wall
Emphasizing the equal incorporation within the Christian
community of Jews and Gentiles—two groups which had
previously been estranged from each other—Ephesians says
that Christ “has made both one and has broken down the
middle wall of partition”—the breaking down of this wall being
otherwise described as his removal of the hostility between the
two groups, his annulling of “the law consisting of
commandments, ordinances and all” (Ephesians 2:14 f.).36
It is a commonplace with British commentators on Ephesians
to suppose that this “middle wall of partition” may have been
suggested by the barrier which separated the inner courts of
the Jerusalem temple from the court of the Gentiles, a barrier
which Gentiles were forbidden to penetrate on pain of death.37
German commentators, on the other hand, are more inclined to
think of the barrier which, in some gnostic texts, separates the
world beneath from the upper world of light.38
Without examining the question whether this concept in its
gnostic form was current as early as the first century A.D.,39
we may ask which of the two barriers provides the more apt
analogy to the thought of Ephesians 2:14. The barrier in the
temple was a vertical one; the “iron curtain” of the gnostic
texts was horizontal. The division in view in Ephesians 2:14 is
not a division between the upper and lower world; it is a
division between two groups of people resident in this world,
and is therefore more aptly represented by a vertical barrier
than by a horizontal one—the more so as the two groups which
were kept apart by this “middle wall of partition” are exactly
the same two groups as were kept apart by the barrier in the
Jerusalem temple.
It may indeed be asked, as it is by Martin Dibelius,40 if the
readers of Ephesians 2:14 would have understood such an
allusion. Perhaps not; but would they have understood a
gnostic allusion any better? There is in any case no emphasis
on a material barrier. But whatever the readers may or may not
have understood, the writer may well have had at the back of
his mind that temple barrier which played an important part in
the chain of events through which Paul became (to quote
Ephesians 3:1) “the prisoner of Christ Jesus in behalf of you
Gentiles”. For, according to Acts 21:27 ff., Paul’s arrest came
about because he was charged with aiding and abetting illegal
entry by a Gentile through the temple barrier. The charge
could not be sustained when it came to court, as no witnesses
were forthcoming, but Paul was not released; he remained in
custody, first in Caesarea and then in Rome. That literal
“middle wall of partition”, the outward and visible sign of the
ancient cleavage between Jew and Gentile, could have come
very readily to mind in this situation.
This is further suggested by the emphasis laid a few lines
later on the common access to the Father which Jewish and
Gentile believers in Christ now enjoy “in one Spirit”.41 The
barrier which formerly kept Gentiles at a distance from the God
of Israel has been abrogated, and even Jewish believers have
now more unimpeded access to God in this “holy sanctuary” of
living men and woman than was available to them in the
earthly temple where, in accordance with their status, they had
to maintain a respectful distance. For the barrier which
excluded Gentiles from the inner courts was not the only
barrier there. There was a further succession of barriers in the
inner precincts, barring various groups of Israelites from
nearer access. Beyond the court of the women Jewish women
might not proceed; beyond the court of Israel Jewish laymen
might not proceed. Into the court of the priests and the outer
compartment of the holy house itself priests and Levites might
enter in the performance of their prescribed duties, but the
heavy veil which curtained off the inner compartment barred
all access to the throne-room of God’s invisible presence except
to the high priest when he entered it annually on the Day of
Atonement with sacrificial blood. His direct access then was an
occasion for soul-affliction; in the spiritual sanctuary of
Ephesians 2:21 the direct access to God which all believers
enjoy is an occasion for gladness and praise. This direct access
is a major theme of the Epistle to the Ephesians and the Epistle
to the Hebrews alike; but whereas the barrier which Hebrews
uses as an illustration is the veil which hung before the holy of
holies, that which is more probably envisaged in Ephesians is
the one which forced Gentiles to keep their distance.
9. The heavenly ascent
Something more in the nature of the horizontal barrier may,
however, be discerned in another passage in Ephesians. In
Ephesians 4:8–10 there is a remarkable commentary in what
we have now learned to call pesher style on the words of Psalm
68:18. “When he ascended on high”, the quotation runs
(turning the second person of the original into the third), “he
led captivity captive and gave gifts to men.”
The context of Psalm 68 seems to portray a triumphal
procession ascending the sacred hill of Zion: the conquering
hero is followed by a train of captives and his route is lined by
his exultant fellow—citizens. The temple singers acclaim him as
victor, and tell how he has “received gifts among men”—a
reference, probably, to the tribute paid him by the vanquished.
Or the leader of the triumphal procession may be no human
conqueror but Yahweh himself, his invisible presence
conqueror but Yahweh himself, his invisible presence
betokened by the ark of the covenant, safe home from leading
Israel into battle and now being carried up to its shrine at the
head of the procession. In this case the tribute of subject
nations is paid direct to the God of Israel.
Whichever of these interpretations of the Psalm be
preferred, it is not in terms of its historical setting that verse
18 is expounded in Ephesians 4:8–10. Even if the historical
setting had been taken into account, an acclamation of the God
of Israel or of his anointed king would have been equally
appropriate for the present application of the words to the one
who was “born of the seed of David according to the flesh but
appointed Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of
holiness, by the resurrection from the dead” (Romans 1:3 f.).
What is most striking is that, instead of the Massoretic and
Septuagint reading, “received gifts among men”, a reading is
here chosen which agrees with the Aramaic Targum and the
Syriac version: “gave gifts to men”. In the Targum this is
interpreted of Moses ascending Mount Sinai to receive the
tables of the law and deliver them as God’s gift to men. But in
Ephesians it is interpreted of Christ’s ascent on high and his
bestowal thence upon his church of the ministers or ministries
necessary for its growth to maturity.
It is in the exposition of Psalm 68:18 that a horizontal barrier
is possibly implied. This is the barrier between “the lower parts
of the earth” and the upper world, “far above all the heavens”,
which Christ broke when he ascended. But if it is implied, no
particular stress is laid on it. On the verb “ascended” in the
Psalm the comment is made:
What does this mean if not that he first of all descended into the lower parts of
the earth? He who descended is the same who ascended far above all the
heavens, in order to fill the universe.
In this exposition the crucial question is whether by “the lower
parts of the earth” the earth itself is indicated (as being
“lower” in relation to the world above), or the underworld (as
being “lower” in relation to the earth). It is not possible to
reach complete certainty. Comparison with Romans 10:6 f.,
where (in a pesher exegesis of Deuteronomy 30:12–14)
ascending into heaven is contrasted with descending into the
abyss, suggests the latter interpretation; comparison with John
3:13 (and the Gospel of John has special affinities with the
Epistle to the Ephesians) suggests the former, for in John 3:13
the Son of Man’s ascent into heaven is paralleled by his coming
down from heaven (that is, to earth). Traditionally the passage
has been interpreted of the descensus ad inferos and the
harrowing of hell, and the “leading captivity captive” has been
understood in this sense; but in Ephesians the “leading
captivity captive” appears simply in the quotation from the
psalm, playing no part in the following exegesis. If there is any
implied significance in the quotation of the words, they might
refer to the despoiling of principalities and powers described in
Colossians 2:15. But this was effected on the cross, not in
Hades. On the whole, “the earth” in the phrase “the lower parts
of the earth” is best construed as genitive of definition—that is,
earth itself is the “lower” realm into which Christ is here said
to have descended. But the point of the reference to his
successive descent and ascent, which is not affected by our
resolution one way or another of this crux interpretum, is that
by this twofold movement Christ fills the universe, upper and
lower realms alike, with his presence.42
10. The divine mystery
One of the most interesting points of affinity between
Ephesians and the Qumran texts lies in the idea of the
“mysteries” of God. These “mysteries” are not arcana; they
have been revealed, but even when they are revealed they
remain mysteries until they are interpreted in terms of their
fulfilment. The pattern of rāz (“mystery”) and pesher
(“interpretation”) in the Aramaic sections of Daniel, where the
former requires the latter to complete and explain it, reappears
in the Qumran texts (pre-eminently in commentaries) and in
the New Testament.43 Paul, for example, speaks of himself and
his fellow-apostles as “stewards of the mysteries of God” (1
Corinthians 4:1)—servants of God called to proclaim that what
had been “promised beforehand through his prophets in the
holy scriptures” (Romans 1:2) was now accomplished, and was
made plain by the fact of that accomplishment, being embodied
in Christ and the gospel.
But Paul speaks not only of the mysteries in the plural, but
also (comprehensively) of “the mystery” in the singular, for all
the revelation of God has been consummated in Christ. So in
Colossians 2:2 f. he speaks of his desire that his readers and
the other churches in the Lycus valley may attain “the
knowledge of God’s mystery—that is, of Christ himself—in
whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden”
(but no longer hidden from those who have attained this
knowledge). This mystery is unfolded in the gospel; so the
doxology at the end of Romans mentions “my gospel and the
proclamation concerning Jesus Christ, according to the
revelation of the mystery which was shrouded in silence in
eternal ages but has now been made manifest, and through
prophetic writings, according to the commandment of the
eternal God, made known to all the nations for the obedience of
faith” (Romans 16:25 f.).
As one called to make known among the Gentiles “the
unsearchable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8) Paul might well
appreciate the honour of being entrusted with the stewardship
of such a “mystery”, nor is it surprising that at times he
concentrates on some aspect of the gospel specially related to
his own ministry and speaks of it as a mystery. In Colossians
1:26 f., for example, he calls the subject-matter of his ministry
“the mystery which has been kept hidden from ages and
generations but has now been made manifest to the people of
God, to whom God has been well pleased to make known what
is the glorious wealth of this mystery among the Gentiles,
which is Christ in you [even in you Gentiles], the hope of
glory”. That Gentiles would come to worship the God of Israel
was a theme of Old Testament expectation; in Romans 15:9–12
Paul reproduces a catena of passages from the Law, the
Prophets and the Psalms to this effect. But that Gentiles should
have the Messiah of Israel, now the exalted Lord, dwelling in
their hearts by faith as the living hope of coming glory—this
was something completely uncontemplated before: it was
bound up with Paul’s own Gentile apostolate and was the
subject of a new revelation. Similarly in Ephesians 3:9 the
substance of this mystery now for the first time divulged is said
to be “that the Gentiles should be joint heirs, fellow-members
of the one body, sharers of the promise conveyed in Christ
Jesus through the gospel”. Not the Gentiles without the Jews,
or even in preference to the Jews, but the Gentiles on the same
basis as the Jews—Gentiles and Jews alike being reconciled to
God “in one body through the cross” (Ephesians 2:16).44
Moreover, the full unveiling of the mystery of God, in the
Qumran texts and in the New Testament, illuminates his
ultimate purpose. In Ephesians 3:9–11 the unfolding of the
mystery hidden in God from ages past brings to light the
purpose for which he has created the church, his “fellowship of
reconciliation”—it is that through the church his many-coloured
wisdom might be made known to all created beings, to
“principalities and powers in the heavenly realm … according
to the eternal purpose which he conceived in Christ Jesus our
Lord”. And this eternal purpose, thus subserved by the church
and due to be realized in the “fulness of the times”, is concisely
stated in Ephesians 1:9 f.: it is to bring all things together
under the headship of Christ.
In 1 Corinthians 2:6 ff. Paul tells the Corinthian Christians
that, for all their self-styled wisdom, he has to feed them with
milk and not with solid food, because they are not yet
spiritually mature. This immaturity was due not to deficiency in
gnōsis (of which they had plenty of a kind), but to deficiency in
agapē, “Nevertheless”, he goes on, “to those who are mature
we do impart wisdom … God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden
wisdom ordained before the world for our glory … as it is
written:
What eye never saw, what ear never heard,
What never entered the heart of man,
What never entered the heart of man,
What God prepared for those who love him—
these are the things which God has revealed to us by the
Spirit.”45
If we ask where in the Pauline corpus this divine “wisdom in
a mystery” is imparted, we should direct our attention to the
letter to the Ephesians.46
CHAPTER 37
The Last Days of Paul: History
and Tradition
1. Persecution under Nero
OUR QUEST FOR FURTHER DATA BEARING ON PAUL’S
ROMAN captivity and its aftermath has not been particularly
fruitful. If the “captivity epistles” at which we have looked were
indeed sent from Rome, they suggest that Paul was about to
have an opportunity of declaring “the mystery of Christ”, for
the sake of which he was in custody, and was anxious that his
friends should pray for him, that he might “declare it boldly”
(Colossians 4:3 f.; Ephesians 6:19 f.). He hoped also, through
their prayers, to be released and to pay a further visit to the
provinces of Asia and Macedonia.
It is probable that Paul’s appeal did come up for hearing at
the end of his two years in Rome. But we have no direct
information about the outcome.
That Paul’s life was brought to an end in Rome by the
executioner’s sword may be confidently accepted, but tradition
associates his execution with the persecution of Christians in
Rome which followed the great fire of A.D. 64—at least two
years after the latest probable date for the hearing of his case.
During the night of July 18/19 in A.D. 64, a fire broke out at
the north-east end of the Circus Maximus. The colonnade of
shops which stood round the outer face of the Circus was full of
inflammable wares; the conflagration secured a hold there and,
fanned by the wind, raged for five days until, of the city’s
fourteen divisions, three were completely destroyed and seven
severely damaged.1
Although Nero, who was at Antium (Anzio) when the fire
Although Nero, who was at Antium (Anzio) when the fire
broke out, hurried back to Rome and instituted energetic relief
measures, rumour alleged that he had set the city on fire in
order to “re-mould it nearer to the heart’s desire”. Tired at last
of being the target for the finger of popular suspicion, he
looked around for scapegoats. Tacitus, who is our most reliable
authority for these events, continues the story thus:
Therefore, to scotch the rumour, Nero substituted as culprits, and punished
with the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices,
whom the crowd styled Christians. Christus, from whom they got their name, had
been executed by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate when Tiberius was
emperor; and the pernicious superstition was checked for a short time, only to
break out afresh, not only in Judaea, the home of the plague, but in Rome itself,
where all the horrible and shameful things in the world collect and find a home.
First of all, those who confessed were arrested; then, on their information, a
huge multitude was convicted, not so much on the ground of incendiarism as for
hatred of the human race. Their execution was made a matter of sport: some
were sewn up in the skins of wild beasts and savaged to death by dogs; others
were fastened to crosses as living torches, to serve as lights when daylight failed.
Nero made his gardens available for the show and held games in the Circus,
mingling with the crowd or standing in his chariot in charioteer’s uniform.
Hence, although the victims were criminals deserving the severest punishment,
pity began to be felt for them because it seemed that they were being sacrificed
to gratify one man’s lust for cruelty rather than for the public weal.2
The same occasion is probably referred to briefly by Suetonius
in his Life of Nero, when he says:
Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men addicted to a novel
and mischievous superstition.3
Some interesting questions are raised by Tacitus’s account,
which may point to tensions within the believing community.
We cannot be sure whether those who first “confessed”
pleaded guilty to the charge of arson or to the charge of being
Christians, nor can we be sure what kind of information they
provided which led to the arrest of the “huge multitude”.
Christians were generally disliked for what their neighbours
regarded as anti-social attitudes, and some of the simpler souls
among them may well have thought—and said—that the fire
raging through the city was the beginning of the conflagration
which was to consume the current world-order and usher in the
reign of the saints. The ferocity and malignity of Nero’s attack
caught the Christians of Rome unawares, but “the patience and
faith of the saints”4 enabled them to stand firm and survive the
attack.
2. Evidence from the Pastoral Epistles?
If a firm and acceptable date and life-setting for the Pastoral
Epistles could be established, their evidence might prove to be
relevant. Even when their Pauline authorship is admitted
simpliciter, there is not complete unanimity on their location in
Paul’s career. J. Vernon Bartlet’s argument for placing all three
in the period before Paul’s appeal came up for hearing appears
never to have convinced any one but himself.5 As for placing
them in the period following Paul’s postulated release at the
end of his two years in Rome, it is no argument against this to
describe it as “a flight into terra incognita”;6 Paul’s fortunes at
the end of those two years constitute a terra incognita,
whatever form they took; and we have to make the best of this
frustrating fact.
If the Pastoral Epistles are not Paul’s composition as they
stand, but represent disiecta membra of Paul’s correspondence
and instruction, collected by one or more of his friends and
disciples, and given a continuous form by the provision of
editorial transitions, then it is not necessary to date all the
authentically Pauline material in them at the same time (and
the same is true of P. N. Harrison’s “fragment” hypothesis).7
Some of the passages might then belong to earlier phases of
Paul’s career, others to the last phase, like the passage
beginning
“I am now ready to be poured out as a libation; the time of my release is at
hand” (2 Timothy 4:6) and probably the reference to Onesiphorus (2 Timothy
1:16–18).
C. F. D. Moule published a “reappraisal” of the problem of
these epistles in 1965. Recognizing on the one hand the
difficulties in the way of accepting the Pastoral Epistles as
completely Pauline in the customary sense, and on the other
hand the improbabilities inherent in the “fragment” hypothesis,
he suggested that for those letters Paul employed as his
amanuensis a man whom he could trust with much greater
discretion than could be allowed to any ordinary amanuensis—
namely, Luke. The non-Pauline elements in them would then
reflect Luke’s thought rather than Paul’s. Greatest freedom
was given to Luke for 1 Timothy, which (on Professor Moule’s
hypothesis) was written shortly before Paul’s release from his
Roman imprisonment, when Paul wanted to send a message to
Timothy in a hurry while he himself was particularly busy with
preparations for leaving Rome and perhaps with completing
judicial formalities just preceding his release. Certainly the
Pastoral Epistles have more in common with Acts in matters of
style and church polity than have Paul’s earlier letters. In view
of the homogeneity of the Pastoral Epistles in style and
vocabulary, the reference in 2 Timothy 4:11 to Luke as the only
member of Paul’s inner circle present with him at the time of
writing may lend some support to Professor Moule’s
reappraisal.8
This reappraisal assumes that Paul was released at the end
of his two years in Rome and returned for some time to the
Eastern Mediterranean, revisiting his friends in the provinces
of Macedonia and Asia and conducting a missionary campaign
in Crete, where Titus was left behind to consolidate the
converts.
Similar conclusions are defended by J. N. D. Kelly in his
Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles (1963). He argues that,
since Paul’s death cannot be dated before the Neronian
persecution of A.D. 64/65 and the following years, and since it
is difficult to see how his house arrest could have lasted until
then, it is most reasonable to infer that he was released after
the expiry of the two years, and after a further spell of
missionary activity was arrested again and imprisoned in Rome
for the second and last time. This is certainly a plausible—
perhaps the most plausible—reconstruction of the course of
events, although some would not share Dr. Kelly’s confidence
that Paul’s “martyrdom cannot in any case be placed earlier
than A.D. 64”.9
3. Release and second imprisonment?
It is clear that no dogmatic statements are justified when the
sequel to Paul’s first imprisonment is under discussion.
Tradition affirms rather confidently that he was released, but
Eusebius, who first records this tradition explicitly, introduces
it with the expression “report has it”.10 It should be recognized,
moreover, that release on the one hand and execution on the
other do not exhaust the possibilities. A third possibility is that
his libera custodia may have given place to a much stricter
confinement, such as P. N. Harrison thinks he was enduring at
the time when Onesiphorus took so much trouble to track him
down.11 A fourth possibility is that he may have been exiled.
Clement of Rome, writing some thirty years after Paul’s death,
includes exile among his sufferings.12 This suggests that there
was an early tradition of exile—unless Clement, with rhetorical
exaggeration, is talking loosely of Paul’s enforced departure
from one city after another in the course of his apostolic
ministry. If exile in the proper sense is meant, when was he
supposed to have been exiled, and what was supposed to be the
place of his exile? It would be odd if it was Spain—if Paul,
having achieved his ambition of visiting Rome by the
unforeseen means of being sent there under armed guard to
have his appeal heard in Caesar’s court, later achieved his
ambition of preaching in Spain by the unforeseen means of
exile.13
If he was released or exiled, he was arrested and imprisoned
a second time in Rome, and this time the conditions of his
imprisonment were much more stringent than before. Such a
stringent imprisonment probably forms the setting for the one
mention of Rome in the Pastoral Epistles. Referring to a
wholesale defection from loyalty to him in proconsular Asia,
Paul goes on (2 Timothy 1:16–18):
Paul goes on (2 Timothy 1:16–18):
May the Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, for he often
refreshed me; he was not ashamed of my chains, but when he arrived in Rome he
searched for me eagerly and found me—may the Lord grant him to find mercy
from the Lord on that Day—and you well know all the service he rendered at
Ephesus.
Onesiphorus appears to have been an Ephesian Christian
who had proved very helpful during Paul’s ministry in his home
city, and who at a later date had occasion to visit Rome and
sought Paul out in circumstances where to do so involved not
only trouble and possible loss of face, but no doubt danger too.
It is usually inferred from the language of this passage that
Paul was no longer enjoying the libera custodia of Acts 28:16 ff.
but undergoing more severe restraint. It was not so easy now
to discover Paul’s whereabouts in Rome: P. N. Harrison,
describing Onesiphorus’s resolute quest for his old friend,
draws a moving and vivid picture of “one purposeful face in a
drifting crowd”.14 The circumstantiality and incidental nature
of this personal reference bespeak a genuine Pauline
reminiscence.
On the hypothesis of Paul’s release and second Roman
imprisonment, his case came up again for hearing—he was
prosecuted (with due regard to his Roman citizenship) on the
charge, it may be, of being a leader of the Christians and also
of being a persistent disturber of the peace of the provinces.
This may be the setting of another passage in the Pastoral
Epistles (2 Timothy 4:16 f.):
At my first defence no one took my part; all deserted me. May it not be
charged against them! But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength to
proclaim the word fully, that all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from
the lion’s mouth.
Dr. Kelly understands his “first defence” as the prima actio or
preliminary investigation. This had gone more favourably for
Paul than he might have dared to hope: he was not discharged
but remanded in custody for a further investigation, the verdict
being Amplius.15 Not only so, but the hearing gave Paul a
welcome opportunity of proclaiming the gospel at the heart of
the imperial system, to the cosmopolitan audience present in
court.16
Why no one stood by him is not said: if the general
persecution of Christians in Rome had broken out, this would
provide cause enough. If Onesiphorus receives special
commendation for his courage in visiting Paul in prison, to
stand by Paul in court at that time would have called for
exceptional courage.
For the time being, then, Paul was saved from Nero’s malice:
“rescued from the lion’s mouth”, as he puts it.17 But only for
the time being: the secunda actio was held in due course, and
this time the verdict was “guilty”, and the sentence, death by
the sword. Paul’s last words have been preserved in 2 Timothy
4:6–8:
I am now ready to be poured out as a libation; the time of my release is at hand. I
have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord,
the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to
all who have loved his appearing.18
4. Clement of Rome
We turn now to early evidence outside the New Testament.
The earliest is that provided by Clement of Rome, and it does
not add much to our sum of positive knowledge. The letter
which, as foreign secretary of the Roman church, he wrote
about A.D. 96 in the name of that church to the church of
Corinth, begins by warning the latter church of the terrible
effects of jealousy and envy. Seven examples are given from
the Old Testament; then Clement continues:
But, to leave the examples of former days, let us come to those who were
athletes in the days nearest to our own. Through jealousy and envy the greatest
and most righteous pillars of the church were persecuted, and maintained their
athletic contest unto death. Let us set before our eyes the good apostles. Peter,
on account of unrighteous jealousy, underwent not one or two but many toils and,
having thus borne witness, he made his way to his allotted place of glory. Paul, on
account of jealousy and strife, showed the way to the prize of endurance; seven
times he wore fetters, he was exiled, he was stoned, he was a herald both in the
east and in the west, he gained the noble renown of his faith, he taught
righteousness throughout the whole world and, having reached the limit of the
west, he bore testimony before the rulers, and so departed from the world and
was taken up into the holy place—the greatest example of endurance.19
In a rhetorical essay of this kind we do not expect the
precision which is properly looked for in a work whose primary
purpose is the supplying of historical information. Clement is
not imparting to the Corinthians facts which they did not know,
but drawing morals from facts which, in general outline at
least, were common knowledge to him and them. Indeed, even
to us he does not say anything concrete about Paul’s later life
to supplement the narrative of Acts from the point where it
breaks off. That Paul bore his testimony before the rulers could
have been an inference from the record of Acts, as well as
being a reminiscence of the risen Lord’s prophecy about Paul
to Ananias of Damascus: “he is a chosen instrument of mine to
carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of
Israel” (Acts 9:15).20 But what was “the limit (Gk. terma) of the
west” that Paul reached? From the standpoint of one who, like
Clement, lived and wrote in Rome, would it not indicate some
place west of Rome, presumably Spain? Perhaps it would, but
even so we cannot be sure that Clement knew for a fact that
Paul did go to Spain; if he meant Spain, he might simply have
been making an inference from Paul’s statement of his plans in
Romans 15:24, 28.
On the other hand, we must give serious attention to the
argument for translating the phrase not by “the limit of the
west” but by “the goal in the west”—Paul’s western goal. Amid
so many other athletic terms, terma might well be intended in
the sense of “goal”. But even if we take Clement to mean Paul’s
western goal, the phrase is not unambiguous. For Luke, Paul’s
western goal was Rome, but for Paul himself it was not Rome
but Spain. P. N. Harrison, who argues persuasively for the
meaning “goal”, goes on to say: “the goal of this race was
certainly not Spain, but Rome, from whatever point in the
world-stadium one happened to be regarding it.”21 That,
however, is going too far, when we consider that in Paul’s own
programme Rome was but a temporary station on his way
farther west, or at best an advance base for the evangelization
of Spain. Yet it is readily conceivable that, to a Christian of a
later generation, in the light of Paul’s martyrdom at Rome,
Rome would naturally suggest itself as the “goal” of his race;
and it might easily be inferred from Clement’s language that
Paul’s western “limit” or “goal” was the place where he “bore
testimony before the rulers, and so departed from this world”.
As for the time of Paul’s martyrdom, Clement may be
thought to say something with a bearing on this when he goes
on:
To these men of holy life was gathered together a great multitude of the elect,
who through their endurance amid many indignities and tortures because of
jealousy presented to us a noble example.…22
That this is a reference to the persecution of Christians in
Rome under Nero is hardly to be doubted: with Clement’s
“great multitude” may be compared Tacitus’s almost identical
wording.23 If we took Clement’s language au pied de la lettre it
would imply that Peter and Paul had suffered martyrdom
before the persecution which followed the great fire and, so far
as Paul is concerned, that he was executed on conviction some
time after the end of his two years’ house arrest in Rome. But,
although Moffatt and others were inclined to deduce this from
Clement’s language,24 to insist on it demands from him an
exactitude in the use of terms which he probably did not
intend. Moreover, “these men of holy life” should not be
restricted to Peter and Paul, mentioned in the immediately
preceding sentences; they include the Old Testament heroes of
endurance who are listed before Clement turns to “the good
apostles”. The most that can safely be said is that Clement
bears witness to Paul’s death at Rome under Nero.25
Rome: St. Paul-Without-the-Walls: inscription above Paul’s tomb (see p. 451)
Rome: Tre Fontane: Church of St. Paul, exterior (see p. 450)
5. The Muratorian canon
The Muratorian fragment is a Latin list of New Testament
books drawn up in Rome towards the end of the second
century, a corrupt seventh-or eighth-century manuscript of
which was discovered and published by Cardinal L. A. Muratori
in 1740. After its account of the Gospels, the list has this to say
about Acts:
Then the “Acts of all the Apostles” were written in one book. Luke tells the
“most excellent Theophilus” that the various incidents took place in his presence,
and indeed he makes this quite clear by omitting the passion of Peter, as well as
Paul’s journey when he set out from Rome for Spain.
The author takes Paul’s Spanish journey for granted. There is
no indication that he had any independent evidence of this; in
itself, the mention of this journey could be nothing more than
an inference from Romans 15:24, 28. But since it is mentioned
along with “the passion of Peter”, another source is indicated—
the apocryphal Acts of Peter.26
This gnostic work was probably composed about A.D. 180,
shortly before the Muratorian list was drawn up. It is extant
only in fragments in various languages. The best known
fragment is the Vercelli manuscript (in Latin), which begins by
describing Paul’s departure from Italy by sea for Spain, and
goes on to recount Peter’s controversy in Rome with Simon
Magus, ending with a description of Peter’s crucifixion.27 It
looks as if the Muratorian compiler is trying (ineptly) to explain
why the contents of the Acts of Peter do not appear in the
canonical Acts. If we are right in identifying the Acts of Peter
as the source of his reference to Paul’s departure for Spain, it
is not an authority which inspires great confidence, although it
may reflect Roman tradition in the latter half of the second
century.28
As for the fourth-century authors who report Paul’s release
from his first Roman imprisonment—Eusebius, Jerome,29 etc.—
they were merely repeating inferences of their predecessors,
and doing so with proper caution: Eusebius, as we have seen,
says that “rumour has it” that he resumed his ministry of
preaching after his first appearing before Caesar. Our literary
sources, therefore, leave us with a verdict of “not proven” in
this regard.
6. The Ostian Way
The hypothesis which is provisionally entertained here is that
Paul was released after his appeal was heard by the supreme
court, and subsequently arrested a second time, imprisoned,
put on trial, sentenced to death and beheaded. On this
put on trial, sentenced to death and beheaded. On this
hypothesis, his execution was most probably an incident in
Nero’s persecution of the Roman Christians, and to be dated in
or shortly after the year 65.
One way or the other, it is scarcely to be doubted that Rome
was the place where he was executed. As regards the more
precise location of his death or burial, our earliest witness is
the Roman presbyter Gaius, at the end of the second century.
In the course of a controversial correspondence with the
Phrygian Montanist Proclus, Gaius says that, if Proclus can
invoke in support of his views the names of distinguished early
Christians (Philip and his daughters, and others) whose tombs
can still be pointed out in the province of Asia, he can improve
on that, for (says he) “I can point out the trophies of the
apostles: for if you will go to the Vatican hill or to the Ostian
Way, you will find the trophies of those who founded this
church”30 By “the apostles” Gaius meant Peter and Paul,
claimed by the Roman church as its joint founders. By
“trophies”31 he means monuments (memoriae) marking the
traditional sites either of the martyrdom or of the burial of the
two apostles—probably the latter, since he is countering
Proclus’s claim to show the tombs of early Christians in his
homeland. In any case, that Peter and Paul were actually
buried at the places mentioned became a matter of general
belief, on the strength of which the Constantinian basilica of St.
Paul Outside the Walls was built on the Ostian Way and that of
St. Peter on the Vatican hill.
Paul was beheaded, tradition asserts, at Aquae Salviae (now
Tre Fontane) near the third milestone on the Ostian Way.32 By
Gaius’s time a monument had been erected on the reputed site
of his tomb, about a mile nearer the city (as one was erected on
the Vatican hill, probably in the time of Marcus Aurelius, c.
A.D. 160, to commemorate Peter).33 On the same site
Constantine built a small basilica in Paul’s honour (c. A.D. 324);
this was replaced at the end of the fourth century by a larger
one, which survived substantially until it was destroyed by fire
during the night of July 15/16, 1823. The present basilica was
reconsecrated by Pope Pius IX on December 10, 1854.34 Some
details of the substructure were preserved in sketches made by
the architect of the new building, Virgilio Vespignani, when a
new confessio was constructed in front of the altar, instead of
behind it (where the confessio in the old basilica had been).35
The floor of the confessio underneath the high altar is
formed by two slabs, discovered in 1835 during the excavations
preceding the erection of the present basilica—one bearing the
inscription PAVLO and the other completing it with a second
line of letters, APOSTOLO MART (“To Paul, apostle and
martyr”). The lettering belongs to the fourth century, and has
been assigned by some epigraphists to a Constantinian date.
There are several indications that the two slabs are no longer
in their original position: it has been suggested that at one time
they stood upright, alongside each other, so as to present one
line of writing, or even at right angles, forming two of the four
sides of the apostle’s memoria.36
It is a point in favour of the authenticity of the site that
Paul’s memoria, like Peter’s, was located in a pagan necropolis,
not the environment which later piety would have chosen.
7. The Appian Way
Mention should be made of what was for a time a rival
tradition—not for the site of Paul’s martyrdom but for that of
his burial. In the Calendar of Philocalus (A.D. 354) and thence
in the earlier part of the Liber Pontificalis (c. A.D. 530) Peter
and Paul are associated with the site later occupied by the
basilica of St. Sebastian on the Appian Way.37 In the Depositio
Martyrum included in the former document, an entry under
June 29 (III Kal. Iul.) mentions that the remains of Peter were
deposited in Catacumbas in the consulship of Tuscus and
Bassus (A.D. 258), a date probably denoting the establishment
of an apostolic memoria and cult on this spot. (This general
area was then known as Ad Catacumbas, “By the Hollows”.
Since the underground galleries there were the only early
Christian cemeteries known in the Middle Ages, the term
“catacombs” was extended from these cemeteries to denote
others which were discovered from the sixteenth century
onwards.) Paul is mentioned along with Peter in this entry for
June 29, but in association with the Ostian Way, not with the
Catacumbae. The text of the entry, however, is probably
corrupt and originally mentioned three cultic sites—Peter’s on
the Vatican hill, Paul’s on the Ostian Way, and Peter and Paul’s
together at the Catacumbae.38 Certainly the belief that Paul’s
remains as well as Peter’s were deposited at the Catacumbae is
attested by a large number of graffiti on the site, of the later
third and early fourth centuries, invoking the names of Peter
and Paul and mentioning refrigeria (cultic meals) held there in
their honour. The hymn Apostolorum Passio, dating from the
mid-fourth century and traditionally ascribed to Ambrose of
Milan, describes how on June 29 the martyrdom of Peter and
Paul was commemorated at three sites—the Vatican hill, the
Ostian Way and the Appian Way.39 This attempt to meet the
competing claims of rival sites was judged unsatisfactory: when
Pope Damasus (A.D. 366–383), in the course of restoring the
Christian cemeteries of Rome, turned his attention to the
Memoria Apostolorum ad Catacumbas, he indicated what was
henceforth to be the official line in a metrical inscription set up
in the Basilica Apostolorum which was built over the memoria:
Here you must know that the saints formerly dwelt, whosoever you are who
ask for the names of Peter and Paul. These disciples were sent from the east, as
we readily admit, but because of the merit of their blood they followed Christ
through the stars and reached the ethereal bosom and the realms of the holy
ones; and Rome has acquired the prior right to claim them as her citizens. Let
Damasus thus record your praises, ye new constellations.40
The latter part of this inscription affirms that the two apostles’
martyrdom in Rome gives the church of that city a superior
right to speak with apostolic authority, even though they
belonged originally to the east. But the opening couplet means:
“their bodies once lay here, but are here no longer.” These
words, with their implication of a transference of the two
bodies from the Appian Way to the Vatican hill and the Ostian
Way respectively, represent an attempt to harmonize the
conflicting traditions and divert the attention of pious pilgrims
to the Constantinian basilicas. Some students of later days,
beginning apparently with John Pearson, seventeenth-century
bishop of Chester,41 envisaged a temporary translation of the
apostles’ bodies from the original sites to the Appian Way
because of the circumstances of the persecution under Valerian
(A.D. 258), when Christians were forbidden to hold their
ordinary public meetings and access to their cemeteries was
prevented. But this harmonistic reconstruction of two separate
traditions, the one enjoying official approval and the other
popular favour, has no independent evidence in its support.
In the mid-third century the Roman Christians who wished to
honour the apostles at the site of their tombs may not have had
easy access to the Vatican hill or to the Pauline memoria on the
Ostian Way, whereas there were fewer hindrances to their
doing so ad Catacumbas. But why choose that particular spot?
We do not know: there may already have been a popular
tradition of the apostles’ burial there; it may have been
revealed to someone in a vision that this was where their
bodies lay. Whatever the origin of the tradition was, it strongly
influenced popular devotion for nearly a century. But it was
bound to weaken after the erection of the Constantinian
basilicas in honour of Peter and Paul. The cult of the apostles
on the Appian Way was increasingly displaced by that of St.
Sebastian, who is said to have been buried in their vicinity late
in the third century; and Damasus eased the situation by
explaining that while the bodies of Peter and Paul had indeed
once lain by the Appian Way, they now lay on the sites covered
by their respective basilicas.
8. Paul in Roman memory
These, however, are relatively unimportant matters
compared with the real memorials to Paul in Rome—those
which he might have been gratified, though surprised, to
foresee. The church and city of Rome have not forgotten their
association, brief and limited as it was, with the apostle to the
Gentiles. Although Paul himself makes it plain that Roman
Christianity flourished years before he first visited the city, the
Roman church has claimed him as one of its two apostolic
founders. Clement of Rome, as we have seen, appeals to the
example of Peter and Paul.42 Ignatius of Antioch, writing to the
Christians at Rome a decade or two later, will not lay
commands on them, as Peter and Paul did; they were apostles,
he is “a convicted criminal”—although they were no more than
that in Roman law.43 Dionysius of Corinth (c. A.D. 170), writing
to Pope Soter, sees a special bond between the churches of
Corinth and Rome in that each was founded by Peter and Paul
and profited by the teaching of both apostles.44 (While Paul
would have deprecated nomination as one of the founders of
the Roman church, he must have turned in his grave at the
suggestion that Peter was joint-founder with him of the
Corinthian church!) Gaius of Rome points to the “trophies” of
Peter and Paul as the most illustrious material monuments of
Roman Christianity. Irenaeus of Lyons, about the same time,
reviewing the churches which were founded by apostles, gives
pride of place to that “very great, very ancient and universally
known church founded and organized at Rome by the two most
glorious apostles Peter and Paul”,45 and adds that they
committed the episcopate in that church to Linus.46 This is in
keeping with early tradition which names Peter and Paul as
founders not only of the church of Rome but also of the Roman
succession of bishops. Irenaeus’s informant may have been
Hegesippus,47 although Irenaeus himself was in sufficiently
close touch with the Roman church to know directly what its
local tradition was. Down to the middle of the third century the
two apostles are regularly conjoined as joint founders of the
Roman church; even Eusebius, in the fourth century, can on
occasion name them in a Roman context in the order Paul-
Peter48 (although in his Chronicle he mentions Peter only:
“After Peter Linus was the first to occupy the Roman see”).49
Later still in that century Damasus, as we have seen, lays claim
on behalf of the Roman church to their joint prestige.
But, as C. H. Turner put it, “in transcribing a catalogue it
was easier to use one name than two, and as soon as the habit
grew up of including the name of the Apostle-founder as the
first of the list rather than as a title at the head of it, … the use
of a single name was dictated by the principle that there could
only be one bishop at a time.”50 The naming of Peter alone is
first attested in Hippolytus, who calls Pope Victor (c. A.D. 190)
“thirteenth from Peter”51—although this leaves Peter outside
the numbered episcopal list. The first to attach dogmatic
significance to the name of Peter alone at the head of the
Roman list is Cyprian, bishop of Carthage (died A.D. 258).52 So
Paul’s contribution to early Roman Christianity was in practice
increasingly overlooked. To be sure, Paul with the sword of the
Spirit stands in the forecourt of St. Peter’s, alongside Peter
with the keys of the Kingdom, just as Peter faces Paul in front
of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls—more congenial associates in
death, perhaps, than they were in life. But there may be a
symbolical fitness, it has sometimes been said, in the location
of St. Paul’s basilica outside the walls. Paul might have
understood and approved; he was well accustomed to being
odd man out. It would be pleasant to think that such a minister
of reconciliation as Paul was there in spirit in March, 1966,
when his namesake Paul VI and Michael Ramsey chose his
basilica for the signing of their Common Declaration, asking
their respective communions to engage in “a serious dialogue
based upon the Holy Gospels and ancient common
traditions”.53
CHAPTER 38
Concluding Reflections
1. Paul’s personality
WHAT KIND OF MAN WAS PAUL?
So far as external features are concerned, we gather only
that, in the estimation of candid friends, he was impressive
neither in appearance nor in speech.1 We have already
discussed the humiliating disability which may have had an
adverse effect on one or both of these.2 More important,
however, are his qualities of mind and spirit.
By his own account, he grew up a zealot for the ancestral
traditions of his people;3 and when those traditions were
displaced in his life by another cause, he was no less zealous in
the promotion of this new cause. The zeal which he had shown
as a persecutor of the church he continued to show as a builder
of what he had once tried to destroy, as a bondslave of the Lord
whom he had formerly repudiated. For the sake of this Lord
everything that he had once valued was discounted as so much
refuse;4 the one-time rigorist made himself the most versatile
and adaptable of men in order to bring others to acknowledge
the same Lord as he did; everything was subordinated to the
propagation of the good news of his grace and to this cause all
his talents and energies were dedicated.
Something of Paul’s native impetuousness is apparent in his
epistolary style. His letters were regularly dictated to an
assistant. At times the torrent of his thought rushes forward so
swiftly that it outstrips the flow of his words, and his words
have to leap over a gap now and then so as to catch up on his
thought. How the scribe managed to keep up with his words we
can only surmise. Time and again Paul starts a sentence that
never reaches a grammatical end, for before he is well
never reaches a grammatical end, for before he is well
launched on it a new thought strikes him and he turns aside to
deal with that. When he comes back on to the main track, the
original start of the sentence has been forgotten. All this means
that Paul is not the smoothest of authors, or the easiest to
follow, but it does give us an unmistakable impression of the
man himself. He has something worth saying, and in saying it
he communicates something of himself; there is nothing
artificial or merely conventional about the way he says it. And
what he has to say is so important—for readers of the twentieth
century as much as for those of the first—that the effort to
understand him is abundantly rewarding.
Dr. Samuel Johnson described one of his acquaintances as an
“unclubbable” man.5 That is the last adjective that anyone who
knew Paul would use of him. He was eminently “clubbable”,
sociable, gregarious. He delighted in the company of his
fellows, both men and women. The most incredible feature in
the Paul of popular mythology is his alleged misogyny. He
treated women as persons: we recall his commendation of
Phoebe, the deacon of the church in Cenchreae, who had
shown herself a helper to him as to many others,6 or his
appreciation of Euodia and Syntyche of Philippi who worked
side by side with him in the gospel.7 The mainstream churches
of Christendom, as they inch along towards a worthier
recognition of the ministry of women, have some way to go yet
before they come abreast of Paul.8
The range of his friendship and the warmth of his affection
are qualities which no attentive reader of his letters can miss.
There are scores of people mentioned in the New Testament
who are known to us, by name at least, simply because they
were friends of Paul. And in his friends he was able to call forth
a devotion which knew no limits. Priscilla and Aquila risked
their lives for him in a dangerous situation.9 Epaphroditus of
Philippi overtaxed his strength and suffered an almost fatal
illness in his anxiety to be of service to the imprisoned
apostle.10 Timothy readily surrendered whatever personal
ambitions he might have cherished in order to play the part of
a son to Paul and help him in his missionary activity, showing a
selfless concern for others that matched the apostle’s own
eagerness to spend and be spent for them.11
As a pious Jew, Paul would have thought of his death as the
final offering he could make to God, an offering which would
expiate his sins and crown his piety. As a Christian, he
continued to look upon his death as an offering to God, but
preferred now that it should be credited to his converts’
account rather than to his own. For example, if some
contribution was necessary to complete the faith of the
Philippian Christians, a libation to be poured out upon their
sacrifice, so to speak, then let the outpouring of Paul’s life be
that libation. Charles Wesley in later days could voice the
aspiration:
Ready for all thy perfect will,
My acts of faith and love repeat,
Till death thy endless mercies seal,
And make the sacrifice complete.
Paul was aware of the same aspiration, but with one
modification: let his death make their sacrifice complete.12
Nothing can surpass the spontaneous expression of the
tenderness which he feels for his Galatian friends when they
are being led astray from freedom back to spiritual bondage:
“my little children, for whom I suffer birth-pangs all over again
until Christ be formed in you!” (Galatians 4:9). It is his
affection and concern for them that explains the indignation
with which he explodes against those who are misleading them,
placing a yoke of slavery on their necks—the same order of
indignation as earlier found expression in Jesus’ stern words
about any one who upset “one of these little ones”: “Better for
him that a millstone were hung round his neck and he were
cast into the sea” (Luke 17:2). “Who is weak, and I am not
weak?” asks Paul. “Who is tripped up, and I am not indignant?”
(2 Corinthians 11:29).
Paul wants to see his converts bound together in heart by the
same strong affection as he feels for them. The faith which
saves, he tells the Galatians, is the “faith that works through
love” (Galatians 5:6). Through this same love they are called to
“serve one another” and so “fulfil the law of Christ” (Galatians
5:13; 6:2). Paul has no place for the solitary life as an ideal; for
all his apostolic energy he would have scouted the suggestion
that “he travels the fastest who travels alone”.13 He
emphasizes the fellowship, the togetherness, of Christians in
worship and action; they are members one of another, and all
together members of Christ.
His converts were his pride and joy. When he writes to them
he is like a father addressing his children. He commends
everything that is praiseworthy in them, where others might
have found little enough to commend. He scolds them for their
shortcomings, and warns them that if they do not mend their
ways he will take a big stick with him next time he comes.14
But he encourages them for all he is worth, and makes no
secret of his consuming desire that they should grow up to be
hundred-per-cent Christians, worthy of the honourable name
they bear.
If he exercises a father’s privilege in this way, he boasts
about them to others. When he is organizing the Jerusalem
relief fund, he tells the Corinthians about the Macedonians’
generosity and boasts to the Macedonians about the
Corinthians’ promptness.15 Above all, he hopes that when he
gives a final account of his apostolic stewardship to the Lord
who commissioned him, he will need do no more than point to
his converts and have the quality of his service judged by their
faith and life.16
Reference to the Jerusalem relief fund brings to mind his
extraordinary sense of delicacy where money is concerned. He
organized the fund, but insisted that the contributions should
be handled and delivered to their destination by individuals
appointed by the donors. As for himself, honesty must not only
be practised but must be seen to be practised; he knew how
convenient a handle involvement in financial affairs provides
for suspicion-mongers. It was partly for a similar reason that he
refused to accept money from the Corinthian Christians, but
partly because of his inbred independence: he much preferred
to maintain himself. To express thanks for a gift, even from his
dear friends at Philippi, was evidently something which he
could not do without a certain embarrassment.17 It is plain, too,
that by maintaining himself and not becoming chargeable to
others he wished to set an example to other Christians who,
from a conviction that the day of the Lord was just round the
corner or for some other reason, thought it was pointless to go
on working to earn their daily bread.18
Paul strikes us as a man possessed of uncommon strength of
will, not easily to be turned aside from the path which he
believed it to be his duty to follow. Since the risen Lord had
called him to be his apostle to the Gentiles, he had no option
but to obey him. He obeyed him right gladly, with utter heart-
devotion: the love of Christ constrained him. But even if he had
felt otherwise about it, he had no option in the matter. He had
been conscripted into this service. Never, to be sure, was there
a more willing conscript, but he knew himself to be under
authority. In other respects he might be allowed freedom of
choice: not in this.19
When he argues that it is preposterous for people who have
been delivered from the bondage of sin to place themselves
under it again, it may be thought that he credited his converts
with his own strength of will and made insufficient allowance
for the pull of old habits, old associations, old environments.
The bondage from which he knew himself to have been
delivered was the bondage of law, and he had no desire to
resume that bondage; but he had not been exposed to the
Corinthian way of life and was perplexed when some of his
converts found so much difficulty in shaking it off.
Yet he set no limits to the transforming power of the risen
Christ, implanted in believers’ hearts by the Holy Spirit, and he
saw sufficient evidence of that power in action in their lives to
know that he was not recommending a hopelessly unpractical
ideal. And if we suppose that he was too inclined to measure
his converts by the strong-willed character of a man for whom
to see that a course was right was to pursue it, let us recall his
own testimony that he practised unremitting self-discipline lest,
after preaching to others, he might be disqualified himself. For
him the Christian life was a strenuous business: he liked to
picture it in athletic terms, as a battle to be fought, a race to be
run.20 Instant attainment was out of the question: not before
the end of his mortal career would he have reached the goal
towards which he pressed, to receive “the prize of God’s
upward call in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14). It was a
naturally proud man who schooled himself to boast about his
humiliations in place of his achievements.
His great concern for his converts was that they should have
reproduced in their own lives the character of Christ—the fruit
of the Spirit (as he called it) which included such qualities as
love, patience, gentleness, meekness and self-control.21 This
concern underlay much of his self-discipline. What was the use
of recommending them to cultivate such qualities if they were
not at the same time visible in his own life? The lack of these
would certainly disqualify him from exhorting others to develop
them. Some of them at least—patience and gentleness, for
example—did not come to him naturally. Meekness was a
distinctive feature in the character of Jesus, but its
reproduction in Paul required the taming of his impetuousness
by the power of the Spirit and his regular self-discipline. So
resolutely, however, did he submit to this taming process that
he could not only with a good conscience try to inculcate these
Christian graces in others, but could even encourage them to
take his own practice as their example.
As an apple-tree does not produce apples by Act of
Parliament, but because it is its nature so to do, so the
character of Christ cannot be produced in his people by rules
and regulations; it must be the fruit of his Spirit within them.
Especially in the earlier days of his ministry, Paul appears to
have been bewildered by the spectacle of Christians who,
instead of rejoicing in the liberty of the Spirit, preferred to be
directed by a code of rules. With his own exhilarating
experience of spiritual freedom, he could not be content to see
his converts going along happily as those for whom “rules are
more comfortable to live with than principles”.22 He longed to
see them entering more fully into the liberty with which Christ
had set them free instead of living like those Pharisees whom
the Talmud assigns to the “tell-me-my-duty-and-I–will-do-it”
category.23
But Paul’s personal strength of will was not accompanied, as
it is in so many, by impatience with lesser mortals. While he
himself had a robust and emancipated conscience, he had
warm sympathy with those whose conscience was immature
and unenlightened, and he would go to almost any length of
self-denial in consideration for his weaker brethren. He
deplored the inability or unwillingness of other strong-minded
Christians to show them such consideration, and it was pre-
eminently in this regard that he pressed his own example on
them, urging them to imitate him as he for his part imitated
Christ.24
His strength of will was matched by unusual physical
toughness; in both respects, indeed, he might be compared to
Socrates. Here the evidence of Acts corroborates that of his
own writings. Luke describes how he was stoned at Lystra,
dragged out of the city and left for dead by the roadside, “but
as the disciples surrounded him he got up and went into the
city, and set out next day with Barnabas for Derbe” (Acts
14:20). This experience forms one item in the list of hardships
which he enumerates in 2 Corinthians 11:23–27. He is abashed
at being put in a position where, in self-defence, he has to
present such a catalogue, but the matter-of-fact recital of
imprisonments, floggings, shipwrecks, narrow escapes from
death and the like that he has been through in the course of his
apostolic work tells its own tale of the resilience and staying
power of the man who has endured it all. The scars which those
experiences left he wears with pride: they were the indelible
stigmata which proclaimed him to be the bondslave of the Lord
in whose service he had received them.25
Paul would not have interpreted his sustaining of trouble and
danger in terms of toughness; in his eyes all this was part of
the life of faith, not to be endured as something one would
the life of faith, not to be endured as something one would
rather be spared but to be embraced with joy as a sure token of
acceptance by God and as a strengthening of Christian hope.
This attitude belonged to the reversal of all conventional values
implicit in the cross of Christ. Paul welcomed such hardships
the more gladly as a sharing in the sufferings of Christ and as a
means of absorbing in his own person afflictions which would
otherwise fall to the lot of his fellow-Christians. As the
hardships wore down the outer man, they were at the same
time used by God for the renewal of the inner man and the
augmenting of his heritage of glory.
Paul was a child of his time, born in the first century A.D.
and not earlier or later, born in the Roman Empire and not
beyond its frontiers, born a Jew and not a Gentile. He was
influenced by his heritage, his environment and his upbringing.
Some men and women remain so completely children of their
time that practically everything about them can be explained in
terms of their cultural conditioning. Not so Paul. Perhaps this
is what John Donne had in mind when he said that “Paul, was
borne a man, an Apostle, not carved out, as the rest, in time;
but a fusile Apostle, an Apostle powred out, and cast in a
Mold”.26 He belongs to that select company who leave their
mark on their time, who mould their contemporaries and exert
an influence which stretches far into the future.
Although he was rabbinically trained, his reappraisal of the
whole spirit and content of his earlier training was so radical
that many Jewish scholars have had difficulty in recognizing
him as the product of a rabbinical education. They have found
it easier to appreciate the Prophet of Nazareth (who, indeed,
was not rabbinically trained) than the apostle to the Gentiles.
Paul presents an enigma with which they cannot readily come
to terms.27
When it dawned on the young Pharisee that God in the
fulness of time had sent his Son, that the crucified Jesus was
exalted as Lord over all, that as such he had inaugurated a new
era which superseded the reign of law, it not only brought
about a complete reorientation in his own thought and life, but
through him reoriented the thought and life of a considerable
through him reoriented the thought and life of a considerable
body of mankind. While others in his day took part in the
Gentile mission, his contribution was unique and most far-
reaching. Paul, more (it appears) than any of the original
disciples of Jesus, appreciated the universal implications of his
Master’s person and work and gave them practical effect. Four
themes emphasized in his teaching call for summary mention
because they still need to be emphasized.
(a) True religion is not a matter of rules and regulations. God
does not deal with people like an accountant, but accepts them
freely when they respond to his love, and implants the Spirit of
Christ in their hearts so that they may show to others the love
they have received from him.
(b) In Christ men and women have come of age, as the new
humanity brought into being through his death and
resurrection-life. God does not keep his children in leading-
strings but calls them to live as his responsible adult sons and
daughters.
(c) People matter more than things, more than principles,
more than causes. The highest of principles and the best of
causes exist for the sake of people; to sacrifice people to them
is a perversion of the true order.
(d) Unfair discrimination on the grounds of race, religion,
class or sex is an offence against God and humanity alike.
If these lessons are important, it is well to give grateful
credit to one man who taught them.
2. Paul in the early church
Paul’s withdrawal from public activity during the four years
following his arrest by Roman auxiliaries in Jerusalem gave his
opponents throughout his Gentile mission-field an opportunity
which they were not slow to exploit. The evidence of
Colossians, if it is to be dated in the context of his Roman
imprisonment, speaks for itself; and the Philippian Christians
are put on their guard alike against Judaizers (the “mutilation”
party) and gnosticizing libertines (Philippians 3:2, 18 f.). The
words of 2 Timothy 1:15, “You are well aware that all who are
in Asia turned away from me”, probably relate to the climax of
this anti-Pauline trend. What the direction of the “turning
away” was we are not told: Phygelus and Hermogenes are
singled out for special mention, presumably as leaders of the
movement, but no details of their teaching are given.
Elsewhere in the same letter another couple, Hymenaeus and
Philetus, are accused of deviating from the truth by
maintaining an over-realized eschatology—saying, as some of
the Corinthians had said before them, that the resurrection had
already taken place (2 Timothy 2:17 f.).28 It is not even certain
that Hymenaeus and Philetus belonged to the province of Asia;
the probability that they did so is high, however, if (as seems
likely) Hymenaeus is identical with the bearer of that name
who, according to 1 Timothy 1:19 f., had with a certain
Alexander “made shipwreck of the faith” and undergone
disciplinary action at Paul’s hands (by remote control,
presumably), “so as to learn not to blaspheme”.29
A stabilizing influence was apparently introduced into the
churches of Asia in the later sixties with the emigration to that
province of some forward-looking and liberal-minded Christian
leaders from Judaea, including “John, the disciple of the Lord”
(as he is called) and Philip of Caesarea with his prophesying
daughters. They enjoyed considerable prestige among the
Asian Christians, not only while they lived but for some
generations after.30 The presence of such men and women,
closely associated as they were with Christian beginnings in
Palestine, helped to discourage tendencies to Jewish legalism
or libertine gnosticism.
But the one event that more than anything else brought
about the collapse of the judaizing mission in Paul’s mission-
field was the Jewish revolt against Rome in A.D. 66, which led
not only to the destruction of the temple and city of Jerusalem
four years later but also to the dispersal of the church of
Jerusalem. The church of Jerusalem endeavoured to maintain
its identity in exile for many generations, but no longer could it
issue decrees to be accepted by Gentile Christendom; indeed,
contact between it and the Gentile churches was reduced to a
minimum. Its ancient prestige was later inherited to some
minimum. Its ancient prestige was later inherited to some
extent by the new church of Jerusalem, the completely Gentile
community which established itself in Hadrian’s new
foundation of Aelia Capitolina, erected on the site of the holy
city in A.D. 135 and the following years.
Where the traditions of the original church of Jerusalem
were cherished, Paul remained a dubious character, if he was
not indeed regarded as the enemy who sowed the tares of
antinomianism among the wheat of the new law promulgated
by Jesus, the prophet like Moses.31 But such a picture of Paul
was eccentric and uninfluential. Throughout his Gentile
mission-field, and beyond it, his prestige rose higher than it
had often done in his lifetime: churches which owed their first
beginnings to his evangelistic energy were proud to
acknowledge him as their apostolic founder.
Rome: Tre Fontane: Church of St. Paul, interior (see p. 450)
Page of p46 (see p. 466), showing Galatians 6:10–18 and Philippians 1:1. p46
is the oldest known manuscript of paul’s letters (c. A.D. 200); it is one of the
Chester Beatty biblical papyri in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin
His letters, whether as entire documents or in fragments,
were carefully collected. He himself had given a first impetus
to this trend in his life-time by encouraging the exchange of
letters addressed by him to neighbouring churches and
probably by occasionally sending copies of a letter addressed
to one community to be read elsewhere. When Clement of
Rome wrote in the name of the Roman church to the church of
Corinth about A.D. 96, he plainly had access to a copy of the
letter which we know as 1 Corinthians, for he quotes it freely,
reminding the Corinthian Christians that they should have paid
reminding the Corinthian Christians that they should have paid
more attention to what their apostolic founder had said to them
forty years before.
It may well be that a powerful impetus was given to the
collecting of Paul’s letters and their publication as a literary
corpus by the wider circulation of the second volume of Luke’s
history—the Acts of the Apostles. If there was any tendency to
forget Paul in the regions which he had evangelized, this
fascinating record would certainly rekindle interest in him both
in those regions and elsewhere.32
However that may be, early in the second century an
unknown benefactor of all succeeding ages copied at least ten
Pauline letters into a codex from which copies were made for
use in many parts of the Christian world.33 From that time
forth Paul’s letters circulated as a collection and not singly. The
second-century writers, whether “orthodox” or “heterodox”,
who refer to the Pauline letters, knew them in the form of a
corpus.
Among the “heterodox” writers the most notable was
Marcion, who about A.D. 144 promulgated a canon of Christian
scripture, comprising his edition of the Gospel of Luke and ten
Pauline epistles (the Pastorals being omitted). Paul, in
Marcion’s eyes, was the only faithful apostle of Jesus Christ;
the original apostles all adulterated his pure gospel with
judaizing doctrines. But even the authentic Pauline letters
required to be purified of what, according to Marcion, were
non-Pauline accretions, such as those passages which assumed
the continuing validity of the Old Testament writings. It has
been said that Marcion was “the only man of his age who
understood Paul, and even in his understanding of him he
misunderstood him”.34 Although his peculiar teachings were
repudiated by the church, his edition of the Pauline corpus
influenced the subsequent transmission of their text in several
ways.35
Our oldest known surviving copy of the Pauline letters is a
papyrus codex in the Chester Beatty collection in Dublin (P46 in
the recognized list of Greek New Testament manuscripts). It
belongs to the end of the second century and contains the
shorter Pauline corpus of ten letters (excluding the Pastorals)
together with the Epistle to the Hebrews. In Egypt, from, which
the Chester Beatty biblical papyri came, Hebrews was
regarded as a Pauline letter as early as A.D. 18036 (the Roman
church, to one group in which Hebrews was probably sent in
the first instance, knew better).
Throughout catholic Christendom, then, by the last quarter
of the second century, Paul’s memory was venerated and his
writings were canonized.37 But this did not mean that his
teaching was understood. The tendency to subject Christian life
to regulations was too powerful, and when, as happened from
time to time, someone appeared who really grasped Paul’s
intention, the effect was liable to be revolutionary. Many of the
fathers would not have thought it possible that Paul really
meant what he said about Christians being no longer under law
but under grace.38 Naturally, too, when the historical context
of his more polemical passages had been forgotten it was
difficult to follow his strategy as he waged war on two fronts
simultaneously, going as far as he could, first with this line of
thought among his converts and then with that, until he
reached the point where the interposition of a “But …”
substantially modified what had appeared to be a wholesale
concession. One ironical result of this failure to place Paul’s
arguments in their contemporary setting was that the apostle
who had been criticized by moralists in his lifetime as an
antinomian was highly esteemed by their spiritual successors
as an ascetic.39
3. Paul in fiction and legend
Early in the second half of the second century A.D. a
presbyter in the province of Asia gathered together legends
and traditions about Paul from the whole area of the apostle’s
activity from Damascus to Rome, drew on his own imagination
to provide them with the necessary continuity, and issued the
work as the Acts of Paul. His purpose was to honour the
apostle’s memory, but his colleagues and superiors
disapproved of what he had done—finding fault either with the
general idea of such a work of fiction, or with some of its
contents which encouraged beliefs or practices which they
found unacceptable—and deposed him from his office. He
affirmed that he had compiled the work amore Pauli, “for love
of Paul”, but the worthiness of the motive could not
compensate, to their way of thinking, for the objectionable
nature of the product.
Our information about the author’s unfrocking comes from
Tertullian of Carthage who, writing later in the same century,
warns those who allow a teaching ministry for women in the
church that they should not invoke the authority of this work,
since it was condemned by competent authority.40 The
particular section of the work referred to is the episode of Paul
and Thekla. Thekla was a legendary convert of the apostle’s
who, at his instance, broke off her engagement and for a time
shared his apostolic ministry, experiencing a miraculous
deliverance from martyrdom. The Paul of this episode acts
inconsistently with the Paul of the Pastoral Epistles: whereas
the Pastoral Epistles “permit no woman to teach” and condemn
those “who forbid marriage” (1 Timothy 2:12; 4:3), Paul in
these Acts discourages Thekla from matrimony but encourages
her to cultivate her gift as a teacher. It may have been in the
inculcation of celibacy and general asceticism that the Asian
church leaders recognized heretical tendencies in the Acts of
Paul, for such tendencies were manifesting themselves just
then in the new Montanist movement.41
It is in this section of the Acts of Paul that we come upon a
pen-portrait of the apostle which has sometimes been thought,
because of its vigorous and unconventional character, to reflect
a persistent local recollection. Paul is on his way to Iconium
with two companions—
And a man named Onesiphorus, who had heard that Paul had come to
Iconium, went out with his children Simmias and Zeno and his wife Lectra to
meet Paul, that he might receive him to his house. Titus had told him what Paul
looked like: thus far Onesiphorus had not seen him in the flesh, but only in the
spirit. He went along the royal road that leads to Lystra,42 and stood there
waiting for him, and looked at those who came, comparing them with Titus’s
description. And he saw Paul coming, a man small of stature, with a bald head
and crooked legs, in a good state of body, with eyebrows meeting and nose
somewhat hooked, full of friendliness; for now he appeared like a man, and now
he had the face of an angel.43
Despite the impression of realism which this pen-portrait
makes, it has been suggested that it belongs to a literary
tradition—the tradition of which Alcibiades’s description of
Socrates is an early expression. Alcibiades’s description is to a
large extent quite unflattering—Socrates is portrayed as a
Silenus or a satyr in outward appearance—but his conversation
is inexpressibly captivating: within the unprepossessing
exterior there was a treasure “so divine and golden, so wholly
beautiful and wonderful, that I simply had to do as Socrates
bade me”.44 Robert Eisler argued that the description of Paul
belonged to the same genre as the imaginative description of
Jesus in the so-called Letter of Lentulus.45 But these parallels
are not so close as to carry conviction, and the possibility
remains—it can be no more than that—that Sir William Ramsay
was not mistaken in saying that “this plain and unflattering
account of the Apostle’s personal appearance seems to embody
a very early tradition”.46
While Tertullian disapproved of the Acts of Paul, his
contemporary Hippolytus of Rome seems to have accepted the
work—not indeed as holy writ (it was never intended to receive
such recognition) but as a genuine record of events. Hippolytus
was the greatest scholar of his day in western Christendom but
his scholarship did not prevent him from taking, apparently, as
factual truth what we should regard as one of the most patently
legendary incidents in the book—the story of Paul’s
confrontation in the arena with a lion which he had befriended
and baptized.47
The legend of Androcles and the lion is well enough known
today, thanks mainly to Bernard Shaw, but in the mid-second
century something very like it was told of Paul himself. This
probably arose from a literalistic interpretation of Paul’s
reference to his having “fought with beasts at Ephesus” (1
Corinthians 15:32) or of his later claim to have been “rescued
from the lion’s mouth” (2 Timothy 4:17). The story was
recorded quite circumstantially in the Acts of Paul and
Hippolytus, treating it quite seriously, adduces it in his
Commentary on Daniel as a parallel to the story of Daniel in the
lions’ den: “If we believe that, when Paul was condemned to
the circus, the lion which was set upon him lay down at his feet
and licked him, why should we not also believe what happened
in the case of Daniel?”48—a precarious apologetic indeed!
In Rome, too, legend embellished the story of Paul. It was
told, for example, how he was taken to Naples to see the tomb
of the poet Virgil, who died in 19 B.C., and wept over him:
“What a convert I would have made of you”, said he, “had I
found you still alive, greatest of poets!”49 The record of his
martyrdom in particular was adorned with miraculous
accessories. As he was led to the place of execution, says one
apocryphal work, he saw a woman named Perpetua, blind in
one eye, who burst into tears as he passed. He asked her to
lend him her kerchief. The soldiers who were conducting him
laughed at her, but she adjured them by the emperor’s well-
being to tie it round Paul’s eyes and return it to her after his
death. When they did so, she put it on again, all bloodstained as
it now was, and immediately the sight of her blind eye was
restored.50
Reliefs in the church of St. Paul at Tre Fontane
commemorate the legend that the apostle’s head bounced on
the ground three times when it was severed, and at each place
there welled forth one of the three springs from which the
place is named.
4. Paul’s perennial influence
Such legends represent an unsophisticated attempt to
emphasize the greatness of Paul. But his true greatness is
attested by the abiding power of his liberating message. Time
and again, when the gospel has been in danger of being
fettered and disabled in the bonds of legalism or outworn
fettered and disabled in the bonds of legalism or outworn
tradition, it has been the words of Paul that have broken the
bonds and set the gospel free to exert its emancipating power
once more in the life of mankind.
(a) Augustine. In the summer of A.D. 386 the thirty-two year
old Augustine sat weeping in the garden of his friend Alypius at
Milan. He had been for two years Professor of Rhetoric in that
city, and had every reason to be satisfied with his professional
career thus far, yet he was conscious of a deep inner
dissatisfaction. He was almost persuaded to begin a new life,
but lacked the resolution to break with the old. As he sat, he
heard a child singing in a neighbouring house, Tolle, lege!
Tolle, lege! (“Take up and read! Take up and read!”). Taking up
the scroll which lay at his friend’s side—a copy of Paul’s letters,
as it happened—he let his eye fall on what we know as the
closing words of Romans 13: “not in revelling and drunkenness,
not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and
jealousy; but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no
provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” “No further would
I read,” he says, “nor had I any need; instantly, at the end of
this sentence, a clear light flooded my heart and all the
darkness of doubt vanished away.”51
The colossal influence which Augustine, “the greatest
Christian since New Testament times”52 (as one patristic
scholar has called him), has exercised on the thought of
succeeding ages can be traced directly to the light which
flooded into his mind as he read the words of Paul.
(b) Luther and the Reformation. In 1513 Martin Luther,
Augustinian monk and Professor of Sacred Theology in the
University of Wittenberg in Saxony, endeavoured to prepare a
course of lectures on the Psalms while his mind was
preoccupied with the agonizing endeavour to “find a gracious
God”. He was struck by the prayer of Psalm 31:1, “in thy
righteousness deliver me”. But how could God’s righteousness
deliver him? The righteousness of God was surely calculated
rather to condemn the sinner than to save him. As he thought
about the meaning of the words, his attention was more and
more directed to Paul’s statement in Romans 1:17 that in the
gospel “the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for
faith; as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall
live’ ” (Habakkuk 2:4). The result of his study is best told in his
own words:
I had greatly longed to understand Paul’s epistle to the Romans, and nothing
stood in the way but that one expression, “the righteousness of God”, because I
took it to mean that righteousness whereby God is righteous and acts righteously
in punishing the unrighteous.… Night and day I pondered until … I grasped the
truth that the righteousness of God is that righteousness whereby, through grace
and sheer mercy, he justifies us by faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and
to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a
new meaning, and whereas before “the righteousness of God” had filled me with
hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of
Paul became to me a gateway into heaven.53
The consequences of Luther’s grasp of the liberating gospel
according to Paul are writ large in history.
It may well be that, since Augustine and Luther both found
Paul to speak so helpfully to their own respective spiritual
conditions, there has been an unwarranted tendency to ascribe
to Paul the same kind of inward conflict before his conversion
that they experienced before theirs.54 But what should be
emphasized is that Paul’s gospel of salvation by divine grace
has a living relevance not only to people who, like him,
supposed they had attained a satisfactory standard of
righteousness by law-keeping but also to those who, in one way
or another, have known themselves to fall far short of such a
standard and have suffered agonies of conscience as a result.
The gospel according to Paul is not a message for one kind of
temperament or one type of experience only. The Wesley
brothers had a very different background and experience from
Augustine and Luther, but it was Paul who spoke to their
condition too.
(c) The Wesleys and the Evangelical Revival. In John
Wesley’s wellknown account of the event which is usually
called his conversion, but which he himself later described (in
Pauline language) as the occasion when he exchanged “the
faith of a servant” for “the faith of a son”,55 he tells how, in the
evening of Wednesday, May 24, 1738, he “went very
unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street [London], where
one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans.
About a quarter before nine”, he goes on, “while he was
describing the change which God works in the heart through
faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did
trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation: And an assurance
was given me, that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and
saved me from the law of sin and death.”56
If there is one event more than another that marked the birth
of the evangelical revival of the eighteenth century, it was that.
“The inextinguishable blaze which burned so brightly
throughout the remainder of the century and beyond was
nourished in the warmed heart of this one man at Aldersgate
Street.”57 But similar awakenings were being experienced by
others around the same time, and it is remarkable in how many
of them Paul had a determinant part to play. A week before
John’s awakening, his brother Charles came for the first time
upon Luther’s commentary on Galatians, and “found him nobly
full of faith”. Later in the same day, he records, “I spent some
hours this evening in private with Martin Luther, who was
greatly blessed to me, especially his conclusion of the second
chapter, I laboured, waited, and prayed to feel ‘who loved me
and gave himself for me’.”58 Four days later, his prayer was
answered.
But another phase of Pauline thought made a powerful
contribution to the evangelical revival—the phase expounded in
the early 1670s by Henry Scougal in The Life of God in the Soul
of Man.59 This treatise was well known to the Wesleys: their
mother recommended it to them as “an excellent good book”
and “as an acquaintance of mine many years ago”. John Wesley
had a copy with him in Savannah, Georgia, and Charles in his
Oxford days gave a copy to his fellow-student George
Whitefield. It was the reading of this book that brought about
Whitefield’s conversion in 1733: it showed him, in his own
words, “that they who know anything of religion know it is a
vital union with the Son of God—Christ formed in the heart. O
what a ray of divine life”, he adds, “did then break in upon my
soul!”60 In thus describing what happened to him, he echoes
Scougal’s own language: “true religion is a union of the soul
with God, a real participation of the divine nature, the very
image of God drawn upon the soul, or, in the apostle’s phrase,
it is ‘Christ formed within us’.”61 The “apostle’s phrase” comes
from that letter to the Galatians which so emphasizes
justification by faith, apart from legal works: Paul tells his
Galatian friends how he endures birth-pangs on their behalf
“until Christ be formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). It was perhaps
the combination of these two aspects of Paulinism—the initial
pardoning grace of God and the progressive inward work of the
Spirit—that gave the evangelical revival its deep and lasting
effect: concentration on the one without the other leads to a
lop-sided form of religion.
(d) Barth and the Theology of Crisis. To come to more recent
times, one of the most epoch-making theological publications of
the twentieth century was Karl Barth’s exposition of the Epistle
to the Romans, first issued in August 1918 when he was pastor
of Safenwil in Canton Aargau, Switzerland. “The reader”, he
said in his preface, “will detect for himself that it has been
written with a joyful sense of discovery. The mighty voice of
Paul was new to me: and if to me, no doubt to many others
also. And yet, now that my work is finished, I perceive that
much remains which I have not yet heard …”.62 But what he
had heard he wrote down, and others heard it too. He
compared himself to a man who, clutching in the dark at a rope
for guidance, finds that he has pulled on a bell-rope, making a
sound fit to wake the dead.63 The Catholic theologian Karl
Adam said that the first edition of Barth’s Römerbrief fell “like
a bombshell on the theologians’ playground”.64 The
repercussions of that explosion are with us still, nearly sixty
years later.
(e) Paul and democratic liberty. It can be argued that, in
those parts of the world where the democratic process has
been specially indebted to the Reformation and the evangelical
revival, Paul, has exercised an indirect influence because of his
direct influence on those movements. This was the judgment of
Sir Thomas Taylor, a distinguished Scottish lawyer and
churchman, who was a careful student both of Pauline theology
and of the democratic process.
Justification by Faith means that salvation depends not on sacraments, not on
what is done or not done by any priest or presbyter, but on the simple response
of the believing heart to the Word of God in Jesus Christ. Observe what this really
means; it is not just a theological figment. At one stroke it cuts at the root of the
whole vast system of sacerdotalism, with its associated doctrine of works—
penance, pilgrimage, fasting, purgatory, and all the rest. The Church is no longer
a hierarchy of clergy performing indispensable rites for its members; no longer a
caste of priests endued with mysterious, not to say magical powers at the word of
a bishop; but the priesthood of all believing men, and a ministry authorised by
the call of the Holy Spirit, by due examination of life and doctrine, and by the
consent of the people concerned. Here you have the beginning of Scottish
democracy, here and nowhere else. Accept this doctrine of Justification by Faith
and the layman, the common man, John the Commonweal, at one stride comes
into the centre.65
Sir Thomas referred particularly to “Scottish democracy”
because he was addressing the General Assembly of the
Church of Scotland convened to commemorate the
quatercentenary of the Scottish Reformation; but his wise
words have a wider reference. Paul looked forward to the day
when the racial, religious, sexual and social prejudices or
discrimination to which on principle he denied anyplace in the
Christian fellowship would be banished from the whole new
creation. And he placed a higher valuation on human
personality than social or political democracy could ever do
when he insisted that the weaker members of the community
should receive special consideration because each of them,
however insignificant in other respects, was “the brother (or
sister) for whom Christ died” (1 Corinthians 8:11). Campaigner
for spiritual liberty that he was, he gave one thing precedence
even over liberty, and that one thing was love. But spiritual
liberty is not really diminished by love; both together are
imparted by the Spirit, and to serve in love is perfect freedom.
In this, as in so many other respects, Paul has remained
unsurpassed in his insight into the mind of Christ.
unsurpassed in his insight into the mind of Christ.
Chronological Table
Christian
history
Roman history
14–37 Tiberius
emperor
c. 28–
30
Public ministry
of Jesus
c. 33 Conversion of
Paul
c. 35 Paul’s first post-
conversion
Jerusalem visit
35–
46
Paul in Cilicia
and Syria
37–41 Gaius emperor
41–54 Claudius
emperor
46 Paul’s second
Jerusalem visit
47–
48
Paul and
Barnabas in
Cyprus and
Galatia
? 48 Letter to the
Galatians
49 Council of
Jerusalem
49 Jews expelled
from Rome
49–
50
Paul and Silas
travel from
Syrian Antioch
through Asia
Minor to
Macedonia and
Macedonia and
Achaia
50 Letters to the
Thessalonians
50–
52
Paul in Corinth 51–52 Gallio
proconsul of
Achaia
Summer 52 Paul’s third
Jerusalem visit
52–59 Felix
procurator of
Judaea
52–
55
Paul in Ephesus
54–68 Nero emperor
55–
56
Letters to the
Corinthians
55–
57
Paul in
Macedonia,
Illyricum and
Achaia
early 57 Letter to the
Romans
May 57 Paul’s fourth
(and last)
Jerusalem visit
57–
59
Paul’s
imprisonment in
Caesarea
59 Festus
succeeds Felix
as procurator of
Judaea
September 59 Paul’s voyage to
Rome begins
February 60 Paul’s arrival in
Rome
Rome
60–
62
Paul under
house-arrest in
Rome
62 Death of
Festus, Albinus
procurator of
Judaea
? 60–
62
Captivity
Letters
July 64 Fire of Rome
? 65 Paul visits Spain
? Pastoral Letters
? 65 Death of Paul
Select Bibliography
This is a select and partial bibliography. Some of the most
important literature on Paul is to be found in commentaries on
his epistles or exegetical monographs. Other important studies
of his life and thought appear in works on early Christian
history and theology or on contemporary Graeco-Roman
civilization, not to mention contributions to periodicals and
Festschriften. References to such important studies have been
given here and there in footnotes throughout this volume.
Alexander, A. B. D., The Ethics of St. Paul (Glasgow, 1910)
Allen, R., Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? (London,
1927)
Bacon, B. W., The Story of St. Paul (London, 1905)
Bacon, B. W., Jesus and Paul (London, 1921)
Bandstra, A. J., The Law and the Elements of the World: An
Exegetical Study in Aspects of Paul’s Teaching (Kampen,
1964)
Barclay, W., The Mind of St. Paul (London, 1958)
Barrett, C. K., From First Adam to Last: A Study in Pauline
Theology (London, 1962)
Baur, F. C., Paul: His Life and Works, E. T., 2 volumes (London,
1875)
Beare, F. W., St. Paul and his Letters (London, 1962)
Betz, H.-D., Der Apostel Paulus und die sokratische Tradition
(Tübingen, 1972)
Bornkamm, G., Paul, E. T. (London, 1971)
Buck, C. H. and Taylor, G., St. Paul: A Study of the
Development of his Thought (New York, 1969)
Bultmann, R., “Paul” (1930), “Romans 7 and the Anthropology
of Paul” (1932), and “Jesus and Paul” (1936), E. T. in
Existence and Faith (London, 1964), pp. 130–172, 173–185
and 217–239
Bultmann, R., “The Theology of Paul” in Theology of the New
Testament, E. T., i (London, 1952), pp. 185–352
Cerfaux, L., Christ in the Theology of St. Paul, E. T.
(Edinburgh/London/New York, 1959)
Cerfaux, L., The Church in the Theology of St. Paul, E. T.
(Edinburgh/London/New York, 1959)
Davies, W. D., Paul and Rabbinic Judaism (London, 1948)
Deissmann, A., Paul: A Study in Social and Religious History, E.
T. (London, 1926)
Dibelius, M., and Kümmel, W. G., Paul, E. T. (London, 1953)
Dodd, C. H., The Meaning of Paul for Today (London, 1920)
Dodd, C. H., “The Mind of Paul” in New Testament Studies
(Manchester, 1953), pp. 67–128
Drane, J. W., Paul: Libertine or Legalist? (London, 1975)
Duncan, G. S., St. Paul’s Ephesian Ministry (London, 1929)
Dungan, D. L., The Sayings of Jesus in the Churches of Paul
(Oxford, 1971)
Ellis, E. E., Paul’s Use of the Old Testament (Edinburgh, 1957)
Ellis, E. E., Paul and his Recent Interpreters (Grand Rapids,
1961)
Ellis, E. E., and Grässer, E. (ed.), Jesus und Paulus: Festschrift
für W. G. Kümmel (Göttingen, 1975)
Enslin, M. S., The Ethics of Paul (Nashville/New York, 21962)
Enslin, M. S., Reapproaching Paul (Philadelphia, 1972)
Foakes-Jackson, F. J., The Life of Saint Paul (London, 1927)
Fraser, J. W., Jesus and Paul (Appleford, 1974)
Fridrichsen, A., The Apostle and his Message (Uppsala, 1947)
Furnish, V. P., Theology and Ethics in Paul (Nashville, 1968)
Glover, T. R., Paul of Tarsus (London, 1925)
Grant, M., Saint Paul (London, 1976)
Gunther, J. J., Paul: Messenger and Exile (Valley Forge, 1972)
Gunther, J. J., St. Paul’s Opponents and their Background
(Leiden, 1973)
Hanson, A. T., Studies in Paul’s Technique and Theology
(London, 1974)
Haughton, R., The Liberated Heart (London, 1975)
Hugedé, N., Saint Paul et la Culture Grecque (Geneva, 1966)
Hunter, A. M. Paul and his Predecessors (London, 21961)
Hunter, A. M., Interpreting Paul’s Gospel (London, 1954)
Jüngel, E., Paulus und Jesus (Tübingen, 1962)
Käsemann, E., Perspectives on Paul, E. T. (London, 1971)
Kennedy, H. A. A., St. Paul’s Conception of the Last Things
(London, 1904)
Kennedy, H. A. A., St Paul and the Mystery Religions (London,
1913)
Klausner, J., From Jesus to Paul, E. T. (London, 1944)
Knox, J., Chapters in a Life of Paul (London, 1954)
Knox, W. L., St. Paul and the Church of Jerusalem (Cambridge,
1925)
Knox, W. L., St. Paul and the Church of the Gentiles
(Cambridge, 1939)
Kuss, O., Paulus: Die Rolle des Apostels in der theologischen
Entwicklung der Urkirche (Regensburg, 1971)
Lake, K., The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul (London, 1911)
Lake, K., Paul: His Heritage and Legacy (London, 1934)
Longenecker, R. N., Paul, Apostle of Liberty (New York, 1964)
Longenecker, R. N., The Ministry and Message of Paul (Grand
Rapids, 1971)
Machen, J. G., The Origin of Paul’s Religion (New York, 1921)
Manson, T. W. (ed.), On Paul and John (London, 1963)
Meeks, W. A. (ed.), The Writings of St. Paul (New York, 1972)
Michel, O., Paulus und seine Bibel (Gütersloh, 1929)
Mitton, C. L., The Formation of the Pauline Corpus of Letters
(London, 1955)
Montefiore, C. G., Judaism and St. Paul (London, 1914)
Munck, J., Paul and the Salvation of Mankind, E. T. (London,
1959)
Murphy-O’Connor, J. (ed.), Paul and Qumran (London, 1968)
Nock, A. D., St. Paul (London, 1938)
Ogg, G., The Chronology of the Life of Paul (London, 1968)
Paley, W., Horae Paulinae (London, 1790)
Pohlenz, M., Paulus und die Stoa (Darmstadt, 1964)
Prat, F., The Theology of St. Paul E. T. (London, 1957)
Ramsay, W. M., St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen
(London, 141920)
Ramsay, W. M., Pauline and Other Studies in Early Christian
History (London, 1906)
Ramsay, W. M., The Cities of St. Paul: Their Influence on his
Life and Thought (London, 1907)
Ramsay, W, M., The Teaching of Paul in Terms of the Present
Day (London, 1913)
Ridderbos, H., Paul: An Outline of his Theology, E. T. (Grand
Rapids, 1975)
Rigaux, B., Letters of St. Paul, E. T. (Chicago, 1968)
Sanders, E. P., Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London, 1977)
Sandmel, S., The Genius of Paul: A Study in History (New York,
1970)
Schmithals, W., Paul and James, E. T. (London, 1965)
Schnackenburg, R., Baptism in the Thought of St. Paul, E. T.
(Oxford, 1964)
Schoeps, H. J., Paul: The Theology of the Apostle in the Light of
Jewish Religious History, E. T. (London, 1961)
Schrenk, G., Studien zu Paulus (Zürich, 1954)
Schütz, J. H., Paul and the Anatomy of Apostolic Authority
(Cambridge, 1974)
Schweitzer, A., Paul and his Interpreters, E. T. (London, 1912)
Schweitzer, A., The Mysticism, of Paul the Apostle, E. T.
(London, 1931)
Scott, C. A. A., Christianity according to St. Paul (Cambridge,
1927)
Scott, C. A. A., Footnotes to St. Paul (Cambridge, 1935)
Scott, C. A. A., St. Paul: The Man and the Teacher (Cambridge,
1936)
Scroggs, R., The Last Adam: A Study in Pauline Anthropology
(Oxford, 1966)
Scroggs, R., Paul for a New Day (Philadelphia, 1976)
Sevenster, J. N., and van Unnik, W. C. (ed.), Studia Paulina in
honorem J. de Zwaan (Haarlem, 1953)
Souter, A., The Earliest Latin Commentaries on the Epistles of
St. Paul (Oxford, 1927)
Stacey, W. D., The Pauline View of Man (London, 1956)
Stendahl, K., Paul Among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia,
1976)
Stewart, J. S., A Man in Christ: The Vital Elements of St. Paul’s
Religion (London, 1935)
Thackeray, H. St. J., The Relation of St. Paul to Contemporary
Jewish Thought (London, 1900)
van Unnik, W. C., Tarsus or Jerusalem: The City of Paul’s
Youth, E. T. (London, 1962)
Vos, G., The Pauline Eschatology (Grand Rapids, 21952)
Wagner, G., Pauline Baptism and the Pagan Mysteries, E. T.
(Edinburgh/ London, 1967)
Weinel, H., St. Paul: The Man and his Work, E. T. (London,
1906)
Weiss, J., Paul and Jesus, E. T. (London/New York, 1909)
Whiteley, D. E. H., The Theology of St. Paul, (Oxford, 1964)
Wikenhauser, A., Pauline Mysticism: Christ in the Mystical
Teaching of St. Paul, E. T. (Freiburg/Edinburgh/London,
1960)
Wiles, M. F., The Divine Apostle: The Interpretation of St.
Paul’s Epistles in the Early Church (Cambridge, 1967)
Wilson, T., St. Paul and Paganism (Edinburgh, 1927)
Wrede, W., Paul, E. T. (London, 1907)
Ziesler, J. A., The Meaning of Righteousness in Paul
(Cambridge, 1972)
Additional Bibliography
Barrett, C. K., Essays on Paul (London, 1982).
Barrett, C. K., Freedom and Obligation (London, 1985).
Beker, J. C., Paul the Apostle (Edinburgh, 1980).
Davies, W. D., Jewish and Pauline Studies (London, 1984).
Hagner, D. A., and Harris M. J. (ed.), Pauline Studies (Exeter,
1980).
Hock, R. F., The Social Context of Paul’s Ministry (Philadelphia,
1980).
Holmberg, B., Paul and Power (Lund, 1978).
Hooker, M. D., and Wilson, S. G. (ed.), Paul and Paulinism
(London, 1982).
Hübner, H., Law in Paul’s Thought, E. T. (Edinburgh, 1984).
Jewett, R., Paul’s Anthropological Terms (Leiden, 1971).
Jewett, R., Dating Paul’s Life (London, 1979).
Kim. S., The Origin of Paul’s Gospel (Tübingen/Grand Rapids,
21984).
Sanders, E. P., Paul, the Law and the Jewish People
(Philadelphia, 1983).
Theissen, G., The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity, E. T.
(Edinburgh, 1982).
INDEXES
Index of People, Places and Writings
Aberdeen, 472
Aberle, M. V., 357
Abraham, 43, 76, 165, 182, 201, 204, 246, 328, 333, 384, 455
Abtalyon, 126
Achaia, 229, 236, 247f., 319, 339, 521
Achilleus, 249
Acrocorinthus, 249
Acropolis, 238
Actium, 25
Acts of the Apostles, 16f., 64f., 144f., 155, 159, 207, 218, 239,
242, 245, 357, 449, 465
Acworth, A., 373
Ad Catacumbas, 452f.
Adam, 114, 122, 123, 186, 205, 329, 431
Adam, K., 473
Adana, 33, 213
Adiabene, 128
Adramyttium, 369
Adria, 373
Aelia Capitolina, 464
Aeschines, 238
Aeschylus, 246f.
Afranius Burrus, 367
Agabus, 133, 150, 344f.
Agrippa I, 85, 174, 348, 364f., 376, 380, 386
Agrippa II, 43, 366
Agrippa, M. Vipsanius, 380
Agrippina, 295, 386
Akko, 343
Alcibiades, 468
Alexander (the coppersmith), 297
Alexander of Ephesus, 294, 297
Alexander the Great, 24, 26, 30, 32f.
Alexander Jannaeus, 44, 47, 53, 79
Alexander Jannaeus, 44, 47, 53, 79
Alexander (libertine), 297, 464
Alexander, Tiberius Julius (procurator), 150, 174
Alexander, W. M., 135
Alexandria, 35f., 68, 81, 225, 256, 465
Alexandria (Syrian), 213
Alfred the Great, 186
Alfrink, B., 301
Allen, R., 18, 315
Alos, 370
Alypius of Milan, 470
Ambrose of Milan, 452
Ambrosiaster, 379, 382, 440
Amman, 77
Amphipolis, 223
Amyntas, 163
Ananias of Damascus, 73f., 76, 83, 350, 447
Ananias (high priest), 351
Ananias (Jewish missionary), 256
Ananus II, 359
Anatolia, 43
Anaxilas, 291
Ancyra, 163
Anderson, C. P., 466
Anderson, J. G. C., 161
Androcles, 469
Andromache, 32
Andronicus, 298, 387f.
Annas, 57
Antichrist, 77
Antigonus, 217
Antioch (Pisidian), 146, 161, 163f., 468
Antioch (Syrian), 26, 30, 34, 36, 129, 133, 148, 150f., 164, 173,
175f., 179, 184, 212f., 319, 344, 392
Antioch-on-the-Cydnus, 34
Antiochus, King of Cappadocia, 213
Antiochus I, 130
Antiochus III, 23, 30, 33, 164
Antiochus III, 23, 30, 33, 164
Antiochus IV, 27, 34, 45, 46f., 231
Antipas, 57, 60, 149
Antipatris, 353
Antipholus, 291
Antium, 440
Antonia (mother of Emperor Claudius), 353, 354
Antonius Felix, 353
Antony, 25, 34, 37, 219
Aphrodite, 34, 249
Apollo, 221, 246
Apollonia, 223
Apollonius, 35, 239
Apollos, 255, 258, 289
Apphia, 393, 404f.
Appian Way, 451f.
Appii Forum, 374
Applebaum, S., 254
Aqaba, Gulf of, 76
Aqiba, Rabbi, 51, 124, 135
Aquae Salviae, 450
Aquila, 250, 255, 298, 381f., 388f., 457
Arabia, 81f., 322
Aratus, 242, 245
Arcadius, 288
Archippus, 355, 393f., 404f.
Areopagus, 238, 243f.
Aretas III, 76
Aretas IV, 81
Aristarchus, 224, 289, 293, 298, 339, 358f., 369, 391f., 394
Aristeas, 173
Aristobulus, 53, 386
Aristobulus II, 77
Ariston of Pella, 232
Aristotle, 337
Arsaces XII, 25
Artaxerxes III, 30
Artemilla, 267
Artemis, 287, 293, 297
Artemis, 287, 293, 297
Asaph, 36
Asia, 25f., 42, 68, 216, 274, 286, 295f., 298, 315, 318f., 339,
349, 358, 379, 440, 444f., 450, 463
Asia Minor, 30, 33, 146, 160, 212, 286, 324, 340, 342, 368,
Assos, 341
Asyncritus, 387
Athenaeus, 291
Athenodorus (the Stoic), 34
Athens, 35, 170, 229, 236f., 243, 246f.
Atkinson, J., 191, 471
Attaleia, 172
Attalus, 364
Attalus III (of Pergamum), 407
Auchterless, 472
Augustine, 47, 196, 421, 470
Augustus, 25, 34, 38, 48, 130, 161, 163f., 218, 226, 295, 316,
468
Ayasoluk, 288
Avi-Yonah, M., 353
Azizus, 361
Azzai, Ben, 135
Baal-peor, 272
Babylon, 22
Babylonia, 30
Bacher, W., 190
Bacon, B. W., 92, 166
Baeck, L., 70, 190
Bailey, D. S., 261
Ballance, M. H., 171
Baltensweiler, H., 66
Banna’ah, Rabbi, 124
Barnabas, 83, 94, 133, 146, 148, 150f., 156, 160, 164, 167,
169f., 179, 212f., 239, 278, 319, 392, 461
Baring-Gould, S., 269
Barnes, T. D., 247
Barrett, C. K., 17, 18, 89, 153, 195, 218, 259, 276, 285, 325,
329
329
Barth, K., 193, 281, 329, 473
Bartlet, J. V., 318, 376, 443
Baruch, Apocalypse of, 308
Bassus, 452
Baucis, 169
Bauckham, R. J., 139
Bauer, W., 256
Baur, F. C., 260, 395
Beare, F. W., 390
Beasley-Murray, G. R., 283, 315
Beatty, Chester, 466
Bell, H. I., 225
Benjamin, 41
Benoit, P., 419
Bernice, 348, 364f.
Beroea, 167, 229, 235f., 248, 339
Best, E., 420
Beth-shan, 77
Betz, H. D., 127
Betz, O., 144, 276
Bickermann, E. J., 72
Bithynia, 216, 364
Björck, G., 86
Black, M., 51, 117, 332, 382, 416
Blackman, E. C., 466
Blaiklock, E. M., 396
Blunt, J. J., 41
Boers, H., 167
Boethus, 34
Bornkamm, G., 235, 326f., 413
Brandon, S. G. F., 99
Braun, H., 80
Breusing, A., 369
Broneer, O., 249
Broughton, T. R. S., 374
Brown, J. T., 135
Bruce, F. F., 17, 46, 65, 86, 106, 117, 119, 164, 217, 231, 256,
Bruce, F. F., 17, 46, 65, 86, 106, 117, 119, 164, 217, 231, 256,
322, 346, 353, 382, 411, 438, 466
Buber, M., 97
Büchsel, F., 438
Bultmann, R., 98, 105, 112, 131, 193, 329, 416, 422
Bunyan, J., 387
Burkitt, F. C., 158, 228
Burney, C. F., 419
Burney, F., 457
Burrus, 367, 375
Burton, E. D., 223
Cadbury, H. J., 36, 149, 235, 243, 252, 271, 286, 376, 424
Caesar, 28, 40, 58, 145, 226, 336, 354, 362f., 372f., 376f., 389,
391, 450
Caesarea, 94, 130, 174, 176, 255, 343, 352, 354, 358f., 364,
386, 370
Caesarea Philippi, 97, 365
Caird, G. B., 422, 424
Calder, W. M., 37, 169, 217
Calvin, J., 192, 329, 386
Campus Martius, 380
Canatha, 77
Cape Lectum, 341
Cape Matala, 371
Cape Salmone, 370
Cappadocia, 213
Capua, 374
Caracalla, 364
Caristanius Fronto, 164
Carthage, 22, 186
Caspian Sea, 30
Cassander, 223
Cauda, 371
Cavallin, H. C. C., 300
Caÿster, 288
Celer, 296
Cenchreae, 255, 338f.
Cephas, 84, 96, 258
Cephas, 84, 96, 258
Chadwick, H., 216, 267, 409, 413, 426, 451, 453
Chaeronea, 237
Cheesman, G. L., 164
Chios, 341
Chloe, 258
Chrestos, 132
Chrestus, 251
Christus, 442
Cicero, 166, 220, 235, 296, 374, 379f.
Cilicia, 32f., 37, 42, 68f., 94, 133, 213
Cisalpine Gaul, 316
Circus Maximus, 440
Claudius, 37, 132, 150, 161, 166, 225f., 234f., 250f., 253, 258,
273, 333, 353, 355, 358, 364, 381, 386, 388
Claudius Lysias, 37, 350, 358
Cleanthes, 242
Clement of Alexandria, 249, 291, 307, 392, 466
Clement of Philippi, 222
Clement of Rome, 389, 444, 446f., 454, 465
Cleopatra, 25, 34
Clermont-Ganneau, C. S., 349
Coleridge, S. T., 425
Colonia Caesarea, 164
Colonia Iulia Philippensis, 219
Colonia Victrix Philippensium, 219
Colossae, 355, 384, 396–8, 400, 404–9, 412–14
Colossians, Epistle to the, 298, 360, 391f., 394, 396, 399–401,
407–23
Colson, F. H., 400
Columella, 334
Colwell, E. C., 401
Constantine, 218, 451
Constantinople, 25
Conzelmann, H., 90, 219, 244, 342, 377
Cook, J. M., 217
Corinth, 23, 42, 62, 213f., 229, 235, 246, 248–64, 266, 270f.,
273f., 276f., 279, 289, 297, 315–20, 322, 324, 338f., 348, 382,
388, 454f., 465
388, 454f., 465
Corinthians, Epistles to the, 179, 250, 264–79, 300, 309f.,
317f., 465, 475
Cornelius, 128, 159, 174, 176, 184, 343
Cos, 342
Cowley, A. E., 30
Craig, C. T., 93
Cranfield, C. E. B., 165, 205
Crete, 318, 370, 444
Crispus, 251
Croesus, 286
Cross, F. L., 179
Cullmann, O., 66, 153, 193, 233, 283, 332f., 336, 345, 415, 417
Cumanus, 355
Cuspius Fadus, 150
Cybele, 287
Cydnus, 33f.
Cynoscephalae, 23
Cyprian, 455
Cyprus, 150, 160, 173, 212, 368, 392
Cyrenaica, 30, 315
Cyrene, 36, 67, 256, 373
Cyrus (the Elder), 26, 286
Cyrus (the Younger), 33, 407
Dalmatia, 316
Damaris, 247
Damascus, 63, 69, 72, 74, 76f., 79f., 83, 93, 322, 421, 467
Damasus, Pope, 379, 387, 452, 454f.
Daniel, Book of, 231, 438
Daniélou, J., 78
Danielsson, O. A., 86
Danube, 316
Darb al-Mustaqim, 76
D’Arbley, Mme, 457
David, 54f., 65, 91f., 165, 328
Davies, W. D., 80, 84, 415f., 420
Dead Sea, 76
DeBoer, W. P., 461
DeBoer, W. P., 461
Decapolis, 77, 79
Degrassi, A., 354
Deissmann, A., 136, 250, 293, 299, 341
Delphi, 253, 260
Démann, P., 197
Demas, 394
Demetrius II, 130
Demetrius (the silversmith), 287, 293
Demosthenes, 238
Derbe, 171f., 213, 339
Devri Şehri, 171
Diana, 287
Dibelius, M., 244, 299, 369, 435, 443
Dinkler, E., 131, 154
Dio Cassius, 37, 226, 253, 296, 363, 381, 383, 386f.
Dio Chrysostom, 34f.
Diogenes Laertius, 240
Dion, 77
Dionysius (Areopagite), 247
Dionysius of Corinth, 379, 454
Dionysus, 77, 260
Dittenberger, W., 253
Dodd, C. H., 198, 295, 300, 385, 396f.
Donne, J., 462
Dorylaeum, 217
Downey, G., 130
Drane, J. W., 215
Drusilla, 355, 360, 362
Dublin, 466
Duchesne, L., 452
Duncan, G. S., 296, 299, 317f., 357, 396f., 445
Dungan, D. L., 107
Dunn, J. D. G., 121, 211, 281f., 290
Dupont, J., 341
Dyrrhachium, 253, 316f.
Ebeling, G., 103
Eden, 134
Eden, 134
Edmundson, G., 258, 449
Egypt, 25f., 29, 54, 150, 225, 381, 466
Ehrhardt, A. A. T., 256, 290, 346, 420, 449
Eisler, R., 381, 468
Elderkin, G. W., 130
Eleazar, 256
Elephantine, 30
Elijah, 81
Elisha ben Abuyah, 135
Ellis, E. E., 51, 131, 312
Elymas, 162
Emerson, R. W., 216
Emmet, C. W., 156
Epaenetus, 388
Epaphras, 288, 384, 394, 398, 400, 406, 408
Epaphroditus, 457
Ephesians, Epistle to the, 360, 424–40
Ephesus, 36, 216, 251, 255f., 258, 264, 273, 280, 286, 291,
315, 317, 319, 339, 341, 349, 360, 386, 388, 396f., 402f., 426,
464, 469
Ephrem Syrus, 149
Epimenides, 137, 242, 240, 245
Erastus, 252, 315, 338
Erskine, T., 19
Eski Istanbul, 217
Eumenes, 23
Eumenides, 247
Eunice, 214
Euodia, 221, 457
Euraquilo, 371
Euripides, 240
Eusebius, 30, 133, 186, 232, 315, 320, 343, 364, 379, 392,
443f., 448f., 454f., 464, 466
Euthydemus, 35
Eutychus, 340
Eve, 331
Fabricius Veiento, 366
Fabricius Veiento, 366
Faenius Rufus, 367
Fair Havens, 318, 370, 372
Farrar, F. W., 234
Fascher, E., 270
Felix, 301, 350, 354ff., 358, 361f., 365, 376
Festus, 254, 359, 362f., 377
Firmicus Maternus, 433
Flaccus, 30
Flavia Domitilla, 387
Foakes-Jackson, F. J., 216
Ford, J. M., 267
Fostat, 77
Frey, J. B., 36
Fridrichsen, A., 86
Friedrich, G., 276
Fritsch, C. T., 354
Frova A., 354
Fuchs, E., 103, 193
Fuller, D. P., 202
Fuller, R. H., 91
Fulvia, 380
Fung, R. Y. K., 326
Gabriel, 54
Gadara, 77
Gaius of Derbe, 293f., 339
Gaius, Emperor, 232f., 234
Gaius of Rome, 338, 343, 379, 450, 454
Gaius Titius Justus, 251f., 315, 324
Galtia, 51, 163, 178, 319
Galatians, Epistle to the, 178–84, 325f.
Galba, 29, 296
Galilee, 47, 57, 79
Gallio, 253, 336, 366
Galloway, A. D., 422
Gamaliel I, 43, 50f., 61, 64, 70, 126, 350
Gamaliel II, 50, 126
Gangites, 219
Gangites, 219
Gardner, P., 341
Gärtner, B., 244
Gasque, W. W., 131
Gaster, T. H., 78
Georgi, D., 131, 276f., 324
Gethsemane, 344
Geyser, A. S., 213, 316
Gibson, M. D., 242
Gilchrist, J. M., 318
Ginsburg, C. D., 415
Ginsburg, M. S., 72
Gischala, 43
Glover, T. R., 458
Goguel, M., 198
Goodenough, E. R., 399f.
Goodrick, E. W., 406
Goodspeed, E. J., 251, 401f., 405, 410, 425, 435, 439, 465
Grant, F. C., 28
Grant, R. M., 307
Grässer, E., 131
Greater Syrtis, 371
Greece, 24, 317
Gregson, R. G., 228
Groag, E., 161
Grundmann, W., 80
Gundry, R. H., 205, 206
Gunther, J. J., 277, 359, 445
Guterman, S. L., 366
Haacker, K., 51
Hadrian, 464
Haenchen, E., 69, 172, 219, 371
Halafta. Rabbi, 219
Hammond, N. G. L., 316
Hammurabi, 22
Hannibal, 24
Hanson, A. T., 272, 329
Harnack, A. von, 99, 228, 235, 298, 334, 373, 382, 455, 466f.
Harnack, A. von, 99, 228, 235, 298, 334, 373, 382, 455, 466f.
Harris, M. J., 301, 311
Harrison, P. N., 252, 299, 396f., 409, 424f., 443f., 448
Harvey, A. E., 312
Haughton, R., 183
Haustrath, A., 274
Hawkins, J., 457
Hector, 32
Hegesippus, 346, 454
Heitmüller, W., 326
Helech, 32
Helena of Adiabene, 150
Helius, 296
Hemer, C. J., 217, 371, 373
Hengel, M., 28, 66, 79, 118, 129, 301
Heracleon, 414
Hermas, 387, 389
Hermes, 169, 387
Herod the Great, 27, 48, 55, 77, 149, 349, 353f.
Herodotus, 162, 407
Herostratus, 287
Hettlinger, R. F., 312
Hezekiah, 92
Hicks, E. L., 293
Hierapolis, 36, 407f.
Hierax, 166
Higgins, A. J. B., 57, 84, 86, 89, 285
Hilakku, 32
Hillel, 49f., 58, 107f., 110, 128
Hippodamus of Miletus, 77
Hippolytus, 42, 304, 382, 408, 455, 468f.
Hippos, 77
Hofius, O., 131, 266
Holl, K., 157, 323
Holtzmann, H. J., 369, 409f.
Homer, 32, 220, 249, 369
Hooke, S. H., 91, 424
Hooker, M. D., 57, 89, 131, 195, 412f., 419
Hooker, M. D., 57, 89, 131, 195, 412f., 419
Horeb, 81
Horst, J., 431
Hoshaiah, 420
Hultgren, A. J., 69
Hurd, J. C., 264
Hymenaeus, 463
Hyrcania, 30
Hyrcanus I, 44, 46, 53
Hyrcanus II, 77
Iconium, 166, 172, 214, 216, 468
Ignatius, 389, 402f., 454
Illiffe, J. H., 349
Illyria, 316
Illyricum, 146, 316f., 322
India, 23
Innes, D. J., 472
Irenaeus, 315, 379, 392, 402, 454, 464
Isaacs, M. E., 211
Ishoʿdad of Merv, 242
Israel, 28, 41, 53f., 56, 60, 63, 67, 74f., 432, 447
Issus, 32
Italy, 24, 37, 369f., 374, 392, 449
Iuliopolis, 34
Izates (King), 150
Jacob, 42
James, 63, 74, 85, 93, 96, 152, 175f., 184, 345f., 359, 464
James (son of Judas the Galilaean), 174
James (son of Zebedee), 153
James, W., 145
Jamnia, 232
Jason of Cyrene, 302
Jason of Thessalonica, 387
Jenkins, C., 267
Jeremias, J., 30, 51, 89f., 268, 270, 284, 309
Jerome, 43, 85, 133, 440, 449
Jesus Justus, 391f.
Jewett, R., 177
Jewett, R., 177
John (the Apostle), 132
John the Baptist, 55, 60, 63, 129, 141, 210, 255, 280, 289
John the Commonweal, 474
Johnson, A. R., 116
Johnson, L., 359
Johnson, S., 313, 457
Jonah, 92
Jonathan (ex-high priest), 355
Jonathan the Hasmonaean, 44f., 130
Jones, A. H. M., 38, 363, 377
Jones, R. M., 136
Jonson, Ben, 287
Jordan, 77
Josephus, 28, 30, 44, 46, 51, 53, 68, 72, 77, 81, 128, 130f., 150,
164, 174f., 219f., 232, 256, 296, 301f., 328, 348f., 351, 354f.,
359, 361, 365, 369, 373f., 386, 434
Joshua, 55
Judaea, 23, 25f., 40, 44, 53, 57, 62, 68f., 72, 79, 126, 150, 174,
226, 232, 296, 319, 324, 336, 338f., 355f., 361, 375, 377, 379,
442
Judah, 41, 53, 78
Judah ben Tema, 269
Judas of Damascus, 76
Judas (the Galilaean), 28, 109, 174
Judas Maccabaeus, 23, 25, 27, 29, 44f.
Judge, E. A., 226, 235
Julia, 387
Julias, 365
Julius, 374
Julius Caesar, 25, 34, 38, 72, 130, 135, 217, 250, 316
Jüngel, E., 103f.
Junias, 298, 387f.
Junius Silanus, 297
Jupiter, 29
Justin Martyr, 166, 413
Juvenal, 386
Kallas, J., 336
Kallas, J., 336
Käsemann, E., 121f., 196, 209, 245, 277, 326, 416, 418, 420,
432
Kelly, J. N. D., 444, 446
Kennedy, J. H., 274
Keynon, F. G., 390
Kerti Hüyük, 171
Kestambol, 217
Kilpatrick, G. D., 84
Kim, S., 123
Kirschbaum, E., 451
Kizzuwatna, 32
Klappert, B., 90
Klausner, J., 51, 267, 351
Klein, G., 154
Knox, J., 345, 396, 401f., 466
Knox, W. L., 334, 420
Knowles, D., 137
Kraeling, E. G., 30
Kuhn, K. G., 434
Kümmel, W. G., 131, 197, 315, 359, 385, 390
Küng, H., 432
Kypris, 161
Lake, K., 161, 164, 228f., 286, 376
Lampe, G. W. H., 283, 430
Lanciani, R., 450
Lane, W. L., 464
Laodicea, 404, 407f.
Lasos, 370
Latium, 24
Law, R., 261
Leaf, W., 217
Leaney, A. R. C., 108
Leclercq, H., 383, 387
Lectra, 468
Lee, E. K., 197
Lentulus, 468
Leon, H. J., 30, 380
Leon, H. J., 30, 380
Levine, L. I., 354
Lietzmann, H., 117, 136, 284, 451
Lightfoot, J. B., 325f., 387f., 391f., 396, 414f., 449, 454f.
Lindsay, Sir D., 474
Linton, O., 84
Linus, 454f.
Lisco, H., 299
Livia Julia, 383
Lofthouse, W. F., 207
Lohmeyer E., 79, 131, 359, 399, 418
Lohse, E., 410
Lucian, 369
Lucius (Paul’s kinsman), 149, 387
Lucius Aemilius Paullus, 219
Lucius of Cyrene, 149
Lucius Junius Gallio, 253
Lucius Mummius, 249
Lucius Valerius Flaccus, 296, 379
Luke, 16, 30, 36, 70f., 74, 79f., 88f., 94, 128, 130, 132f., 141,
144, 148f., 156, 159f., 162, 169, 176, 180, 184, 212, 214, 216f.,
221, 236, 238, 245f., 248, 250f., 255, 288f., 297, 314, 317, 320,
322, 335, 339f., 342, 348, 350, 356f., 360, 364f., 369f., 375f.,
378, 382, 394, 399, 443f., 448f., 458, 465
Lütgert, W., 179, 276
Luther, M., 191, 196, 202, 337, 427, 470f.
Lycaonia, 169
Lycus (river and valley), 396f., 404, 406f., 438
Lydia, 23, 30, 220, 286
Lyons, 315
Lysanias, 364
Lysias, 356
Lystra, 169, 171, 180, 213f., 216f., 241, 243, 339, 461, 468
Lyttelton, G., 75
Ma, 287
McConnachie, J., 473
Macedonia, 216, 218f., 223, 229, 235f., 248, 252, 273, 275,
314f., 317f., 324, 339, 440, 444, 521
314f., 317f., 324, 339, 440, 444, 521
MacGregor, G. H. C., 422
Machaerus, 60
MacLeman, J., 425
Madden, F. W., 362
Maeander (River), 341, 407
Magnesia, 23
Maimonides, 58
Malachi, 45, 323
Malta, 372f.
Manaen, 149
Manen, W. C. van, 395
Manson, T. W., 47, 57, 84, 86, 89, 103, 128, 158, 173, 177, 199,
202, 227f., 258, 260, 385, 392
Marcellus, 34
Marcion, 19f., 465f.
Marcus Antonius Felix, 354
Marcus Aurelius (Emperor), 364, 451
Marcus Junius Silanus, 295
Mark, John, 85, 148f., 160, 163, 212, 256, 315, 391f., 394, 399
Marshall, I. H., 126, 131
Martin, R. P., 131, 419, 424
Mary (mother of Jesus), 54
Mary (mother of John Mark), 85, 160
Massilia, 315
Masson, C., 409
Mattill, A. J., 345, 348, 357
Media, 23
Mela, 253
Melicertes, 249
Melita, 371, 373
Menahem, 150
Mendenhall, G. E., 272
Mersin, 33
Mesopotamia, 31
Messalina (Empress), 383
Metellus, L. Caecilius, 72
Metzger, B. M., 31, 91, 108, 130, 283, 292, 426
Metzger, B. M., 31, 91, 108, 130, 283, 292, 426
Meyer, E., 243
Michaelis, W., 299
Michel, O., 388
Miletus, 341f., 344
Milik, J. T., 78, 117
Milligan, G., 149
Milton, J., 198, 237
Minear, P. S., 337, 384, 389
Mishnah, 150, 268, 292, 348
Mitford, T. B., 161
Mithridates VI, 25, 34
Mitton, C. L., 424, 465
Mljet, 373
Mnason, 343
Moffatt, J., 448
Mommsen, T., 368, 374, 377
Montefiore, C. G., 462
Montgomery, W., 136
Morrison, C. D., 336
Morton, A. Q., 394, 425
Moses, 46f., 55, 65, 70, 81, 113, 120f., 129, 190f., 365, 464
Moule, C. F. D., 117, 121, 131, 202, 342, 401, 405, 443f.
Moulton, J. H., 149
Mount Coressus, 298
Mount Ida, 371
Mount Messogis, 286
Munck, J., 86, 128, 154, 233, 245, 315, 333, 335
Muratori, L. A., 449
Murphy-O’Connor, J., 80
Murray, G. G. A., 15
Murray, J., 329
Myers, F. W. H., 142
Myra, 342, 369f.
Mytilene, 341
Naples, 469
Napoleon, 133, 135
Narbonese Gaul, 315
Narbonese Gaul, 315
Narcissus, 358, 386
Nazareth, 56
Neapolis, 218, 340
Nehemiah, 26
Neill, S. C., 432
Nemesis, 373
Nereus, 387
Nero, 29, 234, 253, 295f., 355, 361, 365f., 376, 381, 386f., 440,
442, 446, 448, 450
Nestle, E., 231
Nestor the Academic, 34
Neusner, J., 49
New Paphos, 162
Newman, F. W., 145
Nickelsburg, G. W. E., 301
Nickle, K. F., 324
Nicolaus of Antioch, 128, 131, 133
Nicolaus of Damascus, 76
Nicopolis, 317
Nineham, D. E., 424
Noah, 186, 203
Nock, A. D., 36, 118, 128, 162, 416
Norden, E., 243
Nordheim, E. von, 440
Nygren, A., 198, 205
Nympha, 384
Obadiah, 30
Octavian, 25, 38, 219, 363
Ofonius Tigellinus, 367
Ogg, G., 172
Ogilvie, R. M., 371
Olive, Synagogue of the, 334
Olympas, 387
O’Neill, J. G., 249
Onesimus (of Colossae), 393f., 410
Onesimus (Bishop of Ephesus), 402f.
Onesiphorus, 443ff., 468
Onesiphorus, 443ff., 468
Orchard, B., 158
Origen, 267, 320, 440, 448
Orosius, 381
Ostia, 380
Ostian Way, 450, 452f.
Otho, 29
Oxyrhynchus, 271
Palestine, 42, 68, 76, 274, 344, 368, 464
Pallas, 355, 358, 361f.
Pamphylia, 162
Pannonia, 316
Paphos, 162
Papias, 392
Parrinder, G., 137
Pallas, 353
Parthia, 25
Pastoral Epistles, 442f.
Patara, 342
Patrobas, 387
Paul VI (Pope), 455
Paullus, 161
Paulus, 365
Pausanias, 162, 239, 250
Peake, A. S., 410, 424
Pearson, J., 453
Peel, M. L., 308
Pella, 77
Percy, E., 424
Perga, 162, 172
Pergamum, 23, 25, 288, 407
Perpetua, 469
Perseus, 23
Persia, 30
Peter, 18, 62f., 65, 67, 74, 84, 88, 90f., 93f., 96, 128, 132f.,
151f., 159, 174, 176, 258f., 269, 336, 346, 379, 382, 388, 392,
447, 449f., 458, 464
Petra, 76
Petra, 76
Philadelphia, 77
Philemon (Greek comic poet), 169
Philemon, Epistle to, 392–406
Philetus, 463
Philip of Caesarea, 464
Philip (evangelist), 67, 128, 130, 132, 343, 450
Philip II of Macedonia, 219, 223, 237
Philip V of Macedonia, 23f.
Philip (the tetrarch), 364
Philippi, 34, 128, 214, 218f., 223, 235, 248, 298, 315, 340, 384,
386, 390f., 459
Philippians, Epistle to the, 299
Philo, 30, 42f., 81, 192, 232, 256, 400, 413
Philocalus, 451
Philologus, 387
Philomelium, 217
Philonenko, M., 24
Philostratus, 35, 239
Phlegon, 387
Phoebe, 338, 384, 457
Phoenicia, 342f.
Phoenix, 371
Phrygia, 30, 36, 162f., 315, 319, 407, 413
Phrygia Galatica, 217
Phygelus, 463
Piper, O. A., 329
Piraeus, 369
Pitman, H., 383
Pius IX (Pope), 451
Plato, 237, 240
Pliny (the elder), 166, 287, 370
Pliny (the younger), 364, 375, 395f.
Plooij, D., 357
Plotinus, 138
Plutarch, 34, 287, 291
Pohlenz, M., 217
Pollard, T. E., 311
Polybius, 22
Polybius, 22
Polycarp, 390
Polycrates, 343, 464
Pompeius Trogus, 76
Pompey, 25, 33f., 37, 54, 77, 379
Pomponia Graecina, 383
Pomponius Graecinus, 383
Pongrácz, J., 398
Pontius Pilate, 27, 57, 225, 254, 354, 362, 442
Pontus, 25
Pontus Galaticus, 217
Poppaea Sabina, 376
Porcius Festus, 362
Poseidon, 249
Pothinus, 315
Powell, B., 42, 250
Praxiteles, 287
Preisendanz, K., 291
Princeton, 291f.
Prisca/Priscilla, 250, 255, 298, 381f., 388f., 457
Proclus, 450, 464
Prodicus, 307
Psalms of Solomon, 54
Psammetichus II, 30
Ptolemais, 343
Ptolemy I, 30
Ptolemy VIII, 72
Publius of Malta, 373
Publius Celer, 296
Puteoli, 374
Pydna, 23, 235
Quintus Sergius Paullus, 161
Quispel, G., 414
Qumran, 45, 48, 54, 59, 78, 80, 92, 129, 303f., 415f., 433f.,
438f.
Ramsay, W. M., 36, 135, 149, 161, 163f., 166, 169, 286, 294,
299, 339f., 343, 367f., 376, 416, 468
299, 339f., 343, 367f., 376, 416, 468
Ramsey, A. M., 455
Raphana, 77
Reicke, B., 66, 359
Reid, J. S., 377
Reifenberg, A., 362
Reitzenstein, R., 416
Renan, E., 394f.
Rengstorf, K. H., 155
Renié, J., 371
Repo, E., 63
Resch, A., 105
Rhegium, 374
Rhodes, 342
Ringgren, H., 116
Robinson, D. W. B., 176, 282
Robinson, J. A., 434
Robinson, J. A. T., 151, 312, 317, 443
Robinson, J. M., 95, 419
Romans, Epistle to the, 324–38, 379
Rome, Church at, 379–92, 441–55
Roon, A. van, 424
Ropes, J. H., 179
Rostovtzeff, M., 368
Rowley, H. H., 79, 129, 422
Rubinstein, R. L., 462
Rufus, 148f., 388
Rupp, E. G., 120, 422, 471
Safenwil, 473
Safrai. S., 72
St. Sebastian, 453
Salamis, 161
Sallust, 25
Salome Alexandra, 47, 53
Samaria, 57
Samos, 341
Samothrace, 218
Samuel, Books of, 204
Sand, A., 211
Sanders, E. P., 202
Sanders, J. N., 424
Sandmel, S., 462
Sanhedrin, 27, 186
Sardinia, 380
Sardis, 30, 36
Satan, 227
Savannah, 472
Scaurus, 77
Schaff, P., 191
Schechter, S., 78
Schlier, H., 416, 420, 422, 427, 432, 435, 440
Schmidt, H. W., 385
Schmidt, J. E. C., 230
Schmidt, K. L., 427
Schmithals, W., 179, 258, 276
Schnackenburg, R., 155, 283
Schneckenburger, M., 345, 357
Schneemelcher, W., 155
Schneider, J., 136, 438
Schoeps, H. J., 70, 79, 98, 129, 415, 462, 464
Schubert, P., 342
Schulz, D., 385
Schulz, F., 39
Schürer, E., 36, 361f., 366
Schütz, J. H., 93
Schweitzer, A., 97, 125, 136f., 244, 326, 420
Schweizer, E., 91, 211
Scipio Aemilianus, 22
Scougal, H., 472
Scythopolis, 77
Secundus, 224, 339
Segal, M. H., 127
Sejanus, 375
Seleucia, 160
Seleucus I, 130
Seleucus I, 130
Seneca, 253, 327
Sennacherib, 33
Sepharad, 30
Sergia Paulla, 164
Sergius Paullus, 161
Sevenster, J. N., 127
Shakespeare, W., 34, 291
Shalmaneser III, 33
Shammai, 49, 59, 302
Shaw, G. B., 469
Sherwin-White, A. N., 37, 39f., 363, 366, 368, 377
Sicily, 22, 24
Sidon, 77, 369f.
Silanus, 296
Silas/Silvanus, 212f., 216, 221, 223, 228f., 235f., 252, 298f.
Simeon (the Rabbi), 50
Simmias, 468
Simon (the high priest), 72
Simon (son of Judas the Galilaean), 174
Simon (the tanner), 176
Simon of Cyrene, 148, 388
Simon, M., 24
Simon Magus, 381, 449
Sinai, 46, 70
Sira, Ben, 47, 302
Smalley, S. S., 310
Smallwood, E. M., 253
Smeaton, G., 121
Smith, J., 370f.
Smith, M., 416
Socrates, 237, 461, 468
Soli, 161
Solomon, 25, 41, 54
Sopater, 236, 339
Sosipater, 387
Sosthenes, 254
Soter, Pope, 454
Souter, A., 315, 339, 379
South Galatia, 173, 213, 216
Spain, 23, 146, 314f., 321, 325, 351, 445, 447f.
Sparks, H. F. D., 440
Spratt, T. A. B., 370
Squarciapino, M. F., 380
Stählin, G., 144, 342
Stendahl, K., 80, 196, 471
Stephanas of Corinth, 251
Stephanus of Byzantium, 172
Stephen, 18, 67f., 79, 94, 129f., 174, 343
Stern, M., 72, 261
Sterrett, J. R. S., 169
Stewart, J. S., 422
Still, J. I., 357
Stillwell, R., 130
Stott, J. R. W., 461
Strabo, 34f., 81, 163, 250, 287f., 373, 407
Strobel, A., 336, 444
Suburra, 380
Suetonius, 29, 150, 218, 251, 296, 336, 355, 358, 380f., 442
Swete, H. B., 66, 341
Syene (Aswan), 30
Syennesis, 32
Symeon, 126f.
Symeon Niger, 148
Syntyche, 221, 457
Syracuse, 374
Syria, 25f., 29, 33, 69, 77, 94, 130, 213, 226, 319
Syria-Cilicia, 33
Tacitus, 29, 90, 296, 336, 354f., 362, 366, 375, 380, 382f.,
386f., 440, 441f., 448
Tannehill, R. C., 137, 147, 189
Tappeiner, D. A., 281
Tarichaeae, 365
Tarsus, 32f., 36f., 43, 45, 94, 126, 133, 213, 350, 352
Taylor, T. M., 473f.
Tertullian, 20, 156, 186, 327, 366, 466f.
Tertullus, 365f.
Thekla, 166, 267, 467
Theophilus, 449
Therme, 223
Thessalonians; Epistles to the, 227–34, 305f.
Thessalonica, 171, 223, 226f., 236, 247f., 305, 315, 339, 455
Thessaly, 236
Thomas, G. S. R., 235
Thrall, M. E., 312
Thrasyllus, 249
Thucydides, 245
Thyatira, 220
Tiber, 24, 30
Tiberias, 365
Tiberius (Emperor), 77, 130, 226, 316, 328, 380, 386, 442
Tiberius Claudius Narcissus, 353, 358, 386
Tigranes I, 34, 76
Timothy, 16, 169, 213–16, 221, 223, 228f., 236, 273f., 339, 347,
391, 408, 443, 457
Titius Justus, 262
Titus, 151, 158, 176, 274f., 318, 320, 339, 444, 468
Tolly, Barclay de, 133
Torquatus Asprenas, 161
Torrance, T. F., 129, 466
Trajan, 364, 374f.
Tre Fontane, 450, 469
Tregelles, S. P., 301
Tres Tabernae, 374
Tripolis, 380
Troad, 217, 275
Troas, 217f., 275, 318, 340
Trogyllium, 341
Trophimus, 339, 349
Trudinger, L. P., 86, 139
Turner, C. H., 455
Tuscus, 452
Tyana, 35
Tyana, 35
Tychicus, 339, 426
Tyrannus, 290
Tyre, 22, 342, 344
Underhill, E., 136
Unnik, W. C. van, 43, 98, 121, 289, 332
Valerian, 453
Van Elderen, B., 171
Vatican Hill, 452f.
Vegetius, 370
Veii, 24
Venice, 22
Ventidius Cumanus, 355
Vespasian, 29
Via Appia, 374
Via Egnatia, 219, 223, 235, 316
Via Portuensis, 380
Victor (Pope), 455
Vielhauer, P., 17, 90, 244
Vienne, 315
Virgil, 469
Vitellius, 29
Vogels, H. J., 379
Waage, F. O., 130
Wagner, G., 283
Wake, W. C., 408
Weiss, J., 98, 228
Wellhausen, J., 99
Wensinck, A. J., 77
Werblowsky. R. J. Z., 382
Wesley, C., 458, 472
Wesley, J., 471f.
Whitefield, G., 472
Whiteley, D. E. H., 283, 285
Wieder, N., 77, 79
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von, 15f., 243
Wilcox, M., 51
Wilcox, M., 51
Williams, R. R., 430
Wilson, R. McL., 179
Wilson, R. S., 466
Wilson, W. E., 136
Wood, A. S., 472
Wood, J. T., 288,
Wrede, W., 99, 135, 326
Xenophon, 33, 166, 286, 407
Xerxes, 286
Yahweh, 28, 45
Yalvaç, 163
Yasna, 302
Yates, R., 139
Yohanan (the sandal-maker), 51
Yohanan ben Zakkai, 49
Zadok (Rabbi), 28, 107
Zaehner, R. C., 137
Zahn, T., 449
Zama, 24
Zechariah (father of John the Baptist), 54
Zeno, 468
Zeus, 169, 231, 242
Zion, 65, 335
Zoma, Ben, 135
Zuntz, G., 465
Index of Subjects
Abba, 208, 332
Abomination of desolation, 232
Adam, first, 114, 194f.
Adam, last, 114
Adoption, 199, 208
Agitators, 162, 174
Angel worship, 413ff., 418
Antichrist, 231ff.
Antinomianism, 191
Apocalyptic imagery, 234
Apostles, 15, 18, 155f., 298, 388
Apostles, false, 278
Apostles, Jerusalem, 84f., 95, 96, 277, 278
Apostles, superlative, 277f.
Apostleship (Paul’s), 107, 145f., 152ff., 167, 275, 277f., 314f.,
326, 332, 334f., 375f., 427
Appeal to Caesar, 40, 363ff., 377f., 441, 443
Aramaic language, 43, 126, 350
Archons, 418
Areopagus speech, 137, 238ff.
Ascension, 436f.
Asceticism, 262, 414f.
Asiarchs, 288, 294, 299
Atonement, 328
Atonement, day of, 370
Authenticity (of Pauline letters), 395f., 408ff., 424f., 427
Authorship (of Acts), 218
Baptism, 76, 112, 128, 138, 205, 251f., 255f., 260, 280ff., 305,
414, 429, 430, 433f.
Baptism, John’s, 255, 280, 289f.
Beasts, fighting with, 295
Beatings in synagogue, 127f.
Birth certificates, 39f.
Birth certificates, 39f.
Blasphemy, 68, 71
Body, 205, 206
Body of Christ, 138, 139, 142, 210f., 273, 284f., 411f., 420f.,
426, 430, 431, 433
Bondage, 282, 330
Burial (of Christ), 91, 113
Calendar, sacral, 182f., 413, 415
Capital jurisdiction, 349
Captivity (imprisonment), Paul’s, 221, 294f., 298f., 353ff., 412,
441ff., 444ff., 449f.
Captivity epistles, 359f., 389ff., 392ff., 407ff., 424ff., 441
Catacombs, 452
Celibacy, 269f.
Charity, 187, 202
Christians, 132
Christology, 65ff., 417ff.
Chronology, 318
Church of Alexandria, 256
Church of Antioch, 133, 148ff., 160, 172, 175ff., 183f.
Church of Caesarea, 343
Church of Colossae, 404ff., 407ff.
Church of Corinth, 214, 248ff., 264ff., 306, 319ff., 446, 454
Church of Ephesus, 291, 341
Church of Jerusalem, 50, 64, 67, 69, 83ff., 128, 132, 152ff.,
160f., 173ff., 208, 213, 273, 277, 278, 290, 319, 321, 322,
343ff., 433, 464
Church of Laodicea, 404
Church of Philippi, 221f.
Church of Ptolemais, 343
Church of Puteoli, 374
Church of Rome, 379ff., 384ff., 446, 454
Church of Thessalonica, 224ff., 305
Church of Troas, 218, 340
Church of Tyre, 342f.
Church universal, 431ff.
Churches of Achaia, 319, 324
Churches of Asia, 319
Churches of Asia, 319
Churches of Galatia, 166ff., 178ff., 213, 216, 273, 319, 413
Churches of Lycus valley, 404, 407f., 438
Churches of Macedonia, 319ff.
Circumcision, 101, 104f., 128, 153, 157ff., 175ff., 179ff., 203,
214ff., 281, 329, 391, 413, 416
Citizenship, Roman, 37ff., 127, 213, 221, 298, 349, 353, 363ff.
Citizenship, Tarsian, 35f., 350
Collection (for Jerusalem), 273, 276, 319ff., 338ff., 357f., 459
Collegia licita et illicita, 254, 366, 385
Colonies, Jewish, 220, 250, 294, 341, 379ff.
Colonies, Roman, 163f., 169, 219, 220
Colossian heresy, 408ff.,412ff.
Commandments, Ten, 111
Conference (apostolic), in Jerusalem, 151ff.
Confession of faith, 115, 119, 165, 264, 283
Confrontation, at Antioch, 175ff., 188
Confrontation, at Corinth, 274
Conscience, 270f., 337
Consistency and expediency, 215f.
Contentment, 142
Conversion, Paul’s, 15, 17, 74ff., 82, 83, 87, 99, 102, 123, 144,
188, 190, 198, 326, 350
Corporate personality, 420
Corpus Paulinum, 402, 403f., 406, 416
Cosmic Christ, 417ff., 426
Council of Jerusalem, 184ff.
Covenant, new, 121, 199f., 276
Covenanters of Damascus, 77ff.
Covetousness, 331
Creation, old and new, 113, 123, 413f., 420
Cross, preaching of, 224, 246f., 253
Crucifixion, 62, 70ff., 87, 89, 97f., 259, 342, 421
Crucifixion with Christ, 138
Cup of blessing, 284
Curse (of the law), 199
Day of the Lord, 112, 142, 230
Days, sacred, 337, 347
Days, sacred, 337, 347
Deadly peril in Asia, 295ff., 310
Death, freedom from, 331ff.
Death, its sequel, 309ff.
Death, Paul’s, 376, 441, 444, 448, 450f., 469
Decree, Jerusalem, 184ff., 213, 259, 270
Decrees, Caesar’s, 225f.
Delimitation of mission fields, 152ff., 167, 258, 278
Democratic liberty, 473f.
Demonic forces, 420ff.
Diaspora, dispersion (Jewish), 29ff., 164, 167, 169
Discipline in church, 262, 274
Divided mind, 196f.
Divorce, 59, 106, 267f.
Early Catholicism, 432
Ebionitism, 415
Ekklesia (civic assembly), 294
Elders, 172, 341f., 345ff.
Elements (stoicheia), 182, 414, 417
Epicureanism, 245f.
Eschatology, eschaton, 104, 146, 193, 229ff., 303f., 411
Essenes, 44, 150, 303f., 414ff., 438f.
Ethics, 112
Eucharist (Lord’s Supper), 100f., 117, 138, 176, 265f., 283ff.
Exorcism, 292
Expansion of Christianity, 17f., 314f.
Expulsion edict (Claudius’s), 235, 250, 381ff.
Faith (saving), 90, 97, 102f., 114, 122, 138, 165, 169, 188ff.,
201, 325ff., 418, 427f.
Fall of man, 194f., 331
Family of Jesus, 79, 85
Famine relief, 150f., 159
Fire of Rome, 441f.
Flesh, 80, 98f., 114, 122, 183, 199f., 203ff.
Flesh and blood, 114
Food laws, 173, 176, 184ff., 202, 259, 261, 270ff., 337, 346,
413, 415
Forgiveness of sins, 89f.
Forgiveness of sins, 89f.
Fornication, 184ff., 249
Foundation, 314
Freedom, 119, 121, 141f., 182f., 186f., 197, 200, 202, 208,
262f., 271, 278, 330ff., 337, 346f., 474
Frumentarii, 368f
Fulfilment of Scripture, 88f., 91f., 115, 116, 118, 120, 140, 168,
375, 436f.
Gehenna, Gehinnom, 302
Gentile Christianity, 345ff., 358f., 383f.
Gentile mission, 81, 87, 126ff., 144ff., 152, 166ff., 173ff., 333,
375f., 432ff.
‘Gifts’ in the church, 272f., 436f.
Glory, 74, 113, 120f., 123
Glory to come, 88, 122, 125, 234, 329, 332, 428, 429, 439
Glossolalia, 143, 260, 272f., 290
Gnosticism, 179f., 261f., 276f., 307, 408, 414f., 416f., 427, 435
God-fearers, 128f.
Gospel, 60, 62f., 80, 86, 93, 101, 113, 122, 177, 180ff., 266,
325ff.
Grace, 18ff., 102, 115, 178, 193, 326, 328, 330, 336, 427
Grain-fleet, 368f.
Greek language, 42f., 126, 169
Guarantee (Spirit), 209, 312, 332, 430
Guidance (divine), 216f., 227
Hades, 437
Half-shekel tax, 57, 58, 296f., 357f.
Hasidaeans, 44ff.
Hasmonaeans, 45, 53, 54
Healing, 374
Heavenly Jerusalem, 323f.
Heavenly man, 114
Heavenly realm, 426ff.
Heavens, multiple, 134, 144
Hebrews, 42f., 67f., 277
Hellenism, Hellenists, 15, 42f., 45, 67f., 83, 94, 126ff., 343
High-priesthood, high priests (Jewish), 45, 57, 64, 72, 351, 355,
High-priesthood, high priests (Jewish), 45, 57, 64, 72, 351, 355,
359, 362
Hillelites, 50, 51, 58, 59, 108
Historical Jesus, 55ff., 95ff.
Holiness, 125, 200f., 210f., 330ff.
Hope, 115, 122, 125, 208f., 300ff., 332ff., 411, 429f.
House-arrest in Rome (Paul’s), 375, 378, 391
House-churches, 385ff., 393, 404f.
Household tables, 400f.
Humanity, old and new, 329
Hymns, early Christian, 116, 131, 418f., 434
Idolatry, 244, 272, 284, 327
Idol food, 108, 184ff., 262f., 270ff.
Image of Christ, 114
Image of God, 122, 123, 124
Immortality, 300ff., 332
Imperial household, 386f., 389f.
‘In Adam’, 329
‘In Christ (Jesus)’, 87, 137f., 329
‘In God’, 137
Influence (Paul’s), 469ff.
Institution (of Holy Communion), 265f., 283f.
Intercession, 66, 119f., 332
Introspective conscience, 196, 471
Israel, mystery of, 333ff.
Jewish Christianity, 346, 382, 385, 392
Jewish mission, 153ff., 433
Judaism, judaszing, 26ff., 36, 41ff., 71, 176, 179f., 278, 326,
413ff.
Judgment, 19f., 308f.
Justification, 101ff., 165, 181, 201, 325ff., 427f., 470f., 473
Kingdom of God, 56f., 104, 141
Knowledge, men of, 261ff.
Labourers in the vineyard, 103
Labourer’s wages, 106f.
Latin language, 315ff.
Law, 45ff., 50ff., 58f., 67, 70, 71, 72, 103, 111, 121, 124, 129,
Law, 45ff., 50ff., 58f., 67, 70, 71, 72, 103, 111, 121, 124, 129,
181f., 188ff., 203, 282, 329ff., 337, 413f.
Law of Christ, 110ff., 187, 201
Law of sin, 197
Law, Roman, 37ff., 221, 234, 254, 376ff.
Lawlessness, man of; mystery of, 231, 233, 337
Learning (education), 35
Letters, letter-writing, 16f., 228 et passim
Life (eternal), 122, 125
Life to come, 300ff.
Light, 74, 113, 122, 434
Living God, 170f.
‘Lord’ (kyrios), 66, 116f., 131, 209
Love, 103, 141f., 187, 200, 201ff., 337, 440, 458, 474
Magic, 291ff.
Magistrates, 220f., 223, 225, 234, 336f.
Mandaism, 417
Manichaism, 417
Marital status, Paul’s, 269
Marriage, 114, 122, 230, 262, 266ff., 331
Merkabah, 135, 416
Messiah, 53, 65, 70f., 78f., 90ff., 99, 115, 118, 132, 139, 168,
189, 207, 233, 251, 304, 439
Messiah, days of the, 115, 119
Messianic hope, 53ff.
Messianism, militant, 177, 225f.
Middle wall, 434f.
Missions, missionary strategy, 18, 314
Mysteries (of divine revelation), 87f., 137, 143, 231, 233, 308,
334, 416, 426, 438ff., 441
Mystery cults, 434
Mysticism, 134ff., 245, 247, 416
Myth (gnostic), 416f.
Name of God, 292
Natural revelation, 240, 328
Navigation, 275, 340, 373
Nazarenes, 356
Nazarenes, 356
Nazirite vow, 255, 348f.
Neoplatonism, 247
New man, 205, 431
Noachian commandments, 186, 195
Nonconformity, Jewish, 416
Old man, 205
Olive tree (parable), 334
Opponents of Paul (in Corinth), 276ff.
Paganism, 169f., 183, 244, 327
Parables of Jesus, 97, 101ff.
Paradise, 134, 302
Parousia, 67, 105, 114, 115, 142, 229f., 284, 304ff., 335f., 428
Pastoral Epistles, 317, 442ff.
Pauline privilege, 268
Peace, 329 (see also Reconciliation)
Pentecost, 207, 210, 340, 343, 388
People of the land, 48, 59
Persecution, 68ff., 172, 174, 441f., 444, 448
Pharisees, 43ff., 59, 64, 173f., 301, 302, 352
‘Pillars’ of the church, 153
Planetary spheres, 414, 422
Platonism, 301
Pleroma, 414f., 417, 426
Police, temple, 349
Poor relief, 156f., 319ff., 357f.
Praetorian camp, 375
Praetorium, 353, 360, 390
Preaching (Paul’s), 164ff., 170
Priesthood (Christ’s), 66, 89, 120
Priestly service, 323, 345
Primal man, 417
Principalities and powers, 118f., 259, 414ff.
Prodigal son, 102f.
Prophecy, prophets, 140, 150f., 160, 214, 216, 272f., 290
Prophet, false, 350
Prophet like Moses, 65
Proselytes, proselytization, 118, 128, 215, 221, 268, 328, 382
Proselytes, proselytization, 118, 128, 215, 221, 268, 328, 382
Punishment after death, 302f.
‘Putting on’ (in ethical sense), 112, 205, 337
Reconciliation, 274f., 329, 439
Redeemer-revealer, 417
Redemption, 328
Restrainer, 234
Resurrection (general), 357
Resurrection of Christ, 62f., 85f., 88, 91ff., 97, 113, 165, 238ff.,
266, 352
Resurrection of people of Christ, 115, 119, 122, 125, 143, 208,
230, 234, 260, 266, 300ff., 336, 352, 429
Resurrection of wicked, 301
Resurrection-body, 308, 311f.
Retribution, 327
Revelation, 86ff., 100, 102, 143, 151, 278, 313, 334f.
Revolt, Jewish (against Rome), 278, 464
Right hand (of God), 66, 115, 118, 119
Righteousness, 80 (see also Justification)
Sabbath, 46, 58f., 92, 173, 413
Sadducees, 44, 47, 48, 57, 64, 352
Saints, 56, 321
Salvation, 325ff.
Salvation-history, 146, 165, 190, 193, 244ff., 324, 335
Samaritans, 132
Sanhedrin, 27, 48, 50, 64, 68, 72, 346, 351, 356, 362f., 376
Sayings of Jesus, 106ff., 266, 306
Seal (of the Spirit), 209, 430 (see also Guarantee)
‘Second conversion’ (Paul’s), 300
Self-support, 220
Sermon on the Mount, 336
Servant of the Lord, Servant Songs, 60f., 65, 89f., 92, 119,
132f., 146, 167, 207
Seventy, Mission of, 108f.
Sexual ethics, 229, 261f., 266f., 272, 327
Shammaites, 58f.
Sicarii, 355
Sin, 193ff., 327ff.
Slavery, slaves, 399ff.
Son of God, 60, 61, 97, 117f., 123, 138, 199
Son of man, 56f., 60, 61, 66, 89, 111, 230, 306
Sons of God, 115 (see also Adoption)
Soteriology, 89, 342
Speeches (in Acts), 164ff., 169f., 238ff., 341f., 350, 365
Spirit, 80, 206ff.
Spirit of God, 21, 55, 60f., 63, 93, 97ff., 114, 120ff., 138, 140ff.,
160, 187, 190, 197ff., 207ff., 216, 259ff., 280ff., 289, 305,
331, 332, 345, 428ff., 435, 473
Spiritual gifts (charismata), 260, 272f., 277
Stigmata, 171
Stoicheia, 182, 414
Stoicism, 127, 242, 245, 302
Stoning, 171
Succession (episcopal), 454f.
Sufferings, messianic, 139f.
Synagogues, 67, 72, 161f., 164ff., 167f., 219, 223f., 236, 250f.,
255, 257, 258, 290, 334, 380, 385
Syncretism, 132, 413
Taxation, tribute, 28, 34, 57, 58, 109, 336f.
Tax-collectors, 59
Teaching of Jesus, 96, 101ff.
Temple of Ephesian Artemis, 287, 293, 297
Temple, Jerusalem, 57, 58, 68, 231, 232, 296f., 349ff., 434f.,
464
Temple, spiritual, 210f., 430f.
Temple violation, 296f., 349ff., 356, 357f., 362f.
Tent-making, 36, 220, 250
Theatre of Ephesus, 288, 293f., 296f.
Themes, Pauline, 463
Thief by night, 112
Third day, 92f.
Thorn in the flesh, 135f., 163, 227
Three ages, 70, 190
Torah, 107, 124, 126
Tradition (Christian), 86ff., 100f., 113, 264ff., 282, 283, 417
Tradition (Jewish), 47, 64
Traditions (about Paul), 463ff.
Transformation (at parousia), 115, 143, 308ff.
Trials, Roman, 351, 366f., 445
Twelve (apostles), 85, 108
Union with Christ, 122, 138, 209f., 313, 431
Unity (of the Spirit), 431f.
Unknown God, 239ff.
Unleavened bread, 340
Valentinianism, 307
Visions, 134ff., 144ff., 278, 350
Voyage and shipwreck, 368ff.
Wall, heavenly, 435ff.
Way, the, 63ff., 72, 356, 360, 362
Way of life, Christian, 336f.
‘We’ narrative, 218f., 340, 369ff.
West, limit of the, 447
Wilderness wanderings, 281
Wisdom, 118, 123f., 261, 418f., 440
‘Word of the Lord’, 306
Zealots, 28f., 174f., 346, 348
Zoroastrianism, 47
Index of References
CLASSICAL WRITERS
Aeschylus
Agamemnon 134ff. 287
Eumenides 647f. 247
Aratus
Phainomena 1–5 242
Aristotle
Politics iii.8.2, 1284a 337
Athenacus
Deipnosophists xii.548c 291
Cicero
Ad Atticum ii. 10 374
Ad Familiares xv. 4.2 166
De lege agraria ii. 93 220
In Pisonem 89 235
Pro Flacco 66ff. 296, 380
Cleanthes
Hymn to Zeus 4 242
Columella
De re rustica v.9.16 334
Demosthenes
De corona 127.6 238
Digest (Justinian’s) xxviii.
1.8.4 295
xlvii.
42 366
xlviii.
6, 7 363
Dio Cassius
History li.19 363
lvi.25.5f. 226
lvii.15.8 226
lx.6 381
lx.17.5f. 37
lx.18.4 383
lx.34 386
lxi.6.4f. 295
lxii.25.3 253
(Epitome)
lxiv.3.4 296, 387
lxvii.
14 387
Dio Chrysostom
Oration 33 35
34 35
34.23 34
Diogenes Laertius
Lives of Philosophers i.110 240
Epictetus
Enchiridion ii.26.4 196
Euripides
fragment 968 240
Hercules Furens 1345f. 241
Medea 1078–80 196
Firmicus Maternus
De errore profanarum
religionum 18.1
434
Galen
De anatomicis
administrationibus i.2
161
De praenotione 2 161
Herodotus
History i.105 162
vii.30 407
Homer
Iliad ii.570 249
iv.141f. 220
vi.152 249
vi.397 32
vi.415 32
xiii.664 249
xxi.470f. 287
Horace
Epistles i.8.11 196
Juvenal
Satire 14.329 386
Nicolaus of Damascus
Histories 4 76
Ovid
Amores iii.4.17 196
Metamorphoses vii.20f. 196
viii.626ff. 169
Oxyrhynchus
Papyri 110 271
523 271
1485 271
1755 271
Palatine Anthology vii.290
373
Paulus
Sententiae v.26.1 363
Pausanias
Description of Greece i.1.4. 239
i.14.6 162
ii.1.1–5.2 250
Philostratus
Life of Apollonius i.7 35
iv.47 445
vi.3.5 239
vi.34 35
Plato
Symposium 215A–222B 468
Pliny the Elder
Nat. Hist. iv.12 370
v.95 166
xxxi.33 253
xxxvi.95–97 287
xxx.vi.179 287
Pliny the Younger
Epistles ix.21 396
x.57 375
x.96.4 364
Plotinus
Ennead vi.9.11 138
Plutarch
Life of Alexander 3.3 287
Life of Antony 26 34
Table-Talk vii.5.706e 291
Polybius
History i.1 22
Sallust
History fragment iv.69.1–23 24
Seneca
Epistulae morales 104.1 253
Strabo
Geography ii.5.20 373
viii.6.20–23 250
xii.8.13 407
xii.8.15 288
xiv.1.21–25 288
xiv.1.22 287
xiv.5.12ff. (673ff.) 35
Suetonius
Life of Claudius 18.2 150
25.4 132, 251, 381
28 355
28.1 355
28.3 358
Life of Julius Caesar
79.3 218
Life of Nero
16.2 381, 442
23.1 296
Life of Tiberius 36 380
Life of Vespasian 4 29
Tacitus
Annals ii.85.5 380
iv.2 375
xii.53f. 355
xii.54 353
xii.54.3 355
xiii. 1.1–3 295
xiii.1.4 386
xiii.4.2 366
xiii. 14.1 355
xiii.14.2 362
xiii.33.1f. 296
xiv.27.1 408
xiv.50.2 366
xv.38ff. 441
xv.44.3–8 442
xv.44.4 90, 354, 382
Histories
i.49 387
ii.95 387
v.9 353, 355
v.13 29
Thucydides
History i.22.1 245
Vegetius
De re militari iv.39 370
Xenophon
Anabasis i.2.6 407
i.2.19 166
i.2.23 33
Hellenica v.i.33 286
JEWISH APOCRYPHA AND PSEUDEPIGRAPHA
Ascension of Isaiah
6:13 134
7:13ff. 134
Assumption of Moses
6:2 55
2 Baruch
21:23 303
30:2 303
49:1ff. 309
Book of the Covenant of Damascus
77, 78
Ecclesiasticus
44:1ff. 47, 302
1 Enoch
9:4 117
10:9 117
4 Ezra
7:32 303
7:75–101 303
Jubilees
1:29 192
1 Maccabees
1:54 231
2:42 44
7:14 44
8:1–16 23
8:17ff. 379
11:41–51 131
12:1ff. 379
14:16ff. 379
14:40 379
14:41 46
15:16 72
15:21 72
2 Maccabees
4:30 34
7:11 302
14:6 44
4 Maccabees
5:15ff. 302
Psalms of Solomon
2:20–32 24
2:30–32 54
17:8 54
17:8–15 24
17:23ff. 54
Tobit
4:15 49
Wisdom
3:1ff. 302
7:26 123
13:1ff. 173
14:12 173, 327
Zadokite Work
77–80
DEAD SEA SCROLLS
CD
1.18 49
2.6f. 303
2.12 140
3.20 303
4.17 185
4.20ff. 185
5.5 78
6.1 140
6.5–7 78
6.19 78
7.12–14 78
7.15 78
7.18f. 78
7.20 78
7.21 78
10.4–11 59
10.18 59
10.14–11.18 59
20.12 78
1QH
2.15 49
2.32 49
8.4ff. 304
12.11ff. 140
13.17f. 303
1QIsa
92
1QIsb
92
1QM
10.10ff. 416
11.7f. 140
15.1f. 303
1QpHab
2.4–6 24
2.12 24
9.2 204, 415
1QS
6.3 219
8.5f. 211
9.4f. 140
10.18 303
11.7–9 303
4QpNah
1.1ff. 44
1.5–8 71
1.7 49
JOSEPHUS
Ant.
i.159 76
iii.320f. 150
xii.119 30
149 164
149ff. 30
xiii.171f. 44
172 51
288–296 44
299f. 53
372ff. 44
xiv.117 81
192–195 72
xv.370 48
373–378 150
407 365
xvi.136–141 354
148 130
162–165 296
xvii.42 48
151ff. 48
328 374
xviii. 2
4ff. 28
13 51
14 301
17 48
81ff. 328
81–84 380
132 365
133 386
135 386
194 365
261ff. 233
354 365
xix.294 348
354f. 361
360 365
362 365
xx.9–12 365
17ff. 128
34–48 256
51–53 150
101 150
102 174
104 365
131–137 355
137 353
138 365
139–143 361
143f. 361
159 365
160–166 355
162 355
171f. 350
183f. 361
186f. 174
186–188 355
200 175, 359
205–207 351
Apion
ii.44 30
BJ
i.88ff. 44
408–415 354
422 77
552 386
ii.104 374
117 68
118 28
146 219
154ff. 303
163 302
184ff. 232
220 365
221 386
223 365
243–247 355
247 365
252 365
254ff. 174
254–257 355
261ff. 350
310–314 348
441f. 351
495 30
561 77
651 174
iii–374 302
v.194 349, 434
243f. 349
vi. 124–126 349
126 68
312f. 29
316 230
vii.45 131
Life
13ff. 369
15 373
38 365
PHILO
Abraham
28 43
Dreams
i.141ff. 192
ii.250 43
Embassy to Gaius
203 ff. 232
Flaccus
55 30
74 81
Virtues
124 400
OTHER JEWISH WRITINGS
Babylonian Talmud
Ḥaggigah 12b 134
14b–15b 135
Menaḥôt 65a 92
Pesaḥim 57a 351
Qiddusîn 669 44
Rosh ha-Shanah 16b 302
Sanhedrin 59b 186
97 a 70
Shabbat 15a 50
30b 51
31a 49, 110
147b 413
Soṭah 47a 44
49b 126
Jerusalem Talmud
Berakôt 9:7 49, 461
Maimonides
Hilekôt Abel 14:1 58
Mekhneh Torah 58
Mekhilta (tractate Baḥōdeš 5)
on Exodus 20:18 192
Midrash Rabba
Genesis1:1 420
1:4 124
8:8 414
Leviticus 24:4 46
Numbers 19:8 49
Deuteronomy 2:25 186
Mishnah
Giṭṭin 4:2 50
Makkôt 3:10–15 127
Menaḥôt 10:3 92
Nazir 3:6 150
6:3 348
6:6 348
Shabbat 7:1ff. 59
Soṭah 9:15 50
Tamid 7:4 70
Yebamôt 11:2 268
Yoma 6:2 292
Pesiqta Rabbati 21 192
Pirqê Abôt,
1:11 126
1:12 128
1:13 107
2:6 48
3:7 219
3:19 51
4:7 107
4:14 51
5:24 269
Sifre 102 on Numbers 12:5
192
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
53
Testament of Dan 6:2 192
Testament of Levi 2:7ff. 134
Testament of Reuben 6:7–12 53
Tosefta Menaḥôt 10:23 (528)
92
CHRISTIAN WRITINGS
Acts of Justin 4
166
Acts of Paul
166, 267, 467–9
Acts of Peter
440, 449
Acts of Peter and Paul 80
450, 469
Aristeas, Letter of 134–138
173
Augustine
Confessions viii.29 470
Sermons 279.1 421
1 Clement,
5:1–7 447
5:6 444
6:1 448
Clement of Alexandria
Exhortation
to the Greeks 2:14
434
Stromateis i.137.1 249
iii.30 307
v.242.45.2 291
Cyprian
De unitate ecclesiae 4 455
Epistles 43.5 455
70.3 455
73.7 455
Didache 9:2
284
10:5 266
10:6 67, 117
Eusebius
Eusebius
Hist. Eccl.
ii.22.2 444
22.2–8 443
23.6 346
25 392
25.7 379, 450
25.8 379, 454
iii.1.3 448
2.1 455
4 133
5.3 232
21.1 455
31.2–5 343
31.3 464
31.4 450, 464
39.15 392
iv.22.1–3 454
v.1.1ff. 315
1.26 186
1.44 364
1.50 364
24.2 464
28.3 320
vi.14.2f. 466
25.6 320
Gospel of Thomas 17
440
Hermas
Shepherd, Vision 2.4.3. 389
3.9.7. 389
Hippolytus
Apostolic Tradition 20:5 382
Commentary on Daniel iii. 29 469
On the Blessing of Jacob 42
Philosophoumena
(= Refutation of all Heresies) ix.18ff.
304
Ignatius
Ignatius
Ephesians 1:1 403
1:3 402, 403
2:1 402
2:2 403
6:2 402
20:2 402
Romans 4:3 454
Irenaeus
Against Heresies iii. 1.1 464
1.2 392
3.1 379, 454
3.2 454
Jerome
De uiris illustribus 2 85
5 43, 449
7 133
Justin (3rd cent.)
Epitome xxxvi.2.3 76
Justin Martyr
Dialogue with Trypho 62 413
Origen
Commentary on Matthew 27:9 440
Commentary on 1 Corinthians §121
267
Orosius
History vii.6. 15f. 381
Polycarp
Letter to the Philippians 3:2 390
Rheginus, Epistle to De Resurrectione 45.14ff.
307
46.1 307
Tertullian
Against Marcion i.8 466
27 20
iii. 5.4 466
iv.3.3 177
v.14.9 466
Apology 9
186
21.1 366
De Anima 20
327
De praescriptione haereticorum 23
156
BJRL Bulletin of the John Rylands (University) Library,
Manchester
1 G. G. A. Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion (New York,
1912), p. 146.
2 U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Die griechische Literatur
des Altertums = Die Kultur der Gegenwart, ed. P. Hinneberg, i,
8 (Berlin/Leipzig, 31912), p. 232.
3 Cf. F. F. Bruce, The Acts of the Apostles (London, 2I952), pp.
15ff. et passim.
4 The last two sentences are amplified in F. F. Bruce, “Is the
Paul of Acts the Real Paul?” BJRL 58 (1975–76), pp. 282–305.
Two important essays which should be mentioned are P.
Vielhauer, “On the ‘Paulinism’ of Acts”, E. T. in Studies in
Luke-Acts: Essays in Honor of Paul Schubert, ed. L. E. Keck
and J. L. Martyn (Nashville/New York, 1966), pp. 33–50 (a
study which defends quite different conclusions on the subject
from mine), and C. K. Barrett, “Acts and the Pauline Corpus”,
Expository Times 88 (1976–77), pp. 2–5 (a study which whets
the reader’s appetite for the major work on Acts which
Professor Barrett is preparing for the International Critical
Commentary).
5 R. Allen, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? (London,
1927), p. 3.
6 C. K. Barrett (“Acts and the Pauline Corpus”, pp. 4 f.) discerns
at least two Christian missions in the Graeco-Roman world of
the time in addition to Paul’s: one led by Peter and one which
ran back to Stephen and his fellow-Hellenists. Acts he regards
as a monument of the process by which the three came to
terms with one another after the deaths of their founders and
the events of A.D. 70.
7 T. Erskine, Letters (Edinburgh, 1877), p. 16.
8 Tertullian, Against Marcion i. 27.
1 Polybius, History i. 1. He then carried the story down to 146
B.C.
2 Philip V of Macedonia, defeated at the battle of
Cynoscephalae in 197 B.C.
3 Perseus, defeated at the battle of Pydna in 168 B.C.
4 Antiochus III, Seleucid king, defeated at the battle of
Magnesia in 190/189 B.C.
5 The reference to the crushing of the revolt of the Achaian
League and devastation of Corinth in 146 B.C. shows that this
account of Roman power, while ostensibly set in the period
preceding Judas’s death (160 B.C.), carries the story down well
beyond that.
6 The nominal strength of the Roman senate in the second
century B.C. was 300.
7 This may be seen just before and after the Roman conquest of
Judaea (63 B.C.) by the description of the Kittim in the Qumran
commentary on Habakkuk (1QpHab 2, l. 4–6, l. 12) and
reactions to their arrogance and impiety in the Psalms of
Solomon (2: 20–32; 17: 8–15). The former passage may reflect
the anti-Roman propaganda of Mithridates VI of Pontus, of
which a sample is preserved in a letter of his (c. 69 B.C.) to
Arsaces XII, king of Parthia (Sallust, History, fragment iv. 69.
1–23). See F. F. Bruce, New Testament History (London,2
1971), pp. 9–12, and “The Romans through Jewish Eyes” in
Mélanges offerts à M. Simon, ed. M. Philonenko (Paris, 1978),
pp. 3–12.
1 See F. F. Bruce, Israel and the Nations (Exeter,21969), pp. 97
ff.
2 Cf. F. C. Grant, The Economic Background of the Gospels
(Oxford, 1926), pp. 87 ff.
3 The “Romance” languages of France, the Iberian Peninsula,
Italy, parts of Switzerland, and Romania.
4 Josephus, BJ ii. 118; Ant. xviii. 4 ff.
5 Cf. M. Hengel, Die Zeloten (Leiden, 1961).
6 Probably a combination of the “sceptre” oracles of Genesis
49:10 and Numbers 24:17 chronologically interpreted in the
light of the seventy heptads outlined in Daniel 9:24–27. See
Josephus, BJ vi. 312 f.; Tacitus, History, v. 13; Suetonius,
Vespasian, 4.
7 A.D. 69 witnessed the fall of Nero’s successor Galba, the rise
and fall of Otho and Vitellius, and the accession of Vespasian.
8 Cf. Jeremiah 44:1; a Jewish community settled by
Psammetichus II (594–588 B.C.) to guard his southern frontier
at Syene (Aswan) and Elephantine survived there till c. 400
B.C. and has left a substantial Aramaic archive; cf. A. E.
Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford,
1923); E. G. Kraeling, The Brooklyn Museum Aramaic Papyri
(Oxford, 1953).
9 Jerome’s edition of Eusebius’s Chronicle preserves the
tradition of a settlement of Jews in Hyrcania by Artaxerxes III
of Persia (359–338 B.C.).
10 Philo, Flaccus, 55; cf. Josephus, BJ ii. 495.
11 Josephus, Apion, ii. 44.
12 Josephus, Ant. xii. 149 ff. Much earlier, the founder of the
Seleucid dynasty, Seleucus I (312–281 B.C.), conferred citizen
rights on all Jews resident in the cities which he founded,
especially in Antioch (Josephus, Ant. xii. 119).
13 Cf. H. J. Leon, The Jews of Ancient Rome (Philadelphia,
1960), pp. 135 f.
14 Cf. J. Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus, E. T. (London,
1969), p. 83; “Die Einwohnerzahl Jerusalems zur Zeit Jesu”,
ZDPV 66 (1943), pp. 24–31.
15 Cf. H. J. Leon, The Jews of Ancient Rome, pp. 46 ff. See p.
380 below.
16 Cf. B. M. Metzger, “Ancient Astrological Geography and Acts
2:9–11”, in Apostolic History and the Gospel, ed. W. W. Gasque
and R. P. Martin (Exeter, 1970), pp.123 ff. For a
Comprehensive account, see M. Grant, The Jews in the Roman
World (London, 1973); E. M. Smallwood, The Jews under
Roman Rule (Leiden, 1977).
1 Homer, Iliad vi. 397, 415. At that time (c. 1200 B.C.) the
Cilicians apparently resided in N.W. Asia Minor; the extension
of their name to the historical Cilicia resulted from their
eastward penetration of the peninsula along with other Indo-
European speaking groups.
2 The satraps minted silver staters with the divine title Baʿal Tarz
(“lord of Tarsus”) on the obverse.
3 It was this victory over Persian forces that opened up the road
to Syria before him.
4 Xenophon, Anabasis, i. 2. 23.
5 A sequel to the revolt mentioned in 2 Maccabees 4:30.
6 Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act 2, Scene 2 (his
description is based on Plutarch, Life of Antony, 26).
7 Dio Chrysostom, Oration 34. 23.
8 Strabo, Geography xiv. 5. 12 ff. (673 ff.).
9 Philostratus, Life of Apollonius, i. 7; cf. vi, 34.
10 Dio Chrysostom, Orations 33; 34.
11 Cf. E. Schürer, s.v. “Diaspora”, HDB v, p. 105; W. M.
Ramsay, The Cities of St. Paul (London, 1907), pp. 176 ff.; H. J.
Cadbury, The Book of Acts in History (New York, 1955), pp. 32
ff.; A. D. Nock, “Isopoliteia and the Jews”, Essays on Religion
and the Ancient World (Oxford, 1972), pp. 960 ff. With Paul’s
status in Tarsus may be compared that of “Marcus Aurelius
Alexander, also called Asaph, of the people of the Jews” at
Hierapolis in Phrygia, where his epitaph (in Greek) has
survived from the second century A.D. He was apparently a
citizen of Hierapolis, and he was self-evidently a Roman citizen
(cf. Corpus Inscriptiorwm Iudaicarum, ed. J.-B. Frey, iii [Rome,
1952], no. 776).
1 The tribune, Claudius Lysias, probably acquired his
citizenship during the principate of Claudius (A.D. 41–54)
when, according to Dio Cassius (History lx. 17. 5 f.), citizenship
was open to purchase. Technically the citizenship itself was not
for sale; the money went to the various intermediaries who
could arrange for a man’s name to be put on the list of
candidates for enfranchisement. See p. 351.
2 See A. N. Sherwin-White, The Roman Citizenship (Oxford,2
1973).
3 E.g. by Sir William Caldar in a letter to the author (February
18, 1953).
4 See p. 221.
5 See p. 351.
6 Since this was a Julian law, it was sponsored either by Julius
Caesar or by his adopted son Octavian (Augustus). A. H. M.
Jones gives reasons for dating it in the principate of Augustus,
after 23 B.C. (Studies in Roman Government and Law [Oxford,
1960], pp. 97 f.; cf. A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and
Roman Law in the New Testament [Oxford, 1963], pp. 57 f.).
See p. 363.
7 Cf. Sherwin-White, Roman Society …, pp. 146 f.
8 Cf. F. Schulz, “Roman Registers of Births and Birth-
Certificates”, JRS 32 (1942), pp. 78 ff.; 33 (1943), pp. 55 ff.
9 Cf. Sherwin-White, Roman Society …, p. 149.
10 See pp. 363f.
1 The expression is derived from J. J. Blunt’s Undesigned
Coincidences in the Writings of the Old and New Testaments
(London, 1847).
2 E.g. Hippolytus, On the Blessing of Jacob, at Genesis 49:27.
3 It is not certain whether the reference here is to one or more
synagogues, but more probably it is to one, attended by Jewish
“freedmen” from the places mentioned. See p. 67.
4 CIG iv. 9909 (Rome); B. Powell, “Greek Inscriptions from
Corinth”, AJA series 2, 7 (1903), pp. 60 f., no. 40 (Corinth).
5 Philo, On Dreams, ii. 250; Abraham, 28.
6 Jerome, De uiris illustribus, 5.
7 This is implied by the punctuation of Acts 22:3 in the Nestle-
Aland Novum Testamentum Graece (Stuttgart, 251963) and in
the editions of the Greek New Testament published by the
British and Foreign Bible Society (London, 21958) and the
United Bible Societies (London and New York, 3 1976). See W.
C. van Unnik, Tarsus or Jerusalem: The City of Paul’s Youth, E.
T. (London, 1962).
8 Josephus, Ant. xiii. 171 f.
9 Josephus, Ant. xiii. 288–296.
10 “Josephus, BJ i. 88 ff.; Ant. xiii. 372 ff.; TB Soṭah 47a; Qiddušîn
66a; 4QpNah frag. 4, col. 1, 11. 1 ff.
11 See F. F. Bruce, Second Thoughts on the Dead Sea Scrolls
(Exeter,3 1966), pp. 104 ff., 110 ff.
12 1 Maccabees 14:41.
13 Leviticus Rabba 24:4 on Leviticus 19:2.
14 Cf. Matthew 23:23; Luke 11:42; see also F. F. Bruce, New
Testament History (London, 21971), p. 68, n. 4.
15 This is the point of the passage beginning “Let us now praise
famous men …” (Ecclesiasticus 44:1 ff.), well known from its
frequent recital at commemoration services.
16 Mark 12:18–27. (See pp. 109, 336.)
17 T. W. Manson, “Sadducee and Pharisee”, BJRL 22 (1938), pp.
153 ff.; The Servant-Messiah (Cambridge, 1953), pp. 19 f.
18 Josephus, Ant. xv. 370.
19 Josephus, Ant. xvii. 42.
20 Josephus, Ant. xvii. 151 ff.
21 Josephus, Ant. xviii. 17.
22 Josephus, Ant. xvii. 42.
23 The phrase ʿam hāʾāreṣ, which in OT times was a collective
expression (“people of the land”), became in rabbinical usage
the designation of an individual, “one of the people of the land”
or “one of the common people”—i.e. an ignoramus (in matters
of religion, at least).
24 Hillel is credited with the remark that “no ʿam hāʾāreṣ is pious”
(Pirqê Abôt 2:6). Cf. the dismissive words of the Jerusalem
authorities in John 7:49: “this crowd, who do not know the law,
are accursed”.
25 Cf. 4QpNah. frag. 4, col. 1, l. 7; 1QH 2, ll. 15, 32; CD 1, 1. 18.
26 TJ Berakôt 9:7.
27 TB Shabbat 31a, although doubt is cast on the historicity of the
incident by J. Neusner, The Rabbinic Traditions about the
Pharisees before 70 (Leiden, 1971), i, pp. 338 f. For an earlier
instance of the negative golden rule cf. Tobit 4:15, “What you
hate, do not do to any one”.
28 Thus Yohanan ben Zakkai, commenting on the purificatory ritual
of the red heifer (Numbers 19), remarks that in fact a corpse
does not convey spiritual defilement nor does water effect
inward cleansing; the ordinance is to be carried out simply
because it is a divine command (Numbers Rabba 19:8 on
Numbers 19:2).
29 TB Shabbat 15a seems to interpose an otherwise unknown
Simeon between Hillel and Gamaliel as leader of the school;
the idea of a blood-relationship between them is later still.
30 Cf. J. Neusner, The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees
before 70, i, pp. 341–376.
31 Mishnah Soṭah 9:15.
32 Mishnah Giṭṭin 4:2.
33 Cf. Josephus, Ant. xiii. 172; xviii. 13; cf. the dictum of Aqiba:
“Everything is foreseen, but freedom of choice is given” (Pirqê
Abôt 3:19).
34 Pirqê Abôt 4:14.
35 Cf. J. Jeremias, “Paulus als Hillelit”, in Neotestamentica et
Semitica: Studies in Honour of M. Black, ed. E. E. Ellis and M.
Wilcox (Edinburgh, 1969), pp. 88 ff.; on the other side, K.
Haacker, “War Paulus Hillelit?”, Das Institutum Iudaicum der
Universität Tübingen, 1971–72, pp. 106–120.
36 So J. Klausner, From Jesus to Paul, E. T. (London, 1944), p.
310, in reference to TB Shabbat 30b.
37 Galatians 1:13 f.; Philippians 3:6.
1 Josephus, Ant. xiii. 299 f.
2 While the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (1st century
B.C.—1st century A.D.) for the most part assign the kingship to
Judah and the priesthood to Levi, the kingship is assigned to
Levi in Testament of Reuben 6:7–12—a reflection, probably, of
the Hasmonaean ascendancy.
3 Psalms of Solomon 17:8.
4 Codex Alexandrinus originally included them as an appendix
to the New Testament. They were first composed in Hebrew,
but are extant only in Greek, and in a Syriac translation from
the Greek.
5 Psalms of Solomon 2:30–32.
6 Psalms of Solomon 17:23 ff.
7 The Latin version of the Assumption of Moses calls him rex
petulans (6:2).
8 Mark 12:35–37.
9 Cf. 2 Timothy 2:8, perhaps another confessional formula.
10 Cf. Mark 1:14 f.; Matthew 12:28/Luke 11:20.
11 Cf. T. W. Manson, The Teaching of Jesus (Cambridge, 21935),
pp. 211 ff.; A. J. B. Higgins, Jesus and the Son of Man (London,
1964); M. D. Hooker, The Son of Man in Mark (London, 1967).
12 Mark 9:12; Luke 17:25.
13 Mark 10:43 f.; Luke 22:25–27.
14 Mark 14:61 f.
15 See the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7; cf. Luke 6:17–
49), passim.
16 Mark 12:13–17.
17 Matthew 17:24–27.
18 See p. 49. A positive formulation of the golden rule in Jewish
orthodoxy is provided by Maimonides, Mishneh Torah 2: Hilekôt Abel
14:1.
19 In Luke 10:27 it is the enquiring lawyer who summarizes the
law thus, in response to Jesus’ counter-question.
20 This probably meant “even in ploughing time and in harvest
….” rather than “only in ploughing time and in harvest …”.
21 Mishnah Shabbat 7:1 ff.
22 CD 10, 1. 14–11, 1. 18.
23 Mark 2:2–3: 5; Luke 13:10–17; 14:1–6.
24 Government tax-collectors were reckoned by definition to be
ʿammê hāʾāreṣ (see p. 48).
25 See p. 105.
26 In his programmatic sermon in the Nazareth synagogue
(Luke 4:16 ff.), Jesus chooses Isaiah 61:1 f. as his text, but ends
at the words “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord”,
without continuing the sentence: “and the day of vengeance of
our God”
27 Mark 1:11 (“You are my Son, my beloved; with you I am well
pleased”); as those words were spoken, he saw “the Spirit
descending on him like a dove” (Mark 1:10).
28 See pp. 89 f. with nn. 16, 17.
1 The information about the appearances to Peter (the leader of
the twelve) and James (the brother of Jesus) was probably
received by Paul when he visited Jerusalem in the third year
after his conversion and met those two men (Galatians 1:18 f.).
See pp. 84 ff.
2 Mark 1:8 and parallels; John 1:33.
3 E. Repo, Der “Weg” als Selbstbezeichnung des
Urchristentums (Helsinki, 1964).
4 See pp. 151, 319 ff.
5 Acts 4:1 ff.; see p. 47.
6 See p. 50.
7 Cf. Acts 15:5.
8 Acts 6:7. C. Spicq has argued that these converted priests
were “Esseno-Christians”, former members of the Qumran
community (“L’Epître aux Hébreux: Apollos, Jean-Baptiste, les
Hellénistes et Qumrân”, Revue de Qumran 1 [1958–59], pp.
365 ff.).
9 Acts 2:25–36.
10 Acts 3:13–26.
11 Acts 3:22 f.; 7:37.
12 Acts 4:11.
13 Such oracles are those relating to the “stone of stumbling” of
Isaiah 8:14, the foundation-stone laid in Zion of Isaiah 28:16,
the stone “cut out by no human hand” of Daniel 2:34 f., 44 f.
For their combination cf. Luke 20:17 f.; Romans 9:32 f.; 1 Peter
2:6–8. See F. F. Bruce, This is That: The New Testament
Development of—Some Old Testament Themes (Exeter, 1968),
pp. 65 f., and “The Corner Stone”, Expository Times 84 (1972–
73), pp. 231 ff.
14 M. Hengel argues that the crucial phase of christological
development was the first five years after the death and
resurrection of Christ (“Christology and New Testament
Chronology”, Between Jesus and Paul, E. T. [London, 1983], pp.
29–47).
15 H. B. Swete, The Ascended Christ (London, 1912), p. 95. See
pp. 119 f.
16 The eucharistic setting of maranā-thā (1 Corinthians 16:22) is
explicit in Didache 10:6. See p. 117 with nn. 11, 12.
17 See p. 57.
18 Acts 6:9; see p. 42.
19 Mark 14:57–59.
20 It is not far-fetched to see in Stephen’s vision the fulfilment
of Jesus’ promise in Luke 12:8 (see p. 66).
21 Josephus BJ ii. 117; cf. Ant. xviii. 2; John 18:31.
22 Cf. Josephus, BJ vi. 126. See p. 349.
23 Cf. Leviticus 24:10–16.
24 Acts 7:58 f.
25 Jeremiah 7:1–15; 26:1–6.
1 Cf. A. J. Hultgren, “Paul’s Pre-Christian Persecutions of the
Church: their Purpose, Locale and Nature”, JBL 95 (1976), pp.
97–111.
2 Cf. E. Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles, E. T. (Oxford,
1971), pp. 297 ff.
3 Deuteronomy 17:7.
4 Part of the charge laid against Stephen in Acts 6:14.
5 For this doctrine of the three ages cf. TB Sanhedrin 97a; for
the eternal sabbath rest cf. also Mishnah, Tamid 7:4. For
someone brought up to accept this doctrine, the argument
would be valid: “If the ‘Days of the Messiah’ have commenced,
those of the Torah came to their close. On the other hand, if the
Law, the Torah, still retained its validity, it was proclaimed
thereby that the Messiah had not yet arrived” (L. Baeck, “The
Faith of Paul”, Journal of Jewish Studies 3 [1952], p. 106; cf. H.
J. Schoeps, Paul, E. T. [London, 1961], pp. 171 ff.). See p. 190.
6 “Hanging up alive” is the Hebrew phrase used for crucifixion
in 4QpNah frag. 4, ll. 5–8, a passage which well conveys the
horror with which this fate was viewed by pious Jews.
7 According to Luke, the phrase “hanging on a gibbet” (ξύλον,
the Greek word used in the LXX of Deuteronomy 21:22 f.) was
used in the primitive apostolic preaching, as though to
emphasize how religiously shocking this mode of execution was
(Acts 5:30; 10:39).
8 Cf. Galatians 1:17, “I returned to Damascus”.
9 The author of the letter is “Lucius, consul of the Romans” (1
Maccabees 15:16)—presumably L. Caecilius Metellus, consul in
142 B.C. (E. J. Bickermann, review of M. S. Ginsburg, Rome et
la Judée, in Gnomon 6 [1930], pp. 358 f.).
10 Josephus, Ant. xiv. 192–195. See S. Safrai and M. Stern (ed.),
The Jewish People in the First Century, i (Assen, 1974), p. 456.
11 This is the implication of the adverb ἐκεῖσε, “thither”, in Acts
22:5; “those who were there” are “those who had gone
thither”.
12 Acts 26:11, “I persecuted them even to foreign cities”.
1 We may compare the experience of Isaiah, who was both
cleansed and commissioned in the course of his vision of the
glory of Yahweh (Isaiah 6:1–9a), or of Ezekiel, whose call came
in the course of a similar vision (Ezekiel 1:4–3:11)—although it
was to Israel, not to the nations, that these two prophets were
sent. Paul’s language also echoes the narrative of the call of
Jeremiah, to whom Yahweh said, “before you were born … I
appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5). See p.
144, n. 37.
2 G. Lyttelton, Observations on the Conversion and Apostleship
of St. Paul (London, 1747), paragraph 1.
3 Although the known literary analogues of this metaphor (Acts
26:14) are Greek and Latin, not Semitic, it is the kind of
expression that might be found in any agricultural community.
4 Cf. Philippians 3:12, where “I was apprehended by Christ
Jesus” conveys the sense of κατελήμφθην better than the weaker
verbs used in some more recent versions.
5 According to Josephus (Ant. i. 159), Herod’s court historian,
Nicolaus of Damascus, recorded in the fourth book of his
Histories that Abraham (Abramēs) reigned there. A similar
statement is quoted from the Latin writer Pompeius Trogus (c.
20 B.C.) in the third-century Epitome of Justin (xxxvi. 2. 3).
6 The Decapolis comprised about ten federated cities:
Damascus, Hippos, Canatha, Raphana, Gadara, Philadelphia
(modern Amman), Gerasa, Dion, Pella and Scythopolis (Beth-
shan), only the last of which lay west of the Jordan.
7 So called from the town-planner Hippodamus of Miletus (5th
century B.C.).
8 Josephus, BJ i. 422 (he also built a theatre in Damascus).
9 According to BJ ii. 561 the number of those massacred (in the
gymnasium) was 10,500; according to BJ vii. 368 it was 18,000.
10 Cf. A. J. Wensinck, A Handbook of Early Muhammadan
Tradition (Leiden, 1927), p. 113.
11 Cf. N. Wieder, The Judaean Scrolls and Karaism (London,
1962), pp. 5–14; “The ‘Land of Damascus’ and Messianic
Redemption”, Journal of Jewish Studies 20 (1969), pp. 86–88.
12 First published by S. Schechter, Fragments of a Zadokite
Work, i (Cambridge, 1910).
13 CD 6, l. 19; 8, l. 21; cf. 20, l. 12.
14 CD 6, ll. 5–7.
15 CD 7, ll. 18 f.
16 Called “the prince of all the congregation” and equated with
the “sceptre” of Numbers 24:17, as the “star” in that verse is
interpreted of the coming “expositor of the law” (CD 7, l. 20).
Cf. also J. Daniélou, “L’éoile de Jacob et la mission chrétienne à
Damas”, Vigiliae Christianae 11 (1957), pp. 121–138.
17 E.g. by T. H. Gaster, The Dead Sea Scriptures (Garden City,
N.Y.,3 1977), pp. 5, 27 ff. But a migration to Qumran would
scarcely be described as leaving “the land of Judah” for “the
land of the north” (CD 5, l. 5; 7, ll. 12–14).
18 CD 7, l. 15.
19 Cf. J. T. Milik, Ten Years of Discovery in the Wilderness of
Judaea (London, 1959), p. 91.
20 Cf. H. H. Rowley, The Zadokite Fragments and the Dead Sea
Scrolls (Oxford, 1952); “The History of the Qumran Sect”, BJRL
49 (1966–67), pp. 203–232.
21 N. Wieder, The Judaean Scrolls and Karaism, p. 3.
22 E. Lohmeyer, Galiläa und Jerusalem (Göttingen, 1936), pp.
54 ff.; so also H. J. Schoeps, Theologie und Geschichte des
Judenchristentums (Tübingen, 1949), pp. 270 ff. For a more
disciplined and better documented examination of evidence on
the expansion of Christianity in the first three to five years of
its existence see M. Hengel, Between Jesus and Paul, E. T.
(London, 1983), pp. 1–29.
23 Luke implies, however, that the baptism which Paul
underwent at Damascus (Acts 9:18; 22:16) was no less valid
than if it had been administered in Jerusalem.
24 Cf. H. Braun, Qumran und das Neue Testament, ii (Tübingen,
1966), pp. 170 ff.; W. Grundmann, “The Teacher of
Righteousness of Qumran and the question of justification by
faith in the theology of the Apostle Paul”, in Paul and Qumran,
ed. J. Murphy-O’Connor (London, 1968), pp. 85–114.
25 Cf. W. D. Davies, “Paul and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Flesh and
Spirit”, in The Scrolls and the New Testament, ed. K. Stendahl
(London, 1958), pp. 157–182.
26 Acts 9:20. See pp. 117 f.
27 Cf. Exodus 3:1; 1 Kings 19:8.
28 Strabo, quoted by Josephus, Ant. xiv. 117; the term ἐθνάρχης
here is probably equivalent to γενάρχης in Philo, Flaccus 74.
29 Luke represents Paul as compelled to escape because of the
hostility of the Damascene Jews (Acts 9:23–25).
1 Acts 4:36 f.
2 O. Linton, “The Third Aspect: A Neglected Point of View”,
Studia Theologica 3 (1949), pp. 79 ff., argues that this variant
account is that on which Luke draws in Acts 9:1–30.
3 Among other discussions of this verb cf. G. D. Kilpatrick,
“Galatians 1:18 ἱστορῆσαι Κηφᾶν” in New Testament Essays … in
Memory of T. W. Manson, ed. A. J. B. Higgins (Manchester,
1959), pp. 144 ff.; W. D. Davies, The Setting of the Sermon on
the Mount (Cambridge, 1964), pp. 453 ff.
4 See pp. 62 f.
5 According to Jerome (De uiris illustribus, 2), the Gospel
according to the Hebrews recorded: “Now when the Lord had
given his linen garment to the priest’s servant, he went to
James and appeared to him. For James had sworn that he
would eat no bread from that hour when he had drunk the cup
of the Lord until he saw him rising from the dead. [And again, a
little later:] ‘Bring a table and bread’, said the Lord; [and
immediately it continues:] he took bread and gave thanks and
broke it, and thereafter he gave it to James the Just and said to
him: ‘My brother, eat your bread, because the Son of Mae has
risen from those who sleep’.”
6 L. P. Trudinger, “A Note on Galatians 1:19”, Novum
Testamentum 17 (1975), pp. 200 ff., translates ἕτερον δε τῶν
ἀποστόλων κτλ as “ other than the apostles I saw none except
James the Lord’s brother”—but this is a dubious way of
construing the Greek text.
7 See F. F. Bruce, Tradition Old and New (Exeter, 1970), pp. 29
ff.
8 In referring to himself thus as “one untimely born”—an
abortion (ἔκτρωμα)—Paul may be taking up a term of reproach
cast at him for the “unnaturalness” of the resurrection
appearance and apostolic commission which he claimed to have
received. See A. Fridrichsen, “Paulus abortivus”, in Symbolae
philologicae O. A. Danielsson dicatae (Uppsala, 1932), pp. 79
ff.; G. Björck, “Nochmals Paulus abortivus”, Coniectanea
Neotestamentica 3 (1938), pp. 3 ff.; J. Munck, “Paulus
tamquam abortivus” in New Testament Essays … in Memory of
T. W. Manson, ed. A. J. B. Higgins, pp. 180 ff.
9 See pp. 105 ff.
10 As it is also in 1 Corinthians 11:23.
11 The genitive “of Jesus Christ” is objective: the reference is to
the conversion-experience in which, as he said, God “was
pleased to reveal his Son in me” (Galatians 1:16).
12 Cf. Ephesians 2:14–16.
13 Cf. T. W. Manson, The Servant-Messiah (Cambridge, 1953),
pp. 72 ff.; J. Jeremias in W. Zimmerli and J. Jeremias, The
Servant of God, E. T. (London, 1957), pp. 79 ff.; for a critique of
this view see M. D. Hooker, Jesus and the Servant (London,
1959).
14 See p. 342, n. 15.
15 In the account of the institution of the holy communion in
Matthew 26:28, the words “this is my covenant blood, which is
poured out for many” (cf. Mark 14:24) are glossed by the
explanatory phrase “for the forgiveness of sins”.
16 For other possible backgrounds to Mark 10:45 see C. K.
Barrett, “The Background of Mark 10:45”, in New Testament
Essays … in Memory of T. W. Manson, ed. A. J. B. Higgins, pp.
1 ff. See pp. 60 f.
17 This Hebrew clause is translated into Greek in Philippians
2:7 f., where Christ is said to have “emptied himself … unto
death”. Whether this passage is pre-Pauline or not, Paul uses it
to express his own thought. See p. 131 with n. 25, p. 124 with
n. 33.
18 Cf. J. Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, E. T. (Oxford,
1955), pp. 129 ff.; B. Klappert, “Zur Frage des Urtextes von 1
Kor. xv. 3–5”, NTS 13 (1966–67), pp. 168 ff.; for contrary
arguments cf. H. Conzelmann, “Zur Analyse der
Bekenntnisformel 1 Kor. 15, 3–5”, Ev. Th. 25 (1965), pp. 1 ff.
19 Cf. J. Jeremias, “Artikelloses Χριστός”, ZNW 57 (1966), pp.
211 ff.; “Nochmals: Artikelloses Χριστός”, ZNW 60 (1969), pp.
215 ff.; to the contrary cf. P. Vielhauer, “Ein Weg zur ntl.
Christologie;” Ev. Th. 25 (1965), pp. 24 ff., especially pp. 57 f.
20 Tacitus, Annals xv. 44. 4.
21 Cf. E. Schweizer, “Two New Testament Creeds Compared”,
in Current Issues in New Testament Interpretation: Essays in
honor of O. A. Piper, ed. W. Klassen and G. F. Snyder (London,
1962), pp. 166 ff.; R. H. Fuller, The Formation of the
Resurrection Narratives (London, 1972), pp. 9 ff.
22 S. H. Hooke, The Resurrection of Christ (London, 1967), p.
114.
23 Cf. B. M. Metzger, “A Suggestion concerning the Meaning of
1 Cor. 15:4b”, JTS, n.s. 8 (1957), pp. 118 ff.
24 Cf. B. W. Bacon, The Apostolic Message (New York, 1925),
pp. 134 f. The “sabbath” in “the morrow after the sabbath” was
understood as the weekly sabbath in the chief-priestly
interpretation which regulated the temple calendar, but in the
Pharisaic interpretation which has become normative since
A.D. 70 this sabbath is the festival day of unleavened bread, so
that Pentecost in the orthodox Jewish calendar today need not
fall on a Sunday, as it did in the temple calendar. See Mishnah
Menaḥôt 10:3; Tosefta Menaḥôt 10:23 (528); TB Menaḥôt 65 a.
25 The noun “light” evidently dropped out of the Massoretic
text at some stage but it was retained in LXX and is attested by
two pre-Christian Hebrew manuscripts found in Qumran Cave
1 (1QIsa and 1QIsb).
26 Paul in his letters rarely adduces Davidic promises as
testimonia (an instance is Romans 15:12, where the prophecy
about “the root of Jesse” in Isaiah 11:10 is quoted with
reference to the Gentile mission), and never with regard to the
resurrection.
27 C. T. Craig, The Beginning of Christianity (New York, 1943),
p. 135.
28 J. H. Schütz, Paul and the Anatomy of Apostolic Authority
(Cambridge, 1975), pp. 43 ff., 53.
29 He refers to his gospel ministry as a “priestly service”
(Romans 15:16).
30 See p. 144.
31 The statement that “the church throughout all Judaea and
Galilee and Samaria had peace” (Acts 9:31) may be little more
than a means of transition from the story of Paul’s conversion
to an account of the evangelization of the Mediterranean
seaboard of Palestine; but it is noteworthy as providing the
only New Testament reference to the church in Galilee (see p.
79).
1 Cf. J. M. Robinson, A New Quest of the Historical Jesus
(London, 1959), pp. 26 f.
2 Cf. A. Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, E. T.
(London, 1931), p. 113. In Jesus and Paul we have to
distinguish not (as Martin Buber put it in the title of one of his
books) Two Types of Faith, E. T. (London, 1951) but two ages
of faith.
3 J. Weiss, Paul and Jesus, E. T. (London, 1909), pp. 47 f.
4 That he did so might be regarded as more probable if we
accepted W. C. van Unnik’s thesis in Tarsus or Jerusalem, E. T.
(London, 1962) that Jerusalem was the city of Paul’s boyhood
and upbringing. See p. 43.
5 R. Bultmann, “Paul”, E. T. in Existence and Faith (London,
1964), p. 133.
6 R. Bultmann, “The Significance of the Historical Jesus for the
Theology of Paul”, E. T. in Faith and Understanding, i (London,
1966), p. 241. Cf. H. J. Schoeps, Paul, E. T. (London, 1961), pp.
57, 72, 79.
7 Cf. S. G. F. Brandon, Jesus and the Zealots (Manchester,
1967), p. 183.
8 W. Wrede, Paul, E. T. (London, 1907, pp. 147 ff. Wrede here
takes sharp issue with J. Wellhausen, A. Harnack and other
contemporaries of his who maintained that Paul was the man
who understood most truly the essence of Jesus’ message.
9 See pp. 283 ff. for further consideration of Paul’s
understanding of the Lord’s Supper.
10 See pp. 62 f., 88 ff.
11 Cf. Mark 7:1–23.
12 Cf. Galatians 3:2–5; 4:4–7, etc.
13 The description of the gospel in Colossians 1:6 as “bearing
fruit and growing” throughout the world has been thought to
echo the parable of the four soils (cf. Mark 4:8).
14 Cf. Matthew 8:10/Luke 7:9.
15 Cf. Mark 6:5/Matthew 13:58.
16 Matthew 17:20; Luke 17:6.
17 T. W. Manson, The Sayings of Jesus (London, 2 1949), p. 220.
It should not be overlooked that a very different emphasis is
found in some other parts of the material peculiar to Matthew,
which indeed have lent themselves in some commentators’
hands to a directly anti-Pauline interpretation, such as the
criticism in Matthew 5:19 of him who “relaxes one of the least
of these commandments and teaches men so” (on this too see
T.W. Manson, The Sayings of Jesus, pp. 25, 154).
18 Galatians 3:2, 5; 5:6.
19 E. Jüngel, Paulus und Jesus (Tübingen, 1962).
20 Cf. E. Fuchs, Studies of the Historical Jesus, E. T. (London,
1964), pp. 125 f.; cf. G. Ebeling’s similar formation
Wortgeschehen (“word event”), The Nature of Faith, E. T.
(London, 1966), pp. 182 ff.
21 See pp. 190 ff.
22 Matthew 23:23; cf. Luke 11:42.
23 A. Resch, Der Paulinismus und die Logia Jesu = Texte und
Untersuchungen 27 (Leipzig, 1904). He also identified 64
sayings of Jesus in the Pauline speeches in Acts, but credibility
is strained to the limit by his claim to find allusions in the
letters of Paul to dozens of otherwise unrecorded sayings of
Jesus. We can all relate the “faith that removes mountains” in 1
Corinthians 13:2 to Mark 11:23 or Matthew 17:20, but
incidental expressions so unambiguously dominical are rare.
24 R. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, E. T., i
(London, 1952), p. 35.
25 E.g. Romans 12:14 (Matthew 5:44); 13:9 f. (Mark 12:31);
16:19 (Matthew 10:16); 1 Corinthians 13:2 (Mark 11:23)
(Theology of the New Testament, i, p. 188).
26 Theology of the New Testament, i. pp. 188 f.
27 Gk. χωρίζειν, the same verb as is used in the passive in 1
Corinthians 7:10, “she should not separate (χωρισθῆναι).”
28 Cf. F. F. Bruce, New Testament History (London, 2 1971), pp.
26 f.
29 See pp. 267 f.
30 Matthew’s “food” is τροφή, while Luke’s “wages” is μισθός. The
injunction of Luke 10:7 is quoted verbatim in a similar context
in 1 Timothy 5:18.
31 D. L. Dungan, The Sayings of Jesus in the Churches of Paul
(Oxford, 1971), p. 32.
32 Pirqê Abôt 1:13; 4:7. (The latter passage quotes also the
similar dictum of R. Zadok: “make not of the Torah a crown
wherewith to magnify thyself or a spade wherewith to dig”.
From the two sayings the inference is drawn: “whosoever
derives a profit for himself from the words of the Torah is
helping on his own destruction”.)
33 This makes it quite clear that τροφή in Matthew 10:10 means
“food” and excludes money.
34 Gk. ἐσθίετε τὰ παρατιθέμενα ὑμῖν, which closely resembles πᾶν τὸ
παρατιθέμενον ὑμῖν ἐσθίετε of 1 Corinthians 10:27.
35 Cf. A. R. C. Leaney, A Commentary on the Gospel according
to St. Luke (London, 1958), p. 176. Of course, if we adopt the
variant reading “seventy-two”, a different symbolism is
indicated. Cf. B. M. Metzger, “Seventy or Seventy-two
Disciples?” in Historical and Literary Studies, Pagan, Jewish
and Christian (Leiden/Grand Rapids, 1968), pp. 67 ff.
36 In Mark 12:17 and Romans 13:7 alike “render” is ἀπόδοτε
(“give back”).
37 TB Shabbat 31a. See p. 49.
38 The words “against you” (εἰς σέ) should probably be omitted
after “sins” (ἁμαρτήσῃ), as in NEB.
39 Cf. Matthew 24:43 f.; Revelation 3:3; 16:15 (also 2 Peter
3:10).
40 “Put on” may have been one of several captions under which
the sections of a primitive baptismal catechesis were summed
up; cf. Galatians 3:27 (“as many of you as were baptized into
Christ have put on Christ”); also Colossians 3:12.
41 According to R. Bultmann (Theology of the New Testament, i,
p. 188), “when he refers to Christ as an example, he is thinking
not of the historical but of the pre-existent Jesus”. This is true
of two of the Pauline texts he quotes in support, where Christ’s
self-denial in becoming man is the subject (Philippians 2:5 ff.; 2
Corinthians 8:9), but not of the third (Romans 15:3), where his
enduring of reproach for God’s sake during his life on earth is
in view, nor yet of those others mentioned above, where many
of the virtues recommended to Christians would not have been
relevant to the pre-existent Christ.
1 See p. 101.
2 2 Corinthians 3:7–16; see pp. 200 f; 275.
3 See pp. 70, 190.
4 Cf. Mark 12:35–37.
5 Perhaps the compound verb ὑπερύψωσεν echoes ὑψωθήσεται
(“shall be exalted”), used of the Servant of Yahweh in the
Greek version of Isaiah 52:13 (cf. Ephesians 1:20–22).
6 The passage Philippians 2:6–11 may be pre-Pauline, but Paul
makes it his own. See p. 131 with n. 25.
7 Cf. A. R. Johnson, Sacral Kingship in Ancient Israel (Cardiff,
1955), pp. 120 ff.; H. Ringgren, The Messiah in the Old
Testament (London, 1956), pp. 13 ff.
8 Quoted by Paul in Romans 14:11 with the appended comment:
“So each of us shall give account of himself to God” (i.e. before
his judgment seat).
9 Another example is 1 Peter 3:15, where Isaiah 8:13, “Yahweh
of hosts (LXX κύριον αὐτόν), him you shall sanctify”, is adapted in
the form: “sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts”.
10 Cf. F. F. Bruce, “Jesus is Lord”, in Soli Deo Gloria: New
Testament Studies in Honor of William Childs Robinson, ed. J.
McD. Richards (Richmond, Va., 1968), pp. 23–36, and Paul and
Jesus (Grand Rapids, 1974), pp. 81–91.
11 Cf. H. Lietzmann, Mass and Lord’s Supper, E. T. (Leiden,
1953 ff.), p. 193; C. F. D. Moule, “A Reconsideration of the
Context of Maranatha”, NTS 6 (1959–60), 307 ff. See pp. 66 f.
12 Cf. M. Black, “The Christological Use of the Old Testament in
the New Testament”, NTS 18 (1971–2), 10; “The Maranatha
Invocation”, in Christ and Spirit in the New Testament: Studies
in Honour of C. F. D. Moule, ed. B. Lindars and S. S. Smalley
(Cambridge, 1973), pp. 189 ff.; and see now most recently The
Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4, ed. J.
T. Milik (Oxford, 1976), pp. 171, 175. The form maryā
corresponds to ὁ κύριος in (Greek) 1 Enoch 10:9.
13 Cf. 2 Corinthians 13:4a.
14 There is a close connexion between his being “designated
Son of God in power” and the coming of the kingdom of God “in
power” in Mark 9:1. During Jesus’ earthly ministry the
Kingdom of God was subject to limitations (cf. Luke 12:50). See
p. 141.
15 Like the oracle of Psalm 110:1, this one also probably had its
original life-setting in the enthronement of a Davidic king. The
clause “You are my Son” is part of the utterance of the
heavenly voice to Jesus at his baptism in Mark 1:11 (cf. John
1:34, “I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son
of God”); in the Western text of the parallel in Luke 3:22 the
heavenly voice repeats the full wording: “you are my Son;
today I have begotten you”.
16 Cf. A. D. Nock, “ ‘Son of God’ in Pauline and Hellenistic
Thought”, in his Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, ed.
Z. Stewart, ii (Oxford, 1972), pp. 928–939; M. Hengel, The Son
of God: The Origin of Christology and the History of Jewish-
Hellenistic Religion, E. T. (London, 1976).
17 Cf. the Q–logion Matthew 11:27/Luke 10:22; but Jesus’ use of
Abba is evidence enough. See pp. 208 f.
18 See pp. 182 f., 412 ff.; cf. also F. F. Bruce, “Galatian
Problems, 3. The ‘Other’ Gospel”, BJRL 53 (1970–1), pp. 266–
70. For the characterization of those elemental powers as
“weak and beggarly” see Galatians 4:9.
19 Cf. the challenge of the Servant of Yahweh in Isaiah 50:8 f.
20 Cf. the abortive attempt to prosecute Joshua the high priest
in the heavenly court in Zechariah 3:1–5.
21 This intercession is obscured in LXX, but the Targum of
Jonathan introduces the theme elsewhere in the fourth Servant
Song, e.g. at Isaiah 53:4, 11 (“for their trespasses he will make
entreaty”), 12 (“he will make entreaty for many trespasses”).
See p. 66.
22 Cf. E. G. Rupp, “The Finished Work of Christ in Word and
Sacrament”, in The Finality of Christ, ed. D. Kilpatrick
(Nashville/New York, 1966), pp. 175 ff.
23 Cf. J. D. G. Dunn, “2 Corinthians 3:17—‘the Lord is the
Spirit’ ”, JTS n.s. 21 (1970), 309 ff.; C. F. D. Moule, “2 Cor.
3:18b, Kathaper apo kuriou pneumatos”, in Neues Testament und
Geschichte, Oscar Cullmann zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. H.
Baltensweiler and B. Reicke (Zürich/Tübingen, 1972), pp. 231
ff.
24 Cf. Paul’s use of παρρησία in 2 Corinthians 3:12; see W. C. van
Unnik, “The Christian’s Freedom of Speech”, BJRL 44 (1961–2),
pp. 466 ff., and “With Unveiled Face”, Novum Testamentum 6
(1963), pp. 153 ff.
25 G. Smeaton, The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Edinburgh,
1882), p. 57.
26 E. Käsemann, Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ii
(Tübingen, 1958), col. 1274 (s.v. “Geist”).
27 The foundation of Paul’s appreciation of Christ as the image
of God in his conversion experience has received close
attention from one of my former students, Dr. Seyoon Kim,
whose studies on the bearing of the Damascus-road
Christophany on Paul’s gospel have provided a welcome
stimulus to my thought on this and related subjects.
28 2 Corinthians 3:18 (see p. 210); cf. Galatians 4:19.
29 1 Corinthians 15:49.
30 Paul says this of the ἀνήρ, the male, although in Genesis 1:26
f. it is said of ἄνθρωπος, mankind. But he read Genesis 1:26 ff. in
the light of 2:18 ff., and concluded that it was first in the form
of the male that mankind was created to bear the image of
God: “male and female he created them” being taken to mean
“first male and later female”.
31 Wisdom 7:26, where wisdom is also described as “a
reflection (ἀπαύγασμα, cf. Hebrews 1:3, where the Son is the
ἀπαύγασμα of God’s glory) of eternal light, a spotless mirror of
the working of God” (with ἔσοπτρον, “mirror”, cf. κατοπτριζόμενοι,
“beholding”, “reflecting”, in 2 Corinthians 3:18 and διʼ ἐσόπτρου,
“in a mirror”, in 1 Corinthians 13:12).
32 Cf. Revelation 3:14, where Christ speaks as “the Amen, …
the beginning of God’s creation”—an echo of Proverbs 8:22, 30
where Wisdom speaks as “the beginning of his way”, his ʾāmôn
(“master workman”) at the creation.
33 The wording echoes that of Isaiah 52:13–53:12, but in
another Greek rendering than that of the Septuagint (where
the servant is παῖς, not δοῦλος as here): ἐκένωσεν ἑαυτὸν … εἰς
θάνατον reflects “he poured out his soul to death” (Isaiah 53:12).
See p. 131 with n. 25, p. 90 with n. 17.
34 Cf. Rabbi Aqiba in Pirqê Abôt iii. 19.
35 Cf. Rabbi Banna’ah in Genesis Rabba 1:4 (on Genesis 1:1).
36 See pp. 104, 190 ff.
37 Heb. rûaḥ haqqōdeš.
38 A. Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, E. T.
(London, 1931), p. 165.
1 Pirqê Abôt 1:11.
2 Cf. I. H. Marshall, “Palestinian and Hellenistic Christianity:
Some Critical Comments”, NTS 19 (1972–73), pp. 271–287.
3 Cf. J. N. Sevenster, Do you know Greek? (Leiden, 1968). On
the possibility that Hebrew was spoken cf. M. H. Segal, A
Grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew (Oxford, 1927), pp. 14–19; T. W.
Manson, The Teaching of Jesus (Cambridge, 2 1935), pp. 46 ff.
4 TB Soṭah 49b. Both Gamaliel I and Gamaliel II had a son called
Simeon. The rabbis called Gamaliel are not always clearly
distinguished, and the reference here may be to the son of
Gamaliel II (c. A.D. 140) but this would not affect the probable
practice of Gamaliel I.
5 Cf. his own account of the matter in 1 Corinthians 9:19–23.
6 Cf. M. Pohlenz, Paulus und die Stoa (Darmstadt, 1964). Paul’s
possible indebtedness (especially in 2 Corinthians 10–13) to an
older philosophical method is discussed by H. D. Betz, Der
Apostel Paulus und die sokratische Tradition (Tübingen, 1972).
7 See p. 69.
8 The maximum number of lashes prescribed by the written law
was forty (Deuteronomy 25:3); on the principle of “setting a
hedge around the law” to prevent its accidental transgression,
it was traditionally restricted to thirty-nine (Mishnah Makkôt
3:10–15).
9 These include the five occasions just mentioned and three
beatings with rods—presumably at the hands of Roman
authorities, like that at Philippi (Acts 16:22 f.); see p. 221.
10 Caution on this is urged by J. Munck, Paul and the Salvation
of Mankind, E. T. (London, 1959), pp. 264 ff.; cf. also A. D.
Nock, Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, ii (Oxford,
1972), p. 929.
11 Pirqê Aôbt 1:12.
12 Josephus, Ant. xx. 17 ff.
13 See p. 67.
14 Acts 10:47 f.
15 Cf. H. H. Rowley, “Jewish Proselyte Baptism and the Baptism
of John”, in From Moses to Qumran (London, 1963), pp. 211–
235; T. F. Torrance, “Proselyte Baptism”, NTS 1 (1954–55), pp.
150–154.
16 “We must therefore suppose that Paul … was already
familiar with the practice and problems of the Jewish mission
before he became a Christian” (M. Hengel, Between Jesus and
Paul, E. T. [London, 1983], p. 53). Cf. H. J. Schoeps, Paul
(London, 1961), pp. 219 ff. This may be the background of
Paul’s words in Galatians 5:11, “if I … still preach
circumcision”.
17 Cf. M. Hengel, Between Jesus and Paul (London, 1983), pp.
24 f.
18 Acts 8:5–40.
19 Cf. B. M. Metzger, “Antioch-on-the-Orontes”, Biblical
Archaeologist 11 (1948), pp. 70–88; G. W. Elderkin, R. Stillwell,
F. O. Waage, D. B. Waage, Antioch-on-the-Orontes, I–IV/2
(Princeton and Oxford, 1934–52); G. Downey, A History of
Antioch in Syria from Seleucus to the Arab Conquest
(Princeton, 1961) and Ancient Antioch (Princeton, 1963).
20 Cf. Josephus, Ant. xvi. 148.
21 1 Maccabees 11:41–51.
22 Josephus, BJ vii. 45.
23 Acts 6:5 (see p. 128).
24 Acts 11:20.
25 Cf. E. Lohmeyer, Kyrios Jesus: Eine Untersuchung zu Phil. 2,
5–11 (Heidelberg, 1928, 2 1961); E. Käsemann, “A Critical
Analysis of Philippians 2:5–11” (1950), E.T. in Journal for
Theology and Church 5 (1968), pp. 45–88; D. Georgi, “Der
vorpaulinische Hymnus Phil. 2, 6–11”, in Zeit und Geschichte:
Dankesgabe an R. Bultmann, ed. E. Dinkler (Tübingen, 1964),
pp. 263–293; R. P. Martin, Carmen Christi: Philippians ii. 5–11
in Recent Interpretation and in the Setting of Early Christian
Worship (Cambridge, 1967); I. H. Marshall, “The Christ-Hymn
in Philippians 2:5–11”, Tyndale Bulletin 19 (1968), pp. 104–127;
C. F. D. Moule, “Further Reflexions on Philippians 2:5–11”, in
Apostolic History and the Gospel, ed. W. W. Gasque and R. P.
Martin (Exeter, 1970), pp. 264–276; M. D. Hooker, “Philippians
2:6–11”, in Jesus und Paulus: Festschrift für W. G. Kummel, ed.
E. E. Ellis and E. Grässer (Göttingen, 1975), pp. 151–164; O.
Hofius, Der Christushymnus Philipper 2, 6–11 (Tübingen, 1976)
26 See pp. 65 f., 89.
27 Cf. Mark 3:6; 12:13.
28 Hebrew māšîaḥ, Aramaic (emphatic state) mešîḥâ, verbal
adjectives of māšaḥ, mešaḥ (“anoint”).
29 Cf. Suetonius, Life of Claudius 25.4 (impulsore Chresto): see
p. 381.
30 See p. 130.
31 The two apostles laid their hands on the Samaritan converts,
so that they received the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:17).
32 See p. 83.
33 The earliest reference to Luke’s being a native of Syrian
Antioch comes at the beginning of the anti-Marcionite prologue
to the Gospel of Luke, late in the second century. Eusebius
(Hist. Eccl. iii. 4) and Jerome (De uiris illustribus, 7) repeat this
testimony. The tradition is attested in one form of the Western
text, where Acts 11:28 appears as a “we” passage: the
prophecy of Agabus to the Antiochene church (see p. 150) is
introduced by the words, “and when we were gathered
together, one of them, named Agabus, spoke …”. J. Smith, in
the light of this tradition, sees significance in the fact that of
the seven Hellenistic almoners appointed in the church of
Jerusalem (see p. 128) only one has his place of origin
mentioned—“Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch” (Acts 6:5); he
notes, by way of analogy, that out of eight accounts of
Napoleon’s Russian Campaign in 1812—three by Frenchmen,
three by Englishmen and two by Scots—only the two Scots
writers mention that the Russian general Barclay de Tolly was
of Scots descent (The Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul
[London, 4 1880], p. 4).
1 “Paradise” (παράδεισος) was a word of Persian origin, used in
the Septuagint (Genesis 2:8 ff.) of the primaeval Eden and in
later Jewish usage of the Eden above. Whether Paul thought of
“the third heaven” as the highest heaven or not—the idea of
seven heavens was commonest at the time (cf. Testament of
Levi 2:7 ff.; Ascension of Isaiah 6:13; 7:13 ff.; TB Ḥagigah 12b)—
this was evidently the heaven in which he located paradise.
According to Luke 23:43 paradise was the abode of bliss after
death; in Revelation 2:7 it is the eschatological Eden.
2 TB Ḥagigah 14b–15b. This experience appears to have been an
early instance of merkābāh (“chariot”) mysticism, in which
contemplative techniques were employed with a view to
attaining the vision of the chariot-throne of God described in
Ezekiel 1 and 10. See G. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism,
Merkabah Mysticism and Talmudic Tradition (New York, 2
1965), pp. 14–19; J. W. Bowker, “ ‘Merkabah’ Visions and the
Visions of Paul”, Journal of Semitic Studies 16 (1971), pp. 157–
173; C. Rowland, The Open Heaven (London, 1982).
3 Cf. W. Wrede, Paul, E. T. (London, 1907), pp. 22 ff. Other
guesses are ophthalmia (e.g. J. T. Brown, “St. Paul’s Thorn in
the Flesh”, in Horae Subsecivae, ed. J. Brown [Edinburgh,
1858]), Malta fever (e.g. W. M. Alexander, “St. Paul’s
Infirmity”, Expository Times 15 [1903–4], pp. 469 ff., 545 ff.),
malaria (e.g. W. M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller and the
Roman Citizen (London, 14 1920), pp. 94 ff.; neurasthenia (e.g.
H. Lietzmann, The Beginnings of the Christian Church, E. T.
[London, 2 1949], p. 113), an impediment in his speech (cf. 2
Corinthians 10:10). Some are perhaps less improbable than
others, but they are all equally guesses.
4 2 Corinthians 4:7.
5 English translation by W. Montgomery (London, 1931) of Die
Mystik des Apostels Paulus (Tübingen, 1930).
6 Leipzig, 1929.
7 A. Deissmann, Paul: A Study in Social and Religious History,
E. T. (London, 1926), p. 149.
8 E. Underhill, Mysticism (London, 12 1930), p. 81 (where she
defines it alternatively as “the art of establishing … conscious
relation with the Absolute”). Rufus M. Jones described
“mysticism, in its normal aspect” as “a type of religion which is
characterized by an immediate consciousness of personal
relationship with a Divine Being” (Studies in Mystical Religion
[London, 1909], p. xviii). Cf. also R. C. Zaehner, Mysticism,
Sacred and Profane (Oxford, 1957); D. Knowles, What is
Mysticism? (London, 1967); G. Parrinder, Mysticism in the
World’s Religions (London, 1976).
9 See R. C. Tannehill’s definition quoted below (p. 147).
10 The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, p. 3.
11 See p. 245.
12 Still less can “we rejoice in God” in Rom 5:11 be understood
in a mystical sense.
13 Plotinus, Ennead vi. 9. 11 (φυγὴ μόνου πρὸς μόνον).
14 1 Corinthians 10:16 f.; 11:20–34a. See pp. 280 ff.
15 See p. 210.
16 The implication of the words “why do you persecute me?”
cannot readily be paralleled elsewhere in Luke’s writings, but
they are completely in tune with Pauline theology.
17 Among recent studies of this passage see R. Yates, “A Note
on Colossians 1:24”, EQ 42 (1970), pp. 88 ff.; L. P. Trudinger,
“A Further Brief Notice on Colossians 1:24”, EQ 45 (1973), pp.
36 ff.; R. J. Bauckham, “Colossians 1:24 Again: The Apocalyptic
Motif”, EQ 47 (1975), pp. 167 ff.
18 1QS col. 9, 11. 4 f., alluding to Hosea 14:2 (cf. Hebrews
13:14).
19 In some places in the Qumran texts (e.g. 1QM col. 11, ll. 7 f.;
CD 2, l. 12; 6, l. 1) the prophets are called God’s “anointed
ones”, in accordance with the precedent set in Psalm 105:15.
20 1QH col. 12, ll. 11 ff.
21 Mark 1:9 f.; cf. John 1:32.
22 To John the Baptist’s prophecy that the Coming One would
baptize “with the Holy Spirit” the words “and fire” are added in
Matthew 3:11/Luke 3:16; cf. the action of wind and fire in the
metaphor of Matthew 3:12/Luke 3:17.
23 Cf. Luke 12:50, where Jesus speaks of being under constraint
until he has accomplished his “baptism”.
24 Cf. John 14:12; 16:7.
25 Whatever be the primary reference of Mark 9:1, it may be
said that the first Christian Pentecost saw “the kingdom of God
come in power”: in that one day Jesus acquired many more
followers than had attached themselves to him during his
earthly ministry. For the “signs” of the early apostolic age cf.
Acts 2:43; 5:12; Galatians 3:5; Hebrews 2:4, etc.
26 1 Corinthians 3:16 f.; 6:19.
27 Romans 5:5.
28 1 Corinthians 9:24–27.
29 F. W. H. Myers, Saint Paul (London, 1867), stanza 15; cf.
Philippians 3:12–14.
30 1 Corinthians 12:14ff.; Romans 12:4f.
31 Cf. Philippians 2:14–16.
32 1 Corinthians 14:18.
33 Cf. 1 Corinthians 12:2 f.
34 See p. 311.
35 Acts 9:1–19; 22:3–16; 26:4–18 (the first of these is related in
the third person, the second and third in the first person, on
Paul’s own lips).
36 He seems to mean: They know how hostile I was to you and
your people; they will therefore understand that my change of
heart must have been the result of the most convincing proof,
and so they will take my testimony seriously.
37 See p. 94. According to Acts 9:15 his commission had
originally been to Jews as well as Gentiles (cf. Acts 26:17, 20).
On the relation of the Acts record to Paul’s testimony in
Galatians 1:16 see O. Betz, “Die Vision des Paulus im Tempel
von Jerusalem”, in Verborum Veritas, Festschrift für G. Stählin,
ed. O. Böcher and K. Haacker (Wuppertal, 1970), pp. 113–123;
he concludes that Luke’s account was composed on the pattern
of Isaiah’s temple vision (Isaiah 6:1 ff.).
38 F. W. Newman, The Soul: its Sorrows and its Aspirations
(London, 3 1852), pp. 89 ff; W. James, The Varieties of Religious
Experience (London, 1902), pp. 80 ff., 166 ff.
39 Romans 15:18; cf. 1 Corinthians 15:10.
40 1 Corinthians 9:1; 15:8 f.
41 See p. 75.
42 See p. 167.
43 R. C. Tannehill, Dying and Rising with Christ (Berlin, 1967),
p. 4, n. 7.
1 See pp. 385 ff.
2 A reviewer with some concern for verisimilitude might ask if a
dark-skinned man was likely to have a red-headed son (for the
name Rufus was no doubt as appropriately bestowed as the
designation Niger); but the fiction-writer could readily explain
that Rufus’s mother was auburn.
3 Cf. W. M. Ramsay, The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the
Trustworthiness of the New Testament (London, 1915), pp. 374
ff.
4 In Colossians 4:10 f. Paul sends greetings from three
companions whom he calls “the only men of the circumcision
among my fellow-workers for the kingdom of God”. It is a
natural inference that the three other companions whose
greetings he sends immediately afterwards (verses 12–14)—
Epaphras, Luke and Demas—were not of Jewish birth.
5 Ephrem Syrus (4th century A.D.), in his commentary on Acts
adds “and Luke the Cyrenean” after “Mark” in Acts 12:25, with
a comment that “these were both evangelists”.
6 Cf. H. J. Cadbury, “Lucius of Cyrene”, in BC i, 5 (London,
1933), pp. 489 ff.
7 Cf. J. H. Moulton and G. Milligan, The Vocabulary of the
Greek Testament (Edinburgh, 1930), p. 615.
8 Cf. Josephus, Ant. xv. 373–378.
9 Suetonius, Life of Claudius 18.2.
10 Cf. Josephus, Ant. iii. 320 f., xx. 51–53, 101. It may have been
while visiting Jerusalem in connexion with her famine relief
that Helena undertook a Nazirite vow (Mishnah Nazir 3:6).
11 Acts 11:27–30.
12 See pp. 319 ff.
13 In Galatians 1:18 Paul says “after (μετά) three years”; in 2:1
he says “in the course of (διά) fourteen years”. For a recent
discussion see J. A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament
(London, 1976), pp. 36 ff.
14 Not even when Agabus was the channel of revelation (cf.
Acts 21:10–14).
15 Gk. οἱ δοκοῦντες. Three times in this context Paul uses this
form (the present participle of δοκεῖν, “seem”) to denote the
leaders of the Jerusalem church. In itself this use has no
nuance of disparagement or sarcasm, either here or in Gal. 2:9
(“men of repute as pillars”) But in Gal. 2:6, where Paul speaks
of them as “men of some repute” and adds “what they were
makes no difference to me; God has no favourites”, he is at
least reacting vigorously against those who reckoned his
apostolic authority dubious by comparison with that of the
Jerusalem leaders (perhaps because of their association with
the historical Jesus).
16 Cf. Philippians 2:16; also 1 Corinthians 9:24–27, with 1
Timothy 6:12; 2 Timothy 4:7f.
17 Cf. C. K. Barrett, “Paul and the ‘Pillar’ Apostles”, in Studia
Paulina in honorem J. de Zwaan, ed. J. N. Sevenster and W. C.
van Unnik (Haarlem, 1953), pp. 1 ff. Perhaps four “pillars”
were originally recognized, but one (James the son of Zebedee)
had been removed by martyrdom (Acts 12:12).
18 Galatians 1:18 f; see p. 84.
19 Cf. O. Cullmann, Peter: Disciple-Apostle-Martyr, E. T.
(London, 1953), p. 18, and TDNT vi (Grand Rapids, 1968), s.v.
Πέτρος, p. 100, n. 6; E. Dinkler, “Der Brief an die Galater”, in
Verkündigung und Forschung, 1953–55, pp. 182 f. J. Munck
curiously inclined to the opposite view: “Perhaps we should
rather say that vv. 7 f. are Paul’s formulation, while v. 9 … is a
citation of the argument” (Paul and the Salvation of Mankind,
E. T. [London, 1959], p. 62, n. 2).
20 Cf. G. Klein, “Galater 2, 6–9 und die Geschichte der
Jerusalemer Urgemeinde”, in Rekonstrucktion und
Interpretation (München, 1969), pp. 107 ff.
21 Cf. Galatians 2:12 (see pp. 175 ff.).
22 The debate about the New Testament apostleship has come a
long way since K. H. Rengstorf’s epoch-making article ἀπόστολος
in TWNT i (Stuttgart, 1933)—E. T. in TDNT i (Grand Rapids,
1964), pp. 407–477. For a judicious assessment of the state of
the question cf. R. Schnackenburg, “Apostles before and during
Paul’s Time”, in Apostolic History and the Gospel, ed. W. W.
Gasque and R. P. Martin (Exeter, 1970), pp. 287–303; see also
W. Schneemelcher and others, “Apostle and Apostolic”, etc., in
New Testament Apocrypha, E. T., ed. E. Hennecke, W.
Schneemelcher and R. McL. Wilson (London 1965), pp. 25–87;
J. A. Kirk, “Apostleship since Rengstorf: Towards a Synthesis”,
NTS 21 (1974–75), pp. 249–264.
23 Tertullian ridicules the Marcionites for their recognition of
Paul as the only true apostle of Jesus Christ at the same time as
they disowned the one independent witness to his apostolic
credentials: “Let me say here to those who reject the Acts of
the Apostles: ‘It is of primary necessity that you show us who
this Paul was, what he was before he was an apostle, and how
he became an apostle”—so very great is the use which they
make of him in respect of other questions” (De praescriptione
haerettorum, 23).
24 Cf. C. W. Emmet, “The Case for the Tradition”, in BC i, 2
(London, 1922), p. 279.
25 Cf. K. Holl, “Der Kirchenbegriff des Pauius in seinem
Verhältnis 7, zu dem der Urgemeinde”, in Gesammelte
Aufsätze ii (Tübingen, 1928), pp. 44 ff., especially pp. 58 ff.
26 At an earlier date the men of Qumran called themselves “the
poor” (hāʾebyōnîm) and in more recent times there have been
separatist Christian groups which described themselves by
such terms as “the poor of the flock” (cf. Zechariah 11:7, 11,
although there the word in the Massoretic text is not ʾebyōnîm).
27 So K. Holl, loc. cit.
28 The Western text of Galatians 2:5 omits οὐδέ before πρὸς ὥραν
and thus makes Paul say the exact opposite of what he most
probably meant.
29 F. C. Burkitt, Christian Beginnings (London, 1924), p. 118; so
also S. C. Neill, Jesus Through Many Eyes (London, 1976), pp.
55 f.
30 T. W. Manson, Studies in the Gospels and Epistles
(Manchester, 1962), pp. 175 f.
31 Cf. T. W. Manson, ibid.; the parenthesis, he suggests,
comprises verses 4 and 5. B. Orchard, “A New Solution of the
Galatians Problem”, BJRL 28 (1944), pp. 154 ff., adopts a
similar interpretation, but includes verse 3 in the parenthesis.
Cf. his “The Ellipsis between Galatians 2, 3 and 2, 4”, Biblica
54 (1973), pp. 469–481, and “Once Again the Ellipsis between
Galatians 2, 3 and 2, 4”, Biblica 57 (1976), pp. 254 f.
32 See p. 175.
33 Cf. Acts 10:34–11:18.
1 Acts 13:1 ff.
2 Cf. Acts 12:12.
3 CIL vi. 31545.
4 He is named on a Latin inscription found by W. M. Ramsay
and J. G. C. Anderson at Pisidian Antioch in 1912; see Ramsay,
The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the
New Testament (London, 1915), pp. 150–152.
5 In CIL vi. 253 he is named as consul suffectus along with
Torquatus Asprenas on the former occasion. He is mentioned
twice by Galen (De anatomicis administrationibus i. 2; De
praenotione 2).
6 E.g. by E. Groag, in Pauly-Wissowa RE, s.v. “Sergius”, No. 34,
and (tentatively) by K. Lake, in BC i, 5, p. 458.
7 IGRR iii. 935; the name of his official position is missing but
he is said to have held it under Claudius. Another inscription
(IGRR iii. 930), from Soli on the north coast of Cyprus,
mentions a proconsul named Paullus as holding office, perhaps,
in the tenth year (? of Claudius); cf. T. B. Mitford, Annual of the
British School at Athens 42 (1947), pp. 201–206.
8 Mainly by the poets but also in a considerable number of
inscriptions. She was also called Kypris (“the Cyprian”). Her
cult at Paphos was probably Phoenician in origin: Herodotus
(History i. 105) derives it from Ascalon, Pausanias (Description
of Greece i. 14. 6) from Assyria.
9 Cf. Acts 17:6 f.; see p. 225.
10 “The proconsul believed”, says Luke, “… for he was
astonished at the teaching of the Lord” (Acts 13:12).
11 Possibly Luke intends ὁ μάγος to be the equivalent of the false
prophet’s name Elymas, which may have been a Semitic word
cognate with Arabic ʿalīm (“wise”, “learned”). See further A. D.
Nock, “Paul and the Magus”, in BC i, 5, pp. 164 ff.
12 St. Paul the Traveller, pp. 94 ff.; see p. 135.
13 Cf. G. L. Cheesman, “The Family of the Caristanii at Antioch
in Pisidia”, JRS 3 (1913), pp. 253 ff., especially pp. 261–265. W.
M. Ramsay, eking out the limited epigraphic evidence with a
generous supply of imagination, argued that Sergia Paulla was
a Christian, having inherited the faith from her supposed
ancestor the proconsul of Cyprus (The Bearing of Recent
Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament, pp.
152 ff.)—an argument consisting, as K. Lake put it, of
“marvellously ingenious, but not very convincing combinations”
(BC i, 5, p. 458).
14 Pisidian Antioch was probably one of the “fortresses and
most important places” in Phrygia where Jews were settled by
Antiochus III (Josephus, Ant. xii. 149).
15 “Word of exhortation” (λόγος παρακλήσεως) is the expression
used by the writer to the Hebrews (13:22) to describe his
“epistle”—a written homily. The first lesson was taken from the
Law, the second from the Prophets (see F. F. Bruce, New
Testament History [London, 2 1971], pp. 136 f.).
16 These words are widely thought to have been quoted by Paul
from a current confession of faith. This, “though it is hardly as
certain as it is sometimes assumed to be, seems highly
probable” (C. E. B. Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans, ICC, i
[Edinburgh, 1975], p. 57).
17 RSV and NEB render “freed”, not “justified”. But Luke
probably intended the word to be understood in its Pauline
sense.
18 Cf. B. W. Bacon, The Story of St. Paul (London, 1905), p. 103.
19 Xenophon, Anabasis i. 2. 19.
20 In the second-century Acts of Justin (ch. 4) one of the
Christians accused at Rome along with Justin Martyr, a slave
named Hierax, says that he was “dragged away from Iconium
of Phrygia”.
21 E.g. Cicero, Ad Familiares xv. 4. 2, and Pliny, Nat. Hist. v.
95, but on the latter see W. M. Ramsay. “The ‘Galatia’ of St.
Paul and the ‘Galatic territory’ of Acts”, in Studia Biblica et
Ecclesiastica iv (Oxford, 1896), pp. 15 ff., especially pp. 46–55.
22 The best-known episode in the second-century Acts of Paul
(see p. 467).
23 For an argument that the paragraph 1 Thessalonians 2:13–16
is an anti-Jewish interpolation cf. H. Boers, “The Form-Critical
Study of Paul’s Letters: 1 Thessalonians as a Case Study”, NTS
22 (1975–76), pp. 145–153. Such an argument is difficult to
establish in the absence of supporting textual evidence.
24 Hebrew lōʾ ʿam, which was readily associated in the mind of a
biblical expositor like Paul with lōʾ ʿammî (“Not my people”) of
Hosea 1:9 (cf. Romans 9:25 f.). See pp. 333 ff.
25 The identification was made by J. R. S. Sterrett in 1885, on
the strength of a Latin inscription found there (CIL iii. 6786),
naming the place as Col (onia) Iul(ia) Felix Gemina Lustra. Cf.
W. M. Ramsay, Historical Geography of Asia Minor (London,
1890), p. 332.
26 Cf. Acts 16:1 f.
27 The best-known attestation in legend is the story of Philemon
and Baucis, who received a visit from these two gods incognito
(Ovid, Metamorphoses viii. 626 ff.). There is inscriptional
evidence of their joint worship around Lystra, e.g. at Sedasa,
where some men with Lycaonian names dedicated to Zeus a
statue of Hermes together with a sun-dial c. A.D. 250 (W. M.
Calder, “A Cult of the Homonades”, Classical Review 24 [1910],
pp. 77 ff.), and at another spot in the same neighbourhood,
where a stone altar was dedicated to the “hearer of prayer”
(Ἐπήκοος), presumably Zeus, and to Hermes (MAMA viii
[Manchester, 1962], No. 1). Cf. also W. M. Calder, “Zeus and
Hermes at Lystra”, Expositor, series 7, 10 (1910), pp. 1 ff., and
“The Priest of Zeus at Lystra”, ibid., pp. 148 ff.
28 Acts 17:22 ff.; see pp. 238 ff.
29 In the poetical quotations in Acts 17:28.
30 Romans 1:18 ff.
31 Romans 3:21–26.
32 See M. H. Ballance, “The Site of Derbe: A New Inscription”,
Anatolian Studies 7 (1957), pp. 147–151; “Derbe and
Faustinopolis”, Anatolian Studies 14 (1964), pp. 139 f. in the
former paper he argued for Kerti Hüyük; in the latter for Devri
Şehri. But in view of conflicting evidence on the provenance of
the inscription on which the latter identification is based,
“Kerti Hüyük cannot be so quickly eliminated as the site of
ancient Derbe” (B. Van Elderen, “Some Archaeological
Observations on Paul’s First Missionary Journey”, in Apostolic
History and the Gospel, ed. W. W. Gasque and R. P. Martin
[Exeter, 1970], pp. 156–161).
33 Possibly beyond, according to G. Ogg, “Derbe”, NTS 9 (1962–
63), pp. 367–370; B. Van Elderen, loc. cit., pp. 159 f.
34 Cf. E. Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles, E. T. (Oxford,
1971), p. 436.
1 T. W. Manson, Studies in the Gospels and Epistles
(Manchester, 1962), pp. 176 f., suggests that this was the
purpose of Barnabas and Paul’s Jerusalem visit of Galatians
2:1–10.
2 Paul’s indictment of paganism in Romans 1:18 ff. is a
commonplace in Jewish literature of the period; cf. Wisdom
13:1 ff. (especially 14:12); Letter of Aristeas, 134–138.
3 Cf. Matthew 5:21 ff.
4 Acts 12:1 ff.
5 Acts 10:1–11:18.
6 While Zealots as such are first mentioned by Josephus when
he so describes the extremists among the insurgents in
Jerusalem in the winter of A.D. 66–67 (BJ ii. 651), he makes it
plain that they are the same people to whom he refers
pejoratively as “bandits” (λῃσταί) from the rising of Judas the
Galilaean in A.D. 6 onwards (Ant. xviii. 8).
7 Josephus, Ant. xx. 102.
8 Josephus, BJ ii. 254 ff.; Ant. xx. 186 f.
9 Cf. Josephus, Ant. xx. 200.
10 Gk. τινα for τινας. D. W. B. Robinson, “The Circumcision of
Titus and Paul’s ‘Liberty’ ”, Australian Biblical Review 12
(1964), pp. 40 f., takes τινα as neuter plural—“certain things”—
and suggests that the reference may be to the contents of the
Jerusalem decree of Acts 15:28 f. (see p. 184).
11 Cf. T. W. Manson, Studies in the Gospels and Epistles, pp.
179–181. It is indeed possible (but unlikely) that what was said
to Peter to make him desist from table-fellowship with Gentiles
was additional to James’s message.
12 Cf. R. Jewett, “The Agitators and the Galatian Congregation”,
NTS 17 (1970–71), pp. 198 ff.
13 1 Corinthians 9:22 f. So Tertullian: “since Paul made himself
all things to all men so that he might gain them all, Peter too
may well have had this in mind in acting somewhat differently
from what he taught” (Against Marcion iv. 3.3).
14 Worse still, there was the risk of eating food that had been
presented in sacrifice to pagan divinities (see pp. 185 f., 270
ff.).
15 Galatians 1:7; 5:12.
16 Cf. W. Schmithals, Paul and the Gnostics, E. T.
(Nashville/New York, 1972), pp. 13 ff. See also the earlier
studies by W. Lütgert, Gesetz und Geist (Gütersloh, 1919), and
J. H. Ropes, The Singular Problem of the Epistle to the
Galatians (Harvard Theological Studies, 14 [1929]), and a
judicious survey by R. McL. Wilson, “Gnostics—in Galatia?” in
Studia Evangelica iv, ed. F. L. Cross = Texte und
Untersuchungen 102 (Berlin, 1968), pp. 358–367.
17 See p. 261.
18 See pp. 408 ff.
19 See R. McL. Wilson, “Gnostics—in Galatia?” p. 361, in
criticism of Schmithals.
20 Galatians 5:6; 6:15; cf. 1 Corinthians 7:19 (see p. 215, n. 14).
21 See pp. 70, 115, 190.
22 Deuteronomy 27:26, quoted in Galatians 3:10.
23 “A hanged man is accursed by God” (Deuteronomy 21:23,
quoted in Galatians 3:13).
24 Genesis 15:6, quoted in Galatians 3:6.
25 Cf. Rosemary Haughton, The Liberated Heart (London,
1975), pp. 100 f.
26 Acts 15:28 f.
27 Paul’s warning against the “mutilation” party in Philippians
3:2 and his insistence in Colossians 2:11 on the inward and
spiritual character of true circumcision do not imply pressure
on Gentile Christians by members of the Jerusalem church.
28 Abstention from eating (a) things sacrificed to idols, (b) the
flesh of strangled animals, (c) flesh with blood in it. The second
of these is one instance of the third. In the Western text of Acts
15:20, 29 (cf. 21:25), these three are reduced to two, idolatry
and blood (probably in the sense of bloodshed); with the ban on
fornication they constitute a threefold ethical prohibition.
29 The corresponding Hebrew word, zenût, is so used in CD 4, ll.
17, 20 ff. (of polygamy and, more particularly, of intermarriage
between uncle and niece).
30 The commandments of Gen. 9:1–7 were held in rabbinical
teaching to be binding on all Noah’s descendants, Gentiles as
well as Jews. But, according to the oldest form of this teaching,
six of these seven “Noachian decrees” had already been
enjoined on Adam: only the seventh, the ban on eating flesh
with the blood in it (Genesis 9:4) was given for the first time to
Noah (Deuteronomy Rabba 2:25 on Deuteronomy 4:41; TB
Sanhedrin 59b). See p. 195 with n. 19.
31 They are regarded as obligatory in the letters to the seven
churches of Asia (Revelation 2:14, 20), and were held to be
binding in the churches of the Rhone valley in A.D. 177
(Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. v. 1. 26) and by Tertullian in Carthage a
decade or so later (Apology, 9). In the late ninth century Alfred
the Great incorporated them in his English law-code.
32 1 Corinthians 6:13 (see p. 261).
33 Romans 14:14.
34 Cf. Mark 12:31 (see p. 58).
1 Mark 10:20 and parallels.
2 Philippians 3:9.
3 It would be a mistake, however, to see here only the reflection
of Paul’s personal experience: see the exposition of the context
in R. C. Tannehill, Dying and Rising with Christ (Berlin, 1967),
pp. 55 ff.
4 L. Baeck, “The Faith of Paul”, Journal of Jewish Studies 3
(1952), pp. 93 ff.; see p. 70 with n. 5.
5 L. Baeck, “The Faith of Paul”, pp. 105 f., quoting W. Bacher,
Tradition und Tradenten (Frankfurt, 1914), pp. 25 ff., 233 f.
6 Cf. 1 Corinthians 9:20; Acts 16:3; 21:20–26.
7 Cf. Romans 3:8; 6:1 ff.
8 Cf. Formula of Concord (1576), article 6, in P. Schaff, The
Creeds of Christendom, iii; The Evangelical Protestant
Churches (New York, 1878), pp. 130–135. Luther himself, in
contrast to his followers, taught only two uses of the law: the
usus theologicus (sometimes called the usus spiritualis) and the
usus politicus (sometimes called the usus civilis). (For this
information about Luther I am indebted to Professor James
Atkinson.)
9 For these angelic intermediaries in the giving of the law see
Acts 7:53; Hebrews 2:2; cf. also Jubilees 1:29; Mekhilta (tractate
Baḥōdeš 5) on Exodus 20:18; Sifre 102 on Numbers 12:5; Pesiqta
Rabbati 21. More general mediation or intercession is ascribed
to angels in Philo, On Dreams i, 141 ff.; Testament of Dan 6:2.
10 Cf. Colossians 2:8, 20; see pp. 182 f., 413 ff.
11 See pp. 187, 201 f.
12 Cf. J. Calvin, Institutio Christianae Religionis (Edinburgh,
1874 [1559]), ii. 7. 12–15.
13 Cf. Calvin, Institutio ii. 7. 17.
14 K. Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, E. T. (Oxford, 1933), pp.
37 (“the perception which moves outwards from God cannot
have free course until the arrogance of religion be done
away”), 238 (“But religion must die. In God we are rid of it”),
374: “All human religion is directed towards an end beyond
itself (3:21); and that end is Christ”. Barth, however, insists
elsewhere that τέλος in Romans 10:4 means “the ‘aim’, the
contents, the substance, the sum total of the Law, its meaning
and at the same time the way to its fulfilment”; he compares
Matthew 5:17 (A Shorter Commentary on Romans, E. T.
[London, 1959], p. 126).
15 E. Fuchs, “Christus das Ende der Geschichte”, Evangelische
Theologie 8 (1948/9), pp. 447 ff. = Gesammelte Aufsätze ii
(Tübingen, 1960), pp. 79 ff.; cf. his Studies of the Historical
Jesus, E. T. (London, 1964), pp. 40, 176 ff.; R. Bultmann,
History and Eschatology (Edinburgh, 1957), p. 43 (“history has
reached its end, since Christ is the end of the law”). See pp.
245 f., 335.
16 Cf. O. Cullmann, Salvation in History, E. T. (London, 1967),
pp. 40–63.
17 T. W. Manson, in Peake’s Commentary on the Bible, ed. M.
Black and H. H. Rowley (London and Edinburgh, 2 1962), p.
945.
18 Cf. also M. D. Hooker, “Adam in Romans i”, NTS 6 (1959–
60), pp. 297 ff.
19 Cf. C. K. Barrett, From First Adam to Last (London, 1962),
pp. 23–26. In Paul’s eyes the ungodliness of the pagan world
consisted in disobedience to the creation ordinances (Romans
1:18 ff.). See p. 186, n. 30.
20 Cf. Philippians 3:6; also Acts 23:1.
21 Parallels have been adduced from Greek and Latin literature
(e.g. Euripides, Medea 1078–80; Ovid, Metamorphoses vii. 20
f.; Amores iii. 4. 17; Horace, Epistles i. 8. 11; Epictetus,
Enchiridion ii. 26. 4), but however similar their wording may be,
none of them means exactly what Paul does.
22 Luther’s interior conflict was spiritual, while Augustine’s was
moral, but Paul seems to have been troubled in neither respect
before his conversion.
23 K. Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective
Conscience of the West”, Harvard Theological Review 56
(1963), pp. 199 ff. See also the critique of Stendahl in E.
Käsemann, Perspectives on Paul, E. T. (London, 1969), pp. 60
ff., and Stendahl’s reply in Paul among Jews and Gentiles
(Philadelphia, 1976), pp. 129 ff.
24 E. K. Lee, A Study in Romans (London, 1962), p. 27.
25 The psychological-autobiographical interpretation of Romans
7:7–25 received a heavy (though not mortal) blow from W. G.
Kümmel, Römer 7 und die Bekehrung des Paulus (Leipzig,
1929), to the point where it has been spoken of as “now
relegated to the museum of exegetical absurdities” (P.
Démann, “Moïse et la loi dans la pensée de saint Paul”, in
Moïse, l’homme de l’alliance [Paris, 1954], p. 229). Kümmel
treats the “I” as symbolical, referring to the condition of all
Jews under the law.
26 In the following words, “Who will deliver me from this body
of death?” (verse 24b), the “body of death” is human nature in
its frailty, existing κατὰ σάρκα.
27 M. Goguel, The Birth of Christianity, E. T. (London, 1953),
pp. 213 f.; cf. C. H. Dodd, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans
(London, 1932), p. 107 (“A man is not moved like that by an
ideal construction”).
28 J. Milton, Areopagitica (1644).
29 Cf. A. Nygren, Commentary on Romans, E. T. (London,
1952), pp. 291 ff.
30 To live “according to the flesh” means for Paul to live “under
law” (i.e. in the old aeon of bondage); to live “according to the
Spirit” means to live “under grace” (i.e. in the new aeon of
freedom).
31 Deuteronomy 21:23.
32 Genesis 15:6.
33 See pp. 19, 58, 337.
34 See p. 192.
35 Cf. 1 Corinthians 6:12–20; 11:17–22.
36 M. Luther, Tractatus de libertate christiana (1520), in
Luthers Werke (Weimar edition), 7 (1897), p. 49.
37 See also T. W. Manson, “Jesus, Paul and the Law”, in Judaism
and Christianity, iii: Law and Religion, ed. E. I. J. Rosenthal
(London, 1938), pp. 125 ff.; C. F. D. Moule, “Obligation in the
Ethic of Paul”, in Christian History and Interpretation: Studies
presented to John Knox, ed, W. R. Farmer, C. F. D. Moule, R. R.
Niebuhr (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 389 ff.; E. P. Sanders,
“Patterns of Religion in Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: A Holistic
Method of Comparison”, Harvard Theological Review 66
(1973), pp. 455 ff.; D. P. Fuller, “Paul and ‘The Works of the
Law’ ”, Westminster Theological Journal 38 (1975–76), pp. 28
ff.; C. E. B. Cranfield, “St Paul and the Law”, Scottish Journal of
Theology 17 (1964), pp. 43–88; H. Hübner, Das Gesetz bei
Paulus (Göttingen, 1978).
1 Where a male and a female “of every living thing of all flesh”
were to be taken by Noah into the ark; so also in Genesis 7:15
f. Apart from these, “all flesh died” (Genesis 7:21).
2 This is the probable meaning (cf. NEB: “he for his part is
mortal flesh”); less likely is the suggestion in RV margin: “in
their going astray they are flesh” (Hebrew bešaggām hûʾ bāśār).
3 Cf. Deuteronomy 10:16; 30:6; Jeremiah 4:4; Philippians 3:3.
4 See p. 135.
5 Cf. 2 Samuel 5:1.
6 See p. 81.
7 Cf. Colossians 2:11; the Hebrew equivalent occurs in 1QpHab.
9, l. 2.
8 Literally, “in likeness of flesh of sin”; cf. A. Nygren,
Commentary on Romans, E. T. (London, 1952), pp. 313 ff.; C. E.
B. Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans, ICC, i (Edinburgh,
1975), pp. 379 ff. See p. 199.
9 See p. 329.
10 See p. 197.
NEB New English Bible
11 Cf., however, R. H. Gundry, “Sōma” in Biblical Theology
(Cambridge, 1976), p. 39; he distinguishes “the body of sin”
from the “flesh” in that the former “is the body which sin, or
the flesh, dominates”. Its destruction, he says, is its “future
dissolution” and replacement by the resurrection body (ibid.,
pp. 57 f.).
12 “The deeds of the body have their immediate source in the
sōma, but their ultimate source in the sarx, which dominates the
sōma and is thereby indistinguishable from it” (R. H. Gundry,
op. cit., p. 39).
13 “But here the body of death is not ‘flesh’ in the sense of sin
itself; it is the physical body destined to die because within its
members dwells the law of sin and death” (Gundry, op. cit., p.
40).
14 Cf. Gundry, op. cit., pp. 43–45.
15 In 2 Corinthians 7:1, “let us cleanse ourselves from every
defilement of flesh and spirit”, it is the human spirit that is
meant.
16 See pp. 55, 60, 428 ff.
17 Literally “Spirit was not yet”. Cf. John 16:7 (one of Jesus’
upper-room promises about the Paraclete): “if I go, I will send
him to you”.
18 Acts 2:1 ff.; cf. W. F. Lofthouse, “The Holy Spirit in the Acts
and the Fourth Gospel”, Expository Times 52 (1940–41), pp.
334–336.
19 Acts 2:43; 4:8, 31; 5:32 (cf. John 15:26 f.), etc.
20 Acts 11:28; 13:1 f.; 20:23; 21:4, 10 f.
21 Acts 15:28.
22 Acts 13:4; 16:6–10.
23 John 14:26; 16:12–15.
24 Cf. 1 Corinthians 15:45, “the last Adam [i.e. Christ in
resurrection] became a life-giving spirit” (with E. Käsemann’s
comment, quoted above, p. 122 with n. 26).
25 The practically interchangeable force of “seal” and
“guarantee” (Gk. ἀρραβών) as used of the Spirit is specially
evident in 2 Corinthians 1:22 and Ephesians 1:13 f. Gk. ἀρραβών
is derived from a Phoenician mercantile term, which appears in
Hebrew as ʿērābôn. It may be nothing more than a coincidence,
but it is noteworthy that on the first occasion where ʿērābôn
occurs in the Hebrew Bible, meaning the “pledge” or
“guarantee” of repayment of a debt, the debtor’s “seal” (Heb.
ḥōtām) was an important part of the pledge (Genesis 38:18, 25).
26 Romans 8:26 f.
27 Romans 8:28; see p. 332, no. 22.
28 Romans 8:2.
29 See p. 120.
30 Cf. Romans 12:4–8. Occasionally Paul expresses this
corporate unity in terms not of a body but of a temple; cf. 1
Corinthians 3:16 (“you are God’s temple and God’s Spirit
dwells in you”). While the image of the body seems to be
original with him, that of the temple had earlier antecedents:
the Qumran community, for example, looked on itself as a
living temple in which the general membership constituted the
holy place and the inner council the holy of holies (1QS 8, ll. 5
f.). (Paul also uses the temple image for the individual believer,
as in 1 Corinthians 6:19, “your body is a temple of the Holy
Spirit within you”).
31 A wealth of exegetical material is presented in E.
Schweizer’s TDNT articles πνεῦμα (vi [1968], pp. 332–455), σάρξ
and σῶμα (vii [1971], pp. 98–151, 1024–1094). See also A. Sand,
Der Begriff “Sarx” in den paulinischen Hauptbriefen
(Regensburg, 1967); M. E. Isaacs, The Concept of Spirit
(London, 1967). A specially sympathetic exposition of Paul’s
doctrine of the Spirit is presented by J. D. G. Dunn, Jesus and
the Spirit (London, 1975), pp. 97–114, 199–342.
1 Acts 15:36–39.
2 Colossians 4:10; cf. Philemon 24; 2 Timothy 4:11.
3 Galatians 2:13.
4 Cf. 1 Corinthians 9:6.
5 Acts 15:22, 32 f.
6 Cf. Acts 16:37.
7 Cf. 1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Corinthians
1:19.
8 Acts 15:27.
9 It is implied in Acts 16:4 that the contents of the letter were
communicated to South Galatian churches also, but see A. S.
Geyser, “Paul, the Apostolic Decree and the Liberals in
Corinth”, in Studia Paulina in Honorem J. de Zwaan, ed. J. N.
Sevenster and W. C. van Unnik (Haarlem, 1953), pp. 124 ff.,
where a case is argued for the deletion of that verse.
10 See pp. 171 f.
11 Her name is given as Eunice in 2 Timothy 1:5.
12 Cf. 1 Timothy 4:14; 2 Timothy 1:6.
13 Luke’s statement about Timothy’s circumcision, coming as it
does after his account of the Jerusalem decree in Acts 15:22–
29, is astonishing indeed—so much so that he is unlikely to
have made it without very good authority.
14 Cf. 1 Corinthians 7:19 (“neither circumcision counts for
anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments
of God”), where J. W. Drane (with doubtful cogency) sees in the
“but” clause an instance of Paul’s more positive attitude to the
principle of law in 1 Corinthians than in Galatians (Paul:
Libertine or Legalist? [London, 1975], p. 65). What Paul means
here is that being circumcised or uncircumcised is irrelevant to
the doing of God’s will.
15 This may have reference to Paul’s missionary enterprise in
his pre-Christian days, when he would naturally have insisted
on the circumcision of proselytes from paganism (see p. 129).
16 Cf. R. W. Emerson: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of
little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and
divines” (“Essay on Self-Reliance”, in Essays, Lectures and
Orations (London, 1848], p. 30). See also F. J. Foakes-Jackson,
Life of St. Paul (London, 1927), p. 15.
17 Cf. H. Chadwick, “All Things to all Men”, NTS 1 (1954–55),
pp. 261 ff.
18 See p. 214.
19 Cf. W. M. Calder, “The Boundary of Galatic Phrygia”, MAMA
vii (Manchester, 1956), pp. ix ff.
20 See F. F. Bruce, “Galatian Problems: 2. North or South
Galatians?” BJRL 52 (1969–70), pp. 246–258. An analogy to the
postulated Phrygia Galatica is Pontus Galaticus, specified (as
distinct from Pontus Polemoniacus) in CIL iii. 6818 as one of
the regions over which the legate of Galatia exercised control.
21 From Eski Istanbul (Old Istanbul). Cf. C. J. Hemer,
“Alexandria Troas”, Tyndale Bulletin 26 (1975), pp. 79–112,
where it is pointed out that “Troas was a nodal point on what
became a sophisticated system of international routes” (p. 91).
See also W. Leaf, Strabo on the Troad (Cambridge, 1923), p.
238; J. M. Cook, The Troad (Oxford, 1973), pp. 16 ff.
22 Cf. Suetonius, Life of Julius Caesar 79. 3 (the “Alexandria”
there mentioned along with “Ilium” [Troy] is naturally
Alexandria Troas).
23 Cf. Acts 20:5–12.
24 One and the same person, in my judgment; contrast C. K.
Barrett: “On any showing it is unlikely that Luke (by which
name I intend the author of the complete work) knew Paul
personally” (“Acts and the Pauline Corpus”, Expository Times
88 [1976–77], p. 4).
25 Acts 16:10–17; 20:5–21:18; 27:1–28:16. Each of the three
ends with a statement in which Paul is distinguished from the
narrator and the rest of his companions.
26 Acts 20:6 (see p. 340).
27 This text survives only in a few Latin codices and a couple of
mediaeval European versions based on the Latin. It postulates
πρώτης (agreeing with μερίδος, “district”, “division”) in place of
the majority reading πρώτη (agreeing with πόλις, “city”). So,
rightly, E. Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles, E. T. (Oxford,
1971), p. 494; also, more tentatively, H. Conzelmann, Die
Apostelgeschichte (Tübingen, 1963), p. 91.
28 The first “we” section of Acts ends in Philippi (16:17), the
second begins there (20:6). A simple-minded inference would
be that the narrator spent the intervening period in Philippi,
and was possibly entrusted with the Philippian Christians’
contribution to the relief fund for the Jerusalem church (see p.
339).
29 Cf. Rabbi Halafta in Pirqê Abôt 3:7. A similar practice obtained
in the Qumran community (1QS 6, l. 3) and among the Essenes
(Josephus, BJ ii. 146).
30 The Byzantine reading ἐνομίζετο προσευχὴ εἶναι (cf. AV: “where
prayer was wont to be made”) may well be original as against
the readings of the early codices, which apparently represent
attempts to mend a primitive corruption.
31 Cf. Homer, Iliad iv. 141 f., “as when some Maeonian [Lydian]
or Carian woman dyes ivory with purple”. “Lydia” means “the
Lydian woman”; it may not have been her original name.
32 Probably not merely her “nuclear” family (it is unknown
whether she was married or not) but her familia, including
slaves and other dependants as well as kinsfolk.
33 See p. 291.
34 See p. 107 with n. 32.
35 Their official title was duo uiri (“duumvirs” or “two men”)
but, like the duumvirs of the colony of Capua, they “wished to
be called praetors” (Cicero, De lege agraria, ii. 93).
36 In Greek the lictors are called ῥαβδοῦχοι, “rod-bearers” (as in
Acts 16:35).
37 Her soothsaying appears to have been a form of
ventriloquism, except that the ventriloquist (ἐγγαστρίμυθος) was
normally in conscious control of his utterances, whereas the
Philippian slave-girl was not.
38 The proselytizing of Roman citizens, even if not formally
forbidden, was officially discouraged; it was, nevertheless,
widely practised. See A. D. Momigliano, Claudius the Emperor
and his Achievement (Oxford, 1934), pp. 29 ff.; A. N. Sherwin-
White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament
(Oxford, 1963), pp. 78 ff.
39 Acts 16:36.
40 That is, if Luke is the narrator of the “we” sections (see p.
218).
41 See pp. 299, 390.
42 Cf. Philippians 4:10 ff.
1 Cf. E. D. Burton, “The Politarchs”, American Journal of
Theology 2 (1898), pp. 598 ff.
2 Cf., at an earlier period, Jason the son of Simon II and last
Zadokite high priest in Jerusalem (c. 174–171 B.C.).
3 Cf. Acts 19:29; 20:4; 27:2; Colossians 4:10 (where it is made
plain that he was a Jewish Christian).
4 Cf. Acts 20:4.
5 The Western text of Acts 17:4 specifically includes among the
converts “not a few of the wives of the leading men”.
6 The same Greek word βασιλεύς does duty for both king (Latin
rex) and emperor (Latin imperator); since it is over against
Caesar that Jesus is set here, “a rival emperor” is the sense (as
in John 19:15 where, in answer to Pilate’s sarcastic question
“Shall I crucify your βασιλεύς ?” the chief priests say “We have
no βασιλεύς but Caesar”).
7 This term is used because it is currently an acceptable
euphemism for people more bluntly described as “terrorists”.
8 Cf. Acts 18:2; see pp. 235, 381.
9 Cf. H. I. Bell (ed.), Jews and Christians in Egypt (London,
1924), pp. 1 ff., for editio princeps.
10 Cf. E. A. Judge, “The Decrees of Caesar at Thessalonica”,
Reformed Theological Review 30 (1971), pp. 1–7.
11 See pp. 231 ff.
12 Dio Cassius, History lvi. 25. 5 f.
13 Ibid. 1vii. 15. 8.
14 Cf. 2 Corinthians 12:7 (see p. 135).
15 Cf. T. W. Manson, Studies in the Gospels and Epistles
(Manchester, 1962), p. 271.
16 See p. 231.
17 Cf. K. Lake, The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul (London, 21914),
pp. 83 ff., following A. Harnack, “Das Problem des zweiten
Thessalonicherbriefs”, Sitzungsberichte der königlichen
preussischen Akademie der Wissenchaften, 1910, pp. 562 f.
18 Cf. F. C. Burkitt, Christian Beginnings (London, 1924), pp.
128 ff.
19 Cf. J. Weiss, Earliest Christianity, E. T. i (New York, 1959),
pp. 289 ff.; T. W. Manson, Studies in the Gospels and Epistles,
pp. 268 ff.; R. G. Gregson, “A Solution to the Problems of the
Thessalonian Epistles”, Evangelical Quarterly 38 (1966) pp. 76
ff.
20 Cf. 1 Thessalonians 3:1 f., 6; Acts 17:14 f.; 18:5. A useful
suggestion about the relation between the two accounts is
made by K. Lake, The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, p. 74.
21 Cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:3–8.
22 Cf. 4:9–12; 2 Thessalonians 3:6–12.
23 See pp. 305 f.
24 See p. 112 with n. 39. It is uncertain whether the “word of
the Lord” to which Paul appeals was spoken by the historical
Jesus or by a prophet in his name; see p. 105 with n. 26.
25 So, first, J. E. C. Schmidt in a succession of works:
Philologisch-exegetische Clavis über das Neue Testament, i. 2
(Giessen, 1798); Bibliothek für Kritik und Exegese des Neuen
Testaments (Hadamar, 1801), pp. 385 f.; Einleitung in das
Neue Testament (Giessen, 1804), pp. 256 f.
26 Possibly a “Q” passage, conflated with its Markan
counterpart (Mark 13:5–37) in Matthew 24:4–44.
27 Cf. Matthew 24:28. If the saying is proverbial, a reference to
vultures would be expected; they may have been replaced by
eagles here in allusion to the Roman legionary standards
(aquilae). When the temple area in Jerusalem was stormed in
A.D. 70, the victorious Romans set up their standards in the
sacred area opposite the east gate and offered sacrifice to them
(Josephus, BJ vi. 316).
28 The word ἀντίχριστος occurs in the New Testament only in the
Johannine epistles (1 John 2:18, 22; 4:3; 2 John 7), but the idea
was quite familiar CF. F. Bruce, The Epistles of John (London,
1970), pp. 64 ff.
29 Compare the apocalyptic seven-headed dragon (Revelation
12:3 ff.) and his agent, the seven-headed beast, i.e. the Roman
Empire (Revelation 11:7; 13:1 ff.; 17:3 ff.).
30 Cf. 1 Maccabees 1:54. Olympian Zeus, whose cult was
established in the Jerusalem temple towards the end of 167
B.C., was equated with the Syrian deity Baʿal Shamen (“lord of
heaven”; Baʿal Shamaim in Hebrew), whose name was parodied
by the Jews a šiqqûṣ mešōmēm (“the desolating abomination”). Cf.
E. Nestle, “Zu Daniel, 2: Der Greuel der Verwüstung”, ZAW 4
(1884), p. 248.
31 Cf. Philo, Embassy to Gaius 203 ff.; Josephus, BJ ii. 184 ff.;
Ant. xviii. 261 ff.
32 It is uncertain if this should be related to the oracle
mentioned by Eusebius which the members of the church of
Jerusalem received before the outbreak of war in A.D. 66,
bidding them leave the doomed capital and settle in the
Peraean city of Pella (Hist. Eccl. iii. 5. 3); departure for Pella is
scarcely the same thing as “fleeing to the mountains”. Eusebius
may owe his account to the second-century writer Ariston of
Pella.
33 βδέλυγμα (neuter) qualified by ἑστηκότα (masculine).
34 O. Cullmann, “Le caractère eschatologique du devoir
missionnaire et de la conscience apostolique de saint Paul”,
RHPR 16 (1936), pp. 210 ff.; cf. J. Munck, Paul and the
Salvation of Mankind, E. T. (London, 1959), pp. 36 ff. Munck
linked this interpretation with his exegesis of Romans 11:13–
27; the cessation of Paul’s missionary activity would be
followed by the rise of Antichrist, whose lordship would be
ended by Christ’s appearing as “Deliverer from Zion”.
35 Cf. in particular 1 Corinthians 15:24–28; Romans 8:17–25.
36 His letter to the Galatians may be earlier; see p. 179.
37 F. W. Farrar goes as far as caution allows: “Whether there is
any allusion to his [Claudius’s] name in the word κατέχω
[“restrain”] I am not prepared to say” (Life and Work of St.
Paul, ii [London, 1879], p. 584).
38 Acts 25:11; see p. 363.
1 Cicero, In Pisonem 89. It was the first city to surrender to the
Romans after their victory at Pydna in 168 B.C.
2 Cf. A. Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity, E.
T., i (London, 1908), pp. 74 f.; H. J. Cadbury, The Book of Acts
in History (New York, 1955), pp. 60 f.; G. Bornkamm, Paul, E.
T. (London, 1971), pp. 51 ff.; E. A. Judge and G. S. R. Thomas,
“The Origin of the Church at Rome”, Reformed Theological
Review 25 (1966), p. 90.
3 Acts 18:2; see p. 250.
4 “He by-passed Thessaly, for he was forbidden to preach the
word to them” (cf. Acts 16:6–8). Thessaly formed part of the
province of Macedonia.
5 John Milton, Paradise Regained iv. 240 ff.
6 It was used of Aeschines as a term of abuse by Demosthenes,
De corona 127. NEB renders it “charlatan”, which is more
accurate than the traditional “babbler”.
7 Acts 17:22–31.
8 Acts 14:15–17; see p. 170.
9 Pausanias, Description of Greece i. 1.4; Philostratus, Life of
Apollonius vi. 3. 5.
10 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers i. 110.
11 Euripides, fragment 968.
12 The NEB rendering of Acts 17:25 is unsurpassed in
conveying the precise force of the words: “It is not because he
lacks anything that he accepts service at men’s hands …”. Cf.
Euripides, Hercules Furens 1345 f.
13 Preserved in Syriac translation by Isho’dad of Merv; cf.
Horae Semiticae x, ed. M. D. Gibson (Cambridge, 1913), p. 40
(Syriac). The second line of the quatrain is quoted in Titus 1:12.
14 Aratus, Phainomena 1–5; cf. Cleanthes, Hymn to Zeus 4.
15 BC i, 5, p. 406.
16 E. Meyer, Ursprung und Anfänge des Christentums, iii
(Stuttgart/Berlin, 1923), p. 105.
17 Meyer, op. cit., p. 92, n. 4.
18 U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Die griechische Literatur
des Altertums (Berlin/Leipzig,3 1912), p. 232.
19 A. Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, E. T.,
(London, 1931), pp. 6 ff.
20 M. Dibelius, Studies in the Acts of the Apostles, E. T.
(London, 1956), pp. 26 ff.
21 H. Conzelmann, “The Address of Paul on the Areopagus”, in
Studies in Luke-Acts, ed. L. E. Keck and J. L. Martyn
(Nashville/New York, 1966), pp. 217 ff.
22 P. Vielhauer, “On the ‘Paulinism’ of Acts”, in Studies in Luke-
Acts, ed. Keck and Martyn, pp. 36 f.
23 For a more positive appraisal cf. B. Gärtner, The Areopagus
Speech and Natural Revelation (Uppsala, 1955).
24 Thucydides, History i. 22. 1.
25 See p. 137.
26 J. H. Moulton and W. F. Howard, Grammar of New
Testament Greek, ii (Edinburgh, 1929), p. 8, n. 3.
27 On Pauline salvation-history (Heilsgeschichte) see J. Munck,
Paul and the Salvation of Mankind, E. T., (London, 1959); O.
Cullmann, Salvation in History, E. T. (London, 1967), pp. 248
ff.; E. Käsemann, Perspectives on Paul, E. T. (London 1971), pp.
60 ff.
28 Aeschylus, Eumenides 647 f.
29 A sober study of the whole Athenian episode has been
published by T. D. Barnes, “An Apostle on Trial”, JTS, n.s. 20
(1969), pp. 407–419.
1 The -nth- sound-group is generally recognized as a pre-Greek
formation. On the history and archaeology of Corinth see J. G.
O’Neill, Ancient Corinth (Oxford, 1930); O. Broneer, “Corinth:
Center of St. Paul’s Missionary Work in Greece”, Biblical
Archaeologist 14 (1951), pp. 78–96.
2 Corinth first appears in Greek literature in Homer (Iliad ii.
570, xiii. 664, and under the name Ephyre, vi. 152); the name
(though perhaps in reference to another place) has been
identified in a Mycenaean text from Pylos.
3 The verb κορινθιάζεσθαι, lit. “to play the Corinthian”, was
current from the fifth century B.C. in the sense of practising
fornication.
4 According to one strand of tradition, the Isthmian Games
were founded in honour of Melicertes (Thrasyllus, according to
Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis i. 137. 1).
5 Cf. Strabo, Geography viii. 6. 20–23; Pausanias, Description of
Greece ii. 1. 1–5. 2.
6 Cf. B. Powell, “Greek Inscriptions from Corinth”, American
Journal of Archaeology, series 2, 7 (1903), pp. 60 f., No. 40; A.
Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, E. T. (London, 2 1927),
p. 16.
7 She was probably associated in some way with the gens
Prisca. While Luke gives her the more familiar name Priscilla,
Paul refers to her more formally as Prisca (e.g. in 1 Corinthians
16:19).
8 See pp. 235, 381.
9 See p. 298.
10 Both by Luke (Acts 18:18, 26) and by Paul (Romans 16:3; cf.
2 Timothy 4:19). The Western reviser of Acts reverses the order
in 18:26, and this is not the only place where he appears to
play down the prominence of women in the narrative.
11 Suetonius, Life of Claudius 25.4.
12 Making it plain that it was to him that the scriptures in
question pointed. We may compare the insertion of “Messiah”
at appropriate points in the Isaianic Servant Songs (Isaiah
42:1; 52:13) and elsewhere (43:10) in the Targum of Jonathan
on the Prophets.
13 Acts 18:8; 1 Corinthians 1:15.
14 Acts 18:7.
15 Cf. E. J. Goodspeed, “Gaius Titius Justus”, JBL 69 (1950), pp.
382 f.
16 1 Corinthians 1:15 f.; cf. 16:15.
17 Acts 18:5; cf. 2 Corinthians 11:9.
18 Reported by T. L. Shear in AJA, series 2, 33 (1929), pp. 325 f.
19 Cf. H. J. Cadbury, “Erastus of Corinth”, JBL 50 (1931), pp.
42–58; P. N. Harrison, “Erastus and his Pavement”, in Paulines
and Pastorals (London, 1964), pp. 100–105. The inscription
runs: ERASTVS. PRO. AED. S. P. STRAVIT.
20 The evidence for the date of Gallio’s proconsulship of Achaia
is provided by an inscription recording a rescript of Claudius to
the people of Delphi (W. Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum
Graecarum ii 3, 801; E. M, Smallwood, Documents illustrating
the Principates of Gaius, Claudius and Nero [Cambridge,
1967], p. 105, no. 376), which mentions Gallio as holding that
office in the period of Claudius’s 26th acclamation as imperator
—a period known from other inscriptions (CIL iii. 476; vi. 1256)
to have covered the first seven months of A.D. 52. Proconsuls
entered on their tour of duty on July 1. Unless, then, the
rescript belongs to the very end of the period in question (in
which case Gallio could have entered on his proconsulship on
July 1, A.D. 52), Gallio arrived in his province on or about July
1, A.D. 51.
21 Gallio does not appear to have retained his proconsulship
long: soon afterwards we find him going on a cruise to throw
off a fever (Seneca, Epistulae morales 104, 1). Later we find
him taking another voyage from Rome to Egypt, after his
consulship (55 or 56), because of threatened phthisis (Pliny,
Nat. Hist. xxxi. 33). In A.D. 65, with his brother Mela, he fell
victim to Nero’s malice soon after the enforced suicide of their
brother Seneca (Dio Cassius, History lxii. 25. 3).
22 Cf. S. Applebaum in The Jewish People in the First Century,
ed. S. Safrai and M. Stern, i (Assen, 1974), p. 460, for Judaism
as a “permitted” association. If Paul and his followers could be
dissociated from Judaism in the eyes of Roman law, their
fellowship and activity would ipso facto become “illicit”.
23 The βῆμα of Acts 18:12; the word is used of Pilate’s tribunal
at Jerusalem from which the death sentence was pronounced
on Jesus (John 19:13) and again of the tribunal of Festus at
Caesarea (Acts 25:6), which Paul recognized as “Caesar’s
tribunal” (Acts 25:10).
24 This is the point of Acts 18:17, “Gallio paid no attention to
this” (RSV); it is made explicit in the Western text, “Gallio
pretended not to see”.
25 The verb ἀνέχεσθαι in Acts 18:14 (RSV “I should have reason
to bear with you”) has this sense in a judicial context (see W.
Bauer, W. F. Arndt, F. W. Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of
the New Testament [Cambridge, 1957], p. 65).
26 Acts 18:18. See p. 348.
27 If it reached Cyrene early (see p. 131), it must have reached
Alexandria earlier still.
28 See Acts 8:5–25.
29 Cf. W. Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity,
E. T. (Philadelphia, 1971), pp. 44 ff.; A. A. T. Ehrhardt, The
Framework of the New Testament Stories (Manchester, 1964),
pp. 174 ff.; F. F. Bruce, The ‘Secret’ Gospel of Mark (London,
1974), pp. 13 ff.
30 Like Ananias and Eleazar who played leading parts in the
conversion to Judaism of King Izates of Adiabene (Josephus,
Ant. xx. 34–48).
31 Cf. 1 Corinthians 1:12; 3:4.
32 It is not expressly stated whose will is in question; among
Greek-speaking Jews “the will” was a way of referring to the
will of God (as in Romans 2:18). Perhaps Apollos himself was
quite unwilling to go back to Corinth, in spite of Paul’s
urgency.
33 Chloe (of whom nothing is otherwise known) seems to have
been head of the household or owner of the house.
34 He was en route for Rome to help with the reconstruction of
the church there, after receiving news of Claudius’s death on
October 13, A.D. 54, according to G. Edmundson, The Church
in Rome in the First Century (London, 1913), pp. 80, 84. Cf. T.
W. Manson, Studies in the Gospels and Epistles (Manchester,
1962), pp. 38–40.
35 How any one could infer from this wording that “Cephas”
was not reckoned among the “apostles” is difficult to
comprehend, but see W. Schmithals, The Office of Apostle in
the Early Church, E. T. (London, 1971), pp. 80–82.
36 There is an “undesigned coincidence” here with Mark 1:30 f.,
where Peter appears as a married man.
37 Cf. C. K. Barrett, “Thing Sacrificed to Idols”, NTS 11 (1964–
65), pp. 138–153, especially pp. 149 f.
38 Cf. 1 Corinthians 4:8.
39 Cf. 1 Corinthians 15:12.
40 Cf. Romans 6:4 f. (where, however, the rising with Christ
seems to be future as well as present); Colossians 2:11–13.
41 Cf. T. W. Manson, Studies in the Gospels and Epistles, p.
207. This is a quite different account of the Christ party from
that propounded by F. C. Baur in his epoch-making article “Die
Christuspartei in der korinthischen Gemeinde”, Tübinger
Zeitschrift für Theologie 5 (1831), Heft 4, pp. 61–206
(reprinted in Ausgewählte Werke in Einzelausgaben, ed. K.
Scholder, i [Stuttgart, 1963], pp. 1–76). Baur looked on the
Christ party (to which he found a further reference in 2
Corinthians 10:7) as comprising judaistic adherents of Peter
who wished to stress their relationship to the Christ who had
appointed and commissioned Peter and his colleagues.
42 Acts 26:11.
43 1 Corinthians 12:3. Another, but less probable, explanation is
that some Gentile Christians were so exclusively devoted to the
heavenly Christ whose presence they enjoyed by the Spirit that
they anathematized any reference to the earthly Jesus who
suffered humiliation and death.
44 R. Law, The Tests of Life (Edinburgh, 1909), p. 28.
45 Cf. D. S. Bailey, The Man-Woman Relation in Christian
Thought (London, 1959), p. 10.
46 1 Corinthians 6:13. Possibly RSV is right in placing the
closing quotation-mark after “… the stomach for food”, in
which case “but God will destroy both one and the other” is
Paul’s comment on their saying.
47 It is referred to in 1 Corinthians 5:9–11.
48 1 Corinthians 5:1 ff.
1 Cf. 1 Corinthians 5:9–11 (see p. 262).
2 1 Corinthians 7:1; 16:17.
3 1 Corinthians 11:2.
4 See J. C. Hurd, Jr., The Origin of 1 Corinthians (London,
1965).
5 Cf. 1 Corinthians 11:23; 15:3.
6 Cf. Colossians 2:6, 8.
7 See pp. 84 ff., 100 f.
8 1 Corinthians 11:17 ff.
9 See pp. 283 ff.
10 Cf. Luke 22:16; Mark 14:25.
11 It has a eucharistic setting in Didache 10:5. See O. Hofius,
“Bis dass er kommt”, NTS 14 (1967–68), pp. 439 ff.
12 1 Corinthians 7:10 f. (cf. Mark 10:5–12); see p. 106.
13 1 Corinthians 9:14 (cf. Matthew 10:9 f./Luke 9:3 f.); see p.
107.
14 1 Corinthians 10:27 (cf. Luke 10:8); see p. 108.
15 See pp. 306 ff.
16 1 Corinthians 15:12–19.
17 1 Corinthians 7:1b. That this is Paul’s quotation of an
attitude of the ascetic party in the Corinthian church, not his
own dictum, was seen by Origen, Commentary on 1
Corinthians, §121 (ed. C. Jenkins, JTS 9 [1907–8], pp. 500 ff.).
18 E.g. Thekla, a virgin of Iconium, and Artemilla, wife of the
governor of Asia (New Testament Apocrypha, E. T., ed. E.
Hennecke, W. Schneemelcher, R. McL. Wilson, ii [London,
1965), pp. 355–364, 370–373). See pp. 467 f.
19 See J. M. Ford, “St. Paul the Philogamist”, NTS 11 (1964–
65), pp. 326 ff.
20 J. Klausner does less than justice to Paul on this point; he
quite wrongly says that Paul saw marriage as a “necessary
evil” (From Jesus to Paul, E. T. [London, 1944], pp. 570–572).
21 1 Corinthians 7:7.
22 Cf. H. Chadwick, “All Things to all Men”, NTS 1 (1954–55),
pp. 261 ff.
23 1 Corinthians 7:14.
24 Mishnah Yebamôt 11:2.
25 Cf. J. Jeremias, “Die missionarische Aufgabe in der
Mischehe” in Neutestamentliche Studien für R. Bultmann, ed.
W. Eltester, BZNW 21 (1954), pp. 255 ff.
26 The interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7:25 ff. (“Now concerning
virgins …”) is debatable, but the passage is best understood of
couples living in a state of permanent but unconsummated
betrothal.
27 Luke 23:29; cf. Mark 13:17.
28 1 Corinthians 9:5 (see pp. 258 f.).
29 Cf. S. Baring-Gould, A Study of St. Paul (London, 1897), pp.
213 ff.
30 Judah ben Tema, a rabbi of a later period (second half of the
second century A.D.), specified eighteen as the appropriate age
for a young man to marry (Pirqê Abôt 5:24).
31 J. Jeremias, “War Paulus Witwer?” ZNW 25 (1926), pp. 310
ff., with critique by E. Fascher, “Zur Witwerschaft des Paulus
und der Auslegung von 1 Cor 7”, ZNW 28 (1929), pp. 62 ff.,
and reply by J. Jeremias, “Nochmals: war Paulus Witwer?”
ZNW 28 (1929), pp. 321 ff.
32 Philippians 3:8.
33 1 Corinthians 8:7, 9–12; 9:22; Romans 14:1 ff.
34 See p. 259 with n. 37.
35 The fact that Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:25 refers to the meat-
market as the μάκελλον, a word of Latin origin (macellum),
suggests that he had the meat-market of Corinth in mind: the
macellum is mentioned on a fragmentary Latin inscription
found near the Lechaeum road, north of the Corinthian agora;
see H. J. Cadbury, “The Macellum of Corinth”, JBL 53 (1934),
pp. 134 ff.
36 Paul (and Greek-speaking Jews in general) would call it
εἰδωλόθυτον (“sacrificed to an idol”); the more devout term
ἱερόθυτον implies that a pagan is speaking (1 Corinthians 10:28).
37 Paul would limit his liberty voluntarily out of regard for
others, but he would not allow others to sit in judgment on his
exercise of his liberty or to make their conscience the standard
by which his liberty was to be regulated. This is the point of his
remark about conscience in 1 Corinthians 10:29b, 30.
38 The reference to this kind of occasion in 1 Corinthians 8:10
is illustrated by some papyrus letters from Oxyrhynchus, e.g.
“Chaeremon invites you to dine at the table of the lord Sarapis
in the Sarapeion (temple of Sarapis) tomorrow, the 15th, at the
9th hour” (Papyrus 110; cf. Papyri 523, 1484, 1755).
39 1 Corinthians 10:21.
40 Numbers 25:1–5; Psalm 105:28b.; cf. G. E. Mendenhall, The
Tenth Generation (Baltimore, 1973), pp. 105 ff.; A. T. Hanson,
Studies in Paul’s Technique and Theology (London, 1974), pp. 4
ff.
41 1 Corinthians 10:23; cf. 6:12.
42 1 Corinthians 14:4a.
43 Acts 13:2 (see p. 160).
44 1 Corinthians 14:23–25.
45 1 Corinthians 12:12–27; see pp. 420 f.
46 1 Corinthians 16:1–4; see p. 319.
47 1 Corinthians 16:5–11; cf. Acts 19:22 and perhaps
Philippians 2:19.
48 The situation in Macedonia may have changed with the death
of Claudius in A.D. 54; at any rate Paul felt it would now be
safe to return there (see p. 236).
49 2 Corinthians 1:15 f.
50 This was the “painful visit” of 2 Corinthians 2:1.
51 It has been widely held that part at least of this letter
survives in 2 Corinthians 10–13 (a view first propounded by A.
Hausrath, Der Vier-Capitel Brief des Paulus an die Corinthier
[Heidelberg, 1870], and popularized by J. H. Kennedy, The
Second and Third Letters of St. Paul to the Corinthians
[London, 1900]), but this is rendered improbable by 12:18,
which seems clearly to refer back to 8:6, 16–19.
52 2 Corinthians 1:8 ff.; see pp. 295 ff., 310.
53 The phrase in 2 Corinthians 2:12, εἰς τὴν Τρῳάδα, might refer
to the port of Troas (as in Acts 20:6) or to the Troad, the
district in which it lay. See p. 217 with n. 21.
54 2 Corinthians 7:6 ff.
55 2 Corinthians 2:5–11.
56 2 Corinthians 3:7 ff.; see p. 200.
57 2 Corinthians 8:1–9:15.
58 Cf. C. K. Barrett, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians
(London, 1973), pp. 243 ff.
59 W. Lütgert, freiheitspredigt und Schwarmgeister in Korinth:
ein Beitrag zur Charakteristik der Christuspartei (Gütersloh,
1908); cf. W. Schmithals, Gnosticism in Corinth, E. T.
(Nashville/New York, 1971). See also G. Friedrich, “Die Gegner
des Paulus im 2, Korintherbrief”, in Abraham unser Vater:
Festschrift für O. Michel, ed. O. Betz, etc. (Leiden, 1963), pp.
181 ff.; D. Georgi, Die Gegner des Paulus im 2. Korinther-brief
(Neukirchen, 1964); C. K. Barrett, “Paul’s Opponents in II
Corinthians”, NTS 17 (1970–71), pp. 233–254; J. J. Gunther, St.
Paul’s Opponents and their Background (Leiden, 1973).
60 Cf. E. Käsemann, “Die Legitimität des Apostels”, ZNW 41
(1942), pp. 33–71.
61 According to D. Georgi (Die Gegner des Paulus, p. 286), this
“other Jesus” was presented as the “man of the Spirit” (θεῖος
ἀνήρ) par excellence; this cannot be disproved, but there is no
evidence for it. It is just as possible that they preached a
theologia gloriae as against Paul’s theologia crucis. See also D.
W Oostendorp, Another Jesus (Kampen, 1967).
62 Greek ὑπέρλιαν ἀπόστολοι (2 Corinthians 11:5; 12:11).
63 See pp. 134 ff.
64 2 Corinthians 11:23 ff.
65 C. K. Barrett, “Christianity at Corinth”, BJRL 46 (1963–64),
p. 297.
1 See p. 210. The sequence of the component elements in
Christian initiation varies from one occasion to another in Acts.
Peter’s hearers in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost repent,
are baptized, and receive the Spirit (2:38, 41); the Samaritans
evangelized by Philip believe and are baptized “into the name
of the Lord Jesus”, but do not receive the Spirit until apostolic
hands are laid on them (8:12, 14–17); Cornelius and his
household receive the Spirit while they are still listening to the
message and are then baptized (10:44–48).
2 J. D. G. Dunn, however, makes a sharp distinction between
Spirit-baptism and water-baptism: in 1 Corinthians 12:13, he
says, “Paul is thinking of baptism in the Spirit; he is not
speaking about water at all” (Baptism in the Holy Spirit
[London, 1970], p. 129). On the relation and distinction
between water-baptism and baptism with the Spirit see Karl
Barth, Church Dogmatics iv, 4, E. T. (Edinburgh, 1969). pp. 32
ff. et passim.
3 Cf. D. A. Tappeiner, “Hermeneutics, the Analogy of Faith and
New Testament Sacramental Realism”, EQ 49 (1977), pp. 40–
52.
4 On the other hand, D. W. B. Robinson concludes from 1
Corinthians 1:13–17 “that Paul regarded water-baptism as
ultimately an adiaphoron, a matter of indifference. This would be
consistent with everything he says about the non-essential
character of ordinances of the flesh” (“Towards a Definition of
Baptism”, Reformed Theological Review 34 [1975], p. 14). Cf. J.
D. G. Dunn, Baptism in the Holy Spirit, pp. 117–120.
5 Cf. Romans 8:9 (see p. 209).
6 Cf. 1 Corinthians 1:13–17.
7 Cf. 1 Corinthians 11:23.
8 Similar language is used in Titus 3:5 f. for “the washing
[λουτρόν, as in Ephesians 5:26] of regeneration and renewal in
the Holy Spirit, which God poured out upon us richly through
Jesus Christ our Saviour”.
9 On Pauline baptism see also O. Cullmann, Baptism in the New
Testament, E. T. (London, 1950), pp. 23 ff.; G. W. H. Lampe,
The Seal of the Spirit (London, 1951), pp. 3 ff.; G. R. Beasley-
Murray, Baptism in the New Testament (London, 1962), pp.
127 ff.; D. E. H. Whiteley, The Theology of St. Paul (Oxford,
1964), pp. 166 ff.; R. Schnackenburg, Baptism in the Thought
of St. Paul, E. T. (Oxford, 1964); G. Wagner, Pauline Baptism
and the Pagan Mysteries, E. T. (Edinburgh/London, 1967).
10 Cf. O. Cullmann, “Kyrios as Designation for the Oral Tradition
concerning Jesus”, Scottish Journal of Theology 3 (1950), pp.
180 ff.; The Early Church (London, 1956), pp. 66 ff.
11 In Matthew’s version the statement about the cup, “and they
all drank of it” (Mark 14:23) becomes a command on the Lord’s
lips, “Drink of it, all of you”, and to the clause “which is poured
out for you” there is added an epexegetic phrase, “for the
remission of sins” (Matthew 26:28).
12 On the textual problem of Luke 22:17–20 see B. M. Metzger,
A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament
(London/New York, 1971), pp. 173–177.
13 After the cup-word in 1 Corinthians 11:25 the memorial
command takes the form: “Do this, as often as you drink it, in
remembrance of me”. It is improbable that this meant, “Do this
in order that God may remember me by speeding my parousia
and consummating his kingdom”, as J. Jeremias argued (The
Eucharistic Words of Jesus, E. T. [Oxford, 1955], pp. 159 ff.); it
is even less probable that the memorial command marks a
change or reinterpretation of the original intention of the
Jerusalem rite, as was held by H. Lietzmann, Mass and Lord’s
Supper, E. T. (Leiden, 1953 ff.), pp. 145 ff., 172 ff., 204 ff.
14 See p. 265.
15 Cf. 1 Corinthians 15:11.
16 The “cup of blessing” was a common Jewish expression for
the cup of wine taken at the end of a meal, perhaps because it
was the signal for saying grace after meat. The blessing said
over the cup expresses thanks to God (the verb in 1 Corinthians
10:16 is εὐλογέω, synonymous with εὐχαριστέω used in 11:24). In
Jewish usage it took the form, “Blessed art thou, O Lord our
God, King of the universe, who createst the fruit of the vine”;
the eucharistic blessing may have been given a more explicitly
Christian content, like “We give thee thanks, our Father, for
the holy vine of David thy servant, which thou hast made
known to us through Jesus thy Servant; thine be the glory for
ever” (Didache 9:2).
17 1 Corinthians 11:27, 29.
18 1 Corinthians 11:30.
19 On the Lord’s Supper in Paul cf. A. J. B. Higgins, The Lord’s
Supper in the Early Church (London, 1952), pp. 64 ff.; D. E. H.
Whiteley, The Theology of St. Paul, pp. 178 ff.; C. K. Barrett,
The First Epistle to the Corinthians (London, 1968), pp. 231–
238, 262–277.
1 Cf. W. M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman
Citizen (London, 14 1920), pp. 265 f.
2 Cf. K. Lake and H. J. Cadbury, BC i. 4, pp. 236 f.
3 They appear as “Javan” in the table of nations in Genesis 10:4.
4 Otherwise called the Peace of Antalcidas (Xenophon,
Hellenica v. 1. 33).
5 The Carians were one of the non-Greek populations of south-
west Asia Minor; the Carians or Carites of 2 Kings 11:4, 19
(related to the Philistines) were probably so called because
they came from there. The mother-goddess was given a variety
of names—Ma in Cappadocia, Cybele or the Great Mother in
Pessinus (from which her image was taken to Rome in 204
B.C.).
6 Homer (Iliad xxi. 470 f.) calls her πότνια θηρῶν, Ἂρτεμις ἀγροτέρη
(“mistress of wild beasts, Artemis of the wilds”); Aeschylus
(Agamemnon 134 ff.) pictures her indignant concern for injured
wild things. See W. K. C. Guthrie, The Greeks and their Gods
(London, 1950), pp. 99 ff.
7 Strabo, Geography xiv. 1. 22; Plutarch, Life of Alexander 3. 3.
8 Cf. Acts 19:35. In CIG 2972 Ephesus is given this title
(νεωκόρος τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος).
9 In RE ii, cols. 1385 f., mention is made of 33 places where she
was worshipped. An inscription of A.D. 161 records her fame
“not only in her own home territory … but also among both
Greeks and barbarians” (British Museum Inscriptions iii. 482B).
10 Cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist., xxxvi. 95–97, 179.
11 Cf. J. T. Wood, Discoveries at Ephesus (London, 1877).
12 The Arcadian Way was named in honour of the Emperor
Arcadius (A.D. 395–408), under whom it was repaired.
13 Strabo, Geography xii. 8. 15; xiv. 1. 21–25.
14 Cf. Colossians 1:7; 2:1; 4:12 f.; see pp. 407 ff.
15 E.g. Aristarchus (in whose company Luke appears in
Colossians 4:10, 14; cf. also Acts 20:4 f.; 27:2) could have
described the riot in the Ephesian theatre (cf. Acts 19:29).
16 W. C. van Unnik, “The ‘Book of Acts’ the Confirmation of the
Gospel”, Novum Testamentum 4 (1964), p. 35.
17 The Greek phrase is identical with that used by Paul in
Romans 12:11, where he urges his Christian readers to be
“fervent in the Spirit”. See J. D. G. Dunn, Baptism in the Holy
Spirit (London, 1970), p. 88.
18 A. A. T. Ehrhardt, The Framework of the New Testament
Stories (Manchester, 1964), P. 94.
19 For “before the congregation (πλήθους)” Codex D, the
principal witness to the Western text in Acts, has the fuller
reading, “before the multitude (πλήθους) of the Gentiles”.
20 Act 1, Scene 2, lines 97 ff.
21 Anaxilas, “The Harp-maker”, quoted by Athenaeus,
Deipnosophists xii. 548c; Plutarch, Table-Talk vii. 5. 706e;
Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis v. 242. 45. 2.
22 Cf. K. Preisendanz, Papyri Graecae Magicae, i–ii (Leipzig,
1928–31), for a collection of such documents.
23 Edited by B. M. Metzger in Papyri in the Princeton
University Collections, ed. A. C. Johnson and S. P. Goodrich, iii
(Princeton, 1942) § 159, pp. 78 f.; cf. his popular account, “St.
Paul and the Magicians”, Princeton Seminary Bulletin 38
(1944), pp. 27 ff., where he describes the amulet as “a first-
hand specimen of the same sort of magical craft which Paul
encountered at Ephesus”.
24 Preisendanz, Papyri Graecae Magicae, i, P IV (Pap. Bibl. Nat.
suppl. gr. 574), lines 3018 f.
25 Mishnah Yoma 6:2.
26 The inscription is bilingual (Greek and Latin); see A.
Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, E. T. (London, 2 1927),
pp. 112 f.
27 Cf. E. L. Hicks, “Demetrius the Silversmith: An Ephesian
Study”, Expositor, series 4, 1 (1890), pp. 401 ff.
28 The Western text says that they “ran into the square” and
raised the cult-cry there.
29 Perhaps Gaius of Derbe and Aristarchus of Thessalonica, if
the final letter of Μακεδόνας is due to dittography before the
initial letter of συνεκδήμους (Acts 19:29).
30 See p. 293, n. 26.
31 W. M. Ramsay, HDB i. p. 723 (s.v. “Ephesus”).
32 Cf. New Testament Apocrypha, E. T., ed. E. Hennecke, W.
Schneemelcher, R. McL. Wilson, ii (London, 1965), pp. 370–
373. It is not absolutely true to say, as some have done, that a
Roman citizen could not be condemned to the lions: for
exceptionally serious offences this sometimes happened, but by
being so condemned he lost his citizenship, so that, strictly
speaking, a Roman citizen could not be exposed to the lions
(Digest xxviii. 1. 8. 4). See p. 469.
33 So C. H. Dodd, “The Mind of Paul: I” in New Testament
Studies (Manchester, 1953), p. 68.
34 Tacitus, Annals xiii. 1. 1–3; Dio Cassius, History 1xi. 6. 4 f.
35 Celer was prosecuted for extortion in the province in Asia in
A.D. 57 but Nero prevented sentence from being passed on him
(Tacitus, Annals xiii. 33. 1 f.), Helius was left in charge of Rome
and Italy during Nero’s tour of Greece (A.D. 66–68) and was
later put to death by Galba (Suetonius, Life of Nero 23. 1; Dio
Cassius, History (Epitome Ixiv. 3. 4).
NEB New English Bible
36 G. S. Duncan, St. Paul’s Ephesian Ministry (London, 1929),
pp. 103–107, 249.
37 Cicero, Pro Flacco 66 ff.; cf. Josephus, Ant. xvi. 162–165 for
Augustus’s edict (12 B.C.) authorizing provincial Jews (inter
alia) to send money to Jerusalem.
38 See p. 356.
39 On the reference to “alms and offerings” in Acts 24:17 see p.
345, 357.
40 These men, he said, “are neither temple-robbers (ἱερόσυλοι)
nor blasphemers of our goddess” (Acts 19:37).
41 The Alexander of 1 Timothy 1:20 appears to have been a
renegade (or at least a libertine) Christian and so presumably
to be distinguished from the Alexander of Acts 19:33.
42 This imprisonment must have been before A.D. 57; the
imprisonment which Aristarchus shared with Paul, according to
Colossians 4:10, may (if “fellow-prisoner” is to be understood
literally) have belonged to a later date (see p. 360).
43 A. von Harnack suggested that ab Epheso (“from Ephesus”)
was a corruption of per Epaphram (“by Epaphras”) (The Origin
of the New Testament, E. T. [London, 1925], p. 168).
44 E.g. by H. Lisco, Vincula Sanctorum (Berlin, 1900); A.
Deissmann, “Zur ephesinischen Gefangenschaft des Apostels
Paulus” in Anatolian Studies presented to Sir W. M. Ramsay,
ed. W. H. Buckler and W. M. Calder (Manchester, 1923), pp.
121 ff., and Paul, E. T. (London, 1926), pp. 16 ff.; W. Michaelis,
Die Gefangenschaft des Paulus in Ephesus (Gütersloh, 1925),
and Einleitung in das Neue Testament (Bern, 1946), pp. 205 ff.;
G. S. Duncan, St. Paul’s Ephesian Ministry (London, 1929); M.
Dibelius, Paul, E. T., (London, 1953), p. 81.
45 G. S. Duncan, St. Paul’s Ephesian Ministry, pp. 106, 108–
111.
46 P. N. Harrison, Paulines and Pastorals (London, 1964), p. 75.
See p. 412.
1 C. H. Dodd, “The Mind of Paul: I”, New Testament Studies
(Manchester, 1953), p. 81. See p. 391.
2 H. C. C. Cavallin, Life after Death: Paul’s Argument for the
Resurrection of the Dead in 1 Corinthians 15, Part 1 (Lund,
1974), p. 200, as quoted by M. J. Harris, “Resurrection and
Immortality: Eight Theses”, Themelios, n.s. 1 (1975–76), p. 52.
Cf. G. W. E. Nickelburg, Resurrection, Immortality and Eternal
Life in Intertestamental Judaism (Harvard Theological Studies
26, 1972): M. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, E. T., i (London,
1974), pp. 196–202.
3 Cf. Mark 12:18 ff.
4 Cf. S. P. Tregelles, Remarks on the Prophetic Visions of the
Book of Daniel (London, 4 1852), pp. 165 ff.; B. J. Alfrink,
“L’idée de résurrection d’après Dan., XII, 1. 2”, in Studia
Biblica et Orientalia, i = Analecta Biblica 10 (Rome, 1959), pp.
221 ff. Even the commoner interpretation implies a
resurrection of many, but not of all.
5 Josephus, BJ ii. 163.
6 Josephus, BJ iii. 374.
7 Cf. Ecclesiasticus 44:1 ff.
8 Wisdom 3:1 ff.
9 2 Maccabees 7:11.
10 4 Maccabees 5:15 ff.
11 Yasna 47:6; 51:9.
12 TB Rosh ha-Shanah 16b (a baraitha, i.e. a saying handed down
from the tannaitic period, A.D. 70–200).
13 Of all the dead, apparently, in 4 Ezra 7:32, 75–101 and 2
Baruch 21:23; of the righteous dead in 2 Baruch 30:2.
14 CD 3, l. 20 (“the glory of man [Heb. ʾādām]” may refer to
Adam’s glory in Eden).
15 CD 2, ll. 6 f.
16 CD 2, l. 20.
17 1QS 10, l. 18.
18 1QS 11, ll. 7–9.
19 1QH 13, ll. 17 f.
20 1QM 15, ll. 1 f.
21 Josephus, BJ ii. 154 ff.
22 1QH 8, ll. 4 ff.
23 Hippolytus, Philosophoumena (= Refutation of all Heresies) ix.
18 ff.
24 Cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:14; 1 Corinthians 6:14; 2 Corinthians
4:14, etc.
25 Cf. Romans 5:2; 6:4; Colossians 1:27; 2:11 f.; 3:1–4.
26 Cf. 1 Thessalonians 1:9 f.; see p. 226.
27 Cf. Matthew 24:43; Luke 12:39; also Revelation 16:15.
28 Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis iii. 30; cf. R. M. Grant, A
Historical Introduction to the New Testament (London, 1963),
pp. 204 ff.
29 De Resurrectione (Epistula ad Rheginum), ed. M. Malinine,
H.-Ch. Puech, G. Quispel, W. Till (Zürich/Stuttgart, 1963).
30 Jung codex, p. 45, ll. 14 ff. The word “psychic” in the last
sentence (Jung codex, p. 46. 1. 1) is Gk ψυχική (feminine in
agreement with ἀνάστασις, “resurrection”), taken over
unchanged into Coptic—the same adjective as Paul uses of the
present “natural” body in 1 Corinthians 15:44, 46.
31 M. L. Peel, The Epistle to Rheginos (London, 1969), pp. 143
ff.; cf. also his paper “Gnostic Eschatology and the New
Testament”, Novum Testamentum 12 (1970), pp. 141 ff.
32 1 Corinthians 15:51.
33 2 Baruch 49:1 ff.
34 It is doubtful if J. Jeremias’s distinction can be maintained
throughout, between the perishable or corruptible (φθαρτόν)
putting on the imperishable or incorruptible (ἀφθαρσία) as
referring exclusively to the dead, and the mortal (θνητόν)
putting on immortality (ἀθανασία) as referring exclusively to the
living (“Flesh and Blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God”,
NTS 2 [1955–56], pp. 151 ff.).
35 2 Corinthians 1:8 f.; see pp. 274, 295 ff.
36 On this subject see S. S. Smalley, “The Delay of the
Parousia”, JBL 83 (1964), pp. 41–64.
37 2 Corinthians 4:16.
38 2 Corinthians 5:8. See M. J. Harris, “2 Corinthians 5:1–10:
Watershed in Paul’s Eschatology?” Tyndale Bulletin 22 (1971),
pp. 32–57, and The Interpretation of 2 Corinthians 5:1–10 and
its Place in Pauline Eschatology (unpublished Ph.D. thesis,
University of Manchester, 1970). For the hope of an earlier (or
immediate) resurrection and entrance into glory for martyrs cf.
T. E. Pollard, “Martyrdom and Resurrection in the New
Testament”, BJRL 55 (1972–73), pp. 240–251.
39 Cf. J. A. T. Robinson, The Body (London, 1952), pp. 76 ff.; R.
F. Hettlinger, “2 Corinthians 5:1–10”, Scottish Journal of
Theology 10 (1957), pp. 174 ff.; E. E. Ellis, Paul and his Recent
Interpreters (Grand Rapids, 1961), pp. 35 ff.; M. E. Thrall,
Greek Particles in the New Testament (Leiden, 1962), pp. 82 ff.
(revised in her Cambridge Bible Commentary volume, I and II
Corinthians, 1965, pp. 142 ff., where a distinction is made
between the “building from God” in verse 1 and the “heavenly
dwelling” of verse 2); A. E. Harvey, Companion to the New
Testament (Oxford/Cambridge, 1970), p. 583.
40 The tension created by the postulated interval between death
and resurrection might be relieved today if it were suggested
that in the consciousness of the departed believer there is no
interval between dissolution and investiture, however long an
interval might be measured by the calendar of earth-bound
human history.
41 “Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged
in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully” (J. Boswell,
Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill and L. F. Powell, iii [Oxford,
1934], p. 167). And perhaps it was actually from a judge’s lips
that Paul “received the sentence of death” of which he speaks
in 2 Corinthians 1:9.
1 Romans 15:20.
2 Cf. 1 Corinthians 3:10 ff.
3 Cf. R. Allen, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? (London,
1927), pp. 18 ff.
4 On the authenticity of this logion see W. G. Kümmel, Promise
and Fulfilment, E. T. (London, 1957), pp. 84–86; G. R. Beasley-
Murray, A Commentary on Mark Thirteen (London, 1957), pp.
40–45; for its relevance to Paul’s conception of his mission see
J. Munck, Paul and the Salvation of Mankind, E. T. (London,
1959), pp. 38–40, 48 f.
5 Massilia (Marseilles) was founded by Phocaeans from the
Ionian coast of Asia Minor c. 600 B.C. The close association of
the churches of Lyons and Vienne in the Rhone valley with
their Asian mother-churches is seen in the letter which they
sent “to the churches of Asia and Phrygia” describing their
suffering in A.D. 177 (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. v. 1. 1 ff.) and in the
appointment soon afterwards of Irenaeus, an Asian Christian,
to be their bishop in succession to the martyred Pothinus.
6 Spain was taken over by Rome and organized as two
provinces in 197 B.C.
7 Cf. A. Souter, “Did St. Paul speak Latin?” Expositor, series 8,
1 (1911), pp. 337–342.
8 His Corinthian friends Gaius (Titius Justus) and Erastus were
probably Latin-speaking.
9 Cf. Acts 16:37; 23:25.
10 A. S. Geyser, “Un essai d’explication de Rom. XV. 19”, NTS 6
(1959–60), pp. 156–159, argues that these words are an echo of
the general apostolic commission of Acts 1:8 and do not
indicate the specific geographical limits of Paul’s missionary
activity thus far. That “Illyricum” should be another way of
saying “the end of the earth” in this context seems most
improbable.
11 Cf. N. G. L. Hammond, “The Western Part of the Via
Egnatia”, JRS 64 (1974), pp. 185–194.
12 Cf. J. A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (London,
1976), pp. 67–84, and Can we trust the New Testament?
(London, 1977), pp. 65 f.
13 Cf. G. S. Duncan, St. Paul’s Ephesian Ministry (London,
1929), pp. 217 ff.
14 According to J. M. Gilchrist, “Crete must have been
evangelized by now, or Paul writes nonsense in Romans 15:23”
(The Authorship and Date of the Pastoral Epistles [unpublished
Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester, 1966], p. 189); he dates
the evangelization of Crete and the mission of Titus in this
period. J. V. Bartlet saw the mission of Titus as the sequel to
Paul’s brief contact with Crete during his voyage to Rome in
A.D. 59 (Acts 27:7–13): the Letter to Titus was written “after
Paul’s arrival in Rome, and after he had left Titus behind in
Crete, where his ship had tarried for a time at Fair Havens”
(“The Historic Setting of the Pastoral Epistles”, Expositor,
series 8, 5 [1913], p. 327).
15 Cf. G. S. Duncan, “Chronological Table to illustrate Paul’s
Ministry in Asia”, NTS 5 (1958–59), pp. 43 ff.
16 Galatians 2:10 (see p. 156 f.).
17 2 Corinthians 8:18 f., 22; they are not named, and it is
fruitless to speculate on their identity. Since Origen’s day at
least (cf. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vi. 25. 6) one of them (“the
brother whose praise in the gospel is spread through all the
churches”) has frequently been identified with Luke, but this is
quite doubtful.
18 See p. 236.
19 Cf. F. F. Bruce, “Paul and Jerusalem”, Tyndale Bulletin 19
(1968), pp. 3–25.
20 Galatians 1:17.
21 Cf. Luke 24:47, 52 f.; Acts 1:4, 8, 12; 2:5, 14, etc.
22 Cf. Isaiah 2:1 ff.; Zephaniah 3:9 f.
23 Cf. K. Holl, “Der Kirchenbegriff des Paulus in seinem
Verhältnis zu dem der Urgemeinde”, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur
Kirchengeschichte ii (Tübingen, 1928), pp. 44 ff., especially pp.
58 ff.
24 See p. 144.
25 Cf. Romans 11:26, “The Deliverer will come from Zion” (a
conflated quotation of Psalm 14:7/53:6 and Isaiah 59:20); see p.
335.
26 Romans 15:31.
27 Cf. also K. F. Nickle, The Collection: A Study in Paul’s
Strategy (London, 1966); D. Georgi, Die Geschichte der
Kollekte des Paulus für Jerusalem (Hamburg, 1965).
28 Romans 9–11, especially 11:13 ff.
1 Cf. C. K. Barrett, “I am Not Ashamed of the Gospel”, in Foi et
Salut selon S. Paul = Analecta Biblica 42 (1970), pp. 19–50.
Habakkuk 2:4b is quoted also (with part of its context) in
Hebrews 10:37 f., where the emphasis is closer to that of the
original oracle.
2 Rather, by the special needs of a particular group of
churches.
3 J. B. Lightfoot, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (London,
1865), p. 49. The more leisurely and literary character of
Romans appears, for example, in the use it makes of the
diatribe style, as when an objection is placed in the mouth of an
imagined critic and answered with devastating finality.
4 A. Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, E. T.
(London, 1931), pp. 219–226: cf. W. Wrede, Paul, E. T. (London,
1907), pp. 122 ff.; W. Heitmüller, Luthers Stellung in der
Religionsgeschichte des Christentums (Marburg, 1917), pp. 19
f.
5 Cf. E. Käsemann, Perspectives on Paul, E. T. (London, 1971),
pp. 60 ff.; G. Bornkamm, Paul, E. T. (London, 1971), pp. 115 ff.;
R. Y. K. Fung, The Relation between Righteousness and Faith
in the Thought of Paul (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of
Manchester, 1975).
6 See p. 188.
7 Cf. Wisdom 14:12, “the idea of making idols was the
beginning of fornication, and the invention of them was the
corruption of life”.
8 Cf. G. Bornkamm, “The Revelation of God’s Wrath”, E. T. in
Early Christian Experience (London, 1969), pp. 47–70.
9
Paul’s contemporary Seneca might provide a good example: he
wrote so effectively on the good life that a Christian rigorist
like Tertullian could describe him as “often one of us” (De
anima, 20), he exalted the great moral virtues, he exposed
hypocrisy, he preached the equality of all men, he
acknowledged the pervasive character of sin, he practised and
inculcated daily self-examination, he ridiculed vulgar idolatry,
he assumed the rôle of an ethical guide—yet he too often
tolerated In himself vices not so different from those which he
condemned in others.
10 Romans 2:12–16, 26–29.
11 Romans 2:21–24; cf. Josephus, Ant. xviii. 81 ff.
12 Romans 3:21–30.
13 The coincidence of the verb “reckon” in Genesis 15:6 and
Psalm 32:2 suggested a joint interpretation of the two texts, in
accordance with the rabbinical exegetical principle of gezerah
shawah, “equal category” (another instance appears in the two
texts linked by the common term “cursed”, adduced in
Galatians 3:10–14; see pp. 181 f.). On the relation between the
two texts quoted in Romans 4:3–8 see A. T. Hanson, Studies in
Paul’s Technique and Theology (London, 1974), pp. 52 ff.
14 Romans 4:1–25.
15 Romans 5:1–11.
16 Cf. K. Barth, Christ and Adam, E. T. (Edinburgh, 1956); J.
Murray, The Imputation of Adam’s Sin (Grand Rapids, 1959); R.
Bultmann, “Adam and Christ according to Romans 5”, in
Current Issues in New Testament Interpretation: Essays in
Honor of O. A. Piper, ed. W. Klassen and G. F. Snyder (New
York, 1962), pp. 143–165; C. K. Barrett, From First Adam to
Last (London, 1962).
17 J. Calvin, Commentary on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to
the Romans (Strasbourg, 1540), E. T. (Edinburgh, 1961), pp.
114 f.
18 See p. 195.
19 See pp. 193 f.
20 In the “parable” it is the husband who dies, leaving his wife
free to marry another man; in the real situation, it is the
believer (corresponding to the wife) who dies in relation to the
law (corresponding to the husband). See pp. 193 f.
21 On the word “Abba” see pp. 208 f.
22 The NEB rendering of Romans 8:28 (“and in everything, as
we know, he [the Spirit] co-operates for good with those who
love God”) marks the revival of an ancient and attractive
interpretation which has received too little attention; cf. M,
Black, “The Interpretation of Romans 8:28”, in
Neotestamentica et Patristica: Eine Freundesgabe O. Cullmann
zu seinem 60. Geburtslag überreicht, ed. W. C. van Unnik =
Novum Testamentum Supplement 6 (Leiden, 1962), pp. 166 ff.
23 Romans 8:31–39.
24 An important monograph on Romans 9–11 is J. Munck, Christ
and Israel, E. T. (Philadelphia, 1967); cf. also H. L. Ellison, The
Mystery of Israel (Exeter, 1966).
25 Romans 11:17–24. For the suggestion of a link with the
Roman Synagogue of the Olive cf. W. L. Knox, St. Paul and the
Church of Jerusalem (Cambridge, 1925), pp. 254, 258.
26 Israel is described in Jeremiah 11:16 as having been “a
green olive tree, fair with goodly fruit”. It is quite conceivable
that proselytes to Judaism were compared to branches
removed from a fruitless wild olive and grafted on to this good
olive tree.
27 Paul concedes that the process he describes is “contrary to
nature” (Romans 11:24). But it appears to have been practised
in Roman times, to judge from Paul’s contemporary Columella,
according to whom, when an olive tree produces badly, a slip of
a wild olive is grafted on to it, so as to give new vigour to the
olive (De re rustica, v. 9. 16).
28 A. von Harnack thought that in arguing for the salvation of
“all Israel” (Romans 11:26), after drawing a careful distinction
between the wider, empirical Israel and the faithful remnant
which constituted the genuine Israel (Romans 9:6 f.), Paul had
let his heart run away with him: “the Jew in himself was still
too strong” (The Date of the Acts and of the Synoptic Gospels,
E. T. [London, 1911], p. 61).
29 Romans 11:25.
30 Luke represents Paul as quoting the Isaianic passage to the
leaders of the Roman Jews (Acts 28:25–27); cf. its citation and
application in the gospel tradition (Mark 4:12; John 12:39 f.).
See p. 375.
31 Cf. J. Munck, Paul and the Salvation of Mankind, E. T.
(London, 1959), pp. 40 ff. et passim.
32 MT says “he will come to Zion as Redeemer”.
33 Cf. Isaiah 59:21 and 27:9 (LXX) for language to much the
same effect.
34 Romans 13:1–7. Among many treatments of this passage,
mention may be made of O. Cullmann, The State in the New
Testament, E. T. (London, 1955), pp. 50 ff., 95 ff.; C. D.
Morrison, The Powers That Be (London, 1960); A. Strobel,
“Furcht, wem Furcht gebührt”, ZNW 55 (1964), pp. 58–62
(where reference is made to a senatus consultum of A.D. 53 [cf.
Tacitus, Annals xii. 60; Suetonius, Life of Claudius, 12. 1]
granting special fiscal powers to imperial procurators); J.
Kallas, “Romans 13:1–7: An Interpolation”, NTS 11 (1964–65),
pp. 365–374 (where the authenticity of the paragraph is
denied).
35 See p. 231.
36 Cf. Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Galatians 5:14.
37 When Paul says, of love and the rest of the fruit of the Spirit,
that “against such there is no law” (Gal. 5:23b), he may be
applying a tag from Aristotle (Politics iii. 8. 2, 1284a) to mean
that such things are outside the scope of law.
38 Cf. P. S. Minear, The Obedience of Faith (London, 1971). He
finds the purpose of the letter set out in the injunctions of
Romans 14:1–15:13; see p. 389.
39 Romans 15:3.
40 For the allusion to Luther see p. 202 with n. 36.
41 See p. 314.
42 See p. 384.
43 On the destination of Romans 16 see pp. 385 ff.
44 Cf. Acts 20:4 (see p. 339).
45 Two recent and highly distinguished commentaries on
Romans are those by C. E. B. Cranfield, The Epistle to the
Romans, 2 volumes (Edinburgh, 1975–9), and E. Käsemann,
The Epistle to the Romans, E. T. (Grand Rapids/London, 1980).
1 Acts 20:4.
2 Acts 21:29.
3 Romans 15:26.
4 2 Corinthians 12:16.
5 One explanation of Luke’s silence about one who was such a
trusted lieutenant of Paul’s is that Titus was Luke’s brother; cf.
W. M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen
(London, 1895), p. 390; Luke the Physician and Other Studies
(London, 1908), pp. 17 f.; A. Souter, “A Suggested Relationship
between Titus and Luke”, Expository Times 18 (1906–7), p.
285, and “The Relationship between Titus and Luke”, ibid., pp.
335 f. But if this relationship is maintained, then the possibility
that Luke is the “brother” of 2 Corinthians 8:18 f. (see p. 320)
is ruled out: Paul’s purpose in sending this “brother” along
with Titus was that he should be an independent guarantor of
the probity of the administration of the relief fund, and this
purpose would have been frustrated if critics had been given an
opportunity to draw attention to a blood-relationship between
the two. Nothing could have been better calculated to foster
already existing suspicions.
6 W. M. Ramsay therefore concludes that “the company left
Philippi on the morning of Friday, April 15” (St. Paul the
Traveller, p. 289); but this depends on the assumption that a
ship was waiting for them the day after the festival ended.
7 Acts 16:11 f.; see p. 218.
8 See p. 218 with n. 25.
9 2 Corinthians 2:12 f.; see p. 275.
10 This Western reading was adopted by the Byzantine text (cf.
Acts 20:15, AV). Trogyllium or Trogyllia is a promontory jutting
out from the mainland to the south-east of Samos, forming a
strait less than a mile wide.
11 Acts 19:10.
12 Cf. A. Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, E. T.
(London,2 1927), pp. 451 f. The God-fearers are here called
θεοσεβεῖς.
13 P. Gardner, “The Speeches of St. Paul in Acts”, in Cambridge
Biblical Essays, ed. H. B. Swete (Cambridge, 1909), pp. 401,
403. See also J. Dupont, Le discours de Milet: le testament de
saint Paul (Paris, 1962).
14 Acts 20:17, 28; see p. 172.
15 Literally, “his own one”: Gk. διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου, where τοῦ
ἰδίου is better construed as possessive genitive governed by τοῦ
αἵματος than as being in attributive concord with it.
16 H. Conzelmann, The Theology of St. Luke, E. T. (London,
1960), p. 201.
17 C. F. D. Moule, “The Christology of Acts”, in Studies in Luke-
Acts: Essays in honor of P. Schubert, ed. K. E. Keck and J. L.
Martyn (Nashville/New York, 1966), p. 171. Professor Moule
makes a sharp distinction between “preliminary” or primary
evangelism and the counselling of those already evangelized;
cf. his “Jesus in the New Testament Kerygma”, in Verborum
Veritas: Festschrift für G. Stählin, ed. O. Böcher and K.
Haacker (Wuppertal, 1970), pp. 15 ff.
18 The Western text of Acts 21:1 makes the party go on in the
same ship from Patara to Myra, and trans-ship there (perhaps
under the influence of 27:5, where Paul changes ship at Myra
on his way from Caesarea to Rome).
19 Cf. Acts 11:19.
20 Cf. Acts 10:44 ff.
21 Acts 21:8 f.; cf. 8:40.
22 Cf. Polycrates of Ephesus and Proclus (c. A.D. 190), as
quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. iii. 31. 2–5.
23 Acts 21:16; this is probably the sense of his designation
ἀρχαῖος μαθητής “a disciple from the beginning (ἀρχή)”.
24 Cf. W. M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller, p. 302.
25 Mark 14:36/Luke 22:42.
26 Luke 9:51.
27 Cf. Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33 f., with the δεῖ of divine necessity
and the repeated emphasis on the Son of Man’s being handed
over to the Gentiles—a note echoed in the prophecy of Agabus
(Acts 21:11).
28 But see A. J. Mattill, “The Purpose of Acts: Schneckenburger
reconsidered”, in Apostolic History and the Gospel, ed. W. W.
Gasque and R. P. Martin (Exeter, 1970), p. 116: “the biggest
shock to Luke was the refusal of the Jerusalem church to
accept Paul’s collection, thereby symbolizing their break with
the Pauline mission” (he refers to O. Cullmann, “Dissensions
within the Early Church”, Union Seminary Quarterly Review 22
[1967], pp. 83–92).
29 J. Knox, pointing out that Luke had a good first-hand source
for this part of his narrative, concludes (rightly) that his soft-
pedalling the nature and purpose of the collection must have
been deliberate. He explains this by the consideration that the
collection was designed as a peace-offering to the Jerusalem
church, whereas Luke’s picture of peaceful relations between
that church and the Gentile mission ever since the apostolic
council of Acts 15 excluded any occasion for such a peace-
offering at this later stage, so that in his narrative the offering
had to be “separated entirely from its original context”
(Chapters in a Life of Paul [London, 1954], p. 71). What seems
to me a more probable explanation is suggested above on p.
297.
30 So Hegesippus as quoted by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. ii. 23. 6);
cf. A. A. T. Ehrhardt, The Apostolic Succession (London, 1953),
pp. 63 ff.; F. F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame (London, 1958), p.
151 with n. 3.
31 1 Corinthians 9:19–23.
32 Romans 14:5 f.
33 Acts 16:3; see pp. 214 ff.
34 Acts 15:28.
35 Acts 21:25.
36 See p. 270.
37 See Numbers 6:1–21; Mishnah Nazir (according to Nazir 6:3 “a
Nazirite vow that is vowed without a fixed duration is binding
for thirty days”).
38 Numbers 6:9 f.; Mishnah Nazir 6:6.
39 Or worse; cf. A. J. Mattill (loc. cit., pp. 115 f.): “As Luke
watched the riot in the Temple, the suspicion dawned upon him
that Judaizers had drawn Paul into an ambush by luring him
into the Temple.”
40 Acts 18:18 (see p. 255).
41 It was an act of piety on the part of the elder Herod Agrippa
to pay the expenses of many Nazirites (Josephus, Ant. xix. 294).
His daughter Bernice undertook a thirty days’ Nazirite vow
shortly before the outbreak of war in A.D. 66 (Josephus, BJ ii.
310–314).
42 Paul, as a Jew, could enter the court of Israel but, as a
layman, he could not penetrate farther. Trophimus, as a
Gentile, could go no farther than the court of the Gentiles.
43 Josephus, BJ v. 194; for the text of one of these inscriptions
in Greek (found in 1871 by C. S. Clermont-Ganneau) see OGIS
598; for another (discovered over 60 years later) see J. H. Iliffe,
“The ΘΑΝΑΤΟΣ Inscription from Herod’s Temple”, QDAP 6
(1938), pp. 1 ff.
44 Josephus BJ vi. 124–126.
45 Josephus BJ v. 243 f.
46 Josephus, BJ ii. 261 ff.; Ant. xx. 171 f.
47 See p. 144.
48 Acts 22:25–28.
49 Josephus tells how Ananias appropriated the tithes that
should have gone to the rank and file of the priests (Ant. xx.
205–207); rabbinical tradition preserved a popular song
lampooning his gluttony (TB Pesaḥim 57a). He was murdered by
Zealots in A.D. 66 (BJ ii. 441 f.).
50 Ephesians 2:14 (see p. 434).
51 J. Klausner, extraordinarily, suggests that nevertheless he
may have done it (From Jesus to Paul, E. T. [London, 1944], p.
400).
52 “I did not know, brethren, that he was the high priest” (Acts
23:5) might mean, “I did not think that a man who behaved so
illegally [as to order him to be struck across the mouth] could
possibly be the high priest”.
53 The young man’s mother, Paul’s sister, presumably lived in
Jerusalem, which may imply that more members of the family
than Paul himself came to Jerusalem from Tarsus in Paul’s
boyhood (see p. 43).
54 The governor’s name is given by Tacitus (Annals xii. 54;
History v. 9) as Antonius Felix, which implies that (like his
brother Pallas) he was emancipated by Antonia, mother of the
future emperor Claudius. But the manuscripts of Josephus (Ant.
xx. 137) give his gentile name as Claudius, implying that it was
Claudius himself who, having inherited him from his mother,
emancipated him. Their testimony may be confirmed by a
Greek inscription found at Bir el-Malik, Israel, in 1966, which
mentions a procurator bearing the praenomen and nomen Tiberius
Claudius (the cognomen is tantalizingly missing). See M. Avi-
Yonah, “The Epitaph of T. Mucius Clemens”, Israel Exploration
Journal 16 (1966), pp. 258–264 with plate 28; F. F. Bruce, “The
Full Name of the Procurator Felix”, Journal for the Study of the
New Testament, Issue 1 (1978), pp. 33–36.
1 Josephus, BJ i. 408–415; Ant. xvi. 136–141. See L. I. Levine,
Caesarea under Roman Rule (Leiden, 1975), and Roman
Caesarea: An Archaeological-Topographical Study (Jerusalem,
1975); C. T. Fritsch (ed.), Studies in the History of Caesarea
Maritima, i (Missoula, Montana, 1975).
2 The inscription was first published by A. Frova, Istituto
Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere: Rendiconti (Milan, 1961), pp.
419–434; cf. A. Degrassi, Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei
Lincei: Rendiconti (Rome, 1964), pp. 59–65; it runs: [Dis
Augusti]s Tiberieum [… Po]ntius Pilatus [praef]ectus luda[ea]e
[fecit d]e[dicauit].
3 Tacitus, Annals xv. 44. 4.
4 Suetonius, Life of Claudius, 28; Tacitus, Annals xii, 53 f.;
History v. 9.
5 Suetonius, Life of Claudius, 28. 1; Tacitus, History v. 9.
6 Tacitus, Annals xii. 54. 3 (“Judaea was divided: the
Samaritans came under Felix and the Galilaeans under
Cumanus”).
7 Josephus, BJ ii. 243–247; Ant. xx. 131–137, 162.
8 Tacitus, History v. 9.
9 Josephus, BJ ii. 254–257; Ant. xx. 160–166, 186–188.
10 Tacitus, Annals xiii. 14. 1.
11 They were so called presumably because they were followers
of Jesus the Nazarene (Jesus of Nazareth), but the term
(Hebrew noṣrîm) could have been understood to mean
“observant ones”.
12 It is only in the Western text of Acts 24:7 (preserved in TR;
cf. AV) that this reference to Lysias is included in Tertullus’s
speech, but a good case can be made out for its genuineness.
13 See for various arguments more or less to this effect M.
Schneckenburger, Ueber den Zweck der Apostelgeschichte
(Bern, 1841), with A. J. Mattill, Jr., “The Purpose of Acts:
Schneckenburger reconsidered”, in Apostolic History and the
Gospel, ed. W. W. Gasque and R. P. Martin (Exeter, 1970), pp.
108–122; also M. V. Aberle, “Exegetische Studien: 2. Ueber den
Zweck der Apostelgeschichte”, Theologische Quartalschrift 37
(1855), pp. 173 ff.; D. Plooij, “The Work of St. Luke: A
Historical Apology for Pauline Preaching before the Roman
Court”, Expositor, series 8, 8 (1914), pp. 511–523; “Again: The
Work of St. Luke”, ibid. 13 (1917), pp. 108–124; J. I. Still, St.
Paul on Trial (London, 1923); G. S. Duncan, St. Paul’s Ephesian
Ministry (London, 1929), p. 97.
14 As early as 122 B.C., within twelve years from the acquisition
of the province of Asia, the lex Acilia repetundarum was
enacted against extortion and venality on the part of provincial
governors, and a standing court (quaestio) was instituted to
deal with such offences.
15 So wealthy were Pallas and another of Claudius’s freedmen,
Narcissus (see p. 386), that one day, when Claudius was
complaining that there was so little money in the privy purse,
he was advised in jest that he should get these two to take him
into partnership (Suetonius, Life of Claudius 28. 3).
16 They accompanied Paul when he set sail for Rome from
Caesarea (Acts 27:2).
17 Josephus, Ant. xx. 200.
18 Cf. E. Lohmeyer, Die Briefe an die Philipper, an die Kolosser
und an Philemon (Göttingen, 13 1964), pp. 3 f., 14 f., 41; L.
Johnson, “The Pauline Letters from Caesarea”, Expository
Times 68 (1956–57), pp. 24–26; J. J. Gunther, Paul: Messenger
and Exile (Valley Forge, 1972), pp. 91 ff.; J. A. T. Robinson,
Redating the New Testament (London, 1976), pp. 57 ff. W. G.
Kümmel thinks Caesarea rather more probable than Rome as
the setting for the Colossians group, but finds the case more
evenly balanced for Philippians (Introduction to the New
Testament, E. T. [London, 1966], pp. 235, 245); B. Reicke
argues more positively for a Caesarean provenance for the
Colossians group but against it for Philippians (“Caesarea,
Rome and the Captivity Epistles”, in Apostolic History and the
Gospel, ed. W. W. Gasque and R. P. Martin, pp. 277–286).
19 See p. 299.
20 References to a praetorianus in three Latin inscriptions
found on a road near Ephesus (CIL iii. 6085, 7135, 7136) do not
imply the presence of a praetorium at Ephesus: this
praetorianus was an ex-member of the praetorian guard who
was now discharging police duties as a stationarius on that
road.
21 Philemon 22.
22 See pp. 294 f., 298.
23 Josephus, Ant. xix. 354 f.; xx. 139–143. Felix, playing on his
own name, is said to have promised her every “felicity” if she
married him; one can but hope that he kept his promise.
24 Josephus, Ant. xx. 143 f.
25 This is rather more probable than Josephus’s statement (Ant.
xx. 183 f.) that Nero annulled the isopoliteia which the
Caesarean Jews already possessed. Cf. E. Schürer, The History
of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, new E. T., i
(Edinburgh, 1973), pp. 465 ff.; M. Stern, “The Province of
Judaea”, in The Jewish People in the First Century, i. ed. S.
Safrai and M. Stern (Assen, 1974), pp. 367 f.
26 When Pallas was dismissed from office he had sufficient
influence to stipulate that neither his past conduct nor his
personal accounts should be open to inspection (Tacitus,
Annals xiii. 14. 2). The fact that Drusilla was sister to the
younger Agrippa, who was persona grata at the imperial court,
may also have been helpful to Felix.
27 The chief priests’ warning to Pilate at the trial of Jesus (John
19:12).
28 Festus’s accession to the procuratorship may have been the
occasion for the striking in A.D. 59 of a new provincial coinage
—the last before A.D. 66 (see F. W. Madden, History of Jewish
Coinage [London, 1864], p. 153; A. Reifenberg, Ancient Jewish
Coins [Jerusalem, 21947], p. 27). The date of Felix’s dismissal
and Festus’s arrival is discussed in E. Schürer, HJP i (1973), p.
465, n. 42.
29 Cf. A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in
the New Testament (Oxford, 1963), p. 67.
30 History li. 19. Seven years later he received in addition life-
long tribunicia potestas, which authorized him on appellatio to
veto the action of any other magistrate in Rome itself and
within a mile of its walls; but this is irrelevant to the present
issue.
31 Studies in Roman Government and Law (Oxford, 1960), p.
96.
32 See p. 38.
33 Digest xlviii. 6, 7; Paulus, Sententiae v. 26. 1.
34 Studies in Roman Government and Law, p. 59.
35 The best-known instance is Pliny the Younger’s reference, in
his letter to Trajan about Christians in his province of Bithynia
(c. A.D. 112), to some whom, because they were Roman
citizens, he marked down to have their case referred to the
capital (Epistles x. 96. 4).
36 In A.D. 177 the Roman citizens among the Christians
rounded up in the Rhone valley were not sent to Rome for trial:
they were kept in prison until a ruling was obtained from
Marcus Aurelius, and even after he had ruled that they should
be beheaded (instead of being put to death by torture, like the
others), one of them, Attalus, was exposed to the wild beasts at
the mob’s insistence (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. v. 1. 44, 50), See p.
295, n. 32.
37 Josephus, BJ ii. 220, 223, 247, 252; Ant. xv. 407; xviii. 132,
194, 354; xix. 360, 362; xx. 9–12, 104, 138, 159; Life 38.
38 Acts 18:12 ff.; see pp. 253 ff.
39 Or rather, as a series of local collegia licita. The frequently
used phrase religio licita does not appear to have been a
technical term of Roman law; it was used by Tertullian
(Apology 21. 1) to describe the status of Judaism in the Roman
Empire. On collegia licita as the approved term (Digest xlvii.
42) see E. Schürer HJP II. ii, p. 260; S. Safrai and M. Stern
(ed.), The Jewish People in the First Century, i, p. 460. On
attempts by later apologists to win such recognition for
Christianity see S. L. Guterman, Religious Toleration and
Persecution in Ancient Rome (London, 1951), p. 12.
40 Does this consideration lie behind the request for prayer that
Paul may be enabled “boldly to proclaim the mystery of the
gospel” (Ephesians 6:19 f.)?
41 Tacitus, Annals xiii. 4. 2. It was evidently a new departure for
Nero when in A.D. 62 he personally judged the case of
Fabricius Veiento (Tacitus, Annals xiv. 50. 2).
42 Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament, p.
112.
43 W. M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen
(London, 14 1920), p. 357. On the death of Afranius Burrus in
A.D. 62, he was succeeded by Ofonius Tigellinus and Faenius
Rufus as joint-prefects for the next three years, Tigellinus
being the more powerful of the two. If Paul did indeed have his
appeal heard by one of the prefects of the praetorian guard, it
would make a substantial difference whether it was the
relatively honest Burrus or the despicable Tigellinus.
1 “Augustan” (Augusta) was “a title of honour very frequently
bestowed upon auxiliary troops” (HJP, new E. T., i [Edinburgh,
1973], p. 364 f.).
2 T. Mommsen, Gesammelte Schriften, vi = Historische
Schriften, iii (Berlin, 1910), pp. 546 ff.; W. M. Ramsay, St. Paul
the Traveller and the Roman Citizen (London, 14 1920), pp 315,
348.
3 Cf. A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in
the New Testament (Oxford, 1963), p. 109.
4 M. Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the
Roman Empire (Oxford, 1926), p. 595.
5 Two hundred and seventy-six (passengers and crew together),
according to the majority reading of Acts 27:37; “about
seventy-six”, according to Codex B and the Sahidic version. The
larger number is the more probable on textual grounds;
Josephus set sail for Rome in A.D. 63 in a ship which had 600
on board (Life, 13 ff.).
6 M. Dibelius, Studies in the Acts of the Apostles, E. T. (London,
1956), p. 107. For a critique of a much more radical
assessment of the voyage-narrative, than Dibelius’s see R. P. C.
Hanson, “The Journey of Paul and the Journey of Nikias: An
Experiment in Comparative Historiography”, Studia Evangelica
iv = Texte und Untersuchungen 102 (Berlin, 1968), pp. 315–
318.
7 There is a notable Homeric echo in the language about
running the vessel aground in Acts 27:41, including the use of
the classical but obsolete word ναῦς. The jettisoning of the
cargo, etc., in Acts 27:18 f. is described in language reflecting
the LXX version of Jonah 1:5. The narrative contains several
other literary reminiscences.
8 H. J. Holtzmann, Handcommentar zum Neuen Testament
(Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1889), p. 421; see also A. Breusing, Die
Nautik der Alten (Bremen, 1886). Another informative
document from antiquity is Lucian’s dialogue The Ship, which
describes a voyage made by a vessel of the Alexandrian grain-
fleet which set out for Italy but was forced by stormy weather
to put in at Sidon and then at Piraeus.
9 Cf. J. Smith, The Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul (London, 4
1880), pp. 75 f. This work remains of unsurpassed value for its
stage-by-stage annotation of the narrative of the voyage.
10 Cf. Vegetius, De re militari, iv. 39 (the dangerous season for
navigation lasted from September 14 to November 11; after
that, all navigation on the open sea ceased for the winter).
11 Variously spelt; cf. the forms Lasos and Alos in Pliny, Nat.
Hist. iv. 12. It has been identified with a ruined site to the east
of Fair Havens; cf. T. A. B. Spratt, Travels and Researches in
Crete, ii (London, 1865), pp. 7 f.
12 This identification, formerly much disputed, may now be
taken as established; cf. R. M. Ogilvie, “Phoenix”, JTS, n.s. 9
(1958), pp. 308 ff.
13 Cf. C. J. Hemer, “Euraquilo and Melita”, JTS, n.s. 26 (1975),
pp. 100 ff. The word is a hybrid, from Greek εὖρος, “east wind”
(or south of east), and Latin aquilo, “north wind”; the wind is
familiar today as the gregale.
14 Cf. E. Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles, E. T. (Oxford,
1971), pp. 703 f., following J. Renié, “Summisso vase (Acts
27:17)”, Recherches de Science Religieuse 35 (1948), pp. 272
ff.
15 J. Smith, Voyage, p. 117.
16 Which island is not said, but if they had no hope of a landfall
on Sicily, Malta was the next best hope (though Paul would not
have known this).
17 J. Smith, Voyage, p. 144.
18 The identity of the Melita of Acts 28:1 with Malta has been
challenged most recently by A. Acworth, “Where was St. Paul
shipwrecked? A Re-examination of the Evidence”, JTS, n. s. 24
(1973), pp. 190 ff. He identifies it with Mljet, off the Yugoslav
coast near Dubrovnik, taking “the sea of Adria” (Acts 27:27) to
be the Adriatic Sea. There is ample evidence that the central
Mediterranean was then known as the sea of Adria (Hadria):
Strabo, for example, says that “the Ionian Sea is part of what is
now called the Sea of Hadria” (Geography ii. 5. 20) and
Josephus’s ship, bound for Rome in A.D. 63, foundered in the
midst of the sea of Adria and he was picked up by a ship of
Cyrene bound for Italy (Life, 15). C. J. Hemer has given
Acworth’s argument what appears to he a conclusive answer in
his article “Euraquilo and Melita”, JTS, n. s. 26 (1975), pp. 100
ff.
19 There are no venomous snakes in Malta today. Luke calls the
snake a viper (ἔχιδνα); whether there were vipers there in the
first century cannot be determined. W. M. Ramsay suggested
that the snake was the non-poisonous Coronella austriaca,
which resembles a viper (Luke the Physician and Other Studies
[London, 1908], pp. 63 ff.).
20 The Palatine Anthology (vii. 290) contains an epitaph on a
man who, having escaped a storm at sea, was overtaken by
Nemesis in exactly this way on the coast of Libya.
21 The title “first man of the Maltese” is inscriptionally attested
both in Greek (CIG 5754; cf. Addenda, p. 1251) and in Latin
(CIL x. 7495).
22 A. von Harnack pointed out that “the whole story of the
abode of the narrator in Malta is displayed in a medical light”
(Luke the Physician, E. T. [London, 1907], p. 179).
23 Cf. Josephus BJ ii. 104; Ant. xvii. 328.
24 At Appii Forum, about 43 miles (72 km) south of Rome on the
Via Appia, and at Tres Tabernae, another halting stage ten
miles farther north along the road. Cicero (Ad Atticum ii. 10)
mentions them both together.
25 The thirteenth-century Codex gigas.
26 Comptes-rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-
Lettres (Paris, 1923), p. 197, quoted by T. R. S. Broughton in
The Beginnings of Christianity, ed. F. J. F. Jackson and K. Lake,
i. 5 (London, 1933), p. 444, n. 3.
27 Mommsen and Ramsay thought the reference in Acts 28:16
was to this official (see p. 368, n. 2).
28 Sejanus had occupied the post for the greater part of the
principate of Tiberius; it was under him that the nine
praetorian cohorts were concentrated in Rome (Tacitus, Annals
iv. 2). There were usually two collegiate prefects, but Sejanus
and (under Nero) Burrus held the office alone. In Pliny, Epistles
x 57, Trajan directs Pliny (when legate of Bithynia) to send a
prisoner in chains to the prefects of the praetorian guard.
29 The Western text of Acts 28:16 adds expressly that Paul was
allowed to live “outside the camp” (but there may be a
theological nuance here, derived from the LXX of Exodus 33:7
or Leviticus 16:27; cf. Hebrews 13:11).
30 Cf. Mark 4:11 f.; John 12:40. See p. 335.
31 J. V. Bartlet, “Two New Testament Problems: 1. St. Paul’s
Fate at Rome”, Expositor, series 8, 5 (1913), pp. 464 ff.
32 Cf. W. M. Ramsay, “The Imprisonment and Supposed Trial of
St. Paul in Rome”, Expositor, series 8, 5 (1913), pp. 264 ff.,
reprinted in The Teaching of Paul in Terms of the Present Day
(London, 1913), pp. 346 ff. (the article to which Bartlet’s article
mentioned in the immediately preceding footnote was a reply);
K. Lake, “What was the End of St. Paul’s Trial?” Interpreter 5
(1908–9), pp. 147 ff.; H. J. Cadbury, “Roman Law and the Trial
of Paul”, Beginnings of Christianity i. 5, pp. 297 ff., especially
pp. 326 ff.
33 T. Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht (Leipzig, 1899), pp. 469,
n. 1, 472, n. 5, 473. n. 1. The document (BGU ii. 628 recto) is
reproduced by Cadbury, Beginnings of Christianity i, 5. pp. 333
f., and by H. Conzelmann, Die Apostelgeschichte (Tübingen,
1963), pp. 157 f. Bartlet recognized its third-century date; he
refers to “eighteen months, which to judge from the third
century usage was the limit for capital charges sent on appeal
from the provinces” (Expositor, series 8, 5, pp. 466 f.).
34 The distinction is made plain by A. H. M. Jones, Studies in
Roman Government and Law (Oxford, 1960), p. 57.
35 A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the
New Testament, p. 109.
36 Acts 27:23 f.
1 Edited by H. J. Vogels in CSEL lxxxi. 1 (Vienna, 1966), p. 6.
2 He wrote during the Roman episcopate of Damasus (A.D. 366–
384); cf. A. Souter, The Earliest Latin Commentaries on the
Epistles of St. Paul (Oxford, 1927), pp. 42 f.
3 Cf. Irenaeus, Against Heresies iii. 3. 1; Gaius of Rome as
quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. ii. 25. 7; Dionysius of Corinth as
quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. ii. 25. 8.
4 Cf. 1 Maccabees 8:17 ff.; 12:1 ff.; 14:16 ff., 40.
5 Cicero, Pro Flacco 66. See p. 296.
6 Cf. H. J. Leon, The Jews of Ancient Rome (Philadelphia, 1960),
pp. 135 f. (see p. 30 above).
7 Cf. H. J. Leon, The Jews of Ancient Rome, pp. 46 ff.
8 Cf. H. J. Leon, The Jews of Ancient Rome, pp. 135 ff. A fourth-
century synagogue was excavated at Ostia in 1963; it had been
erected on the site of a late first-century synagogue. Cf. M. F.
Squarciapino, “The Synagogue at Ostia”, Archaeology 16
(1963), pp. 194 ff.
9 See p. 334.
10 From the Campus Martius (on the left bank of the Tiber) and
the Suburra (a heavily populated district between the Quirinal
and Viminal hills).
11 Either from Tripolis in North Africa or from Tripolis in
Phoenicia.
12 The synagogue of the Augustenses was presumably named in
honour of the emperor; that of the Agrippenses either after his
minister and son-in-law M. Vipsanius Agrippa (63–12 B.C.) or
after the elder Herod Agrippa (10 B.C.–A.D. 44).
13 See p. 250.
14 Cf. Josephus, Ant. xviii. 81–84; cf. Tacitus, Annals ii. 85. 5;
Suetonius, Life of Tiberius 36. Four thousand Jews were sent to
Sardinia to take part in the military suppression of brigandage
in that island. See p. 328.
15 Romans 2:24.
16 Dio Cassius, History 1x. 6: “he forbade them to meet
together in accordance with their ancestral way of life”.
17 The date indicated by Orosius (History vii. 6. 15 f.), A.D. 49,
is probably accurate enough, although Orosius confuses the
issue by referring to a non-existent account of Josephus.
18 See pp. 235, 250.
19 Suetonius, Life of Claudius 25. 4.
20 Cf. R. Eisler, Iesous basileus ou basileusas, ii (Heidelberg,
1930), p. 706; The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist (London,
1931), p. 581.
21 He mentions them in his Life of Nero (16. 2) as men addicted
to “a novel and mischievous superstition”, on whom exemplary
punishment was inflicted. See p. 442.
22 Cf. R. Graves and J. Podro, Jesus in Rome (London, 1957),
pp. 38 ff.
23 Tacitus, Annals xv. 44. 4.
24 See especially Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition 20:5, where
the purificatory bath prescribed on Maundy Thursday for
candidates for baptism on Easter Day presents affinities with
nonconformist Judaism of the Essene variety; cf. R. J. Zwi
Werblowsky, “On the Baptismal Rite according to St.
Hippolytus”, Studia Patristica iv = Texte und Untersuchungen
54 (1957), pp. 93 ff.; M. Black, The Scrolls and Christian
Origins (London, 1961), pp. 91 ff.
25 Acts 18:2; see pp. 250 f.
26 See F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids,
1964), pp. 267 ff.
27 Cf. A. von Harnack, “Probabilia über die Adresse und den
Verfasser des Hebräerbriefs”, ZNW 1 (1900), pp. 16 ff.
28 Tacitus, Annals xiii. 32. 3–5.
29 H. Pitman (ed.), Cornelii Taciti Annalium Libri XIII–XVI
(Oxford, 1904), Notes, pp. 29 f.
30 Cf. Dio Cassius, History lx. 18. 4.
31 Cf. H. Leclercq, “Aristocratiques (Classes)”, in DACL i. 2
(Paris, 1907), columns 2847 f.
32 Romans 11:12 ff. (see p. 334).
33 The Christian community in Colossae included smaller
groups (“churches”) meeting in the houses of Nympha (Col.
4:15) and Philemon (Philemon 2).
34 See p. 408.
35 Cf. “all” in Romans 1:7.
36 Cf. P. S. Minear, The Obedience of Faith (London, 1971), p.
23.
37 If it was addressed to a Jewish Christian group in Rome, then
Hebrews 12:4 (“… you have not yet resisted to the point of
shedding your blood”) seems to preclude a date after the
Neronian persecution of A.D. 64/65.
38 Cf. T. W. Manson, Studies in the Gospels and Epistles
(Manchester, 1962), pp. 234 ff.; he names D. Schulz in
Theologische Studien und Kritiken 2 (1829), pp. 609 ff., as the
first to suggest an Ephesian destination for Romans 16. For the
Roman destination cf. C. H. Dodd, The Epistle to the Romans
(London, 1932), pp. xvii ff., 236 ff.; H. W. Schmidt, Der Brief
des Paulus an die Römer (Berlin, 1963). pp. 250 ff.; W. G.
Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament, E. T. (London,
1966), pp. 224 ff.
39 Colossians 4:15, 17 (with the latter verse cf. Philemon 2).
40 Romans 16:5.
41 Tacitus, Annals xiii. 1. 4; Dio Cassius, History lx. 34; cf.
Juvenal, Satire 14. 329. This Identification was made (inter
alios) by J. Calvin (Commentary on the Epistle of Paul the
Apostle to the Romans [Strasbourg, 1540], E. T. [Edinburgh,
1961], p. 323). See p. 358, n. 15. For Narcissiani cf. CIL iii.
3973, vi. 15640.
42 Cf. Josephus BJ i. 552; ii. 221; Ant. xviii. 133, 135, etc.
43 Gk. συγγενής. Others whom Paul so designates in this chapter
are Andronicus and Junia(s) (verse 7) and Lucius, Jason and
Sosipater (verse 21).
44 Tacitus, Histories i. 49; ii. 95; he was executed under Galba,
according to Dio Cassius, History (Epitome) lxiv. 3. 4.
45 J. B. Lightfoot, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians (London,
1868), p. 177.
46 An allegorical work, composed about the beginning of the
second century, which had the same sort of vogue in the
church of the generations following as John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s
Progress once had in the English-speaking world.
47 The tomb of the martyrs Nereus and Achilleus was marked
by an epitaph set up by Pope Damasus. The Acts of Nereus and
Achilleus should be dated in the fifth century; cf. H. Leclercq,
“Nérée Achillée”, DACL xii. 1 (Paris, 1935), columns 1111 ff.
For Flavia Domitilla see Dio Cassius, History (Epitome), lxvii.
14; for her cemetery see H. Leclercq, “Domitille (Cimetière
de)”, DACL iv. 2 (Paris, 1921), columns 1404 ff.
48 Cf. H. Leclercq, “Ampliatus (Cubicuium d’)”, DACL i. 2
(Paris, 1907), columns 1712 ff.
49 Cf. O. Michel, Der Brief an die Römer (Göttingen, 13 1966), p.
341.
50 J. B. Lightfoot, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians, p. 17. See
p. 382.
51 See p. 148.
52 P. S. Minear, The Obedience of Faith, pp. 8 ff.
53 The evidence of Ignatius is especially conclusive. He is
obsessed with the importance of the bishop’s office, and insists
on it in six out of his seven letters, so that his silence about it in
his letter to the Romans calls for explanation. The most
probable explanation is that when he wrote (c. A.D. 110) the
Roman church was still without a monarchical bishop. There is
no tone of episcopal authority in the letter of Clement of Rome
to the Corinthians (c. A.D. 96); Hermas, not long afterwards,
speaks of no rule in the Roman church but that of the “elders
who preside over the church” (Shepherd, Vision 2. 4. 3; 3. 9. 7).
54 Polycarp in his Letter to the Philippians (3:2) reminds them
how Paul “in his absence wrote letters to you”. For the
composite view see E. J. Goodspeed, Introduction to the New
Testament (Chicago, 1937), pp. 90–96; F. W. Beare, A
Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians (London, 1959),
pp. 2–5, 100–102, 150. W. G. Kümmel, on the other hand, finds
“no sufficient reason to doubt the original unity of the
transmitted Philippians” (Introduction to the New Testament,
E. T., p. 237).
55 For the expression see F. G. Kenyon, The Bible and Modern
Scholarship (London, 1948), pp. 37 etc.
56 2 Corinthians 10:1.
57 Philippians 1:19.
58 Philippians 1:20.
59 Colossians 4:12–14.
60 Technically (but only technically), Timothy could be included
among the “men of the circumcision” since Paul had
circumcised him (Acts 16:3); see p. 214.
61 J. B. Lightfoot, St. Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to
Philemon (London, 1875), p. 236; cf. his St. Paul’s Epistle to
the Philippians, pp. 16 ff.
62 See p. 360.
63 See p. 212.
64 According to Papias (c. A.D. 130), as quoted by Eusebius
(Hist. Eccl. iii. 39. 15), “Mark became Peter’s interpreter and
wrote accurately all that he remembered of the words or deeds
of the Lord—not, however, in order”. Towards the end of the
second century the anti-Marcionite prologue to Mark’s Gospel
says that “after Paul’s departure he committed this Gospel to
writing in the parts of Italy”. About the same time Clement of
Alexandria (as quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. ii. 25) and
Irenaeus (Against Heresies iii. 1. 2) write to similar effect.
65 Cf. T. W. Manson, Studies in the Gospels and Epistles
(Manchester, 1962), pp. 38 ff.; see p. 258 above with n. 34.
66 Colossians 4:11.
1 Taking πρεσβύτης (“old man”) in the sense of πρεσβευτής
(“ambassador”).
2 Cf. A. Q. Morton, The Times, April 24, 1963 (“there seems no
reason to exclude it from the works of Paul”).
3 E. Renan, Saint Paul, E. T. (London, 1889), p. x.
4 F. C. Baur, Paul, E. T., ii (London, 1875), p. 80.
5 Baur, Paul, E. T., ii, p. 83.
6 W. C. van Manen, article “Philemon, Epistle to”,
Encyclopaedia Biblica, iii (London, 1902), column 3695.
7 Pliny, Epistle ix. 21. For translations see J. B. Lightfoot, St.
Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians and to Philemon (London,
1879), pp. 318 f.; J. Knox, Philemon among the Letters of Paul
(London, 2 1960), pp. 16 f.; E. M. Blaiklock, From Prison in
Rome (London, 1964), pp. 71 f.
8 Encyclopaedia Biblica, column 3696.
9 Cf. P. N. Harrison, “Onesimus and Philemon”, Anglican
Theological Review 32 (1950), pp. 268 ff. See pp. 409 f.
10 G. S. Duncan, St. Paul’s Ephesian Ministry (London, 1929),
pp. 72 f.; cf. P. N. Harrison, “Onesimus and Philemon”, p. 271.
11 St. Paul’s Ephesian Ministry, pp. 74 f.; cf. P. N. Harrison,
“Onesimus and Philemon”, p. 281.
12 C. H. Dodd, “The Mind of Paul”, in New Testament Studies
(Manchester, 1953), p. 95.
13 Ibid.
14 G. S. Duncan, “The Epistles of the Imprisonment in Recent
Discussion”, Expository Times 46 (1934–35), p. 296.
15 A visit by Mark to the province of Asia is implied in
Colossians 4:10, but after the despatch of the letter to the
Colossians.
16 E. Lohmeyer, Der Kolosser—und der Philemonbrief
(Göttingen, 11 1957).
17 St. Paul’s Ephesian Ministry, p. 73.
18 E. R. Goodenough, “Paul and Onesimus”, Harvard
Theological Review 22 (1929), pp. 181 ff.
19 The Deuteronomic law runs as follows: “You shall not give up
to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you;
he shall dwell with you, in your midst, in the place which he
shall choose within one of your towns, where it pleases him
best; you shall not oppress him” (Deuteronomy 23:15 f.). This is
unparalleled in the legislation of the ancient Near East, where
severe sanctions (even the death penalty, as in Law 16 of
Hammurabi’s code) were imposed on anyone harbouring a
runaway slave. The Israelites had good reason to know that
God cared for runaway slaves. To Paul this enactment carried
divine authority; even so, he would not invoke it without
Philemon’s consent, preferring Philemon to act like a Christian
of his own free will.
20 Philo, On the Virtues, 124; see F. H. Colson’s notes in the
Loeb edition of Philo, viii (London/Cambridge, Mass., 1939),
pp. 238 f., 447 f.
21 He also cast doubt (p. 182, n. 7) on the identity of Philemon’s
Onesimus with the Onesimus of Colossians 4:9.
22 Colossians 3:22–4:1; Ephesians 6:5–9; 1 Corinthians 7:21–23;
1 Timothy 6:1 f. (cf. 1 Peter 2:18–21).
23 C. F. D. Moule, The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the
Colossians and to Philemon (Cambridge, 1957), pp. 34 ff.; cf. E.
J. Goodspeed and E. C. Colwell, Greek Papyrus Reader
(Chicago, 1935), no. 59.
24 The Interpreter’s Bible xi (New York, 1955), pp. 555 ff.
25 E. J. Goodspeed, “The Place of Ephesians in the First Pauline
Collection”, Anglican Theological Review 12 (1929–30), pp. 189
ff.; Introduction to the New Testament (Chicago, 1937), pp. 210
ff., 222 ff.; The Meaning of Ephesians (Chicago, 1933); The Key
to Ephesians (Chicago, 1956). See pp. 425 ff.
26 Ignatius, To the Ephesians 1:3.
27 Including three times by name (1:3; 2:1; 6:2).
28 Ignatius, To the Ephesians 20:2.
29 To the Ephesians 2:2 (Ignatius’s ὀναίμην ὑμῶν [plural] catches
up Paul’s ὀναίμην σου [singular]).
30 Knox argues (Philemon among the Letters of Paul, pp. 89 ff.)
that Ignatius’s reference to the Ephesian church’s “well-loved
name” (1:1) is an allusion to the name of its bishop, in whom
the church was embodied: “I received in the name of God your
whole community in Onesimus” (1:3).
31 “I appeal to you for my child” (Philemon among the Letters
of Paul, p. 14). “Is Paul appealing on behalf of Onesimus?… Or
is he simply asking for Onesimus?… Paul, with all possible
delicacy, is asserting a claim upon Onesimus” (pp. 19 f.), i.e. he
is asking that Onesimus be given (back) to him.
32 Philemon among the Letters of Paul, p. 21; he alludes (p. 90)
to Ignatius’s mention of “thy [singular] well-loved name, which
you [plural] have acquired by your righteous nature, according
to faith and love in Christ Jesus” (To the Ephesians 1:1).
33 Philemon among the Letters of Paul, pp. 49 ff.
34 Goodspeed held this view of the letter from Laodicea, but he
made Archippus and Onesimus, as well as Philemon, live at
Laodicea (Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 109 ff.).
35 According to Goodspeed, he would not be present: “If he
were in Colossae, why should the Colossians have to ‘tell’ him?
He would be present at the meeting of the church and would
hear the message without being told” (Introduction to the New
Testament, p. 112).
36 “It is evident that Philemon’s house is meant” (E. J.
Goodspeed, Introduction to the New Testament, p. 111). C. F.
D. Moule rightly regards the fact that Philemon’s name comes
first, together with the phrase κατʼ οἶκόν σου (“at thy house”) as
“fatal to the theory that Archippus is primarily the one
addressed” (Colossians and Philemon, pp. 16 f.).
37 If Philemon of Colossae was Paul’s convert, how is it that
Paul apparently knew the Colossian church only by hearsay
(Colossians 1:4 ff.; 2:1)? It has been suggested to me by
Professor E. W. Goodrick of Multnomah School of the Bible,
Portland, Oregon, that the “upper country” through which Paul
passed on his way to Ephesus (Acts 19:1; see p. 286 above)
included the Lycus valley. If so, he might have met Philemon on
his journey and won him for Christ, although the actual
evangelization of Colossae and neighbouring cities was carried
out, a little later, by Paul’s colleague Epaphras. Alternatively,
he might have met Philemon elsewhere, e.g. in Ephesus: we do
not know.
1 Herodotus, History vii. 30.
2 Xenophon, Anabasis i. 2. 6.
3 Strabo, Geography xii. 8. 13 (πόλισμα).
4 It was about this time (A.D. 60) that the Lycus valley suffered
an earthquake which devastated Laodicea (Tacitus, Annals xiv.
27. 1); we are not told how it affected Colossae.
5 Cf. W. C. Wake, “The Authenticity of the Pauline Epistles: A
Contribution from Statistical Analysis”, Hibbert Journal 47
(1948–49), pp. 50 ff., especially p. 54. See also pp. 16, 443 f.
6 H. Chadwick, “All Things to All Men”, NTS 1 (1954–55), pp.
261 ff., especially pp. 270 ff.
7 H. Chadwick, “All Things to All Men”, pp. 272 f.
8 H. J. Holtzmann, Kritik der Epheser- und Kolosserbriefe
(Leipzig, 1872).
9 C. Masson, L’Epître de Saint Paul aux Colossiens
(Neuchatel/Paris, 1950), pp. 83 ff.
10 P. N. Harrison, Paulines and Pastorals (London, 1964), pp.
65 ff.
11 Paulines and Pastorals, p. 75. According to Harrison, the
original letter consisted of Colossians 1:1–6a, 6c–9a; 1:26–2:2a;
2:5, 6; 3:2–13; 3:17–4:18.
12 A. S. Peake, Critical Introduction to the New Testament
(London, 1909), p. 52.
13 Paulines and Pastorals, pp. 70, 77.
14 E. Lohse, A Commentary on the Epistles to the Colossians
and to Philemon, E. T. (Philadelphia, 1971), pp. 177–183 et
passim. The exhortation to the Colossian Christians to “teach
and admonish one another” (Colossians 3:16) should not be
pressed to imply that there was no specialized teaching gift in
that church.
15 F. F. Bruce, “The Epistles of Paul”, in Peake’s Commentary
on the Bible, ed. M. Black and H. H. Rowley (London, 2 1962),
pp. 928 ff.
16 E.g. 1 Thessalonians 4:16 f.; 2 Thessalonians 1:7; 2:3–12; see
pp. 231, 306.
17 Cf. 1 Corinthians 12:16–21.
18 If Ephesus is excluded as the place of origin for Colossians, it
is by the same token excluded for Philemon (see p. 399).
19 Paulines and Pastorals, p. 75 (see p. 299).
20 It is not easy to see why the allegedly genuine nucleus of
Colossians should have been written at all.
21 M. D. Hooker, “Were there False Teachers in Colossae?” in
Christ and Spirit in the New Testament: Studies in Honour of
C. F. D. Moule, ed. B. Lindars and S. S. Smalley (Cambridge,
1973), pp. 315–331.
22 For an inquiry into their teaching see G. Bornkamm, “Die
Häresie des Kolosserbriefes”, in Das Ende des Gesetzes:
Paulusstudien = Gesammelte Aufsätze i (Munich, 1952), pp.
139–156, E. T., “The Heresy at Colossae”, in Conflict at
Colossae, ed. F. O. Francis and W. A. Meeks (Missoula, 1975),
pp. 125–140.
23 The statement sometimes quoted in this connexion from TB
Shabbath 147b, to the effect that the wines and baths of Prugita
had separated the ten tribes from their fellow-Israelites, is of
doubtful relevance: Prugita may be Phrygia, but it may not.
24 Cf. H. Chadwick, “St. Paul and Philo of Alexandria”, BJRL 48
(1965–66), pp. 286–307, especially p. 303.
25 Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 62.
26 See G. Quispel’s account in The Jung Codex, ed. F. L. Cross
(London, 1955), p. 62; he suggested that the treatise was by
Heracleon. Cf. also Genesis Rabba 8:8 on Genesis 1:26: “When
Moses came to the words, ‘Let us [plural] make man’, he said,
‘Lord of the world! What an opportunity is thus given to the
heretics to open their mouths!’ He answered, ‘Write! He who
wishes to go astray may go astray’.”
27 Cf. Galatians 3:19; Acts 7:53; Hebrews 2:2; see p. 192 with n.
9.
28 J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to
Philemon (London, 1875), pp. 73 ff.
29 “The Name Essene” (pp. 349 ff.); “Origin and Affinities of the
Essenes” (pp. 355 ff.); “Essenism and Christianity” (pp. 397 ff.).
30 J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (London,
1865), pp. 292 ff.
31 Reprinted with another of his treatises in C. D. Ginsburg,
The Essenes: Their History and Doctrine/The Kabbalah: Its
Doctrines, Development and Literature (London, 1955).
32 Cf. O. Cullmann, “Die neuentdeckten Qumran-Texte und das
Judenchristentum der Pseudoclementinen” in
Neutestamentliche Studien für R. Bultmann, ed. W. Eltester =
BZNW 21 (Berlin, 1954), pp. 35 ff., and “The Significance of
the Qumran Texts for Research into the Beginnings of
Christianity”, in The Scrolls and the New Testament, ed. K.
Stendahl (London, 1958), pp. 18 ff.; H. J. Schoeps, Urgemeinde,
Judenchristentum, Gnosis (Tübingen, 1956), pp. 69 ff.
33 Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, pp.
73 ff.
34 Cf. W. D. Davies, “Paul and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Flesh and
Spirit”, in The Scrolls and the New Testament, ed. K. Stendahl,
pp. 157 ff., especially pp. 166 ff.
35 E.g. “his body of flesh”, attested in Colossians 1:22 (τῷ σώματι
τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ, cf. Colossians 2:11) and in 1QpHab 9, l. 2
(bigewiyyat beśārô).
36
With Colossians 2:18, “taking his stand on visions” (ἃ ἑώρακεν
ἐμβατεύων) Professor Davies compares the description in 1QM
10, ll. 10 ff., of
“the people of the saints of the covenant
instructed in the laws and learned in wisdom,
who have heard the voice of Majesty
and have seen the angels of holiness,
whose ears have been unstopped,
and who have heard profound things”.
The meaning of the Greek phrase was considerably illuminated
in 1913 by the publication of a group of inscriptions from
Claros, on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, where the verb
ἐμβατεύειν denotes a sequel to initiation, meaning something like
“to tread the sacred area”, “to have access to the inmost
shrine”. Cf. W. M. Ramsay, The Teaching of Paul in Terms of
the Present Day (London, 1913), pp. 286 ff.; A. D. Nock, Essays
on Religion and the Ancient World, i (Oxford, 1972), p. 342; M.
Smith, The Secret Gospel (London, 1974), pp. 98 f., where the
phrase is translated “[beings] he saw [when] going in [to the
heavens]”, in a context which makes one wonder if the
“Colossian heresy” may not have had something to do with an
inchoate phase of merkabah mysticism (see p. 135, n. 2; 423, n.
54).
37 M. Black, The Scrolls and Christian Origins (London, 1961),
p. 166.
38 See in particular R. Reitzenstein, Das iranische
Erlösungsmysterium (Bonn, 1921); for the application to the
New Testament, especially to Colossians and Ephesians, cf. H.
Schlier, Christus und die Kirche im Epheserbrief (Tübingen,
1930); E. Käsemann, Leib und Leib Christi (Tübingen, 1933); R.
Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, E. T., i (London,
1952), pp. 164 ff., ii (London, 1955), pp. 133 ff., 149 ff.
39 Cf. O. Cullmann, “The Tradition”, in The Early Church
(London, 1956), pp. 55 ff.
40 Colossians 2:15.
41 The “archons of this age” in 1 Corinthians 2:8 are probably
identical with the “kosmokratores of this darkness” in Ephesians
6:12. For Paul’s understanding of them see pp. 422 f.
42 On the structure of these verses see E. Lohmeyer, Die Briefe
an die Philipper, an die Kolosser und an Philemon (Göttingen, 8
1930), p. 41; E. Käsemann, “A Primitive Christian Baptismal
Liturgy”, in Essays on New Testament Themes, E. T. (London,
1964), pp. 149 ff.; R. P. Martin, Colossians: The Church’s Lord
and the Christian’s Liberty (Exeter, 1972), and Colossians and
Philemon (London, 1974), pp. 55 ff. Professor Martin accepts
that verses 15–20 “form a compact, self-contained hymn
written in praise of the cosmic Christ, the Lord of creation and
redemption” (Colossians: The Church’s Lord and the
Christian’s Liberty, p. 39). M. D. Hooker is not convinced that
there was a previously existent “hymn”, but suggests that the
passage “may … have been developed and formulated … in
order to demonstrate that both creation and redemption are
completed in Christ because he has replaced the Jewish Law”
(“Were there False Teachers in Colossae?”, pp. 316 f., 329). J.
M. Robinson has proposed that Colossians 2:9–15 should be
regarded as “clearly a baptismal homily on the anti-gnostic
kerygmatic hymn in Col. 1:15–20” (“From Paulinism to Early
Catholicism”, Interpretation 10 [1956], p. 349). The present
state of the question is reviewed in detail and judiciously
assessed by P. Benoit, “L’hymne christologique de Col 1, 15–
20”, in Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults:
Studies for Morton Smith at Sixty, ed. J. Neusner, i (Leiden,
1975), pp. 226–263.
43 Cf. C. F. Burney, “Christ as the APXH of Creation”, JTS 27
(1925–26), pp. 160–177. Paul’s exegesis of Proverbs 8:22 in this
sense antedates by nearly 200 years its earliest rabbinical
exponent, the third-century Hoshaiah (Genesis Rabba 1:1 on
Genesis 1:1). For the Greek background of ἀρχή see A. A. T.
Ehrhardt, The Beginning (Manchester, 1968).
44 Cf. Revelation 1:5.
45 In Colossians 1:18 and 2:10 there is probably the same kind
of oscillation between the literal sense of “head” and its
secondary sense of “origin” as appears in 1 Corinthians 11:3 ff.
Mention may also be made here of W. L. Knox’s improbable
argument that, under the influence of Hellenism, Paul moved
from apocalyptic to cosmogony, from Christ as Omega to Christ
as Alpha (St. Paul and the Church of the Gentiles [Cambridge,
1938], pp. 90 ff.).
46 Cf. W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism (London, 1948),
pp. 53 ff.
47 Cf. H. Schlier, Christus und die Kirche im Epheserbrief
(Tübingen, 1930), pp. 37 ff.; E. Käsemann, Leib und Leib
Christi (Tübingen, 1933). (Both these scholars have modified
their views since these monographs were published.)
48 Cf. W. L. Knox, St. Paul and the Church of the Gentiles, pp.
160 ff.
49 Cf. A. Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, E. T.
(London, 1931), pp. 115 ff.; E. Best, One Body in Christ
(London, 1955), pp. 93 ff., 203 ff.
50 Cf. 1 Corinthians 12:12 (“as the body is one and has many
members, and all the members of the body, being many, are
one body, so also is Christ”).
51 “Membris adhuc in terra positis caput in caelo clamabat”
(Sermons 279. 1).
52 Cf. A. D. Galloway, The Cosmic Christ (London, 1951), p. 28;
J. S. Stewart, “On a Neglected Emphasis in New Testament
Theology”, Scottish Journal of Theology 4 (1951), pp. 292 ff.; G.
H. C. Macgregor, “Principalities and Powers”, NTS 1 (1954–
55), pp. 17 ff.
53 R. Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, E. T. (London,
1960), p. 21. Cf. the treatment of “Beliar” in H. H. Rowley, The
Relevance of Apocalyptic (London, 3 1963), pp. 177 f. On the
subject in general see also G. B. Caird, Principalities and
Powers (Oxford, 1956); H. Schlier, Principalities and Powers in
the New Testament, E. T. (Freiburg/London, 1961); E. G. Rupp,
Principalities and Powers (London, 1964).
54 I should speak more positively now on the possibility that the
“Colossian heresy” had “something to do with an inchoate
phase of merkabah mysticism” (p. 416, end of n.36); see F. F.
Bruce, The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the
Ephesians (Grand Rapids, 1984), pp. 23–26.
1 Published in BJRL 4 (1917–18), pp. 285 ff., and subsequently
in J. T. Wilkinson (ed.), Arthur Samuel Peake (London, 1958),
pp. 116 ff.
2 G. B. Caird, The Apostolic Age (London, 1955), p. 133; cf. his
New Clarendon Bible commentary, Paul’s Letters from Prison
(Oxford, 1976), pp. 9 ff. According to S. H. Hooke, Ephesians,
“if not by Paul, certainly belongs to the Pauline exposition of
the glory” (Alpha and Omega [Welwyn, 1961], p. 256). P. N.
Harrison adds that the author of Ephesians “knew how to put
into words, and so make explicit, thoughts which are implicit in
Paul’s other letters, but nowhere else so explicit as here”
(Paulines and Pastorals [London, 1964], p. 35). The case
against Pauline authorship is presented most substantially by
C. L. Mitton, The Epistle to the Ephesians (Oxford, 1951); cf.
his more popular commentary, Ephesians (London, 1976).
Pauline authorship is defended by E. Percy, Die Probleme der
Kolosser- und Epheserbriefe (Lund, 1946), and A. van Roon,
The Authenticity of Ephesians (Leiden, 1974). See further the
two opening papers, “The Case for the Pauline Authorship” by
J. N. Sanders (pp. 9 ff.) and “The Case against the Pauline
Authorship” by D. E. Nineham (pp. 21 ff.) in F. L. Cross (ed.),
Studies in Ephesians (London, 1956); also H. J. Cadbury, “The
Dilemma of Ephesians”, NTS 5 (1958–59), pp. 91 ff.; R. P.
Martin, “An Epistle in Search of a Life-Setting”, Expository
Times 79 (1967–68), pp. 297 ff.
3 M. Barth, The Broken Wall (London, 1960), p. 9; see also his
massive commentary in the Anchor Bible: Ephesians, 2 volumes
(Garden City, N.Y., 1974).
4 E. J. Goodspeed, The Meaning of Ephesians (Chicago, 1933),
p. 15.
5 The Meaning of Ephesians, p. 3.
6 The Meaning of Ephesians, p. 9.
7 The Meaning of Ephesians, p. 8.
8 A. Q. Morton and J. McLeman, Paul: The Man and the Myth
(London, 1966), pp. 27 f.
9 S. T. Coleridge, Table Talk, May 25, 1830; see H. N. Coleridge
(ed.), Specimens of the Table Talk of the late Samuel Taylor
Coleridge (London, 1835), p. 88. “The Epistle to the
Ephesians”, Coleridge said on this occasion, “is evidently a
catholic epistle, addressed to the whole of what might be called
St. Paul’s diocese.… It embraces every doctrine of Christianity;
—first, those doctrines peculiar to Christianity, and then those
precepts common to it with natural religion.”
10 The Meaning of Ephesians, p. 3. Goodspeed’s own view, in
which he was followed by the “Chicago school” and P. N.
Harrison, was that Ephesians was composed by the first editor
of the Pauline corpus to serve as an introduction to it. See p.
402.
11 The reference to Ephesus is omitted by P46 (the oldest extant
Pauline manuscript) and by the principal witnesses to the
Alexandrian text-type. See B. M. Metzger, A Textual
Commentary on the Greek New Testament (London/New York,
1971), p. 601.
12 The reference to Tychicus in Ephesians 6:21 f. is practically a
verbatim reproduction of Colossians 4:7 f.
13 He magnifies his office because it will be the indirect means
of the conversion of his fellow-countrymen; apostle to the
Gentiles though he is, he has closely at heart the spiritual
welfare of his Jewish kith and kin (see p. 334). On the relation
between Ephesians and Romans 9–11 see H. Chadwick, “Die
Absicht des Epheserbriefes”, ZNW 51 (1960), pp. 145 ff.,
especially p. 148. He suggests that Ephesians was designed to
bring the whole Gentile mission, in all its streams (cf. p. 18),
under the aegis of Paul’s unique apostleship.
14 Cf. the similar sentiment in 1 Corinthians 15:9 f.
15 H. Schlier, Christus und die Kirche im Epheserbrief
(Tübingen, 1930). From the common stock of Christian
language about Christ’s saving work, he points out, come
statements about Christ’s giving himself up for his people
(Ephesians 5:2, 25) and about God’s raising him from the dead
and putting all things beneath his feet (Ephesians 1:20, 22).
For the rest, Schlier derives from the world of gnostic thought
the concepts of the redeemer’s ascent to heaven, the heavenly
wall, the heavenly man, the church as the body of Christ, the
body of Christ as a heavenly building, and the heavenly bridal
union. See the summary of his thesis by K. L. Schmidt in TDNT
iii, s.v. ἐκκλησία, pp. 509 ff., abridged in The Church (Bible Key
Words, London, 1950), pp. 15 ff.
16 Cf. Ephesians 1:14 (see p. 209 above).
17 The Spirit is mentioned incidentally in Colossians 1:8 (“your
love in the Spirit”), and his inspiration is implied in the
reference to “spiritual songs” in Colossians 3:16.
18 Acts 2:33; 5:32,
19 John 15:26; 16:8–10, 14 f.
20 1 John 5:7 f.
21 1 Peter 1:12.
22 Romans 7:6; 8:2, 4; 2 Corinthians 3:3 ff.; Galatians 3:2 ff.;
see p. 200 above.
23 Romans 8:10 ff., especially verse 23; 2 Corinthians 1:22; 5:5.
24 1 Corinthians 12:13 (see p. 210).
RSV Revised Standard Version
NEB New English Bible
25 See p. 209, n. 25; cf. for a full treatment of the subject G. W.
H. Lampe, The Seal of the Spirit (London, 1951).
26 Mark 1:8; John 1:33; Acts 1:5; 11:16 and (by implication)
19:1–6.
27 The “unity (ἑνότης) of the Spirit” which the readers are
charged to keep is not, of course, the fact that there is one
Spirit (which cannot be affected by anything they do or fail to
do); it is a consequence of that fact. Ephesians 4:4–6 to some
extent echoes 1 Corinthians 12:4–6; both passages include the
coordinated “Spirit … Lord … God”. The repeated “one” in
Ephesians 4:4–6 anticipates the later eastern creeds; cf. R. R.
Williams, “Logic versus Experience in the Order of Credal
Formulae”, NTS 1 (1954–55), pp. 42 ff.
28 Cf. the “new man” of Ephesians 2:15, who comprises former
Jew and former Gentile in one. There, as in Ephesians 4:24, the
“new man” is the καινὸς ἄνθρωπος, whereas in Colossians 3:10 he
is the νέος ἄνθρωπος. But no difference in meaning can be
pressed here between καινός and νέος, for in Ephesians 4:23
putting on the καινὸς ἄνθρωπος is equivalent to ἀνανεοῦσθαι
(“being renewed”) in the spirit of their mind, while in
Colossians 3:10 the verb ἀνακαινόω is used for the renewal of
the νέος ἄνθρωπος. With the new man we must compare the
“inner man” (ἔσω ἄνθρωπος) of Romans 7:22 and 2 Corinthians
4:16, who appears also in Ephesians 3:16. It is in the παλαιὸς
ἄνθρωπος of Romans 6:6 and the ἕσω ἄνθρωπος of Romans 7:22
that we find the source of the “new man” concept, not in the
gnostic “redeemer” myth (cf. J. Horst in TDNT iv. p. 565, n. 79,
s.v. μέλος).
29 Thus E. Käsemann says that “in the New Testament it is
Ephesians that most clearly marks the transition from the
Pauline tradition to the perspectives of the early Catholic era”;
he compares the epistle in this respect with Acts (“Ephesians
and Acts”, in Studies in Luke-Acts: Essays in Honor of Paul
Schubert, ed. L. E. Keck and J. L. Martyn [Nashville, 1966], pp.
288 ff.). On this point H. Küng takes issue with Käsemann and
others in The Structures of the Church, E. T. (London, 1965),
pp. 135 ff., especially 142 ff., charging them with establishing a
New Testament canon within the received canon by relegating
to an inferior status anything that savours of “early Catholic
decadence”. S. C. Neill points out that in German Protestant
theology the term Frühkatholizismus is used “always as a term
of reproach” (The Interpretation of the New Testament
[London, 1964], p. 160). It is noteworthy that when the former
Lutheran scholar H. Schlier, author of Christus und die Kirche
im Epheserbrief, became convinced that incipient Catholicism
and other features commonly labelled “accretions” were part
and parcel of apostolic Christianity, he not only joined the
Roman Catholic Church but found it possible to regard
Ephesians as an authentic epistle of Paul; cf. his commentary,
Der Brief an die Epheser (Düsseldorf, 5 1965), pp. 22 ff.
30 An evident token of this is his collection for the Jerusalem
“saints” (see pp. 321 ff).
31 Cf. the similar use of μέλη (“members”) in Ephesians 4:16, 25;
5:30.
32 Cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:6; Colossians 1:12.
33 Cf. John 3:19 ff.; 12:35 ff.; 1 John 1:7; 2:8 ff.
34
Cf. the metre (not the substance) of the Attis initiation formula
quoted by Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum
religionum 18:1:
ἐκ τυμπάνου βέβρωκα,
ἐκ κυμβάλου πέπωκα,
γέγονα μύστης Ἄττεως
(“I have eaten from the drum, I have drunk from the cymbal, I
have become an initiate of Attis”). A similar Eleusinian formula
is quoted by Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks
2:14.
35 On this see K. G. Kuhn, “The Epistle to the Ephesians in the
Light of the Qumran Texts”, E. T. in Paul and Qumran, ed. J.
Murphy-O’Connor (London, 1968), pp. 115 ff.
36 With this annulment of the law cf. the statement in Romans
10:4 that “Christ is the end of the law” (see pp. 190 ff.).
37 E.g. J. A. Robinson, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians
(London, 1904), pp. 59 f. (On the barrier see Josephus, BJ v.
194.)
38 E.g. H. Schlier, Der Brief an die Epheser, pp. 126 ff.,
following his treatment of “die himmlische Mauer” in Christus
und die Kirche im Epheserbrief, pp. 18 ff.
39 This question is especially provoked when attempts are made
to reconstruct the concept of the heavenly wall (or other
gnostic concepts) on the basis of Mandaean texts which are
several centuries later than the New Testament age.
40 M. Dibelius, An die Kolosser, An die Epheser, An Philemon
(Tübingen, 3 1953), p. 69; cf. H. Schlier, Christus und die
Kirche im Epheserbrief, p. 18. E. J. Goodspeed sees the temple
barrier here, but considers that its figurative use in this context
was suggested by its actual destruction in A.D. 70 (The
Meaning of Ephesians, p. 37).
41 Ephesians 2:18, 21.
42 How evenly balanced is the evidence for either view may be
illustrated by a series of entries in TDNT, In Vol. i, pp. 522 f.,
s.v. καταβαίνω), J. Schneider argued for the “lower realm” being
earth itself; in Vol. iv, pp. 597 f., s.v., μέρος he acknowledges a
change of mind, having been persuaded thereto by F. Büchsel’s
entry on κατώτερος in Vol. iii, pp. 640 f.
43 Cf. F. F. Brace, Biblical Exegesis in the Qumran Texts
(London, 1960), pp. 7 ff.
44 Goodspeed (The Meaning of Ephesians, p. 12) suggests
strangely that when Ephesians was written the Jewish-Gentile
question was no longer actual, but that “under this old form the
writer puts forth his appeal for unity among the Greek
churches in the face of the rising sects”. This is reading into
the text what is not there in preference to reading out of it
what is there.
45 This quotation in 1 Corinthians 2:9 is introduced by “as it is
written” as though it were scripture. It bears some
resemblance to Isaiah 64:4, on which indeed it may ultimately
be based, but that is not its immediate source. Origen in his
Commentary on Matthew 27:9 (cf. Jerome on Isaiah 64:4 and
Ambrosiaster on 1 Corinthians 2:9) says the words appear in
the Secrets (or Apocalypse) of Elijah, but they do not occur in
the fragment of that (probably post-Pauline) work which has
survived. They are frequently quoted in the early centuries
A.D., especially by gnostic writers, because they lent
themselves readily to a gnostic interpretation (of which the
wording of 1 John 1:1 might be a deliberate rebuttal). In some
late second-century documents they are ascribed to Jesus (cf.
Acts of Peter 39; Gospel of Thomas 17). See also E. von
Nordheim, “Das Zitat des Paulus in 1 Kor 2, 9 und seine
Beziehung zum koptischen Testament Jakobs”, ZNW 65 (1974),
pp. 112–120 (this Coptic work is a christianized version of a
Jewish testament, from which, it is suggested, Paul may have
quoted), with reply by H. F. D. Sparks, “1 Kor 2, 9 a quotation
from the Coptic Testament of Jacob?” ZNW 67 (1976), pp. 269–
276.
46 Cf. H. Schlier, Der Brief an die Epheser, pp. 21 f.
1 Cf. Tacitus, Annals xv. 38 ff.
2 Tacitus, Annals xv. 44. 3–8.
3 Suetonius, Life of Nero 16. 2.
4 Revelation 13:10.
5 J. V. Bartlet, “The Historic Setting of the Pastoral Epistles”,
Expositor, series 8, 5 (1913), pp. 28 ff., 161 ff., 256 ff., 325 ff.
especially pp. 326–339. J. A. T. Robinson dates them even
earlier (see p. 317, n. 12; p. 446, n. 15).
6 Cf. M. Dibelius and H. Conzelmann, The Pastoral Epistles, E.
T. (Philadelphia, 1976), pp. 3, 15f., 126 f., 152 ff. The first
known writer so to date them was evidently Eusebius (Hist.
Eccl. ii. 22. 2–8).
7 P. N. Harrison, The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles (Oxford,
1921), pp. 93 ff., 115 ff.; cf. his Paulines and Pastorals (London,
1964), pp. 106 ff.
8 C. F. D. Moule, “The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles: A
Reappraisal”, BJRL 47 (1964–65), pp. 430 ff.; cf. A. Strobel,
“Schreiben des Lukas? Zum sprachlichen Problemder Pastoral
briefe”, NTS 15 (1968–69), pp. 191 ff.
9 J. N. D. Kelly, A Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles
(London, 1963), p. 9.
10 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. ii. 22. 2 (λόγος ἔχει).
11 P. N. Harrison, Problem, pp. 127 ff.; cf. J. N. D. Kelly,
Commentary, p. 170.
12 1 Clement 5:6.
13 Cf. J. J. Gunther, Paul: Messenger and Exile (Valley Forge,
1972), pp. 144 ff., for the view that this is precisely what
happened (see also L. P. Pherigo, “Paul’s Life after the Close of
Acts”, JBL 70 [1951], p. 278). Apollonius of Tyana is said to
have been exiled to Spain (Philostratus, Life of Apollonius iv.
47).
14 P. N. Harrison, Problem, p. 127. To delete “in Rome” as a
gloss, because its retention stands in the way of a hypothesis
one wishes to maintain (cf. G. S. Duncan, St. Paul’s Ephesian
Ministry [London, 1929], pp. 188 f., 193 f.) is an impermissible
procedure; the phrase constitutes a solid piece of evidence.
15 Cf. J. N. D. Kelly, Commentary, p. 218. J. A. T. Robinson
thinks that Felix’s pronouncement of Amplius (see p. 357) is
referred to (Redating the New Testament [London 1976], p. 74;
cf. Can we trust the New Testament? [London, 1977], pp. 65 f.).
16 See pp. 366 f.
17 2 Timothy 4:17.
18 Cf. J. N. D. Kelly, Commentary, pp. 207–210, 218.
19 1 Clement 5:1–7.
20 There might also be an echo here of the dominical warning in
Mark 13:9 (Matthew 10:18).
21 P. N. Harrison, Problem, p. 107. J. N. D. Kelly, on the other,
hand, says that Clement’s phrase “in a Roman writer could only
mean Spain” (Commentary, p. 10).
22 1 Clement 6:1.
23 Where Clement says πολὺ πλῆθος, Tacitus has multitudo
ingens.
24 Cf. J. Moffatt, Introduction to the Literature of the New
Testament (Edinburgh, 31918), pp. 313, 416 f.
25 Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. iii. 1. 3) indicates that Origen bore
similar witness in the third volume of his commentary on
Genesis.
26 For the dependence of the Muratorian statement on this
document cf. T. Zahn, Introduction to the New Testament, E. T.
ii (Edinburgh, 1909), pp. 62 f., 73 ff. See further A. A. T.
Ehrhardt, The Framework of the New Testament Stories
(Manchester, 1964), pp. 18, 35.
27 Cf. New Testament Apocrypha, E. T., ed. E. Hennecke, W.
Schneemelcher, R. McL. Wilson, ii (London, 1965), pp. 279 ff.
28 Cf. J. B. Lightfoot, Biblical Essays (London, 1893), pp. 423 ff.;
G. Edmundson, The Church in Rome in the First Century
(London, 1913), pp. 160 f.; M. Dibelius and W. G. Kümmel,
Paul, E. T. (London, 1953), p. 152, for more positive
assessments.
29 See p. 444; Jerome, De uiris illustribus 5.
30 As quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. ii. 25. 7; cf. iii. 31. 4.
31 Greek τροπαῖα, monuments set up by the victorious army on a
battle-field to mark their triumph.
32 Cf. (Greek) Acts of Peter and Paul, 80 (Acta Apostolorum
Apocrypha, ed. R. A. Lipsius, i [Leipzig, 1891], p. 214). A
memorial chapel was built on the spot in the fifth century;
above it stands the present-day church of St. Paul at Tre
Fontane. According to these Acts, Paul was executed beneath a
stone pine (στρόβιλος); in 1875 Trappists, excavating behind the
chapel, found a number of fossilized pine-cones with a mass of
Neronian coins (R. Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome
[London, 1895], pp. 156 f.).
33 Cf. H. Lietzmann, Petrus und Paulus in Rom (Berlin, 2 1927);
J. M. C. Toynbee and J. B. Ward-Perkins, The Shrine of St. Peter
and the Vatican Excavations (London, 1956).
34 Cf. E. Kirschbaum, The Tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul, E. T.
(London, 1959), pp. 165 ff.
35 E. Kirschbaum, op. cit., pp. 168 ff. The confessio is the
chamber around the tomb together with the shaft connecting it
with the altar.
36 E. Kirschbaum, op. cit., pp. 179 ff. MART is an abbreviation
of the dative MARTYRI.
37 A magisterial examination of this rival tradition is provided
by H. Chadwick, “St. Peter and St. Paul in Rome: The Problem
of the Memoria Apostolorum ad Catacumbas”, JTS, n. s. 8
(1957), pp 31 ff.
38
The text as it has been transmitted runs:
III KAL. IVL. Petri in Catacumbas
et Pauli Ostense Tusco et Basso
consulibus
On the basis of the Martyrologium Hieronymianum this can be
restored somewhat as follows:
III KAL. IVL. Petri in Vaticano
Pauli uero in uia Ostensi
utrumque in Catacumbas Tusco et Basso
consulibus.
Cf. L. Duchesne (ed.), Liber Pontificalis i (Paris, 1886), p. cv.
39
Tantae per urbis ambitum
Stipata tendunt agmina;
Trinis celebratur uiis
Festum sacrorum martyrum.
40
Hic habitasse prius sanctos cognoscere debes,
Nomina quisque Petri pariter Paulique requiris.
Discipulos Oriens misit, quod sponte fatemur;
Sanguinis ob meritum, Christumque per astra secuti
Aetherios petiere sinus regnaque piorum:
Roma suos potius meruit defendere ciues.
Haec Damasus uestras referat noua sidera laudes.
41 J. Pearson, Annales Cyprianici, p. 62, ad annum 258, printed
in Sancti Caecilii Cypriani Opera, ed. John Fell (Oxford, 1682),
according to H. Chadwick, JTS, n. s. 8 (1957), p. 41, n. 2.
42 See p. 447.
43 Ignatius, Letter to the Romans 4:3.
44 As quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. ii. 25. 8.
45 Irenaeus, Against Heresies iii. 3. 1.
46 Ibid., iii. 3. 2.
47 According to Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. iv. 22. 1–3), Hegesippus (a
mid-second-century Palestinian Christian) drew up an early
succession-list of Roman bishops. For Irenaeus’s dependence
on Hegesippus see J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers i. 1: S.
Clement of Rome (London, 1890), pp. 202 f., 327 ff.
48 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. iii. 2. 1; 21. 1.
49 Eusebius, Chronicon, Year of Abraham 2084 = Nero 14 (i.e.
A.D. 67).
50 C. H. Turner, Catholic and Apostolic (London, 1931), p. 225;
see also his essay “Apostolic Succession” in Essays on the Early
History of the Church and the Ministry, ed. H. B. Swete
(London, 1921), pp. 93–214, especially pp. 141 f.
51 As quoted anonymously by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., v. 28. 3.
That the quotation is from Hippolytus was maintained by J. B.
Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers i. 2 (London, 1890), p. 379,
and A. von Harnack, Chronologie der altchristlichen Literatur,
ii (Leipzig, 1897), pp. 224 f.
52 Cyprian, De unitate ecclesiae 4; Epistles 43. 5; 70. 3; 73. 7,
etc.
53 Cf. A. M. Ramsey, Canterbury Pilgrim (London, 1974), p. 10.
Paul might have raised his eyebrows at the use of the plural
“Gospels”, but he would have approved of “ancient common
traditions” if they were such as he delivered to his converts at
Thessalonica and Corinth (2 Thessalonians 2:15; 1 Corinthians
11:2).
1 Cf. 2 Corinthians 10:10.
2 See pp. 135 f.
3 Galatians 1:13 f.
4 Philippians 3:8.
5 Mme D’Arbley (Fanny Burney), Diary, i (London, 1842), p. 66:
he called Sir John Hawkins “a most unclubbable man”.
6 Romans 16:1 f.
7 Philippians 4:2 f.
8 Even if he asks them to keep their heads veiled when praying
or prophesying, the veil is the sign of their authority to play a
responsible part in church life.
9 Romans 16:3 f.
10 Philippians 2:25–30.
11 Philippians 2:19–22.
12 Philippians 2:17. We may compare his readiness to be
himself “accursed and cut off from Christ” if only thus the
salvation of his Jewish kinsmen could be achieved (Romans
9:3).
13 It was not for this reason that he found the celibate life
congenial (see p. 269); he does not imply that Peter and others
found the company of their wives on their missionary journeys
an encumbrance (1 Corinthians 9:5). The implications of Paul’s
fondness for compounds with the prefix συν· (e.g. “fellow-
worker”, “fellow-soldier”, etc.) have been studied by several
writers; cf. T. R. Glover, Paul of Tarsus (London, 1925), pp. 178
ff., 212.
14 1 Corinthians 4:21.
15 2 Corinthians 8:1–5; 9:1–4.
16 1 Thessalonians 2:19 f.; Philippians 2:14–16.
17 Philippians 4:10–20.
18 2 Thessalonians 3:6–13.
19 1 Corinthians 9:15–18.
20 1 Corinthians 9:24–27.
21 Galatians 5:22 f.
22 J. R. W. Stott, Obeying Christ in a Changing World, 1: The
Lord Christ (London, 1977), p. 24.
23 TJ Berakôt 9:7.
24 1 Corinthians 10:32–11:1. Cf. W. P. DeBoer, The Imitation of
Paul (Kampen, 1962).
25 Galatians 6:17.
26 LXX Sermons (London, 1640), no. 46, p. 460.
27 More appreciative Jewish assessments have come from C. G.
Montefiore, Judaism and St. Paul (London, 1914); H. J.
Schoeps, Paul, E. T. (London, 1961); S. Sandmel, The Genius of
Paul (New York, 1970). Cf. also the interesting psycho-analytic
study by R. L. Rubinstein, My Brother Paul (New York, 1972).
28 Cf. W. L. Lane, “1 Tim. 4:1–3: An Early Instance of Over-
realized Eschatology”, NTS 11 (1964–65), pp. 164–167; see also
p. 307 above.
29 Cf. the disciplinary action enjoined in 1 Corinthians 5:4 f.
30 Eusebius quotes to this effect the Phrygian Montanist
Proclus (Hist. Eccl. iii. 31. 4) and Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus
(Hist. Eccl. iii. 31. 3; v. 24. 2); cf. Irenaeus, Against Heresies iii.
1.1. All three of these writers belong to the end of the second
century.
31 Cf. Matthew 13:25. He is so portrayed in the Clementine
literature, a corpus of third-century writings purporting to
come from the apostolic age (see p. 395), in which James the
just and Peter are the fountain-heads of authority in the
church; cf. H. J. Schoeps, Theologie und Geschichte des
Judenchristentums (Tübingen, 1949), pp. 120, 127.
32 Cf. E. J. Goodspeed, Introduction to the New Testament
(Chicago, 1937), pp. 210 ff.
33 Cf. G. Zuntz, The Text of the Epistles (London, 1954), pp. 14
ff., 276 ff.; he thinks of Alexandria as the place where this work
was done, in view of its apparent “dependence upon the
scholarly Alexandrian methods of editorship” (p. 278). An
Ephesian setting for the compilation of the corpus was
envisaged by E. J. Goodspeed (Introduction to the New
Testament, pp. 217 ff.); cf. C. L. Mitton, The Formation of the
Pauline Corpus of Letters (London, 1955), pp. 44 ff. See also p.
402 above.
34 Cf. A. von Harnack, History of Dogma, E. T., i (London,
1905), pp. 89, 267–286; Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden
Gott (Leipzig, 1921), pp. 230 ff.; 2nd edition = Texte und
Untersuchungen 45 (1924), pp. 199 ff.; this (with its
supplement Neue Studien zu Marcion = Texte und
Untersuchungen 44, Part 4 [1923]) remains the most important
work on Marcion. See also R. S. Wilson, Marcion: A Study of a
Second-Century Heretic (London, 1933); J. Knox, Marcion and
the New Testament (Chicago, 1942); E. C. Blackman, Marcion
and his Influence (London, 1948). See p. 19.
35 In some quarters Marcion’s devotion to Paul raised questions
about Paul in orthodox minds: Tertullian, for example, calls him
“Marcion’s apostle” or “the apostle of the heretics” (Against
Marcion iii. 5. 4; v. 14. 9)—not indeed disparagingly, but in ad
hominem argument; he speaks of him also as “my apostle” (v.
1. 8), but not in Marcion’s exclusive sense. See also C. K.
Barrett, “Pauline Controversies in the Post-Pauline Period”,
NTS 20 (1973–74), pp. 229–245.
36 Cf. Clement of Alexandria, as quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl.
vi. 14. 2 f. See also C. P. Anderson, “The Epistle to the Hebrews
and the Pauline Letter Collection”, Harvard Theological Review
59 (1966), pp. 429–438.
37 In their response to Marcion the catholic churchmen named
thirteen Pauline letters, not ten only, and writings of other
apostolic men in addition to Paul: a fourfold Gospel and not one
single record; with the Acts of the Apostles as the link joining
the Gospel and the Epistles. See F. F. Bruce, The Spreading
Flame (London, 1958), pp. 228 ff.
38 See T. F. Torrance, The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic
Fathers (Edinburgh/London, 1948).
39 See M. F. Wiles, The Divine Apostle (Cambridge, 1967), pp.
94 ff. et passim.
40 Tertullian, De baptismo 17.
41 Cf. A. von Harnack, The Origin of the New Testament, E. T.
(London, 1925), pp. 35 ff., for the influence of Montanism on
the canonizing process.
42 The royal road “is obviously the Roman road built by
Augustus from [Pisidian] Antioch to Lystra” (W. M. Ramsay,
The Church in the Roman Empire before A.D. 170 [London,5
1897], p. 32).
43 New Testament Apocrypha, E. T., ed. E. Hennecke, W.
Schneemelcher, R. McL. Wilson, ii (London, 1965), pp. 353 f.
The reference to “the face of an angel” is reminiscent of
Stephen in Acts 6:13.
44 Plato, Symposium 215 A–222 B.
45 R. Eisler, The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist (London.
1931), pp. 393 ff.
46 W. M. Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire, p. 32.
47 New Testament Apocrypha, E. T., ii, pp. 369–373; see p. 295
above.
48 Hippolytus, Commentary on Daniel, iii. 29.
49
Ad Maronis mausoleum
Ductus, fudit super eum
Piae rorem lacrimae:
“Quem te”, inquit, “reddidissem,
Si te vivum invenissem,
Poetarum maxime!”
50 Cf. (Greek) Acts of Peter and Paul, 80. (See p. 450, n. 32.)
51 Augustine, Confessions viii. 29.
52 A. Souter, The Earliest Latin Commentaries on the Epistles
of St Paul (Oxford, 1927), p. 139.
53 Gesamtausgaben seiner lateinischen Schriften (Wittenberg,
1545); cf. Luthers Werke (Weimar edition, 54 (1928), p. 186).
See E. G, Rupp, The Righteousness of God (London, 1947), pp.
129 ff.; J. Atkinson, The Great Light (Exeter, 1968), pp. 19 f.
54 Cf. K. Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective
Conscience of the West”, Harvard Theological Review 56
(1963), pp. 199–215. See p. 196 above.
55 J. Wesley, Journal, i (London, 1872), pp. 76 f., footnotes. The
language is Pauline; cf. Galatians 4:3–7.
56 J. Wesley, Journal, i, p. 103.
57 A. S. Wood, The Inextinguishable Blaze (London, 1959), p.
113.
58 C. Wesley, Journal, i (London, 1849), p. 90. In his quotation
from Galatians 2:20 he lays (following Luther) the same
emphasis on the personal pronoun me as his brother does in
his reference to Romans 8:2.
59 Henry Scougal (1650–78) was elected Professor of Divinity in
King’s College, Aberdeen, in 1673 and died of consumption five
years later. He wrote The Life of God in the Soul of Man
probably during the year 1672–73, when he was parish
minister of Auchterless in Aberdeenshire. It was published
anonymously in 1677; a number of further impressions and
editions appeared within the following century. The edition
used here is that issued by the Inter-Varsity Press (London,
1961), with a foreword by D. J. Innes.
60 Sermon preached in 1769 (quoted by D. J. Innes in his
foreword to the 1961 reissue of Scougal, p. 12); cf. G.
Whitefield, Journals, i (Banner of Truth edition, London, 1960),
pp. 46 f. Whitefield was nineteen years old when he underwent
this experience.
61 The Life of God in the Soul of Man (1961 reissue), p. 16.
62 K. Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, E. T. (Oxford, 1933), p.
2.
63 K. Barth, Die Lehre vom Worte Gottes (Munich, 1927),
preface.
64 K. Adam, in Das Hochland, June 1926, as quoted by J.
McConnachie, “The Teaching of Karl Barth”, Hibbert Journal
25 (1926–27), pp. 385 f.
65 T. M. Taylor, The Heritage of the Reformation (Edinburgh,
1960), pp. 6 f. John the Commonweal (“Iohne the Common-
weill”) is a character in Sir David Lindsay’s Satyre of the Thrie
Estaitis (1552).
E. English Translation
E. English Translation
Nat. Naturalis Historia (Pliny the Elder)
CD Book of the Covenant of Damascus (= Zadokite Work)
1QH Hodayot (Hymns of Thanksgiving) from Qumran Cave 1
1QIsa Complete scroll of Isaiah from Qumran Cave 1
1QIsb Incomplete scroll of Isaiah from Qumran Cave 1
1QM Milhamah (War scroll) from Qumran Cave 1
1QpHab Pesher (commentary) on Habakkuk from Qumran Cave
1
1QS Serek (Rule of the Community) from Qumran Cave 1
4QpNah Pesher (commentary) on Nahum from Qumran Cave 4
Ant. Antiquities (Josephus)
BJ De Bella Iudaico (Jewish War) (Josephus)
Hist. Historia Ecclesiastica (Eusebius)
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction
CHAPTER 1
The Rise of Rome
CHAPTER 2
The Jews under Foreign Rule
CHAPTER 3
“Of No Mean City”
CHAPTER 4
“This Man is a Roman Citizen”
CHAPTER 5
“A Hebrew Born of Hebrews”
CHAPTER 6
“When the Time had Fully Come”
CHAPTER 7
The Beginning of “The Way”
CHAPTER 8
Persecutor of the Church
CHAPTER 9
Paul Becomes a Christian
CHAPTER 10
Paul and the Jerusalem Tradition
CHAPTER 11
Paul and the Historical Jesus
CHAPTER 12
Paul and the Exalted Christ
CHAPTER 13
Paul and the Hellenistic Mission
CHAPTER 14
Man of Vision and Man of Action
CHAPTER 15
Conference in Jerusalem
CHAPTER 16
Church Extension in Cyprus and Asia Minor
CHAPTER 17
The Gentile Problem
CHAPTER 18
“What the Law could not do”
CHAPTER 19
Flesh and Spirit
CHAPTER 20
Antioch to Philippi
CHAPTER 21
Christianity in Thessalonica
CHAPTER 22
Paul and the Athenians
CHAPTER 23
The Church of God at Corinth
CHAPTER 24
Corinthian Correspondence
CHAPTER 25
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper in Pauline Thought
CHAPTER 26
Ephesus: Open Door and Many Adversaries
CHAPTER 27
Paul and the Life to Come
CHAPTER 28
Farewell to Macedonia and Achaia
CHAPTER 29
The Gospel According to Paul
CHAPTER 30
Last Visit to Jerusalem
CHAPTER 31
Caesarea and the Appeal to Caesar
CHAPTER 32
“And So We Came to Rome”
CHAPTER 33
Paul and Roman Christianity
CHAPTER 34
The Letter to Philemon
CHAPTER 35
Principalities and Powers
CHAPTER 36
The Quintessence of Paulinism
CHAPTER 37
The Last Days of Paul: History and Tradition
CHAPTER 38
Concluding Reflections
Chronological Table
Select Bibliography
Additional Bibliography
INDEXES
Index of People, Places and Writings
Index of Subjects
Index of References
CLASSICAL WRITERS
JEWISH APOCRYPHA AND PSEUDEPIGRAPHA
DEAD SEA SCROLLS
JOSEPHUS
PHILO
OTHER JEWISH WRITINGS
CHRISTIAN WRITINGS
Assignment
Read Bruce, pages 424-455.
Answer the following questions (five pages).
1. Summarize each of the ten sections of Bruce’s chapter called “The Quintessence of Paulinism.”
2. Consult the essay below on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans.
https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/isb/r/romans-epistle-to-the.html
. James Orr, General Editor. “Epistle to the Romans,”
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Summarize each of the listed main teachings in Romans.
3. Read Paul’s epistle called I Thessalonians. Summarize the message, and comment on how it is meaningful to you.
4. Read Paul’s epistle called Philippians. Summarize the message, and comment on how it is meaningful to you.
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