We're On a Mission From God

The story of Paul’s first missionary journey is presented in Acts 13 and 14. Some scholars question its historicity since Paul’s Letter to the Galatians seems to rule it out. Others point to a verse (2 Tim 3:11) that references sufferings Paul endured “in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra” and those are three towns on the itinerary of the first missionary journey. It is widely held that 2 Timothy is not an authentic Pauline letter, but it may be an independent witness to the Lukan source that underlies Acts 13-14.

The mission begins in Syria when the Holy Spirit spoke to the five “prophets and teachers” leading the Antiochene church and Barnabas and Saul were commissioned to go forth and proclaim the word (13:1-3). The other three men are otherwise unknown, but the mention that Manaen was brought up with Herod Antipas indicates that Christianity was not just a religion of the lower classes.

Conflict in Cyprus

The first stop is Cyprus, Barnabas’ homeland (13:4-12). From Antioch, it was a day’s walk to the port city of Seleucia where they were able to take a cargo ship – no passenger ships in the 1st century CE – to Salamis on the eastern shore of Cyprus. They walked the length of the island, proclaiming the word in the synagogues as they went, eventually arriving on the western shore at the capital of Paphos (100 miles from Salamis).

In Paphos the apostles encountered a Jewish magician named Bar-Jesus who was in service to the Roman proconsul Sergius Paulus. Saul (who, Luke finally tells us, was also known as Paul) admonished Bar-Jesus. As a result, the magician became blind and the proconsul became a believer. The whole story is reminiscent of the conflict between Peter and Simon Magus in 8:5-25.

There are a couple more items of interest in this passage. First, Sergius Paulus was the proconsul of Cyprus between 46-48 CE, so that gives us a rough idea of when the first missionary journey could have taken place. Second, from this point on Luke will refer to Saul as Paul. Unlike Simon who was given the name Peter (Aramaic Kephas, meaning “rock”) by Jesus, the names “Saul” and “Paul” were given to him at birth. “Saul” would have been his Hebrew name and “Paul” his Roman name. (John Mark would be another example of a double name.) It makes sense that Paul would go by his Roman name in his interactions with the Gentile world.

Inciting a Crowd

With the Cyprus part of their mission concluded, Paul and his companions began the next leg (13:13-52). They sailed to Perga on the southern shore of Asia Minor where John Mark left them to return to Jerusalem. Barnabas and Paul continued on the dangerous 100-mile overland route to the mountainous region where Pisidian Antioch lay. It was called “Pisidian” because it was close to the border of the district of Pisidia (and to distinguish it from a dozen other cities named Antioch).

According to Acts, Paul gave a lengthy speech in the synagogue and won over a following, but that success aroused jealousy in the local Jewish population who eventually had the apostles expelled from the district. They shook the dust of the town off their feet in protest, just as Jesus instructed the disciples (cf. Lk 9:5; 10:11), and moved on to Iconium where the sequence of success and rejection repeated itself (14:1-7).

After fleeing Iconium under threat of stoning, Barnabas and Paul travelled 25 miles to the Roman town of Lystra (14:8-20). It was the first town they visited that did not already have an established Jewish community so they preached in the agora (the public open space). Paul saw a man there who was lame from birth and healed him. The Gentile crowd reacted by calling the apostles Zeus and Hermes and wanted to offer sacrifices to them. (Luke explains that Paul was called Hermes because he did most of the speaking, Hermes being the messenger of the gods.)

Barnabas and Paul tried without success to dissuade the crowd from treating them as deities when Jews from Pisidian Antioch and Iconium arrived and turned the crowd against the apostles. Paul was stoned and left for dead outside the town, but his disciples formed a circle around him and Paul recovered. The next day the apostles left for Derbe but Acts reports nothing of the visit there.

“The priest of Zeus…brought oxen and garlands to the gates; he and the crowds wanted to offer sacrifice.” Paul and Barnabas in Lystra (1678) by Johann Heiss

Everybody Must Get Stoned

The entire Lystra episode bears tell-tale signs of Luke’s reworking. Paul’s healing of the crippled man is a parallel to an earlier healing story involving Peter (3:1-10), but in his letters Paul never refers to having performed healings. Jews stalking the apostles from town to town in order to turn the local pagan populace against them stretches credulity. The Jewish antagonism is part of the Lukan program to show that hostile rejection of the Christian message on the part of the Jewish population forced the apostles to turn to the Gentiles.

That said, in 2 Cor 11:24-25 Paul speaks of his sufferings as am apostle: five floggings (Jewish punishment), three beatings with rods (Roman punishment), one stoning. Stoning usually ended in death, but I wonder if the reference to Paul’s disciples forming a circle around him may have been an intervention to stop a stoning in progress.

[Side note: The RSV (1952) translates 2 Cor 11:25a, “Three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned.” In the NRSV (1989) this verse was translated, “Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning.” In the 37 years between these two translations, the term “stoned” developed a different connotation in the US English vocabulary and the NRSV translators didn’t want readers thinking Paul got high on anything other than the Holy Spirit.]

Acts 14:21-28 reports that Barnabas and Paul retraced their steps before sailing back to Syrian Antioch. It would have been shorter and quicker to continue along the road towards Tarsus from which they could then book passage home to Antioch. Does it make sense to return to cities that had rejected and almost killed one of them? The route of the return journey suggests that Luke exaggerated the rejection and downplayed the successes. After all, even in Lystra where Paul was stoned he had won over disciples who formed a protective circle around him.

Paul’s first missionary journey was the shortest of the three in terms of distance travelled. Scholars estimate that he and Barnabas were away for two years. The actual travel time by ship and foot was about two months; most of the time was spent in residence in the cities on their itinerary.

Clouds on the Horizon

When the apostles gave an account of the outcome of their mission to the Antiochene church, they said God “had opened a door of faith for the Gentiles.” Gentiles were a tremendous opportunity for the new faith, but also posed a problem. It was one thing to win over Gentile God-fearers, but quite another to convert pagan Gentiles to Christianity. What about dietary laws and the rest of the Mosaic law? Do the new Gentile converts also need to be circumcised like all Jews? Those were the questions that pre-occupied the minds of the leaders in Jerusalem. The future of the Christian faith would depend on the decisions they were about to make.

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.

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.]

Persecution Complex

The commissioning of the Seven serves as an introduction to the martyrdom of Stephen which, in turn, serves as an introduction to Saul and the greater persecution of the church in Jerusalem. The persecution is the motivation behind the mission of Philip to Samaria and his baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch.

Escalating Persecution

This is not the first time Luke records harassment of the early Christians. In Acts 4:1-22, Peter and John were imprisoned overnight and hauled before the Sanhedrin to explain why they had been healing in the name of Jesus and preaching the resurrection of the dead. They were eventually released without punishment but warned not speak or teach in the name of Jesus again.

Further persecution of the apostles was reported in 5:17-42 when they disobeyed the Sanhedrin’s gag order. Initially imprisoned, they were freed by an angel of the Lord and went back to preaching in the Temple. Re-arrested, the Sanhedrin was convinced by the words of council-member Gamaliel to release the apostles, which they did after first having them flogged.

But when Stephen debated with foreign Jews in their synagogue, he was charged with blasphemy and brought before the Sanhedrin where false witnesses testified that Stephen also spoke against the Temple and the Law of Moses (6:8-15). The high priest asked Stephen what he had to say about the charges against him and he responded with the lengthy speech in 7:2-53.

At the end of his monologue (7:54-8:1a), Stephen described a vision of Jesus sitting at God’s right hand which was enough to send the mob over the edge. Dispensing with any legal procedure, the mob dragged Stephen out of the city and stoned him to death. The “witnesses” (that is, those doing the stoning) laid their cloaks “at the feet of a young man named Saul” who, we are told, approved of Stephen’s execution.

Saul at the Stoning of Stephen. Artist unknown.

According to Luke, Stephen’s death marked the start of a major period of persecution of the church in Jerusalem (8:1b-4) and Saul was the chief enforcer, pulling people from their homes and imprisoning them. All but the apostles fled Jerusalem for the relative safety of the Judean countryside and Samaria. And, wherever they went, they preached the Christian message. Thus the stage is set for recounting Philip’s mission in Acts 8 and Saul’s conversion in Acts 9.

How Reliable is Acts?

Biblical scholars have issues with the historicity of events as reported by Luke. We’ve seen how, in his Gospel, Luke is not averse to rewriting his source material – whether it be Mark or Q – to give a smoother narrative flow. Unlike Luke’s Gospel where we have Matthew or Mark to compare against, when it comes to Acts, we don’t have an alternate source except for occasional remarks in Paul’s letters. So we have to look for doublets and internal contradictions to get an idea where Luke may be blending his source material with his own composition.

According to the gospels, Jesus was considered such a threat to the Roman and Jewish authorities that he had to be crucified. Yet his disciples are allowed to live in Jerusalem largely unmolested. They are first given a warning and later flogged. But it is not until Stephen begins debating with Hellenist Jews that Christian lives are put in danger. Something more than simply preaching the message of Jesus made the Christian presence in Jerusalem intolerable.

After the lynching of Stephen, Luke says all but the apostles fled Jerusalem due to persecution led by Saul. Judging from the rest of Acts, though, it seems it was mostly the Hellenists who fled Jerusalem while the Hebrews stayed behind. Based on the charges against Stephen, a disparaging attitude towards the Temple and the Law of Moses is what made the presence of the Hellenist Christians intolerable to the non-Christian Jews. Eventually, the friction between the Hellenist Christians like Paul and the Hebrew Christians like James will lead to a crisis over how to initiate Gentiles into the Church.

Introducing Saul

Saul, of course, is better known as St. Paul. Luke places him at the scene of Stephen’s execution and states he was a “young man” which could mean anything from 20 to 40 years of age. Luke also states that cloaks were piled at the feet of Saul, which sounds reminiscent of how money donated to the Church would be laid at the feet of the apostles. There was some symbolic significance for this act that has been lost to us.

Elsewhere in Acts, Luke states that Paul studied the Law in Jerusalem under Gamaliel (22:3) and voted to execute Christians at their trials. There are some doubts about this. In his letters Paul is proud of his education as a Pharisee yet never mentions he was taught by Gamaliel, the leading Pharisee of his time. If he spent years in Jerusalem studying Judaism, he took no notice of events around Passover 30 CE because he never mentions in his letters a personal connection with the Jesus of the public ministry.

Could Saul really have had a free hand to drag Christians out of their homes and imprison them? Some biblical scholars think something like this could only have happened in the period between the administrations of Pontius Pilate and Marcellus (late 36 to early 37 CE). Luke claims Saul had the authority to do this either from the high priest or the Sanhedrin, but this is dubious. Acts 9:1-2 states Saul had letters allowing him to arrest Christians in Damascus but neither the high priest nor the Sanhedrin had authority outside the city of Jerusalem. Many scholars believe that Luke is exaggerating Saul’s role as the great persecutor of the church in order to better serve as a contrast with his conversion to the great apostle.

The biggest takeaway from this brief episode in Acts is that it was the pressure of persecution that propelled the early church outwards from Jerusalem to the countryside of Judea and Samaria. It wasn’t something that Jesus planned from the start. Just as with the creation of the Seven, the apostles were making it up as they went along, responding to situations as they arose. In the next chapter of Acts, we will follow the mission of Philip, one of the Seven, as he preached in Samaria and the countryside of Judea.