Out of the Ashes

It’s not often that two of my interests – computer technology and the Bible – intersect, but they did in a science discovery announced this week. A team of computer specialists at the University of Kentucky were able to read the writing on a 1700-year old Torah scroll that had been turned into charcoal by a fire in 600 CE. How this miracle of science was accomplished and what it uncovered is fascinating.

The Spring of the Young Goat

The story begins on the Western shore of the Dead Sea, a barren desert without tree or shrub except for those around oases such as the one at En-gedi, 35 miles southeast of Jerusalem. En-gedi (the name means “spring of the young goat”) is mentioned a few times in the Bible, most notably as one of the spots where David fled from Saul (1 Sam 24). It was the site of a Jewish community beginning in the 8th century BCE and by the 4th century CE, it was a large Jewish city with at least one synagogue. The city was destroyed by fire in the 7th century during the Arab conquests.

Archaeological excavations in 1970 uncovered the Holy Ark in the ruins of the city’s synagogue. The Holy Ark is a cabinet in a synagogue that holds the scrolls used for synagogue readings. Inside the En-gedi Ark were the charred fragments of its Torah scrolls. The blackened lumps of charcoal fell apart at the touch and there was no way to unwrap them, so the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) preserved them on the chance that some future technology would allow them to be read.

Start with a Good Scan

Did the charred scrolls contain any writing at all or were they a total loss? Sefi Porat, one of the excavators who worked on the En-gedi synagogue, asked his colleague, Pnina Shor, head of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) Project at the IAA, if she could scan the En-gedi scrolls as part of the project to create images of all DSS material.

Modern X-ray-based micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) scans of the En-gedi scrolls can reveal there was writing on the layers inside because the ink, containing metals like iron or lead, is denser than the parchment on which it was written and provides a good contrast. The micro-CT scan, designed for high-resolution scanning of biological tissues, can also visualize the layers in the scroll.

But it was impossible to decipher the writing. The Hebrew letters appear on a 3D cylindrical image and cannot be read without conversion to a 2D image. It would be as if you wrote a message on a piece of paper, rolled it up and tried to read it by holding it up to a light. The letters on one layer would be superimposed on the letters on the other layers.

Computer-Assisted Archaeology

This is where the University of Kentucky comes in. Similar charred scrolls were unearthed in the library of Julius Caesar’s father-in-law in Herculaneum, destroyed along with Pompeii in 79 CE. W. Brent Seales, professor and chairman of the computer science department at the University of Kentucky, has spent the last 13 years working on ways to read such damaged scrolls. Dr. Seales and his team developed a technique to “virtually unwrap” the charred scrolls once they had been scanned.

Learning of Dr. Seales’ work, Dr. Shor sent him the micro-CT scan of one of the En-gedi scrolls and asked if he could analyze it.

The program developed by Dr. Seales’ team builds a triangulated surface mesh to identify the layers of material in the scroll. The team identified five complete revolutions of parchment in the scroll. Once the layers had been identified and modeled, the program renders readable textures on the layers by assigning a “brightness” value from the appropriate layer of the CT scan to each point on the segmented surface in the computer model.

Video from The New York Times describing the technique.

Because the layers were rolled-up in the scan, the next step was to flatten the segments. This was done via common 3D-to-2D mapping techniques. The final step was to merge the flattened segments into a composite image. The final image revealed the scroll to be two columns of text that include 35 lines (18 preserved and 17 reconstructed) of Hebrew text from the first two chapters of Leviticus, the third book in the Torah.

A composite image of the completed virtual unwrapping of the En-gedi scroll (source: B. Seales)

The Findings

Radiocarbon results date the scroll to 3rd-4th century CE. This puts the En-gedi scroll a century or two after the period of the Dead Sea Scrolls (3rd century BCE to 2nd century CE) and centuries before medieval biblical fragments found in Cairo dating to the 9th century CE.

The text on the En-gedi scroll is identical to the Masoretic Text (MT). The MT is the text printed in most modern Hebrew Bibles and used as the source for translations into English. This is interesting because the DSS written just one or two centuries earlier reveal some variations in the biblical texts. This discovery pushes back the date for the standardization of the MT to the 3rd-4th century CE.

The work of Dr. Seales and his team was financed by a government grant. The suite of software programs, called Volume Cartography, will be released as open source once the grant ends. Use of the software on the damaged scrolls from the Herculaneum library could re-discover long-lost works of Latin and Greek literature. It is a remarkable accomplishment.

Details of the “virtual unwrapping” technique are detailed in an article published in the 21 Sept 2016 issue of the journal Science Advances.

Rejoice in the Lord Always

Like most people, I like a good mystery. Paul’s letter to the Philippians (abbreviated hereafter as “Phil”) is something of a mystery because we don’t know when or where it was written. There is also some debate as to whether the letter as we have it today was one, two or three separate letters.

Location, Location, Location

Phil is a fairly short letter that Paul wrote from prison (Phil 1:7, 13, 17) to the church in Phlippi, the first church that he founded in Europe. The occasion for the letter is to assure the Philippians that Epaphroditus has survived a life-threatening illness. The Philippians, hearing of Paul’s imprisonment, sent Epaphroditus with a gift (4:18). While with Paul, Epaphroditus fell ill and news of this reached the church in Philippi. Paul sent Epaphroditus back to them (2:25-30) and he hopes to be able to send Timothy soon and come for a visit himself (2:19-24).

What possible locations fit these facts? From later in Acts, we learn that Paul was arrested in Jerusalem and imprisoned in Caesarea for two years. It seems like an obvious choice except that, as summarized above, the letter presupposes frequent contact between Philippi and Paul. Caesarea is 1000 miles from Philippi by sea and travel on the Mediterranean during winter would be out of the question. An overland route would be arduous as well. The turnaround time on a letter would be months.

Acts ends with Paul under house arrest in Rome. While seemingly closer to Philippi, the geography of Italy and Greece would require a 900-mile voyage skirting their coastlines. The shortest route would be overland across the width of Italy, then by boat across the Adriatic to Corinth, and then up the coast of Greece to Philippi. At 700-miles, it still poses a formidable challenge to messengers travelling back and forth between Paul and Philippi.

Ephesus would solve the problem of frequent contact as Philippi is only 400 miles away by sea. A ship could cover that distance in seven to nine days. Unlike Caesarea or Rome, we know that Timothy was with Paul at Ephesus (1 Cor 4:17; 16:10; Acts 19:22). The only problem is that Acts does not mention Paul being imprisoned there. Paul refers (metaphorically) to having fought “wild beasts” at Ephesus (1 Cor 15:32) and almost receiving a sentence of death while in Asia (2 Cor 1:8-10). A lengthy imprisonment in Ephesus could explain why Paul spent three years there and why he later avoided the city on his journey from Macedonia to Jerusalem.

If Ephesus is the city of origin, Phil would have been written around 56 CE.

The Apostle Paul (c. 1657) by Rembrandt

E Pluribus Unum

The other mystery about Phil is whether it is one letter or a compilation of multiple letters Paul sent to the church in Philippi. If you read the first two verses of Phil 3, you can easily see why many scholars think more than one letter may have been combined:

Finally, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord.
To write the same things to you is not troublesome to me, and for you it is a safeguard.
Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of those who mutilate the flesh!

Up to this point, the tone of the letter has demonstrated the warm affection Paul has for the Philippians with the repeated mention of the word “rejoice.” Starting chapter 3 with “finally,” you think Paul is bringing the letter to a close and he will continue with the theme of rejoicing. But then he abruptly changes subject to repeat admonitions that he has apparently written in previous letters. The shift in tone from “rejoice” to “beware” is quite jarring. But when you get to Phil 4:4, the refrain of “rejoice” returns. And then there’s another conclusion beginning with the word “finally” at 4:8.

Other oddities can be observed. Paul acknowledges receiving Epaphroditus (4:18) after he writes that he is returning the messenger to Philippi (2:25-30). Logically, you would expect it to be the other way round. Paul typically discusses his travel plans at the end of his letters, but in Phil they appear in the middle (2:23-30) right before the false ending (the first “finally”) at 3:1.

Some biblical scholars argue for Phil containing content from two original letters and others suggest content from three separate letters. There’s no consensus on the topic. I’m inclined to the theory that a short note (4:10-20) acknowledging the Philippians’ gift was combined with a later letter sent back with Epaphroditus after he regained his health. The warnings against the circumcisers (3:2-11) could have come from one or both of these letters, or even a separate letter. One can’t be too precise in these matters.

Imitation of Christ

The most famous part of Phil is the christological hymn that appears in 2:5-11. Most scholars believe Paul did not originate these lines, but instead inherited them, either in Greek or Aramaic. If it was originally composed in Aramaic, Paul may have learned the hymn in the years following his conversion in the mid-30s.

The original purpose of the hymn would have been to proclaim Jesus as Lord in a liturgical context. The structure consists of six verses of three lines each (Paul adding the part about “even death on a cross”). The first three verses have Jesus not claiming his equality with God, but taking the form of a slave and becoming obedient to the point of death. The last three verses explain that, because of this, God exalted him so that all of creation should bend the knee to him and confess his new name, “Lord”.

Although the hymn’s original purpose was to praise Jesus as Lord, Paul asks his readers to take as their example the exalted Christ. Instead of having the mindset of bettering themselves at the expense of others, they should take on the mind of Christ and look after the interests of others (2:3-4). The way to God is not through climbing the ladder of success, but by becoming humbly obedient to God, even to the point of death.

Foolish Galatians

Here in the United States we’re in the middle of a presidential election year, with candidates doing their best to win over as many voters as possible. In a sense, a political campaign is not that different from how 1st century Christian missionaries tried to win over Jew and Gentile converts to their particular interpretations of Christianity.

In a contemporary political campaign, when one candidate critiques the positions of their opponent, the audience is familiar with what the opponent has said or done. But when it comes to Paul defending his ministry against his opponents, such as the Judaizers in Galatians, we only hear one side of the story. We have to reconstruct the opposing viewpoint from how Paul argues against it in his letters. And, just as a modern politician tends to twist their opponent’s position, you can be sure that Paul is giving his audience neither a complete nor a generous interpretation of the Judaizers’ position.

Arguments Against the Judaizers

The core of Paul’s refutation of the Judaizers in Galatians lies in chapters 3 and 4. A key argument is an experiential one: the Galatians received the Spirit without doing works of the Law, so how can doing works of the Law be necessary for justification (3:1-5):? Prior to receiving the gospel, the Galatians were enslaved to the “elemental spirits of the world.” Faith in God’s son redeemed them from their slavery and made them adopted children of God. How can the Galatians return to slavery (4:1-9)?

Paul also relied on Scripture to refute the Judaizers: God promised Abraham, a man whose faith was reckoned as righteousness (Gen 15:5-6), that through his offspring all the nations would be blessed (Gen 22:18). They will be blessed not because they are circumcised, but because they believed, like Abraham did. And this promise to Abraham was made 430 years prior to the Law being given to Moses, so how can it be contingent on observing the law (Gal 3:6-18)?

The Allegory of Sarah and Hagar

Paul cites the story from Genesis of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, but says the Judaizers have misinterpreted it. This requires a little explanation. In Genesis 16 Sarah, seeing that she was childless, gave her Egyptian slave-girl Hagar to Abraham as a concubine. Hagar conceived but became contemptuous of Sarah, who then mistreated her to the point that Hagar ran away. But YHWH found Hagar by a spring of water in the wilderness and told her to return, later giving birth to Ishmael. In Genesis 21:8-21, Hagar is again driven off into the wilderness where God intervenes once more to save the life of mother and child.

Hagar and Ishmael Banished by Abraham (1781) by Flemish painter Pieter-Jozef Verhaghen

As well as we can reconstruct it, the Judaizers’ argument was that Abraham had two children, one (Isaac) the son of the free woman Sarah, the other (Ishmael) the son of the slave-girl Hagar. Jews are the descendants of Isaac and Gentiles are the descendants of Ishmael, so both Jew and Gentile are children of Abraham. But the Jews are the true children of Abraham because, like him, they practice circumcision and observe the Sabbath and other feasts. As the Messiah, Jesus offers Gentiles the opportunity to share in God’s promise of blessings to Abraham’s descendants. All they have to do is accept circumcision and observe the Mosaic Law.

Paul interprets the story of Sarah and Hagar as an allegory (Gal 4:21-31). The child of the slave woman (Hagar) is born according to the flesh and the child of the free woman (Sarah) is born according to the promise. The descendants of Hagar are not the Gentiles but the Jews, for they are enslaved to the Law. The descendants of Sarah are those born according to the Spirit, in freedom. Sarah had Abraham drive out Hagar because she did not want the child of the slave to share Abraham's inheritance. Thus Paul makes a subtle suggestion that the Galatians are to drive out the Judaizers.

Such an allegorical interpretation of Scripture was once popular, but has been out of favor since the Middle Ages. It’s not hard to see why. There are simply no controls to the interpreter’s imagination. Are Jews the children of the free woman or the slave woman? As you can see, this approach allows for diametrically opposed interpretations of the same biblical passage. How can someone possibly judge which of these allegorical interpretations is correct?

It’s not entirely an academic question. Paul is trying to refute those who would impose the Mosaic Law on Gentiles. From his perspective, the Judaizers are trying to enslave his Christian converts. But to say Paul is denigrating Judaism as a religion that enslaves people is to completely misinterpret Paul. That’s exactly what the 2nd c. theologian Marcion did, concluding that the God of the OT was incompatible with the teachings of Jesus. Anti-semites down through the centuries have also used Paul to justify their prejudice.

Abraham vs. Jesus

The Judaizers’ elevated focus on Abraham and Law caused Paul to reflect on the role of Jesus and “the Law of Christ” which he defines as “faith working through love” (Gal 5:6). It is the love of Christ “who loved me and gave himself for me” that now lives in Paul (2:20). The magnitude of Christ’s love is his self-sacrifice on the cross (a death, by the way, that is condemned by the Law [3:13]).

The Christian is freed from obedience to the Law but that does not mean – contrary to what the Judaizers might say – that Christians are free to indulge the desires of the flesh (5:16-21). The works of the flesh lead to destruction of the individual and the community, but the fruit of the Spirit lead to building up the individual and the community (5:22-26). Use your freedom to become slaves to one another (5:13) because it is only by bearing one another’s burdens that one fulfills the Law of Christ (6:2). Christ himself said that the whole Law could be summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Did Paul’s letter bring the Galatians round to his side again? His letter was preserved, so at least some in Galatia thought his writing was worth keeping and sharing with other churches. Galatians served as a rough draft for Paul’s letter introducing himself to the churches in Rome, where he was able to expound on his theological ideas of justification by faith. Both Galatians and Romans would inspire Luther to develop his doctrine of sola fide (justification by faith alone).

Maybe Paul was misunderstood in his own time, but his writings have continued to inspire Christians throughout the centuries.

Competitive Christianity

If you want to buy a personal computer today, you have a choice between Apple and Windows-based systems. But almost 40 years ago you could have chosen from models by Commodore, Apple, Tandy, Atari, Sinclair, and a variety of other vendors, all incompatible with each other’s software. Only with the creation of IBM’s original PC and the multitude of PC-clones that offered the same functioning hardware at a cheaper price point did some semblance of standardization take hold, eventually leading to the binary choices in personal computers we have today.

Similarly, it would be wrong to think that the Christianity we know today was the only brand of Christianity operative in the 1st century. A close reading of the NT literature indicates there were a variety of preachers and prophets all trying to spread their own version of Christianity. Paul regarded his opponents as “false prophets” and, in all likelihood, they would have said the same of him. The average Gentile convert had no idea which of these competing gospels were authentic.

The Baptism of John

Acts 18:24-28 and 19:1-7 present us with some Christian odd-fellows in the form of Apollos and a dozen believers who were unfamiliar with the Holy Spirit and only knew the baptism of John. Previously, I wrote about how John’s baptism of Jesus and Jesus’ continuation of John’s ministry were suppressed in the NT. In his time, the Baptist was very popular but Jesus eventually came to supplant him and the Baptist was re-cast as a precursor of Jesus. So it is not impossible that some of the Baptist’s disciples would have spread outside of Judea alongside traditional Christian missionaries.

Apollos, a Jewish convert from Alexandria, is introduced upon his arrival in Ephesus in Acts 18:24-28. Although he was described as eloquent, well-versed in Scripture, and “taught accurately the things concerning Jesus,” he “knew only the baptism of John.” Fortunately, Prisca and Aquila were able to explain Christianity to him “more accurately.” Luke does not describe how one could both “teach accurately” yet still need instruction to be “more accurate.”

The next episode (19:1-7) presents a similar scene in Ephesus. Paul found some dozen disciples who, like Apollos, had only received John’s baptism of repentance and knew nothing of the Holy Spirit. After being baptized in the name of Jesus, Paul laid hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues and prophesying. (In the previous episode, no mention was made of Apollos being re-baptized.) There is insufficient information to be sure but my impression is that Apollos and the other twelve were early disciples of Jesus – and not the Baptist’s disciples – who did not possess the charismatic gifts associated with the Holy Spirit.

We know from Paul’s correspondence that Apollos was a popular teacher in Corinth. Indeed, divisions developed in Corinth among those who considered Apollos their spiritual leader (1 Cor 3:4-6). Factionalism was an apparent problem not only in Corinth but Philippi as well. This seems to be a logical outgrowth of Paul’s missionary program: he would establish a church, provide some basic instructions on how to live according to the Spirit, and then move on. Without any explicit rules to follow, it was only natural that individual Christians would disagree as to how a Christian was to behave.

Church Divisions

While Corinth and Philippi faced divisions from within, the churches of Galatia were confronted with outsiders who undermined Paul’s work. After the Council of Jerusalem, we saw how Paul had a falling out with Peter and Barnabas over whether Jewish Christians would be allowed to have table fellowship with Gentile Christians. Paul lost that battle and it may have also led him to cut his ties with the Antiochene church. He therefore missed the subsequent letter from the Jerusalem authorities that required Gentile Christians to follow Jewish restrictions on diet and sexual unions.

The opponents Paul attacks in his letter to the Galatians went beyond the requirements of the Jerusalem decree. A linchpin of their teaching was strongly encouraging – if not compelling – Gentile Christians to become circumcised. They also wanted the Galatians to observe Jewish feasts and festivals. To win over the Galatians, they had to discredit Paul as an apostle and explain why the Mosaic Law was the foundation on which Christians could ground their new life in Christ.

Paul spends the first two chapters of Galatians defending himself as an apostle commissioned by the risen Lord and accepted by recognized authorities in Jerusalem like Peter and James. After establishing his bona fides, Paul spends the rest of the letter elaborating on how it is faith in Jesus Christ and not obedience to the Law which justifies a person before God. The Law was the disciplinarian until Christ came, but after one has received the Spirit, that person is no longer subject to the disciplinarian. He pleads with the Galatians to reclaim the freedom of the gospel and not turn to the slavery of the Law, which is what accepting circumcision would entail.

There were other flavors of Christianity in the air. Notable among them is the version seen in the Gospel of John and the three Johannine epistles. The Johannine Christians seem to have evolved from Hellenist Christians like Stephen who taught that Jesus replaced the essentials of Judaism like Temple worship and festivals. They had an elevated view of Jesus, almost to the point of denying his humanity. Over the decades, without a church authority structure to combat false teaching, the Johannine churches were torn apart by divisions. Some finally accepted the authority of the greater church, while the rest spun off into Gnosticism, the belief that one is saved by a secret knowledge (gnosis).

All of these Christianities competed in the marketplace of ideas. The more extreme elements – Judaizers on one side and Gnostics on the other – fell by the wayside. The Petrine, Pauline, and Johannine elements combined together to give us the church that we see emerging in the 2nd century writings of the early Church Fathers like Ignatius, Polycarp and Justin Martyr. This is the brand of Christianity that was refined in the crucible.

O! Say Parousia

After I graduated from college in 1982, I wrote letters to keep in touch with my friends who had moved away to various parts of the country. Today email and text are so much faster and efficient but they don’t replace the joy of finding a letter in the mailbox from a friend you haven’t seen in a while, tearing into the envelope to read the latest news from afar. For many years, I kept some of the letters I had received so that I could re-read them from time to time. I knew it might be years before I could see my friends again in-person.

Such was the case with Paul in the middle of the 1st century. He visited a city long enough to make some converts and setup a church, but then it was off to the next town. But Paul would keep in touch by means of letters, encouraging the churches he founded, providing instruction or addressing their questions, and in some cases, chastising them for not living up their potential.

Thessalonica was one of the cities where Paul’s visit was abruptly cut short. According to Acts 17:1-15, Jews angered at Paul’s evangelization efforts caused him to be driven out of town. Paul wanted to return but was unable so he sent Timothy to check up on the church. Timothy caught up with Paul in Corinth and brought back a positive report. Overjoyed at the news, Paul wrote a letter of encouragement back to the Thessalonians.

Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians (1 Thess) is the earliest Christian document we possess. Because it was written during Paul’s 18 month stay in Corinth, we can date it to 51 CE. It is very short and can be easily read in 15 minutes. I encourage you to give it a quick read either before or after completing this article.

You Know, You Know

The letter can be roughly divided into two parts. 1 Thess 1-3 praises the Thessalonians and recounts Paul’s short-lived ministry there and his desire to return. Chapters 4 and 5 provide extended instruction on the second coming of Christ (4:13-5:11) surrounded by exhortations to live a life pleasing to God. Unlike other Pauline letters, there are no weighty theological topics such as justification by faith.

The problem with trying to understand Paul’s correspondence is that we only have one half of the conversation. We have to infer the situation Paul is addressing from clues in the letters. For example, why does Paul spend so much of the letter reminding the Thessalonians of things they already know?

You yourselves know, brothers and sisters, that our coming to you was not in vain…as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel...as you know and as God is our witness, we never came with words of flattery…you remember our labor and toil…as you know, we dealt with each one of you like a father. (2:1-11)

These reminders from Paul suggest that Timothy returned with news that others – disciples or rival Christian teachers – were speaking ill of Paul. Maybe they were calling him a coward, someone who cut and run at the first sign of trouble with the authorities, leaving his converts behind to suffer the consequences. They not only questioned his dedication but also the authenticity of his teaching.

In his defense Paul reminds his readers of the suffering and shameful mistreatment he received in Philippi and the opposition he encountered in Thessalonica. If his readers had suffered mistreatment from their fellow Gentiles, they can rest assured they are in solidarity with the Christian churches in Judea under attack by the Jewish population. Indeed, they are imitators of the Lord Jesus himself.

Unlike the wandering peddlers of exotic religions who told people what they wanted to hear in order to live off donations, Paul worked for his upkeep so as not to beg for charity. He did not seek praise nor did he make unreasonable demands. His teachings were authorized by God and the fruit of God’s word at work in the believers was proof of that.

Contemporary Christian art of raptured Christians meeting the Lord in the clouds are usually a lot more literal than this.

Caught Up in the Clouds

The one new teaching in 1 Thess is the section on the coming of the Lord (4:13-5:11). The Greek word for “coming” is parousia, and was used in reference to the solemn arrival of a king at a certain place. Parousia occurs four times in 1 Thess and has become the technical term used in theological writings to refer to the second coming of Christ.

Paul wants the Thessalonians to know that those who have died will rise again. They won’t miss out, for at his coming Christ will raise the dead along with those who are still alive and all will be “caught up in the clouds together…to meet the Lord in the air” (4:17). The Greek word used for “caught up” was translated into the Latin Vulgate as rapturo (“seized, carried off”). This passage inspired the term for the Christian teaching of “rapture,” but that’s a topic for another time.

Why does Paul find it necessary to address the problem of Christians who have died? Not many Christians in Thessalonica would typically have died in the months since he visited them, unless they were killed as a result of official executions or unauthorized lynch mobs. This would underscore why some Thessalonians may have denigrated Paul as someone who stirred up trouble only to leave when the going got tough. Paul needed to address the situation and assure those still alive that their dead will rise again.

This section also tells us that Paul believes Christ will come soon, most likely in his lifetime. Those who have recently died are exceptions to the rule. Paul expected that most Christians living at the time of his writing would still be alive at the Parousia. But as time dragged on with no Parousia, this teaching became an embarrassment.

The second letter of Peter shows a church leader trying to deal with the problem of the delayed Parousia (2 Pet 3:1-13). As the last members of the apostolic generation died off (“ever since our fathers fell asleep”), doubters began to ask, “Where is the promise of his coming?” The author’s answer is that, for the Lord, “one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” Any perceived delay is to allow more people time to repent.

In closing his epistle, Paul urges the recipient to read it to all members of the church in Thessalonica (1 Thess 5:27). No doubt a personal letter from Paul was treasured by the community as would be a letter from the pope today. Copies were made and distributed to other churches in the vicinity. By the 2nd century, they were considered part of what we today call the NT canon.

I wonder what Paul would think if he had known that his letters would be read daily by millions of Christians worldwide two thousand years later.

The First Missionary Couple

Paul is commonly seen as the master missionary who single-handedly evangelized the Roman world but, in fact, he had a lot of help. On his first missionary journey, he worked alongside Barnabas and chose Silas as his companion for the second missionary journey. Along the way, he picked up Timothy (and perhaps Luke) as well. In Corinth, he made the acquaintance of a married couple, Aquila and Priscilla (Acts 18:1-3), who are mentioned in his letters (1 Cor 16:19; Rom 16:3-5) as his fellow co-workers in Christ.

From Philippi to Athens

After baptizing Lydia in Philippi, Paul (16:16-24) exorcised the spirit of divination from a slave girl, spoiling the talent that was profitable for her masters. The masters hauled Paul and Silas before the magistrates who had them beaten with rods and thrown in prison. Luke recounts another miraculous “prison break” scene (vv. 25-34), except this time, Paul and Silas do not escape from prison but remain to evangelize the warden.

Vv. 35-40 make no mention of the miraculous earthquake. On the next morning, the magistrates ordered the release of Paul and Silas. They are even more eager to hustle them out of town when they find out that Paul, at least, is a Roman citizen; flogging was an illegal punishment for Roman citizens.

According to Acts 17:1-15, trouble with the Jewish citizens of Thessalonica made their visit there short-lived and trouble followed them to Beroea as well. Leaving Silas and Timothy behind, Paul left for Athens.

Paul tells a slightly different story in his first letter to the Thessalonians. After referencing his suffering and mistreatment at Philippi (1 Thess 2:2), Paul discussed how he was separated from the Thessalonians and wanted to return but Satan blocked his way (2:17-18). Paul eventually chose to remain alone in Athens in order to send Timothy back to Thessalonica to check on the state of the infant church there (3:1-5). In Paul’s version, Timothy had initially accompanied him to Athens.

Paul Before the Areopagus

Alone in Athens (17:16-34), Paul continued to spread the word of Jesus and had discussions with the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers. Eventually, he was interrogated by the city council, the Areopagus. Paul’s speech to the council gives us an idea of how a 1st-century missionary would have evangelized pagan Gentiles.

Paul begins by referencing an altar he saw in the city that was dedicated “to an unknown god.” He asserts this unknown god is the God who made the world and everything in it: “For in him we live and move and have our being” (v. 28). This God created all humanity and placed within us a longing to seek him out. Paul even quotes the Stoic poet Aratus (3rd century BCE): “of him we too are offspring.”

Although God has overlooked human sinfulness in the past, now is a time for repentance because he has fixed a time in which the world will be judged by Jesus. We know this to be true because God has raised him from the dead. Mention of the resurrection drew both negative and curious reactions from the jaded Athenians and Paul soon left Athens for Corinth.

Fresco from Pompeii of a Roman couple. Prisca and Aquila could have looked something like this.

Setting Up Shop in Corinth

Once in Corinth Paul apparently ran out of funds and needed to work his trade as a tent maker so he would not have to beg for support (2 Cor 11:7-9). He ended up working and living with Priscilla (Prisca in Paul’s letters) and Aquila, fellow tent makers and Jewish believers who had recently arrived from Italy, forced out due to an edict from the emperor Claudius (Acts 18:1-3). The Roman historian Suetonius explains: “He expelled Jews from Rome, who were constantly making disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus.” Historians debate exactly when this happened, with 49 CE being a frequently cited date.

It sounds like an odd trade in a city like Corinth, but tent makers were in high demand because they made awnings for residences and shops as well as tents for temporary lodgings. They would probably also able to work leather goods such as cloaks and belts. Paul lodged with Aquila and Prisca until Silas and Timothy arrived with money from the Macedonian churches (2 Cor 11:9). This enabled Paul to return full-time to his ministry, so he left their home and moved next door to the synagogue (Acts 18:5-7).

When, after 18 months in Corinth, Paul returned to Asia, he took Prisca and Aquila along and left them in Ephesus to build up the church there (18:18-21). According to Acts 18:24-28, they would prove instrumental in catechizing Apollos, who would become a popular teacher in Corinth. A few years later, after the death of Claudius, they returned to Rome. The move may have been prompted by Paul who was planning a visit to Rome and may have wanted to use them as a vanguard in laying the groundwork for him. In his letter to the Romans, Paul praises the couple for having “risked their necks for my life” (Rom 16:3-4). They and the church that met in their home are the first to receive his greetings.

Christianity is Not a Crime

Towards the end of his stay in Corinth, Paul once again got in trouble with the local Jewish congregation and was brought before Gallio, the proconsul of Achaia (Acts 18:12-17). The case the Jews presented to Gallio was that Paul was persuading people to worship God “in ways that are contrary to the law.” Judaism was a legally recognized religion in Roman law and they wanted Gallio to declare that Paul’s Chrisitianity was not the same as Judaism. Gallio did not want to engage in semantics (“a matter of questions about words and names and your own law”) and refused judgment. In short, Gallio decreed that Christianity was not a crime under Roman law.

An inscription allows us to date Gallio’s proconsulship to 52 CE, giving us the best chronological peg in Paul’s life. Paul would have arrived in Corinth in late 50/early 51 and lodged with Aquila and Prisca a year or two after they were expelled from Rome. This period is also the time when he wrote his first letter to the Thessalonians, the earliest document we have in the NT. We will look at that letter next week.

We the People

[Note: I will be on vacation next week, so I won't be posting any new articles until I return the week of August 8.] 

The Council of Jerusalem sits at the center of Acts and marks a turning point in the story. Prior to the council, Luke’s narrative thread darts from one character to another: Peter, Stephen, Philip, Saul, Peter again, and Paul. But after the council, the apostles disappear from the story and the focus is solely on Paul. Not only that, but the author seems to insert himself into the story with an unexpected shift from 3rd person narration to 1st person.

Paul’s New Partner

After the men from James arrived in Antioch and started enforcing the separation of Jewish and Gentile Christians at common meals, Paul decided to hit the road on another missionary journey. Acts explained (15:37-39) that Barnabas wanted to take John Mark with them and Paul refused. Whether for that reason or Barnabas siding with Peter in the table-fellowship controversy (Gal 2:13), Paul chose Silas as his new missionary partner.

Silas was first mentioned in Acts 15:22 as a leader in the Jerusalem church who, along with Judas Barsabbas, would carry the Jerusalem council’s decree to Antioch. He is most likely the same person Paul identifies as Silvanus in his letters. Given Silas’ position within the Jerusalem community, he would bring legitimacy to the Pauline mission.

Timothy’s Circumcision

Revisiting the towns from the previous mission, Paul and Silas travelled overland to Lystra where lived a disciple named Timothy (Acts 16:1-4). Timothy was the son of a Jewish Christian mother and a Greek father and was highly recommended by believers in Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted Timothy to join him on the mission, so he had him circumcised.

Paul’s action here has puzzled many commentators. Why did Paul circumcise Timothy when the Jerusalem council did not require it of Titus (Gal 2:1-3)? The key, I think, is that while Titus was Greek, Timothy was the son of a Jewish mother. If he was then considered to be Jewish by birth, he needed to be circumcised if he would be accompanying Paul since he did not want Timothy to become a distraction to his mission.

Timothy’s circumcision would also demonstrate that Paul was not opposed to Jewish Christians following the Mosaic law. It was a literal embodiment of what Paul wrote in 1 Cor 9:20:

To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law.

The “We” Passages

Leaving the region of Galatia, Paul and his companions were prevented from going to the cities on the west or northern coasts of Asia Minor (16:6-10). They made their way to Troas, a seaport on the northwestern shore and there Paul had a vision one night of a Macedonian man inviting him to come over to Europe. Convinced that God was calling them, “we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia.”

This first use of the 1st-person plural in what had been up to this point 3rd-person narration is quite jarring. It marks the first of four We-Sections (16:10-17; 20:5-15; 21:1-18; 27:1-28:16). The first We-Section covers the journey from Troas in Asia Minor to Philippi in Macedonia. The second and third pick up four chapters and several years later and cover the journey from Philippi to Jerusalem. The last We-Section covers the captive Paul’s journey from Caesarea to Rome.

Scholars have debated the meaning behind these “we” passages. The obvious explanation is that the author is recounting experiences that he shared with Paul and the others. The day-by-day detail of the itinerary in the We-Sections reads like the travel journal of an eyewitness. The problem is that Acts paints a different portrait of Paul than what we know from his authentic letters. The alternate theory is that the use of “we” is a stylistic device well-known in sea voyage literature of the time. Critics of this theory argue that the “we” passages do more than simply recount travel by ship.

For the time being, I am inclined to believe the “we” passages are taken from an eyewitness source. Scholars say that the use of language in these passages match that of the rest of Acts, so they either come from the same author or were thoroughly re-written to match his literary style.

In the second century, Irenaeus attributed the Gospel and Acts to Luke, a companion of Paul. Why Luke and not any of the dozen other companions of Paul? Maybe it was a guess or maybe that was the tradition he received. Whatever the case may be, I refer to the author as “Luke” for simplicity’s sake, instead of using a circumlocution such as “the author of the Third Gospel.”

Icon of Lydia of Thyatira. Thyatira is one of the "seven churches" mentioned in Rev 2-3. The message to the church in Thyatira (Rev 2:18-29) warns against a prophetess who teaches the community to practice immorality and eat food sacrificed to idols. We know from Paul's letters (1 Cor 8) that he had no objections to eating meat sacrificed to idols. If Lydia returned to Thyatira and promoted Paul's version of Christianity, could she be the false prophet condemned in Revelation? NT Christianity was not monolithic and one group of faithful believers could be considered false brothers by another group.

Women’s Liberation

The first convert in Philippi – indeed, the first Christian convert in all of Europe – is Lydia (16:11-15), a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira in Asia Minor. Royal purple cloth was a luxury item that only royalty and the wealthy could afford. Since Lydia had a household large enough to accommodate both servants and guests, she was probably a financially independent woman. Acts calls her “a worshipper of God,” so she was a Gentile God-fearer.

The author writes that on the Sabbath day Paul and his companions went outside the city to a place along the river where the Jewish women gathered for prayer. This suggests there were not enough men in Philippi to form a proper synagogue. After her baptism, Lydia welcomed Paul and his companions to her home, ignoring the restrictive customs of the day that would not allow a woman talk to a man, let alone invite him into her home. By the end of the chapter (v. 40), Lydia’s home had become a house-church for the Christian community in Philippi.

Luke’s subtle point here is that Jewish women could not be founding members of a Jewish synagogue. But as Christians, women like Lydia could be the founding members of a local church. The freedom of the Gospel empowers women and frees them from the restraints placed on them by their faith and culture. It calls to mind the statement of absolute equality in my favorite passage from Scripture (Gal 3:28):

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are one in Christ Jesus.