I believe that we need to read Paul with a sense of his own intense conviction that he was exploring a new country—as fertile, beautiful and exhilarating, above all as real and tangible in its working, as any that a sixteenth-century sailor might have run across in his voyages of discovery. Did Paul transform Christianity? Yes, of course. He took a bundle of traditions and practices generated by the mysterious events around and after Jesus’ death and struggled, with all the intellectual and imaginative skill he could muster, to see the patterns that held them together. But the more you read him, the more you see how he is labouring to do justice to something that is already there confronting him in these stories and practices—not improvising a new religious system. Sometimes there are still loose ends in his attempts to bring it all together in a consistent pattern; more often he uncovers a set of interconnections so profound that they have set the agenda for centuries of further discussion and elaboration. He is never looking for new religious theories for their own sake; he is always asking what must be true about God, about Jesus, about the human and the non-human world, if the prayer and practice of the early Christians he knew is to make some kind of sense, to them as well as to their baffled and suspicious neighbours.
–Williams, Rowan. 2015. Meeting God in Paul. London: SPCK
The quotes below are taken directly from “The New Testament In Its World,” by NT Wright and Mike Bird, Zondervan/SPCK. Chapter 15.
PAUL’S SIGNIFICANCE FOR THE EARLY CHURCH
Paul stands as a monumental figure in the history of the early church. He was a person of notoriety and controversy from the very beginning, both before and after his conversion, the type of man who could cause riots as much as broker reconciliation between warring parties. Apart from Jesus, no person other than Paul was more formative for recasting the Jewish worldview around messianic hopes and establishing kingdom-centred Christian communities in the west. Apart from maybe Peter, no person other than Paul was more influential in founding churches across the Roman empire, communities that were distinguished by their devotion to the lord Jesus, and committed to a radically counter-cultural way of life. Apart from maybe Irenaeus, no person other than Paul was more formidable when it came to defending the gospel against accommodation and adulteration by dissident groups.
BLAST FROM THE PAST: JOHN CHRYSOSTOM ON THE APOSTLE PAUL
As I keep hearing the Epistles of the blessed Paul read, and that twice every week, and often three or four times, whenever we are celebrating the memorials of the holy martyrs, gladly do I enjoy the spiritual trumpet, and get roused and warmed with desire at recognizing the voice so dear to me, and seem to fancy him all but present to my sight, and behold him conversing with me. But I grieve and am pained, that all people do not know this man, as much as they ought to know him; but some are so far ignorant of him, as not even to know for certainty the number of his Epistles. And this comes not of incapacity, but of their not wishing to be continually conversing with this blessed man. For it is not through any natural readiness and sharpness of wit that even I am acquainted with as much as I do know, if I do know anything, but owing to a continual cleaving to the man, and an earnest affection towards him. (Chrys. Praef. Hom. Rom.)
PAUL’S EARLY LIFE
Paul the apostle began life as a Diaspora Jew, named Saul of Tarsus. We do not know for sure when Paul was born. In the immediate years after Jesus’ death, we hear that he was a ‘young man’ who minded the coats of a mob as they stoned Stephen to death, and he calls himself an ‘old man’ when writing to Philemon in the early or middle 50s AD. The terms ‘young’ and ‘old’ are of course very imprecise. In a world where boys assumed adult responsibilities at puberty, a ‘young man’ might be in his mid-teens; in a world where most adults died in their fifties one might be ‘old’ at forty-five. It is impossible to be precise, but Paul was probably born a few years after Jesus, perhaps as late as around AD 10.
During the reign of the emperor Augustus, when Paul was born, the city grew to a population of about half a million people. Strabo reports from the first century that Tarsus surpassed both Athens and Alexandria as a seat of learning, being particularly known for its schools of philosophy and rhetoric, and for its poets. Numerous Jewish families were settled in Cilicia during the Seleucid dynasty in the third century BC. Philo mentions Jewish colonies across Asia Minor, including the regions of Pamphylia, Cilicia, Bithynia, and Pontus. Luke refers to a synagogue of Jewish freedmen in Jerusalem, comprised of Greek-speaking Jews from regions including Cilicia, possibly involving those from Tarsus.
On several occasions Paul underscores his ethnic and religious heritage as a Jew: ‘[I was] circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee.’ All this indicates that Paul was raised in a devout Jewish family, conscious and proud of his Jewish identity, and committed to the Jewish way of life. Luke records Paul claiming to have been educated in Jewish ancestral customs in Jerusalem; some have disputed this, but it would work very well with Paul’s own autobiographical remarks about his training as a Pharisee and his advancement in zealous Jewish activity in his early adulthood.
Early on—probably in his teens—he left Tarsus and trained in the Pharisaic tradition in Jerusalem. All the evidence suggests that, in the many ongoing debates about what it meant to be a loyal Jew, he aligned himself with the more politically militant and religiously zealous Shammaite wing.
PAUL’S PERSECUTION OF THE CHURCH
So why did Saul of Tarsus persecute the church? In general, opposition to Jesus-believers may not have involved detailed theological disagreements; it would be enough that they were following the Jesus who had been shown up as a troublemaker, ‘leading Israel astray’. But those, particularly the Pharisees, whose hopes for the coming kingdom of God were marked by an ever-stricter adherence to Torah, as well as a passionate attachment to the Temple, were bound to see the early Jesus-followers as dangerously disloyal. If that kind of view were to catch on, it could delay or even derail the long-awaited fulfilment of the divine purposes. In addition, of course, their veneration of a crucified man as Messiah and lord was affronting to Jewish scruples, especially if, as seems likely, devotion normally ascribed to YHWH was being given to Jesus. Sociologically, they had become sectarian rivals to existing groups, and potential troublemakers in the eyes of those in the political class. These things were not of course separate from ‘religious’ concerns. Our distinctions of categories do not apply.
Although it is difficult to nail down the precise contention against Jewish Christians, we are on firmer ground when we enquire after Paul’s motivation for his persecution. Paul tells us that he was acting on account of his zeal. Paul says that he ‘persecuted the church of God’ because he was ‘extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers’. This ‘zeal’ is more than simply hotheaded enthusiasm. It has a particular resonance in Jewish tradition, referring to the violence that might be necessary to preserve Israel’s holiness.
The most famous zealot of Israel’s history was Phinehas, who killed an Israelite and his Midianite mistress in their flagrant disobedience. Elijah is often ranked with Phinehas on account of his slaughter of the prophets of Baal. The Maccabean revolt began when Mattathias ‘burned with zeal’ and killed a fellow-Judean and a Syrian official for attempting to offer a pagan sacrifice in their village of Modein. Mattathias rallied his sons into the hills with the words, ‘Let every one who is zealous for the law and supports the covenant come out with me.’ A similar perspective is found in the Qumran scrolls where a hymn says, ‘I draw near [to God], I become zealous against all those who practice wickedness and men of deceit.’ Philo offers warning to anyone who might transgress Israel’s law because: ‘There are thousands who have their eyes upon him full of zeal for the laws, strictest guardians of the ancestral institutions, merciless to those who do anything to subvert them.’ Several themes, it seems, cluster around ‘zeal’: holiness, purity, separation, hatred of paganism, violence. This was what drove Saul in his persecution of Jewish Christians.
This Saul could have become a distinguished rabbi among the Pharisees. Had he played his cards right he might, like some other Pharisees, have been elevated to the ranks of the Sanhedrin. He certainly had the intelligence and the oratorical abilities to attract followers. Or perhaps he could have been a Pharisaic missionary to non-Jews, as Eleazar was to the Adiabene royal family, or like Philo a leading figure in the protest against Caligula’s attempt to install a statue of himself in the Jerusalem Temple (AD 40). He might even, like his younger contemporary Josephus, have played a significant part in the Judean revolt against Rome (AD 66). We can only imagine. What we do know is that something dramatic and radical happened to Saul of Tarsus in the midst of his persecution of the church. As a result, people would soon be saying of him: ‘The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.’
PAUL’S CHRISTOPHANY AND CONVERSION
Saul’s zeal led him to pursue followers of ‘the Way’ (as the Jesus-movement was sometimes called in the early days) who had fled to Damascus. He was given authority from the chief priests (Pharisees, being a populist pressure-group, had no legal standing in themselves) to bring them back by force to Jerusalem. It was on the road to Damascus that Saul experienced a vivid and arresting encounter with the risen lord Jesus that threw his social and theological worlds into a cataclysmic upheaval.
Luke’s underlying aim seems to have been to tell the story in such a way as to align Paul with the prophets and visionaries of Israel’s history, and also to place him alongside penitent pagans who turned round and went in a new direction. This serves as both an apologia for Paul’s new life and work, a legitimation of him in the eyes of potentially puzzled or hostile readers, and a heightening of the dramatic tension as the story is repeated in a crescendo to accompany Paul’s progress, through riots and trials, until his eventual arrival in Rome. Luke, ever the artist, has painted the portrait so as to bring out the features that will speak to his intended audience.
The effect of this ‘revelation’ upon Paul was radical and world-changing. He was in the truest sense ‘converted’, shifting from the Pharisaic brand of Judaism to its messianic cousin in the Jesus-movement. The word ‘conversion’, though, should not mislead us. Paul did not ‘convert’ in the sense of abandoning something called ‘Judaism’ for something called ‘Christianity’. Neither of those words, in the modern sense, corresponds to a reality in Paul’s world. Saul did, however, experience a 180-degree turn in many of his deeply held convictions about the God he served and how he should serve him; that is, Paul continued to be a loyal servant of the God of Israel, but was now fired with a quite different vision of who that God really was and what he was doing to fulfil his promises.
Paul seems to have seen himself as a prophetic figure, heralding the good news of God’s new exodus, and the arrival of the true Davidic deliverer, among Jews and gentiles across the eastern Mediterranean. The biggest change of course was in Paul’s evaluation of Jesus himself. Having persecuted Jesus’ followers because he regarded them as sectarians, loyal to a false messiah, he now came face to face with living proof that Israel’s God had vindicated Jesus against that charge. God had declared, in the resurrection, that Jesus really was ‘his son’ in a genuine messianic sense. The resurrection demonstrated that Jesus was the son of David, the root of Jesse, Israel’s Messiah, God’s anointed.
If, then, Jesus had been vindicated as Messiah, certain things will have followed at once in Saul’s mind. Jesus was to be seen as Israel’s true representative: God had done for him, in the middle of history, what loyal Jews had expected God to do for all Israel at the end of history. The great turnaround of the eras had therefore already begun. ‘The resurrection’ had split into two, with Jesus the Messiah as the first-fruits and the Messiah’s people following later at his return. And if Jesus was Messiah, then Paul saw at once that he must also be the world’s true lord. He was the kyrios (‘lord’ or ‘master’) at whose name every knee would bow. He was the ‘son of man’ exalted over the beasts (Dan. 7.13–14, alluded to in 1 Cor. 15), Israel’s king rising to rule the nations (Ps. 2.1–12; Isa. 11.1–10). Every step down this road took Saul of Tarsus closer to saying that if Jesus was the kyrios now exalted over the world—a deduction, we repeat, from his messiahship—then the biblical texts which spoke in this way were harder and harder to separate from the texts which, when they said kyrios, referred to Israel’s one God, YHWH himself. Jesus, the Messiah, was kyrios. Israel’s God had exalted Jesus as the world’s true lord; and, with Daniel 7 and Psalm 110 clearly of great significance in the minds of the early Christians, this seemed to mean that the one true God had exalted Jesus to share the divine throne itself. Thus—the move we see perhaps most clearly in Philippians 2.6–11—if Jesus had now been exalted to share the very throne of God, the God who (as Isa. 45.23 declares) will not share his glory with another, then this Jesus must have been from all eternity, somehow or other, ‘equal with God’.
PAUL AND THE ‘TUNNEL PERIOD
The period between Paul’s conversion in approximately AD 33 and the time when he wrote his first letters—to the Galatians in around AD 48 and to the Thessalonians in around AD 51–2—is often called the ‘tunnel period’. It is the segment of Paul’s life that is the most obscure to us.
While still based in Damascus, Paul made a visit to Arabia. This was most likely to Mount Sinai, where, like Elijah who had been one of his role models, he went to do business afresh with Israel’s God and to discern his own new path. Then, after returning to Damascus, he had to flee because of plots against his life. This takes us to around AD 36.
Paul then visited Jerusalem, where he became acquainted with Peter and James.38 He then spent a considerable period in Syria and Cilicia, including a solid decade back home in Tarsus, after which he was asked to join the fellowship in Antioch, where he became one of the church’s leaders and teachers, acting as an emissary to Jerusalem (along with Barnabas and Titus) after prophetic warnings about an imminent famine. After that he and Barnabas were sent by the church in Antioch as missionaries, travelling through Cyprus and southern Asia (part of the Roman province of Galatia).
Sometime after their return to Antioch two things happened. First, Peter (referred to by Paul as ‘Cephas’, his Aramaic name) came to Antioch and was happy to join in with the ‘open table’ policy through which the reality of fellowship in the messianic family was celebrated with believing Jews and believing gentiles eating together. But when ‘certain men from James’ came from Jerusalem, Peter realized what impression this policy would create, and he withdrew—and Paul opposed him to his face. Then, second, news arrived from Galatia that a similar problem had arisen there, taking the form of pressure from Jewish Jesus-believers on the male gentile believers to make them undergo circumcision. There were undoubtedly political dimensions to this problem, to which we shall return.
Regards
Prof. Dana Schuler
And if the crucified and risen Jesus was and is Israel’s Messiah, then that fate, and its full meaning, would translate into the transformation of what it meant to be Israel. Paul neither rejected nor unthinkingly endorsed the traditions and beliefs he had had when he set off for Damascus. He rethought everything in the light of what had been disclosed to him: that the crucified Jesus, executed as a messianic pretender, had been vindicated by the creator God and thereby marked out as Israel’s Messiah, indeed the one appointed to be lord of the world. Paul found himself called to be his special emissary.
PAUL AND THE ‘TUNNEL PERIOD’
The period between Paul’s conversion in approximately AD 33 and the time when he wrote his first letters—to the Galatians in around AD 48 and to the Thessalonians in around AD 51–2—is often called the ‘tunnel period’. It is the segment of Paul’s life that is the most obscure to us (see ‘Emails from the edge: Paul in letters and Acts’). Different constructions of events and, not least, their chronology are possible; we offer the one that seems to us most likely.
While still based in Damascus, Paul made a visit to Arabia. This was most likely to Mount Sinai, where, like Elijah who had been one of his role models, he went to do business afresh with Israel’s God and to discern his own new path. Then, after returning to Damascus, he had to flee because of plots against his life. This takes us to around AD 36.37
Paul then visited Jerusalem, where he became acquainted with Peter and James.38 He then spent a considerable period in Syria and Cilicia, including a solid decade back home in Tarsus, after which he was asked to join the fellowship in Antioch, where he became one of the church’s leaders and teachers, acting as an emissary to Jerusalem (along with Barnabas and Titus) after prophetic warnings about an imminent famine.39 After that he and Barnabas were sent by the church in Antioch as missionaries, travelling through Cyprus and southern Asia (part of the Roman province of Galatia).40
Sometime after their return to Antioch two things happened. First, Peter (referred to by Paul as ‘Cephas’, his Aramaic name) came to Antioch and was happy to join in with the ‘open table’ policy through which the reality of fellowship in the messianic family was celebrated with believing Jews and believing gentiles eating together. But when ‘certain men from James’ came from Jerusalem, Peter realized what impression this policy would create, and he withdrew—and Paul opposed him to his face. Then, second, news arrived from Galatia that a similar problem had arisen there, taking the form of pressure from Jewish Jesus-believers on the male gentile believers to make them undergo circumcision. There were undoubtedly political dimensions to this problem, to which we shall return. Paul then wrote his letter to the churches in Galatia, highlighting the recent public confrontation with Peter which illustrated the point he needed to make. He then set off with Barnabas for Jerusalem, to hammer out an agreement with the church leaders.
PAUL’S MISSIONARY CAREER
Paul’s missionary endeavours, apart from his earlier period with the church in Syrian Antioch, were focused on cities located on either side of the Aegean Sea, in Asia Minor and Greece. Paul’s evangelistic and church-planting ministry during the years AD 50–7 constitutes one of the most important periods in the church’s history, second only in significance to the mission of Jesus in Palestine during AD 28–30. It was during this time that Paul planted gentile-majority churches in several major urban centres, wrote letters to various congregations and individuals, and took up a collection to help the beleaguered Jerusalem church. His evangelistic work in these regions was perhaps the crucial factor in the radical transition of the Jesus-movement from being a minor Jewish sect to becoming a major gentile cultural phenomenon—not just a ‘religion’—in the greco-roman world.
Paul took Silas as his missionary companion and they journeyed westwards through Syria and Cilicia, encouraging the churches that Paul and Barnabas had established. Paul proceeded northwards to Derbe, Lystra, and Iconium where he met a young man named Timothy, whom he added to their party as another missionary companion.
Luke next describes how Paul and his friends went through the Phrygian part of Galatia in the interior of Asia Minor, but the holy spirit prevented them going west into the province of Asia, presumably to Ephesus. Instead they travelled north-west, opposite the region of Mysia, and Paul had intended to go north-east into Bithynia, but Luke says ‘The spirit of Jesus did not allow them’.
So instead, they journeyed to Troas on the central western coast. While in Troas, Paul had a vision of a man from Macedonia pleading with him to visit the region and help them, which is where Paul and his team soon headed.
Luke then tells how Paul and his companions (perhaps including Luke himself, since the ‘we’-passages in Acts start at this point) travelled through Neapolis and into Philippi, an important Roman colony on the east–west Via Egnatia. Luke recounts several events, including the conversion of Lydia and her household, Paul’s exorcism of a slave-girl, and Paul and Silas’s arrest and release. It is clear from Paul’s letter to the Philippians that the Philippian church, though experiencing internal rivalries and external persecution, continued to have positive relations with Paul, including sending him financial support.
The narrative in Acts presents Paul moving southwards from Philippi through Amphipolis and Apollonia and then arriving in Thessalonica. There Paul followed his convention of preaching in the synagogue, resulting in a small cohort of Jews as well as some gentile God-fearers coming to faith. A church was established in the house of a man named Jason. Paul spent some time in the city, working largely with gentiles, though his success in gaining adherents resulted in the Jewish community stirring up persecution against the Thessalonian church. Paul was forced to flee to Berea, and when the situation there also soured, he continued south to Athens.
Luke presents Paul’s sojourn in Athens as a dramatic moment: the Jewish apostle of Jesus Christ meeting the epicentre of pagan religion and philosophy. Or perhaps we should say, the highest judicial court in the Greek world hearing, to its surprise, of a higher court still, that of the one God of Israel who was going to pass judgment, through the risen Jesus, on the whole world. Paul’s speech in the court of the Areopagus, or at least Luke’s digest of it, combines several elements. At one level, it is one of the most epic sermons in the history of homiletics, exhibiting as it does gospel proclamation married with missional contextualization. At another, it is a clever exercise in apologetics, using local colour and culture as stepping-stones for the gospel, and engaging by implication with the major philosophies of the time. But underneath both there is a darker strand. The Areopagus was not a debating society. It was a court, designed to try serious cases. Paul was on trial for bringing ‘strange new divinities’ into the city. The court got more than it bargained for, and Paul was able to leave.
No such trouble greeted Paul at his next port of call, the strategically important city of Corinth. Corinth, located to the south-west of the isthmus that joins northern and southern Greece, was an ideal site for east–west trade. After an earlier sacking, it had been refounded by Julius Caesar in 44 BC as a Roman colony, and had become the epitome of a romanized Greek city. We can accurately date Paul’s time in the city after Claudius’s edict expelling Jews from Rome (AD 49) and by the pro-consulship of Lucius Gallio of Achaia concurrent with Paul’s ministry there (AD 51/2). Paul spent eighteen months in the city, and despite hostility from the Jewish community, it was a time of profitable work. Sadly, the Corinthian churches would also prove to be a constant headache for Paul.
Paul was once more expelled from the synagogue, yet appears to have planted various house-churches, based around the families of Titius Justus, the synagogue leaders Crispus and Sosthenes, Chloe, and Stephanus. It was during the time in Athens and Corinth that Paul wrote his two letters to the Thessalonian churches. The first expressed Paul’s anxiety that the Thessalonians would remain steadfast in the faith, and it deals with the Thessalonians’ anxiety about facing trials ahead of the lord’s return. The second letter addresses a concrete matter, with some suggesting that the ‘day of the lord’ had come already, or else that it was so imminent that Jesus-followers could abandon their occupations and live off the generosity of others. Some also suppose that this was when Paul wrote to the Galatians, though we have good reason to place that letter earlier, during the time in Antioch and before the Jerusalem conference.
The next phase of Paul’s work is a roundabout trip: from Corinth to Ephesus to Jerusalem to Antioch, and back again to Ephesus.
Paul then lands in Ephesus but leaves again, after a very brief time of ministry, promising to return. He then proceeds onwards to Caesarea, up to Jerusalem to greet the church (this implies that relations were not as strained as some have imagined), and then north to Antioch. Afterwards, Paul again is on the move, this time returning through the Phrygian part of Galatia and pressing on westwards to Ephesus on the coast. In the meantime, Priscilla and Aquila have encountered an eloquent Greek-speaking Jewish Christian called Apollos, whom they instruct more carefully in the faith before sending him to minister to the churches in Corinth.
Paul spent three years in Ephesus (c. AD 52–4), one of the longest sustained periods of his work. Ephesus itself was hugely important, the third largest city of the empire after Rome and Alexandria, central to trade routes by land and sea. The city housed a substantial Jewish minority, and was a significant religious centre containing numerous cults, including the imperial cult and the renowned temple of Artemis. Luke’s narrative of Paul’s time in Ephesus includes a fast-paced montage of notable events that transpired during this period. These include Paul’s ministry to some disciples of John the Baptist about the holy spirit, preaching the kingdom of God in a Jewish synagogue, daily discussions in the lecture hall of Tyrannus, healing the sick, the comical account of the sons of Sceva who tried to imitate Paul’s technique in exorcism but ended up being beaten up by a demoniac, the wide-scale rejection of magic by new gentile believers, and of course the anti-Christian riot led by Demetrios the silversmith.
In addition, it was during this period that Paul’s entourage probably established churches in adjacent areas like the Lycus valley among the regional cities of Laodicea, Hierapolis, and Colossae, and perhaps in other nearby Asian cities too like Pergamum, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Thyatira. Such was the growth of churches in this region that Paul could claim to send greetings from the ‘churches of Asia’. What is more, if Paul underwent imprisonment in Ephesus, as seems very likely, expressed perhaps metaphorically when speaking of the ‘wild beasts’ he faced there, and as part of the ‘troubles’ from the ‘many who oppose me’ in the ‘province of Asia’, then it is likely that the captivity letters (namely Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, and Ephesians) were written in Ephesus (rather than from Rome, as is more usually asserted).
During Paul’s stay in Ephesus, he wrote numerous letters to the Corinthians, dispatched several colleagues to visit them, and even visited them himself. Many reconstructions of this complex time are possible, of which the following is one of the more likely:
- Paul wrote a first letter based on reports, possibly from Apollos after his initial visit (Ac. 18.27—19.1), of the prevalence of sexual immorality among the Corinthians (1 Cor. 5.9–10).
- Paul then received, probably over an extended period, correspondence from the Corinthians with questions about marriage, food sacrificed to idols, spiritual gifts, the Collection (for Jerusalem), and the prospect of Apollos’s return (1 Cor. 7.1, 25; 8.1, 4; 12.1; 16.1, 12), as well as troubling news about the Corinthians from house-church leaders pertaining to factions, incest, lawsuits, women dressing in culturally inappropriate ways, disorder in worship, and denials of the resurrection (1 Cor. 1.11; 5.1; 6.1; 11.18; 15.12; 16.17).
- Paul urged a visit to Corinth by a reluctant Apollos (1 Cor. 16.12).
- Paul wrote 1 Corinthians and sent it from Ephesus (1 Cor. 16.8, 19–20), with Timothy en route as well (1 Cor. 4.17; 16.10).
- Timothy arrived in Corinth and saw that things had deteriorated, and that Paul’s instructions had not been heeded; so he returned to Ephesus to communicate the bad news to Paul. On hearing the news of the situation from Timothy, instead of travelling to Corinth via Macedonia as he had planned (1 Cor. 16.5–6; 2 Cor. 1.16), Paul rushed over to Corinth, apparently by direct sea-voyage, and made a ‘painful visit’, which further strained his relationship with the church (2 Cor. 2.1) as he made stern warnings to the believers there (2 Cor. 12.21; 13.1–2).
- Paul returned to Ephesus, and in his absence was viciously attacked by some ringleader in Corinth. He then wrote a ‘letter of tears’, delivered by Titus, which grieved the Corinthians further (2 Cor. 2.1–11; 7.8–12).
- Paul intended to meet Titus in Troas while Titus was on his way back from Corinth, but when Titus failed to arrive, Paul travelled to Macedonia (2 Cor. 2.12–13) where he found Titus, who reported how the Corinthians had been reconciled to him through his tearful letter (2 Cor. 7.6–16).
- Titus also informed Paul of the visit by the ‘super-apostles’ who had disparaged Paul’s ministry as inferior to their own (2 Cor. 11.5; 12.11).
- Paul wrote 2 Corinthians from Macedonia, celebrating the Corinthians’ reconciliation to him, giving them further instruction about Titus who had the task of finalizing the Collection (2 Cor. 8.6, 16–25; 12.18), and preparing them for his third visit (2 Cor. 12.14; 13.1–2).
Paul’s relationship with the Corinthians can be described as tense, incendiary, and frustrating. The Corinthians were a constant headache for Paul, and required continuous attention. Their capacity for internal tumult seems to have persisted well after Paul’s time: Clement, the bishop of Rome, had to write to the Corinthians to intervene in an internal dispute at the end of the first century. The Corinthian correspondence is perhaps the best example of how reading Paul’s letters is much like reading someone else’s mail, enabling you to learn the embarrassing details of a congregation’s proclivity for things like fights, factions, and fornication. These letters are also, however, our best insight into Paul’s pastoral labours. He never gave up on these problem-child churches, despite the endless exasperation they caused him.
Romans was written in or near Corinth in around AD 55/6. Paul had several purposes in mind. He wanted to introduce himself; he wanted to defend his work against miscellaneous rumours; he hoped to address and heal any rifts in the church caused by the sudden return of Jewish-Christian leaders like Priscilla and Aquila after their six-year absence on account of Claudius’s edict. The church in Rome, after all, faced the dangers of acculturating to Roman prejudices against foreigners like the Jews, and fracturing along ethnic lines between Jews and gentiles. Paul was hoping that by visiting Rome he might bless the Roman Christians by imparting some gift to them—perhaps a gift of fresh insight into what following Jesus might involve in the days to come—and by preaching the gospel in Rome among them. In return, he hoped they would materially support him in his mission to Spain.
In and through it all, Paul wanted them to grasp the full sweep of God’s purposes, from creation to new creation, taking in Abraham, Moses, the law, and above all the dramatic and world-changing gospel events concerning Jesus. Romans sets it all out, in the context of these complex and detailed agendas, in a way that still stretches and challenges thinkers of all sorts.
Paul was warmly received by the Jerusalem church, though the underlying tensions in Jerusalem appear clearly enough in Luke’s account. When Paul was planning this journey, he asked the Roman churches to pray that ‘I may be kept safe from the unbelievers in Judea and that the contribution I take to Jerusalem may be favorably received by the Lord’s people there’. Strangely, Luke does not mention the Collection, so we are left wondering if it was received or rebuffed. Anyway, Paul’s hope of avoiding violent confrontation in Jerusalem proved to be in vain. James convinced Paul to engage in a conciliatory gesture to assuage misgivings about him held by zealous Jewish Christians; this would involve sharing in a purification ritual in the Temple. But the plan backfired because, when Paul and his four companions visited the Jerusalem Temple, a riot broke out.
The next section of Luke’s account covers the following three years (c. AD 57–60), during which Paul remained in detention in Caesarea. He endured legal proceedings, assassination plots, and manipulation by the governor, who was hoping for a bribe. Paul, no doubt frustrated, finally played the ‘citizenship’ card, making an official appeal to have his case heard by Caesar himself. Then, after Porcius Festus had become governor, Paul was interviewed by King Herod Agrippa II and his sister Bernice, who concluded—too late to be of any good—that he was indeed innocent, and could have been released had he not appealed to Caesar. Yet the wheels had been set in motion. Paul, the apostle to the gentiles, would now go at last to Rome, the heart of the empire, as a prisoner under guard.
‘AND SO WE CAME TO ROME’
Luke’s narration of Paul’s journey to Rome, accompanied by various friends, is fast-paced and dramatic. It is riddled with theological motifs, rich with ancient nautical information, and bristling with drama and suspense. The voyage took them from Palestine, following the south coast of Turkey, continued around Crete, and then involved a terrifying storm and shipwreck on Malta. Having wintered there, the party continued past Sicily, until finally arriving in Puteoli, where Paul was greeted by fellow-believers. The perilous trip ends with Luke’s famous words: ‘And so we came to Rome.’
Paul arrived in Rome in around AD 60, where he was warmly welcomed by a party of Roman believers. Luke notes how Paul was permitted to live by himself, with a Roman soldier to guard him, while he awaited an imperial audience. Early in his stay he sought a meeting with local Jewish leaders, where he emphasized (at a time of growing tension between Rome and the Judeans) that he had no intention of accusing the Jewish people. Luke indicates that the leaders of the Jewish community in Rome were happy to judge him on his own merits, without any hostile predisposition. They professed ignorance of Paul, and wanted to hear his account of the messianic sect that everyone was speaking against.
The final episode in Acts then portrays Paul engaged in a local version of what had been his conventional activity: explaining from scripture, to a Jewish audience, what the kingdom of God was about, and trying to persuade his hearers about Jesus. The outcome was once more fairly standard: some believed, but most did not. This occasioned Paul’s lament for Jewish unbelief, using Isaiah 6.9–10 (a passage quoted in all four gospels to similar effect) as a key scriptural prediction of Israel’s recalcitrance. The result is the same as throughout his work: God’s salvation is going to the gentiles. This motif of Jewish rejection and consequent gentile mission is a familiar Lukan theme, but it fits like a glove Paul’s own account of the gospel as being ‘for the Jew first and then for the Greek’. It also undergirds his argument in Romans 11 about how Israel’s rejection of the Messiah was part of God’s plan to bring the gentiles to faith and so to rouse Israel to jealousy.
The Pastoral Epistles—with due caveats on their disputed authenticity—confirm a Roman imprisonment.86 More disputed, however, is the description of Paul’s release from his Roman imprisonment and his subsequent travel across the Adriatic and Aegean, visiting Macedonia and Asia, meeting up with Titus in Nicopolis, and composing 1 Timothy and Titus during this period. However, if we follow this line it appears that matters soon deteriorated, leaving Paul once again awaiting trial in Rome, writing once more to urge Timothy to join him there. By the end, Paul is certain about what awaits him: ‘For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near.’ He knew his race was just about run.
In other early Christian literature we find evidence that several authors thought that Paul was released from his first Roman imprisonment, that he visited Spain between writing 1 and 2 Timothy, and was thereafter executed by Nero after a second trial in Rome. We have 1 Clement (c. AD 95) which celebrates how Paul was ‘a herald in both the east and the west’, and that he reached ‘the limits of the west’, which many have taken to indicate that he made it to Spain. The Muratorian canon (c. AD 180) states that Paul travelled as far west as Spain, but one wonders if this is based on inferences drawn from Romans 15.24, 28, rather than being reliant on sound tradition. Eusebius implies a release between Paul’s first and second trials in Rome, which could certainly accommodate a trip to Spain, but he never explicitly says this happened. It is quite possible that after such a trip Paul then decided (changing his mind from his earlier plans) on a fresh visit to the east. In the absence of further evidence we simply do not know.
On Paul’s death, the earliest reference we have is from 1 Clement which provides a short summary of Paul’s afflictions, and notes that he ‘left this world and was taken up to the holy place’, without specifying when, where, or how Paul died. Eusebius records that ‘Paul was beheaded in Rome itself and Peter likewise was crucified under Nero’. Eusebius also notes that the graves of Peter and Paul are traditionally associated with the Vatican and Ostian ways respectively. The death of Paul received hagiographical treatment in writings like the Acts of Paul with elaboration on why Nero had Paul ‘beheaded according to the law of the Romans’. That Paul died during the Neronian persecutions cannot be proven, but it is completely plausible in the light of Nero’s pogrom against Christians in the aftermath of the fire of Rome in AD 64.
The Carpenter's Nail 