The Cradle of Christianity

Jerusalem was certainly the birthplace of Christianity, but Antioch was its cradle. In the first century CE Antioch was the third greatest city in the Roman Empire (after Rome and Alexandria) and the capital of the province of Syria, with a population of over two-hundred thousand. From Ignatius bishop of Antioch in the second century to John Chrysostom in the fourth century, it was the home for great theologians and bishops. The city was predominantly Greek-speaking but had a large Jewish population. It is obvious why the apostles considered Antioch prime territory for evangelization.

They’ll Know We are Christians

One of the prominent figures in the early Antiochene church was Barnabas and his story is told in Acts 11:19-30. Because of persecutions following the death of Stephen, believers fled Jerusalem for Phoenicia (modern-day Lebanon), Cyprus, and Antioch. Although the initial inclination was only to teach the word to Jews, in Antioch the Hellenist believers proclaimed Jesus to the Greeks as well and converted many.

Once the Jerusalem leaders heard of this, they sent Barnabas to investigate and perhaps take control of the situation. There are no chronological markers to indicate when this happened, but it is plausible that it was concurrent with Philip’s mission to the Samaritans and Peter’s conversion of the house of Cornelius. However, Peter was one of the Twelve and Philip one of the Seven, so both of those missions were somewhat under the auspices of the Jerusalem church. Whatever was happening in Antioch was completely unsanctioned.

After assessing the situation, Barnabas decided to build upon what had already taken root there. He travelled to Tarsus (about 100 miles from Antioch, as the crow flies) and brought Saul back to Antioch with him where they spent the next year teaching and preaching. This tells us that Barnabas is bringing both the Antiochene church and Saul under control of Jerusalem. No longer is Saul acting as an independent agent; he now has a mandate from the mother church through Barnabas.

Almost as an aside, the last part of v. 26 announces that “in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.” Up to this point in Acts, the followers of Jesus have been referred to as believers, disciples, brothers, or members of “the Way.” It seems like a minor historical footnote, but the implication is that the followers of Christ in Antioch had become so numerous and so different in practice from the Jewish population that they had to be identified by a different name. “Christian” was a name they were called, not a name they gave themselves.

Relief Mission

Vv. 27-29 tell of the wandering prophet Agabus who announced a coming famine in Jerusalem. Luke tells us the famine took place during the reign of the Emperor Claudius and the historian Josephus does report there was a famine sometime in the years 46-48 CE. (We’ll see Agabus again in 21:10-14 when he predicts Paul will be handed over to the Romans.) Agabus’ prophecy encouraged the prosperous Antiochene church to take up a collection to send to the poor believers in Judea.

Luke states that this relief mission was carried out by Barnabas and Saul (v. 29). But in his letters Paul seems to preclude it. As we saw, he did report visiting Jerusalem to confer with Peter for a couple of weeks three years after his conversion. After this, Paul says he “went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia” and it was fourteen years until he returned to attend the “Council of Jerusalem” described in Acts 15.

Some biblical scholars accept the historicity of a famine relief mission but think Saul’s involvement was a creation of Luke. As with the census at the birth of Jesus and Saul’s journey to Damascus, Luke appears to be using the relief mission as an excuse to get Barnabas and Saul to Jerusalem so they can return with John Mark.

Herod’s Persecution

We first hear of John Mark in Acts 12:1-19, a passage recounting persecutions under “King Herod” This is not the same “King Herod” who had John the Baptist beheaded in the gospels. That was Herod Antipas. This “King Herod” is Herod Agrippa I who assumed control over Judea in 41 CE. It’s not coincidental that persecution of Christians picks up again when Judea is no longer under direct Roman control.

According to Luke, Agrippa ordered the execution of James son of Zebedee, brother of John, and one of the Twelve. Agrippa then had Peter arrested, double-chained, and guarded by four squads of soldiers but to no avail because an angel of the Lord sprang him out of prison. What follows is an amusing scene as Peter goes to the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, to announce his freedom. The maid answering the door was so shocked when she heard Peter’s voice that she ran to tell everyone inside and forgot to open the door, leaving Peter still knocking at the door.

“Wait, don’t leave me out here!” The maid Rhoda runs away without opening the gate for Peter in this Sunday School lesson (from www.BibleFunForKids.com by Debbie Jackson).

John Mark

Concluding the account of the Herodian persecution is the report of the death of Agrippa (12:20-23) and the Jewish historian Josephus helps us date this to 44 CE. Mention of the successful completion of the famine relief mission (12:25) awkwardly ends the chapter. The verse is very intrusive in its current location but it flows perfectly if read immediately after 11:30.

Luke purposefully interrupted his story in order to mention Peter’s visit to the house of Mary, the mother of John, also known as Mark. Why? One reason is to link Peter to Mark. When Peter escapes from prison, he immediately goes to the safe house of Mark’s family where he knows believers will be gathered in prayer. This suggests Mark’s family were prominent members of the Jerusalem community. Later tradition will associate Mark more closely with Peter.

In 13:5 we are told that on their first mission in Cyprus, Barnabas and Saul have John Mark with them as their assistant. But once they departed Cyprus, John Mark left them to return to Jerusalem (13:13). This didn’t sit well with Paul. When Paul later proposed (15:36-40) checking up on the cities they visited on their first mission, Barnabas wanted to take Mark along but Paul considered him a deserter. So they parted ways, Barnabas taking Mark with him to Cyprus and Paul choosing Silas to accompany him to Asia Minor.

Why is Barnabas so keen on taking Mark along with him? Scholars disagree as to whether or not Colossians is an authentic Pauline letter but in Col 4:10, we are told that Mark is the cousin of Barnabas. That would certainly explain why Barnabas chose Mark over Paul. But Mark eventually returned to Paul’s good graces for he is mentioned in the authentic Pauline letter to Philemon as one of Paul’s fellow workers (v. 24).

We think of figures like Barnabas and Paul as great saints and heroes of the Church. That does not make them exempt from human foibles like playing favorites and bearing grudges. What is important is that they rise above it.

The Gentile Pentecost

How is Acts of the Apostles like the television series The Walking Dead? In terms of story-telling, both are sprawling tales with a vast cast of characters. When those characters become separated due to a traumatic event, the narrative thread splits to follow individual characters as they cope with new challenges.

Following Multiple Storylines

In the middle of the fourth season of The Walking Dead, the main cast of characters are separated into five groups when their home comes under attack. For the rest of the season, each episode focused on one of the five groups struggling to reunite with their friends and find a safe haven in the zombie apocalypse.

In Acts, the shattering event that drives the characters apart is the persecution of the Jerusalem church first mentioned in Acts 8:1. The rest of Acts 8 focused on the evangelist Philip in Samaria and Judea. Acts 9:1-31 rewound back to the persecution with Saul pursuing Christians to Damascus and his conversion there. He eventually returns to Jerusalem to meet with Peter, and in 9:32-43 we follow Peter healing the paralyzed Aeneas and raising Tabitha from the dead, miracles reminiscent of those Jesus performed in Luke’s gospel. Although this passage appears after Saul’s return to Jerusalem, due to the story-telling technique, the events may have occurred during the three years Saul was in Damascus.

Peter’s two miracles are merely a prelude to the more important story of the baptism of the centurion Cornelius and his family in 10:1-11-18. The story is recounted in five acts:

1. Cornelius has a vision of an angel who instructs him to send his servants to Joppa to find Peter (10:1-8); 
2. Peter has a vision instructing him to eat clean and unclean animals (10:9-16);
3. Peter greets the messengers from Cornelius and invites them to spend the night (10:17-23a);
4. Peter sets off to Cornelius’ house in Caesarea. Finally understanding his vision, Peter begins to proclaim the gospel to the Gentiles and they receive the Holy Spirit. Peter then has them baptized. (10:23b-48);
5. Peter is asked to give an account of his actions (11:1-18).

The vision of Peter and the conversion of Saul are both pivotal events for Luke because he narrates each three separate times. Another similar feature is the “double vision” of the convert and his sponsor (Cornelius and Peter, Saul and Ananias) which is more common in Greek than Jewish literature. Luke wants to be clear to his readers that these foundational events were under divine direction.

God-Fearers

Cornelius is described as a “God-fearing man” (10:2), a term referring to non-Jews sympathetic to Judaism. The God-fearers agreed with Jewish ethical principles and attended synagogue services, but did not submit to circumcision or observe the Torah in its entirety. In modern parlance, I suppose you could call them “Jew-curious.” But Cornelius was more than that. In v. 22, he is also called “upright,” meaning that he actually followed Mosaic law.

In addition to circumcision, one of the religious practices that dissuaded God-fearers from conversion to Judaism was the dietary restrictions. Certain food items – like pork – were forbidden to Jews. Peter explains in 10:28a that it was actually unlawful for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. This rule was probably adopted to eliminate the possibility of the Jew unintentionally bringing ritual impurity upon himself through contact with a Gentile.

Peter’s Vision, engraving from the Dutch theology text History of the Old and New Testament by David Martin (1639-1721)

In this context, we can understand Peter’s vision of “all kinds” of animals and the instruction that God has declared them all to be clean (kosher). Scholars are divided on whether Peter’s vision is an integral part of the Cornelius story or something Luke took from a separate strand of tradition – for example, a dispute story about whether Christians are allowed to eat non-kosher foods – and introduced into the Cornelius narrative. In 10:28b Peter interprets the vision of various animals as an allegory for people: “God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.”

After Peter arrives at Cornelius’ house, he delivers a missionary speech. After a brief introduction (vv. 34-36), he launches into the Christian kerygma (vv. 37-41), before reaching his conclusion (vv. 42-43). Kerygma is a Greek word used to refer to the initial and essential proclamation of the gospel message. You can think of it as “the gospel in a nutshell.” Luke usually writes Greek that indicates he is cultured and educated, but portions of this passage are written in a “miserable Greek” that is not at all his style. This indicates to biblical scholars that Luke is incorporating very old material. Some scholars believe that apostolic preaching such as this eventually developed into the synoptic gospels.

The Gentile Problem

At this point in Acts, we have seen the word of Jesus spread among Jews (both Hebrew and Hellenists), Samaritans, and Gentile converts to Judaism like the Ethiopian eunuch. Being a follower of Jesus was seen as just a different way of being Jewish, certainly not a separate religion. It just didn’t make sense that one could be a believer in Christ without also being Jewish.

Cornelius presents an interesting case. He’s a Gentile God-fearer who follows Mosaic law and attends synagogue, but he isn’t circumcised and therefore not Jewish. Fortunately for Peter, God takes the initiative and sends the Holy Spirit upon Cornelius and his relatives and friends who have gathered in his household. Seeing the Gentiles “speaking in tongues and extolling God,” Peter decides there is no reason not to baptize them with water as well.

Word of what happened in Cornelius’ house got out and the next time Peter was in Jerusalem, he was confronted by the “circumcised believers” and asked to explain why he visited and ate with the uncircumcised. The term “circumcised believers” is apparently being used to describe Jewish Christians, in distinction from Gentile Christians like Cornelius who would be “uncircumcised believers.” Interestingly, the Jewish Christians seem to be more concerned about Peter visiting Gentiles than with him baptizing them as Christians. For the time being, they are satisfied with Peter’s explanation of the divine initiative in pouring out the Holy Spirit upon the Gentiles. Soon, however, the church will have to decide on expectations for the newly baptized Gentiles.

The thought that Peter’s fraternization with Gentiles was considered scandalous among the Jewish Christians tells us that there was no episode in Jesus’ public ministry that could be referenced as justification for such a ministry. The church had no blueprint for how to address questions such as: Do Gentiles need to be circumcised to become followers of Jesus? Do Gentile Christians need to follow Jewish dietary restrictions? Without clear statements from Jesus to lead them, the early church had to rely on insights gained through the Holy Spirit to guide them on what Christ wanted for his church.

Basket Case

[This is the conclusion of my article on Paul’s early career that I began last week. I strongly suggest that you first read that article, if you have not already done so, before continuing with this article.]

Fixing Pauline Chronology

Paul’s mention in Galatians 1:11-24 that “after three years” he traveled to Jerusalem to “visit Cephas” (that is, Peter) is a key piece of information that helps biblical scholars fix the time of Paul’s conversion. The common opinion is that the “three years” are in reference to his conversion and not to his return to Damascus from his sojourn in Arabia. So if we can narrow down the year Paul left Damascus, it would give us an idea of the date of his conversion.

In citing his sufferings as an apostle in 2 Corinthians, Paul refers to a time he escaped Damascus in a basket (11:32-33). This can only be the incident Luke narrates in Acts 9:23-25. Paul tells us this happened when Damascus was under the authority of an ethnarch (sheik of an ethnic group) appointed by King Aretas. Prior to the death of the emperor Tiberius (March 37 CE), Damascus was under Roman rule. Since the Nabatean king Aretas died in 39/40 CE, Paul’s attempted arrest and escape could only have occurred between 37 and 40 CE. Therefore, Paul’s conversion would have been 34-37 CE.

Saint Paul Escapes from Damascus [painting based on a 14th century mosaic in Sicily]. In boasting of the events that show his weakness, Paul mentions his humiliating escape from Damascus by basket. He may be contrasting himself with the honor that would be given to the first Roman soldier to scale the walls of a city under siege.

The confluence of Paul’s visit to Arabia (Nabatea) and his subsequent flight from the Nabatean ethnarch in Damascus has led many scholars to wonder if Paul got into some trouble in Arabia that required him to flee to the safety of Damascus. According to this theory, after Damascus fell under Nabatean authority, Paul learned of a plot to arrest him and had to flee once more, this time by means of a basket from the city’s wall. If this hypothesis is correct, it would place Paul leaving Damascus shortly after the Nabateans gained control, perhaps late 37 or early 38 CE. This would narrow down the year of Paul’s conversion to 34 or 35 CE.

Saul in Jerusalem

34-35 CE is prior to the recall of Pontius Pilate in late 36 CE. Previously, we speculated that the stoning of Stephen and persecution of the Jerusalem church would have been most likely during the period between the departure of Pilate and the arrival of his successor, Marcellus. But Acts places Saul at the stoning of Stephen and leading the persecution of the Christians in Jerusalem, events that could have only happened before his conversion.

The dating of these two events can be reconciled if we consider that Paul may not have had anything to do with persecuting Christians in Jerusalem. His placement at the scene of Stephen’s execution and subsequent spearheading of a program of persecution may have been dramatic license by Luke. It gives the reader of Acts a narrative thread to follow: from the reconstitution of the Twelve apostles, to the Seven they commission, to the stoning of Stephen – one of the Seven – at the feet of Saul.

As we saw last week, Luke’s explanation of why Saul left Jerusalem for Damascus has issues of historicity. One is reminded of the thoroughly implausible census that Luke provides as the reason for Joseph and Mary to travel from Nazareth to Jerusalem. If Luke wanted to situate Saul in Jerusalem to play up his role as arch-persecutor of the church but it was well-known that his conversion occurred in Damascus, Luke needed to come up with a reason for Saul to travel from Jerusalem to Damascus. A mission from the Sanhedrin to extradite Christians from Damascus to Jerusalem was Luke’s solution.

Paul in Jerusalem

Both Acts and Paul are in agreement that, after leaving Damascus, he travelled to Jerusalem. Acts gives no reason for the visit. Paul says it was to “visit Cephas” (that is, Peter) and he only stayed fifteen days, seeing no other apostle except James the brother of Jesus. The phrase “visit Cephas” could also be translated as “get information from Cephas” and Paul may be intentionally vague here. His visit to Peter was hardly a social call. Undoubtedly, Paul wanted to learn about the historical Jesus to better inform his preaching.

Acts tells us that Saul was treated with suspicion on his arrival in Jerusalem and Barnabas had to introduce him to the apostles. It seems unlikely that three years after his conversion and ministry Paul’s intentions would still be doubted. We previously saw Barnabas in Acts 4:36-37 where he served as a positive example for selling his field and donating the proceeds to the Christian community. We learned in that passage that Barnabas was a native of Cyprus. Like Paul, he was a diaspora Jew and would later become Paul’s travelling companion on his early missionary journeys.

Although Luke reports that Saul angered the local Jewish populace for preaching in Jerusalem, Paul’s itinerary doesn’t allow for that. He insists in Gal 1:22 that he did not do any evangelizing in Judea (“I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea”) although they had heard of how he had formerly persecuted Christians. Paul seems to be going out of his way to stress that he has always been an apostle operating in Gentile territory.

Concluding Comments

Paul is the rare biblical character who provides us first-hand information about himself in his letters. Not only that, but we have additional information on his life from Acts, although as we have seen, that information does not always dovetail with what Paul tells us. Just like many people telling their story, Paul casts himself in the best possible light. Like many writers, Luke employs dramatic license in telling Paul’s story. Critical scholars cannot take either account completely at face value. Even so, we know more about Paul and his life than we do about any other character in either the Old or New Testament.

Better Call Saul

In Acts 9:1-31 Luke presents us with the story of Saul’s conversion. Paul also discusses his calling and his travels on a few occasions in his letters, giving us the rare opportunity to compare Luke’s account with Paul’s own.

Luke’s Version of Saul’s Conversion

Luke actually presents three versions of Saul’s conversion, one in third-person narration in Acts 9 and the twice more (22:1-16; 26:9-18) in the form of Paul’s speeches. There are some minor differences in all three accounts, but the basic core is the same: Saul was traveling to Damascus with letters of authority from the Sanhedrin to round up Christians there and return them to Jerusalem. As he approached the city, he was struck by a blinding light and heard the voice of Jesus say, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

Saul was left blind by the incident for three days until he was healed and baptized by a Damascene disciple named Ananias. Saul began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues and debated the Jews there. “After some time had passed” (v. 23), Saul became aware of a plot by the Jews to kill him and escaped the city by being lowered from the city wall in a basket.

Arriving in Jerusalem, Saul sought out the Christian community there, but no one wanted to have anything to do with him. Barnabas intervened and brought him to the apostles. Saul began preaching the name of Jesus and arguing with the Jewish Hellenists until they, too, sought to kill him. Learning of the plot, the disciples hustled Saul off to Caesarea where he could take a ship back to his hometown of Tarsus. He would remain there until Barnabas found him and brought him to Anitoch (11:25-26).

Was Paul a pedestrian or an equestrian? If you are Catholic, you probably think he got knocked off his horse, but if you are Protestant, you probably think he was just knocked off his feet. Prior to the Renaissance, images featured Paul on foot. The Catholic imagination was fueled by visual images such as this one, but Protestants were influenced by the text of Scripture. (The Conversion of St. Paul [1767] by Nicolas Bernard Lépicié)

The Road to Damascus

Before we contrast Luke’s account with Paul’s, there’s some inconsistency with what we have read so far in Acts. According to Acts, the early Christian community lived largely at peace in Jerusalem until Saul led a program of persecution that caused all but the apostles to flee to Samaria and the Judean countryside. After being sidelined with the mission of Philip the evangelist, we return to the main narrative to find Saul still on the warpath and seeking to persecute Christian disciples in Damascus.

Damascus is 140 miles from Jerusalem and it would have taken Saul about a week to walk there. If Saul wanted to expand his area of operation, there were Christians much closer at hand in Judea, Samaria and Galilee. Traveling all the way to Damascus doesn’t make much sense unless he was attempting to extradite Christians who had escaped from Jerusalem. But, as explained elsewhere, the Jewish Sanhedrin had no authority outside the city of Jerusalem. At most, the letters Saul obtained from the Sanhedrin could only have served as proof he was not acting on his own initiative.

When Saul finally arrived in Damascus, he found a Christian community who took him in and, he immediately began proclaiming Jesus as the Son of God in the synagogues. Presumably he would have been catechized by the local Christians in some form before he began preaching. Although Saul’s reputation as a persecutor of the Jerusalem Christians preceded him, it doesn’t sound like the Damascene Christians had fled his persecution. One gets the impression from all this the Christian community in Damascus was well-settled long before Saul’s arrival.

Bottom line: Luke’s version of events seems somewhat contrived.

Paul’s Account

How does Luke’s version square with what Paul describes in his letters? Although Paul speaks several times of his vision of the risen Christ which called him from life as a persecutor of the church to become an apostle to the Gentiles, he never provides any details of the experience.

However, Paul gives an account of his early career in Gal 1:11-24. He is eager to assert that the gospel he received was unmediated by any human authority (vv. 16-17). After his call, he did not confer with any local disciples or the apostles in Jerusalem. Instead, he “went away at once” to Arabia and only afterwards returned to Damascus. From this we can infer that his conversion experience occurred in Damascus, matching what we are told in Acts.

Paul’s account doesn’t leave any room for the role Ananias played in healing and baptizing him. Given the importance of baptism as an initiation into the Christian community, it seems certain that Paul would have been baptized at some point, so we have to take his insistence that he “did not confer with any human being” with a grain of salt. Having already learned enough of the basics of the faith through his arguments with Hellenist Christians, perhaps Paul did not feel the need to be formally catechized but he must have had some contact with the local Christian community in Damascus before starting his ministry.

Into Arabia

More interesting is Luke’s failure to mention Paul’s sojourn in Arabia. “Arabia” is generally understood as the Nabatean Kingdom, across the Jordan from Israel. Paul never explains what he was doing there or how long he was there before returning to Damascus, so it is easy to see why Luke would have left that out, even if he had known about it.

Why go to Nabatea at all? For prayer and reflection prior to beginning his ministry? Perhaps. Did he seek to start a ministry there? Then why not begin in Damascus? If, as I suspect, the historical Paul had been engaged in persecuting Christians in and around Damascus rather than Jerusalem, he may have thought he would get a more open-minded hearing in a region where he didn’t carry as much baggage.

Most likely, things didn’t go well in Nabatea and Paul returned to Damascus where he must have known he would receive a chilly reception from both the Christian and Jewish communities. But Paul apparently considered it preferable to remaining in Nabatea. And, as we’ll see next week, once Nabatea gained some control over Damascus, Paul was threatened with arrest and had to flee once more. His first effort as an evangelist in Nabatea must really have turned out badly.

If all this supposition is close to the truth, it is little wonder Paul doesn’t say anything more about his journey into Arabia.

[To be continued next week.]

The Adventures of Philip

Most of what we know about Philip the evangelist, one of the Seven, comes from two incidents in Acts 8. In the first (8:4-25), Philip preaches in Samaria and encounters Simon the magician. In the second story (8:26-40), Philip baptizes an Ethiopian eunuch he meets on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza.

Appointment in Samaria

According to Luke in Acts of the Apostles, Saul led a wave of persecution in Jerusalem that caused the Christian community to scatter to the winds. As a result, Philip relocated to Samaria and followed the model of Jesus with a ministry of preaching combined with exorcisms and healings.

Samaria was the area we know today as the West Bank. Once part of the heartland of Israel, it was resettled by various peoples after Israel’s defeat at the hands of the Assyrians and Babylonians. The Samaritans accepted only the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, and did not acknowledge the Temple in Jerusalem as the only place of worship. Upon the return of the exiles from Babylon, the Jews considered the Samaritans as heretics and worse than pagans. For the Jews of Jesus’ day, there was no such thing as a “good” Samaritan, such was the hostility between the two.

Therefore it is with some surprise that (1) Philip traveled to Samaria and (2) was accepted there. At the time, the Samaritans were enamored of a certain magician named Simon who they referred to as “the Great Power of God.” Better known in later Christian tradition as Simon Magus (“magician”), he was converted by Philip’s message, submitted to baptism, and became a follower of Philip.

The success of Philip’s mission drew the attention of the apostles in Jerusalem, so Peter and John were sent to investigate. Since the Samaritans had only been baptized, Peter and John laid hands on them to confer the Holy Spirit. Presumably, at this point the Samaritans began to demonstrate charismatic gifts such as speaking in tongues. Seeing this, Simon Magus offered the apostles money to give him a share of their power. Peter berated him, essentially saying, “To hell with you and your money!” (v. 20). Unlike the story of Ananias and Sapphira, however, Peter gave Simon the opportunity to repent and Simon asked Peter to pray for him.

Who was Simon Magus?

For such a minor character, the amount of legends surrounding Simon Magus are quite surprising. The term “Great Power” (v. 10) used to refer to Simon is found among later gnostic texts. Gnosticism was a popular movement in the 2nd century that believed in a strong dichotomy between spiritual (= good) and material (= evil) existence and salvation relied on a special knowledge (gnosis) that was only granted to a select few. The early church considered Gnosticism a heresy and identified Simon Magus as the first gnostic. In other church traditions, Simon was considered a charlatan and opponent of the apostles.

Fall of Simon Magus (1461-62) by Benozzo Gozzoli. The apocryphal Acts of Peter tells the story of a contest between St. Peter and Simon Magus in Rome. Simon uses his magic to levitate (seen in the background) and Peter (on right) prays to God that he be struck down (where he lays at Peter’s feet).

Certainly Luke’s intent is to subordinate the person of Simon Magus to apostolic authority. Since Simon is described as a sorcerer with a substantial Samaritan following, there could be a polemical purpose to the story, especially if Simonians were still active at the time Luke wrote Acts (80-85 CE). In a similar fashion, the NT sought to subordinate John the Baptist to Jesus to the point of trying to obscure Jesus’ baptism by John.

As a side note, the term “simony” (buying an ecclesiastical office or grace) comes from this episode.

The Ethiopian Eunuch

After Peter and John arrive in Samaria, we hear nothing more of Philip and his ministry there. We’re told in v. 25 that Peter and John eventually returned to Jerusalem, proclaiming the good news to the Samaritans as they went along. Apparently Philip went along with them, because when he is next mentioned in v. 26, he is told by an angel of the Lord to go down the road from Jerusalem to Gaza, one of the five ancient Philistine cities.

Along the road, he encountered a eunuch who was treasurer to the Candace (the queen of the Ethiopians). Luke tells us that the eunuch was returning to his country after worshipping in Jerusalem. Running alongside the eunuch’s carriage, Philip heard him reading Isaiah 53:7-8 and offered to explain it to him. Believing in the message of Jesus, the eunuch stopped his carriage beside some water and asked to be baptized. Immediately after the baptism, Philip was snatched away by the Spirit of the Lord and he found himself in Azotus (Ashdod), another of the five ancient Philistine cities. He continued travelling north along the Mediterranean coast until he arrived in Caesarea where Paul later finds him in Acts 21:8.

Many have seen correspondences between this story and the Emmaus narrative. Both have as their core the narrative of travelers (two disciples; eunuch) overtaken by a stranger (risen Christ; Philip) who interprets Scripture for them. A request from the traveler leads to a sacramental outcome (Eucharist; baptism). Upon conclusion of the sacrament, the stranger disappears from the traveler’s presence.

Another side note: v. 37 is missing in the oldest texts and appears to be a baptismal formula that was incorporated into the text within a hundred years or so of the writing of Acts.

Evangelizing Beyond Jews

In both the episode of the Ethiopian eunuch and the preceding passage, we see the good news of Jesus being preached for the first time to people other than mainstream Jews. While not considered Jews, the Samaritans weren’t Gentiles, either. They did accept the Torah and some traditional Jewish practices like circumcision. Baptizing Samaritans into the Christian community didn’t run into the same objections that would come with Peter’s baptism of Cornelius and his family in Acts 10.

The Ethiopian eunuch is either a Jew or a convert to Judaism. Deuteronomy 23:2 (23:1 in some English versions) seems to preclude the possibility of a eunuch entering “the assembly of the Lord” but in the later understanding reflected in Isaiah 56:3-5, “eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths…and hold fast to my covenant” will be given an everlasting name. Luke portrays the Ethiopian treasurer as that kind of eunuch.

In these two stories, Luke is showing how the first Christian evangelists are quick to welcome those who would be considered on the outskirts of mainstream Judaism or who would be rejected altogether. He is setting the stage for the next big leap in Acts 10 when Peter baptizes Gentiles for the first time. But, before we can get to that momentous event, we have to backtrack a bit in Acts 9 and report the story of Saul’s conversion.