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*PAUL THE APOSTLE

2010-03-14T15:36:00.000-07:00

*PAUL THE APOSTLE
pôl [Pau'lov; Lat. Paulus, little]; SAUL sô1 [Sau'lov, SauVl; lwa`] only in Acts. A first-century Jew who from being a persecutor of the followers of Jesus was transformed into the leading missionary of early Christianity. He called himself an "apostle to the Gentiles" (Rom. 11:13) and was the founder of churches in Asia Minor and Greece, carrying on an extensive correspondence with these new churches as he moved about. Paul's extant letters form an important part of the NT, and Acts devotes more than half its contents to his career. He was a pioneer in formulating the doctrines and the ethical implications of the gospel. His influence has persisted across the Christian centuries, and he must be reckoned as second only to his master, Jesus Christ, as a creative personality in Christianity.
A. The life of Paul
1. Sources
a. Paul's letters
b. The Acts of the Apostles
2. The events in the life of Paul
a. Tarsus
b. Jerusalem
c. Damascus
d. Asia Minor and Greece
e. Jerusalem to Rome
3. Paul as a person
a. "Man of conflict"
b. Man of inward peace
c. Other traits
B. Paul's message
1. Introduction
2. The power and righteousness of God
a. God is the author of salvation
b. The righteousness of God
c. The power of God as love
3. Man from the human point of view
4. Christ the wisdom and power of God
a. Christ the gospel's center
b. Who is Paul's Christ?
c. The origin of Paul's Christology
5. The word of the Cross
6. To everyone who has faith
a. Faith and the law
b. Faith as the opposite of boasting
c. Faith as obedience, receptivity
7. Life through the Spirit
a. What does Paul mean by the Spirit?
b. Life in and through the Spirit
c. The Pauline mysticism
8. The church is the body of Christ
a. The meaning of the church
b. The church is divinely constituted
c. The church and the eschatological event
d. The body of Christ
9. Walking by the Spirit
a. The nature of Paul's ethics
b. The Pauline standards of conduct
c. The Pauline paradox
10. The Lord is at hand
a. The importance of eschatology for Paul
b. Was Paul apocalyptic?
c. Eschatology and ethics
11. The permanent significance of Paul
Bibliography
A. THE LIFE OF PAUL. 1. Sources. If we may disregard the Acts of Paul, and other relatively late apocryphal works, Paul is never mentioned in any ancient nonbiblical source. Even Josephus, who might have known and been interested in him, is silent. It is clear that Paul did not sufficiently impress contemporary literary or official circles to gain recognition.
The NT, however, contains a wealth of material on Paul, for we possess not only firsthand sources in Paul's own letters to the churches but also an important and lengthy account of his missionary career by the author of Acts. These two sources are independent of each other. It is generally held among scholars that the author of Acts did not know Paul's letters. The few verbal identities and similarities between Acts and the letters are more likely to be the result of chance agreement of two writers on the same theme than of any dependence of the one on the other, while the striking differences include both significant omissions and equally significant contradictions. This independence of our sources is both an advantage and a liability. Where they agree, they confirm each other and give us confidence in the reliability of the information or understandings they convey; but when they differ, they confront us with many problems, especially since Acts is prevailingly biographical, while Paul's letters are, of course, only incidentally so. These facts not only work out in major difficulties as regards chronology, but also raise important problems with reference to Paul's career.

a. Paul's letters. The very substantial corpus of extant Pauline letters, out of what may well have been scores now lost, affords a fascinating field of study from the purely literary point of view. It is now generally acknowledged that the Pauline writings in the NT are indeed genuine letters--not, of course, private, "off the record" communications, for they are addressed to the churches and presumably intended for public reading. Even Philemon, the one genuine Pauline letter addressed to an individual, is addressed also to the "church in your house." For our purposes a letter may be defined as a communication, on whatever subject, determined as to its contents by the personal relations existing between writer and reader(s). With some small exceptions, Paul's writings conform to this definition. Even the first eight chapters of Romans, the longest discussion of a single theme (Rom. 1:16-17), have a personal purpose growing out of Paul's plans and hopes with regard to the church at Rome (1:8-15; 15:14-33).
Paul conforms to the general epistolary style of his times, with significant changes due chiefly to the nature of the message he proclaims or to his work as a missionary (see LETTER). E.g., the epistolary greeting in the usual Greek letter consisted of the writer's name, the name of the person addressed, and a greeting (caiVrein). Paul follows this pattern but enlarges it so as to indicate the Christian status of both writer and readers, with such phrases as "an apostle," "the church of God which is at Corinth, ... sanctified ..., called to be saints." He also changes "greeting" (cai"rein) to "grace" (ca"riv) and adds the familiar Semitic "peace." He often names one or two persons with himself in the salutation I Cor. 1:1;II Cor. 1:1; Phil. 1:1; I andII Thess. 1:1), but it is unlikely that this means joint authorship; the letters are often too personal for that (see especially II Corinthians). It means rather a joint greeting. Frequently in a Greek letter a word of praise or thanks or a prayer for the health of the recipient follows the salutation. This too is so characteristic of Paul's letters that the absence of the thanksgiving from Galatians appears to be deliberate and in keeping with the tension under which he writes this letter. Apparently it was Paul's custom to dictate his letters to an amanuensis, who on one occasion identifies himself (Rom. 16:22; cf. references to Paul's writing with his own hand inI Cor. 16:21;II Thess. 3:17; Gal. 6:11; Col. 4:18).
Occasional corrections (e.g.,I Cor. 1:16), incomplete sentences (e.g., Rom. 5:12), and a general roughness and vigor of style witness to the extempore character of the compositions. But many passages are carefully and exactly phrased. E.g.I Cor. 13:1, the "hymn of love," while obviously pertinent to the unlovely divisions at Corinth, does seem to go beyond the immediate requirements of the context; and a great passage such as Phil. 2:5-11 has been thought to be from an early Christian hymn. Perhaps Paul, like an experienced preacher, makes use of passages, here and there, which have been independently composed. It is natural to suppose that extended exegesis of OT materials (cf. Rom. 15:7-12; Gal. 3:10-13; 4:21-31) often first appeared in sermons preached by Paul. And the collocations of exhortations of a general rather than specific nature, which tend to appear near the close of the letters (cf. Rom. 12:9-13;II Cor. 13:11-12; Phil. 4:8-9; and the "household lists" of Col. 3:5-4:6), bear more than a superficial resemblance to what we find in James, I Peter, and Hebrews, and witness to the beginning of a Christian "didache."
What impresses one most of all in the letters is the dominance of Paul's central message about Christ and the salvation that is in and through him. Paul does, indeed, seek to "take every thought captive to obey Christ" II Cor. 10:5). Every subject he touches--vegetarianism, women's headdress, lawsuits, personal illness, gross immorality, the status of a Christian slave, party strife--is brought into some connection with the "law" of Christ. Quite earnestly and consistently, Paul seeks to bring everything under the one principle of being "in Christ." It is this above everything else--not Paul's literary gifts, which were considerable; not his eloquence, which could leap like a flame at times--which makes his letters of permanent significance.
No autograph of any of Paul's letters is known, and none is apt to turn up. We have only copies of copies many times removed from the originals, and these copies have been edited and collected before forming the considerable part of the NT canon that we know. It is not surprising that the question of authenticity has been raised and discussed for more than a hundred years. Something like a consensus on the major questions has been achieved. Thirteen writings bear the name of Paul (the Letter to the Hebrews does not have Paul's name in the text). Of these the most important for Paul's thought, Romans, I and II Corinthians, and Galatians, are fortunately widely held to be substantially as they came from him. So are Philippians, Philemon, and I Thessalonians. Many scholars would also include Colossians and II Thessalonians, although these are often seriously questioned. Ephesians, while quite Pauline in content, is often held to be by a Paulinist; and the Pastorals, I and II Timothy and Titus, are usually thought to be post-Pauline but to contain perhaps genuine fragments of his letters.
b. The Acts of the Apostles. In Acts we possess another source of major importance for the life and thought of Paul. Since the letters contain a minimum and Acts a maximum of biographical data, we would seem to be in the happy situation of combining Paul's letters and the Acts for a knowledge of his life and his message. This is exactly what has happened across the centuries. The very simplicity and consistency of the record in Acts is impressive as the framework for the letters, which have been fitted in even when some admitted difficulties arose. If we had four Acts of the Apostles, as we have four gospels, the picture might be much less simple and consistent but nearer the truth. While errors may occur in firsthand sources, these are obviously to be preferred to secondary accounts, which must always justify themselves as over against the primary records in every case of difference. It is a mistake in method to assume that a secondary source provides a framework of events into which the primary sources must be made to fit. This is the mistake frequently made with regard to Acts, probably because it is the only source we possess for much of the biographical data we desire. The extraordinary value of Acts must not be allowed to obscure the fact that it is a later and secondary source to be critically examined in comparison with Paul's letters.
The purpose of Acts is to record the expansion of Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome under the inspiration and control of the Holy Spirit (see 1:8, which is indeed a condensed "table of contents" of the book). While Acts is not, therefore, intended as a biography of Paul, his place in it is of unparalleled importance. He is mentioned in 7:58; 8:1; the first account of his conversion comes in 9:1-30 (cf. 22:1-29; 26:1-23); the initial mission as a colleague of Barnabas is described in 11:25-30; 12:25. But beginning with 13:1, the following sixteen chapters are devoted entirely to Paul.* This considerable amount of unique material so important for the career of Paul needs to be critically assessed (see ACTS OF THE APOSTLES), but only some of the results of this study can be referred to here. It is widely recognized that Acts and Luke form a two-volume work by one author. Now we can know, from observing the way the Gospel of Luke is related to Mark and Matthew, how our author used his sources and what emphases are characteristic of him. Among these (some of them become clearer and more explicit in Acts) are the dominant role of Jerusalem and the Jerusalem church; the prominence of the Holy Spirit in the motivation, guidance, and discipline of the early church; the mission to the Gentiles acknowledged by all the leaders (even Peter was sent to the Gentiles [15:7]), with amazement but without dissension (cf. 11:18); and the innocence of Christians of any charge of rebellion against Rome, coupled with the constant malice and persecution of the Jews. This last is especially noteworthy, for Pilate three times asserts the innocence of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, while the magistrates at Philippi, Gallio in Corinth, the Roman captain, Felix, and Festus in Jerusalem regularly attest to Paul's innocence according to Acts. See map "The Travels of Paul in the Book of Acts" under ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
The straightforward narrative of Acts predisposes the reader in its favor. Is it not unwarranted to question so clear and satisfactory an account? Two answers must be given to this question: First, the author is not an eyewitness--at any rate, for most of the events he records (see ACTS OF THE APOSTLES for a discussion of the "we" passages)--and he is accordingly dependent on the reliability of his sources. Second, while it can be shown that he introduces his sources without radical re-editing, it can also be shown, in the case of the gospel, that he is quite free to select and arrange material from his sources in such a way as to bring out his own views. Much, perhaps most, of the surplus information of Acts, as compared with the letters, is to be welcomed as adding to our knowledge. When, however, Acts stands in clear contradiction to the letters (see § A2 below), the student must not be obsessed with the necessity of harmonizing the two; the letters must be accorded primary authority unless they can be shown to be themselves contradictory or otherwise of doubtful validity.
2. The events in the life of Paul. Only occasionally do Paul's letters furnish data for his biography, and while these glimpses are of great value, they do not add up to anything like a life story. We are so accustomed to draw upon Acts and the letters without discrimination that the results of isolating the biographical materials according to sources is somewhat startling; we are dependent on Acts alone for most of our knowledge of Paul's career. That he was born in Tarsus, and was a citizen of Tarsus by birth; that he was named Saul; that he was educated in Jerusalem "at the feet of Gamaliel" (Acts 22:3); that he was present at the stoning of Stephen and was a persecutor of the Jerusalem church; that he made a persecuting trip to Damascus and was converted as he approached this city; that he subsequently engaged in three distinct missionary journeys; that he was arrested in Jerusalem, appealed to Caesar as the right of a Roman citizen, and was sent to Rome for trial--all this we know only from Acts. Paul himself never mentions any one of these items. Of course, Paul's known letters may have been written before the final sea voyage to Rome, but the other data lie certainly within their scope. Probably the best arrangement of the materials on the life of Paul is geographical.
a. Tarsus. According to Acts, Paul says he was "born at Tarsus in Cilicia" (22:3; cf. 21:39), and three times in Acts he is associated with this city (9:11, 30; 11:25). While the letters do not mention Paul's birthplace, there appears to be no reason why they should, just as there appears no reason why the author of Acts should have invented it. Tarsus had a considerable reputation for culture, and, as a Hellenistic city in Cilicia--one of the early fields of Paul's missionary activity (Gal. l:21)--it would provide the environment for his use of the common Greek speech and perhaps also for some acquaintance with the kind of thinking exposed in the streets and market place by Stoic, Cynic, and other propagandists.
That he received at birth the Jewish name Saul may also be assumed without much question. While he never uses any other name than Paul in the letters, addressed as they were to churches with many Gentiles, he does claim to belong to the "tribe of Benjamin" (Rom. 11:1; Phil. 3:5), and Saul would be an appropriate name. It has been pointed out that the author of Acts shifts from Saul to Paul (13:9) as Paul moves into more Hellenistic territory, and that Semitisms yield in general to a superior type of Greek in the second half of Acts.
The letters also confirm in general that Paul was a Hellenistic Jew, but it is unwarranted to conclude from his birthplace that he would be acquainted in more than a superficial way with Greek philosophy and culture. He insists on the correctness of his Jewish upbringing and on his zeal for Judaism (cf. Rom. 11:1; Gal. 1:14; Phil. 3:5), and we know how ingrown and intense small minorities in a large and alien city can become.
It is generally assumed that Paul came from a family of some wealth and position. That he had a trade of "tentmaker" or "leatherworker" (Acts 18:3) would not be inconsistent with this assumption, since there is reason to believe Paul was a student of the law, and every such student had a trade to live by. The letters do not add to our knowledge here, unless the phrase "We labor, working with our own hands" I Cor. 4:12), shows a self-consciousness about physical work unnatural in a hand worker. That he was a citizen of Tarsus (Acts 21:39) and of Rome by birth (Acts 22:25-28) has been much discussed, for we do not know precisely what citizenship meant in the first century, and Acts does not tell us how Paul's citizenship had been earned by his forebears. Paul himself does not mention this fact of his citizenship.
b. Jerusalem. Acts tells us of Paul's education at the feet of Gamaliel in Jerusalem (5:34; 22:3), of Paul's presence at the stoning of Stephen (7:58; 8:1; 22:20), of his persecution of the Jerusalem church (9:1), and of his journey from Jerusalem with letters to the synagogues in Damascus "so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem" (9:2). Each of these items is known to us from Acts alone, and each raises a difficulty when the letters are considered. It is strange that Paul does not mention Gamaliel, the famous rabbi, when he is asserting his own thorough grounding in Judaism. Furthermore, Paul's rigoristic interpretation of Judaism--especially his statement that failure to keep the whole law brings the legalist under a curse (Gal. 3:10)--disregards the Jewish emphasis on repentance and forgiveness, and is hard to understand if he had indeed sat at the feet of Gamaliel, a teacher of the liberal school of Hillel. Again, we face a difficulty in the account of Paul's persecution of the Jerusalem church. That he had been a persecutor of Christians is unquestioned I Cor. 15:9; Gal. 1:13). But he is so emphatic in asserting that after his conversion he was "still not known by sight to the churches of Christ in Judea" (Gal. 1:20, 22) that it is difficult, indeed, to suppose that he had been active in persecuting these very churches. The view that Paul was an inconspicuous participant in the Jerusalem persecution is hardly convincing.
c. Damascus. If we had only Paul's own words in Galatians, we would assume that his place of residence at the time of his conversion was Damascus, since he never mentions Tarsus and speaks of not going "up to Jerusalem" and of returning "to Damascus" (1:17). It is the account in Acts of his education in and his persecuting activity in and out from Jerusalem, together with the conversion experience on the Damascus Road (9:3; 22:6; 26:12), that predisposes us to Jerusalem as his residence. It has been argued that Luke's special interest in Jerusalem and the church there must be set over against Paul's passionate insistence that he was quite independent of that church. Do both overstate the case? It is hardly possible to reconcile the two positions as they are stated. At any rate, both Acts and the letters associate Damascus with Paul's transforming experience.
"Conversion" is a convenient word for Paul's transformation, although Paul himself calls it a revelation (Gal. 1:16), a new creation II Cor. 5:17), an appearance I Cor. 15:8). It did mean a radical about-face in his attitude toward the followers of Jesus, on the one hand, and in his estimate of the role of the Jewish law, on the other. There are several implications usually associated with the word "conversion" which are not appropriate in describing Paul's experience. He was not changed from a morally bad to a morally good man nor from an irreligious to a religious man. He had, he insists, always striven to obey the law and in the eyes of men could claim to be "blameless" (Phil. 3:6). If the seventh chapter of Romans is reckoned to be autobiographical, it does not refute this claim, for it was powerlessness to obey the law perfectly, rather than licentiousness or any type of gross immorality, that drove Paul to the verge of despair (Rom. 7:8, 16 ff).
Nor was it a conversion in the sense of a change from one religion to another. Paul never consciously forsook Judaism for "Christianity." The gospel he insisted upon was the proclamation of the age-old plan and purpose of God, which his fellow religionists had so tragically rejected. Paul did assert that the function of the law had been misunderstood, and he endeavored to prove the true relationship of faith and the law from the very history of his own people. To the end he yearned for their redemption and believed that in the providence of God, Israel's temporary rejection of the gospel opened the door to the Gentiles, and that ultimately "all Israel will be saved" (Rom. 11:26). It was dissatisfaction with himself, and so with man as man in isolation from God, which was the background for the central experience that transformed Paul. Various attempts have been made to rationalize the conversion experience in psychological terms. Paul was moved, it is held, by the behavior of Christians under persecution, especially by the behavior of Stephen (whom he never mentions). Their spirit, unbroken and unembittered by persecution, witnessed to an inner peace which he himself longed for. He tried to resolve his own inner conflict by externalizing it and persecuting the Christians, who represented one side of his own inner conflict. This only intensified the struggle, which was resolved by the "vision" on the Damascus Road, for only an external stimulus adequate for reorganizing Paul's inner self could avail. He believed it was an outside life and light and energy that flooded his embattled mind and heart to bring him into a new creative state of being, and he named this power "Christ," "the Spirit (of Christ)"; and his new state he called being "in Christ."
This and other ways of explaining the event are, of course, legitimate, but we must remember that they are almost purely conjectural, since our sources do not so understand it. Paul presents his experience as the act of God, penetrating, indeed, to the innermost core of his being, but inexplicable, humanly. speaking, and to be ascribed to the unmerited favor, the grace, of God. Here the three accounts in Acts (9:1-18; 22:1-16; 26:1-18) and the scattered references in the letters are in agreement. They also agree that Paul was not instructed in the truths of Christianity; how he came to know these truths is not told in our sources. A further agreement is in the immediate connection of the "conversion" and the sense of Gentile mission (cf. Acts 9:15; 26:17; Gal. 1:16). In other respects the accounts differ. The three accounts in Acts constitute a pattern and sound like a traditional phrasing of the decisive event. All three reflect a sense of an organized Christian group to which Paul was now joined; all three omit the interior emphasis so unmistakable in the letters; and all three stress the voice, the light, but not the actual vision of Christ, which is central in Paul's own words (cf.I Cor. 9:1; 15:8). Paul refers to his own transforming experience on several occasions I Cor. 15:8; Gal. 1:15-1.6; and perhapsII Cor. 4:6), but there is no pattern; indeed, the idea that his own "conversion" could be duplicated by any other man is probably excluded. Paul was not only the latest, but also the last, witness of the risen Christ--there are to be no more. The clear chronological sequence inI Cor. 15:3-8, together with Paul's view that the mark of belonging to Christ is to "have the Spirit of Christ" (Rom. 8:9), would seem to suggest this; and we are probably safe in assuming that he regarded his own unique experience as the authentication of his apostolic standing and mission (Gal. 1:15-16), rather than as a pattern for others. There is no clear statement, either in Acts or in the letters, regarding Paul's knowledge of Jesus' life and teaching and of the teaching of the earliest church and how he came by such knowledge. We must assume that he did know why he persecuted the church and that he did have contacts with the leaders--"those, I say, who were of repute." When he writes of the latter that they "added nothing to me" (Gal. 2:6), he is insisting on the independent validity of his apostolic commission, and the polemical context of the words would not encourage him to admit that he had learned much from these leaders and from other Christians outside the area of controversy.
d. Asia Minor and Greece. Neither the letters nor Acts furnish much data for the early days of Paul's Christian career. The important biographical passage in Gal. 1:11-2:21 is keyed, not to biography as such, but to Paul's vigorous defense of his apostolic commission and its consequences. Acts seems not to know about most of the items in the Galatians passage, and it is difficult to harmonize Acts and Galatians, as we shall see. From ch. 13 on, however, the author of Acts has very detailed sources at his command, including the famous "we" passages generally thought to be extracts from a diary kept by the author or some other companion of Paul (16:10-17; 20:5-15; 21:1-18; 27:1-28:16). The exact limits of these "we" passages are uncertain, since the diary may be quoted beyond the point where the last plural pronoun appears.
Let us sketch rapidly the run of the material in Acts and then face the questions raised by a comparison of Acts with the letters. The "first" missionary journey--Acts does not enumerate but does quite definitely separate the three--is formally initiated at Antioch when Barnabas and Saul are "set apart ... for the work to which I have called them" (13:2), John (Mark) accompanying them as far as Perga (13:13). They sail to Cyprus, Barnabas' native island, where Salamis at the E and Paphos at the W end are mentioned. Sailing again to the mainland of Asia Minor, they journey in the provinces of Pamphylia, Pisidia, and Lycaonia, the towns of Perga, Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe being noted along their way and in reverse order as they retrace their steps. They sail this time from Attalia directly to Antioch in Syria (of course, Seleucia was actually the seaport). Chs. 13-14 tell this story with vivid detail. The contrast between Paul's sermons to Jews at Antioch (13:16-41) and those to Gentiles at Lystra ( 14:15-17) is noteworthy. Assuming that these sermons were freely composed by the author of Acts, we must admire his skill and the appropriateness of the words he ascribes to Paul. The famous Jerusalem "conference" (15:1-29) account follows, rounding out the scheme of Acts, according to which each journey terminates in Jerusalem (cf. 18:22; 21:15). Both the content and the chronology of this "conference" must be considered later.
The "second" missionary journey (15:36-18:22) begins with changed personnel--Silas (Silvanus) and later Timothy (16:3), instead of Barnabas (15:36-40), are the companions of Paul. After "strengthening the churches" in Syria and Cilicia (15:41), whose founding is only hinted at (Acts 15:23; cf. Gal. 1:21), he revisits Derbe and Lystra. The journey through the enigmatic "region of Phrygia and Galatia" follows, and the divinely guided decision to go to Macedonia--Europe to us but not, of course, to Paul--with the significant planting of new churches at Philippi, Thessalonica, Beroea; the incident at Athens; and the longer and more fruitful stay at Corinth. Ephesus, destined to be a center for future evangelization, was briefly visited, and Paul sailed for Caesarea, "went up and greeted the church" (18:22), and then "went down to Antioch." The graphic style and the highlighting of dramatic incidents, such" as the stories of the slave girl and of the jail delivery at Philippi (16:16-40) and Paul's address at Athens (17:22-34), give us the authentic flavor of Paul's mission, although we have only a very general outline of it. The address at Athens,* like that at Lystra ( 14:15-17), seems very appropriate, whatever is to be made of the inscription "To an unknown god," which has been so much debated. 18:22 marks the close of the "second" journey, but it is strangely worded. Is "the church" at Caesarea or at Jerusalem? Most scholars would answer "Jerusalem," "went up" and "went down" being almost technical phrases in Acts for visits to the religious capital. Does this brief, almost casual sentence really mark the end of an important and separate stage in Paul's mission, or does the author lack information at this point and simply introduce it to conform to the pattern of Paul's missionary journeys as he understands them, each ending at Jerusalem? Fig. ARE 58.
The "third" missionary journey (18:23-21:16) again starts from Antioch and ends in Jerusalem. After another vague reference to the "region of Galatia and Phrygia," where the disciples were strengthened (18:23), and the introduction of Apollos and others who needed and received Christian instruction (18:24-19:7), the rest of the nineteenth chapter is devoted to events at Ephesus, where Paul stayed for two years and three months (cf. 19:8, 10). It is assumed that churches at Colossae, Laodicea, and Hierapolis were founded by Paul's disciples during this period, but Acts only summarizes by reporting "that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks" (19:10), by noting that Paul's authentic miracles aroused the envy of Jewish exorcists (19:11 ff), and by giving a full account of the riot at Ephesus (19:23-41). A visit to Macedonia and Achaia is given in very condensed form (20:1-6), and then the coastwise trip from Troas to Caesarea, amplified only by the moving words of Paul to the elders from Ephesus who came down to Miletus at Paul's request to hear what was to be his valedictory (20:1-21:16).
Before going on to the account of the final events as recorded in Acts (21:17-28:31), we must consider briefly some of the many questions raised by a comparison of Acts with the Pauline letters. First, we may note that the agreements are quite as numerous and substantial as sources separated by almost a generation in time of writing could be expected to yield, especially if they are independent. It was in the area of Asia Minor and Greece that Paul did his major work, as Acts and the letters agree. The churches addressed in the letters are all mentioned in Acts, with the exception of Rome, which Paul did not found, and possibly the Galatian churches if the "North Galatia" theory is held (see GALATIA; GALATIANS, LETTER TO THE). A convincing, if incidental, item is the fact that about three fourths of the fifty or so persons associated with Paul in Acts appear in the letters. Of course, Acts is far from a complete record of Paul's career, in spite of its considerable detail. His residence at Corinth (18:11 [a year and a half]) and at Ephesus (19:8, 10 [two years and three months] or 20:31 [three years]) is summarized only, with striking incidents recorded. Neither Illyricum (Rom. 15:19) nor Arabia (Gal. 1:17) is mentioned, nor is Titus, although he is important in Galatians (2:1 ff) and in II Corinthians (2:13; 7:6, 13-14; 8:6, 16, 23; 12:18). The list of hardships in II Corinthians (11:24 ff) is scantily documented in Acts--of the many items only one beating with rods (16:22-23), one stoning (14:19), and no beatings "at the hands of the Jews" are recorded. Acts does have the escape from Damascus (9:23-25), which Paul appends to his list II Cor. 11:32-33); the variations between the two accounts observable in the Greek suggest that they are independent of each other.
These differences and others are not serious; they are what we would expect. But the case is other with some basically contradictory material which we must now consider. Paul's letters record three visits to Jerusalem, each quite pointedly characterized as to purpose and result (Rom. 15:25-32;I Cor. 16:4; Gal. 1:18-21; 2:1-10). Acts, on the other hand, records five visits (9:26-27; 11:29-30 [12:25]; 15:1-29; 18:22; 21:15). Not only is the number of visits in question, but it is by no means easy to identify the three letter visits with any three of the Acts visits, so variously are they described as to purpose and outcome. Many scholars hold that the third visit of Acts (15:1-29) is identical with the second in Galatians (2:1-10), arguing that this visit is recorded from two different viewpoints: a private, informal conference vindicating Paul and Barnabas and laying no restriction on them, "only they would have us remember the poor, which very thing I was eager to do" (Gal. 2:10); and a formal, official council resulting in a compromise formula communicated to the churches (Acts). While not all the difficulties are resolved by this view, it should be noted that the account in Galatians is strictly consonant with Paul's thinking and that the Acts account, with its emphasis on the authority of Jerusalem, is in harmony with the viewpoint of that writer. The suggestion that Acts 11:29-30; 12:25 is to be regarded as the parallel to Gal. 2:l-10--i.e., that the Galatians visit is not the "council visit" of Acts 15:1--has the advantage of eliminating a visit by Paul to Jerusalem between the two noted in Gal. 1:18; 2:1, but it is something of a tour de force, since the famine visit in Acts 11:29-30; 12:25 simply has no point of contact with the issues raised in Gal. 2:1-10 and is relieved accordingly of any overt contradictions. This solution often discounts Acts 15:1 as tendentious--James proposes the compromise, and Peter talks like Paul--and suggests that the "decrees" (vss. 28-29) are really later in date than this visit.
The most radical proposal for dealing with the confusion about the visits is to identify the three letter visits with the only three visits in Acts described as having the same purposes--i.e., Gal. 1:18-21 with Acts 9:26-27, both presenting the new convert Paul to the Jerusalem apostles; Gal. 2:1-10 with Acts 15:1-29, both dealing, with whatever differences, with the basic Jewish-Gentile issue; andI Cor. 16:1-4 and Rom. 15:25-32 with Acts 11:29-30; 12:25, both having as a purpose the bearing of an offering to the Jerusalem church. It has also been suggested that Acts has confused the chronology of these three visits. The famine visit in Acts could not have happened at the time there indicated (cf. Gal. 1:18-2:10), and it is cogently argued that the council visit (Acts 15:1-29) should be after, not before, the "second" missionary journey (could 18:22 be the right place for it?) and only a few years before the final visit. This would have the great advantage of eliminating the fourteen to seventeen "silent" years so difficult to fit into the Pauline chronology, since the whole of the "second" journey would be located in this period. It would also explain why the "decrees" do not figure in Paul's letters, as they would come, not in the middle, but toward the end of his active career. Perhaps the nature of our sources is such that no completely satisfactory solution of the visits to Jerusalem, around which the chronology of Paul's active life revolves, is possible. We ought, indeed, to be thankful that the sources are not even more confusing.
Two other issues as between the letters and Acts must be noted: the Jews as persecutors of the Christians, and the collection of funds for the saints of Jerusalem as the ruling motive for the final visit. In Acts the Jews are repeatedly said to be persecutors (9:23-24; 13:45, 50; 14:2, 19; 17:5 ff, 13; 18:6, 12 ff; 20:3; 21:27; 23:12 ff; 24:1-9; 25:7), and when Paul and his companions once gain the ear of the Roman officials, they can count on protection and justice. Paul's letters represent the Jews as rejecting the gospel, to be sure, but they are not conspicuously persecutors.I Thess. 2:15 is almost alone in branding the Jews as active persecutors; elsewhere Paul's sorrow and dismay arise from their failure to respond to the good news, rather than from persistent persecution. Acts may possibly reflect here the hostility which emerged toward the end of the first century when Christianity began to be defined as a separate religion. The Dead Sea Scrolls are adding to our understanding of late Judaism as a much more flexible, less rigid religion than we had supposed. According to Paul's letters, the "contribution for the saints" (Rom. 15:25-29;I Cor. 16:1-4) was quite definitely the major purpose of his final visit to Jerusalem. Acts, too, regards this last visit as important and dangerous, but nowhere reveals any knowledge of "aid for the saints" (Rom. 15:25) which Paul has been collecting for some time past. In Acts the motive for the visit seems to be the fulfilling of a vow (18:18; 21:23-26), and the one reference to an "offering" comes late and is far from clear. The words: "I came to bring my nation alms and offerings" (24:17), would suggest a temple offering rather than gifts from Gentile to Jewish churches. Perhaps the obscurity in Acts is the consequence of the author's thesis that tension between Gentile and Jewish Christians had been early faced and settled harmoniously and that the "offering" could hardly be regarded as the strategic and symbolic act intended to resolve a continuing conflict between the two racial groups.
e. Jerusalem to Rome. Acts is our only source for the events in Jerusalem leading up to Paul's appeal to Caesar and the dramatic record of his journey to Rome (21:17-28:31). Even if Rome is to be regarded as the provenance of the so-called "prison letters"--Philippians, Philemon, Colossians, Ephesians--in contradiction of the currently popular view that Ephesus is their place of origin, they throw almost no light on the Pauline biography.
From Acts we learn of Paul's rescue by the Roman soldiery from the hands of a temple mob, aroused by the rumor that he had brought Gentiles into the inner court, and of the permission granted him to address his accusers--an address which permits the author to insert the second account of Paul's conversion (Acts 21:18-22:21) but which it is difficult to imagine that a Roman officer would allow. Paul's assertion of Roman citizenship saves him from scourging (22:22-29), but he is brought before the Sanhedrin in order that the authorities may be enlightened on the real issues involved (22:30). The turn of the controversy to the question of resurrection must have left them uninformed (23:1-10).
Paul's removal to Caesarea, when the plot to assassinate him was discovered, and his relations with the governor Felix and his Jewish wife, Drusilla, including the charges brought against Paul by the Jews, and his defense, are recorded in Acts 23:12-24:27. The "two years" of 24:27 are usually reckoned as the time of Paul's imprisonment, although the alternative view--i.e., the term of Felix' governorship--remains a possibility.
Chs. 25-26 give the next act in the drama, with Festus, successor to Felix, and Agrippa and Bernice as the actors, and the Jews as the accusers. Given the choice of going up to Jerusalem to stand trial before Festus, Paul appeals to Caesar. He makes his final defense before Agrippa; it consists, in the main, of the third account of his conversion, the three (cf. 9:1 ff; 22:3 ff) serving as a kind of chorus to remind the reader of the motif binding the varied events into an ordered whole.
The voyage and shipwreck have been called among the best sea tales from antiquity (Acts 27:1-28). Paul is at last at Rome (28:14), but what the closing verses of the book: "He lived there two whole years at his own expense, and welcomed all who came to him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ quite openly and unhindered" (28:30-31), intend to convey to the reader and why they form the conclusion of Acts--these are as yet unanswered questions. Was Paul released? Was he martyred? And why, in either case, did the author not inform his readers? No answer commanding general assent has yet been given.
For the dating of each letter and its setting in the career of Paul, see THESSALONIANS, FIRST LETTER TO THE, and the other Pauline letters. For the chronology, see CHRONOLOGY OF THE NT; the articles on the several letters; ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
3. Paul as a person. Paul was a Jew by race, and he had been a Jew in religion; indeed, he never ceased to think of himself as belonging to God's people (Rom. 11:1 ff) and to yearn for the ultimate inclusion of the Jews in God's gracious purpose (Rom. 9:1-11). His message was proclaimed in terms familiar to Jews--the law, faith, the promises, the righteousness of God, the Judgment, the Spirit--however unacceptable his presentation of these themes might be to his fellow religionists. Paul was, of course, a Hellenistic Jew, a Jew of the Diaspora, who wrote in Greek, used the Greek translation of the OT, and at points betrays Hellenistic influences. He must be appraised, accordingly, in the light of the mingled Greek and oriental syncretism which was the atmosphere of the first-century Mediterranean world.
Paul was a Christian although he never uses this word. Jew and Greek alike were in his eyes only custodians "until Christ came" (Gal. 3:24), and he felt himself to be "under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, ... to preach the gospel" (Rom. 1:14-15). He quotes no Hellenistic source in his writings, only the OT; and the impact of the larger world around him must be discerned in his ideas, style of writing, and unconscious absorption of the contemporary culture, rather than in direct borrowing. The centrality of Christ is evident on every page of his letters.
When the student has exhausted all the resources at his disposal in appraising Paul as Jew, Hellenist, Christian, Paul himself is still unexplained. Something has been left out--indeed, the most important something. Paul was a unique person. Just as aunts see now the father and now the mother in the child, so we can see now the Jew and now the Hellenist in Paul. But the child is not his mother or his father; he is himself. Paul was emphatically himself. His letters to the churches of Galatia, to Thessalonica, to Corinth or Philippi, are not just the serious communications of a Christian theologian; it is Paul writing, and the unmistakable flavor of his personality pervades them. Perhaps it would have been easier to estimate him if his writings had been less personal, for we get hints, flashes, intimations, of a rich, many-sided, complex character who remains something of an enigma in spite of the unusually revelatory nature of our sources. But just as Paul's thought is clear in its main outlines, however difficult in particular aspects, so his personality is reasonably clear, however complex and baffling certain traits may seem to be.
a. "Man of conflict." Conflict, struggle in the inward man and in outward situations, characterized not only the pre-Christian but also the Christian Paul. He was born into a conflict of cultures. His heritage was strict Judaism (Phil. 3:5 ff), and the Jews were a minority group whose loyalty to the one God made them resist the eclectic, syncretistic temper of the first century. Hardly an ancient writer has a kind word to say about the Jews. We do not know precisely how a Jewish family outside Palestine would react or adjust to Gentile customs, but Paul's lengthy and labored discussion of the dietary laws and the Christian's relation to them iI Cor. 8:1-10 suggests that he himself had battled long and hard with this problem. Whether Rom. 7:1 is to be reckoned as autobiographical or as typical, the chapter shows a profound insight into the struggle between the law as an external code and the inward desires and frustrations of an earnest and serious soul.
Paul viewed nature as sharing the struggle between good and evil. The creation, he writes, knows the pain and also the hope of a woman in childbirth (Rom. 8:22 ff). This cosmic struggle will go on until Christ "delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power" I Cor. 15:24). He sees nature as within the framework of the apocalyptic warfare.
Conflict continued to be the very breath of Paul's life as a missionary. If his inner conflict had been resolved "in Christ," Paul was still "in the flesh." His personal situation--indeed, that of all Christians--has often been compared to a war in which the decisive battle has been fought and won but the war lasts on, and exhortation and effort are required even though the victorious outcome is now assured and triumph can be anticipated. Paul was a protagonist defending the gospel against Jews and Jewish Christians, on the one hand, and against libertines and sectarians among the Gentile converts, on the other. Hardly a letter omits entirely this note of struggle, not even so joyous a communication as Philippians.
Paul's argumentative style of thinking and writing also reveals the same characteristic note of conflict. He has the habit of putting things in terms of their opposites: flesh versus spirit, faith versus works, grace versus merit. The question-and-answer method of the rabbis, the Stoic diatribe, the epistolary "I" and "you," or just the native temper of a born debater--all these have been credited with Paul's style. The virtue of this dialectical method is its clarity. We can hardly mistake where Paul stood on the main issues he discusses. The weakness of the method is the tendency to exaggeration, so that very little ground remains for opposing parties to stand together on.
b. Man of inward peace. Paul was indeed a "man of conflict," but he was also a man of inward peace, whose wholeness of outlook and statesmanlike leadership are conspicuous among the early followers of Jesus. He knew an inner center of peace and joy "in Christ." Outward turmoil, external circumstance, whether of plenty or of hunger, abundance or want, did not disturb him. "I can do all things in him who strengthens me" (Phil. 4:12-13). He believed that "in everything God works for good with those who love him" (Rom. 8:28). Whatever scars, whatever memories of his tumultuous life, still plagued him, Paul knew a radiant oneness and wholeness of life so that nothing "in all creation" is "able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8:39). His dark view of the creature and of the creation is not his final word, for he held that the walls that separate man from man--slave, freeman; Jew, Gentile; male, female--have actually been leveled, and that the entire creation has been unified, healed, redeemed, and reconciled by the revelation of God in Christ. His gospel has behind it and within it a cosmic sweep and sanction. There is for him no such unit as an isolated individual; the tiny person "in Christ" is caught up into a cosmic purpose, and conversely the power and love of God are available for every particular human situation. It is this central conviction that speaks to us through Paul, flowing over all the ancient vocabulary and thought-forms that separate us from him. Paul moves from the particular to the universal, from the temporal to the eternal and vice versa, without effort or strain. "If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit" (Gal. 5:25), is the constant correlation he makes; and to particularize this, he adds: "Let us have no self-conceit, no provoking of one another, no envy of one another" (vs. 26). "Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?" I Cor. 6:2), he asks the quarreling Corinthians, and then: "If the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial eases?" They expect to sit on the Supreme Court of the universe but cannot qualify as justices of the peace (perhaps Paul did have a sense of humor).
c. Other traits. We possess no reliable evidence about Paul's physical appearance except his own quotation from opponents: "They say, 'His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account'" II Cor. 10:10). The earliest external witness comes from a late second-century collection of legends (see PAUL, ACTS OF) to the effect that he was small in stature, baldheaded, bowlegged, of vigorous physique, with meeting eyebrows and a slightly hooked nose, and full of grace. Paul himself writes of a recurrent physical ailment, deliverance from which was not granted him although he prayed three times for it. He came to see that this weakness of the flesh had its lesson for him II Cor. 12:7-8). All conjectures as to the nature of this affliction--epilepsy, malaria, an eye malady (Gal. 6:1 l)--must remain conjectures, since we simply do not have enough evidence for a diagnosis. The amazing list of physical hardships endured II Cor. 11:24-29) witnesses rather to a rugged than to a frail physical constitution. That Paul was by nature a sensitive, proud, quick-tempered man can be abundantly documented from his letters, for he is conscious of his tendency to boast II Cor. 10:8, 13, 15; 11:1, 16, 21, 30; 12:1), and he glories in the victory faith in Christ assures (Phil. 3:4-14) and in the sublimation made possible by another object of glorying (Gal. 6:11-15). He is capable of sarcasm and irony, although he himself regrets that his opponents have maneuvered him into playing the fool II Cor. 11:16-21).
Paul had a genius for friendship. The extraordinary list of twenty-seven names in Rom. 16:1 (whether this chapter was originally addressed to Rome or elsewhere is immaterial at this point), with just the little touches here and there that save the names from being a mere catalogue, is eloquent of his concern for people. He could be magnanimous--this protagonist--even with persons whose motives were questionable (Phil. 1:12-18). He was tenderhearted--this fighter for his own understanding of the gospel--like a "nurse taking care of her children ..., ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us" I Thess. 2:7-8). The catalogue of his sufferings reaches its climax, not in some physical agony, but in the words: "Apart from other things, there is the daily pressure upon me of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant?" II Cor. 11:28-29).
Although Paul traveled through spectacular country, his letters are wanting in figures from nature in either its humbler or its more majestic aspects. The few nature illustrations he does use (e.g.,I Cor. 9:8-10) are not very happy. But when he turns to city life, the arena, the court, the military, he is often effective in analogy, imagery, and figure of speech I Cor. 3:10-15; 4:9; 9:24-27; etc.).
Had Paul a sense of humor? The writings we possess are so deadly serious in intent that the lighter touch may well have been rigorously excluded, but with all his truly extraordinary gifts as a phrasemaker, the humorous, witty flavor so characteristic of the remembered teaching of Jesus seems not to be native to Paul.
Subject as he was or had been to ecstatic experiences II Cor. 12:1-4), it is inevitable that Paul's psychic health should be questioned. He had, no doubt, passed through a period of psychical instability, but the amazingly balanced estimate of spiritual gifts in group worship and in relation to ethics contained iI Cor. 12:1-14 is powerful evidence of the kind of integration Paul had achieved. The impact of his life and work on his own times and ours is also eloquent testimony to his essential sanity.
The most serious charge that can be brought against Paul is that of personal inconsistency. Proclaiming an ethos of love, did he himself deal with his opponents lovingly? Especially in Galatians and iII Cor. 10:1-13, Paul uses sarcasm, irony, and bitter denunciation, including curses, against those who have attacked him and his gospel. Without attempting to defend him, for he himself is conscious that his words do not represent a very high plane of thinking II Cor. 11:1), we may point out the considerations necessary for a proper perspective. His language betrays an oriental exuberance foreign to the usual standards of Western speech and writing. These are letters, after all, and they show a spontaneity which more careful editing would perhaps have modified. His opponents, moreover, are not attacking him and his message from outside the Christian movement but from within it. He can endure persecution from "the world" II Cor. 11:23-33) without any hint of bitterness--indeed, as almost normal Christian experience, the sharing of "his sufferings" (Phil. 3:10)--but when the gospel is attacked directly or indirectly through his own apostleship, he indignantly strikes back. He knows the teaching of Jesus about loving the enemy (Rom. 12:14;I Cor. 4:12-13) and has lived it out in some of his own personal relationships. Cast out by his fellow Jews, he maintains a moving loyalty to them and is convinced that their rejection of the gospel is only temporary and that, in the providence of God, it has opened the door to Gentiles (Rom. 9:1-11). But when from within the Christian fellowship leaders play upon the fickleness, the credulity, and the lower nature of his converts to subvert what Paul believes to be the gospel of the love and grace of God in Christ, he meets this challenge with all the force of his aroused emotions and his agile mind. We may argue that Paul was deficient in an understanding of his opponents and less loving in his attitude toward them than he ought to have been, but he does not condemn them out of personal pique. He believes that the gospel itself in all its implications is at stake; he could do nothing less than meet this danger with vigor. That this is more than mere rationalization becomes apparent when we consider how Paul dealt with rivalries between the partisans of genuine Christians leaders. Cephas, Apollos, Paul--who are they? "Servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God" (cf.I Cor. 1:12-13; 4:1-5; Phil. 1:15-18). Rivalry is unthinkable.
B. PAUL'S MESSAGE. 1. Introduction. Paul's letters afford us rich firsthand source material for his thinking. Yet as letters they depend on situations and relationships known to the writer and his readers but not always entirely clear to us. The epistolary form of our sources creates another difficulty. The letters do not purport to be systematic presentations of Paul's theology; their content is rather determined by the needs of the readers as Paul conceives those needs. Accordingly the nature of our sources is at once an asset and a liability--an asset because we are able to come at Paul's thinking so directly and in immediate relation to human situations; a liability because we must undertake to organize his thinking without any systematic presentation from his own hand.
The interpreter seeks for a key to open up Paul's thought or, better, some central thesis about which all his thinking may be arranged. Paul's doctrine of God, of Christ, of man; Paul's background, Jewish and Hellenistic; Paul's religious experience; these and other focuses have been proposed as central in his theology. Solid gains in understanding Paul have been achieved by this method, even when a single thesis proves inadequate. We have always to remember, however, that any organization is the work of the interpreter and so must be constantly subjected to the test of our sources. We are not dealing with theological treatises but with firsthand communications addressed by a complex personality to diverse human situations. The interpreter's legitimate urge to establish consistency in the whole range of Paul's thinking must be balanced by his determination to let the sources speak for themselves even when consistency is threatened.
The headings selected for this article do not, of course, escape an imposed arrangement of Paul's thought. The order of topics is determined in part by the run of the thought in Romans. The first eight chapters of Romans constitute the longest and most orderly presentation of a theme in Paul's writings, although important topics such as the nature of Christ in distinction from his work, the Resurrection, and the sacraments are not discussed at any length. Paul is addressing a church which he has neither founded nor visited. He wants to inform them of his own understanding of the gospel of which he is not "ashamed" (1:16), "that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine" (vs. 12). Perhaps he is also clarifying and arranging his own thinking as he contemplates a fresh stage in his missionary career (15:22-29). The wording of the following topics is derived from Paul's own writings; that the topics correspond in part with rubrics of systematic theology is inevitable, since Paul is concerned with fundamental theological issues. It is not to be assumed that Paul always thought in this sequence. He could and did present his message beginning from any one of these points as the epistolary situation required.
2. The power and righteousness of God. Addressing readers who had never heard him expound his message, although they are "God's beloved" (Rom. 1:7) whose "faith is proclaimed in all the world" (vs. 8), Paul begins with these oft-quoted words: "I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation. ... For in it the righteousness of God is revealed" (vss. 16-17). Paul glories in the power (duVnamiv) of the gospel. The word and the thought pervade his letters. Christ is the "power of God and the wisdom of God" I Cor. 1:24). "The word of the cross is ... the power of God" (vs. 18). He longed to know Christ "and the power of his resurrection" (Phil. 3:10). This power is not an enhancement or release of human energy; it is a divine gift given when a man confesses that his own power is utter weakness: "I can will what is right, but I cannot do it" (Rom. 7:18); "for when I am weak, then I am strong" II Cor. 12:10); even Christ "was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God" II Cor. 13:4). We must examine Paul's thought about the power of God.
a. God is the author of salvation. In Rom. 1:16-17, Christ is not mentioned, although it is clear from the following chapters that God's saving act is in Christ. Paul's theology has been called Christ-centered, and this is true enough if we remember that the center and the circumference alike depend on God. Writing of the ultimate outcome, he says: "When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him ..., that God may be everything to every one" I Cor. 15:28). Or when he speaks of the "new creation" in Christ, he immediately adds: "All this is from God" II Cor. 5:17-18). God is the ultimate reference for Paul. Not Paul, not Christ, but God alone is the author of salvation. "All things are yours, ... and you are Christ's; and Christ is God's" I Cor. 3:21-23).
Paul's God is the God of Judaism. Paul has no new conception of God to propose. He constantly stresses the will and the purpose of God as revealed in his acts and supremely in his new and final act in Christ. God for Paul, as for Judaism, is the living God to be known, as all life is known, through action. Doubtless Paul might have quoted the words ascribed to him in his address at Athens: "In him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28), but they certainly are not characteristic of his own writings. God is the living, active, dynamic source of events, rather than the ground of being or the Absolute beyond empirical knowledge. It is the God who rescued the Hebrews from Egyptian bondage, led them to the Promised Land, and brought them back from exile, who has acted in Christ and will act decisively in the final outcome of human and cosmic history. The gospel is the power of God, and Paul would have been amazed at the charge that monotheism was threatened by his doctrine of Christ. Christ is for Paul the manifest proof on the plains of history of the power of God. He has no other terms in which to present God's act than the familiar OT concepts of justice and mercy. Perhaps most strikingly Jewish is Paul's emphasis on the righteousness of God.
b. The righteousness of God. "In it [i.e., the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed" (Rom. 1:17). Righteousness is revealed in the gospel to be the kind of power God exercises for salvation. The context of this verse requires the meaning here that God is the source, not the object, of righteousness. Perhaps Paul would not have been disturbed by the grammarian's difficulty in deciding whether the "righteousness of God" is objective or subjective genitive, for although it is obvious here that God's power, not man's, is being proclaimed, yet Paul was so convinced that man must possess or be possessed by this righteousness that the distinction would have seemed oversubtle to him.
Was it Paul's Jewishness, the necessities of his polemic against the law-righteousness of Pharisaism, or something else that led him to single out the word "righteousness"? Obedience to the law was the sine qua non of being "right" with God according to Pharisaic teaching. Paul could hardly, expound the gospel in relation to Judaism without facing this position squarely. But we will not understand him unless we sense his deep personal hunger for rightness with God beneath all the polemical necessities. Of course, Paul includes in the term "righteousness" the connotation of "goodness" included in ethical monotheism. Of course, there is a genuine forensic factor in his argument, for Paul is keenly aware that man does not and cannot earn the verdict of acquittal before God's judgment seat. Man is offered in God's boundless mercy a status, a relationship with God which he does not deserve. The dominant note, however, is neither exclusively ethical nor exclusively forensic. It is centrally dynamic. States of being such as "goodness" or "acquittal" do not really do justice to Paul's thought. We must consider later what Paul meant by the righteousness of God. Here we need only note that it is God's own righteousness which gives content to his saving act in Christ.
c. The power of God as love. Paul's emphasis on God's righteousness neither excludes nor contradicts in his thinking God's gracious love in his salvation. He can and does write of the love of God (Rom. 5:5, 8; 8:37-39;II Cor. 13:11) and of the grace of God (Rom. 1:5;I Cor. 15:10; Gal. l:15; 2:9) without using the word "righteousness." He writes also of the fatherhood of God quite in the manner of Jesus--i.e., God is the Father, men become his sons, for the father-son relationship is neither necessary nor physical as based on the creator-creature status; it is ethical and spiritual, based on God's unmerited choice and man's response in faith (Rom. 8:14-17). God is first of all Father of the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 15:6;I Cor. 1:9;II Cor. 1:3). Through Christ, God is the Father of all believers I Cor. 8:6;II Cor. 1:3; 6:18). They name him Father II Cor. 1:2; Gal. 1:4; Phil. 1:2; Philem. 3). Yet men are not children of God by nature but by faith (Gal. 3:26), by adoption (Gal. 4:4-7), by the Spirit (Rom. 8:14-17). The variety and richness of Paul's vocabulary when he writes of God and of God's relationship with man confirms our view that Paul is centrally concerned to show that God has acted for the salvation of men and that the gospel is the power of God to this end. "Righteousness," "love," "grace," "fatherhood," can be used almost interchangeably to express the character of the God who acts. It is God's act in Christ that reveals his power unto salvation. Righteousness is particularly relevant when Paul explicitly relates his thought to the Judaism he is seeking to reinterpret, but the word "righteousness" is not the only or the inevitable term for the power of God.
3. Man from the human point of view. Having announced the theme of Romans, the "power of God for salvation to every one who has faith" (1:16), Paul follows with a sustained argument to show that all men, Jews and Gentiles alike, are guilty before God, that they are in bondage to sin, and that they are powerless to save themselves by obeying God's law, whether written in the scriptures or in their consciences (1:18-3:20). Man's utter and unexceptionable need of salvation and God's grace and power to save--these are the focuses of Paul's theology. The link between power and need is faith, without which even God's amazing offer of salvation cannot avail. This does not mean that Paul centers his gospel in "experience" as over against "theology." It means, as his letters show, that he is concerned to lift the saving acts of God in Christ and man's response in faith into the "clarity of conscious knowing." He is not engaged in formulating a speculative system, even as he is not content to present salvation as a vague and formless "experience." As we grasp his purpose, which cannot be called exclusively experiential or exclusively theological--being, indeed, the interpenetration and illumination of both--we shall be prepared for certain obscurities, and even contradictions, which more systematic thinking might have avoided.
"From now on, ... we regard no one from a human point of view" II Cor. 5:16). The RSV rendering of kata; saVrka is an interpretative, rather than an exact, translation. It has the value of carrying Paul's thought over into contemporary English more adequately, if not perfectly, than the literal "after the flesh." For saVrx means, not just a phase of man's life such as his desires and passions, but the whole man when he is viewed apart from or in opposition to God. Man so viewed can be saved only by a "new creation," by becoming a "new creature" (vs. 17).
Let us examine further Paul's view of man as isolated from or in opposition to God. Paul accuses the Gentiles of sinful deeds such as idolatry and sensual and antisocial behavior (Rom. 1:18-32). He then brings home to the Jews their own sins, which are even more blameworthy in the light of their privileges (Rom. 2:1). His indictment might merit the charge that it is never possible to condemn wholesale an entire people. Were there not "good" Gentiles and "good" Jews? Paul would, no doubt, have agreed. His listing of overt sinful acts may be regarded as a description of the symptoms of the disease which afflicts all mankind, even those men who do not exhibit the flagrant symptoms. The human predicament, Paul holds, is deeper than "sins." "Sins" are the fruit of "sin." "All men, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin" (Rom. 3:9). "There is no distinction; since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:22-23). Man as man is the slave of sin (Rom. 6:17, 20; 7:14); sin is the constant pattern or principle of his life (Rom. 7:25; 8:2).
What is sin? We shall miss Paul's meaning if we equate sin with "badness" defined in terms of an ethical standard or code, although he is convinced that sin bears evil ethical fruit. Sin is falling "short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). It is man's isolation from, his independence of, God, and his pride in his own ability to deal with life on the level of his own wisdom. Paul believes that this self-confidence leads to gross moral evils, but its chief disaster is that men are caught in the toils of their own little selfhood. The ultimate tragedy of existence does not lie in little or larger misdemeanors but in the failure to rise to the creative purpose of God, the "glory of God." Sin is more than an act or an attitude of rebellion against God; it is more than a transgression of God's law; Paul appears to regard sin as an objective condition or status, even when man is not guiltily responsible (Rom. 6:12-14). Indeed, many expressions Paul uses suggest that sin is actually a personal being, an outside, demonic power. Sin "came into the world" (Rom. 5:12), "reigned in death" (5:12), "lies dead" (7:8), "revived" (7:9), "wrought in me all kinds of covetousness," "deceived me and ... killed me" (7:8, 11; cf. vs. 13), "dwells within me" (7:17, 20), enslaves me (cf. 6:6, 17), pays the "wages of ... death" (6:23). This is either mythology or vivid rhetorical language. Suggesting the latter is the fact that Paul speaks of the flesh in similar personal terms (cf. Rom. 8:12; Gal. 5:13, 17, 19, 24), and so he does of the world I Cor. 1:20-21). In any case, Paul is clearly saying that man is caught in the toils of sin beyond his power to extricate himself and that sins--i.e., deeds and attitudes patently evil--spring from sin as the objective condition of man as man, man from the human point of view.
When man becomes conscious of this status, he may be driven to the verge of despair (Rom. 7:24). Yet God created man in his own image I Cor. 11:7), and one of the benefits of the gospel is "our hope of sharing the glory of God" (Rom. 5:2). Even as the desperate nature of man's plight is brought home to him, he is aware that this sinful condition is alien to his true nature and not part of the creative work of God (Rom. 7:20, 23). The awareness that man is essentially a creature and child of God, though he is actually estranged from him, results in the deep inward cleavage in the self so characteristic of Paul's view of man from the "human point of view."
What of the origin of sin? Paul seldom raises this question, and when he does, his answer is far from clear. The classical passage is Rom. 5:12-21. The terse, closely packed opening sentence: "As sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned," is never finished, but few sentences, finished or unfinished, have occasioned more discussion. The "one man" is Adam (vs. 14), whose "transgression" had dire consequences for all humanity. Is Adam regarded as a historical figure (Christ is his counterpart in vss. 15-21), or is he the symbol of a doomed humanity in mystical union with him, just as the redeemed are to be "made alive" in Christ (cf. Rom. 5:17;I Cor. 15:22)? Or did Paul think in such categories as literal over against symbolic? In the verse as it stands, it is death which "spread to all men because all men sinned," and it has been argued that Paul regarded death as inherited from Adam, rather than sin. Each man does his own sinning, it is held, but he is born into a world in which death is the penalty for sin. Yet in this very context Paul writes: "By one man's disobedience many were made sinners" (vs. 19), and: "Sin reigned in death" (vs. 21). He makes no distinction between sin and death as inherited from Adam. We do scant justice to Paul's thought, however, if we fail to note that every statement about the reign of sin and death and about man's helplessness and hopelessness in the grip of sin is set in immediate and vivid contrast to the "reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ" (vs. 17). Paul's impact on successive generations since his time is due in part to the sheer realism with which he faces our human situation and the equally amazing faith that he proclaims in the redeeming, transforming power of God in Christ. We are born into a human situation corrupted by sin, whether the spread of sin is reckoned biologically, sociologically, or psychologically. Yet we are perpetually haunted by the consciousness that we are children of God, made in his image and with the hope of sharing his glory.
How and where does sin lay hold of man? Paul is deeply concerned with this question, and he answers it in many and varied ways. The words "flesh" (saVrx), "body" (sw'ma), and "soul" (yuchV) are the chief terms he employs, while the word "spirit" (pneu'ma; see § 7 below) is the chief term for the redemptive power which overcomes the power of sin and death.
"Flesh" (see FLESH [NT]) as Paul uses the word has many different shades of meaning which only the context can determine. (Translators render the Greek word saVrx by different English words and phrases such as "worldly," "earthly," etc. This is confusing to the reader who does not know Greek. In the following documentation the Greek word for "flesh," saVrx, is always present, even when the English translation does not reveal it.) Often, perhaps usually, Paul uses the word "flesh" for the physical or natural man, the tangible stuff of human life (cf. Rom. 1:3;I Cor. 15:39;II Cor. 12:7; Gal. 4:13; Phil. 1:22; Philem. 16). But it is clear that Paul does not limit the use of this word to the instinctual or sensual aspects of man's life. The "works of the flesh" include not only the vices that we call sensual but also "enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit" (Gal. 5:20). While the flesh is the sphere of imperfection (cf. Rom. 2:28; 6:19;I Cor. 3:1; 15:50;II Cor. 5:16; Gal. 1:16) and so subject to capture by sin, many scholars think that Paul regards the flesh itself as morally neutral. Perhaps in principle he thought of the flesh as neutral but in fact saw it as sinful and, indeed, as the seat of sin. Nevertheless, it is "sin in the flesh" (Rom. 8:3) which is the essentially evil thing. Flesh for Paul may be characterized as the sense-bound, earth-bound, time-bound, self-bound existence of man apart from God and in opposition to his will.
The word "BODY," sw'ma, also has a number of different meanings and shades of meaning for Paul. He can use it for the natural, physical human body I Cor. 5:3; 12:12; 15:38;I Thess. 5:23). He can also use it of the whole community of Christians in his famous figure of speech (Rom. 12:4-5;I Cor. 12:12-30). But perhaps the characteristic use approaches the meaning of our word "personality," a word not available for Paul. Paul's sustained argument about the spiritual body iI Cor. 15:1 contains the real clue to his meaning. He cannot conceive of existence after death as bodiless. The spiritual body, however, is not of "flesh and blood" (vs. 50). "Body" for Paul in this context is the principle of individuality, the imperishable mold of the person. The body, so understood, is capable of being glorified, transmuted from the physical to the spiritual (vss. 42-50), and so has a spiritual potential not attributed to the flesh.
The word "SOUL," yuchV, is perhaps the least important of the three terms for Paul and at the same time the most difficult for the English reader, since the word "soul" carries with it meanings not present for Paul. It is usually defined as the animating, vital principle of the fleshly body. As such Paul can at times use the word to mean "physical," "soulish," "unspiritual," in ways that seem very like his use of "flesh" (cf.I Cor. 2:14; 15:44, 46). But it has a wider significance than the word "flesh," and Paul can use it of full human life, the natural life of earthly men, in contrast to the life endowed with the "gifts of the Spirit of God" which constitute a new creation I Cor. 2:14). Paul was pioneering in religious psychology, and it is not surprising that he leaves the modern reader somewhat confused as to the precise meanings intended. It seems clear, however, that he intends to say that man by his very nature is open to the onslaught of sin and that sin may capture--indeed, has captured--his whole being.
4. Christ the wisdom and power of God. Paul is proud of the gospel because it is the power of God for salvation (Rom. 1:16). But how is this saving power revealed and made operative for men? Paul answers: "In Christ," who is the "power of God and the wisdom of God" I Cor. 1:24). Paul's thought may be gathered around three questions: Why did Paul center his gospel in Christ? Who is Paul's Christ? What is the origin of his Christology?
a. Christ the gospel's center. Paul's background, racial and religious, was Jewish, and while Judaism could look for the manifestation of God's sovereignty by God's own acts without reference to an anointed Agent or Messiah (see MESSIAH [JEWISH]), yet the coming of Messiah and of the messianic age was characteristic of Judaism. Paul as a Jew was predisposed to look for the coming of Messiah. As a Jew he would look for God's reign to come through deeds rather than by the emergence of new ideas. The structure of Paul's thought required a revelation of God in terms of history. But it was surely the impact of the historic Jesus upon Paul that determined his emphasis and led him to the full and formal ascription: "the Lord Jesus Christ."
If the historic Jesus was determinative for Paul, why did he make so little use of the words and deeds of Jesus in his letters? He centers attention almost exclusively on the death and the Resurrection. Paul does refer to words of Jesus I Cor. 7:10), and they are authoritative for him. An impressive list of possible allusions to sayings of Jesus can be compiled (see § B9b below). Perhaps most significant of all is the central place of "love," ajgaVphI Cor. 13:1), in the Pauline ethos and the fact that he understands so clearly the Lord's deeds and words as manifesting God's outreaching love to men who do not deserve it. He can catch this up in one memorable sentence: "While we were yet sinners Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). Yet we must not gloss over the fact of the fewness of references to Jesus' life and words. It is due in part to Paul's radical evaluation of human existence apart from God. Outside the divine purpose and power, death spiritual and physical is the final outcome for humanity. The ultimate issue, then, is whether there can be life-through-death. The death and resurrection of Jesus is the answer. More positively put, the messianic role for Paul does not lie in the past; Christ is the living Lord now, and his lordship will be gloriously consummated in the future. This dominates Paul's thinking. The historic Jesus is now caught up in the divine Lord. It may well be that Paul told his converts more about Jesus' words and deeds than the letters reveal, but it is abundantly clear that Christ is now the living Lord for him.
b. Who is Paul's Christ? The risen Lord Jesus Christ is unmistakably a divine being for Paul. The older messianic concept of a divinely anointed and empowered king who would be God's instrument in restoring the kingdom to Israel has little, if any, meaning for him. Jesus Christ was indeed "descended from David according to the flesh," but he was "designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead," and the name given him was not "son of David" but "Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 1:3-4). Christians are called of God (Rom. 8:30) and of Christ (Rom. 1:6;I Cor. 7:22) and of both together (Gal. 1:6). Paul's apostolic commission is from God II Cor. 5:18; Gal. 1:16) and from Christ (Rom. 1:5;II Cor. 5:20; 10:8; 13:10; Phil. 3:12). Revelation is from God (Gal. 1:16) and from Christ (Gal. 1:12). Paul is the servant of God II Cor. 6:4;I Thess. 3:2) and of Christ I Cor. 3:5;II Cor. 11:23). Christ is the object of prayer, is seated at the right hand of God, and is Judge. The title "Lord" is freely used, and it is not always possible to be sure whether Paul means God or Christ by it. Paul's freedom in using almost interchangeably the same expressions of God and of Christ raises the inevitable question: Was Christ God for him? The few verses which in some versions seem to identify God and Christ, actually distinguish between them, as the modern translations correctly indicate (cf. Rom. 9:5;II Cor. 4:4, 6;II Thess. 1:12). Two verses in Colossians (1:17; 2:9) are more difficult to harmonize with Paul's usage elsewhere, but Colossians has a different orientation from the other generally accepted letters and reflects a type of controversy not so central in them. Yet even in Colossians (see COLOSSIANS, LETTER TO THE) God is "the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1:3). Only the Paulinist author of Titus seems to allow a direct ascription to Christ of the name God (2:13). Over against these scattered verses are the several passages which explicitly distinguish Christ from God and subordinate him to God (Rom. 11:36;I Cor. 3:23; 11:3; Phil. 2:11;I Thess. 1:9). That Paul never thought of his monotheism as compromised by his conception of Christ is spelled out in the full and formal pronouncement ofI Cor. 8:4-6: "We know that 'an idol has no real existence,' and that 'there is no God but one.' For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth--as indeed there arc many 'gods' and many 'lords'--yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist."
None of the titles Paul uses was invented by him. "Christ," "Son of God," "Lord"--all these were current religious titles in the Jewish and Hellenistic environment. The full and formal "our" or "the Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 5:11, 21; 6:23; 7:25; 8:39;I Cor. 1:10; 15:57) and the "grace of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 16:20;I Cor. 16:23;II Cor. 13:14; Gal. 6:18) sound like accepted forms needing neither explanation nor defense. Paul as a Jew must have known that the word "Christ" was a title (see CHRIST), but in most cases he uses it as part of a proper name. Possibly his usage of "Christ Jesus" interchangeably with "Jesus Christ" retains the memory of the title, since strictly proper names were not variable in this fashion. "Christ" as a title has all but disappeared in his letters. Was this because Gentile readers had no background of tradition for the Messiah-Christ title unless and until they had been instructed? Was it made congenial because for Paul and the early Christians, Jesus and Jesus alone was the Christ?
SON OF GOD is a frequent designation in Paul's letters. In its Jewish meaning, "Son" or "my Son" would refer to character and appointment, not to metaphysical relationship. Paul's usage certainly implies more than the Jewish implications, although many scholars question whether he is primarily concerned with metaphysical relationship of the Son to the Father. His presentation at this point, however, would bring the Lord Jesus into the area of Hellenistic thought. "Lord" was perhaps the most significant and characteristic title used by Paul. The exact contemporary religious usage of "Lord" (kuVriov) is a complicated area of research. We may only remark that Paul uses "Lord" to designate Christ as a pre-existent, divine being just as he uses the name Jesus to retain the significance of the historic man. The title Lord brought Paul's message within the circle of Hellenistic religious thought as the title Messiah-Christ could not do. Yet Paul was not the founder of a Christ cult in which the Lord Christ paralleled the Lord Serapis or the Lord Mithras. Such a passage asI Cor. 8:4-6 makes such an interpretation impossible. The use of the title Lord no doubt carried with it certain dangers to be guarded against. Paul had, indeed, a "mystery" to proclaim I Cor. 2:7; 4:1), but it was not to be kept secret but to be broadcast to all who had faith to hear and heed.
Some christological titles do not appear in Paul's letters. "Born of the seed of David," Jesus Christ is "Son of God" and "our Lord," not "son of David" (Rom. 1:3-4). The title Savior (see SALVATION, SAVIOR) is not applied to Christ; God is Savior, and the one exception, in Phil. 3:20, immediately adds the familiar "the Lord Jesus Christ." Although Paul never uses the exact title SON OF MAN--it would be a barbarism in Greek--he does make significant use of a related concept, the first Adam and the last Adam, the earthly and the heavenly man (Rom. 5:12-20;I Cor. 15:45-49).
c. The origin of Paul's Christology. When we ask how Christ became the "power of God and the wisdom of God," Paul's answers are not in the form of precise definition but in glowing and vivid figures of speech. The three most important passages areI Cor. 15:20-28 (cf. Rom. 5:12-21); Phil. 2:5-11; Col. 1:13-20. According to Philippians, the "mind ... in Christ Jesus" was far other than that of the presumptuous and rebellious angels who would have grasped "equality with God." His mind was bent on obedience, on humiliation and self-emptying, that he might despoil death, "even death on a cross," of its doom. And this, writes Paul in bold phrases, turned out to be in accord with the very mind of God, who "has highly exalted him ..., that ... every tongue [should] confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Here the age-old myth of rebel angels cast out of heaven is daringly replaced by the Son, who in complete obedience to the Father chooses the life of a slave among men and a death on a cross. The outcome is that our humanity is no longer doomed to death as the penalty for sin but has the potential of sharing with Christ in the hope of glory.
Whether from the pen of Paul or of a Paulinist, Col. 1:13-20 only carries into the cosmic realm Paul's thought of Christ as the power and wisdom of God. Here, as the agent of God in creation, the Son is the "first-born of all creation," and "in him all things hold together," since "in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell." Although the language here differs in emphasis from the other letters, it is to be noted that this cosmic speculation yields practical consequences (vss. 12-14) and has an ethical outcome, "to lead a life worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God" (vs. 10). The type of thought in the whole passage reminds us of contemporary thinking in Alexandrian Judaism (see PHILO JUDEUS) and in the late WISDOM literature. If this is Paul, he is presenting Christ as the sole MEDIATOR over against some threat of angelic mediators.
In the final key passage I Cor. 15:20-28) Paul presents the Lord Christ as the head of the new humanity (cf. vs. 22 with Rom. 5:12-21), this time as the victor over sin and death. He will vanquish all rebellious wills, human and demonic, to achieve the final consummation, when God will "be everything to every one" (vs. 28). The framework of this kind of thinking is clearly apocalyptic messiahism:
One other christological passage has been much discussed: Rom. 1:1-4. Here the crux is the ambiguous verb in vs. 4. Is it to be rendered "declared to be" (KJV), "installed" (Moffatt), or "designated" (RSV)? In other words, is the Resurrection here presented as the proclamation of a status already existing, or as the assumption of an office not previously possessed, or is the verb designedly ambiguous? The last suggestion seems a bit subtle. Would it not be more likely that Paul was unaware of the theological problem he raises for us? If the verb is translated "installed"--i.e., the assumption of an office not previously held--this might support the adoptionist Christology which passages implying the pre-existence of Christ II Cor. 8:9; Gal. 4:4; Phil. 2:6-11) would contradict. It has been argued that Paul here represents a transition between a primitive adoptionism (cf. Acts 2:36) and the thoroughgoing pre-existence, incarnation, exaltation, of the Gospel of John and the Letter to the Hebrews. Another way out of the difficulty is to hold that Paul is tactfully beginning his Letter to the Romans by citing their Christology, which is not his. Paul could be tactful, but hardly at a point like this.
If we ask of Paul, Was your Christ once really a man? he answers: Was? He is the heavenly man, and "just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven" I Cor. 15:49). If we ask, How could the exalted Lord be genuinely human? he replies: He "emptied himself, ... and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross" (Phil. 2:7-8). If we ask, How can a cosmic Christ be conceived as personal or a personal Christ as cosmic? he answers: This is the whole goal of creation, which "waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God" (Rom. 8:19). If we object that Jesus was, after all, but an incident, an episode, in human history, Paul answers that there is no isolated fact hereafter, for "all are yours; and you are Christ's; and Christ is God's" I Cor. 3:22-23). See also CHRIST.
5. The word of the Cross. "The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" I Cor. 1:18). At the outset it is important to remember that to isolate the Cross from the Resurrection is a formal procedure, for just as the Resurrection can have no meaning apart from death, so the death is informed by the Resurrection, even when there is no verbal reference to it in Paul's words. What is everywhere implicit becomes explicit in such a sentence as: "If while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life" (Rom. 5:10). Was the sequence death-life, or was it life-death? Or was the former the logical, and the latter the experiential, sequence? Surely it was the living Lord Jesus Christ whose impact upon Paul illuminated the Cross and gave it significance. The two events are inseparable, inextricable; and when the one is considered apart from the other, we must remember that their relationship to each other is almost organic.
Why and how is the death of Christ on the cross effective for salvation? No part of Paul's message has been more debated, as he himself anticipated when he said of the Cross that it was a "stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles" I Cor. 1:23). Paul employs a number of metaphors to communicate what God has done for man's salvation in the death of Christ: It is a redemption, a ransoming, like a slave's release from bondage (Rom. 3:24;I Cor. 1:30). It is a sacrifice adequate for restoring favorable relations with deity (Rom. 3:25; 5:9). It is a victory over demonic powers who are competing for man's soul (Rom. 8:38-39;I Cor. 2:8; 15:25; Col. 2:15). It is the end of the old and the beginning of the new humanity (Rom. 5:12-21;I Cor. 15:20-22). Similarly, the consequences flowing from God's saving act in Christ are presented in richly varied imagery: as acquittal or justification when man is arraigned before the heavenly court (Rom. 3:24; 5:1); as reconciliation replacing the estrangement between God and man (Rom. 5:10-11;II Cor. 5:18-20); as belonging in Christ to the new humanity instead of in Adam to the old (Rom. 5:12-21;I Cor. 15:22;II Cor. 5:17); as sustained by the love of God, from which not even demonic powers can separate (Rom. 8:35-39); and ultimately as salvation, which is already initiated but will be consummated in glory (Rom. 5:2; 8:18).
Yet the Pauline imagery, varied though it is, is far from chaotic. God is always the author of salvation; there is no slightest hint that it is wrested from an unwilling God, even though the nature of sin is such as to involve estrangement, nor is there any suggestion that the death of Christ is the noble sacrifice of a good man over against an unfeeling or hostile world. Paul can exhort his readers to the imitation of Christ II Cor. 8:9; Phil. 2:5), but always this is imitation of the will and the act of God in Christ II Cor. 8:5, 16; Phil. 2:9). Furthermore, it is clear that the death of Christ is the way God deals with human sinfulness, universal and unexceptionable (Rom. 3:22-23). For Paul the origin of sin is on the circumference rather than at the center of his thought. He uses in homiletical fashion an analogical argument from Adam's sin (Rom. 5:12-21;I Cor. 15:21), but it is the fact of sin supported by data (Rom. 1:18-32) and by experience (Rom. 7:7-25) and the cure of sin by the creation of a new humanity in Christ which chiefly concern him. And finally, it is clear that the death of Christ reveals the nature and meaning of God's forgiveness. Paul seldom uses the word "FORGIVENESS." Was it too closely associated with the legalism he was opposing? But his favorite words, "grace," "peace," "reconciliation," express the same deep sense of God's forgiving, restoring love. The death of Christ carries the note of the cost of sin and the costly character of God's act in Christ. These are the major notes sounded throughout Paul's letters when he treats of the death and the resurrection of Christ. He is neither obscure nor esoteric in expressing these convictions.
It is when we ask how the death of Christ reveals and makes operative God's saving action--exactly how--that the recurrent discussion of Paul's doctrine of the Atonement arises. Some of the more important passages in which Paul treats this question are the following:
Rom. 3:21-26. Here the three major notes are clearly sounded: God is acting in Christ, "whom God put forward" (vs. 25); his act deals with universal sin--"all have sinned" (vs. 23); and in this act the nature of the divine forgiveness is set forth (vss. 25-26). Two figures of speech are used: redemption--i.e., emancipation from slavery--and sacrifice, an "expiation by his blood" (vs. 25). "Expiation'.' is to be preferred to "propitiation," not only because the Greek word iJlasthVrion usually has this meaning in the LXX, but also because it is God himself who "put forward" Christ Jesus to this end. The two figures of speech proclaim that in the death of Christ both the power and the guilt of sin are broken. But does Paul mean to say that the death of Christ exhibits in action God's costly forgiving love, or does he mean that Christ paid the inevitable, inexorable penalty for sin as an atoning sacrifice? In the latter case it is God who acts to propitiate himself. Or does Paul rest back upon the ancient axiom: "Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins" (Heb. 9:22), without regard to the subtleties of our modern interpretation?
Rom. 5:8-11. Here again Paul is discussing the death of Christ, but his thought is oriented to the new life issuing from justification by faith (5:1), which is here called "reconciliation." The same three notes are sounded again: it is God who is the actor (vs. 8); his act deals with sin (vs. 8); and it exhibits the nature of God's forgiveness--i.e., there is a wrath of God to be saved from (vs. 9). Two emphases not present in Rom. 3:21-26 appear: the word "RECONCILIATION," found only in the Pauline letters (Rom. 11:15;II Cor. 5:18-20; Eph. 2:16; Col. 1:19-22); and the eschatological reference to salvation (vs. 9). The barrier between God and man--which must be a barrier, in some sense, for God himself---is removed by Christ, who "died for us" as an act of God's love (vs. 8).
Rom. 6:1-11. This important passage relates the death of Christ to still another area of thought. Instead of the language of sacrifice or of reconciliation, the imagery is of the "old self" (vs. 6) and the new, of dying to sin and living to God (vs. 10), of being buried "by baptism into death" and being "raised from the dead [as Christ was]" that "we too might walk in newness of life" (vs. 4). The death of Christ is a death to sin (vs. 10), but the "life he lives he lives to God," and "we believe that we shall also live with him" (vs. 8). The old humanity "in Adam" as contrasted with the new humanity "in Christ" (Rom. 5:12-21) is the background for this thought. The death of Christ, a death to sin, is the end of the old; the Resurrection is the beginning of the new order. By a vivid use of the analogy of baptism--"baptized into his death," "buried ... with him by baptism into death"--Paul conceives the believer as having died to sin and potentially to be raised to that newness of life characterized as being "alive to God in Christ Jesus" (vs. 11). Again it is God who is the ultimate actor, the death of Christ (and here explicitly the Resurrection) which reveals the nature of God's act, and sin which conditions that redeeming act.
II Cor. 5:14-21. This great passage is reminiscent of Rom. 6:1-11. The same controlling concern with the new life dominates, although the occasion is a very personal one (vss. 11-13). There is the same emphasis on personal appropriation of the death and the Resurrection (vss. 14-15), with an even stronger note of the believer's solidarity with Christ (vs. 14), this time without the analogy of baptism. Once again it is God who is the actor, even more emphatically than before (vss. 18-20); it is the death of Christ which reveals the significance of God's act; and it is sin which is vanquished. The closing verse, 21--one of the many terse, enigmatic Pauline sentences--has been variously interpreted. Does it mean that the sinless Jesus bore the penalty for sin on our behalf, or does it mean that by his incarnation he lived the life of man, a life dominated by sin and death, and so wrought out our salvation in the real world of our human experience? In addition to these more ordered treatments of the death of Christ there are occasional references scattered through Paul's letters I Cor. 2:8;II Cor. 8:9; Gal. 2:20; 6:14; Phil. 2:8-9).
6. To everyone who has faith. According to Paul the gospel "is the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith" (Rom. 1:16). Faith is man's response to the gospel; it is the gateway to salvation. Paul uses the word "faith" with more than one meaning, but his characteristic use is to be seen in relation to the law. An understanding of his view of the law is essential to an understanding of faith.
a. Faith and the law. By "law" Paul usually means the revelation of God's will in the Scriptures. In a few passages "law" means obligation such as conscience exerts (Rom. 2:14-16), or civil law (Rom. 7:2-3), or even the demand of Christ (Gal. 6:2). Again, without losing the sense of "obligation," "law" can mean principle or pattern (Rom. 8:2). But most frequently Paul means the OT law or the whole OT (Rom. 3:10-19, where passages from the Psalms and the Prophets are regarded as law;I Cor. 14:21, which includes Isa. 28:11-12 as law). Paul draws no explicit distinction between the ritual and the ethical demands of the law; both are law for him as a Jew (Gal. 3:10; 5:3). Nevertheless, an unconscious distinction is apparent. What the conscience of a Gentile demands can hardly be the ritual, but only the ethical, requirements of the law (Rom. 2:14-16), and Paul regularly thinks of the ethical demands when he discusses the permanent validity of the law (Rom. 2:21-29; 13:8-10; Gal. 5:14-23). He deals with the dietary laws in considerable detail, reckoning them as of relative rather than absolute validity I Cor. 8:1-11:1; Gal. 2:11 ff), and circumcision is spiritualized in a way that would not be satisfactory to a Jew (Rom. 2:28-29). Perhaps the solution of this apparent contradiction lies in recognizing that Paul thinks like a Jew in his view of the law. He is not so much concerned with the content of the commandments as with the fact that they are commandments. Then how are they to be fulfilled? This is the question facing him, and in answering it he undoubtedly, if perhaps unconsciously, shifts the center of gravity from the ritual to the ethical demands, for it is in the area of ethical requirements that the inward struggle goes on (Rom. 7:7-25).
The major difficulty, however, lies in the apparent contradiction between the law as embodying the will of God for men and the law as intimately related to sin and death in Paul's view. He is quite aware of this difficulty and devotes considerable space to its solution. On the one hand, he asserts the validity of the law and his own zeal in upholding it (Rom. 2:13; 3:31; 7:12). The law is to be fulfilled (Rom. 13:8-10; Gal. 5:14); and it brings no charge against those who bear the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:23). On the other hand, "Christ is the end of the law, that every one who has faith may be justified" (Rom. 10:4); the law brings knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:20; 7:7) and death (Rom. 7:9); it stimulates sinful activity (Rom. 5:20; 7:8) and brings those who "rely on works of the law ... under a curse" (Gal. 3:10). Not only is this puzzling, but it is also shocking to Paul's Jewish readers, as he well knows it will be. He insists again and again that he is an upholder of the law, that "the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good" (Rom. 7:12), and that the law itself is not sin (Rom. 7:7). He answers the charge of blasphemy in a twofold way: first, the law is the instrument of sin, not sin itself; and second and more important, the function of the law in the divine economy has been misunderstood. It is not the validity of the law, but its misunderstood role, that Paul attacks. The law does not bring a man into right relationship with God, as the classic example of Abraham shows, for faith in his case preceded the very existence of the law (Rom. 4:1; Gal. 3:6-18). Furthermore, the law is good but powerless as a motivating force, since, on the one hand, it fails to ensure right conduct (Rom. 1:18-2:29), and, on the other hand, zeal in keeping the law only increases one's confidence in his own righteousness and thus defeats the end in view--i.e., the righteousness of God (Rom. 10:3; Phil. 3:4-9).
Law and gospel are thus mutually exclusive as ways to the right relationship with God. Law has the positive function of revealing sin as sin--indeed, of stimulating the activity of sin and showing man that he is in sin's fatal grip, from which only a power not his own can rescue him (Rom. 7:24). Passage after passage (Rom. 3:20; 7:7-25; Gal. 3:21-25) sets forth the role of the law as an instrument in God's gracious providence to reveal to man, to stab him broad awake to the fact, that no effort of his own, however strenuous, will enable him to lift himself by his own bootstraps out of the entangling web of sin, and to show him that every victory apparently won by his own effort is actually a defeat, since it encourages the self-deception that he can save himself. Only a "new creation" like the creative act of the God who made light to shine in darkness II Cor. 4:6) will restore, redeem, reconcile, and save mankind. But how is man to respond to God's saving act in Christ? Paul's answer is, By the obedience of faith.
b. Faith as the opposite of boasting. Negatively, faith is the absence of all self-confidence, self-assurance, self-satisfaction in human goodness, wisdom, power. While Paul can use the word "faith" to mean "trust" or "intellectual assent" and the like, faith owes its characteristic features to the sharp antithesis: faith versus law. Law--any kind of law--is powerless to set a man right with God, to put him in creative relationship with God. On the contrary, law shows man his powerlessness, incites him to sin, makes sin into guilt, and, in short, closes every avenue to salvation save only the way of faith. The objectivity of law, in other words, cuts through the subjective rationalizing of conduct ("I meant well, however short the deed fell from the intention"). The impact of the law, accordingly, either sets a man at enmity with a God who demands what no man can fulfil, or else it opens up the possibility of a radically different relationship with God from that between a lawgiver and a lawkeeper. This is what Paul means when he writes: "The law was our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith" (Gal. 3:24).
Lover of paradox as he is, Paul expresses this negative quality of faith by writing about "boasting," "glorying," but now the object has been shifted from man to the gospel which reaches man in his helplessness (Rom. 4:20;I Cor. 1:31;II Cor. 10:17; 12:9; Gal. 6:14). Paul knows that human boasting is folly, even when he feels that he is forced by his adversaries to indulge in it II Cor. 10:8, 13; 11:1, 16, 21), and he often sets faith over against it as its radical opposite (Rom. 11:18;I Cor. 1:29; 4:7).
c. Faith as obedience, receptivity. Faith is obedience, surrender, receptivity; it is acceptance with the whole self of the good news that God's saving grace is offered to men in Christ. Paul does not think of faith as a native, human quality progressively clarified as to its object (with the author of Hebrews; cf. Heb. 11:1-12:2), even though he can include the idea of faith as an attitude toward the unseen reality II Cor. 4:18; 5:7). Faith is the response of the whole man toward the humanly unbelievable love of God in Christ, freely offered to men who do not deserve it. This act Paul calls "obedience," almost interchangeably with "faith" (cf. Rom. 1:5, 8, with 16:19), and its opposite he terms "disobedience" (cf. Rom. 11:30-32 with 10:3, 16), for faith is submission and "heeding" (Rom. 10:16). It is, in other words, the condition for receiving salvation, and not a virtue, an attitude, or an experience. It is the continuous necessity of an act of submission, of receptivity to God's grace in Christ. Thus, of course, faith cannot be regarded as meriting salvation, since it is surrender of the self and one's own estimate of the self. But while faith is the basic response of the whole man to the revelation of God in Christ, it is not the whole of salvation. The Spirit and the fruits of the Spirit issue from the faith that puts man in creative relationship with God.
7. Life through the Spirit. If faith is the human response to God's saving act, the consequence of faith is a "new creation" II Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15). This new life can be characterized as life in and through the Spirit; it can also be described as life in and through Christ, "Spirit" and "Christ" being used interchangeably.
a. What does Paul mean by the Spirit? The antecedents of Paul's concept of the Spirit are clearly Jewish. As in the OT, "Spirit" is predominantly a religious rather than a metaphysical term, standing for the divine presence and power and for man's capacity for receiving it, and not for an invisible essence in man relating him to the rest of creation (see SPIRIT; HOLY SPIRIT). Paul knows of the Spirit as a miraculous divine power, a kind of invading energy enabling man to perform more than human deeds. He writes at length about "spiritual gifts"I Cor. 12:1-14), quite in the temper of the OT, if with different terminology. In two respects, however, Paul deviates from the OT pattern. First, he relates spiritual gifts, unquestionably personal and individual, to group sanctions, arguing that the variety of gifts is a manifestation of the one Spirit I Cor. 12:4-11) and that an individual gift, however highly prized, is for the edification of the church I Cor. 14:18-19), which is itself the product of the Spirit I Cor. 12:13). Second, the gift of the Spirit is no longer temporary or an ad hoc endowment; it is a permanent possession of the believer. He now lives by the Spirit (Gal. 5:25); without the Spirit (of Christ) he does not belong to Christ (Rom. 8:9). He is one of the "spiritual" (Gal. 6:1). Here we meet again the persistent Pauline paradox: the Christian is, the Christian ought to be. His true life is the life of the Spirit; yet he is exhorted to "walk by the Spirit" (Gal. 5:25; see § B9 below). That Paul thinks of the Spirit as more than an invading, dynamic energy manifested in spectacular gifts such as speaking with tongues, is evident from expressions such as "led by the Spirit of God" (Rom. 8:14; Gal. 5:18) and setting "the mind on the Spirit" (Rom. 8:6, 27). The Spirit means a direction, a will, for all of life.
Paul can and does use the word to designate the human spirit I Cor. 7:34;I Thess. 5:23) and as an equivalent of "I" I Cor. 16:18;II Cor. 2:13; 7:13 [translated in the latter two cases as "mind" in the RSV]; Gal. 6:18; Phil. 4:23; Philem. 25). Perhaps it is unwarranted to say that Paul thinks of the human spirit as having the capacity for receiving the divine Spirit, since he usually thinks of the self as a unified whole, yet there are at least two passages in which the spirit of man appears to be that part or aspect of the self which is open to the divine Spirit. "When we cry, 'Abba! Father!' it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God" (Rom. 8:15c-16)--this passage and especially the analogy inI Cor. 2:10b-13 point in that direction. It is clear that the term "spirit" has a Jewish rather than a Hellenistic background in Paul's usage, for it does not so much reflect a dualism as refer to the divinely empowered transformation of the whole person to be a "new creation." It is not clear whether "Spirit" is consistently personal or impersonal for Paul, whether we should use the pronoun "he" in all cases or "it" in some instances. There can be no question of the personal meaning in passages such as Rom. 8:16;I Cor. 2:10-16, but where impersonal expressions such as "pouring out," "sealing," "supplying," are used (Rom. 5:5;II Cor. 1:22; 5:5; Gal. 3:5)--and these are the more numerous--the precise intention is less clear. The answer to this question may lie in another direction. Personal and impersonal conceptions of the Spirit are both found in the OT. Paul's use of both, accordingly, is not surprising. What is significant is his intimate association of "Spirit" and "Christ."
b. Life in and through the Spirit. The new life is life in and through the Spirit. The Spirit is the seal, the guarantee, the first installment, of the new life (Rom. 8:23;II Cor. 1:22; 5:5). We live by the Spirit (Rom. 8:13; Gal. 5:25). The Spirit means "peace and joy" (Rom. 14:17), the freedom of sonship (Rom. 8:14-17; Gal. 4:4-7), hope (Rom. 15:13), and fruit (Gal. 5:22-23). Similarly, the new life is life in Christ and through Christ. The believer has his "life in Christ Jesus" (cf. Rom. 8:1;I Cor. 1:2, 30; Gal. 2:17; Phil. 4:1). "In Christ" are all the goods of the new life: joy (Phil. 3:1; 4:4, 10), the love of God (Rom. 8:39), the peace of God (Rom. 5:1; Phil. 4:7), and freedom (Gal. 2:4). The new life is life in the Spirit and in Christ, both expressed in the same passage: "You are in the Spirit .... Christ is in you .... Your spirits are alive .... Life to your mortal bodies ... through his Spirit" (Rom. 8:9-11; cf. 8:1; Gal. 5:5-6). Paul also uses the expression "the Spirit of Jesus Christ" (Rom. 8:9; Gal. 4:6; Phil. 1:19), but never "the Spirit of Jesus." He apparently reserves the name Jesus for the historical person. Some scholars think that complete identification of Spirit and Christ is indicated byII Cor. 3:17: "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom," since "Lord" undoubtedly means "Christ" here, as vs. 14 assures. But a study of the context does not warrant this conclusion. The essence of Paul's thought here (3:4-18) is that scripture, which can be rightly interpreted only by the Spirit, is unveiled by the "Spirit of the Lord," which Spirit sets us free from the written code (vs. 6), for we are "changed into his likeness .... This comes from the Lord who is the Spirit" (vs. 18). That the Lord (Christ) has the universality and effectiveness of the Spirit is, no doubt, Paul's meaning, but that he is identifying Spirit and Christ in any metaphysical sense is questionable. The whole passage is to be understood from the religious and experiential viewpoint.
c. The Pauline mysticism. We have seen that the new life is described by Paul as life in and through the Spirit and in and through Christ. What does he mean when he writes of being "in Christ" and of Christ "in me"? This is usually called "mysticism,". a word with many meanings. It will be well to appraise Paul's thought as positively as possible.
The new life is personal life. While it is true that Paul can use impersonal terms of the Spirit (see above) and in Col. 1:15-20, terms which strain, if they do not burst, the bounds of the personal in setting forth the cosmic aspects of Christ's role, these terms are not typically Pauline. The life of the Spirit, the life in Christ, is a definite way of living patterned after Jesus. Even the cosmic Lord "emptied himself," and his followers are to "have this mind among yourselves" (Phil. 2:5-11). Love even toward the unlovely is the mark of the new lifeI Cor. 13:1). Paul writes the famous "hymn to love" in a contextI Cor. 12:1-14) devoted to the discussion of spiritual gifts, and he makes it as explicit as words can that the ultimate and only permanent gift of the Spirit is love expressed in personal relations. Every Pauline letter issues in the same concrete, personal application to specific human situations. This is to be the outcome of life in the Spirit, in Christ. The classic statement of Paul's mysticism is found in Gal. 2:19-20: "I through the law died to the law, that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." This statement shows at once the intimate relationship with Christ and the resultant redirection and reconstitution of the self. The self is neither annihilated nor merged with the divine as a stream is absorbed into the ocean; the "I"-"Thou" relationship is retained, "that I might live to God," and its ultimate purpose realized.
The new life is corporate life. If a passage like Gal. 2:19-20 stresses the individual aspect of the new life, many other passages emphasize the corporate aspect. Life in the Spirit, life in Christ, is life in the new humanity I Cor. 15:22). Perhaps being "in Adam" is not less "mystical" than being "in Christ," and this corporate consciousness may well be a central aspect of Paul's thought. To be "in Christ" may well mean a complete sharing in the body of Christ, the church (Rom. 12:4;I Cor. 12:12-27). Paul's discussion of baptism (Rom. 6:1-11; Gal. 3:27-29) and of the Lord's Supper I Cor. 11:23-25) is probably to be understood from the same corporate viewpoint. Paul does, indeed, use language which approaches the terminology of the mystery cults, but the major reference seems to be directed toward the new humanity, the body of Christ.
The new life, then, is personal life in a new realm or a new creation. It is conditioned by faith, which involves a personal response to a definite object, God's gracious act in Christ, and which issues in a new relationship with God through the Spirit. Christ is released from the limitations of the man Jesus and is made contemporary and inward by the Spirit; the Spirit, on the other hand, is given the ethical content and the personal implications inherent in Jesus.
8. The church is the body of Christ. It is generally agreed that Paul's most significant contribution to the concept of the church is his teaching about the "body of Christ." In the two classic passages (Rom. 12:4-5;I Cor. 12:12-30) the word "church," ejkklhsiVa, does not appear; it is only in Colossians and Ephesians that the identification is explicit (Eph. 1:22-23; Col. 1:18). The content and context of the extended Corinthian passage on spiritual gifts I Cor. 14:4-5, 19, 28) make it certain, however, that Paul uses "body" and "church" synonymously. No other NT writing employs the concept of the body, unless it is hinted at in John 2:21. The new life manifests itself most conspicuously in the church and in the personal conduct of the believer. These two, church and ethics, are, indeed, intimately associated (see §§ B9b-c below), for the Spirit is the unitary source--the lifeblood, so to speak--of the varied spiritual gifts, and the ethical issue of the new life is described as "fruit of the Spirit" (Gal. 5:16-25).
a. The meaning of the church. There are at least two reasons why it is a mistake in method to stress the meaning of the Greek word ejkklhsiVa, used by Paul for the new community. First, he can and does use other words, such as "saints" (more than twenty-five times), "brethren" when the reference is to the common faith (about one hundred times), and a variety of other expressions to indicate that the new community constitutes the true Israel of God (Rom. 4:11: "all who believe"; 9:6-8: "children of the promise"; Gal. 3:29; 6:16; Phil. 3:3: "the true circumcision"). Second, the Greek word ejkklhsi"a has behind it Aramaic and Hebrew words (see CHURCH, IDEA OF), and the linguistic genealogy is by no means clear. Both etymologically and genealogically the background of the Greek word is uncertain, not to speak of the fact that our English word "church" has no relation whatever to the Greek word Paul USES.
It is best to study Paul's usage from the immediate context. His free use of the word we translate "church" indicates that he regards it neither as peculiar to himself nor as in need of definition. This corresponds with the common use of the word in Acts, which purports to give the story of the primitive pre-Pauline community. In Acts and in Paul's letters the word "church" occurs both in the singular and in the plural. Did Paul move from the particular (a church at Corinth) to the several churches, here and there, and so to the universal (the "church of God") by a kind of sociological progression? It is quite widely, and probably correctly, held today that the reverse is true. Paul conceived of the church, not as a new and tiny entity, but as the existing and true Israel, the "church of God which is [i.e., has its local habitation] at Corinth" I Cor. 1:2). In the same way he can recall that he persecuted "the church of God" or "the church" I Cor. 15:9; Gal. 1:13; Phil. 3:6) when his Jewish zeal was directed against Christians in a specific locality. This helps us to understand his otherwise extravagant hope and confidence in the struggling little communities so seemingly insignificant over against mighty Rome. The church was the eschatological community. Only so can we understand its existence as the heart of a movement which in its inception, at least, looked for the imminent coming of the kingdom.
It has been argued that there was no room for the church as an institution in the eschatological expectation. But is the church envisaged as an institution in the NT? Certainly not in Paul's writings. The church is the eschatological community; it is a "colony of heaven" (Phil. 3:20 Moffatt). This accounts for the informality and flexibility of its organization and worship, on the one hand, and for the fact that organization stems from the consciousness of the one body with its several members rather than from any sense of the need for a polity, on the other I Cor. 12:14-30; see CHURCH, LIFE AND ORGANIZATION OF THE). Paul's view of the church is seen to be entirely consonant with the Synoptic records, according to which the individual is not so much saved by a unilateral relation to God as by being incorporated into the fellowship of God's people, the kingdom of God. Paul develops his thought along his own distinctive lines, but he is not in conflict with Acts and the Synoptics at this point.
b. The church is divinely constituted. We must unthink our modern sociological approach to the rise of the church, if we are to understand Paul's thinking. He does not think of himself as an organizer or even as a missionary in our modern sense of the word; he is not one who selects strategic centers for propaganda and strategic methods of work. We may well appreciate the statesmanship of Paul in choosing the bases for his operations and the skill with which he discovers and develops prepared groups, ready for his message. But these are quite incidental, almost unconscious aspects of his work. He believes that he is heralding the "message of reconciliation" as an ambassador for Christ II Cor. 5:19-20), and those who hear and heed are the "saints" (Rom. 1:7;I Cor. 1:2;II Cor. 1:1; Phil. 1:1; Col. 1:2 and often). The saints are the called ones, the separated ones, the holy ones. The word "saint" does have. an ethical connotation, but goodness is the implication, not the explication, of sainthood. When Paul writes to the Corinthian or to the Roman Christians as to klhtoi'v aJgi"oiv ("called saints"), he does not mean that they are called to become saints any more than he means that he himself as a "called apostle" (klhto;v ajpo"stolov) is called to become an apostle. He is an apostle because he has been called; they are saints by virtue of their calling. Any other understanding makes nonsense of the use of the word "saints" to characterize those Corinthian Christians whose moral deficiences Paul is going to expose in the frankest way. It is just because they are "saints" in the Pauline sense that he can appeal to them to behave as such. When we remember that the word "saint" is never used in the singular in the NT (Phil. 4:21 is an apparent but not a real exception), we become aware of the power of Paul's conception of the church as made up of the saints who have been called by God and who constitute a "colony of heaven."
c. The church and the eschatological event. The modern idea of the church as a means of propaganda for high ends is also foreign to Paul's thinking. To be sure, he urges the Corinthian Christians to "give no offense to Jews or Greeks or to the church of God" I Cor. 10:32); but to regard the church as a means to an end is not the Pauline thought. He does, indeed, believe that the end of the old world will come with the imminent parousia of Christ I Cor. 15:23, 51-57;I Thess. 4:16), but this anticipated event has already been manifest with the coming of Christ (Gal. 4:4), so that "the old has passed away, behold, the new has come" II Cor. 5:17). The church is not so much an agency for promoting desirable causes; it is itself an invasion of the eschaton into time, having already the "first fruits of the Spirit" (Rom. 8:23) as a "guarantee" of things to come II Cor. 1:22; 5:5) and of "sonship" (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6). Paul makes use of the cosmic imagery of Jewish apocalyptic to prefigure the eschaton I Cor. 15:51-57;I Thess. 4:13-18), but with his teaching about the new life and the church he has decisively "lifted the eschaton out of the dimension of cosmic occurrence into that of historic events."
d. The body of Christ. With this background we come to a consideration of the church as the body of Christ, an important Pauline concept, consonant, as we shall see, with his total view of the new humanity in Christ. The figure of the body must not be too rigidly interpreted, since Paul himself develops various aspects of it. InI Cor. 12:12-30 after a brief statement to the effect that the body is one, its many members actually demonstrating rather than negating its unity and "so it is with Christ," Paul focuses attention on the vital interrelations in the community of Christians. Each member, however insignificant in himself, is related organically to the body by the "same Spirit," and the differing spiritual gifts are to be understood from the functional viewpoint, for "you are the body of Christ and individually members of it" (vs. 27). In Rom. 12:4-8 the figure is again directed to the same end of unity in diversity. In Colossians, however, a different note is sounded. Here there is no suggestion of rivalry over spiritual gifts; the danger is from those who fail to acknowledge that Christ is the "head of the body, the church" (1:18), and so the "head of all rule and authority" (2:10). That Christ is the head of the church is apparently derived from the cosmic headship of Christ in the universe (Col. 1:15-20), and Christians are not so much thought of as separate parts of one body as they are incorporated into the very person of Christ. The Paulinist Ephesians carries this concept much further, along lines, many think, of Gnostic mythology, although designed to combat it.
Whatever the source of this striking figure of the body of Christ, Paul uses it to emphasize, now in one way and again in another, the unity of the Messiah-Christ and the messianic community. It is thoroughly consonant with the eschatological and the ecclesiological outlook so central in his thought. It is, as indicated above, so closely related to the mysticism of Paul as to constitute an integral part of his thought about being "in Christ." Is this phrase Paul's way of proclaiming that the Christian is "in" the fellowship of believers, "in" the church, and "in" the eschatological community of those who are being saved? At the least, this aspect of his thought must be included in any consideration of his mysticism. But does the complementary "Christ in you" (Rom. 8:10; Gal. 2:20; Col. 1:27) find its explanation so readily in eschatological and ecclesiological terms? Should we not be willing to allow Paul a genuinely mystical idea of the interpenetration of the living Lord with the spirit of the believer, which is not inconsistent with the mysticism of the body and its members?
9. Walking by the Spirit. Paul knows what ecstasy means II Cor. 12:1-4), and he prizes the spiritual gift of speaking with tongues in its rightful place I Cor. 14:18-19), but the fruit of the Spirit is a kind of character and conduct consonant with the new life in Christ and quite different from spectacular gifts; it is a matter, not of flying or soaring, but of walking (Gal. 5:25). The importance of ethics in Paul's message is unmistakable. Not only does he commonly close his letters with ethical admonitions and exhortations, but in most instances his doctrinal discussions are conditioned by some ethical problem or interwoven with it. It is the ethical collapse of both Gentile and Jew (Rom. 1:18-2:29) that makes justification by faith alone a necessity. The most significant passages on the sacraments are related to questions of behavior: baptism ought to issue in "newness of life" (Rom. 6:1-14), and we possess the words of the institution of the Lord's Supper only because of the disgraceful conduct of members of the Corinthian church I Cor. 11:17-34). An important christological passage such as Phil. 2:1-11 and the significant discussion of the church inI Cor. 12:12-30 both appear to owe their presence in the Pauline corpus to the ethical needs of the churches addressed. Whether Rom. 7:7-25 is autobiographical or meant to represent the typical experience of man-under-the-law, or partly both, the ultimate despair (vs. 24) is occasioned by a "commandment" and by man's inability to "do the good" (vs. 19).
Paul's doctrine of salvation is set forth in language which at a number of points reminds us of the mystery cults, but his insistence on morality as the fruit of the Spirit sunders him sharply from these cults. It is unnecessary to look to Stoicism as the source of Paul's ethical emphasis, although he would approve and on occasion appears to have used some Stoic terms (see STOICS). The obvious background of Paul's ethical emphasis is Judaism, with its identification of religion and conduct. The ethical monotheism which was Paul's heritage made it quite impossible for him to think of conduct without its source in religion or of religion without its consequence in behavior. Judaism, however, had the law as the standard of conduct, and when Paul displaced law by faith as the basis of right relationship with God, what was to be the new standard? This question troubled both Paul and his readers and must be considered later.
a. The nature of Paul's ethics. Paul was, ethically speaking, a Jew from the beginning to the end of his life, and as a Jew he was the heir of an ethical monotheism he never abandoned and of the law of Moses, which remained valid for him as a guide to conduct although he denied that it was capable of setting a man in right relations with God. Consciously or unconsciously, Paul's ethical center of gravity had shifted from the ritual to the moral commandments of the law, although he made a gesture toward the former by interpreting them symbolically (Rom. 2:28-29). His respect for the law as a guide to behavior obviates the necessity of providing a new system of ethics for converts to the gospel. Paul conceives the Christian as freed from all external requirements (Gal. 5:1, 13), but this freedom does not mean license (vs. 13); it is freedom to act according to the new life principle (Gal. 5:25). The law of Moses--indeed, all law as an externally binding control--is finished, "for Christ is the end of the law" (Rom. 10:4). This was not, at least in Paul's intention, a charter of moral subjectivity, although some of his converts so interpreted it, creating thereby one of the most difficult problems he had to face. They understood his teaching to mean that every man might now do what was right in his own eyes. Paul meant that the new man in Christ now wants to do from inward compulsion what was formerly imposed from without. This is the new Christian freedom. Henceforth good deeds are to be considered the normal expression of the Spirit-filled life; the Christian is to walk by the Spirit by which he lives (Gal. 5:25). Just as the child learns to walk with many a fall, so Paul believed that the new life in the Christian would mean walking after the pattern of Christ, and falling was not ruled out as a possibility. He found this difficult to explain to his new converts, and he devotes much space in his letters to the ethical implications of the new life.
b. The Pauline standards of conduct. Eager as Paul was to escape from the bondage of all law--for sin used the law as its instrument--and emphatic as he was in insisting that the new life creates its own "fruit" and is untrammeled by external rules, he cannot avoid standards, norms of conduct, if he is to deal concretely with ethical issues as they arise in the Gentile churches. "Walking" (Gal. 5:25) involves putting one foot before the other and doing this in a certain direction. Right conduct is not inevitable, even among the "saints," as Paul knows from experience; it is a matter of decision and of effort. Accordingly, Paul's letters do reveal certain standards of conduct even though he has no system of ethics as such. Chief among these norms are the law of Moses, the words and example of the Lord, and the leadings of the Spirit. Although Paul repudiates the law of Moses--indeed, all law--as the way to justification and shocks his Jewish readers by associating it with sin and death (Rom. 7:7-11), he himself is certain that he has maintained the validity of the law as "holy and just and good" (vs. 12). It is the function of the law which Judaism misrepresents, not its demands. God in Christ has acted so that the "just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us" (Rom. 8:3-4). The ethical demands remain in force for him, and they are meant to be fulfilled, except that the new man, Spirit-filled, now performs what the law demands from an inward motivation rather than from an outward compulsion. There are a number of passages (Rom. 2:6;II Cor. 5:10; Gal. 6:7; Col. 3:24-25) in which Paul appears to look forward to a judgment according to deeds done "in the body" quite in terms of the Jewish pattern which he has repudiated. The apparent contradiction is to be resolved, not by supposing that Paul has forgotten for the moment his doctrine of the saving grace of God in Christ to be received by faith, but by remembering that the divine grace was a morally creative power, in his view, which made possible all and more than the law required.
The words and example of the Lord are also authoritative as a standard of conduct. While there is little direct quotation, Paul's letters reflect, here and there, the influence of Jesus' teaching (cf.I Thess. 4:8 with Matt. 10:40; Luke 10:16; cf. Gal. 4:17 with Matt. 23:13; Luke 11:52; cf.I Cor. 4:12-13 and Rom. 12:14 with Matt. 5:44; Luke 6:27; cf.I Cor. 5:4 with Matt. 18:20; cf.I Cor. 9:19 with Mark 10:44; cf.I Cor. 13:2 with Matt. 17:20; Mark 11:23; cf.I Cor. 13:3 with Mark 10:21; Luke 12:33; cf.II Cor. 10:1 with Matt. 11:29; cf. Rom. 2:1 and 14:13 with Matt. 7:1; cf. Rom. 14:14 with Matt. 15:11; Mark 7:15; cf. Rom. 16:19 with Matt. 10:16 and many other passages). Three explicit references to Jesus' teaching are:I Cor. 7:10 (cf. Matt. 5:32; Mark 10:11-12);I Cor. 9:14 (cf. Matt. 10:10; Luke 10:7);I Cor. 11:23-25 (cf. Matt. 26:26-29; Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:15-19). To this should be added Paul's stress on love (ajgaVph) as the ultimate determinative of conduct. Love is the Pauline ethos, the "way" I Cor. 12:31) in which all spiritual gifts are to be expressedI Cor. 13:1 does not mention Christ, but the context makes it evident that Paul is speaking of the way in which the Spirit (of Christ) issues in conduct. Even when Paul refers to the teaching of Jesus explicitly, the manner of his reference is significant. Jesus' teaching about marriage has, indeed, final authority I Cor. 7:10), but Paul does not present it as an objective command like the law of Moses. It is rather part of that revelation of the new life in the Spirit, in Christ, which Paul himself shares (7:12, 25). Jesus' saying is not an isolated dictum but an integral part, if the supremely authoritative part, of the total revelation.
It is the Spirit which is the prevailing sanction and norm of Christian conduct. What saves this standard from being vague and indecisive is the role of the Spirit in binding the many into one body I Cor. 12:12, 27). Because of the Spirit each individual member has an organic relationship (obligation?) to all other members. There can and must be no schism I Cor. 1:10-13), no self-conceit (Gal. 5:26), no censoriousness, but only a "spirit of gentleness" (Gal. 6:1), for this is the "law of Christ" (vs. 2). This sense of sharing, koinwniVa, produced the Pauline ethic or, at any rate, gave it its distinctive form. This is another reason for the lack of any formal system of ethics, although the list of household duties (see HOUSEHOLD DUTIES, LIST OF) in Col. 3:18-4:1 (cf. Eph. 5:21-6:9) is a step in that direction.
c. The Pauline paradox. It is in the realm of ethics that the Pauline paradox is most clearly encountered. The Christian, Paul insists, lives a new life; he is a new creation; yet he must be exhorted and admonished to be what he is, to act in accordance with his new nature. Perhaps there is no logical solution of this paradox. Paul simply knows that the new life comes from God through Christ and the Spirit as men open their hearts in faith to receive it; he also knows that he must exhort his converts to walk by the Spirit, which is their true life. Of course, salvation for Paul is still an end event, the Christian is still living "in the flesh" (Gal. 2:20), and the battle with sin is still going on even though the decisive victory has been won. Accordingly Paul exhorts and admonishes, for the believer has the seal, the guarantee or down payment, of the Spirit, but the final and complete salvation is still to be expressed in future tenses (Rom. 6:5, 8, 14).
Another unsolved problem, logically speaking, is the basis for obligation in the Pauline ethic. He has abandoned the law, all law, as the means of a right relationship with God and has reinterpreted its role in the economy of salvation. Has Paul also abandoned all objective grounds for obligation? This was the position taken by certain antinomian Christians in the Pauline churches, and Paul is seriously troubled by their plausible arguments (Rom. 3:7-8; 6:1, 15). Our obligation is to God, who in Christ has acted for our salvation, but what is the ground of our obligation to our fellows once the law has ceased to play that role? Paul's answer appears to be, We are bound into one body by the gift of the Spirit, and so our obligation is as members one of another. But here his striking figure of the body is not wholly satisfactory as a logical solution, for the members of the body operate organically and automatically and not from obligation in a moral sense. It is clear, therefore, that in Paul's thought the body is still a metaphorical term and is not meant to be taken literally.
10. The Lord is at hand. The coming of the Lord (see PAROUSIA) is but one aspect, although of central significance I Cor. 15:20-28;I Thess. 4:13-17), in Paul's expectation of events to be realized at the end of history and as its divinely ordained culmination. Eschatology is central rather than peripheral for Paul. He contemplates these end events both in chronological terms as near (Rom. 13:11-12;I Cor. 7:29) and in terms of decisive opportunity and fulfilment (see TIME), looking forward, not with foreboding, but with eager joy, to the emancipation from human and cosmic enslavement when "the creation itself will be set free" (Rom. 8:19-23).
a. The importance of eschatology for Paul. How important eschatology was for Paul is to be seen by surveying the scope of his expectations. The most complete statement isI Cor. 15:20-28. There the major notes are sounded, although his terse phrases leave the precise meaning open to conjecture. The destiny of believers, alive and dead, is bound up with the coming of Christ in messianic power I Thess. 2:19; 4:15; 5:23). He is the "first fruits" of the new humanity. The resurrection of Christ--so the logic of Paul's reasoning runs--means the resurrection of believers, who are members of his body. Just as they have been "in Adam," so they are now "in Christ" I Cor. 15:22). The rule of Christ is to mean the defeat of all alien powers (vss. 24-26). How long this rule of Christ is to continue is not indicated (contrast Rev. 20:5, 7), but it is to issue in the complete conquest of the enemies of God and in the final consummation when the Son delivers the kingdom to God (vs. 28). Whether the final judgment of all, believers and unbelievers alike, is meant by the words to; te"lov (vs. 24; "the end" or "finally"?) is not clear; Paul is here concerned primarily with the destiny of believers, although, no doubt, sharing the view that all will be judged (Rom. 2:6-11; but Rom. 14:10;II Cor. 5:10 refer to the judgment of Christians). Two Thessalonians passages deal with the destiny of Christians who have died before the coming of the Lord, in order to assure the readers that the dead in Christ will share equally with the living at his coming I Thess. 4:13-18) and to correct their view that "the day of the Lord has come" by an enigmatic presentation of the "man of lawlessness" and of events that must yet occur before the coming of the Lord II Thess. 2:1-17; see THESSALONIANS, SECOND LETTTER TO THE).
An integral part of Paul's eschatology is his view of the cosmic conflict between Christ and the invisible, supernatural powers of evil. These "principalities" and "powers" (Rom. 8:38; Col. 1:16) reign over all mankind, bringing sin and death since Adam. But in the Cross they have been defeated I Cor. 2:8; Col. 1:13; 2:10, 15), for Christ's coming and especially his resurrection marked the turning point in the tide of battle, and the ultimate victory is now assured I Cor. 15:26-26).
It follows naturally that salvation for Paul is a strictly eschatological event, the climax of God's dealing with men (Rom. 13:11 and often): we have been reconciled to God; we shall be saved (Rom. 5:10). That Paul can speak of salvation as a present reality (Rom. 8:24) is a contradiction in terms but not in reality, for he is emphasizing the fact that ours is, indeed, a saving hope, not contrasting something completed now over against the eschatological climax.
b. Was Paul apocalyptic? Neither Paul's eschatology nor the apocalyptic form it took (see APOCALYPTICSM) when he was contemplating the sequence of coming events I Cor. 15:20-28;I Thess. 4:13-18;II Thess. 2:1-12) can be dismissed as oriental hyperbole or as merely the framework of his thought from which his essential message can be lifted without surgery. These ideas are too deeply embedded in his gospel and too intimately woven into it to be treated as incidental. Yet the question, Was Paul apocalyptic? remains a valid one. He did think in terms of the two ages, the Judgment and the resurrection, the reign of the saints and the coming of the Lord. Apparently he also accepted the intermediate messianic kingdom as preceding the age to come I Cor. 15:25-28), after the general pattern of Jewish apocalypses (cf. II Bar. 30:1; II Esd. 7:26-30), although this plays an incidental role in his presentation of end events.
But Paul stands over against the apocalypses in important respects. His OT citations and allusions are from the Pentateuch, Isaiah, and the Psalms prevailingly, and he makes almost no use of the apocalyptical parts of the OT. In contrast to the pseudonymity of the apocalypses, Paul's personality is of significance in his writings. While the epistolary character of our sources guarantees this, it remains true that a thoroughgoing apocalyptist would have regarded an apocalypse as alone worth writing. Furthermore, moral values and motives, peripheral in the apocalypses, are central for Paul. The apocalyptic message was primarily one of comfort for the faithful and of condemnation for unbelievers. Paul's eschatology had a different relevance to his ethics (see § B10c below) than in the Jewish apocalypses. Finally and chiefly, the apocalyptic dualism--this age and the age to come--has been essentially transformed in Paul's thought. There is no longer a sharp boundary between the now and the then, for "all things are yours, whether ... the present or the future, all are yours" I Cor. 3:21-22). The dualism is now not simply a matter of time or of space, but it is a warfare between flesh and Spirit. Though the believer is still "in the flesh" (Gal. 2:20), he is also "in the Spirit,'" and the Spirit dwells in him. The age of the Spirit is yet to come, but the reality of the Spirit's presence is the guarantee of victory and of participation in the kingdom of God (Rom. 14:17). Paul puts this in a striking phrase inI Cor. 10:11: "written down for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come." He believes that he and his readers "stand in the isthmus of time between the ages," or better, he believes that the age to come can be entered from within history. Indeed, Paul has lifted the eschaton out of the "dimension of cosmic into the realm of historic occurrence." Accordingly, while it is correct to say that Paul accepted and employed apocalyptic, it is more accurate to say that he stands above apocalyptic, unconfined by its boundaries. This age of historical time has yet opportunities opening out into the age to come. That age has invaded this in Christ and the Spirit.
c. Eschatology and ethics. Paul's ethical teaching is surprisingly free from an explicit eschatological sanction and motivation. It is, of course, true that all his exhortations to right conduct imply the "new creation" in Christ II Cor. 5:17), which is to be consummated in salvation as an end event. Behavior, however, is usually the "fruit of the Spirit" (Gal. 5:22-23). "Love is the fulfilling of the law" (Rom. 13:8-10), and it is through the Holy Spirit that "God's love has been poured into our hearts" (Rom. 5:5). Paul seeks to work out each ethical problem to the "way" of love (ajgaVph). In two instances he does make explicit use of the eschatological sanction: In Rom. 13:11-12 he follows the important declaration that "love is the fulfilling of the law" (vs. 10b) with the words: "Besides this you know what hour it is ... For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed; the night is far gone, the day is at hand." The imminence of the end is not used to control the content (love) of conduct; it only enforces the relevance of that teaching. The situation in Paul's discussion of marriage iI Cor. 7:1 is quite different, however. Here, in counseling the unmarried to remain in their present state, Paul explicitly introduces the imminence of the end as the reason for his advice (vss. 26, 29). This is the clearest example of "interim ethic" in the NT. It is to be observed that Paul uses eschatology here, not to invalidate the institution of marriage, but only to show its inadvisability in view of the imminent end.
How thoroughly eschatological Paul's thought is can be tested by considering any one aspect of it. He cannot think of the destiny of the Jewish people, e.g., without evaluating their present rejection of the gospel in terms of the ultimate purpose of God (Rom. 9:1-11). Salvation, the conduct of the believer, the unceasing battle with the flesh--every aspect of the new life is at once a mingled faith and hope and a definitive assurance of victory. Yet Paul was never obsessed with speculations about the end, else we would have had only an apocalypse from his pen. His letters are replete with admonitions, exhortations, warnings, and encouragements. He is convinced that "the form of this world is passing away" I Cor. 7:31), but what saves him from being an apocalyptist is the event of Christ and the gift of the Spirit. Because of these events human history is now conjunct with the age to come. The day is dawning, and the eyes of faith can see its approaching glory. To the Christians at Thessalonica who are tempted to sloth by the imminence of the end, Paul writes a sharp rebuke II Thess. 3:6-12). The nearness of the end should mean the release, the enhancement, the revitalization, of the whole man to live the new life. What the end means is a new range and significance for life here and now "so that whether we wake or sleep we might live with him" I Thess. 5:10). Into this temporal, transient age new and lasting powers and values have come. Love, "poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit," lasts on, even when the form of this world passes away. The church is a "colony of heaven" (Phil. 3:20 Moffatt), and the believer is being changed into the Lord's likeness.
11. The permanent significance of Paul. It is hard to write calmly about Paul. Across the centuries, as during his lifetime, he has been the center of controversy arousing passionate defense and equally passionate opposition. The fact that his letters were preserved and that they were ultimately accepted as scripture is solid evidence of the verdict of the early church. That verdict has never been successfully challenged. It is true, however, that the significance of Paul's message has been quite variously assessed. Sometimes little more of Paul is known today than the well-loveI Cor. 13:1, together with Rom. 12:1; Phil. 4:8-9; and other such ethical exhortations. Sometimes one would gather from theological works that Paul only wrote a series of proof texts to support and illustrate the rubrics of systematic theology. Perhaps Paul would write again as he did to the church at Philippi: "What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in that I rejoice" (1:18).
Paul himself acknowledged the marks of human frailty both in his thinking and in his doing. His achievement--or, as he would say, what God wrought through him--is the more impressive because of it. He asked and gave significant answers to the major theological questions which were to recur again and again through the subsequent centuries. But perhaps his most creative contribution was the union in him of the universal and the particular, for he released the universal message of Jesus from Jewish limits, laying the foundation for Gentile Christianity, and at the same time he planted little Christian churches in the strategic centers of the NW Mediterranean world in the firm conviction that they were "colonies of heaven," thus influencing and helping to shape the history of the Western world. Paul was an authentic ambassador for Christ whom nothing "in all creation" could separate from the love of God.
Bibliography. W. M. Ramsey, St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen (1896); H. Weinel, St. Paul, the Man and His Work (trans. G. A. Bienemann; 1906); A. Schweitzer, Paul and His Interpreters (trans. W. Montgomery; 1912); R. W. Robinson, The Life of Paul (1918); C. H. Dodd, The Meaning of Paul for Today (1920); G. A. Deissmann, St. Paul: A Study in Social and Religious History (trans. W. E. Wilson; 1926); F. J. Foakes-Jackson, The Life of Saint Paul (1926); B. W. Bacon, The Story of Paul (1927); T. R. Glover, Paul of Tarsus (1930); F. C. Porter, The Mind of Christ in Paul (1930); A.D. Nock, St. Paul (1933); C. A. A. Scott, St. Paul, the Man and the Teacher (1936); J. Weiss, The History of Primitive Christianity (trans. F. C. Grant et al.; 1937), bks. II-III; J. Knox, Chapters in a Life of Paul (1950).

2010-02-28T14:10:00.000-08:00

CONVERSION OF SAUL (9:1-31)
CONVERSION OF CORNELIUS (10:1-11:18)
EARLY HISTORY OF THE CHURCH AT ANTIOCH (11:19-30)
PERSECUTION UNDER HEROD (12:1-25)

ActsExeg.91
This section is clearly the continuation of 8:3 and may come from the same Antiochene source. Harnack, however, assigns it to a special "Pauline source," while Lake thinks that ch. 9, which by giving prominence to Ananias seems to belittle the independence of Paul's apostleship, possibly "partially represents the tradition of Jerusalem as to the conversion of Paul" (Beginnings of Christianity, II, 153).
Saul was a native of Tarsus (21:39), a city important both as a commercial center and as the seat of a famous university. He was of pure Israelite descent and proud of it (II Cor. 11:22; Phil. 3:4-6). At the same time he was by birth a Roman citizen (22:28); and as Tarsus did not possess the civitas, the probability is that his father had obtained the citizenship as a freedman client of some Roman family, possibly the Aemilian house of which "Paul," adopted by Saul as his second name, was a cognomen. The family would be of some distinction and probably fairly well-to-do. By education and upbringing Saul would certainly be bilingual. It is likely that he was first educated at the university in Tarsus, but it is doubtful whether he would be allowed to absorb much purely Greek culture; for later he was sent to study at Jerusalem in the schools of the rabbis, about whom Josephus says that "the only wisdom they prize is a knowledge of our laws and the correct interpretation of the Scriptures." Definite allusions by Paul to classical writers are found only in the speeches of Acts and in passages in the epistles of doubtful authenticity (e.g., Acts 17:28; Tit. 1:12). In Jerusalem his chief mentor was Gamaliel, by whom he was "educated according to the strict manner of the law" (22:3), though, to judge by Gamaliel's attitude to the Christians in 5:34 ff., the teacher can have been marked by little of his pupil's fanaticism. Saul, like Stephen, should probably be ranked as a "Hellenist" Jew, for the accusers of Stephen appear to have been chiefly "Hellenists," and if we are right in identifying Saul closely with them as a member of the synagogue of "those from Cilicia and Asia" (6:9), the inference is that he too be longed to the same class. But he was certainly an "orthodox" rather than a "liberal" Hellenist. His dual character as a Jew speaking the language of Jerusalem and a Roman citizen speaking fluent Greek perfectly fitted him to act as the great missionary mediator between Israel and the empire.
1. THE CONVERSION ITSELF (9:1-19)
After Stephen's death Saul set out to instigate persecution at Damascus, and on the way occurred the event which changed him suddenly from the fiercest enemy of the faith to its foremost apostle. Paul refers four times in his epistles to his conversion experience (Gal. 1:15-16; I Cor. 9:1; 15:8; II Cor. 4:6). From these passages it is clear that he was convinced that the vision had a truly objective reality. He had "seen Jesus our Lord" (I Cor. 9:1) just as truly as had the original disciples. There was for Paul no distinction in kind between the appearance of Christ to himself at his conversion and the appearances to the eleven before the Ascension. Yet at the same time he thought of the vision as an inward revelation. God had been pleased "to reveal his Son in me" (Gal. 1:15). He had had the first of those mystical experiences in which he held communion with the indwelling Christ.
There are three accounts in Acts of Saul's conversion--the present passage; 22:4 ff., in Paul's speech to the crowd at Jerusalem; 26:12 ff., in Paul's defense before Agrippa. In the descriptions of the vision there are minor discrepancies. In 9:7 Saul's companions "stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one"; in 22:9 they "saw the light but did not hear the voice"; while in 26:13-14 there was "a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining round me and those who journeyed with me," but apparently Saul alone "heard a voice." Much more important is the divergence as to how the call to the apostleship of the Gentiles was given to Saul. In 26:16 ff. the commission is given directly to Saul by the risen Christ himself; in 22:21 it is connected with a later vision during a trance in the temple; while in ch. 9 no definite call is given to Saul himself, who is merely told to go to Damascus, where he will receive instructions (vs. 6), while the announcement about Saul's promised mission is made, not to Saul, but to Ananias (vs. 15). In spite of these discrepancies the verbal agreements between the three accounts are such that they are generally considered to be interdependent. Perhaps that in ch. 26, which can be harmonized more easily with Paul's own account in Galatians, approximates most nearly the story in Luke's source, and constitutes the original out of which he has built up the other two accounts in chs. 9 and 22. The most important addition in chs. 9 and 22 is the part played by Ananias. Paul makes no reference to him in Galatians, and his part as intermediary is very difficult to reconcile with Paul's claim that he was an apostle "not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ" (Gal. 1:1). As Lake remarks, "The story of Ananias, as told in Acts ix, seems to be exactly the kind of story against which Paul protests in his epistles" (Beginnings of Christianity, II, 153). Yet a fair case can be made for the substantial truth of Luke's account. Though he may possibly have attributed too much importance to Ananias in Saul's conversion, the latter, on the other hand, in Galatians may well have been tempted to exaggerate his independence of all human instruction, as his chief concern there is to prove that his gospel as preached to the Gentiles is his very own. In the heat of this defense of his independence he may have underestimated the part played by Ananias, apart from whose counsel his conversion might never have been confirmed.
9:2. According to I Macc. 15:15, the Romans had granted to the high priest the right of extraditing to Jerusalem Jewish malefactors who had fled abroad. This would cover the case of Christians from Jerusalem who had taken refuge in Damascus, and the reference here is probably to such rather than to residents of Damascus. The Way was apparently one of the earliest names in Greek for the primitive Christian community (cf. "this Life," 5:20); it occurs six times in Acts, curiously always in passages relating to Paul (9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22). Lake and Cadbury argue that there is no evidence that it represents an Aramaic name, though in rabbinical literature dérekh ("way") is used in the sense of "customs" or "manner of life." Perhaps the word suggests that to their opponents the new Christian "heresy" appeared as a matter of practice rather than of opinion.
4. Saul: Here Saou6l, the Semitic spelling, which is found only here, in vs. 17 below, and in the parallel passages in 22:7 and 26:14 (also in 13:21 of King Saul). According to 26:14, the voice was "in the Hebrew language." Elsewhere the Greek spelling Sau'lov is used (cf. 9:1; etc.).
10-11. A disciple ... Ananias: In 22:12--significantly in a speech to the Jews--Ananias is called "a devout man according to the law"; but he may well have been a Christian "disciple" as well as a loyal Jew, as indeed seems implied by 22:14. If so, he may have been either one of the refugees from Jerusalem, or one of a group of Damascus Jews who had already become Christians. In the house of Judas: For the precise directions cf. 10:6--also in a vision. Is this evidence of a firsthand tradition? Or should we say with Lake and Cadbury that "part of the miraculous motif in such visions is the divine communication of details"?
13. Saints: The common word in Paul's letters for "Christians," but in Acts used only in this chapter (vss. 13, 32, 41) and in the parallel in 26:10.
15. Chosen instrument (skeu'ov ejklogh'v): cf. Rom. 9:22, "vessels of wrath" (skeu6h ojrgh'v)
17. Brother Saul practically means "fellow Christian," and again reminds one that Ananias was a Christian. The Lord Jesus: Note again (cf. on vs. 10) how in Paul's speech to the Jews in 22:14 Ananias speaks in the language of a good Jew. He comes to Saul with a message from "the God of our fathers," and Jesus is called, not "Lord," but "the Just One." As this was probably the earliest title given to Jesus, it may be that the account in ch. 22 has been less extensively edited than the parallel version in ch. 9.
18. Something like scales: Not necessarily anything physical, but a vivid way describing the sense of returning sight. Regained his sight ... was baptized. It is interesting that baptism itself is often called fwtismo6v--"illumination." Thus is fulfilled the promise of the previous verse that Saul should "regain [his] sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit." The gift of the Spirit is brought into the closest connection with baptism.
2. THE IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH (9:20-31)
For the events following Saul's conversion, Acts must be checked by the apostle's own account in Gal. 1:15-24. There are a number of perplexing discrepancies:
(a) Paul states that immediately after his conversion he "went away into Arabia" (Gal. 1:17). Acts says nothing of this and states that in the synagogues immediately he proclaimed Jesus. Here it must be confessed that Luke's account is both historically and psychologically improbable. If the Jewish authorities in Damascus indeed had authority to hand over Christians to an emissary from Jerusalem, they would hardly have allowed that emissary, turned renegade, to preach the faith he came to persecute. Paul himself, too, is much more likely to have sought a quiet breathing space in "Arabia." Like Augustine after his conversion, he went into retreat and "found rest in God from the turmoil of the world."
(b) A more important problem is how to reconcile the two accounts of Paul's first visit to Jerusalem. The following difficulties emerge: (i) Whereas Paul says that it was "after three years" that he went up to Jerusalem, Luke compresses this period and writes when many days had passed--iJkanai6, "an adequate number"--not suggesting any very long period. (ii) Luke states that Paul attempted to join the disciples and that, failing a welcome, Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles. In Galatians Paul states on his oath that he saw none of the apostles save Peter and James the Lord's brother, and that he was in Jerusalem for only fifteen days, and then incognito, being "still not known by sight to the churches of Christ in Judea" (Gal. 1:22). Nothing is said of the fact that Barnabas introduced him. (iii) Luke pictures Paul at Jerusalem preaching boldly in the name of the Lord--a course which, as in Damascus, is not only historically and psychologically unlikely, but also obviously contradicts the impression left by Galatians.
(c) As to Paul's subsequent movements, Acts takes him by way of Caesarea to Tarsus in Cilicia, and in Gal. 1:21 Paul says "I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia." After this we find him in the company of Barnabas at Antioch, whence Barnabas had gone to bring Paul from Tarsus (11:25-26). If the "fourteen years" of Gal 2:1 is correct, Paul must have spent a very considerable period of time, presumably at Tarsus, about which we know nothing, before Barnabas chose him as his colleague at Antioch. Again Paul, intent upon emphasizing his independence, says nothing about his association with Barnabas during this period. But Gal. 2:13 mentions the presence of Barnabas at Antioch, and it is entirely likely that, as Acts 11:26 states, they worked for a year together there before the "famine visit" to Jerusalem (11:30), and their subsequent setting out from Antioch on the first tour (13:4). For the chronology see on 11:30.
Where there is divergence, the Galatian epistle, as our primary authority, must generally speaking be preferred to Acts. The discrepancies suggest that for the early period of Paul's career Luke had no detailed knowledge of events, and filled in his picture in somewhat general terms. It may be that the circumstances of a later visit to Jerusalem have been incorrectly assigned to this first one. We must remember, however, that in Galatians Paul is particularly concerned to stress the immediacy and independence of his apostleship, while Luke throughout wishes to suggest that from the very first there was concord between Paul and the twelve. It is likely that both accounts, but especially Luke's, are unconsciously colored by the respective ends they have in view.
20. Son of God, as a title of Jesus, is used only here in Acts, and significantly it appears here on the lips of Paul, who frequently uses it in his epistles. It was commonly used by the Jews of Messiah (Pss. 2:7; 89:26); and Peter (Matthew 16:16) acknowledges Jesus as "the Christ, the Son of the living God." Here the force of the phrase is still mainly messianic; and it does not, of course, yet convey the full idea that Jesus is "God the Son" in the sense, e.g., of the Nicene Creed.
21. Made havoc: In Gal. 1:13 Paul uses the same Greek word to describe his persecution of the church--"perhaps the nearest approach that there is to verbal evidence of literary dependence of Acts on the Pauline Epistles" (Lake and Cadbury, Beginnings of Christianity, IV, 105; cf. 7:53).
23-25. Paul's own account of this incident in II Cor. 11:32 ff. suggests that he was trying to elude, not a plot against him by the Jews within the city, but the watchfulness of "the ethnarch of King Aretas"--the Nabatean Arab king of Petra--who was presumably "guarding the city" to catch Paul as he came out. Are we to suppose that the Jews had enlisted the help of Aretas against Paul? In that case the ethnarch may have been his representative or consul within the city. Or was Aretas himself hostile to Paul, on account perhaps of his activities in "Arabia"?
30. To Tarsus: Presumably by sea, though Gal. 1:21 ("I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia") is thought by some to imply a route overland through Syria.
31. Another characteristic summary. The Western text is here defective, but the Antiochene text, which often preserves the Western reading, has "churches" in place of "church." If church is the correct reading, this is the best example in Acts of the catholic meaning of the word (see on 5:11). Walking (poreuome6nh): Torrey suggests that this may represent the idiomatic use of the Hebrew hAlakh ("walk"), which indicates that the action of the accompanying verb is continuous. The sense then would be, "and it was continuously multiplied."
F. THE FIRST MISSIONS TO GENTILES (9:32-11:30)
1. PETER'S PRELIMINARY MISSION (9:32-43)
The transition here is abrupt, and the phrase as Peter went here and there among them all is even vaguer in the Greek than in the English. According to Harnack, Luke is drawing again upon the Jerusalem-Caesarean source, the interest of the section up to 11:18 being concentrated on Peter's conversion of the Caesarean Cornelius and his defense of his action at Jerusalem. In that case 9:32 ff. may pick up the story of Peter where it was broken off at 8:25, and among them all may refer to the "many villages of the Samaritans" mentioned in that verse. A still more attractive suggestion is that the events of ch. 12 have been misplaced, and that chronologically 12:1-17 (also from the Jerusalem-Caesarean source) should precede 9:32 ff. (See on ch. 12.) In 12:17 we read that Peter, after his escape from prison, "departed and went to another place." This would lead up well to the equally vague statement in 9:32 that he went here and there among them all. At the moment Peter was a fugitive and had no fixed place of abode.
The narrative, like the story of Peter and John's visit to Samaria (8:14-25), reads like the account of an episcopal tour. "One would say," writes Alfred Loisy, "that the head of the episcopal bench comes to give his recognition and sanction to the results achieved by the zeal of believers whom the persecution of Stephen has scattered towards the coast of Palestine" (Les Actes des Apôtres [Paris: Êmile Nourry, 1920], p. 428). Again, the miracles in this section have been considered somewhat suspect because they are so obviously parallel with certain prominent miracles both in the Gospels and in the O.T. The healing of Aeneas recalls Jesus' cure of the paralytic (Luke 5:18-26), and the story of Dorcas closely resembles that of the raising of Jairus' daughter (Luke 8:41-42, 49-56), and also awakens echoes of the miracles of Elijah and Elisha (cf. I Kings 17:17 ff.; II Kings 4:32 ff.). Without questioning the general trustworthiness of the narrative, we may admit that it is part of Luke's purpose to show how in the cures of Peter the miraculous activity of Jesus is still being carried on.
32. Lydda, between Jerusalem and Joppa, was famous for purple-dyed materials, and after the destruction of Jerusalem it became also a center of rabbinical learning.
34. Make your bed: Cf. Luke 5:24, "take up your bed"; alternatively, "spread your couch," i.e., with a view to eating; for which cf. Luke 8:55 (of Jairus' daughter), "He directed that something should be given her to eat."
35. Sharon is a transliteration of a Hebrew word meaning "the coastal plain."
36. Joppa: The modern Jaffa and the port of Jerusalem. Tabitha is Aramaic for "gazelle," for which the Greek word is "Dorcas." The only way to bring out the point in English translation is to give both the Greek and the English interpretation as in RSV.
39. Widows: Possibly there as nurses and as professional mourners--a part they certainly played at a later date--but more probably simply as Dorcas' beneficiaries.
41. Saints and widows: Though "saints" is the all-inclusive word for "Christians," we need hardly suppose that the widows were not Christians.
43. A tanner: Hardly a suitable lodging for a scrupulous Jew, but it is not likely that Luke is consciously hinting that Peter was becoming more liberal. "A psychologist might think that lodging in so questionable a house may have turned Peter's mind to the problem of clean and unclean foods, which is raised in the next chapter" (Lake and Cadbury, Beginnings of Christianity, IV, 111-12).
2. CONVERSION OF CORNELIUS (10:1-11:18)

As has already been indicated (p. 129, above), it is possible that the account of Peter's escape from prison (12:1-17) has been chronologically misplaced and ought to precede the story of the conversion of Cornelius. It was only after the revolt which followed Herod Agrippa's death (12:20 ff.) that a Roman garrison was established at Caesarea, where Cornelius appears to have been stationed. A consequence of this rearrangement of the sequence of events would be that Peter's activities at Lydda, Joppa, and Caesarea would be taking place during much the same period as the early mission work of Paul and Barnabas at Antioch, and all three would return to Jerusalem to give account of their missions at approximately the same time. For the whole sequence of events see on 12:17.
Luke evidently regards the conversion of Cornelius as an event of supreme importance. He even adopts the literary device, common in epic writing, of twice reporting every detail in the story. Everything that the narrator tells in 10:9 ff. is repeated by Peter in his defense in 11:4 ff.; while the vision of the centurion in 10:3 ff. is described again by Cornelius himself, on Peter's arrival at Caesarea, in 10:30 ff. Such stress can be put on the incident only because Luke regards it as the first case of the admission to baptism of an uncircumcised pagan; and the initiative in this new departure is ascribed, not to Paul, but to Peter. On this account radical scholars summarily dismiss the incident as unhistorical, and use it as one of the chief arguments against the Lukan authorship of Acts. The visions and angelic appearances, it is alleged, give the whole story a legendary coloring. Had Peter been enlightened in so unmistakable a manner about the lack of distinction between clean and unclean food, he could hardly have been guilty at Antioch of the equivocal conduct described in Gal. 2:11-13. Such a vision and the experience that followed it must have been regarded as conferring on Peter not only the right but the duty to evangelize Gentiles, and Peter, rather than Paul, would have to be considered as God's chosen instrument for the pioneering missionary work among pagans. If the whole question of the legitimacy of admitting Gentiles had already been settled in the case of Cornelius (11:18), the later discussions at Jerusalem (Gal. 2:1; Acts 15:1) could never have taken place. On the contrary 11:20 appears to record the first genuine case of preaching to Gentile Greeks, and it cannot have been anticipated by this incident. Finally, a motive for the insertion of this "legend" is ready to hand: From 15:7-9 it is clear that our author actually did think it important to show that it was not Paul but Peter who was the pioneer of Gentile missions. This assumption is the reverse side of his overemphasis upon the Judaistic aspect of Paul (e.g., the circumcision of Timothy in 16:1-3, and his compliance with James in the matter of fulfilling temple vows in 21:17 ff.)--both being due to his desire to gloss over any suggestion of conflict between the Pauline and Petrine parties within the church.
The incident undoubtedly raises difficulties, though they would be lessened by the chronological arrangement suggested above (see again on 12:17). Cornelius was presumably a "God-fearer" (10:2), i.e., an adherent of Judaism who did not accept the conditions of proselytism. But as he was of Gentile birth and not even a proselyte, his admission to baptism without circumcision was a new departure and violated the principles which had hitherto controlled the extension of the church. The question is whether such official action by Peter, and its confirmation by the apostles at Jerusalem, can be reconciled with the future course of events as revealed by Galatians and Acts. Many scholars hold that the proceedings of the "apostolic council" (Gal. 2:1; Acts 15:1) imply that the legitimacy of Gentile missions had never been before the mother church, and that it was the arguments of Paul that first induced the apostles to give their sanction to the new development.
In reply it can be argued that the council at Jerusalem took place at least ten years after Paul's conversion; for a large part of that time Paul presumably had been preaching to Gentiles (Gal. 1:16); and it is scarcely credible that the church at Jerusalem can have been unaware of what he was doing, or that the question of the legitimacy of such a Gentile mission did not occur to its leaders. Indeed Gal. 1:24 ("they glorified God because of me") claims that they actually approved. Moreover Galatians suggests that the new factor which precipitated the trouble later at Jerusalem was not the preaching to Gentiles for the first time, but the renewed question of its legitimacy. The "false brethren" (Gal. 2:4) apparently had come only recently into the limelight, and did not represent the hitherto prevailing attitude of the Jerusalem church. Thus the fact that the legitimacy of Gentile Christianity was re-examined at the council is no proof that it was not at least tacitly recognized at an earlier date; and such recognition may well have been given first as a result of just such an event as the conversion of Cornelius.
It is often objected that the incident robs Paul of his originality as the Apostle to the Gentiles, and that his reference to Peter in Gal. 2:8 as the apostle to the circumcision proves that Peter cannot have preached to Gentiles. But even a notable exception does not make Peter the Apostle to the Gentiles. Nor on the other hand does Paul ever claim that he was the first to preach to Gentiles. His sense of independence and originality sprang not from that but from his conviction that he was called directly by Christ to do for the Gentiles what others were doing in the main for the Jews. The fact that Paul calls Peter the apostle to the circumcision no more proves that Peter never preached to Gentiles than does Paul's claim to be the Apostle to the Gentiles prove that he never preached to Jews; we know in fact that he often did so (I Cor. 9:20).
Peter's behavior toward Cornelius is entirely in line with his impulsive nature, and shows the same uncalculating spirit that later led him to throw aside traditional scruples and live in intimate fellowship with Gentiles at Antioch (Gal. 2:12). But if the story of Cornelius is indeed historical, how are we to explain Peter's subsequent change of front when "he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party"? If the circle around James had sanctioned Peter's conduct with Cornelius at Caesarea, they could, it is argued, hardly have found fault with him for doing the same thing at Antioch; nor could Peter have been so vacillating as thus to disown the crucial step he had taken when he admitted Cornelius to fellowship. This objection rests on a misunderstanding which, it must be confessed, is due partly to Luke himself, who seems throughout to be confusing two distinct questions--social intercourse between Jews and Gentiles, and the admission of Gentiles to the Christian community. In Acts 11:3 the disciples at Jerusalem are represented as criticizing Peter for having held tablefellowship with non-Jews, and it is to this question that Peter's vision on the housetop appears to be related (cf. also 10:28). But the question to which Peter's defense is successfully directed is the admission of Gentiles to Christian baptism--a very different matter. Note too that at 11:18 the church "glorifies God," not because the social barriers between Jew and Gentile have been broken down, but because "to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance unto life." In other words, in the conversion of Cornelius the Jerusalem church recognized what, after renewed criticism by the "false brethren," they reaffirmed at the council--the legitimacy of Gentile Christianity. But they did not yet admit the right of a Jew to disregard the social prohibitions of the Jewish law. Luke may not have clearly realized the distinction between these two steps; hence he too, like modern critics, may have been so puzzled by Peter's vacillation at Antioch that he omitted the incident altogether from his narrative. A clearer perspective may not perhaps excuse Peter's conduct, but it at least makes it understandable.
Our conclusion, then, is that however we may question certain details in Luke's story, there is no reason to doubt that, in the person of Cornelius, Peter admitted the first Gentile, and that the legitimacy of his action was acknowledged by the Jerusalem church. Streeter, after discussing the incident, concludes that "the fundamental fallacy of histories of the Apostolic age inspired by the Tübingen school was the tacit assumption that Gentile Christianity was of one single type, and that that type was the creation of Paul" (The Primitive Church, p. 48). One wishes, that the editors of The Beginnings of Christianity had given more heed to their own admission that "it is one of the mistakes of the Tübingen School that it did not recognize that Peter, not only in Acts but also in the Pauline Epistles, is on the Hellenistic, not on the Hebrew side" (Vol. I, p. 312).
10:1-2. Caesarea was at the time the Roman capital of the province of Judea and as such a garrison town. The Italian Cohort is probably the Cohors II ltalica Civium Romanorum, which was a corps composed of freedmen from Italy and is known to have been stationed in Syria by A.D. 69. The fact that Cornelius' household was also at Caesarea suggests that he may have retired and settled there. Who feared God (fobou6menov to;n qeo6n): A phrase commonly held to be a description of Gentiles who had accepted the truth of the Jewish religion and had become loose adherents of the synagogue, without going the length of being circumcised and becoming full proselytes. That the phrase was often so used is certain--other possible examples in Acts are 13:16, 26. But it is doubtful whether it can be considered a technical designation of a clearly defined group--the non-Jewish fringe attending the synagogues--parallel to Jews and proselytes, or whether it could not also be used on occasion as an honorable epithet of any devout worshiper of God--Jew, proselyte, or Gentile, as the context may decide. An alternative expression is sebo6menov (to;n qeo6n), usually translated "devout," for which see 13:43, 50; 16:14; 17:4, 17; 18:7. (See note, Beginnings of Christianity, V, 84 ff.) The people, i.e., "the Jewish people"--almost a technical use of oJ lao6v, in contrast to ta; e[qnh, the nations or Gentiles.
4. As a memorial: Scripture regularly compares prayer and alms with sacrifice (Ps. 141:2; Phil. 4:18). In the LXX this same Greek word is used of the part of the meat offering that was burned (Lev. 2:1).
7. Those that waited on him: As we would say, "his orderlies."
9. About the sixth hour, i.e., noon, and not a usual hour for prayer, as were the third and the ninth (see 2:15; 10:3, 30). But all the hours mentioned in the N.T. are multiples of three--third, sixth, ninth--and it is possible that the four quarters of the day were used to mark the approximate time.
11. Something descending: The Greek word means any vessel, implement, or object; it is used even of the human body (I Pet. 3:7; I Thess. 4:4).
15. What God has cleansed: Presumably by the command to eat. Or have we an echo of Mark 7:14-23, where Mark's comment on Jesus' teaching is that "thus he declared all foods clean" (RSV)?
19. The Spirit becomes "I" in the next verse and is probably thought of as identical with Jesus. Previously (vss. 13-15) Peter has addressed "the voice" as "Lord." And does Luke intend to distinguish between the "angel" who spoke to Cornelius (vs. 3) and the "Spirit" who spoke to Peter? (See on 8:26.)
25. The Western text is very vivid here: "And as Peter was coming near to Caesarea one of the slaves ran ahead and announced that he had arrived. And Cornelius jumped up and met him."
28. Unlawful (ajqe6miton); cf. I Pet. 4:3, "lawless idolatry." "The word means contrary to qe6miv, the divinely constituted order of things, breaking a taboo" (Lake and Cadbury, Beginnings of Christianity, IV, 117). "Something which is not done" gives the feel of the word, though our expression has not the religious nuance of the Greek word.
34. Peter's speech to Cornelius and his associates follows the same lines as do the other Petrine speeches, the emphasis being on the judicial murder of Jesus by the Jews and on the Resurrection, which vindicates his claims. But this message is now, whether by Peter himself or more probably by Luke, skillfully adapted to a Gentile audience. The catholic relationship of God to the righteous of all nations alike is stressed, and Jesus is no longer, as in 2:36, the Jewish "Lord and Christ," but Lord of all (vs. 36). The fulfillment of purely national messianic expectation falls into the background, and Jesus is presented not only as "Christ," but as judge of the living and the dead (vs. 42). God shows no partiality: Literally "God is not an accepter of faces"; cf. I Pet. 1:17, "who judges each one impartially."
36-38. The Greek is very clumsy, but the RSV gives a perfectly satisfactory rendering: rJh'ma simply picks up lo6gon both being governed by oi[date, while !Ihsou'n ... qeo;v must be regarded simply as an awkward periphrasis for wJv e[crisen !Ihsou'n oJ qeo6v. For the curious adverbial use of ajrxa6menov, the nominative apparently being outside the construction of the sentence, cf. Luke 24:47; see also Luke 23:5; Acts 1:22. Anointed, i.e., "made Christ," "made Messiah"; cf. 4:27. Does this refer to the baptism of Jesus, with the implication that it was only then that he became Messiah? Elsewhere (e.g., 2:36, with which cf. Rom. 1:4) it seems to be suggested that it is in virtue of his resurrection that Jesus is Messiah. But would not Luke himself think of him as Messiah by birth, having been "conceived by the Holy Spirit"? Probably the verse should be taken in a more general sense as an echo of Isa. 60:1, applied by Jesus to himself in Luke 4:18. Oppressed by the devil: All Jesus' miracles and mighty works are regarded in the Gospels and Acts as triumphs over the demonic powers; cf. especially Luke 10:18, where, at the return of the seventy, after hearing the report of their cures in his name, Jesus cries out, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven."
39. On a tree: It is interesting that the same word is used for the cross in I Pet. 2:24, "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree"; cf. also 5:30, again on Peter's lips.
41. Witnesses: The supreme qualification of an apostle; cf. 1:8, 22; Luke 24:48. The reference to eating and drinking is no doubt to meet the objection that the risen Jesus was merely a "ghost"; cf. Luke 24:39 ff.
42. Ordained by God to be judge, i.e., to undertake the supreme function traditionally delegated to him as the "Son of man," whom the book of Enoch, e.g., constantly pictures as judge; cf. I Pet. 4:5, "They will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead," and II Tim. 4:1, "Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead." See 17:31 for another periphrasis for the title "Son of man," which is avoided in Acts--except at 7:56, which is an echo of Luke 22:69--as likely to be unintelligible to Hellenistic readers.
43. Forgiveness of sins, cf. Luke 24:46-47. This idea is greatly emphasized in Acts. Peter's speech in 2:38 claims that the messianic promises are fulfilled by the gift of the Spirit and the forgiveness of sins; and in Paul's speeches the climax to which everything leads up is the forgiveness of sins (see 13:38; 26:18).
44. The word: Not merely Peter's speech, but the gospel message.
48. To be baptized: Does the passive imply that Peter delegated the act of baptism to an assistant? Also cf. Paul's words, "Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel" (I Cor. 1:17). In the name of Jesus Christ: The most primitive formula (cf. 8:16; 19:5) later displaced by the trinitarian formula (Matthew 28:19).
The account of Cornelius' baptism is interesting as combining the primitive point of view, according to which the gift of the Spirit takes the place of water-baptism, and the intermediate position that baptism is at least a necessary condition of admission to the church (see on 2:37). As at Pentecost, the Spirit is given independently of baptism: "While Peter was still saying this [i.e., before there is any mention of baptism] the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word" (10:44). But by the time Luke wrote, baptism was a universally practiced initiatory rite, and so we read here that Peter commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Indeed, Lake suspects that the mention of baptism is due to the writer's preconception that Cornelius must have been baptized before admission to the Christian fellowship. Neither in Peter's own account of the incident (11:15-18) nor in his reference to it at the Jerusalem conference (15:7-9) is there any mention of baptism. When replying to the charge of having treated these Gentiles as members of the fellowship (11:3), Peter insists that in the gift of the Spirit they had already received from God all the authentication that was necessary (11:17). More significantly still, he points his argument by quoting the words "John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit" (11:16). As Lake pertinently asks: "What would have been the point of this quotation if the true end of the story had been, 'So I baptized Cornelius in water'?" (Beginnings of Christianity, I, 341.)
11:1-2. The narrative which follows seems to imply that the church challenged Peter's action and recalled him to Jerusalem to justify it. The Western text, possibly in order to remove this impression, freely rewrites: "So Peter after some time wished to go to Jerusalem ... and he met them [i.e., the leaders at Jerusalem] and reported to them the grace of God. But the brethren of the circumcision disputed with him. ..."
3. The same criticism had been leveled at Jesus himself (Luke 15:2; 19:7).
12. Without hesitation: The Greek properly means "making no distinction" (i.e., between Jew and Gentile); cf. 15:9, where with reference to this same incident we read, "He [God] made no distinction between us and them." In the parallel passage in 10:20 the Greek verb is in the middle voice and is rightly translated "without hesitation," an idea which is picked up in 10:29, "I came without objection." Six brethren: A new detail, not given in ch. 10, but apparently referring to "some of the brethren from Joppa" (10:23) and "the believers from among the circumcised who came with Peter" (10:45).
15-16. At the beginning, i.e., at Pentecost. I remembered: For the formula cf. 20:35, "remembering the words of the Lord Jesus. ... " In the Gospels this saying about baptism is regularly attributed, not to Jesus, but to John the Baptist (Mark 1:8 and parallels). In Acts 1:5 also the words are put on Jesus' lips.
18. They glorified God: Probably in the simple sense of praising God for his great works (cf. 21:20). But the phrase may carry the technical Jewish sense of admitting a previous error, for which cf. John 9:24, "Give God the praise; we know that this man is a sinner." Also cf. Josh. 7:19; Rev. 16:9. This would fit in well with the preceding phrase they were silenced; and the meaning would be that they withdrew their objections to Peter's conduct.
3. EARLY HISTORY OF THE CHURCH AT ANTIOCH (11:19-30)
This section is clearly a continuation of 8:4, the words those who were scattered (vs. 19) being intended to pick up "those who were scattered went about preaching the word" (8:4). Luke is presumably basing his narrative again on the Antiochene source, for now he takes up once again the story of the church at Antioch. Just as Philip preached to the Samaritans and had his work confirmed by Peter and John (8:14-17), and the conversion of Cornelius at Caesarea by Peter was approved by the Jerusalem church (11:18), so now at Antioch a larger Gentile mission is undertaken and is subsequently investigated and blessed by Barnabas (11:22-24). Luke is concerned to show that at each stage of the rapidly expanding Christian mission the innovators carried with them the consent of the mother church.

a) FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH (11:19-21)
The new developments noted in these verses are of epoch-making importance, and they are described with a sobriety, not to say casualness, that contrasts strongly with the highly dramatized story of Cornelius. As Johannes Weiss well says: "The interesting thing about this statement is that the transition to the Gentile mission does not appear here as the result of conscious deliberations and solemn decisions but as an obvious extension of the work, which must have seemed quite natural to these men who had grown up in a Greek environment. And that is at the same time a genuinely historical conception of the course of events, for the great innovations in the life of the spirit are usually brought about in such a way that their first beginnings arrive quietly and imperceptibly, so that when the world becomes aware of them, it is already face to face with accomplished facts"(The History of Primitive Christianity [ed. F. C. Grant; London: Macmillan & Co.; New York: Wilson-Erickson, 1937], I, 171-72).
The chief significance of vs. 20 lies in the assertion that the momentous step of preaching to pagans was taken independently of Paul. Not that we should conclude from this that Paul was forestalled, and that in his Gentile missions he was merely following an example set by Antioch. He was probably already at work himself along similar lines in Syria and Cilicia (Gal. 1:21). It is in fact entirely likely that the initiative was taken in various places by various individuals more or less simultaneously. But the ultimate preponderating importance of Paul's work, the fact that his letters bulk so large in the N.T., while Luke has given to the second part of Acts the form of a history of Pauline Gentile missions--all this has thrown into the shade the early non-Pauline missions to pagans. Yet it is a mistake to regard Paul as the sole founder of Greek Christianity. As Wilhelm Bousset reminds us: "Between Paul and the Palestinian primitive church stand the Hellenistic churches in Antioch, Damascus, Tarsus. ... In any case the development of the Apostle's life took place on the foundation of the Hellenistic churches" (Kyrios Christos [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1926], pp. 75-76). Quite apart from Paul's pioneering it is impossible to say how soon and how far work among Hellenistic Jews would begin to touch pure Gentile Greeks.
This, of course, is the problem raised by the crucial words in vs. 20, some of them ... spoke to the Greeks also. For the distinction between "Hellenes" and "Hellenists" see on 6:1. Though the best-attested reading here is undoubtedly "Hellenists" (@Ellhnista;v with a B), the pointed contrast with to none except Jews makes it certain that the reference is to pure Greeks and not to "Grecizing Jews," and accordingly most editors adopt the reading "Hellenes" or "Greeks" ($Ellhnav with a2 A D). The confusion in the MSS is probably due simply to the fact that the distinctions between various classes within the church were soon forgotten; and after two or three hundred years the difference between a "Hellene" and a "Hellenist," a "Greek" and a "Grecian," became as obscure and as unimportant as it is to the ordinary reader today. But in this particular passage it is just this distinction that gives point to the whole incident.
19. Antioch, on the Orontes, ranked as capital of the East, and was the seat of the imperial legate of the Roman province of Syria and Cilicia. It was, according to Josephus, the third city of the Roman Empire, second only to Rome and Alexandria. The mass of the population would be Syrian, with a large Jewish colony, but its culture was chiefly Greek. It was a very important center of commerce, its port being Seleucia (13:4). Some few miles distant was Daphne, the headquarters of the cult of Apollo and Artemis, and its Daphnici mores became so notorious that when Juvenal wishes to sum up in one line the moral degradation of Rome, the worst that he can say is that "the Syrian Orontes has flowed into the Tiber" (Satires III. 62). The center of gravity of Christianity rapidly passed from Jerusalem to Antioch. Tradition closely associates Peter with the city, naming him as its first bishop; and later illustrious names among its bishops are Ignatius and John Chrysostom.
20. Men of Cyprus and Cyrene: Note 13:1, where Lucius of Cyrene is mentioned with Barnabas of Cyprus (cf. 4:36) among the leaders of the Antioch church. It would be attractive to think of Barnabas as one of the group of early pioneers; but the fact that he was sent from Jerusalem to investigate tells against this, though he was perhaps sent because he was a compatriot of the missionaries. Preaching the Lord Jesus: Or perhaps, "preaching Jesus as the Lord"; for the "gospel" which they preached was in fact the "lordship" of Jesus.
21. The hand of the Lord, being a common O.T. phrase, probably refers to God's assistance, while turned to the Lord rather awkwardly gives the same title again to Jesus.
b) VISIT OF BARNABAS (11:22-24)
Barnabas (for whom see on 4:36), though not one of the twelve, here appears to be ranked as an apostle, for he undertakes the same function of confirmation that was previously performed by Peter and John after Philip's mission to Samaria (8:14-17). He was certainly a much more important figure in the early church than we are apt to realize, and was the leader in the movement which virtually resulted in the transference of the headquarters of the church from Jerusalem to Antioch. When he linked up with Paul, the latter occupied for a time a quite subordinate position; and indeed Paul's whole future work may have owed more than is commonly acknowledged to the encouragement of Barnabas, the "Son of encouragement." It is interesting that one who was a "Levite" (4:36), and presumably closely associated with the national cult, could detach himself so far from his Jewish connections as to identify himself so fully with the Hellenistic movement, even though later, on one famous occasion, his early prejudices reasserted themselves (Gal. 2:13).
The present mission of Barnabas to Antioch, as a representative of the Jerusalem church, is suspect to some scholars on the following grounds: (a) Barnabas is much more likely himself to have been one of the Cypriote pioneers (cf. 11:20); (b) in the sequel he appears, not as a representative of Jerusalem reporting on Antioch, but as a representative of Antioch acting as a delegate of his fellows in a mission to Jerusalem (11:30; 12:25); (c) the incident, like the mission of Peter and John to Samaria, merely illustrates the quite artificial "thesis" of our author that every new development must receive apostolic confirmation. But, as will be argued below, one of the main objects of the visit to Jerusalem mentioned in 11:30 was in fact to report back to Jerusalem on the situation at Antioch. Moreover Gal. 2:11-13, and the apostolic decrees mentioned in ch. 15, make it clear that the Jerusalem church did actually claim some oversight over the churches of Syria and Cilicia. There is therefore really no difficulty in supposing that Barnabas, who was already a prominent figure at Jerusalem, was sent to investigate the pioneering activities of his fellow Cypriotes.
22. They sent: Perhaps Luke is suggesting that Barnabas went in the role of an "apostle"; the wider use of this title is already becoming apparent (see on 1:12).
23-24. Grace ... glad (ca6rin ... ejca6rh): In the Greek there is a graceful play on the words impossible to reproduce in English (cf. Jas. 1:1-2). But is it intentional? With steadfast purpose, literally "with the purpose of their heart," an unusual expression which occurs elsewhere only in Symmachus' Greek translation of Ps. 10:17. Barnabas' personal qualities of goodness and faith are described as due to possession by the Spirit, as was Stephen's eloquence (6:10).
c) PAUL COMES TO ANTIOCH (11:25-26)
At this point we pick up again the thread of Paul's life. After his first visit to Jerusalem he had gone into the "regions of Syria and Cilicia" (Gal. 1:21); and he himself states that it was only "after fourteen years" (Gal. 2:1) that he again visited Jerusalem--the point which we reach at 11:30. Most of the time may well have been spent at Tarsus, whither Luke tells us he went immediately after his first visit to Jerusalem (9:30). From Acts one certainly does not gain the impression that anything like so long a period as fourteen years has elapsed between 9:30 and 11:30, and the "fourteen years" of Gal. 2:1 may possibly be a primitive scribal error for "four" (see note on p. 152). If the time was indeed as long as Galatians states, Paul may have been engaged in wider missionary activities of which we know nothing, and it may be that some of the events mentioned in the long catalogue of sufferings in II Cor. 11:23-27 must be fitted into this period. Certainly neither Gal. 1:21 nor Acts 9:30 necessarily implies that Paul never moved outside Syria and Cilicia. But all this is only speculation, for the truth is that neither from Acts nor from Paul's letters do we know anything certain about Paul's life during this intervening period before the so-called first missionary journey. But, as Weiss shrewdly points out, this silence of Acts has some bearing upon our judgment of its historical trustworthiness: "This phenomenon is of the highest importance in connection with the origin of the narratives of the Book of Acts. If they were fiction, based perhaps upon Galatians, we should certainly have had some stories about this period. Why could not the imaginative author of the Acta Pauli just as well have thought up something about his mission in Tarsus or in Gyrene as about the later period?" (History of Primitive Christianity [ed. F. C. Grant; London: Macmillan & Co.; New York: Wilson-Erickson, 1937], I, 205.) However Paul was occupied, these early years, of which we know absolutely nothing, must have been of supreme importance. In them Paul found himself and thought out the gospel which he purposed to proclaim. It was as no mere novice that he set out on his great tours; he was already a missionary of long and varied experience. "It cannot be too much insisted upon that the real development of Paul both as a Christian and as a theologian was completed in this period which is so obscure to us, and that in the letters we have to do with the fully matured man" (ibid., I, 206).
Barnabas now brings Paul from Tarsus to be his colleague at Antioch, where they spend a whole year together (vs. 26). In Galatians, Paul says nothing of this time spent with Barnabas at Antioch, for the reason no doubt that at the moment he is concerned chiefly with his contacts with the original apostles, and his silence has led to questions as to the historicity of Luke's notice. But we know from Gal. 2:11-13 that some four years later Paul and Barnabas were again at home together at Antioch, whither they had returned from the first missionary tour (14:26); and it is entirely reasonable to suppose that Paul may have first been brought there under the circumstances described in Acts, and may have labored there for a time before starting out on his tour with Barnabas.
25. To look for Saul: The turn of the sentence gives the impression, perhaps quite unintentionally, that our author thinks of Paul as not being at the moment prominently in the public eye.
26. They met with the church, or possibly, "they were entertained by the church"; the Greek word is the same as in Matthew 25:35, "I was a stranger and you welcomed me." Christians: In the N.T. the word occurs only here, in 26:28, and in I Pet. 4:16. The word has the usual Latin termination denoting "a partisan off"--as Herodian, Caesarian, Pompeiian--and shows that already the word "Christ" was in common use as a proper name. The intention of the folk of Antioch was doubtless to fasten on the disciples a kind of party designation as a nickname. Within the church the same termination later labeled various heretics--Basilidians, Valentinians, Arians. As the word "Christ," meaning "anointed" or Messiah, must have been unintelligible to Greek pagans, it is possible that the disciples were in fact first called "Chrestians"--Chrestus being a common enough Greek proper name, meaning "good." This seems to have been the view of Suetonius, who tells us that the Jews had made disturbances at Rome "at the instigation of Chrestus" (Claudius 25). Paul never uses the adjective, but uses in its place various adaptations of his favorite phrase "in Christ"--e.g., "I know a man in Christ" (II Cor. 12:2).
d) VISIT TO JERUSALEM AT THE TIME OF THE FAMINE (11:27-30)
This paragraph raises difficult problems both of history and of criticism. Barnabas and Paul are represented as visiting Jerusalem as the bearers of relief from the richer church at Antioch to the presumably poverty-stricken church of Judea--a mission which would mark a significant stage in the transference of the church's center of gravity from Jerusalem to Antioch. Critics doubt the historicity of this visit on the following grounds: (a) The alleged motive for the visit is to be dismissed, for no such prophecy as that of Agabus could possibly have been made. The reference to Agabus is itself a mere "doublet" of 21:10-11, where the same prophet intervenes at Caesarea on the eve of Paul's last visit to Jerusalem, when the latter was once again traveling as a "relief agent" and carrying the "collection" from the Gentile churches. (b) On the usual critical reconstruction there is no reference in Galatians to this visit, usually called the "famine visit." The visit described by Paul in Gal. 1:18-24 obviously corresponds with that of Acts 9:26-29. The second visit mentioned in Galatians (2:1-10) has been generally considered to be the same as that described at length in Acts 15:2-29--usually called the "council visit"--though the identification results in almost insoluble historical difficulties (see on ch. 15). Accordingly we have in the present passage mention of a visit to Jerusalem falling apparently between the two mentioned by Paul. Now Paul in Galatians is concerned to narrate his every movement, in particular his visits to Jerusalem, in order to prove that at no time did he come into such close contact with the original apostles as might invalidate his claim to have received his own apostolic commission directly from Jesus. His object is to prove that "the gospel which was preached by me is not man's gospel. For I did not receive it from man" (Gal. 1:11-12). Unless he is deliberately deceiving his readers, it is difficult to suppose that he paid another visit in the interval between the first visit and that to the council. In particular would it have been disingenuous to remain silent about an official visit to Jerusalem as a delegate from Antioch. Whether in fact he did or did not see the apostles, here was an opportunity to do so that might have been held up against him. If the visit did take place, then he must have mentioned it.
Various solutions of the puzzle have been propounded: (a) The whole incident can be explained as a vague reminiscence, or transposition, of the "great collection" undertaken later by Paul as a result of the demand made at the council that the Gentile churches should "remember the poor" (Gal. 2:10). (b) Paul may have been appointed to accompany Barnabas, but for some unexplained reason only Barnabas went. Luke, finding the appointment noted in his sources, drew the natural conclusion that Paul did in fact go. (c) The account of the "famine visit" here and that of the "council visit" in ch. 15 are "doublet" descriptions of the same visit, derived from different sources and narrated from different viewpoints. The author, it is suggested, found in his sources two independent accounts of the same journey, the one stressing the generosity of the Antioch church, the other concerned with the debate at Jerusalem on the question of the legitimacy of Gentile Christianity. The first may be held to reflect the attitude of Antioch, the second that of Jerusalem. Supposing these two accounts to refer to different events, the author inserted this first one in what seemed to him a convenient place. It might even be suggested that the mutilation of the original order of events has been glossed over by the insertion of the story of the persecution by Herod (ch. 12, which we have already seen to be misplaced), while the notice in 12:25 serves to bring Paul and Barnabas back to Antioch, whence Luke has quite unhistorically taken them. This reconstruction is ingenious and cannot be rejected out of hand. It is adopted by almost all modern radical critics. But against it stands the fact that it does nothing to explain the serious discrepancies between Gal. 2:1-10 and Acts 15:1. (d) Preferable to any of these is the alternative solution, first suggested by Sir William M. Ramsay in 1895, and supported by C. W. Emmet in an essay in The Beginnings of Christianity (II, 277 ff.). This solution is that the visit of Gal. 2:1-10 should be identified, not with the "council visit," but with the "famine visit"--these two visits being rightly distinguished by Luke as two separate events. There are clear hints both in Acts and in Galatians that this is the correct solution.
First, then, in Acts: In 11:22 Barnabas had been sent in the name of the Jerusalem church on a mission of investigation into affairs at Antioch. It is natural to assume that he would return to Jerusalem to report. This he did, at the same time taking Paul with him and acting as commissioner for Antioch in the delivery of the famine relief. It is the latter aspect of his mission that at this point interests Luke, as an example of how the center of gravity is passing to the Gentile churches. But at the same time, on the basis of Barnabas' report, the whole Gentile question was bound to come up for discussion; and naturally it is this aspect of the mission that interests Paul as he writes his account in Gal. 2:1. The idea that this question could not have been raised till the later council is contradicted both by the reference in 11:20 to the mission to Gentiles conducted by the Antioch church, and also by all a priori probabilities. But the discussion indicated in Gal. 2:1 is still private and informal; the controversy was not yet at the stage of public debate, which it reaches at the council meeting of Acts 15:1.
In Galatians, too, several minor references seem to confirm this solution. The words "I went up by revelation" (Gal. 2:2) might refer to the inspired warning given by Agabus in 11:28. Again, Paul's words "which very thing I was eager to do," with reference to the injunction that he and Barnabas should "remember the poor" (Gal. 2:10), fit in excellently in connection with a visit made specifically for charitable purposes. The aorist tense ("I was eager") is almost equivalent to a pluperfect, and fits the fact that Paul had indeed just brought alms to Jerusalem; it would be much less natural if Paul was merely anticipating the later "great collection for the saints." Finally, Peter's ambiguous conduct in Antioch, mentioned in Gal. 2:11 ff., is much more understandable if it took place before the debate at the later council, perhaps during the difficult days referred to in Acts 15:1-2. Indeed, on the supposition that Gal. 2:1-10 is describing the "council visit," so incredible has Peter's action seemed that some scholars have suggested that Paul in Gal. 2:1 is not treating events in strict chronological order, and that Peter's visit to Antioch was in fact earlier than the council at Jerusalem (so Turner, "Chronology of the New Testament," Dictionary of the Bible, ed. James Hastings [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1900]). The proposed solution harmonizes Acts and Galatians without the need for any such adroit manipulation.
Finally, as to chronology: We know from Josephus (Antiquities XX. 5. 2) that a famine took place ca. A.D. 46, and this may be accepted as the date of the second or "famine visit" of Paul to Jerusalem. According to Gal. 2:1, the first visit was "fourteen years" earlier, which, on the inclusive method of reckoning, would place it in 33. Paul's conversion, being "three years" earlier still (Gal. 1:18), would have to be dated as early as 31, perhaps not quite impossibly early, if the Crucifixion is dated in 29 or 30. But the difficulty of such an early date for the conversion, and of the long period of fourteen years, about which we know nothing, spent in Syria and Cilicia (Gal. 1:21), has led to the surmise that in Gal. 2:1 Paul really wrote "after four years." We would then have two possible series of dates:
The conversion 31 or 39
The first visit ("after 3 years"--inclusive) 33 or 42
The "famine visit" ("after 14 years") 46 or 46 ("after 4 years")
The "council visit" 49
Between the second and third visits there took place the first missionary tour (ca. 47-48) and probably the writing of Galatians--for the whole problem is intimately bound up with the "South Galatian theory" and the early dating of Galatians. These problems will be discussed later in connection with ch. 15. Alternatively, those who identify the visit of Gal. 2:1 with the "council visit" must date: the conversion ca. 36; first visit ("after three years") 39; "council visit" ("after fourteen years"--dating inclusively not from the last mentioned visit but, surely most unnaturally, from the conversion) 49. Galatians, of course, on this hypothesis was written after the council.
If the "famine visit" is, as we conclude, historical and separate from the "council visit," it marked a real crisis in Paul's career. If the account in Galatians is correct concerning the first visit, this second visit must have been Paul's real introduction to the Jerusalem church. Accompanied by Barnabas, the most honored representative of Hellenistic Christianity, he would receive a welcome and a recognition which he had not formerly enjoyed; and doubtless he and Barnabas would obtain at least provisional sanction for their projected Gentile tour.
27. Prophets are frequently mentioned in the N.T. and are usually ranked next to apostles (I Cor. 12:28; Eph. 2:20; 3:5; 4:11; Rev. 22:9). In Acts they are mentioned in 13:1; 15:32; 21:9-10. It is obvious that they exercised their function in virtue of charismatic personal gifts rather than of official standing, and there is no evidence that they were in any way ordained to office. The instructions which Paul lays down concerning them (I Cor. 14:29-39) make it clear that their enthusiasm sometimes outran their sense of order and decency. Hence the injunction to "test the spirits to see whether they are of God" (I John 4:1; cf. I Thess. 5:20-21).
28. Agabus is mentioned also in 21:10, where he warns Paul of the fate that awaits him at Jerusalem. The Western text here reads, "And there was much rejoicing, and when we had conversed together...." The verse thus becomes the first of the "we" passages. If the reading is genuine, it suggests that the diary source, here used for the first time, originated in Antioch; if it is not genuine, it at least shows that the "Western" reviser may have connected Acts with Antioch. The days of Claudius: Both Tacitus (Annals XII. 43) and Suetonius (Claudius 18) confirm that there were several famines in Claudius' reign (A.D. 41-54), while Josephus (Antiquities XX. 5) mentions one in Judea which was at the worst ca. A.D. 46.
30. The elders: Mentioned now for the first time as specifically Christian office-bearers. Here they are perhaps the presidents of the house churches of Jerusalem; and in 15:6, 23 they appear with the apostles as a kind of church council. The fact that the alms from Antioch were handed over to them suggests that one of their duties was to act as relief officers. (For their possible relationship to "the seven" see on 6:6.) The fact that on this occasion the alms were handed over to them need not imply that the apostles were absent from Jerusalem, possibly on account of Herod's persecution, as is urged by those who decline to identify this visit with that of Gal. 2:1. It was not in any case the business of the apostles "to serve tables" (6:2). Whether "elders" would as early as this be officially ordained is doubtful, but 14:23 (where see a fuller discussion) shows that in the Pauline churches the custom quickly arose of so consecrating them to their office, though it may be that Luke's language reflects the usage of a slightly later time.
G. PERSECUTION UNDER HEROD (12:1-25)

ActsExeg.121
This chapter is in the nature of an interlude; as already noted (pp. 151-52), it has been suggested that it was inserted to fill the gap between two accounts of one and the same visit to Jerusalem. But if the story of Peter's escape from imprisonment by Herod is historical, it is one of the few incidents in the first half of Acts that can be dated with relative certainty. It must have happened in A.D. 44, the year Herod died (Josephus Antiquities XIX. 8.2), for it is plain that Peter left Jerusalem just before Herod's death, probably in the spring of 44. It follows that Peter's imprisonment took place before the famine and Paul's visit to Jerusalem, which cannot have been earlier than 45 or 46. Therefore, strictly speaking, ch. 12 ought to come before 11:19 ff. If the two visits of Paul to Jerusalem mentioned in chs. 11 and 15 respectively are still held to be doublet accounts of the same visit, then the present Herod section will be correctly placed in relation to the Jerusalem version (ch. 15), but wrongly placed in relation to the Antioch version (ch. 11). This would be natural enough, for the story about Herod clearly would be part of the Jerusalem tradition.
Our reconstruction of the order of events may be further helped by the curiously vague remark about Peter in vs. 17, Then he departed and went to another place. Where did Peter go? We have already remarked that chronologically ch. 12 must come before 11:19 ff. Immediately preceding this is the story about Cornelius, introduced at 9:32 with an equally vague reference to Peter going "here and there among them all." No explanation is given of how he came to be so doing. The placing of 12:17 before 9:32 would give an excellent sequence, and explain both the vagueness of the reference to "another place" and the reason why Peter came thus to be wandering about. At the moment, having fled from the persecution of Herod, he had no fixed place of abode.
An attractive consequence of this reconstruction would be that Peter's activities in Lydda, Joppa, and Caesarea (the conversion of Cornelius) would be taking place at much the same time as the early mission work of Paul and Barnabas at Antioch. Peter would return to Jerusalem at just about the same time as Paul and Barnabas came there on their "famine visit." Peter's argument with the narrower Jewish faction (11:1 ff.) would take place not far from the time when Paul conferred with the same faction during the "famine visit," as recorded in Gal. 2:1. Thus the question of the legitimacy of Gentile missions would be very much in the limelight, and the development of the mission of Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem, which according to Acts 11:29-30 was originally merely charitable, may well have been along the lines indicated in Gal. 2:1. The chronological order of events would then be as follows:
(a) Acts 12:17, Peter's escape from Jerusalem (A.D. 44)
(b) Acts 9:32-10:48, Peter's tour through Palestine to Caesarea and the conversion of Cornelius (44-45)
Acts 11:22-26, the work of Barnabas and Paul at Antioch (44-45)
(c) Acts 11:28, the famine in Palestine (45-46)
(d) Acts 11:2, Peter's return to Jerusalem (early 46)
Acts 11:30, the "famine visit" of Paul and Barnabas (early 46)
Gal. 2:1-10, the discussion at Jerusalem (early 46)
The persecution under Herod was apparently not very general, but was directed mainly against the church's leaders. Some scholars believe that at this time not only James but also his brother John was martyred. It is regarded as strange that the persecution did not touch John, who from the beginning of the narrative appears with Peter as one of the two leading representatives of the Jerusalem church. Moreover he is not again mentioned in Acts. (The best discussion of this possibility is in R. H. Charles, The Revelation of St. John [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920; "International Critical Commentary"], I, xlv ff.) The actual evidence in support of John's early martyrdom is slight enough: (a) The prophecy of Mark 10:39 which, it is held, would gain point if, at the time Mark wrote, it was known to have been fulfilled in the case of both brothers. Curiously Luke omits the prophecy from his Gospel. (b) A statement of Philip of Side (fifth century) in the "de Boor fragment" that "Papias in his second book says that John the divine and James his brother were killed by the Jews." (c) Two early martyrologies which commemorate the martyrdom of James and John on the same day, December 27. (d) The silence concerning any later residence of the apostle John in Ephesus both on the part of Acts and also of Ignatius in his Epistle to the Ephesians (A.D. 110-15). Each of these pieces of evidence is disputed and quite inconclusive; but the cumulative effect is considerable, and as Streeter remarks, "The wonder is that any evidence at all should survive of a tradition apologetically so inconvenient as that of John's early death" (Four Gospels, p. 435).
Loisy argues that the editor of Acts suppressed not only the death of John but also the account of a judicial process against James. He considers it incredible that the death of James could have been dismissed in a single sentence, when so much space is given to Peter's escape. The motive alleged is that the editor is unwilling to imply that a Christian leader could be guilty of an infraction of the law so grave as to justify a capital sentence after formal trial. This surely is sheer perversity! The disproportion between the attention given to James and to Peter is understandable enough if we remember that Peter's story is one that catches the imagination and lends itself to edifying use. Again, the remark that the murder of James "pleased the Jews" (vs. 3) is supposed to imply that there was a formal trial before the Sanhedrin. This too is pure assumption. If the author had found in his sources an account of such a trial, there is no reason whatever why he should have suppressed it; for his tendency is to emphasize the guilty responsibility of the Jewish religious leaders rather than of the civil power as represented here by Herod. If we ask in surprise why so little is said about the first martyrdom--so far as we know--of one of the twelve, the answer perhaps is that the brevity of the notice reflects the true instinct of the early church, which, in its ardent expectation of Jesus' speedy return, regarded bodily death as insignificant. Finally, it is not surprising that Loisy concludes that the whole story of Peter's escape is fiction, based entirely on the known fact that whereas James was martyred, Peter escaped from Jerusalem. But whatever the marvelous coloring of the story, there are circumstantial details (especially vss. 12-17, the house of Mary; ... a maid named Rhoda) which suggest that the story came from one who knew the topography of Jerusalem and was possibly even present in the house when Peter arrived. It seems to be a true story of escape--no doubt with certain miraculous embellishments--preserved in order to explain how it was that Peter, who ought to have been one of the first victims, succeeded in escaping death. A real escape is described in terms of current belief--the unexpected, whatever the true source of rescue, being ascribed to angelic intervention. In so far as the details are true Peter himself may well have been the original source of information; John Mark may have been an eyewitness and may have heard Peter's story; and from Mark, Luke may have had it at first hand.
12:1. Herod the king is Herod Agrippa I, the grandson of Herod the Great (Luke 1:5), and should be distinguished from the Herod Antipas of the Gospels, who was one of Herod the Great's sons and ruler of Galilee and Perea. Agrippa was brought up in Rome in intimate relations with the imperial family, and was a close friend of the young Caligula, who on his accession gave him the title of "king" and bestowed upon him the tetrarchy of Philip (Luke 3:1), to which he shortly afterwards added also the tetrarchy of Herod Antipas. The Emperor Claudius, in whose succession to Caligula Herod had been instrumental, added Judea and Samaria. Agrippa, hitherto still at Rome, then returned to Judea, and in order to win the favor of the people showed great zeal in the practice of the outward rites of Judaism. Another outlet for this religious patriotism he found in this persecution of the "Nazarenes." After his death in A.D. 44 the whole of Palestine became a Roman province. Agrippa II, before whom Paul made his defense (25:13 ff.), was his son.
2. James the brother of John: The son of Zebedee. In the Gospels the order of the names is reversed, "John the brother of James" (Mark 5:37); but by the time Acts was written John was the more prominent, and in 1:13 is mentioned before James, about whom nothing more is known. Some who accept the hypothesis of John's early martyrdom think that the original text here read, "killed James and his brother John"--a tour de force in the interests of a theory!
3. The days of Unleavened Bread, strictly speaking, came after the Passover and not before it, as the somewhat careless writing here would seem to suggest. The "Passover" was on Nisan 14, and "the days" followed from the fourteenth to the twenty-first. But apparently Luke regarded the two terms as synonymous, for in Luke 22:1 he writes that "the feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called the Passover."
4. Four squads, a quaternion for each of the four watches of three hours. Bring him out (ajnaga6gein), i.e., for public execution. After the Passover: Cf. Mark 14:2, "Not during the feast, lest there be a tumult of the people."
5. Earnest prayer: The same Greek word that is used of Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane (Luke 22:44).
6. Bring him out (here proa6gein): Probably with the same meaning as in vs. 4, but possibly (like prosaga6gein, 16:20) "bring out for trial."
10. The first and the second guard: Of the four soldiers on duty (vs. 4) two would be chained to Peter while the other two mounted guard. The Western text adds that when Peter and the angel "went out, they descended the seven steps"--possibly the same steps from which on a later occasion Paul addressed the people (21:40). For though we do not know where Peter's prison was, it may well have been the Tower of Antonia. This had gates leading both to the temple and into the city.
12. The house of Mary was, according to church tradition which can be traced back to the fourth century, the house in which was the upper room, where the Last Supper took place. If, as tradition also holds, it was the headquarters of the Jerusalem church, vs. 17 shows that "James and the brethren" were not resident there at the moment. Were they hiding from persecution? The mother of John whose other name was Mark: Have we a hint here that the original source of the story was Mark himself? The latter is again mentioned in vs. 25; 13:5, 13; 15:37-39. Paul mentions him in Col. 4:10 (as a cousin of Barnabas); Philem. 24:1; II Tim. 4:11; and it is most interesting and significant that on all three occasions Luke's name appears in the same context. The two evangelists evidently had ample opportunity to share their reminiscences.
15. It is his angel. The idea of an accompanying guardian angel may be traced in every stratum of Scripture. In Gen. 48:16 Jacob speaks of "the Angel which redeemed me"; in Dan. 10:20, 21; 12:1 we find guardian angels of nations; and in Rev. 1:20 "the angels of the seven churches." In Tob. 5:21 we are told that "a good angel shall go with him." In Matthew 18:10 the "little ones" have "their angels"; and in Heb. 1:14 we read of "ministering spirits sent forth to serve." Here a distinction is evidently intended between the Lord's "angel" (cf. 8:26) in vs. 11, who is the divine agent of the escape, and Peter's "angel," who is in some way Peter's own spiritual representative--as we should say, "his ghost."
17. James is "the Lord's brother" and apparently at the moment the acting head of the church at Jerusalem. Does this mean that the rest of the twelve had fled temporarily from the city? Peter of course reappears at Jerusalem at 11:2 and at the council in ch. 15. Yet even on that formal occasion it is not Peter but James who, after the debate, delivers the judgment. James's prestige as "the Lord's brother," combined perhaps with the respect with which he was regarded by the Jewish community, evidently quickly gave him preeminence at Jerusalem (see also on 21:18).
To another place: Failing the suggestion made above that this phrase links up the narrative with 9:32, the following explanations have been given of this oddly vague note: (a) Peter simply went to another house in the city, where he could lie low. In 4:31 "the place" seems to be a house. It may be that in the earliest telling of the story there was still a desire to keep the place of refuge secret. (b) Antioch is suggested as a likely place of retreat. But if so, why should the name be suppressed? Loisy thinks the reason is that the name would recall the unfortunate quarrel later at Antioch, when Paul fell out with Peter and Barnabas (Gal. 2:11 ff.)--an incident which Luke ignores in Acts, giving another reason for the estrangement between Paul and Barnabas (15:36 ff.). (c) The early apologists, ignoring the necessity of bringing back Peter to Jerusalem for the council, seized on this phrase as marking the point where Peter departed to take up his bishopric at Rome. But the Epistle to the Romans seems to imply that at the time of writing (A.D. 54) no apostle had yet visited the city. It is most improbable that Peter did any missionary work in Rome so early. It is barely possible, but most unlikely, that, as Rackham suggests, he went to Rome as the best of all hiding places (Acts of the Apostles, p. 180). The tradition that Peter was in Rome in the days of Claudius is bound up with the legends about Simon Magus. (See p. 111 above and B. H. Streeter, The Primitive Church, pp. 15-16.)
19. Put to death: A common enough penalty for a guard convicted of allowing the escape of a prisoner held on a capital charge (Codex Justinianus IX. 4. 4). But the Greek might mean simply "to be led away," i.e., to prison. From Judea to Caesarea: Rather a curious expression, for which cf. 21:10, for Caesarea was in fact the Roman capital of Judea.
20-21. We have no information why Herod was angry with Tyre and Sidon. But whatever the reason, Herod held the trump card, for Phoenicia still depended for its food on the cornfields of Galilee, just as in the days of Solomon (I Kings 5:9). Blastus, of whom we know nothing more, was presumably bribed to obtain favorable terms. The appointed day was, according to Josephus, a feast in honor of the emperor. But Luke seems to mean that a special day was fixed for the reception of the Phoenician delegates. Agrippa's royal robes were, according to Josephus, on this occasion entirely of silver.
22-23. The voice of a god: No very unusual flattery, as Orientals were accustomed to deify their monarchs, and the worship of the "divine" Augustus was rapidly spreading throughout the empire. An angel of the Lord is the usual agent of divine retribution, as in the case, e.g., of Sennacherib's army (II Kings 19:35). Did not give God the glory, i.e., instead of arrogating it to himself. But possibly--specially if with the Western text we read "glory" for "the glory"--this may be the common Jewish expression meaning "admit oneself in the wrong and ask forgiveness" (see on 11:18).
Josephus (Antiquities XIX. 8. 2) gives a vivid account of Herod's death. The superstitious king had been taught to believe that an owl was to be the harbinger of his fate. In the midst of the flattering plaudits of the crowd he saw an owl sitting on the awning of the theater, whereupon he was seized with sudden pains in the belly, was carried to his palace, and died on the fifth day from a loathsome disease.
24-25. These verses are another of the characteristic Lukan "summaries" marking the end of one of the "panels" (see Intro., p. 15). Returned from Jerusalem: This meaning seems obviously required. At 11:30 Barnabas and Paul had come to Jerusalem; they now return to Antioch. But curiously the best MSS, including both Codex Vaticanus (B) and Codex Sinaiticus (a), read "returned to Jerusalem"; and on the accepted principles of textual criticism this ought to be preferred as the more difficult reading and the one more likely to be changed to the easier "from Jerusalem." On the other hand a visit to Jerusalem by Paul would not naturally be called a "return." If "to Jerusalem" is accepted as correct, we must suppose either: (a) The verse picks up and repeats 11:30--perhaps to indicate that the events of ch. 12 preceded the famine and the visit to Jerusalem, as we have seen to have been almost certainly the case. We would then have to translate, "Returned to Jerusalem and fulfilled their mission"--the aorist participle plhrw6santev being "timeless" and here referring to what took place not before but actually after the action of the main verb. For other possible examples of this construction see 16:6; 23:35; 25:13. (b) Translate, by an inversion of the order of the Greek: "Returned [to Antioch] having fulfilled their mission to Jerusalem."
Bringing with them ... Mark: This is in favor of the reading "from Jerusalem," for Mark's home, we know, was in Jerusalem. He was a relative of Barnabas (Col. 4:10), so that the delegates from Antioch may well have stayed at his home. Possibly "John" now took the Roman praenomen or other name of Mark with a view to his coming travels in Gentile districts.

Who Were the Pharisees?

2010-02-21T14:53:00.000-08:00

Pharisees
The word Pharisees (lat. pharisæus, -i) comes from the Hebrew פרושים perushim from פרוש parush, meaning "set apart" [1]. The Pharisees were, depending on the time, a political party, a social movement, or a school of thought among Jews that flourished during the Second Temple Era (536 BCE–70 CE). After the destruction of the Second Temple, the Pharisaic sect was re-established as Rabbinic Judaism — which ultimately produced normative, traditional Judaism, the basis for all contemporary forms of Judaism, with the exception of the Karaites.
Relationship to other movements
The Pharisees were one of at least four major schools of thought within the Jewish religion around the first century and were most prominently in opposition to the Sadducee sect. They were also one of several successor groups of the Hasidim (the "pious"), an anti-Hellenistic Jewish movement that formed in the time of the Seleucid king, Antiochus Epiphanes (175–163 BCE). (This group is distinct from the Hasidism established in 18th century Europe.) The social standing and beliefs of the Pharisees changed over time, such that the role, significance, and meaning of the Pharisees evolved as political and social conditions in Judea changed. The sages of the Talmud see a direct link between themselves and the Pharisees, and historians generally consider Pharisaic Judaism to be the progenitor of Rabbinic Judaism, that is normative, mainstream Judaism after the destruction of the Second Temple.
The first mention of the Pharisees is by the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus, in a description of the "four schools of thought" (that is, sects, social groups, or movements) into which the Jews were divided in the 1st century CE. The other schools were the Essenes, the revolutionaries, and the Sadducees. The Essenes were generally apolitical. The revolutionary groups, such as the Sicarii and the Zealots, emerged specifically to resist the Roman Empire. Other sects emerged at this time, such as the Early Christians in Jerusalem and the Therapeutae in Egypt. The Pharisees and their opponents the Sadducees were two of the earliest sects to emerge in the Second Temple period, as political factions during the Hellenist Hasmonean rule. At no time did any of these sects constitute a majority; most Jews were non-sectarian. However, Josephus indicates that the Pharisees received the backing and good-will of the common people, apparently in contrast to the more elite Sadducees associated with the ruling classes. Nevertheless, these sects are emblematic of the different responses of Jews to the political, economic, and cultural forces that characterized the Second Temple era.
For most of their history, Pharisees considered themselves in opposition to the Sadducees. Conflicts between the Sadducees and the Pharisees took place in the context of much broader conflicts among Jews in the Second Temple era, which followed the Babylonian captivity of Judah. One conflict was class, between the wealthy and the poor. Another conflict was cultural, between those who favored hellenization and those who resisted it. A third was juridico-religious, between those who emphasized the importance of the Temple, and those who emphasized the importance of other Mosaic laws and prophetic values. A fourth, specifically religious, involved different interpretations of the Bible (or Tanakh), and how to apply the Torah to Jewish life, with the Sadducees recognizing only the written letter of the Tanakh or Torah and rejecting life after death, while the Pharisees held to Rabbinic interpretations additional to the written texts.
These conflicts, practically speaking, define the Second Temple Era, a time when the Temple had tremendous authority but questionable legitimacy, and a time when the sacred literature of the Torah, and Bible or Tanakh were being canonized. Fundamentally, Sadducees and Pharisees took clearly opposing positions concerning the third and fourth conflicts, but at different times were influenced by the other conflicts. In general, whereas the Sadducees were conservative, aristocratic monarchists, the Pharisees were eclectic, popular and more democratic. (Roth 1970: 84) The Pharisaic position is exemplified by the assertion that "A learned mamzer takes precedence over an ignorant High Priest." (A mamzer, according to the Pharasaic definition, is an outcast child born of a forbidden relationship, such as adultery or incest, in which marriage of the parents could not lawfully occur. The word is often, but incorrectly, translated as "illegitimate" or "bastard.")[2]
Sadducees rejected the Pharisaic tenet of an oral Torah, and created new interpretations based on a literal understanding of verses.[citation needed] In their personal lives this often meant an excessively stringent lifestyle from a Jewish perspective, as they did away with the oral tradition, and in turn the Pharisaic Jewish understanding of the Torah. An example of this differing approach is the interpretation of, "an eye in place of an eye". The Pharisaic understanding was that the value of an eye was to be paid by the perpetrator[3]. In the Sadducees' view the words were given a more literal interpretation, in which the offender's eye would be removed.[4] From the point of view of the Pharisees, the Sadducees wished to change the Jewish understanding of the Torah.
Pharisees in the Second Temple era
The Persian period
In 539 BCE the Persians conquered Babylon. In 537 BCE, Cyrus the Great inaugurated the Persian period of Jewish history by allowing Jews to return to Judea and rebuild the Temple, which was completed in 515 BCE. He did not, however, allow the restoration of the monarchy, which left the priests as the dominant authority. Without the constraining power of the monarchy, the authority of the Temple was amplified. Around this time the Sadducee party emerged as the party of priests and allied elites; the name Sadducee comes from Zadok. Nevertheless, the Second Temple had been constructed under the auspices of a foreign power, and there were lingering questions about its legitimacy. This provided the condition for the development of various sects (including Josephus's "schools of thought"), each of which claimed exclusive authority to represent "Judaism," and typically shunned social intercourse, especially marriage, with members of other sects.
One of the earliest of these competing sects, the Pharisees, had its origins in a relatively new group of authorities — scribes and sages. The end of the Babylonian Exile saw not only the construction of the Second Temple, but canonical selection of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, by the Sanhedrin. Critical biblical scholarship puts forth the claim that the Torah was also redacted during this period according to the documentary hypotheses.
Although the priests controlled the monarchy and the Temple, scribes and sages (who would later come to be addressed as rabbi, "my master") monopolized the study of the Torah, which was read publicly on market-days, a practice which was institutionalized after the return from the Babylonian exile. These sages identified with the prophets (political and religious reformers active in the kingdoms of Judah and Israel), and developed and maintained an oral tradition, which they maintained originated at Mount Sinai alongside the Holy Writ. The rift between the priests and the sages developed during the Hellenistic period, when the Jews faced new political and cultural struggles.
The Hellenistic period
The Hellenistic period of Jewish history began in 332 BCE when Alexander the Great conquered Persia. Upon his death in 323 BCE, his empire was divided among his generals. At first, Judea was ruled by the Egyptian-Hellenic Ptolemies, but in 198 BCE, the Syrian-Hellenic Seleucid Empire, under Antiochus III, seized control of Judea.
The Near East had long been cosmopolitan, and was especially so during the Hellenistic period. Several languages were used, and the matter of the lingua franca is still subject of some debate. The Jews almost certainly spoke Aramaic among themselves. Greek was at least to some extent a trade language in the region, and indeed throughout the entire eastern portion of the Mediterranean. Thus, historian Shaye Cohen has observed that
All the Judaisms of the Hellenistic period, of both the diaspora and the land of Israel, were Hellenized, that is, were integral parts of the culture of the ancient world. Some varieties of Judaism were more hellenized than others, but none was an island unto itself. It is a mistake to imagine that the land of Palestine preserved a "pure" form of Judaism and that the diaspora was the home of adulterated or diluted forms of Judaism. The term "Hellenistic Judaism" makes sense, then, only as a chronological indicator for the period from Alexander the Great to the Macabees or perhaps to the Roman conquests of the first century BCE. As a descriptive term for a certain type of Judaism, however, it is meaningless because all the Judaisms of the Hellenistic period were "Hellenistic."[5]
There are significant distinctions in the manner in which Hellenism influenced factions within the Jewish world of that time. Some assimilated Greek language, dress and sciences. Others wholeheartedly incorporated Greek philosophy and culture, to the point where they assimilated their understanding of Judaism into a Hellenic idiom.
Cultural struggles with Hellenism
Jews had to grapple with the values of Hellenism and Hellenistic philosophy, which were often directly at odds with their own values and traditions. Bath houses were built in Jerusalem, for instance, and the gymnasium became a center of social, athletic, and intellectual life. Many Jews embraced these institutions, although Jews who did so were often looked down upon due to their circumcision, which some Gentiles viewed as an aesthetic defacement of the body. Many Jews lived in the Diaspora, and the Judean provinces of Judea, Samaria, and the Galilee were populated by many Gentiles (who often showed an interest in Judaism). Under such conditions, Jews had to confront a paradox in their own tradition: their God was the God of all, but their covenant with God — the commandments and laws through which this covenant took material and practical form — applied only to them. This tension between the universal and the particular in Judaism led to new interpretations, some of which were influenced by Hellenic thought and in response to Gentile interest in Judaism.
Political struggles with Hellenism
Generally, the Jews accepted foreign rule when they were only required to pay tribute, and otherwise allowed to govern themselves internally. Nevertheless, Jews were divided between those favoring hellenization and those opposing it, and were divided over allegiance to the Ptolemies or Seleucids. When the High Priest Simon II died in 175 BCE, conflict broke out between supporters of his son Onias III (who opposed hellenization, and favored the Ptolemies) and his son Jason (who favored hellenization, and favored the Seleucids). A period of political intrigue followed, with priests such as Menelaus bribing the king to win the High Priesthood, and accusations of murder of competing contenders for the title. The result was a brief civil war. Huge numbers of Jews flocked to Jason's side, and in 167 BCE the Seleucid king Antiochus IV invaded Judea, entered the Temple, and stripped it of money and ceremonial objects. Jason fled to Egypt, and Antiochus imposed a program of forced hellenization, requiring Jews to abandon their own laws and customs. At this point Mattathias and his five sons, John, Eleazar, Simon, Jonathan, and Judah Maccabee, priests of the Hasmon family living in the area of ancient Modi'in, assumed leadership of a bloody revolt against the Seleucids.
Judah liberated Jerusalem in 165 BCE and restored the Temple. Fighting continued, and Judah and his brother Jonathan were killed. In 141 BCE an assembly of priests and others affirmed Simon as high priest and leader, in effect establishing the Hasmonean dynasty. When Simon was killed in 135 BCE, his son John Hyrcanus took his place as high priest and king.
The Hasmonean period
After defeating the Seleucid forces, Judah's nephew John Hyrcanus established a new monarchy in the form of the priestly Hasmonean dynasty in 152 BCE — thus establishing priests as political as well as religious authorities. Although the Hasmoneans were heroes for resisting the Seleucids, their reign lacked the legitimacy conferred by descent from the Davidic dynasty of the First Temple Era.
The emergence of the Sadducees, Essenes, and Pharisees
The rift between the priests and the sages grew during the Hellenistic period, when the Jews faced new political and cultural struggles. Around this time the Sadducee party emerged as the party of the priests and allied elites (the name Sadducee may come from Zadok).
The Essenes may have emerged as a sect of dissident priests. They are believed to have rejected either the Seleucid appointed high priests, or the Hasmonean high priests, as illegitimate. Ultimately, they rejected the Second Temple, arguing that the Essene community was itself the new Temple, and that obedience to the law represented a new form of sacrifice.
The Pharisee ("separatist") party emerged largely out of the group of scribes and sages who harked back to Ezra and the Great Assembly. The meaning of the name is unclear; it may refer to their rejection of Hellenic culture or to their objection to the Hasmonean monopoly on power. It is difficult to state at what time the Pharisees, as a party, arose. Josephus first mentions them in connection with Jonathan, the successor of Judas Maccabeus ("Ant." xiii. 5, § 9). One of the factors that distinguished the Pharisees from other groups prior to the destruction of the Temple was their belief that all Jews had to observe the purity laws (which applied to the Temple service) outside the Temple. The major difference, however, was the continued adherence of the Pharisees to the laws and traditions of the Jewish people in the face of assimilation. As Josephus noted, the Pharisees were considered the most expert and accurate expositors of Jewish law.
During the Hasmonean period, the Sadducees and Pharisees functioned primarily as political parties. Although the Pharisees did not support the wars of expansion of the Hasmoneans and the forced conversions of the Idumeans, the political rift between them became wider when a Pharisee suggested that the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus choose between being king and being High Priest. In response, Alexander Jannai openly sided with the Sadducees by adopting their rites in the Temple. His actions caused a riot in the Temple and led to a brief civil war that ended with a bloody repression of the Pharisees, although at his deathbed the king called for a reconciliation between the two parties. Alexander was succeeded by his widow, Salome Alexandra, whose brother was Shimon ben Shetach, a leading Pharisee. Upon her death her elder son, Hyrcanus, sought Pharisee support, and her younger son, Aristobulus, sought the support of the Sadducees. The conflict between Hyrcanus and Aristobulus culminated in a civil war that ended when the Roman general Pompey captured Jerusalem in 63 BCE and inaugurated the Roman period of Jewish history.
Josephus attests that Salome Alexandra was very favorably inclined toward the Pharisees and that their political influence grew tremendously under her reign, especially in the institution known as the Sanhedrin. Later texts like the Mishnah and the Talmud record a host of rulings by Rabbis, some of whom are believed to be from among the Pharisees, concerning sacrifices and other ritual practices in the Temple, torts, criminal law, and governance. In their day, the influence of the Pharisees over the lives of the common people remained strong and their rulings on Jewish law were deemed authoritative by many.
The Roman period
According to Josephus, the Pharisees appeared before Pompey asking him to interfere and restore the old priesthood while abolishing the royalty of the Hasmoneans altogether ("Ant." xiv. 3, § 2). They regarded Pompey’s defilement of the Temple in Jerusalem as a divine punishment of Sadducean misrule. Pompey ended the monarchy and named Hyrcanus high priest and ethnarch (a lesser title than "king"). Six years later Hyrcanus was deprived of the remainder of political authority and ultimate jurisdiction was given to the Proconsul of Syria, who ruled through Hyrcanus's Idumaean associate Antipater, and later Antipater's two sons Phasael (military governor of Judea) and Herod (military governor of Galilee). In 40 BCE Aristobulus's son Antigonus overthrew Hyrcanus and named himself king and high priest, and Herod fled to Rome.
The Herodian dynasty, the procuratorship, and the Sanhedrin
In Rome, Herod sought the support of Mark Antony and Octavian, and secured recognition by the Roman Senate as king, confirming the termination of the Hasmonean dynasty. According to Josephus, Sadducean opposition to Herod led him to treat the Pharisees favorably ("Ant." xiv. 9, § 4; xv. 1, § 1; 10, § 4; 11, §§ 5-6). Herod was an unpopular ruler, perceived as a Roman puppet. Despite his restoration and expansion of the Second Temple, Herod’s notorious treatment of his family and of the last Hasmonaeans further eroded his popularity. According to Josephus, the Pharisees ultimately opposed him and thus fell victims (4 BCE) to his bloodthirstiness ("Ant." xvii. 2, § 4; 6, §§ 2-4). The family of Boethus, whom Herod had raised to the high-priesthood, revived the spirit of the Sadducees, and thenceforth the Pharisees again had them as antagonists ("Ant." xviii. 1, § 4).
After Herod's death in 4 BCE, various radical Jewish elements rose in revolt: Judas in the Galilee (or Judas of Galilee), whose followers tore down the Roman Eagle that had adorned the Temple; Simon in Perea, a former slave of Herod, who burned down the royal palace at Jericho, and Athronges in Judea, a shepherd who led a two-year rebellion. The Syrian legate Publius Quinctilius Varus took command of Judea, Samaria, and the Galilee, and immediately put down the uprisings, killing thousands of Jews by crucifixion and selling many into slavery. Rome quickly re-established governance and divided Herod's kingdom among his sons: Archelaus received the southern part of the territory (Judea and Samaria), Herod Antipas became tetrarch of the Galilee and the southern Transjordan (Peraea), and Philip received the northern Transjordan (Batanaea).
Archelaus antagonized the Jews as his father had, and in 6 CE the emperor Augustus acceded to a delegation by placing Judea and Samaria under the indirect rule of a Roman procurator (or prefect), and the direct rule of a Roman-appointed high priest instead, see Iudaea province [6]. During this period Judea and Galilee were effectively semi-autonomous client-states under Roman tribute. For the most part, Jews were willing to pay tribute, although they complained when it was excessive, and absolutely refused to allow a graven image in their Temple although some emperors considered imposing one. The primary tasks of the tetrarch and high priest were to collect tribute, convince the Romans not to interfere with the Temple, and ensure that the Jews not rebel.
In 57 BCE the Proconsul Cabineus established five regional synhedria (Sanhedrins, or councils) to regulate the internal affairs of the Jews. The Sanhedrinae was a legislative council of 71 elders chaired by the high priest, that interpreted Jewish law and adjudicated appeals, especially in ritual matters. Their specific composure and powers actually varied depending on Roman policy.
Religious and cultural life during the Roman period
In the first decades of Roman rule, the Temple remained the center of Jewish ritual life. According to the Torah, Jews were required to travel to Jerusalem and offer sacrifices at the Temple three times a year: Pesach (Passover), Shavuot (the Feast of Weeks), and Sukkot (the Feast of Tabernacles). Yet, the Temple was not the only institution for Jewish religious life. During the 70 year exile in Babylon, Jewish houses of assembly (known in Hebrew as a "beit knesset" or in Greek as a "synagogue") were the primary meeting place for prayer. The house of study (in Hebrew: "beit midrash") was the counterpart for the synagogue. After the building of the Second Temple in the time of Ezra, the beit knesset and the beit midrash remained important institutions in Jewish life, although secondary in importance to the Temple. Outside of Palestine, the synagogue was often called a house of prayer (in Greek: προσευχαί, proseuchai; in Hebrew Beit Tefilah). One such synagogue in Alexandria, the Diopeloston, was a basilica with a double roofed colonnade, was said to be large enough to house one million worshippers (see Succah 51b). While that number is an exaggeration, it demonstrates the importance and centrality of the synagogue at that time. While most Jews could not regularly attend the Temple service, they could meet at the synagogue for morning, afternoon and evening prayers. On Mondays, Thursdays and the Sabbath, a weekly Torah portion was read publicly in the synagogues, following the tradition of public Torah readings instituted by Ezra (see, Nehemiah 8:1-18).
From political party to sect: Sadducees, Essenes, and Pharisees in the Roman period
There is a definite record of only one high priest (Ananus, in 62) being a Sadducee, although some scholars assume, based purely on speculation, that the Sanhedrin was dominated by Sadducees. Nevertheless, their power severely curtailed, during the Roman period Sadducees are better understood as a sect rather than a political party. Similarly, the Pharisees were politically quiescent, and studied, taught, and worshiped in their own way. Although popular and respected, they had no political power. Rather, they only had the power of persuasion.
During this period serious theological differences emerged between the Sadducees and Pharisees. Although the Essene lack of concern for the Second Temple alienated them from the great mass of Jews, their notion that the sacred could exist outside of the Temple was shared and elevated by the Pharisees.
Many, including some scholars, have characterized the Sadducees as a sect that interpreted the Torah literally, and the Pharisees as interpreting the Torah liberally. R' Yitchak Isaac Halevi (who takes the above view) suggests that this was not, in fact, a matter of religion. He claims that as complete rejection of Judaism would not have been tolerated under the Hasmonean rule, Hellenists maintained that they were rejecting not Judaism but Rabbinic law. Thus, the Sadducees were in fact a political party not a religious sect (Dorot Ha'Rishonim).
According to Jacob Neusner, this view is a distortion. He suggests that two things fundamentally distinguished the Pharisaic from the Sadducean approach to the Torah. First, Pharisees interpreted Exodus 19:3-6 literally:
And Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him out of the mountain, saying, "Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples; for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel."[7]
Or, in the words of 2 Maccabees 2:17, Pharisees believed that "God gave all the people the heritage, the kingdom, the priesthood, and the holiness."
The Pharisees believed that the idea that all of the children of Israel were to be like priests was expressed elsewhere in the Torah, for example, when the Law itself was transferred from the sphere of the priesthood to every man in Israel (Exodus 19: 29-24; Deuteronomy 6: 7, 11: 19; comp. 31: 9; Jeremiah 2: 8, 18:18). Moreover, the Torah already provided some ways for all Jews to lead a priestly life: the precepts concerning unclean meat were perhaps intended originally for the priests, but were extended to the whole people (Leviticus 11; Deuteronomy 14:3-21); the prohibition of cutting the flesh in mourning for the dead (Deuteronomy 14: 1-2, Leviticus 19: 28; comp. Lev. 21: 5). The Pharisees believed that all Jews in their ordinary life, and not just the Temple priesthood or Jews visiting the Temple, should observe rules and rituals concerning purification.
Second, the Pharisees believed that there were two Torahs. In addition to the Torah recognized by both the Sadducees and Pharisees and believed to have been written by Moses, the Pharisees believed that there was another Torah. They referred to the five books of Moses as the “Written Torah,” and the corpus of oral laws and traditions as the “Oral Torah,” because it was not written down but was rather transmitted by God to Moses orally, and was then memorized and then passed down orally by Moses and his successors over the generations. In other words, they did not interpret the Written Torah literally; rather, they asserted that the sacred scriptures were not complete and could therefore not be understood on their own terms. The Oral Torah functioned to elaborate and explicate what was written; it is unclear whether or not the Pharisees and later rabbis believed they were interpreting the Torah. The sages of the Talmud believed that the Oral law was simultaneously revealed to Moses at Sinai, and the product of debates among rabbis. Thus, one may conceive of the "Oral Torah" not as a fixed text but as an ongoing process of analysis and argument; this is an ongoing process in which God is actively involved; it was this ongoing process that was revealed at Sinai, and by participating in this ongoing process rabbis and their students are actively participating in God's ongoing revelation. That is, "revelation" is not a single act, and "Torah" is not a single or fixed text. It is this ongoing process of analysis and argument that is itself the substance of God's revelation. As Jacob Neusner has explained, the schools of the Pharisees and rabbis were and are holy
because there men achieve sainthood through study of Torah and imitation of the conduct of the masters. In doing so, they conform to the heavenly paradigm, the Torah believed to have been created by God "in his image," revealed at Sinai, and handed down to their own teachers ... If the masters and disciples obey the divine teaching of Moses, "our rabbi," then their society, the school, replicates on earth the heavenly academy, just as the disciple incarnates the heavenly model of Moses, "our rabbi." The rabbis believe that Moses was (and the Messiah will be) a rabbi, God dons phylacteries, and the heavenly court studies Torah precisely as does the earthly one, even arguing about the same questions. These beliefs today may seem as projections of rabbinical values onto heaven, but the rabbis believe that they themselves are projections of heavenly values onto earth. The rabbis thus conceive that on earth they study Torah just as God, the angels, and Moses, "our rabbi," do in heaven. The heavenly schoolmen are even aware of Babylonian scholastic discussions, so they require a rabbi's information about an aspect of purity taboos.[8]
Finally, unlike the Sadducees, the Pharisees also believed in the resurrection of the dead in a future, messianic age. The Pharisees believed in a literal resurrection of the body[9].
The destruction of the Temple and the end of the Second Temple era
By 66 Jewish discontent with Rome had escalated. At first, the priests tried to suppress rebellion, even calling upon the Pharisees for help. After the Roman garrison failed to stop Hellenists from desecrating a synagogue in Caesarea, however, the high priest suspended payment of tribute, inaugurating the Great Jewish Revolt. The destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 not only put an end to the revolt, it was a profoundly traumatic experience for the Jews that marked the end of an era.
From Pharisees to rabbis
Revolutionaries like the Zealots had been crushed by the Romans, and had little credibility (the last Zealots died at Masada in 73). Similarly, the Sadducees, whose teachings were so closely connected to the Temple, disappeared. The Essenes too disappeared, perhaps because their teachings so diverged from the concerns of the times, perhaps because they were sacked by the Romans at Qumran.
Of all the major Second Temple sects, only the Pharisees remained, poised with teachings directed to all Jews that could replace Temple worship. Such teachings extended beyond ritual practices. According to the classic midrash in Avot D'Rabbi Nathan (4:5):
The Temple is destroyed. We never witnessed its glory. But Rabbi Joshua did. And when he looked at the Temple ruins one day, he burst into tears. "Alas for us! The place which atoned for the sins of all the people Israel lies in ruins!" Then Rabbi Yohannan ben Zakkai spoke to him these words of comfort: "Be not grieved, my son. There is another way of gaining ritual atonement, even though the Temple is destroyed. We must now gain ritual atonement through deeds of loving-kindness."
Following the destruction of the Temple, Rome governed Judea through a Procurator at Caesarea and a Jewish Patriarch. Yohanan ben Zakkai, a leading Pharisee, was appointed the first Patriarch (the Hebrew word, Nasi, also means prince, or president), and he reestablished the Sanhedrin at Yavneh under Pharisee control. Instead of giving tithes to the priests and sacrificing offerings at the (now-destroyed) Temple, the rabbis instructed Jews to give money to charities.[citation needed] Moreover, they argued that all Jews should study in local synagogues, because Torah is "the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob" (Deut. 33: 4).
After the destruction of the First Temple, Jews believed that God would forgive them and enable them to rebuild the Temple – an event that actually occurred within three generations. Would this happen again? When the Emperor Hadrian threatened to rebuild Jerusalem as a pagan city dedicated to Jupiter, in 132, some of the leading sages of the Sanhedrin supported a rebellion led by Simon Bar Koziba (later known as Bar Kokhba), who established a short-lived independent state that was conquered by the Romans in 135. According to a midrash, in addition to Bar Kochba the Romans executed ten leading members of the Sanhedrin: the high priest, R. Ishmael; the president of the Sanhedrin, R. Shimon ben Gamaliel; R. Akiba; R. Hanania ben Teradion; the interpreter of the Sanhedrin, R. Huspith; R. Eliezer ben Shamua; R. Hanina ben Hakinai; the secretary of the Sanhedrin, R. Yeshevav; R. Yehuda ben Dama; and R. Yehuda ben Baba. The Rabbinic account describes agonizing tortures: R. Akiba was flayed, R. Ishmael had the skin of his head pulled off slowly, and R. Hanania was burned at a stake, with wet wool held by a Torah scroll wrapped around his body to prolong his death.
Romans forbade Jews to enter Jerusalem and forbade any plan to rebuild the Temple. Instead, it took over the Province of Judea directly, and renamed Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina. Romans did eventually reconstitute the Sanhedrin under the leadership of Judah haNasi (who claimed to be a descendant of King David). They conferred the title of "Nasi" as hereditary, and Judah's sons served both as Patriarch and as heads of the Sanhedrin.
According to historian Shaye Cohen, by the time three generations had passed after the destruction of the Second Temple, most Jews concluded that the Temple would not be rebuilt during their lives, nor in the foreseeable future. Jews were now confronted with difficult and far-reaching questions:
How to achieve atonement without the Temple?
How to explain the disastrous outcome of the rebellion?
How to live in the post-Temple, Romanized world?
How to connect present and past traditions?
Regardless of the importance they gave to the Temple, and despite their support of Bar Koseba’s revolt, the Pharisees’ vision of Jewish law as a means by which ordinary people could engage with the sacred in their daily lives provided them with a position from which to respond to all four challenges in a way meaningful to the vast majority of Jews. Their responses would constitute Rabbinic Judaism.[10]
During the Second Temple era, when Jews were divided into sects, the Pharisees were one sect among many, and partisan. Each sect claimed a monopoly on the truth, and discouraged marriage between members of different sects. Members of different sects did, however, argue with one another over the correctness of their respective interpretations, although there is no significant, reliable record of such debates between sects. After the destruction of the Second Temple, these sectarian divisions ended. The Rabbis avoided the term "Pharisee," perhaps because it was a term more often used by non-Pharisees, but also because the term was explicitly sectarian. The Rabbis claimed leadership over all Jews, and added to the Amidah the birkat haMinim, a prayer which in part exclaims, "Praised are You O Lord, who breaks enemies and defeats the arrogant," and which is understood as a rejection of sectarians and sectarianism. This shift by no means resolved conflicts over the interpretation of the Torah; rather, it relocated debates between sects to debates within Rabbinic Judaism. The Pharisaic commitment to scholarly debate as a value in and of itself, rather than merely a byproduct of sectarianism, emerged as a defining feature of Rabbinic Judaism.
Thus, as the Pharisees argued that all Israel should act as priests, the Rabbis argued that all Israel should act as rabbis: "The rabbis furthermore want to transform the entire Jewish community into an academy where the whole Torah is studied and kept .... redemption depends on the "rabbinization" of all Israel, that is, upon the attainment of all Jewry of a full and complete embodiment of revelation or Torah, thus achieving a perfect replica of heaven."[11]
The Rabbinic Era itself is divided into two periods. The first period was that of the Tannaim (from the Aramaic word for "repeat;" the Aramaic root TNY is equivalent to the Hebrew root SNY, which is the basis for "Mishnah." Thus, Tannaim are "Mishnah teachers"), the sages who repeated and thus passed down the Oral Torah. During this period rabbis finalized the canonization of the Tanakh, and in 200 Judah haNasi edited together Tannaitic judgements and traditions into the Mishna, considered by the rabbis to be the definitive expression of the Oral Torah (although some of the sages mentioned in the Mishnah are Pharisees who lived prior to the destruction of the Second Temple, or prior to the Bar Kozeba Revolt, most of the sages mentioned lived after the revolt).
The second period is that of the Amoraim (from the Aramaic word for "speaker") rabbis and their students who continued to debate legal matters and discuss the meaning of the books of the Bible. In Palestine, these discussions occurred at important academies at Tiberias, Caesarea, and Sepphoris. In Babylonia, these discussions largely occurred at important academies that had been established at Nehardea, Pumpeditha and Sura. This tradition of study and debate reached its fullest expression in the development of the Talmudim, elaborations of the Mishnah and records of Rabbinic debates, stories, and judgements, compiled around 400 in Palestine and around 500 in Babylon.
Rabbinic Judaism eventually emerged as normative Judaism and in fact many today refer to Rabbinic Judaism simply as "Judaism." Jacob Neusner, however, states that the Amoraim had no ultimate power in their communities. They lived at a time when Jews were subjects of either the Roman or Iranian (Parthian and Persian) empires. These empires left the day-to-day governance in the hands of the Jewish authorities: in Roman Palestine, through the hereditary office of Patriarch (simultaneously the head of the Sanhedrin); in Babylonia, through the hereditary office of the Reish Galuta, the "Head of the Exile" or "Exilarch" (who ratified the appointment of the heads of Rabbinical academies.) According to Professor Neusner:
The "Judaism" of the rabbis at this time is in no degree either normal or normative, and speaking descriptively, the schools cannot be called "elite." Whatever their aspirations for the future and pretensions in the present, the rabbis, though powerful and influential, constitute a minority group seeking to exercise authority without much governmental support, to dominate without substantial means of coercion.[12]
In Neusner's view, the rabbinic project, as acted out in the Talmud, reflected not the world as it was but the world as rabbis dreamed it should be.
According to S. Baron however, there existed "a general willingness of the people to follow its self imposed Rabbinic rulership". Although the Rabbis lacked authority to impose capital punishment "Flagellation and heavy fines, combined with an extensive system of excommunication were more than enough to uphold the authority of the courts." In fact, the Rabbis took over more and more power from the Reish Galuta until eventually R' Ashi assumed the title Rabbana, heretofore assumed by the exilarch, and appeared together with two other Rabbis as an official delegation "at the gate of King Yazdegard's court." The Amorah (and Tanna) Rav was a personal friend of the last Parthian king Artabenus and Shmuel was close to Shapur I King of Persia. Thus, the Rabbis had significant means of "coercion" and the people seem to have followed the Rabbinic rulership.
Innovators or preservers
The Mishna in the beginning of Avot and (in more detail) Maimonides in his Introduction to Mishneh Torah records a chain of tradition (mesorah) from Moses at Mt. Sinai down to R' Ashi redactor of the Talmud and last of the Amoraim.
This chain of tradition includes: 1. the interpretation of unclear statements in the Bible (e.g. that the "fruit of a beautiful tree" refers to a citron as opposed to any other fruit). 2. the methods of exegesis (see Wikipedia article on midrash). The disagreements recorded in the Mishna and Talmud generally focus on methods of exegesis. 3. Laws with Mosaic authority which however cannot be derived from the Biblical text. These include the measurements (e.g. what amount of an unkosher food must one eat to be liable), the amount and order of the scrolls to be placed in the phylacteries, etc.
The Pharisees were also innovators in that they enacted specific laws as they saw necessary according to the needs of the time. These included prohibitions to prevent an infringement of a biblical prohibition (e.g. one does not take a Lulav on the Shabbat "Lest one carry it in the public domain") called gezeirot, among others.
The commandment to read the Megillah (Book of Esther) on Purim and to light the Menorah on Hannukah are Rabbinic innovations. Much of the legal system is based on "what the sages constructed via logical reasoning and from established practice" [13]. Also, the blessings before meals and the wording of the Amidah. These are known as Takanot. The Pharisees based their authority to innovate on the verses: "....according to the word they tell you... according to all they instruct you. According to the law they instruct you and according to the judgment they say to you, you shall do; you shall not divert from the word they tell you, either right or left" (Deuteronomy 17:10-11) (see Encyclopedia Talmudit entry "Divrei Soferim").
In an interesting twist, Abraham Geiger posits that the Sadducees were the more hidebound adherents to an ancient Halacha whereas the Pharisees were more willing to develop Halacha as the times required. See however, Bernard Revel's "Karaite Halacha" which rejects many of Geiger's proofs.
Pharisaic principles and values
At first the values of the Pharisees developed through their sectarian debates with the Sadducees; then they developed through internal, non-sectarian debates over the law as an adaptation to life without the Temple, and life in exile, and to a more limited degree, life in conflict with Christianity. These shifts mark the transformation of Pharasaic to Rabbinic Judaism.
One belief central to the Pharisees was shared by all Jews of the time: monotheism. This is evident in the practice of reciting the Shema, select verses from the Torah, at the Temple and in synagogues. The Shema begins with the verses, "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God; the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might." According to the Mishna, these passages were recited in the Temple along with the twice-daily Tamid offering; Jews in the diaspora, who did not have access to the Temple, recited these passages in their houses of assembly (in Hebrew: Beit Knesset). According to the Mishnah and Talmud, the Men of the Great Assembly instituted that Jews both in Judea and in the diaspora were required to pray three times a day (morning, afternoon and evening), and include in their prayers a recitation of these passages in the morning ("Shacharit") and evening ("Ma'ariv") prayers.
The book 2 Maccabees was written by a Pharisee or someone sympathetic toward Pharisees. It includes several theological innovations: propitiatory prayer for the dead, judgment day, intercession of saints, and merits of the martyrs.
According to Josephus, whereas the Sadducees believed that people have total free will and the Essenes believed that all of a person's life is predestined, the Pharisees believed that people have free will but that God also has foreknowledge of human destiny. According to Josephus, Pharisees were further distinguished from the Sadducees in that Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead.
It is likely that Josephus highlighted these differences because he was writing for a Gentile audience, and questions concerning fate and a life after death were important in Hellenic philosophy. In fact, it is difficult, or impossible, to reconstruct a Second Temple Pharisaic theology, because Judaism itself is non-creedal; that is, there is no dogma or set of orthodox beliefs that Jews believed were required of Jews. Josephus himself emphasized laws rather than beliefs when he described the characteristics of an apostate (a Jew who does not follow traditional customs) and the requirements for conversion to Judaism (circumcision, and adherence to traditional customs). In fact, the most important divisions among different Jewish sects had to do with debates over three areas of law: marriage, the Sabbath and religious festivals, and the Temple and purity. Debates over these and other matters of law continue to define Judaism more than any particular dogma or creed.
Not one tractate of the key Rabbinic texts, the Mishnah and the Talmud, is devoted to theological issues; these texts are concerned primarily with interpretations of Jewish law. Only one chapter of the Mishnah deals with theological issues; it asserts that three kinds of people will have no share in "the world to come:" those who deny the resurrection of the dead, those who deny the divinity of the Torah, and Epicureans (who deny divine supervision of human affairs). Another passage suggests a different set of core principles: normally, a Jew may violate any law to save a life, but in Sanhedrin 74a, a ruling orders Jews to accept martyrdom rather than violate the laws against idolatry, murder, or adultery. (Judah haNasi, however, said that Jews must "be meticulous in small religious duties as well as large ones, because you do not know what sort of reward is coming for any of the religious duties," suggesting that all laws are of equal importance). In comparison with Christianity, the Rabbis were not especially concerned with the messiah or claims about the messiah.
Fundamentally, the Pharisees continued a form of Judaism that extended beyond the Temple, applying Jewish law to mundane activities in order to sanctify the every-day world. This was a more participatory (or "democratic") form of Judaism, in which rituals were not monopolized by an inherited priesthood but rather could be performed by all adult Jews individually or collectively; whose leaders were not determined by birth but by scholarly achievement. In general, the Pharisees emphasized a commitment to social justice, belief in the brotherhood of mankind, and a faith in the redemption of the Jewish nation and, ultimately, humanity. Moreover, they believed that these ends would be achieved through halakha ("the way," or "the way things are done"), a corpus of laws derived from a close reading of sacred texts. This belief entailed both a commitment to relate religion to ordinary concerns and daily life, and a commitment to study and scholarly debate.
The commitment to relate religion to daily life through the law has led some to infer that the Pharisees were more legalistic than other sects in the Second Temple Era. This is not true — the Sadducees were committed to obeying the commandments of the Torah, and the Essenes governed themselves through elaborate rules and regulations (Josephus does claim that the Pharisees were the "strictest" observers of the law, but he likely meant "most accurate"[citation needed]). It is more accurate to say they were legalistic in a different way. In some cases Pharisaic values led to an extension of the law — for example, the Torah requires priests to bathe themselves before entering the Temple. The Pharisees washed themselves before Sabbath and festival meals (in effect, making these holidays "temples in time"), and, eventually, before all meals. Although this seems burdensome compared to the practices of other sects, in other cases, Pharisaic law was less strict. For example, Biblical law prohibits Jews from carrying objects from a private domain ("reshut ha-yachid") to a public domain ("reshut ha-rabim") on the Sabbath. This law could have prevented Jews from carrying cooked dishes to the homes of friends for Sabbath meals. The Pharisees ruled that adjacent houses connected by lintels or fences could become connected by a legal procedure creating a partnership among homeowners; thereby, clarifying the status of those common areas as a private domain relative to the members of the partnership. In that manner people could carry objects from building to building.
Just as important as (if not more important than) any particular law was the value the rabbis placed on legal study and debate. The sages of the Talmud believed that when they taught the Oral Torah to their students, they were imitating Moses, who taught the law to the children of Israel. Moreover, the rabbis believed that "the heavenly court studies Torah precisely as does the earthly one, even arguing about the same questions."[14] Thus, in debating and disagreeing over the meaning of the Torah or how best to put it into practice, no rabbi felt that he (or his opponent) were in some way rejecting God or threatening Judaism; on the contrary, it was precisely through such arguments that the rabbis imitated and honored God.
One sign of the Pharisaic emphasis on debate and differences of opinion is that the Mishnah and Talmud mark different generations of scholars in terms of different pairs of contending schools. Around the time the Romans conquered Judea, for example, the two major Pharisaic schools were those of Hillel and Shammai. After Hillel died in 20, Shammai assumed the office of president of the Sanhedrin until he died in 30. Followers of these two sages dominated scholarly debate over the following decades (although the Talmud records the arguments and positions of the school of Shammai, the teachings of the school of Hillel were ultimately taken as authoritative).
Pharisaic wisdom was compiled in one book of the Mishna, Pirke Avot. The Pharisaic attitude is perhaps best exemplified by a story about Hillel the Elder, who lived at the end of the 1st century BCE. A man once challenged the sage to explain the law while standing on one foot. Hillel replied, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your friend. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation -- go and study it."
Pharisees and Christianity

Gustave Doré: Dispute between Jesus and the Pharisees

Jesus at the house of the Pharisean, by Jacopo Tintoretto, Escorial
See also: Early Christianity and Judaism, Paul of Tarsus and Judaism, and Christianity and Judaism
Outside of Jewish history and writings, the Pharisees have been made notable by references in the New Testament to conflicts between themselves and John the Baptist [15] and with Jesus. There are also several references in the New Testament to Paul of Tarsus being a Pharisee before he became a Christian [16]. Christian traditions have been a cause of widespread awareness of the Pharisees among the world's roughly two billion Christians.
An important binary in the New Testament is the opposition between law and love. Accordingly, the New Testament presents the Pharisees as obsessed with man-made rules (especially concerning purity) whereas Jesus is more concerned with God’s love; the Pharisees scorn sinners whereas Jesus seeks them out. Because of the New Testament's frequent depictions of Pharisees as self-righteous rule-followers (see also Woes of the Pharisees), the word "pharisee" (and its derivatives: "pharisaical", etc.) has come into semi-common usage in English to describe a hypocritical and arrogant person who places the letter of the law above its spirit. Jews today who subscribe to Pharisaic Judaism typically find this insulting and some consider the use of the word to be anti-Semitic.[17]
Some have speculated that Jesus was himself a Pharisee and that his arguments with Pharisees is a sign of inclusion rather than fundamental conflict (disputation being the dominant narrative mode employed in the Talmud as a search for truth, and not necessarily a sign of opposition).[18] Jesus' emphasis on loving one's neighbor (see Great Commandment), for example, echoes the teaching of the school of Hillel. Jesus' views of divorce, however, are closer to those of the school of Shammai, another Pharisee.
Others have argued that the portrait of the Pharisees in the New Testament is an anachronistic caricature. Many scholars (including Christians and non-Christians) date the composition of the Christian gospels to between 70 and 100 C.E., a time after Christianity had separated from Judaism (and after Pharisaism emerged as the dominant form of Judaism). This could make them a biased source concerning the conduct of the Pharisees. However, scholars who support the Augustinian hypothesis, such as John A. T. Robinson and John Wenham, date the Synoptic Gospels to between 40 and 60 C.E. This earlier date, contemporary with the events they describe (when eyewitnesses would still be alive) and at a time when many Christians were still of Jewish background, would suggest a greater reliability of their descriptions.
Examples of disputed passages include the story of Jesus declaring the sins of a paralytic man forgiven and the Pharisees calling the action blasphemy. In the story, Jesus counters the accusation by healing the man in order to demonstrate his authority to forgive sins. Similarly, Jewish sources from the time commonly associate illness with sin and healing with forgiveness.[19] Those critical of the New Testament account see the proposition that the healing would be criticized by Pharisees to be sharply at odds with the teachings of the Pharisees independently preserved. No actual Rabbinic source questions or criticizes this practice.[19] Similarly, according to the New Testament, Pharisees wanted to punish Jesus for healing a man's withered hand on the Sabbath. However, no historical Rabbinic rule has been found according to which Jesus would have violated the Sabbath.[20]
Although the New Testament presents the Pharisees as obsessed with avoiding impurity, Rabbinic texts reveal that the Pharisees were concerned merely with offering means for removing impurities, so that a person could again participate in the community. According to the New Testament the Pharisees objected to Jesus's mission to outcast groups such as beggars and tax-collectors, but Rabbinic texts actually emphasize the availability of forgiveness to all. Indeed, much of Jesus' teaching, for example the Sermon on the Mount, is consistent with that of the Pharisees and later Rabbinic thought.
Some scholars believe that those passages of the New Testament that are most hostile to the Pharisees were written sometime after the destruction of Herod's Temple in 70 C.E.[21][22], at a time when it had become clear that most Jews did not consider Jesus to be the messiah, see also Rejection of Jesus. At this time Christians sought most new converts from among the gentiles, and needed to explain why converts should listen to them rather than the Jews, concerning the Hebrew Bible. They thus would have presented a story of Jesus that was more sympathetic to Romans than to Jews. It was only after 70 C.E. that Phariseeism emerged as the dominant form of Judaism.

Acts 6 to 8 THE BEGINNINGS OF HELLENISTIC CHRISTIANITY (6:1-8:40)

2010-02-21T14:07:00.000-08:00

Acts 6 to 8 THE BEGINNINGS OF HELLENISTIC CHRISTIANITY (6:1-8:40)

ActsExeg.61
1. APPOINTMENT OF THE SEVEN (6:1-7)
At this point a new factor enters into the history of the church--the growth of a Hellenistic as distinct from a purely Hebrew Christianity. There are indications, too, that Luke begins here to draw upon a new source. There is a definite break with what precedes. The daily distribution, though not previously alluded to, is referred to as if familiar, presumably because it has been mentioned earlier in the source; and the whole passage rests upon a fundamental distinction between "Hebrew" and "Hellenist" Christians that has not previously been drawn but now is taken for granted without explanation. Harnack in his analysis calls this the "Antiochene" source, and believes that it originated from a locality where there was special interest in the development of Hellenistic Christianity. He traces this source in 6:1-8:4, with which he links up 11:19-30--the first spread of Christianity to Antioch and district--and 12:25-15:35--Paul's mission from Antioch on his first tour and his return to Antioch. It is interesting, as evidence that this is an Antioch rather than a Jerusalem source, that none of Torrey's examples of possible mistranslation from Aramaic occur in these sections. Torrey claims an Aramaic origin for the whole of the first part of Acts; but his evidence is much weaker here than elsewhere.
The Hellenists (RSV) or Grecians (KJV) in Acts have always been regarded as Greek-speaking Jews in contrast with the "Hellenes," who are Greeks by race and upbringing. This interpretation, though almost certainly right, depends entirely upon the context and not on the intrinsic meaning of the word, which signifies simply "one who Grecizes" either in language or in habits. Here the Hellenists are contrasted with the Hebrews; and as the latter word refers to race rather than to language, the Hellenists here (if they are in fact Jews) are perhaps not "Greek-speaking Jews," but rather Jews who adopted Greek customs in contrast with the more conservative Hebrews. Gadbury (Beginnings of Christianity, V, 59 ff.) in an important note argues that the word "Hellenists" refers not to Jews but to Gentiles, and is simply an alternative for "Hellenes." He points out that the other two passages in which "Hellenists" are mentioned are (a) 9:29, where there is nothing to indicate who is meant, and (b) 11:20, where the context makes it plain that pure Gentile Greeks are in view, and the best-attested reading is undoubtedly "Hellenists" (@Ellhnista6v with a B), though most editors adopt "Greeks" ($Ellhnev with a2 A D). His conclusion is that the word "Hellenists" really refers to Gentile Greeks; Luke loves verbal variations, and while in the latter half of the book "Hellenes" or "Greeks" is used, in the first twelve chapters only "Hellenists" is found. But in the present passage the insuperable obstacle to Cadbury's view would be so early a mention of Gentile Christians without any comment on this innovation. Our author gives so much attention to the case of Cornelius, as the first Gentile conversion and a turning point in Christian missions, that it is very hard to believe that, as Cadbury himself puts it, he could "introduce a reference to Gentile Christians so early in his story and so casually."
6:1-3. The daily distribution: This may be a reference to the public assistance given by means of the agape or common religious meal. The case of widows without legal protection was particularly hard, and the church quickly copied the Jewish custom of providing funds for their relief. Later the "widows" appear to have been a recognized body with their names on a roll (I Tim. 5:9). Tables is usually understood as referring to dining tables; but it is possible that the money-changer's table is meant, with reference to the general financial administration of the community. Pick out from among you: It is the congregation which makes the selection, while the apostles set them apart. Curiously Codex Vaticanus (B) reads, "Let us choose, brethren, seven men from among you," which may imply, though not necessarily, that the apostles made the selection also.
5. Of Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, and Parmenas we know nothing but legend, save that Prochorus is traditionally the writer of the Prochoran Acts of John, and, according to Byzantine art, John dictated the Fourth Gospel to him. Nicolaus was traditionally the founder of the heretical sect of the Nicolaitans found at Ephesus and Pergamum (Rev. 2:6, 15). Antioch is here mentioned for the first time, and perhaps indicates the interest of the source-compiler in that city.
6. Laid their hands upon them: The "laying on of hands" usually symbolizes the bestowal of the Holy Spirit, which at the very beginning seems to have been connected with this rite rather than with baptism (see 19:5-6 and on 8:17). The rite is taken over from the O.T., where it symbolizes the establishment of some vital connection between two persons, and the transference of some power or responsibility from the one to the other. Thus Moses, when appointing Joshua his successor, laid his hands on him, by which act he "put some of his honor upon him" (Num. 27:23, 20). So the apostles in Acts frequently do in healing, confirming, and ordaining. Here the bestowal of some special charisma is not necessarily implied, for the seven were already men full of the Spirit (vs. 3). The rite is the formal sign of appointment to office, as it was in the admission of new members of the Sanhedrin. It would be dangerous, as does Rackham, to base on this verse a full doctrine of apostolic succession. More truly, says Chrysostom, "The hand of man is laid on, but all is the work of God; and it is his hand that touches the head of the candidate, if he is rightly ordained."
The question why the seven were appointed, and what was their function, raises a somewhat difficult problem. Evidently a certain tension had arisen between the "Hebrew" Jews of Jerusalem and the "Hellenists" who had returned to the capital after a period of residence abroad. Possibly the latter felt that they were being treated with unfair discrimination as outsiders. If such was the case, the reason would probably be mere local prejudice rather than any suspicion of their religious orthodoxy. For, as evidence of the Hellenists' loyalty to Jewish law and worship, it is noteworthy that the attack upon Stephen was instigated, not by Palestinian, but by Hellenist Jews. All the seven have Greek names, and they were evidently appointed in some way to safeguard the interests of the Hellenists. But what were their functions? There are three possible views: (a) They have traditionally been regarded as the first "deacons." Luke implies that they were to be responsible for the fair distribution of alms. He does not actually call them "deacons" (dia6konoi); but in connection with them he uses the abstract noun "distribution" (literally ministration or "service"; diakoni6a) and the verb "serve" (diakonei'n); and as by the time that Luke wrote there did in fact exist an order with the name of deacons, the use of these cognate words at least suggests that Luke considers the seven to be deacons. The difficulty is that nowhere in the N.T. are any of the seven referred to as such; nor is there any evidence that there ever were in Jerusalem deacons with functions like those of the deacons whom we meet toward the end of the first century. Whereas, according to Luke, the seven were appointed to be in charge of financial administration, the deacon, as we know him from Phil. 1:1; I Tim. 3:8 ff.; the Didache; and Clement, is commonly mentioned alongside the bishop, and appears to have been his assistant generally in the conduct of the Eucharist, and the ordering of discipline, as well as in the organization of alms. (b) It has been suggested that the seven were the first "elders" of the Jerusalem church. Later in Acts "apostles and elders" are mentioned as the important personages, and in 11:30 it is stated that Antioch sent alms to "the elders," as if the latter had charge of the duties entrusted here to the seven. But it is most unlikely that as early as this "elders" would be officially "appointed" and "ordained." Rather would they naturally assume leadership in virtue of personal prestige and larger experience in the faith. Nor can we explain why all the first elders at Jerusalem should be Hellenists. (c) It is noticeable that the seven comport themselves not as administrators but as missionaries, and Stephen and Philip in particular at once assume an almost apostolic prominence in aggressive evangelism. Hence it is perhaps more likely that the seven were, as Chrysostom says, "neither presbyters nor deacons," but rather held a unique office parallel to the apostolate. The motive for their appointment lay in a Hebrew-Hellenist disharmony which the matter of practical administration merely brought to a head. Probably the Hellenists were discovering that their own view of the gospel was not quite that of the Palestinian brethren, and they wished apostles of their own who would represent it. Thus the title "the seven" corresponds to the title "the twelve," and the names of the seven are given in full like those of the apostles. The distinction between the seven and the twelve was one of sphere rather than of function. The seven were to be for the Hellenists exactly what the twelve were for the Hebrews. If Luke has obscured this, has put all the emphasis on the minor question of the "distribution," and made it to appear that the seven were intended to be mere administrators subordinate to the twelve, it is perhaps because he habitually tends to minimize any cleavage between the more Judaistic and the more liberal elements in the church.
7. Multiplied greatly (sfo6dra): According to Torrey, this represents the same Aramaic word (lahadhA), correctly translated here, as was incorrectly translated by ejpi; to; aujto; in 2:47. We have in this note the only trace in Acts of any interest in Christianity on the part of the priests.
2. STORY OF STEPHEN (6:8-8:3)

Some editors have detected a certain incoherence in the telling of the story of Stephen. The connection between the wonders and signs in vs. 8 and the disputation that follows in vs. 9 is not very clear; it looks as if the source rather may have told how Stephen carried his aggressive missionary message into the Hellenistic synagogues and thus aroused an acrimonious debate which resulted in his arrest. Furthermore there are curious repetitions in the narrative: (a) The charge against Stephen is twice stated, the substance of vss. 9-11 being repeated in vss. 12-14; (b) the stoning of Stephen is also described twice, in 7:54-58a and in 7:58b-60. These doublets suggest that the story may be derived from two sources, possibly reflecting two variant traditions, which have been somewhat infelicitously combined. According to one (6:9-11 plus 7:54-58a) Stephen was summarily lynched by an angry mob; according to the other (6:12-7:53, plus 7:58b-60) he was tried, possibly somewhat informally, and executed by the Sanhedrim Lake points out that one can pass from 6:8-11 to 7:54 ff. without being conscious of any break in the narrative. He is inclined to think that the whole speech, which bears very little relation to the charges brought against Stephen, is a free composition by the author--who considers that Stephen's death was due to the Sanhedrin--inserted into an earlier narrative which related that he was stoned by a mob (Beginnings of Christianity, II, 14950). Even without accepting any such theory of "doublets," it may be admitted that the speech looks like an insertion. Note that the ecstasy of 6:15 reappears in 7:55. If the latter verse is read to follow immediately after 7:1, Stephen's only answer to the high priest, like Jesus', would be a reference to a theophany of the glorified Christ (Mark 14:62)--a most suggestive and impressive parallel. One cannot but wonder whether the story was not told thus in Luke's original source. Quite apart from the acceptance of any one of the complicated theories of source reconstruction, the problem of how and why Stephen was put to death remains, and is discussed below.
Concerning the authenticity of Stephen's speech, it is particularly difficult to reach a clear judgment. At first sight it appears largely irrelevant. No direct answer is made to the charges brought against him. Instead, a lengthy narrative of God's gracious dealings with Israel is followed by illustrations of the ingratitude with which Israel requited God's goodness. But this criticism of the old economy is not balanced by a single word about the new Christian economy which is to supplant it; nor is there any mention of the name of Jesus Christ. The conclusion in vss. 51 ff. is singularly surprising and abrupt. Why should Stephen find the climax of his people's history in the building of Solomon's temple? And having done so, why does he abruptly launch into invective without any attempt to give a reasoned answer to his accusers? It is easy to say that "he was cut short and his defense left incomplete" (Rackham). If he really made so irrelevant a speech, the wonder rather is how the court could have allowed him to run on so long. Moreover, though the speech professes to be a summary of O.T. history, there are a surprising number of variations from and of additions to the O.T. record. Hence most modern editors are unable to accept the speech as Stephen's own. On the other hand Lake and Cadbury comment: "The absence of an allusion to they Judaistic controversy seems to exclude any theory which would make the speech the composition of one who had lived through that controversy in the company of Paul, and was writing with a view to the situation of the Christian Church of the period. ... The general character of the speech seems to fit in very well with the theory that it represents either a good tradition as to what Stephen really did say, or at least what a very early Christian, not of the Pauline school, would have wished him to say. All observation shows that religious or political pioneers when brought into court never attempt to rebut the accusations brought against them, but use the opportunity for making a partisan address" (The Beginnings of Christianity, ed. F. J. Foakes Jackson and Kirsopp Lake [London: Macmillan & Co.; New York: The Macmillan Co., 1920-33], IV, 69-70).
Had Stephen lived he would have ranked with the greatest of the apostles. His career can hardly have lasted more than a few months, or even weeks, and he is the ideal type of man who "being made perfect in a little while fulfills long years" (Wisd. Sol. 4:13). Of his origin we know nothing, save that he was probably a Hellenistic Jew from abroad--possibly from Cyrene or Alexandria, if the name of the synagogue in which he was attacked provides any clue. It has been noted that there is a slight flavor of Alexandrian culture in his speech; e.g., the word "wisdom" occurs four times and nowhere else in Acts; and men from Cyrene were of course also prominent in the early community--Simon who carried the cross (Mark 15:21), and Lucius the prophet of Antioch (13:1). Stephen's significance is that his preaching in the Hellenistic synagogues made it evident that Christianity was something more than just a new Jewish sect, and that its spread would involve danger to the law of Moses. He drove in the first wedge between Judaism and Christianity and made possible the emergence of a distinctively Christian church. Hence the attack upon him by his fellow Hellenist Jews. The accusation must have had some basis in fact; but 6:13 is almost certainly a misrepresentation. Had this been a true charge, Stephen must have earned the disapproval of the Christian community itself, which was still wholly loyal to the Jewish faith, and of this there is no trace. Even if we accept the speech as authentic, it would be a mistake to interpret even vss. 48-50 as an attack on the whole temple system as such. The sting of the speech is not in vss. 48-50 but in vss. 51-53, and Stephen's main point is that the real violators of God's law are not the Christians but their accusers and the unconverted Jews in general. Hence the force of vss. 48-50 is not so much that God is to be worshiped only in spirit and that temple worship should be abolished; it is rather that mere external worship is not enough if the hearts of the worshipers are turned away to other gods. Stephen is repeating a thought constantly voiced by the prophets, not launching a new Gentile-Christian anti-Jewish polemic. Probably Stephen was arrested, not because of any definite attack on the law and the temple, but because he represented a more liberal type of Judaism, which emphasized the moral rather than the ceremonial side of the law, perhaps combined with a more spiritual interpretation of the messianic expectations, which may have seemed to belittle national and political hopes. Though Stephen is rightly considered a forerunner of Paul, it is only in this somewhat limited sense that we can think of him as anticipating Paul's assertion of a distinctively free, Gentile Christianity.
As to how, as a matter of history, Stephen's death was brought about, there is a good deal to suggest that Luke's source may have described the martyrdom as an act of mob violence. But the account as edited by Luke implies that he was officially tried and condemned by the Sanhedrin; and in particular the reference to "witnesses" points to a regular execution. On the other hand it is perhaps unlikely that during the Roman dominion in Jerusalem the Sanhedrin could have carried through such a summary trial and execution. It is possible that Stephen really was tried before the Sanhedrin, which had no intention of exceeding its powers by inflicting the death penalty, and that the mob intervened and lynched him. But it is worth remembering that the insertion of a trial scene, whereby the blame for judicial murder would be cast upon the Jewish authorities rather than on the people or the Romans, would be quite in keeping with our author's point of view.
The persecution which followed Stephen's death made more clear the growing cleavage between the two sections within the Christian community. The apostles and the native Christians were apparently permitted to remain in Jerusalem; the followers of Stephen were driven in all directions, many no doubt returning to their former homes, and thereby sowing the first seeds of a wider mission. How long the persecution lasted we do not know. Three years after Paul's conversion (Gal. 1:18) Peter and James, and presumably other Jewish Christians, were still in the city; and a few years later the community was numerous enough to give Herod Agrippa the opportunity to curry favor with the Jews by executing James and imprisoning Peter (12:1 ff.). But Luke records this as something exceptional and in contrast to a general toleration.
9. Better translated: "Some of the members of the synagogue which is called that of the Libertines, both Cyrenians and Alexandrians." Jews who were Libertines, or Freedmen, had their own synagogue, and in this particular case both Cyrenians and Alexandrians were included in the membership. Those from Cilicia and Asia are mentioned as a separate group. An alternative is to read "Libyans" instead of "Libertines"--these "Libyans" then being defined as "Cyrenians and Alexandrians."
11. Secretly instigated: The Greek word gives the suggestion of a frame-up. Blasphemous words: "Blasphemy" in the technical sense according to rabbinical law required the use of God's name. But the word can be used of scurrilous language apart from any technical religious offense.
14. An obvious echo of the charge brought against Jesus himself (Mark 14:58).
7:2. Before he lived in Haran: According to Gen. 11:27-12:5, God's promise to Abraham was made after he had already moved to Haran. But both Philo and Josephus support Stephen's version. There are in the speech a number of variations from the story as told in the Pentateuch, some of which are due to the influence of the LXX and others apparently to the persistence of varying traditions. (On the speech see also pp. 91-93.)
4-5. After his father died: According to the reckoning of Gen. 11:26, 32; 12:4, Terah must still have been living when the move was made from Haran. A foot's length: An echo of Deut. 2:5, where, however, the reference is to Mount Seir.
7. In this place: An echo of Exod. 3:12, where similarly the reference is not to Canaan but to Mount Sinai. According to Stephen, the promise is not only that they shall inherit the land, but, even more, that they shall have free opportunity of worship; cf. Luke 1:73, "The oath ... that we ... might serve him without fear."
14. Seventy-five souls: So the LXX in Gen. 46:27; Exod. 1:5, whereas the original Hebrew has "seventy."
16. Again tradition varies, for according to Josh. 24:32, it was Joseph alone who was buried at Shechem, while according to Gen. 50:13, Jacob--and his other sons? (cf. Josephus Antiquities II. 8. 2)--was buried at Hebron.
19. Dealt craftily with: An unusual Greek word well translated "exploited" by Lake and Cadbury; cf. Exod. 1:10, "let us deal wisely with them."
20. Beautiful before God, i.e., even by God's standards--equivalent to a strong superlative (cf. Gen. 10:9). In modern Greek qeo-, prefixed to adjectives, gives them this superlative force.
22. This is not mentioned in the O.T. but is stressed by Philo (Moses I. 5).
25. This statement is not supported by any O.T. passage and seems prompted by the desire to draw a parallel between Moses and Jesus, and to illustrate the proverb that "no prophet is acceptable in his own country"; cf. Luke 4:24 ff., where two illustrations are given from the O.T.
30. Mount Sinai: According to Exod. 3:1, Horeb. The relation between the two mountains is something of a puzzle, and later tradition identified them.
35. Deliverer or "redeemer": This word is never applied to Moses in the LXX, and once again the motive here seems to be to compare Moses with Jesus, who in Luke 24:21 is described as "the one to redeem Israel."
37-38. A prophet: See on 3:22. In the congregation is an echo of the LXX phrase "the day of the assembly," i.e., the day on which the people assembled to receive the law (Deut. 9:10; 18:16). The angel as a mediator is a later tradition added to the original account, in which Yahweh himself gives the law to Moses (see on vs. 53). For living oracles cf. Ezek. 20:11, "I gave them my statutes ... which if a man do, he shall even live in them."
42-43. For the distinctively Jewish idea that God punishes sinners by giving them over to even worse sin, cf. Rom. 1:24, 26, 28. The book of the prophets means the Book of the Twelve or minor prophets, which was one of the books into which the Prophets, or second part of O.T. canon, was divided. The quotation is from the LXX of Amos 5:25-27, but Stephen changes the point. Amos is arguing that whereas no sacrifices were required in the wilderness, the people had later turned to idolatrous sacrifices. Stephen uses the passage as a proof that even in the wilderness Israel rejected God for idols. There are several variations from the Hebrew in the LXX version which Stephen follows. Rephan is read for "Chiun"; and whereas the Hebrew has "ye have carried Sikkuth your king," the LXX took "Sikkuth" to mean tent (skhnh6) and "your king" (Hebrew mélekh) to mean the god Moloch. Stephen also puts Babylon in the place of "Damascus" (both Hebrew and LXX). The important point is that, if we had here a transcript of what Stephen actually said, the text would hardly be likely to follow the LXX in the changes made from the Hebrew. But if the speech was written in Greek by the author of Acts, the facts become intelligible. If it is held, as is argued by the champions of the theory of an Aramaic original, that the translator always brought the O.T. references into line with the LXX, why did he allow Babylon to stand in place of "Damascus"?
46. Much the best-attested reading is "for the house of Jacob" (oi[kw with a B D), though most editors prefer God of Jacob in line with Ps. 132:1-5. But the temple was for the use of the assembled people as well as of Yahweh, and "house" may well be correct.
48. The force of the Greek is: "It is not the Most High who dwells in houses made with hands"--with the implication that the heathen gods do dwell in such houses. The Most High ($Uyistov) is the LXX rendering of (Elyôn, which in the O.T. is the name used by non-Israelites who reverence the God of Israel. The prophet is Isaiah (66:1-2), again quoted from the LXX.
51-53. The Holy Spirit: Here, as often in rabbinical writings, with reference to the spirit of prophecy; or possibly Isa. 63:10--"they ... vexed his Holy Spirit"--is in mind. They killed: Historically there is no support for this statement, but in legendary tradition nearly every prophet became a martyr. For the Righteous One see on 3:14. As delivered by angels: The phrase presents us with one of the very few verbal echoes between Acts and the epistles of Paul, who in Gal. 3:19 speaks of the law as being "ordained by angels" (cf. 9:21 for another such possible echo).
55-56. Jesus standing, instead of the usual "seated," seems to suggest that our Lord is about to welcome Stephen into the immediate presence without an intermediate period of waiting for judgment or resurrection. The parallels of the story of Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16:22) and of the promise made to the penitent thief (Luke 23:43) suggest that this is characteristic Lukan eschatology. Son of man: The only place outside the Gospels where the title is given to Jesus. There seems to be an echo of Jesus' own words in Luke 22:69, "But from now on the Son of man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God."
57-58. The Western text of vs. 57 probably read, "then the people cried out"--perhaps because the copyist regarded the execution as a mob lynching. Cast him out again suggests a lynching, whereas the mention of witnesses suits better an official execution; their duty was to throw the first stones (Deut. 17:7). A young man named Saul: This reads like a "genuine Pauline reminiscence" and "probably turns the scale in favour of the view that Stephen was actually executed rather than lynched" (Beginnings of Christianity, IV, 85)--though it is by no means clear that this is Luke's own view. How keenly Luke, if not Paul himself, felt the latter's responsibility is shown by the way he harks back to the subject in Paul's speech to the crowd at Jerusalem (22:20).
59-60. Stephen's last words echo those of Jesus as recorded by Luke: "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!" and "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:46, 34). If we could be sure that these are Stephen's exact words, the occurrence of the title Lord with reference to Jesus would prove that this use of ku6riov (or the Aramaic mar) began at Jerusalem and not later among the Hellenistic churches. But Luke has a fondness for this title, and historical deductions would be dangerous.
8:1. Saul was consenting: For the Greek word cf. Luke 11:48. Saul was not necessarily an actual member of the Sanhedrin that condemned Stephen. But as a member of the Cilician synagogue he may have taken part in the original dispute, and Luke suggests that the moral consent he gave to the execution carried with it as much responsibility as the actual doing of the deed.
2. The devout men would be Jews rather than Christians, for the law prescribed the burial of executed criminals (Deut. 21:22-23). As apparently no lamentation or wake was permitted after a legal execution, is this another hint of an irregular lynching?
3. Saul laid waste the church: But did he in fact have a part in this particular persecution? Though he confesses several times that he had persecuted the Christians (Gal. 1:13, 23; I Cor. 15:9; Phil. 3:6), it is nowhere stated that he did so in Jerusalem, and from Galatians it would seem that Damascus was the center of his persecuting activity.
3. STORY OF PHILIP (8:4-40)
a) THE MISSION TO SAMARIA (8:4-13)
According to Harnack, 8:4-40 belongs to a source in which interest is divided between Jerusalem and Caesarea; he calls it the "Jerusalem-Caesarean" source and finds its continuation in 9:32-11:18 and 12:1-24. The present section, however, appears to be composite, as, inserted in the story of Philip, we have a paragraph dealing with Peter's visit to Samaria and his encounter with Simon Magus. This "Petrine" interlude may possibly be derived from Jerusalem Source A.
R. B. Rackham well notes that "this chapter is thoroughly Old Testament in its spirit and language, and ... we could imagine that we are reading of a second Elijah or Elisha. ... Like an Old Testament prophet [Philip] wanders about, with sudden and spontaneous movements under the immediate impulse of the Spirit" (The Acts of the Apostles [London: Methuen & Co., 1901; "The Westminster Commentary"], p. 112). Philip is the typical Christian "prophet" and "evangelist." His mission to Samaria is chiefly important as marking the first definite initiative into non-Jewish territory, and was naturally enough undertaken by one who was himself a "Hellenist" and therefore, though no doubt as loyal a Jew as his fellows, would feel a deeper interest in the outside world. For the Samaritans formed a halfway house between Judaism and the Gentile world proper. They were a heterogeneous people of mixed Israelitish and heathen blood. But their religion was genuinely Israelitish; they worshiped Yahweh, kept the sabbath, practiced circumcision. But their holy city was Gerizim, and of the Jewish scripture canon they accepted only the Pentateuch. Though hated and despised by their Jewish neighbors, they were not put upon a level with the heathen; their observance of the law was regarded as very defective, but they were not looked upon as complete aliens; and social intercourse with them, though not frequent, was pronounced by the rabbis to be permissible (John 4:9 must not be taken too literally). Thus Philip's new move involved no definite breach of Jewish law. But it revealed a concern for the Samaritans that no ordinary Jew would feel, and to that extent it marked an advance on the spirit of Judaism in general and an approach to Jesus' own broader sympathy. It is no doubt chiefly for this reason that Luke records the visit.
5. A city of Samaria, the Western text reading, seems preferable to "the city of Samaria" (KJV), for in the N.T. "Samaria" always refers to the territory rather than the capital city Sebaste, and "the city of Samaria," meaning "called Samaria," is an English and not a Greek idiom. Lake and Cadbury guess that the town in question is Gitta, with which Justin Martyr connects Simon Magus.
9-10. For Simon see on 8:14-25. With somebody great cf. Theudas' claim in 5:36 "to be somebody," and Luke 1:32, "He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High." Simon, like Theudas, evidently had messianic ambitions. That power of God which is called Great: The sentence is awkward, and the Greek may be a mistranslation of an Aramaic phrase meaning "this is the power of the God who is called Great"--Great being a title used by foreigners of the God of the Jews. Power is a Jewish reverential substitute for "God" (cf. Mark 14:62, "sitting at the right hand of Power," where Luke in his parallel [Luke 22:69] adds, as here, the explanatory words "of God").
12. The kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ: Implying, perhaps in contrast to Simon's false claim, that it was only through Jesus, the true Christ, that the messianic kingdom would come. Lake and Cadbury note that "the usage of Acts suggests ... that Kingdom of God here means the Church--the society of believers in Jesus, who through his representatives, using the power of his name, receive the Holy Spirit which cleanses and saves" (Beginnings of Christianity, IV, 91).
b) THE APOSTLES' CONFIRMATORY VISIT (8:14-25)
This paragraph reads like the account of an episcopal tour of confirmation. Peter and John, like Barnabas on a later occasion (11:22), are sent to investigate a new development in missionary work, to bestow on the converts by the laying on of apostolic hands a grace which presumably Philip could not bestow, and to give to the new Samaritan church the apostolic sanction which was necessary for its regular organization. All this seems to reflect the point of view of a later age when ecclesiasticism had become much more self-conscious. This comes out in three ways: (a) Our author thinks of authority as being centralized in the hands of an apostolic college without whose imprimatur no undertaking was valid. But this is almost certainly to misread history (see on 1:12). No doubt Peter and John did visit Samaria; but the idea that they went as an official delegation to do something that Philip could not do betrays later conceptions. It is very questionable whether the apostles ever constituted an official board with oversight over the whole church in its various local divisions. As A. C. McGiffert says: "It is widely said that the bishops were the successors of the apostles. It would perhaps be as near the truth to say that the apostles were the successors of the bishops! For the official character that has been ascribed to the apostles since the second century was the result of carrying back to them the official character of the bishops" (A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1896], p. 97 n.). (b) We have here too the suggestion that the Holy Spirit could be conveyed to converts by the mediation of apostles and no others. Luke evidently supposes that Peter and John exercised a peculiar function not possessed by Philip. But such an association of the gift of the Spirit with a particular office or class of men is foreign to the ideas of the early apostolic age, as is shown by Luke himself in other passages--e.g., in 9:17 Ananias, an ordinary disciple, lays his hands on Paul in order that he may receive the Holy Spirit; and in 2:4 no human agent at all is in view. In 2:33 Peter says that the exalted Jesus has poured forth his Spirit, and there is no suggestion that he, as an apostle, can alone mediate the gift. (c) Still less does the tying up of the gift of the Spirit with some specific rite such as baptism or the laying on of hands belong to these earliest months (see also on 6:6). The truly primitive point of view is reflected even by Luke, not only in the passages already referred to, but also in 10:44, 11:15 ff., where it is clearly stated that the Spirit fell on Cornelius and his fellows while Peter was still speaking, and before they were baptized. The evident possession by them of the Christian experience, the fact that they had already "received the Holy Spirit," was precisely the reason urged by Peter that they should then receive baptism--not something which followed the performance of the rite.
Simon, as his traditional name "the Magus" shows, is the typical wonder-working false prophet, and acts as foil to the typical Christian prophet, Philip. The picture suggested by vss. 9-13 of a competition in wonder-working reminds us of Moses' encounter with the magicians of Egypt, or St. Patrick and St. Columba in rivalry with the druids. The decay of orthodox pagan religion had created a keen demand for teachers who by esoteric knowledge of the occult could open up the way to God. The current intermixture of Greek philosophy and Eastern mysticism had given a very varied hue to their pretensions, and the whole Mediterranean world abounded with seers, astrologers, spiritualists, exorcists, and miracle-workers. Some of them were no doubt sincere and able men, as for example Apollonius of Tyana, whose biography by Philostratus rivaled the Gospels in popularity. But the temptation to gain through quackery must have been too strong for most, and the majority were certainly charlatans. From the references in Acts, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus, there seems little doubt that Simon claimed to be Messiah, and instituted in Samaria a movement that was intended to rival Christianity. With his messianic pretensions he seems to have combined Gnostic speculations, including the common conception of a hierarchy of divine emanations or "powers," serving as mediators between God and man, of which he claimed himself to be the chief--"that power of God which is called Great." Justin Martyr tells us that in the reign of Claudius, Simon went to Rome where the senate honored him "with a statue erected upon the Tiber between the two bridges, with the Latin inscription, Simoni Deo Sancto, 'To Simon the Holy God'" (I Apology 26:2). This incredible statement has been explained by the discovery on an island in the Tiber, called "between the two bridges," of an altar inscribed "Semoni Sanco Deo"--Semo Sancus being an ancient Sabine deity! As Streeter says, "Justin's veracity ... is completely vindicated, somewhat at the expense of his intelligence" (The Primitive Church [New York: The Macmillan Co., 1929], p. 13). Besides giving his name to the sin of "simony" or the use of money to attain spiritual ends, Simon came to be regarded in Christian tradition as the father of all heresy. In Justin's day, about one hundred years later, there were heretics called "Simonians." In the Pseudo-Clementine literature of the third century Simon appears as the foremost opponent of Peter in debate in various cities, and in the next century legend is busy with his end. Denounced by Peter at Rome, he seeks to rehabilitate himself by a superlative feat of magic and offers to fly. The experiment has fatal results!
14. John: If, as is probable, this is the son of Zebedee--who had once wished to call down fire on a Samaritan town! (Luke 9:54)--this is the last time he is mentioned in Acts. But it is just possible that the reference is to John Mark (12:25; 15:37), who in 13:13 is called simply "John."
16-17. Here it is not baptism but the laying on of hands that bestows the Spirit. In 19:1 ff. certain Christians at Ephesus, who had not received the Holy Spirit as a result of the "baptism of John," are "baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus," and forthwith "when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them." The two passages taken together suggest that "the baptism of the early church was a conflation of the water-baptism of John with the Christian baptism which was the gift of the Spirit," and that "possibly the 'laying on of hands' was the specifically Christian element in baptism" (Beginnings of Christianity, IV, 93). See also on 2:37.
20. Gift: The Greek word means a free gift that cannot be bought.
22-24. If possible: the question being, of course, Simon's repentance. In the gall of bitterness: An echo of Deut. 29:18, where the first phrase relates to idolatry. The ERV mg. has "thou wilt become gall of bitterness"--i.e., Simon's sin will be a root of bitter dispute in the church. Bond of iniquity is from Isa. 58:6. Simon is held fast by the chain of his sin. The Western text ends vividly, "and he ceased not weeping greatly."
c) PHILIP AND THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH (8:26-40)
The story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch is most vividly told, very much in the style of a narrative from the books of Samuel or Kings. Was the eunuch a Jew or a Gentile? Eusebius refers to him as the first Gentile to embrace Christianity; so this Ethiopian has sometimes been regarded as an uncircumcised heathen, and his baptism as the first departure from the principle that Christianity was only for Jews, either native or proselyte. But there is nothing in the story to suggest any such far-reaching innovation. The fact that the Ethiopian was a pilgrim returning from Jerusalem, and that he was reading Isaiah, indicates that already he was at least a Jewish proselyte. Luke quite evidently regards not his case, but that of Cornelius, as the first admission of an uncircumcised Gentile. The stress laid on all the details of Cornelius' case, on the scruples that Peter found so hard to overcome, and on the controversy which the incident precipitated at Jerusalem--all this proves that Luke is describing what he considers to be the first case of the baptism of a heathen. He can hardly have thought of it as a mere repetition of the present event. The conversion of the Ethiopian is significant, not as introducing a new principle, but as an illustration of how far afield the gospel was already spreading. The most important feature of the story is the emergence for the first time of the great suffering servant passage in Isa. 53:1 as a specifically quoted text for Christian apologetic. If we can believe that the story rests on authentic tradition, this is of the greatest possible significance.
Vss. 26-40 contain a number of echoes of the story of Elijah (cf. I Kings 18:12; II Kings 2:16-17) which, combined with the echoes of Zephaniah noted below (on 8:26), have suggested to some scholars that the whole story may have been built up out of reminiscences extracted from the O.T. This appears a fantastic explanation of what is much more probably a perfectly natural coloring of the narrative by O.T. language.
26. An angel: Compare this verse with vss. 29 and 39, and note the interesting interchange between "angel" and "spirit." Cf. also 10:3 with 10:19, and see 23:8. Toward the south: This seems the most natural translation; but in the LXX the Greek word always means "midday," and it is possible that we ought here to translate "about noon" (cf. Zeph. 2:4; RSV mg.). Several curious verbal echoes of the LXX of Zephaniah occur in the narrative, including the use of this word and the mention of Ethiopia, Gaza, and Azotus (cf. this verse with Zeph. 2:4; vs. 27 with Zeph. 2:11-12; 3:10; vs. 39 with Zeph. 3:4). This is a desert road: Perhaps more probably "this place [i.e., Gaza] is deserted." Old Gaza, about two miles from the sea, had been destroyed by Alexander and was at this time "deserted." New Gaza, on the coast, was not destroyed till A.D. 66. The clause reads like an editorial note.
27. An Ethiopian: The Ethiopians were the Nubian race dwelling in the Nile region south of Egypt proper. It is only in modern times that they have been confused with the Abyssinians, who ethnologically and linguistically are Semitic. A eunuch: As such he would be excluded by the law from the "assembly of the Lord"; but for the more charitable prophetic attitude see Isa. 56:3 ff. To worship (proskunh6swn), or "on a pilgrimage." Proskunhth6v is the regular modern Greek word for a "pilgrim" (cf. 24:11).
32-33. The quotation is from the LXX of Isa. 53:7-8 and is important as the first definite application of the passage to Jesus as the suffering Servant. Have we a clue to anything characteristic of Luke's view of Christ's death in the fact that the quotation, as here employed, avoids Isaiah's several references to bearing the sins of others, while Luke also omits both Mark's "give his life as a ransom for many" (cf. Luke 22:27 with Mark 10:45), and also--in the shorter Western text--his reference to the "blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many" (cf. Luke 22:19 with Mark 14:24)? Of vs. 33, Lake and Cadbury say: "The meaning of the original is apparently as obscure to Hebrew scholars as are these Greek words. ... The truth seems to be that the translators did not know what the meaning of the Hebrew was, and gave a literal but unintelligible rendering" (Beginnings of Christianity, IV, 97). But see on 13:36.
36. After the words What is to prevent my being baptized? the Western text adds, "And Philip said, 'If you believe with all your heart, you may.' And he replied, 'I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.'" (RSV mg.; vs. 37 in KJV.) This probably represents the earliest form of the baptismal creed; and it is noticeable that it is an expansion, not of the trinitarian formula, but of the primitive formula "in the name of Jesus Christ."
39. The Spirit of the Lord: cf. II Kings 2:16. In Acts the phrase is used only here; but cf. 16:7, "the Spirit of Jesus," which is probably the meaning here, the title "Lord" being transferred as usual from Yahweh to Christ. No gift of the Spirit is said to follow baptism, unless we read with the Western text, "The Holy Spirit fell on the eunuch, but the angel of the Lord caught away Philip."
40. Azotus is the O.T. Ashdod. Among all the towns visited may have been Lydda and Joppa, where Peter, in 9:32, may have followed up and confirmed Philip's work, just as he had previously done in Samaria. Caesarea was the headquarters of the Roman procurators of Judea. Apparently it was Philip's home, for in 21:8 he is still resident there.

THE CHURCH AT JERUSALEM (3:1-5:42)

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C. THE CHURCH AT JERUSALEM (3:1-5:42)

1. PETER'S HEALING AND PREACHING (3:1-26)
Some scholars believe that 3:1-5:16 is a "doublet" of ch. 2, plus 5:17-42, and represents an earlier and more reliable tradition about "the birth of the church." For a fuller discussion see pp. 69-70, 72-73; on this theory 4:31 would be the simplest and most primitive version of the Pentecost story.
Peter's healing of a lame man and his provocative speech which follows lead to the first serious clash with the Jewish authorities. The account of the healing should be compared with that by Paul of a lame man at Lystra (14:8-11)--one of the best illustrations of the alleged parallelism between the two halves of Acts. According to our author, the power to work miracles was the supreme proof that the apostles had inherited the mission and authority of their Master. In Acts, as in the Gospels, we note a twofold attitude to miracles: (a) faith is necessary in order that a miracle may be worked (vs. 16; 14:9); (b) conversely, miracle is the supreme way of awakening faith (4:16, 21-22). The presence of a miraculous element in the narrative must therefore not be regarded as evidence either against the Lukan authorship or against the writer's dependence on a quite primitive tradition. There can be no question that the first Christians lived in daily expectation of "miracles," and may therefore well have experienced them; and Luke is just as likely as any alleged later editor to record miracles in full good faith.
Peter's speech follows very much the same lines as his first one. Again the language is strongly messianic; and we have the same emphasis on the rejection of Jesus by his own people, on his rehabilitation as Christ through the Resurrection, and on the consequent need of repentance if the blessings of the messianic era are to be enjoyed. It is again alleged that this speech, like the first, is full of ideas which can be paralleled in I Peter; e.g., vss. 20-21 are compared with I Pet. 1:10-11. But the ideas are all such as were common to primitive Christianity in general, and the parallelism is hardly sufficient to prove conclusively either the Petrine origin of the speech or the Petrine authorship of the First Epistle of Peter. This speech possibly reflects an even more primitive viewpoint than that in ch. 2 (as being derived from the better of the two sources?). Here the return of Jesus is the chief hope and central message (vs. 20); there the central place is given to the gift of the Spirit, the bestowal of which is the chief work of the ascended Jesus. This speech is also written in much less polished Greek than most of Acts, which may indicate a translation from an Aramaic source.
3:1. John, generally assumed to be the son of Zebedee, is, as in the Gospels, closely associated with Peter; but in Acts he takes a quite subordinate position (see 8:14 if.)--which is strange if he was really so prominent a figure in the early church as tradition asserts. If, as some hold, the source from which this section comes (Jerusalem Source A) is a continuation of the original Marcan narrative, Lake's suggestion would be attractive --that the John who accompanied Peter was not the apostle but John Mark, who was traditionally "the interpreter of Peter" (so Papias; Eusebius Church History III. 39). This would certainly better explain his lack of prominence.
2. The gate ... Beautiful of the temple is usually identified with either (a) the Shushan Gate, which was the eastern external gate to the temple area. This would be on the outside of "the portico called Solomon's" (vs. 11), and would better suit our ("Neutral") text, according to which the apostles "entered the temple" (vs. 8), or rather the temple area, presumably through the "Beautiful Gate," and inside it were surrounded by a crowd in Solomon's Portico, which was a colonnade, probably on the east side of the temple area. Or (b) the gate in question is the Nicanor Gate, the eastern gate of the temple buildings proper, the special magnificence of which is described both in the Mishnah and by Josephus. This suits the Western text which reads: "When Peter and John were going out, he went with them, holding on to them, and they [the people] stood astonished in the portico called Solomon's"; this would seem to indicate that the "Beautiful Gate" was farther in than Solomon's Portico. Lake and Cadbury suggest that the reason why the apostles entered from the east, rather than by the usual great southern entrance, may have been that they were still coming in daily from the Bethany district. True, 1:13 seems to regard the upper room in Jerusalem as their home; but, if Harnack's source analysis is true, that verse comes from Jerusalem Source B, while the present passage belongs to Jerusalem Source A.
6-7. In the name: The use of "the name" in religious formulas and practice springs from the identification of a name with the person to whom the name belongs and the belief that the qualities and powers of that person are inherent in his "name," so that by invoking the "name" his power and authority are called into operation. For the use of "the name" in the N.T. see Mark 9:38 ff.; Matthew 7:22; Luke 10:17; Phil. 2:9-11, and the common baptismal formula (e.g., I Cor. 6:11); for Acts in particular see 2:38; 3:16; 4:12; 5:41; 9:14; 16:18; 19:13. Note that while others work miracles in the power of "the name," Jesus does so by his own "authority" (Mark 1:27). Vs. 7 is a favorite passage with those who seek proof from his technical language that the author of Acts was a medical man.
13. The words glorified his servant Jesus read like an echo of Isa. 52:13, whence it has been deduced that Peter and the early Jerusalem community already identified Jesus with the "righteous servant" of Second Isaiah (see also 4:27-30). The word servant (pai'v) is ambiguous in the Greek, and may mean either "child" or "servant"; there is no such ambiguity in the Hebrew, and from this it has been argued that its use as a title for Jesus is more likely to have begun among Greek-speaking Christians. The only passage in Acts which quite clearly identifies Jesus with "the servant" of Isaiah is 8:32, which, according to Harnack, comes from a source connected with Caesarea, and would reflect the view of the Hellenistic-Jewish circle to which Philip belonged. But if Jesus himself, as seems highly probable, identified himself with the servant (cf. Luke 4:17 ff.; Mark 10:45), there seems no good reason why Peter and the earliest disciples should not have bestowed the title upon him. The servant was glorified first by the sign just performed in his name, but chiefly through the Resurrection (vs. 15).
14-15. The Holy and Righteous One likewise seems an echo of Isa. 53:11. The "Just One" is again used as a title for Jesus in 22:14. The only evidence that it was a Jewish title of the Messiah is in Enoch 38:2. Wisd. Sol. 2 speaks of the persecution of the "righteous one" by the wicked, but without any messianic reference. But it was evidently one of the earliest titles given to Jesus. Have we an echo of it in Matthew 27:19; Luke 23:47; Jas. 5:6; I Pet. 3:18? And was the title passed on to James the Lord's brother, who was also called "the Just"? (See also 7:52; 22:14.) The Author of life: Except in Acts, the word (ajrchgo6v) occurs in the N.T. only in Heb. 2:10; 12:2, and in both those passages means, as here, "originator" rather than "captain," which, however, seems to be the meaning in Acts 5:31. Bengel remarks on the magnificum antitheton which calls Barabbas a murderer and Jesus the Author of life.
16. The language here is intolerably awkward, and the text must surely be confused. Torrey (The Composition & Date of Acts [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1916]) suggests that an original Aramaic phrase meaning "[God] made him strong" has been misread and mistranslated as if it were another phrase meaning "his name has strengthened." This is perhaps his most ingenious and convincing proof from mistranslation of the existence of an Aramaic original. Alternatively, Burkitt alters the punctuation to read: "To this we are witnesses, and to faith in his name; this man ... did his name make strong" (Journal of Theological Studies, XX [1919], 320 if.). The faith in question is either the lame man's or, perhaps more probably, the apostles' faith in Jesus which enables them to work miracles in his name (cf. vs. 6).
17. Note I Cor. 2:8: However, there "the rulers of this age" are probably to be understood, not as the civil authorities, but as the demonic "principalities and powers."
18-19. Strictly speaking, the prophets neither in the original passages nor in Jewish interpretation of them foretold ... that his Christ should suffer; for even the suffering Servant prophecies were never interpreted messianically. But Christian interpretation soon came to apply to Christ all references to suffering both in the Psalms and the Prophets. Lake and Cadbury remark that "the assumption ... that the Christian interpretation was recognized and accepted by Jews in Jerusalem is difficult to reconcile with the view that the speech is authentic" (Beginnings of Christianity, IV, 37; see also on 17:3; 26:23). The context shows that by times of refreshing is meant the coming of the messianic age, though the Greek word appears never to be technically so used in Jewish writings.
21-23. The time for establishing: The Greek word ought properly to mean "restoration"; but "in relation to prophecy it may mean the establishment of what was predicted rather than the restoration of an earlier condition" (ibid. IV, 38). The quotation in vss. 22-23 is a combination of Deut. 18:15 and Lev. 23:29, possibly taken from some collection of testimonia or proof texts, where they were already run together. The Jews distinguished this prophet from the Messiah (see John 1:20-21; 7:40-41), but Christian interpretation, as here and in 7:37, united them in the person of Jesus.
25. Note Gen. 12:3; 22:18, and the use made by Paul of the latter verse in Gal. 3:16.
26. Having raised up apparently echoes the quotation in vs. 22, and means "caused to appear," with reference to Jesus' ministry. But the Greek word is used regularly of the Resurrection, and 4:2 (as well as 26:22-23, where many of the same ideas as here reappear) suggests that here too the reference may be to the Resurrection: in Pentecost and the miracle of healing God has sent the risen Jesus on a new ministry. In that case should first be taken as an adjective agreeing with his servant, as in 26:23, where Christ is "the first to rise from the dead," and in Col. 1:18 where he is "the first-born from the dead"?
2. FIRST CLASH WITH JUDAISM (4:1-22)

ActsExeg.41
According to vs. 4, the number of persons belonging to the new Christian community had now risen to about five thousand. Such a statement some scholars feel "defies every resemblance to truth" (Maurice Goguel, Introduction au Nouveau Testament, "Le Livre des Actes" [Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1922], III, 179). It is true that the verse reads like an editorial summary, so that the figure may not have stood in the source. On the other hand, though most of these notes about the growth of numbers are very vague (see 2:47; 5:14; 6:1; 9:31), and almost certainly editorial, in other cases specific numbers are given (so 1:15--"about a hundred and twenty"; 2:41--"about three thousand"; 4:4--"about five thousand"), which suggests the possibility that in these cases Luke may be quoting from his sources, and that the figures are not merely the result of his own idealization of early history. In any case the growth of the community was evidently extremely rapid; and it was probably alarm at this that prompted the authorities to take action. Hitherto they had not thought it worth while to do so; that the Christians were still proclaiming a gibbeted malefactor as Messiah merely stamped them as deluded fanatics; and that they never questioned the validity of the Jewish law, and were in no sense revolutionaries against either church or state, would disarm suspicion. This would be the situation until the steady increase of their numbers attracted hostile attention.
It is significant that it was not the Pharisees who first took action, but the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees. Although Judea had been a Roman province under a procurator since A.D. 6, external affairs were left to the Jewish authorities in the persons of the high priest and the seventy members of the Sanhedrin drawn from the rulers, or actual holders of political office, the elders, who owed their position not to office but to blood or wealth or religious prestige, and the scribes or teachers of the law. But political power was concentrated in the hands of "the high priest ... and all who were with him, that is, the party of the Sadducees" (5:17). Theologically the hierarchical aristocracy represented a rationalistic and skeptical tendency; for example they denied the resurrection and the existence of spirits (23:8). But their religious views were subordinated to policy. Their one aim was to maintain their own ascendancy and to prevent this being endangered by any popular restlessness that might provoke the Romans to place restrictions on local self-government (cf. especially John 11:48). Hence their suspicion of any undue religious enthusiasm, especially of the messianic order such as was being manifested by the new Christian sect. Thus Luke is undoubtedly right in representing the first opposition as coming from the Sadducees rather than from the Pharisees, who would have had no reason for proceeding against such consistent Jews. The apostles almost certainly were arrested, not as teachers of false doctrine, but as potential disturbers of the public peace. For Luke is probably wrong in the reason which he gives for the hostility of the Sadducees--because they were ... proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. The Sadducees were tolerant to a fault, and never sought to silence those who merely differed from them theologically. But for Luke it is a postulate that the Sadducees "say that there is no resurrection" (Luke 20:27; Acts 23:8), and it may well be that he ignores the real reason because of his concern throughout the book to demonstrate that the Christians were never politically suspect in the eyes of the Roman authorities.
On the ground that the account of the arrest is so vague, and that so little is said of any definite charge, some scholars (e.g., Loisy) think that the disciples were merely warned, and that no formal proceedings can have been taken before the Sanhedrin. But for Luke at least the trial provides the dramatic climax to which the story of the cure is introductory. A few weeks before, Jesus himself had been arraigned before the same court; he had warned his disciples that "they will deliver you up to councils" (Mark 13:9); and here is the fulfillment of the prophecy.
4:1-2. The captain of the temple is either (a) the zAghAn who held rank next to the high priest and was his chief executive officer; he is called "captain" in the LXX; or (b) a lesser official in charge of the temple guard, to whom Josephus gives the same title. Proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection, i.e., in Jesus they found proof of the doctrine denied by the Sadducees.
5-6. The rulers are presumably the office-holding priests of vs. 1. Compare the usual collocation, as here, with elders and scribes of "chief priests" in Luke 9:22; 20:1; etc., the latter being not only those who had actually held office as high priest, but also their priestly relatives--all who were of the high-priestly family. Annas had been high priest from A.D. 6 to 14, but as five of his sons and his son-in-law Caiaphas (now the legal high priest) had followed him in the office, he was still the power behind the throne (cf. John 18:13). Did Luke believe that Annas and Caiaphas both held office at the same time, as seems implied by the words "in the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas" (Luke 3:2)? For John Codex Bezae (D) reads "Jonathan"; if this is correct, he may be the son of Annas who succeeded Caiaphas as high priest in A.D. 36. Of Alexander we know nothing.
8-9. Filled with the Holy Spirit: Another very primitive touch, the action of the Spirit, as often in the O.T., being still regarded as intermittent (e.g., I Sam. 19:20, 23; Judg. 11:29; 15:14; see on 4:31). By what means this man has been healed: The Greek word for healed is the same as that for "saved" (vs. 12), but the play on the word cannot be reproduced in English.
11. This is the stone refers of course to Jesus. The quotation is from Ps. 118:22. In Luke 20:17 (following Mark 12:10) it is quoted verbatim from the LXX; but here we have a free paraphrase from the original Hebrew, again perhaps from some collection of testimonia (see on 3:22). The head of the corner may be either (a) a stone in the foundation, which suits the reference in Isa. 28:16 (quoted in Rom. 9:33) and in Eph. 2:20; or (b) a stone at the top of a corner, binding the walls together where they meet, which better suits the word head. (See also I Pet. 2:7.)
13. Uneducated, common men (ajgra6mmato6i ... ijdiw'tai): The first word means properly "unable to write," but here probably implies that they had not been educated in the rabbinical schools. The ijdiw6thv is properly the layman as opposed to the professional in any field. The implication is that the apostles belong to the Amhaarez, the "people of the land," of whom the Pharisees say in John 7:49 that "this crowd, who do not know the law, are accursed." They recognized that they had been with Jesus: Does this imply that up to this point the authorities had not actually associated the apostles with Jesus? Possibly so; and the longer Western text makes this even more evident. But Luke may mean rather that the authorities, already knowing that they were followers of Jesus, now put two and two together and deduced that it was just because they were Christians that they possessed such marvelous powers.
19. So Socrates, in Plato Apology 29. D: "I shall obey God rather than you."
21. Because of the people: The Pharisees, not the Sadducees, were the party in favor with the people, and the Sadducees had therefore carefully to watch public opinion (cf. 5:26; Matthew 21:26; 26:5).
3. LIFE WITHIN THE. COMMUNITY (4:23-5:16)

The key verse of this section is 4:31, describing a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit. This reads so like a repetition of the Pentecost experience that it is convenient at this point to call attention to the remarkable parallelism between the two blocks of material represented by (a) 2:1-47 plus 5:17-42, and (b) 3:1-5:16, corresponding respectively to Harnack's two sources, Jerusalem Source B and Jerusalem Source A. The "doublets" may be set in parallel columns, the passages attributed by Harnack to Jerusalem Source A being in boldface type. If it is conceded that we have in fact two parallel accounts of the same series of events, which the author has set down consecutively, there is a general inclination to prefer that derived from Jerusalem Source A as being a simpler and therefore more authentic account of the church's infancy. The series of parallels is certainly most striking, and in particular the duplication of "summaries of progress" is somewhat suspicious (cf. 2:43a with 5:5b; 2:43b with 5:12a; 2:46a with 5:12b; 2:47a with 5:13b; 2:47b with 5:14). It is of course not impossible that events did thus repeat themselves. If, on the other hand, we accept the theory of two accounts of the same series of happenings, then the very closeness of the parallelism, quite unconsciously reproduced by our author, is surely a proof of the historicity of the sequence of events.
2:1-13 Outpouring of the Spirit.
2:14-21 Peter's speech at Pentecost.
2:42-47 Summary: the communal life of the church.
2:43a "Fear came upon every soul."
2:43b "Many wonders and signs were done through the apostles."
3:1-11 Healing of the lame man.
3:12-26 Peter's speech in Solomon's Portico.
4:1-7 Arrest of the apostles.
4:4 "Many of those who heard the word believed."
4:8-12 Peter's speech to his accusers.
4:13-17 The council deliberates.
4:18-22 The apostles are warned and freed.
4:23-30 The community rejoices.
4:31a Outpouring of the Spirit.
4:31b "They ... spoke the word of God with boldness."
4:32-35 Summary: the communal life of the church.
4:36-5:11 Two examples of communism: Barnabas, Ananias.
5:5b "Great fear came upon all who heard it."
5:11 "Great fear came upon the whole church."
5:12a "Many signs and wonders were done ... by the hands of the apostles."
5:12b-16 Typical healings.
5:12b "They were all together in Solomon's Portico."
5:17-18 Arrest of the apostles.
5:19-28 The apostles escape and preach the word (vs. 20).
5:29-32 Peter's speech to his accusers.
5:33-39 The council deliberates (Gamaliel).
5:40 The apostles are warned and freed.
5:41-42 "Rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer."
The passages 2:42-47 and 4:32-35 may either be ascribed to Jerusalem Source B and Jerusalem Source A respectively, or may be regarded as editorial summaries not derived from either source. The passage 4:36-5:11 is not regarded by Lake as part of Jerusalem Source A, on the ground that logically 5:12 ff. is a continuation of 4:31, so that all the intervening verses (and not merely 4:32-35) must be an intrusion from elsewhere (see Beginnings off Christianity, V, 142). But 5:12b-16 provides the same prelude to the arrest of the disciples in 5:17-18 as does the healing of the lame man to their arrest in 4:1 ff. It is tempting therefore to transfer 5:12b-16 to Jerusalem Source B, to which the sequel belongs, or to suppose that the verses are Luke's own composition. Vs. 12a should surely be combined with vs. 11 to form a summary conclusion to Jerusalem Source A parallel to 2:43, which provides an exactly similar conclusion to Jerusalem Source B. The two sets of doublets would then be complete; and if ch. 2 were transposed to follow ch. 5, we should have from Jerusalem Source B a complete narrative parallel in detail to that from Jerusalem Source A in 3:1-5:12a. Whereas, with ch. 2 in its present position, there is nothing to lead up to Pentecost, we might now assume that in both sources the first outpouring of the Spirit followed the first public appearance of the apostles as miraculous healers and their first encounter with the Jewish authorities. The result of the gift of the Spirit shows itself in a new boldness in witness-bearing in the face of persecution, thereby illustrating the fulfillment of the promise given by Jesus (Luke 12:11-12).
a) NEW OUTPOURING OF THE SPIRIT (4:23-31)
The prayer of thanksgiving (vss. 24-30) is a lyric comparable with the songs and prayers of Luke's nativity storyú It is quite in the style of the O.T. to insert such lyrics in the middle of narrative, good examples being the prayer of Jonah "out of the fish's belly" (Jonah 2:1), and the song of the three children "in the burning fiery furnace" (Dan. 3:1, in the Greek). Luke here with great skill reproduces the O.T. flavor, and if, as seems likely, the lyric is his own composition, it illustrates how well he conforms to the conventions of his twofold literary inheritance--Greek in the case of the speeches, Hebrew in this characteristically Hebraic section.
Immediately after the prayer of thanksgiving they were all filled with the Holy Spirit (vs. 31). Acts is particularly full of references to the activity of the Spirit. Men are variously spoken of as in it, under it, filled with it, baptized with it, anointed with it, instructed by it. They speak through it, or it through them. Sometimes it is called the Spirit of the Lord, or the Spirit of Jesus, and is in fact almost indistinguishable from the risen Jesus himself. All this is of course not peculiar to Luke, whose special outlook is shown (a) in his emphasis on the materiality of the Spirit: at Jesus' baptism it descends "in bodily form, as a dove" (Luke 3:22); Jesus casts out devils "by the finger of God" (Luke 11:20; Matthew 12:28 has "by the Spirit of God"); at Pentecost we have the actual sound of "wind" and the tongues of "fire"; and the idea of "filling" and "pouring," almost as of some kind of material fluid, is especially frequent. Is Luke showing the characteristic interest of the physician in the tangible and corporeal? (b) Noticeable too is the definiteness with which Luke marks the arrival of the Spirit; there are outstanding moments when the Spirit manifests itself quite apart from the normal spiritual experience of Christians. Here Luke certainly reflects a point of view much more primitive than Paul's. For Paul the Spirit is the active moving power in normal Christian living; the life of every true Christian is "spiritual" in the fullest sense. But the primitive view saw the highest expression of the Spirit's activity, not in the everyday faith and piety of the common disciple, but in the abnormal and unusual in character, word, or work. To see visions, speak with tongues, preach with more than ordinary power was a proof of possession by the Spirit, of which the ordinary disciple was expected to show no striking evidence. Thus the community as a whole could be "filled with the Spirit" only on special ecstatic occasions such as the present. Nevertheless in the case of some saints such possession by the Spirit, attainable by others only spasmodically, was regarded as habitual and characteristic, and they are called men "full of the Spirit" (6:3). Stephen (6:5) and Barnabas (11:24) are specifically so called. Such were men whose religious power was so pre-eminent that only the permanent indwelling of the Spirit of God could account for it. It was not the least of Paul's achievements that he transcended this somewhat artificial distinction between the man whose religious fervor manifested itself in striking outward effects, and the saint in whom the Spirit expressed itself in the depth of his personal devotional life. (On the Spirit in the primitive church see also article "The Gospel in the New Testament," in Vol. VII of this work, especially pp. 8-10.)
24. The only other place where Luke uses the title Sovereign Lord (despo6thv) of God is Luke 2:29, where also the word "slave" (dou'lov, the word translated "servants" in vs. 29) is used in antithesis. Is a similar antithesis implied by the use in vs. 27 of the phrase "thy holy servant [pai'da] Jesus"--our Lord being thus identified with the "servant of Yahweh" of Isa. 52:13, etc.? (See on 3:13.)
25. Though the RSV probably gives the intended sense, the Greek here is "an incoherent jumble of words" (Torrey). The text is almost certainly corrupt, though Torrey suspects a mistranslation of an original Aramaic sentence meaning, "That which our father, thy servant David, said by command of the Holy Spirit." The quotation is from Ps. 2:1-2.
27. Whom thou didst anoint, i.e., "make Christ," "make Messiah." Did Luke think of this anointing as taking place at Jesus' baptism? Herod represents "the kings" of the quotation, and Pontius Pilate represents "the rulers."
31. An earthquake would be considered an outward sign of divine activity, and it is the only one of the four signs in the divine manifestation to Elijah (I Kings 19:11-12) which was not reproduced in the account of Pentecost in ch. 2. Boldness, as illustrated in vs. 8 above, is the result of the possession of the Spirit. The phrase almost means "without inhibition"; cf. its use of Jesus in Mark 8:32 ("he said this plainly"), and for the thought in general cf. Luke 12:11-12.
b) THE SHARING OF GOODS (4:32-5:10)
Immediately after the notice of the outpouring of the Spirit there follows once again (as in 2:42-47 after the story of Pentecost) a summary giving a little tableau of life within the primitive community. Those who regard the two summaries as doublets are inclined to give priority to the present passage. In both stress is laid upon the apostles' teaching and upon the community of goods, practiced not as a compulsory system but as a voluntary means of meeting the common need.
The two illustrations given of "communism"--the cases of Barnabas and Ananias--show that there can have been no absolute or even general rule. The special liberality of Barnabas had no reason to be mentioned if vs. 32 is to be taken with strict literalness. Similarly 5:4 makes it clear that Ananias was perfectly at liberty to keep his possessions if he so wished. His sin was not that he withheld part of his goods, but that he lied to the Holy Spirit (5:3) by retaining part of the proceeds of the sale, and thereby pretending to be more generous than in fact he was. Whatever may have been the extent of this "communistic" experiment at Jerusalem, it appears very soon to have broken down, first, perhaps on account of the dissension between "Hellenists" and "Hebrews" (6:1), and second, because the administrators who had been appointed as a result of the dispute had been driven from the city by the Jews. Probably also the eager expectation of the Parousia led to improvidence for the future, so that the Jerusalem community was always poor. Accordingly we find the selling of local possessions superseded by the sending of alms to the mother church by the richer daughter churches. Antioch sent relief by Barnabas and Paul (11:30); Paul was asked "to remember the poor," presumably of Jerusalem (Gal. 2:10); and later he brought a contribution from the Gentile churches (Rom. 15:25 ff.; II Cor. 8:1 ff.).
Barnabas is here mentioned for the first time. For a considerable period, until Paul later took the leadership, he must have been the most prominent figure in Hellenistic Jewish-Christian circles. In the calendar of the Anglican church he is given the title of "apostle," and is the only saint outside the twelve, except Paul and the evangelists, to be honored with a red-letter day. By birth he was a Cypriote; but he probably had connections with Jerusalem, for John Mark was his cousin. Originally named Joseph, he received the surname "Barnabas" possibly to mark his admission to the function of prophet or teacher--if we accept the traditional derivation of the name from bar-nebhû)Ah, "son of prophecy." This might also give the meaning "Son of exhortation" (ASV). Alternatively, an Aramaic derivation from bar-newahâ) ("rest" or "refreshment") would give "son of consolation" (KJV). Luke's Greek (uiJo;v paraklh6sewv) might at a stretch bear either meaning. A "paraclete" is properly a person called in to one's side to help; hence in I John 2:1 it is translated "advocate"; in John 14:16 it is used of the Holy Spirit and is translated "Comforter" (KJV) or "Counselor" (RSV). Here a good translation is Son of encouragement, which includes both ideas. In Acts Barnabas lives up to his name (see e.g., 11:23 ff.). Adolf Deissmann (Bible Studies [Edinburgh: T. g: T. Clark, 1901], pp. 307-10) and others prefer a derivation from Nebo, apparently a heathen demon-god, in which case Luke's translation seems quite arbitrary, though curiously, as Lake and Cadbury note, it would fit Manaen, who appears with Barnabas in 13:1. Can there have been some confusion? A similar problem arises in connection with the meaning of the name Elymas in 13:8.
For the extreme punishment meted out to Ananias and Sapphira we may compare Paul's words in I Cor. 5:5, "You are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." Some may prefer to believe that the account has been somewhat "written up": the coincidence of the sudden death of the guilty pair was put down to a direct visitation of the Spirit--cf. lie to the Holy Spirit (5:3); tempt the Spirit of the Lord (5:9)--and the actual agency of Peter in causing the deaths was introduced later. But more important than the accuracy of the story in detail is the light it throws on the ideas of the primitive community--the constant oversight of the Spirit whom none can deceive; the odiousness of hypocrisy, which Jesus had treated as the chief of all sins; the love of money as the root of all evil. Indeed, greed for gain or trust in the power of money lies behind most of the sins or failures recorded in Acts: Judas' betrayal (1:18), the sin of Simon (8:18), the opposition of the "owners" of the mediumistic slave girl at Philippi (16:16 ff.) and of the silversmiths at Ephesus (19:23 ff.), and even the procrastination of Felix (24:26). The sin of Ananias was that he tried "to make the best of both worlds."
32. The company of those who believed means the whole body of Christians and is practically synonymous with "the church" (cf. 6:2, 5; 15:12, 30).
35. Laid it at the apostles' feet may reflect an old legal convention by which property was transferred by placing it at or under the feet of the recipient.
5:1-2. Ananias, not an uncommon name (9:10; 23:2), means "Yahweh is gracious." Sapphira means "beautiful." Kept back some of the proceeds: The Greek verb is somewhat obscure, but is regularly used of appropriating something that is held in trust; the implication is that the proceeds of the sale, having already been dedicated to the community, were no longer at Ananias' own disposal. Lake and Cadbury well translate: "embezzled part of the price." The word is used in Josh. 7:1 of Achan who "took of the accursed thing," i.e., "retained part of the consecrated spoil." The word may well have been chosen with that story in view, for the enormity of Ananias' sin, like Achan's, was that through it sin entered into the community.
3. Lie to [or "cheat"] the Holy Spirit: The essential "sin against the Holy Spirit" is always to confound evil with good. In Mark 3:29 to ascribe Jesus' good deeds to the Devil's agency is to "blaspheme the Holy Spirit"; here the lie to the Holy Spirit is for a miserly man to pose as generous--a piece of willful hypocrisy. Note that this "lie to the Spirit" is equivalent to lying to God (vs. 4), and to tempting the Spirit of the Lord (vs. 9).
6. The young men: Literally "the younger men," possibly in distinction from the "elders"; but it is questionable whether even the latter yet existed as officials, and most unlikely that "the younger men" were an official "body of men devoted to such offices as burying" (Rackham). In vs. 10 they are called simply "young men," the Greek word having no such official flavor.
9. To tempt the Spirit of the Lord: The primitive idea of seeing how far one can go without provoking retaliation; cf. the common O.T. phrase of "tempt the Lord" (e.g., Exod. 17:2), and notice how, as in I Cot. 10:9, the idea, and indeed the very title "Lord," is transferred from God to Christ.
c) SUMMARY (5:11-16)
Vss. 11-12a probably go together to form a summary conclusion to Jerusalem Source A parallel to 2:43, which provides an exactly similar conclusion to Jerusalem Source B. In the following verses (12b-16) the idea of signs and wonders is developed into a generalizing summary which provides a fitting climax to the whole section. This was probably composed by Luke himself. Or did he take over these verses also from one or other of his sources? (See Exeg., above on p. 70.)
11. The word church (ejkklhsi6a) is here used for the first time as a name for the Christian community. At first any such name would be unnecessary, for Christians were still within the Jewish community, though marked out as "those who called on this name" (i.e., of Jesus; 9:21). Then vague phrases like "the Way" (9:2), "this Life" (5:20), "this salvation" (13:26) were perhaps used. The Christians, as a sect within Judaism, were probably called "Nazarenes," and their synagogue in Aramaic would be "the Kenîshta) [Hebrew Kenézeth] of the Nazarenes." Among themselves they were known as "saints" or "brothers," the name "Christian" being regarded as a mere nickname (11:26) and not used till well on in the second century. As the rift with Judaism widened, "the church" was accepted as a distinctive title. The usage has its roots in the LXX, where ejkklhsi6a (ecclesia) is one of two words used to describe the "congregation" or "assembly" of Israel, the other being sunagwgh6, "synagogue." The Hebrew words used to describe the people assembled for acts of public worship, deliberation, and judgment are (edhAh (ASV "congregation") and qAhAl (ASV "assembly"). Both words seem sometimes to be used in exactly the same sense; but the distinction is that (edhAh can denote all Israelites as a community, while qAhAl is rather the "assembly" called for a specific purpose. In the LXX the distinction becomes clearer: sunagwgh6 is often used to translate both Hebrew words in the more general sense. But there was ready at hand another Greek word ejkklhsi6a, with the technical sense of a specially convoked public assembly "called out" by trumpet or otherwise. When the qAhAl in question is a formal assembly for solemn religious purposes (e.g., on Sinai, Ebal, and Gerizim, at the dedication of the temple, or at Hezekiah's and Josiah's Passovers), the regular LXX translation is ejkklhsi6a. Hence Israel as God's "called" community might be spoken of as "the ecclesia, or church, of the Lord," and the use of the word by the Christians certainly implies the claim that they, rather than the Jews, were the true "people of God." The Jews appear to have preferred to use sunagwgh6 in the same sense; e.g., Ps. 74:2 in the LXX runs, "Remember thy synagogue which thou hast purchased and redeemed of old"--for which Paul significantly substitutes "church" when he echoes the verse (Acts 20:28). In short the Christians appropriated the word ejkklhsi6a; over against the Jewish "synagogue" stands the Christian "church." As in the Pauline epistles, the use of the word "church" in Acts is threefold: (a) The whole church as a religious community; 20:28 comes nearest to this "catholic" use; cf. also 5:11; 9:31; I Cor. 10:32. (b) The local Christian body: e.g., 13:1, "the church at Antioch," or 11:26, where the local community at the same place is called "the church"; so both in Paul and Acts we have "the churches" with reference to the local bodies; this is much the most common usage. (c) The original use with reference to the people in actual assembly. So throughout I Cor. 14 ejn ejkklhsi6a almost means, as we would say, "in church," and in 14:23 kat! ejkklhsi6an may mean "at church," just as in 2:46 kat! oi\kon means "at home." An extension of this usage would be the application of the word to the church building, as with the word "synagogue." A possible, but unlikely, example might be I Cor. 11:22, where oijki6av (homes) and ejkklhsi6av (church building?) may be in antithesis.
12b-14. These verses are very obscure. The all who were together in Solomon's Portico are presumably the apostles and their immediate following, or possibly the whole Christian community, in which case the rest will be other interested spectators who still hesitated to identify themselves thus publicly with the Christians, even though the people in general held them in high honor. But vs. 14 seems a contradiction unless we suppose that dared loin them means not merely to join the community but to co-operate in courageous public witness. It is suggested that join them (kolla'sqai, "be cemented to") is a mistranslation of an Aramaic word meaning "interfere with."
15-16. So that: The connection is obviously with 12a rather than with the immediately preceding words, which suggests that the obscure intervening sentences may be a misplaced editorial summary. Note the close parallel between vss. 15-16 and Mark 6:56, which is part of a Marcan section omitted by Luke's Gospel (see on 1:7). For the healing power of Peter's shadow compare the faith in Paul's "handkerchiefs" (19:12).
4. SECOND CLASH WITH JUDAISM (5:17-42)
The second encounter of the apostles with the Sanhedrin is very much like that recorded in 4:1-22, and, as we have seen, there is some reason for regarding the two accounts as "doublets." There is also a close resemblance to the account of Peter s escape from prison in 12:6-11, though the present narrative has none of the vivid circumstantial details of the later story. If we are dealing with doublets, then we should recall that the present account is, according to Harnack, from Jerusalem Source B, the less satisfactory of the two parallel Jerusalem sources. It is perhaps significant that the section contains what appears to be the worst historical error in Acts. In 5:36 Gamaliel refers to a rebellion of Theudas which, according to Josephus (Antiquities XX. 5), took place ten or twelve years after the time when he is speaking. He also makes it appear that Theudas rebelled at an earlier date than Judas, who in fact led a revolt in A.D. 6-8. This notorious anachronism has been made the basis for the argument that the author of Acts had read Josephus' Antiquities; for the latter, after narrating the rebellion of Theudas, goes on to tell of the subsequent execution of the sons of Judas. The two names thus occur in reverse order, and it is suggested that Luke's anachronism is due to a careless reading of Josephus. The importance of this is that it would necessitate a later date for Acts, as Josephus did not publish his Antiquities till about A.D. 93. Two other passages are quoted as proving Luke's dependence on Josephus--Luke 3:1; Acts 21:38. But it must be granted that all three passages "fall just short of demonstration," and in the case of the present passage "there is always the possibility that Luke and Josephus were using a common source in which the events were arranged in the order given by Josephus" (Beginnings of Christianity, II, 357). There is in fact no need to assume any acquaintance on Luke's part with the works of Josephus.
The historicity of Gamaliel's intervention has been commonly denied by radical critics, on account both of the anachronism in his speech and of the general line that he is alleged to have taken. But Gamaliel belonged to the more liberal school of Hillel, as opposed to the more rigid followers of Shammai; and it is quite likely that he may have counseled moderation for reasons of conviction as well as of policy. As a Pharisee he may well have had a bias in favor of the Christians as loyal observers of the law over against their Sadducean persecutors; and as a coolheaded statesman he may have believed that firm control would accomplish more than harsh repression, which might provoke a popular outbreak in support of a respected sect. It is entirely credible that Gamaliel, as indeed any other member of the Sanhedrin, may have taken up the attitude indicated by Luke. The Christians were in fact for some considerable time treated with just the kind of toleration that Gamaliel urged.
17. The party of the Sadducees: The Greek is hJ ou\sa ai{resiv--an odd use of the participle, for which cf. 13:1. Lake and Cadbury suspect a semitechnical usage, for which there is some evidence in the papyri, of a participle "referring to what was existent at the place mentioned or the time mentioned, for which our English equivalent would be 'local' and 'current' respectively" (Beginnings of Christianity, IV, 56). Here the meaning would be "the local party of the Sadducees." Would this explain the famous crux in Eph. 1:1, which might be translated "to the local saints and believers in Christ Jesus"?
19-20. An angel sometimes appears in the O.T. as a quite impersonal agent of God's purpose, as when, e.g., "an angel" (pestilence) smites Sennacherib's army (II Kings 19:35; cf. II Sam. 24:16) or protects Daniel from the lions (Dan. 6:22). Here some providential intervention is suggested, perhaps the connivance of a jailer or the help of a friend (see also 8:26; 12:7, 23). This Life: a unique expression, perhaps like "the Way," used by Christians to describe their gospel.
21. The council and all the senate are one and the same body, the Jewish Sanhedrin. Senate is an older name which well suits the archaic language, the senate of the children of Israel. It is, however, just possible that Luke thought that there was a deliberative body of "elders" in addition to the "council" or "Sanhedrin" as the judicial body.
28-29. We strictly charged: i.e., referring to 4:18, as we must obey God repeats 4:19. Rackham well compares Antigone's words in Sophocles' tragedy (Antigone 453-55; tr. E. H. Plumptre):
Nor did I deem thy edicts strong enough,
That thou, a mortal man, should'st over-pass
The unwritten laws of God that know not change.
30-32. The gist of Peter's speech is exactly the same as in the parallel in 4:8 ff.: the Jews are responsible for the crime of crucifying one whom God has vindicated by raising him from the dead and exalting him to the highest honor. Killed: The unusual Greek word has perhaps a semislang flavor, for which cf. 26:21; Lake and Cadbury translate "did away with." Hanging him on a tree; cf. Deut. 21:22 and see on 10:39. Leader: The same word translated in 3:15 as "the Author of life." To these things: Literally "words," probably one of Luke's deliberate Hebraisms, based on the similar use of the Hebrew word däbhär; cf. 10:37. So is the Holy Spirit, i.e., as demonstrated by the deeds of the apostles.
34. Gamaliel: The first of the famous rabbis of that name, he was a descendant of Hillel and is named in the traditional list as one of the successive "presidents of the council." His reputation is later attested by the saying, "Since Rabban Gamaliel the elder died, there has been no more reverence for the law" (quoted in Emil Schürer, A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1891], Div. II, Vol. I, p. 364). According to 22:3, he was Paul's teacher.
36-37. Theudas: There is no evidence of any Theudas other than the rebel mentioned by Josephus as having risen some years later than Gamaliel's speech. The argument is that if Jesus is, like Theudas and Judas, a mere impostor, his cause will as speedily collapse. The census in question in connection with Judas is that made by Quirinius in A.D. 6, and is not that of Luke 2:1, though there is a question that Luke may have confused them. Judas, according to Josephus (Jewish War II. 8. 1), was the leader of a much more serious uprising than is here implied and his followers, so far from being completely exterminated, became the origin of the "Zealots," who in turn were largely responsible for the movement which eventually led to the great rebellion and the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
41-42. For the phrase the name, without qualification, cf. the Greek of III John 7. Jesus as the Christ: Alternatively, we may have here the use of the double name--"telling the good news of Christ Jesus."

ACTS - Chapters One and Two

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I. FROM JERUSALEM TO ANTIOCH (1:1-12:25)

ActsExeg.11

A. DAYS OF EXPECTATION (1:1-26)

1. INTRODUCTORY PREFACE (1:1-5)

The introductory verses, both of his Gospel and of Acts, stamp Luke as a typical man of letters of his day. Such prefaces were used neither by ancient Greek nor ancient Semitic writers, but came into fashion in the Hellenistic age among both Greeks and Romans. They usually followed conventional lines. References would be made to earlier writers on the same subject--often with unflattering comparisons with the author's own work--claims put forward to special knowledge, and an explanation given of the author's purpose in writing. When the work was divided into several logoi or books, the whole work began with a general preface or prooimion setting forth the author's method and aim. This we have at the beginning of Luke's Gospel. At the beginning of each subsequent volume came a subsidiary preface or proekthesis linking this volume with the preceding one and noting the stage reached in the work. This we have here; and the natural deduction is that the two books are by the same author. A good example of the proekthesis is found at the beginning of the fourth book of Polybius' Histories: "In the preceding book, after pointing out the causes of the second war between Rome and Carthage, I described the invasion of Italy by Hannibal. ... I shall now give an account of the contemporary events in Greece. ..." True, the proekthesis of Acts is incomplete: we have a summary of the first logos, but not the usual sketch of the contents of the second. This suggests to some critics that the preface has been mutilated by a later editor, who at the same time has introduced a second and discordant account of the Ascension, an incident already narrated in the Gospel, and alluded to in vs. 2--until the day when he was taken up. It is surely better to recognize that Luke is not slavishly bound by literary convention, and that the opening sentence is in fact balanced by the whole succeeding narrative.

1:1. There is no reliable tradition about Theophilus, and it has even been suggested that the name, "lover of God," means merely "Christian reader." But the title "most excellent" (Luke 1:3) suggests a real person. It is thrice used in Acts (23:26; 24:3; 26:25), always of persons of high official rank. B. H. Streeter (The Four Gospels [New York: The Macmillan Co., 1925], p. 539) suggests that Theophilus may have been the secret Christian name of Flavius Clemens, cousin and heir of Domitian. His wife Domitilla was secretly an adherent of the church, and he himself at least an inquirer. He was put to death by Domitian in A.D. 96. Acts would thus be the first of those "apologies" addressed by the church to prominent members of the Imperial House. The Clementine Recognitions speaks of Theophilus as a wealthy resident of Antioch, the probable birthplace of Luke. Later Christian writers transform him into a bishop, and finally confound him with the apologist of the same name at the end of the second century, Bishop Theophilus of Antioch. First (prw'ton, not pro6teron) in the Greek of Luke's day need not imply that the author had written, or intended to write, more than two books in the present series. Began to do in Semitic idiom means little more than "did." The first book narrates Jesus' activities "from the beginning" (Luke 1:2) till the Ascension. The idea that Acts narrates what the ascended Christ continued to do is true. but too subtle.

2. The order of the Greek words shows that through the Holy Spirit should be taken with given commandment rather than with had chosen. The text here is doubtful; and after he had given commandment, without any explanatory object, is left curiously vague. Possibly dia6 ("through") is here used to translate an Aramaic preposition meaning "in the case of," and the original sense may have been "when he had given commandment concerning the Holy Spirit"--a reference forward to vss. 4-5.

3. The Greek word for appearing to them occurs only here in the N.T., but is used in the LXX in Num. 14:14 of Yahweh's self-manifestation in the wilderness. These appearances occurred during forty days--a number traditional in sacred history (Exod. 34:28; I Kings 19:8; Matthew 4:2). In Luke's Gospel there is nothing to indicate that the Ascension did not take place on the same day as the Resurrection--a view perhaps shared by Paul who seems to regard the two as synonymous. The acceptance of the longer period by church tradition was probably due to the desire to make room for the imparting of secret instruction to the inner circle of his disciples by the risen Jesus, in particular concerning the kingdom of God. The kingdom in Acts is much more closely identified with the church than is the case in the Synoptic Gospels, though nowhere in Acts is the earlier eschatological meaning excluded by the context (see 8:12; 14:22; 19:8; 20:25; 28:23, 31).

4. While staying with them is the translation of a difficult Greek word (sunalizo6menov) variously taken as meaning (a) being assembled together--a rare word from the root aJlh6v, "crowded"; (b) "eating salt together"--presumably with reference to Luke 24:42; (c) "lodging together"--a spelling variant of sunaulizo6menov, and on the whole the most probable rendering. The word might even mean "camping with them in the open"-it is a military term, to "bivouac"--as according to Luke 21:37, he had done during the week before the Crucifixion. The disciples are charged not to depart from Jerusalem--the suggestion being that it had been their intention to do so. Is Luke deliberately contradicting the variant "Galilean tradition," according to which Jesus' first appearances took place at a distance from Jerusalem? According to our author, it is in Jerusalem that they are to wait for the promise of the Father, i.e., for the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise, says Jesus, you heard from me (in Luke 24:49), and to its fulfillment at Pentecost Peter makes reference in 2:33. For the promise of the Spirit see also Gal 3:14; Eph. 1:13.

5. Here, as also in 11:16, Luke puts on Jesus' lips words elsewhere ascribed, not to Jesus, but to John the Baptist (Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16). The idea, evidently here present, that this promise was fulfilled, quite apart from any specifically Christian baptismal rite, by the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, is genuinely primitive. Later the words were understood as referring to a Christian baptism with water which differed from John's baptism, not because it was Spirit-baptism rather than water-baptism, but because though still water-baptism it also bestowed the Spirit, as John's baptism did not (see on 19:1-6 and a fuller note on 2:37-41).

2. THE ASCENSION (1:6-11)

For the first Christians the two cardinal events after the Crucifixion were the Resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The Ascension holds a peculiar middle position. There is little reference to it in the earliest Christian teaching, and it was probably not felt to mark so complete a break in Jesus' earthly fellowship with his disciples as it is now often regarded as doing. Paul, for example, in 1 Cor. 15, enumerates the resurrection "appearances" without any reference to the Ascension, and evidently felt no radical difference between the appearances to the eleven before the Ascension and that to himself later on the Damascus road. For Paul the risen Christ, even when he appeared to the eleven, was already clothed in a "spiritual" or "glorified" body; and the Ascension, as symbolical of his passage to heaven, was in fact identical with the Resurrection. But with the growth of the tradition of the "forty days," the Resurrection implied first a temporary renewal of earthly intercourse with the disciples, followed by the Ascension as a separate event. Acts gives us the only explicit account of the Ascension in the N.T., apart from the Marcan appendix (Mark 16:19), for Luke 24:51-52 is textually suspect and the best texts bracket the words "and carried up into heaven" (KJV). Yet the exaltation of Jesus at the right hand of God quickly became an integral part of the earliest Christian creed; and this, given ancient cosmic ideas, presupposes an "ascension." Such a happening would also help to explain the cessation of appearances of the risen Jesus. But the silence of Matthew and Mark, apart from the appendix, suggests that the Ascension, as an event separate from the Resurrection, had no place in the most primitive tradition.

6. The disciples are pictured as misunderstanding the meaning of the "promise" (vs. 4). They still connect it with the expected restoration of the national theocracy and therefore ask, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? It is quite likely that the disciples' earliest expectations would in fact take this line. They would be looking for the personal return of Jesus as the herald of the kingdom. In the Gospels Jesus speaks much of the coming of the kingdom, but little of the Holy Spirit. But by the time Acts was written the church had realized that the truest return of Jesus was in the manifest power of the Holy Spirit.

7-8. The Western text here reads "no one can know," which makes the parallel closer with Mark 13:32, a verse which Luke omits in his Gospel. It has been noted that Acts not infrequently thus compensates for an omission of Marcan material from Luke's Gospel (cf. 5:15; 6:13; 12:4). Power implies the ability to work miracles, and such ability, according to contemporary ideas, was the chief evidence expected of witnesses of Jesus. Mark 16:17-18 reads like a later elaboration of this promise, which is itself the Lukan form of the universal commission in Matthew 28:19, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (RSV). The widening circle--Jerusalem ... Judea ... Samaria ... the end of the earth--suggests the plan of Acts. Note again how in place of the promise in Matthew 28:20, that Jesus in person will be "with you always," we have here a promise of the Spirit. If Jesus had in actual fact commanded such a universal Gentile mission, would the apostles have shown the hesitation which is so evident in the first half of Acts? (See on Matthew 28:20, Vol. VII.)

9. A cloud took him out of their sight may be understood metaphorically; but the spiritual reality could not be better conveyed pictorially to Luke's readers. Daniel speaks of one like a Son of man who "came with the clouds of heaven" (Dan. 7:13); in the O.T. the incomprehensibleness of Yahweh is represented by the cloud that hides him from view; now Jesus is received into the same cloud of the Shekinah or divine glory.

10-11. In the message of the men in white robes, the garb of angels (Mark 16:5), the belief in Christ's personal return, which is one of the central tenets of the earliest creed, is set in the very forefront of Acts.

3. FILLING UP OF THE NUMBER OF THE TWELVE (1:12-26)

The first act of the new community was to appoint one of their number to take the place of the traitor Judas. The filling up of the number of the twelve was evidently considered of great importance. This is the more remarkable in that the twelve as such play a small part in the rest of the book, only three of them being again mentioned (Peter, James, and John), and Matthias never at all. At their original appointment the number twelve certainly had a symbolic reference to the twelve tribes, and in some ancient lists a tribe is assigned to each apostle. In the kingdom the twelve are to "sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel" (Luke 22:30). The disciples presumably wished to preserve this national symbolism by keeping the number intact. It is interesting that later no successor was appointed to James, possibly because it was felt that the martyr, unlike the traitor, would still judge the tribe allotted to him. At this time the disciples anticipated neither an apostolate to the Gentiles, which would deprive the symbol of its significance, nor such a long delay of the Parousia as would make it impossible to keep the number twelve intact.

What was the significance attached to the twelve in the most primitive tradition? Apparently they held no "official" position, nor were they commissioned with authority to govern the whole church. It was not the twelve as a "college" who headed the Jerusalem church, but certain individuals--Peter, and John, and later James the Lord's brother. Matthias is here appointed, not as an office-bearer, but as a witness to his resurrection (vs. 22). An "apostle" was a shelîah--the Aramaic word for one "sent out" by Jesus, of which "apostle" is the Greek translation (cf. Luke 6:13, "whom he named apostles"). The title was perhaps originally confined to the twelve. But very quickly it was extended to others like Paul and Barnabas, who worked as traveling missionaries without necessarily holding any "official" position in the churches. Indeed, even in the case of the twelve we have a hint here that they were "apostles" primarily as missionaries. They have been commanded to wait in Jerusalem (vs. 4), not permanently as resident officials, but until they "receive power" to become "witnesses."

But a later conception of the significance of the twelve soon becomes apparent in Acts. Already they are beginning to be thought of as constituting an "apostolic college" which remained in being for some years at Jerusalem, had in its hands the first organization of the church, and provided the official heads, not only of local congregations, but of the church at large (cf. 6:2; 8:14; 11:1; and vs. 20, his office let another take). But such a conception is out of accord with the facts even as they appear in Acts, and will not square with what we know from Paul's epistles concerning the Jerusalem church.

12-13. The disciples then returned to Jerusalem in expectation that Jesus was about to appear as the triumphant Messiah. The list of the eleven agrees with that in Luke's Gospel (Luke 6:14-16), save that John now ranks next to Peter, as throughout the following narrative, while Thomas is coupled with Philip, perhaps because both are prominent in the resurrection stories. The eleven are regarded as the nucleus of the new community, and they have their rendezvous in the upper room, probably the scene of the Last Supper (Luke 22:12), and perhaps in the house of Mary the mother of Mark (12:12).

14. Devoted themselves to prayer: Probably in the temple, where it was expected that the Messiah would appear (Mal. 3:1). But the Greek may mean "attended the place of prayer," i.e., the synagogue (cf. 16:13, 16). But the similar phrase in 2:42 seems rather to mean "attended the service of prayer," presumably in the temple. With the women may be purely general--"with their wives," rather than a reference to "the women" mentioned in Luke 8:2; 24:10.

15. It is noteworthy that from the first, Peter, in spite of his cowardly denial, takes the leadership. The obvious explanation of this rapid recovery of authority is that it was to Peter that the risen Lord first appeared (Luke 24:34; I Cor. 15:5), and that his sturdy faith had rallied the others from despair. Jesus' words that "upon this rock" he would build his church (Matthew 16:18) had found literal fulfillment.

How much of the content of these first speeches in Acts rests on an earlier tradition is debatable. Attention has often been called to the primitive Christology of the sermons attributed to Peter. But generally speaking there is doctrinally no essential difference between Peter's speeches and Paul's. Nor should we look for it; for Luke can hardly have had any idea of an "evolution of theology." No doubt he sometimes skillfully adapts thought and language both to the occasion and to the speaker. The present speech certainly reflects a primitive stage of Christian thought, such as might be expected in Peter's teaching. If vss. 17-19 are regarded as an insertion of the author, there remains nothing that might not fittingly have been said by Peter. But on the whole it is safer to assume that the theology underlying the speeches is neither Peter's nor Paul's, but Luke's own--the average point of view of the Gentile Christianity of Antioch.

In all, ejpi6 to; aujto6: see note on 2:47. A hundred and twenty: Is it a coincidence that the tract Sanhedrin (1:6) states that the number of officers in a community (here the twelve) shall be one tenth of the membership?

16.The scripture had to be fulfilled, i.e., presumably that freely quoted in vs. 20 (Pss. 69:25; 109:8). The tense in the Greek implies that the prophecy had already been fulfilled.

18-20. A field: or perhaps better "a farm" or "estate" in the country. Reward of his wickedness: Or, by a common Semitic idiom (cf. Luke 16:8-9; 18:6; II Pet. 2:15), simply "with his unjust reward." There are three traditions concerning the death of Judas: (a) the account here in Acts; (b) Matthew 27:3-10, according to which he hanged himself; (c) the story preserved by Papias that, on account of a loathsome disease, he suffered from excessive swelling (prhsqei6v) and was crushed by a wagon in a narrow place where it could normally have passed him (see J. A. Cramer, Catenae in Evangelia S. Matthaei et S. Marci [Oxford: Typographeo Academico, 1844], on Matthew 27:1). It has been suggested that Papias is really dependent on the same tradition as Acts, and that the somewhat strange phrase prhnh;v geno6menov, falling headlong, is an obscure medical term with the same meaning as prhsqei6v (see The Beginnings of Christianity, ed. F. J. Foakes Jackson and Kirsopp Lake [London: Macmillan & Co., 1933], V, 22-30). His habitation is presumably the estate Judas had bought, while his office is his commission as apostle.

21-23. The baptism of John: The more natural meaning would be "from Jesus' baptism by John till his ascension"; but the parallel in 10:37 suggests "from the time when John was baptizing" (cf. 13:24). They put forward: According to the Western text it is Peter, and not the community, who makes the nomination. Of Joseph called Barsabbas (to be distinguished from Judas Barsabbas in 15:22) all that we know is that Eusebius numbers him, like Matthias, among the seventy, while Papias is said to have related that, according to Jesus' promise in Mark 16:18, he drank poison and came to no harm. Matthias means the "gift of Yahweh"; about him also there is no trustworthy tradition. He was later constantly confused with Matthew; Clement of Alexandria identifies him with Zacchaeus, and the Clementinc Recognitions with Barnabas.

24. Lord, who knowest the hearts would more naturally refer to God. But the word for chosen is the same as that used in vs. 2 of the original choice by Jesus of the apostles (Luke 6:18), and this would seem to indicate that the prayer is addressed to Jesus.

26. Cast lots: The story strikes a very primitive O.T. note. There is no mention yet of ordination by the laying on of hands. The method of "casting lots" would be to put stones with names written on them into a vessel and shake it until one fell out. But the natural verb would be e[balon, not e[dwkan, and it is just possible that the phrase here means "gave their votes."

B. BIRTH OF THE CHURCH (2:1-47)

ActsExeg.21

In 2:1-40 we have, according to Harnack, the first of several sections derived from Jerusalem Source B (see Intro., p. 18 and note on p. 69). Vss. 41-47 are more probably a summary by Luke himself. The story of Pentecost falls into four parts: a description of the descent of the Spirit and the accompanying phenomena (vss. 1-13); an explanatory speech by Peter (vss. 14-36); a description of the effects produced (vss. 37-41); and an account of the beginnings of communal life (vss. 42-47).

1. GIFT OF THE SPIRIT (2:1-13)

The conviction that shortly after the Resurrection the Christian community "received the Holy Spirit" is a constant factor in N.T. writings; but there appear to have been more than one tradition concerning the time and circumstances of the gift. In the Fourth Gospel the Spirit is bestowed by Jesus himself on the day of Resurrection: "He breathed on them, and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit'" (John 20:22). According to Acts, the Spirit descended on the day of Pentecost, fifty days after the Resurrection. But both traditions bear witness to the fact that, as a result of the Resurrection, the disciples became conscious of a new inward power which completely transformed their whole outlook; and this they attributed to the possession by the Spirit of God. It is indeed this new sense of power that is the significant factor in the experience of Pentecost. For Pentecost can hardly have been the first occasion when the little community felt the presence of the Holy Spirit; it must have been through the Spirit's enlightening influence that they had already reached the conviction that Jesus had risen. But now they became conscious of the Spirit as power--in accordance with the promise of 1:8--wherein they might go forth to their work of witness-bearing. Accordingly the great central fact of the day was not that on it the Spirit was given for the first time, but that it marked the beginning of their active missionary work (cf. 4:31).

But this is not the conception of our author, for whom Pentecost does mark the first descent of the Holy Spirit. The accompanying miraculous phenomena are set forth as evidence that this was a completely new and strange gift, marking the birthday of a new community. Even the gift of "speaking with tongues," apparently a common enough experience in the later Pauline churches, is described as if it were something abnormal and unique, and is given quite another significance than it has in the epistles. There this glossolalia quite clearly means the outpouring of inarticulate sounds under the stress of an overpowering religious emotion, a phenomenon to which there are many parallels in the history of all religious revivals down to our own day. It was evidently regarded as a supreme proof of possession by the divine Spirit and as such was earnestly coveted. But it is a gift to which Paul gives no very high place in his list of charismata (see I Cor. 12:4-11 and ch. 14 throughout), because it did not edify unbelievers, tended to disorder, and could be easily counterfeited. It is among the "childish things" which are to be put away while we "earnestly desire the higher gifts" (I Cor. 13:11; 12:31).

The "speaking with tongues" at Pentecost was almost certainly the same common phenomenon, and not something unique as is suggested by Luke, who undoubtedly intends us to understand that the disciples were miraculously endowed with the power to speak foreign languages. But this idea is quite inconsistent with the evidence elsewhere, even of Acts itself. There is, of course, no hint elsewhere that the apostles ever made use of such a gift in their missionary labors; nor would it have been necessary in a world where the Greek Koine was almost universally understood. In 10:46 and 19:6 glossolalia is mentioned in the true Pauline sense with no hint of misunderstanding. Even in the present context the impression produced is that they are filled with new wine, which exactly suits the known phenomena, but not Luke's conception. In the following speech Peter draws a comparison with the expected messianic outpouring of the Spirit foretold by Joel, and makes no reference to foreign tongues, even in his defense against the charge of drunkenness. We must probably assume that the glamour surrounding the birth of the church has, either for Luke or for the compiler of his source, invested even familiar occurrences with unique marvel and mystery, so that to add to the wonders of "wind" and "fire" he creates a similar unique miracle out of the everyday phenomena with which the church of his day was familiar.

2:1. Pentecost is the Hellenistic name for the Hebrew feast of Weeks, the institution of which is described in Lev. 23:15-21. They were all together: Either all the Christians (the 120 of 1:15?); or all the apostles, if it is held that vs. 4 implies that it was upon the apostles only that the Spirit fell.

3. The tongues ... of fire are distributed so that one rests on each disciple. The promise of baptism "with the Holy Spirit and with fire" is fulfilled (Luke 3:16). The word tongues is chosen probably to suit the glossolalia that follows; and if the twelve only are involved, the suggestion may be that each apostle spoke one of the languages.

5. There is some textual evidence for the omission of the word Jews. It is omitted by Codex Sinaiticus, and the fact that in vs. 10 Jews and proselytes are treated as merely component parts of the crowd suggests that it is not wholly composed of Jews.

It would then follow that the crowd at Pentecost represents the whole world, Jewish and heathen alike, and Luke presumably considers this as the beginning of the worldwide mission entrusted to the disciples in 1:8.

6. The multitude here apparently means the whole company of devout men just mentioned, rather than the entire Christian community or the general populace. There are undoubtedly signs of confusion in the language, due possibly to the author's having written up the earlier source--perhaps transferring the scene from the house to the open air, and converting the glossolalia into the novel phenomenon of speaking in foreign languages. As Lake says: "The facts would be adequately covered if it were supposed that the original source ran 'and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance, and when this voice arose the populace came together, and they were all astonished and perplexed, one saying to another, "What does this mean?" But others jeered and said, "They are full of sweet wine"'"(Beginnings of Christianity, ed. F. J. Foakes Jackson and Kirsopp Lake [London: Macmillan & Co., 1920-33], V, 119).

9-11. The list of people is intended to cover every nation under heaven (vs. 5). Parthians and Medes and Elamites represent Eastern races outside the Roman Empire. Then come the residents of the districts around the eastern Mediterranean, followed by visitors from Rome (i.e., temporarily resident in Jerusalem), and Cretans and Arabians, who perhaps represent the two extremes of West and Southeast. But the classification may be one of language rather than geography, Judea perhaps meaning Aramaic--speaking Palestine and Syria.

2. PETER'S SPEECH (2:14-36)

Peter's speech at Pentecost appears to be derived from a very primitive tradition concerning, if not his own teaching, at any rate that of the earliest community. The Christology is very elementary, and there is little trace of Pauline ideas which must have been current in the environment in which Luke wrote. For example, any reference to faith as a necessary condition of sharing in the blessings of the messianic age is noticeably absent. Only once in these early speeches does Peter mention it: in 3:16, where it is stated to be the ground of the healing of the lame man--a close resemblance to the view of faith characteristic of the Synoptic Gospels. As Christianity for Luke and his contemporaries was above all the proclamation of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, the absence of such ideas in the early Petrine speeches argues strongly for the use of primitive documentary sources.

In this speech numerous parallels have been traced with the thought and language of I Peter. Foreknowledge occurs in the N.T. only here (vs. 23) and in I Pet. 1:2. The following ideas are prominent both here and in the epistle: that Christ is Lord (vs. 36; I Pet. 3:15); his rejection by his own (vs. 23; I Pet. 2:4, 7); his ascension and session at the right hand of God (vs. 33; I Pet. 3:22); the promised gift of the Spirit (vs. 33; I Pet. 1:12; 4:14); the glory that follows upon suffering (vs. 36; I Pet. 1:11; 4:12-14); salvation and baptism (vs. 38; I Pet. 3:21). E.G. Selwyn (The First Epistle of St. Peter [London: Macmillan & Co., 1946], p. 12) has suggested that the echoes of I Peter which are heard in Acts may be due partly to the fact that Silvanus, who was the joint author with Peter of the epistle (I Pet. 5:12), was also a friend and companion of Luke.

The speech may be said to be the earliest Christian apology. The first aim of the Christian preacher was to show to his fellow countrymen that Jesus was the promised Messiah. The Crucifixion seemed to have given the lie to Jesus' claims to be the revealer of God, and till this impression was dispelled all preaching of the Christian message was futile. Hence the defense of the gospel rather than its exposition is the need of the hour, and the stress is not so much on the content of the gospel as on the evidence of its truth. To judge by these early sermons the first preachers contented themselves with the demonstration of the messiahship, and did not ask what the messiahship involved for Jesus himself. There is no reason to suppose that at first their idea of messiahship differed greatly from that of their fellow Jews. It was only when the original messianic expectations had somewhat waned that Christians began to fill in or add to the picture with its original Jewish content, probably by drawing on their recollection of Jesus' own words, the full meaning of which they had at the time missed. Only when it dawned upon them that Jesus' work was something more than the founding of a national messianic kingdom did they begin to speculate upon the person of Jesus himself. Hence the complete absence here of any developed Christology.

The supreme argument for the messiahship was the Resurrection, for it effaced the impression left by a disgraceful death, proved that Jesus was no impostor, and vindicated all his claims. Hence the effort, so well illustrated in this speech, to show that such a resurrection, though no part of common messianic expectation, had nevertheless been foretold in Scripture. To a Jewish audience no other argument would be necessary; that an event had been prophesied was sufficient reason for believing in its truth and its divine significance. So Peter (vss. 25-28) appeals to Ps. 16 and claims that it foretells the resurrection of the Messiah. This would both make Jesus' resurrection credible and be convincing proof that he was Christ. Peter argues also (vss. 32-35) that the Messiah must be exalted to the right hand of God, and Jesus' ascension becomes yet further proof of his claims. Such an exaltation is evidenced by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which in turn is a final proof, after Joel, that the messianic age has arrived; for the gift of the Spirit is the work of the glorified Jesus and shows him to be Lord and Christ (vs. 36).

The view taken of Jesus' death is also very primitive. The Cross is an obstacle to faith, to be overcome by stressing the Resurrection; it has not become a central doctrine of the faith. The conception of a suffering Messiah was completely strange to contemporary Judaism, and there is little sign that the disciples saw at first in Jesus' death, as did Jesus himself, any positive contribution to the advancement of the kingdom of God. Such a development of thought may well have taken place before Paul, for one of the truths that Paul "received" was that "Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures" (I Cor. 15:3). But there is little trace of such a thought in these earliest days, and its absence here seems again to confirm the authenticity of the primitive tradition underlying the speech.

15-17. The third hour: about 9 A.M., the hour of morning prayer, before which a Jew would not customarily eat. The prophet is Joel 2:28-32. The Western text omits the name and also makes several alterations in the quotation to suit it to the occasion more exactly, and to suggest that the promise was made to all flesh and not only to the Jews: e.g., "your sons and daughters" becomes "their sons and daughters," and the "my" is omitted before "menservants and maidservants" (cf. the similar omission of "Jews" in vs. 5).

18-21. Do the words and they shall prophesy indicate that Luke thought that the "speaking with tongues" was such prophecy? In I Cor. 12:10 Paul of course clearly distinguishes between "prophecy" and glossolalia as he knew it. Blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke: omitted by the Western text, again presumably to make the quotation suit the circumstances. The manifest day is in the Hebrew original the "terrible day"; but owing to the confusion of similar Hebrew roots meaning respectively "fear" and "see," the LXX translation is ejpifanh6v, which may here mean "conspicuous" in the sense of notable (KJV) or "splendid." The Lord in Joel is of course Yahweh; but in Luke's thought the title, as in vss. 34-36, is transferred to Jesus as Messiah.

22. Jesus of Nazareth: literally "the Nazoraean." Two forms of the word are found in the N.T.: Nazwrai'ov (regularly in Acts), and Nazarhno6v (in Mark and Luke 4:34; 24:19). In spite of the attempt, based on Matthew 2:23, to make the words the name of a religious sect, there seems to be no decisive philological argument against deriving both forms of the adjective from the name of the town Nazareth (see on 24:5; also G. F. Moore in Beginnings of Christianity, I, 429). Attested: The Greek is ajpodedeigme6non, which would mean, as frequently in contemporary papyri, designatus, proclaimed or appointed to office. Jesus is the "elected Messiah," and was actual Messiah here on earth. The Western text reads dedokimasme6non--translated destinatum by Tertullian--which would suggest rather that Jesus was "Messiah-elect," and entered on his actual messiahship only at his ascension.

28-24. A hint, in spite of what was said above, that even thus early the Cross is seen to be part of the definite plan of God for salvation. Lawless men may mean either "wicked men" or merely those "outside the law," i.e., the heathen. Pangs (wjdi'nav) is also used in the LXX to translate a Hebrew word really meaning "cords" or "bands" (e.g., Ps. 18:4-5). Hence perhaps the somewhat strange expression loosed the pangs, a phrase which actually occurs in the LXX of Job 39:2.

25-28. Accurately quoted from Ps. 16:8-11 in the LXX which, as here, has my tongue rejoiced in place of the Hebrew "my glory rejoices." Curiously enough the latter phrase is the very one on the basis of which the Midrash gives the psalm a messianic interpretation. Elsewhere in rabbinical literature the psalm is not applied to the Messiah. My flesh will dwell in hope: The Hebrew has "shall dwell safely," i.e., with God's help the psalmist need have no fear of death. But for Luke the LXX variant in hope gives to the quotation its main point: Peter's whole argument is that this hope was not fulfilled in the person of David, but only in Jesus' resurrection.

29-30. The site of David's tomb is uncertain, but it was probably on the southeastern hill. It is only since the Crusades that it has been located on "Mount Zion" (southwestern hill). That he would set (RSV) is a more accurate translation than would raise up Christ to sit (KJV), and better suits the original in Ps. 132:11: "Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne."

32-33. Of that (i.e., the Resurrection) rather than "of whom" (i.e., Christ) suits better 1:22, where the function of an apostle is to be "a witness of his resurrection." Vs. 34 supports the translation at the right hand of God (RSV), rather than by the right hand (KJV), in spite of a curious Midrash on Ps. 118:16, which states that "the right hand of the Lord exalts."

34. Since the psalm quoted (110:1) cannot refer to David, who did not ascend to the heavens, it must refer to the Messiah; and Jesus in virtue of his ascension is proved to be that Messiah and also to have the right to the supreme divine title Lord. For a similar confession by Paul see I Cor. 12:3; Rom. 10:9; Phil. 2:11; and for Jesus' own treatment of the same verse from Ps. 110 see Mark 12:35 and parallels.

3. RESULTS OF PENTECOST (2:37-41)

Vss. 37-41 describe the immediate results of Pentecost and of Peter's speech, and summarize the requirements for membership in the new community. Special emphasis is given first to the need for repentance, which in the most primitive preaching means primarily repentance for the failure to recognize Jesus as the Messiah and for the consequent crime of the Crucifixion (cf. 3:17-19). If there is any more general idea of the necessity for repentance as a condition of God's blessing, this too is purely a Jewish conception. There is as yet no trace of the specifically Christian idea that every man is a sinner, and that repentance, as contrasted with the keeping of the law, is a universal precondition of salvation. Second, closely linked with repentance is baptism. Here too there is nothing essentially novel, for baptism as such was in line with Jewish rites of purification for the admission of proselytes, and John the Baptist--a great Jewish prophet, quite apart from his intimate connection with Jesus--had already associated baptism with repentance (Mark 1:4). But throughout Acts the conception of the significance of baptism, and in turn of its relationship to the gift of the Holy Spirit, varies to such an extent that we can only assume that several traditions have been inconsistently combined. There is no evidence that Jesus himself ever baptized--except in John 3:22, corrected in 4:2. The earliest idea seems to have been that the Christian equivalent of John's baptism was not a similar water-baptism, but rather a baptism with the Holy Spirit such as is pictured at Pentecost (see on 1:5). Later the distinction between Christian baptism and John's baptism--both alike being with water--was held to be that the former bestowed the Spirit as the latter did not (cf. 19:1-7). Similarly there is no consistent view of the part played by baptism in the gift of the Spirit. Perhaps in the beginning the Spirit is given before there is any question of baptism, which is added rather as a seal upon a gift already bestowed; so in the case of Cornelius (10:44-48). Later, baptism is regarded as a necessary condition of entrance into the community and an opportunity for public confession, but the gift of the Spirit is still distinct from it. So in 8:12-17 Samaritans are baptized, but they do not receive the Spirit until Peter and John, dispatched from Jerusalem for that very purpose, lay apostolic hands upon them. And finally the stage is reached when baptism with the Spirit becomes the direct consequence of baptism with water, so that Christian baptism becomes the essential condition of Christian spiritual experience (19:5-6). Although the present narrative is in general so primitive, 2:38 seems to reflect this final stage of development.

It has been suggested that baptism may have been adopted by the Christian community only as part of the Hellenistic mission which followed the appointment of the seven (6:1-6). It seems much more likely that with the beginnings of organization the fitness and indeed necessity of some such initiatory rite would be recognized, and baptism, at first simply as a rite of incorporation into the fellowship of those who professed "the name of Christ" and awaited his Parousia, would readily be adapted from the practice by which his forerunner had symbolized repentance in preparation for the coming kingdom. All that was necessary was the addition of the distinctively Christian formula in the name of Jesus Christ. This phrase (cf. 8:16; 10:48; 19:5) sometimes means "with the authority of" (e.g., Mark 9:38-39), but as a primitive baptismal formula the invocation of the name implies primarily recognition of Jesus as "Lord and Christ." There is as yet no trace of the trinitarian formula of Matthew 28:19, which is not to be taken as part of Jesus' original commission, but comes from later liturgical use.

38-40. Does our author hold that baptism not only confers the gift of the Holy Spirit but also conveys the forgiveness of your sins? Probably this latter thought should be linked up as closely with repent as with be baptized, for the ideas of repentance and forgiveness are constantly associated in Luke-Acts (Luke 3:3; 24:47; Acts 5:31). Far off may refer either to space or time, and mean either "to those who live far away" (for which cf. Isa. 57:19, quoted in Eph. 2:17; Acts 22:21), or "to you and to your children and to your distant descendants." Crooked generation: a proverbial phrase drawn from Deut. 32:5; Ps. 78:8.

41. So (me;n ou\n) is a regular formula in Acts summarizing what has just preceded and looking forward to a new section (cf. 1:6; 5:41; 8:25; 9:31; 11:19; 12:5; 13:4; 15:3, 30; 16:5). If Harnack's source division is accepted, it here marks the end of the first section extracted by Luke from Jerusalem Source B. Three thousand souls: The use of yuch6, "soul," in the sense of an "individual," comes from the LXX, where it is used to translate the Hebrew néphesh, which has the same meaning.

4. BEGINNINGS OF COMMUNAL LIFE (2:42-47)

The paragraph seems to be composite; vss. 42 and 46 read like two parallel summaries, and may be doublets. Possibly vss. 42 and 43 are Luke's summarizing link by which he joins his account of Pentecost with a more ancient fragment, vss. 44-47, describing the life of the primitive community. Four characteristic features of the early church are emphasized. First, concern with the apostles' teaching--chiefly, it may be supposed, their personal recollections of Jesus and his teaching. It would not be long before a comparatively fixed body of such teaching would take shape. Thus Paul speaks of the "standard of teaching" (Rom. 6:17) and the "pattern of the sound words" (II Tim. 1:13). Out of this would be formed the tradition which ultimately was reduced to writing in the logia, to which on one theory Papias refers, and which may supply the Q material in Matthew and Luke. Such "teaching" would no doubt also include renewed study of the O.T., especially such passages as appeared to foretell Jesus as the Christ--the testimonia, or "proof texts," of later days.

Second, fellowship (koinwni6a)--first perhaps with the apostles, but also with reference to the wider fellowship of all believers. It is Paul's favorite word to describe the unity of believers with each other and with their Lord. In I Cor. 1:9 ("called into the fellowship of his Son") it seems almost to take on the concrete sense of "the body of believers." Its equivalent in Aramaic (habhûrA)) seems to have been in common use to describe a group of companions who shared a common life, particularly those who united to celebrate a common Passover meal. Thus there may possibly be a reference here to the tablefellowship which becomes more explicit in the breaking of bread. Again, this fellowship found practical expression in experiments in Christian communism (vss. 44-45; for a fuller discussion see on 4:32-37). The original habhûrA) of Jesus had shared a common life (cf. John 13:29), and the communism of Jerusalem was simply a continuation of that practice. The word koinwni6a sometimes has the sense almost of "almsgiving" or "relief" (cf. Rom. 15:26, "to make some contribution for the poor"). What is in view here is clearly not absolute communism, but a sharing of goods for the benefit of those in need. Nevertheless the motive was probably not mere charity, but the recognition that the claims of the Christian family are superior to those of the individual, and that brethren must have their share, not only because they are needy, but because they are brethren. No doubt the vivid expectation of the Parousia and the consequent undervaluing of possessions made this "communism" easier, but it does not explain it.

Third, we have mention of the breaking of bread, picked up in vs. 46 by the words breaking bread in their homes. The association of this in vs. 42 with teaching and prayers shows that it has a religious significance, and immediately following the reference to fellowship it appears as the peculiar symbol of that fellowship. For this same word koinwni6a is, of course, the word used of the "communion of the blood of Christ" and the "communion of the body of Christ" at the Lord's Supper (I Cor. 10:16), which is the central pledge and symbol of a common life and a common faith. At the same time the close conjunction in vs. 46 of breaking bread and they partook of food proves that the former, though already of religious significance, was still part of a regular nourishing meal. It may be indeed that the poorer members of the community found in it their chief means of subsistence. It was only later that the Eucharist became differentiated from the agape. The exact phrase breaking of bread occurs only in vs. 42 and in Luke 24:35; but the verbal phrase "to break bread" occurs also in Luke 24:30; Acts 2:46; 20:7-11; 27:35; and in connection with the feeding of the multitude, and the institution of the Lord's Supper. The phrase springs from the Jewish custom of beginning a meal with the prayer, "Blessed be thou, O Lord our God, that thou didst make bread to be on earth," followed by a ceremonial breaking of bread. In vs. 46 breaking bread in their homes seems to be contrasted with attending the temple together. Regular attendance at the public worship of the temple would mark the disciples as still being loyal Jews. It was the common religious meal in their own homes that provided them with the opportunity for distinctively Christian fellowship and worship.

Fourth, they devoted themselves to ... the prayers. So far as public worship is in view this would still be through attending the temple together, and in the regular meetings of the Jewish synagogue. As yet there was no idea of establishing separate places of public worship. But once again the specifically Christian side of this devotional life would find expression in family gatherings for prayer, and in daily intercourse in the homes of members of the new community. Christian public worship, when it did take shape, closely followed Jewish models, as is seen by a comparison of the prayers of the Didache with the Jewish liturgy. But meantime the emphasis would be on domestic family worship and private prayers at home (see references in 1:24; 4:23-30; 12:12).

43-44. The mention of fear at this point appears strange; but it suits the context exactly in 5:5; 5:11, where this "summary" reappears (see on 4:23-5:16 for the theory of possible "doublets"). Wonders and signs is a common O.T. description of miracles. It is frequent in the first half of Acts with its marked Aramaic background, but does not occur in the second half. Paul uses it in Rom. 15:19; II Cor. 12:12; II Thess. 2:9.

45-46. The tense of the verb sold is imperfect, "used to sell," not in one great sale, but occasionally as the need arose. Possessions and goods are properly "real estate" and "private possessions"; the meaning probably is that they sold the former and divided the proceeds, while they distributed the latter. In their homes may mean (a) merely "at home," in contrast with attending the temple, or (b) from house to house or "in separate houses," implying a possible contrast with the preceding together.

47. The phrase translated to their number (ejpi6 to; aujto6) has given much difficulty, as is evidenced by the confusion in the text. Usually it seems to mean "together" (Luke 17:35; Acts 1:15; 2:1; 2:44; 4:26); but here it is so awkward that Torrey suggests the mistranslation of an Aramaic adverbial compound meaning "exceedingly." The word has this meaning only in the Judean dialect, of which Luke may well have been ignorant, ú and is also regularly put at the end of a clause, as here. The Western text tried to solve the puzzle by adding ejn th' ejkklhsi6a, and the omission of the ejn gave us the KJV translation added to the church. Lake and Cadbury (Beginnings of Christianity, IV, 30) point out that in the papyri ejpi; to; aujto; is used in financial statements as being "in total," and wonder whether a number should follow it here as in 1:15. Saved is an echo of Peter's quotation (vs. 21) of Joel 2:32.

Regular Sunday Gathering - 7 PM to 9 PM - New Semester Starts November 29th

2009-11-03T12:07:00.000-08:00

Regular Sunday Gathering
7 PM to 9 PM
10202 Vanderbilt Drive
Revs. Sam and Bunny Sewell
591-4565 or ChurchWOW@comcast.net

See recent article about CHURCH WOW below:

The Book of Acts

First century Christianity gets a rocky start and then conquers the Roman Empire

Church Without Walls Biblical Scholarship series
New Semester Starts November 29th
Class Meets Sundays - 7 to 9 PM.

The ongoing biblical Scholarship Class meets every Sunday from 7PM to 9PM in the media room at 10202 Vanderbilt Drive, Naples, FL. There is no tuition fee, but love offerings are appreciated. Class is led by Revs. Sam and Bunny Sewell. The Biblical Scholarship series is sponsored by the Theological Center of Naples.

Directions? – More information? – and please RSVP - Rev Bunny at 591-4565 or ChurchWOW@comcast.net 10202 Vanderbilt Dr, Naples, Fl 34108

Biblical scholarship is not the same thing as Bible study. Those who want Bible study can find high quality Bible study programs at almost every church in town. The Church Without Walls Biblical Scholarship Program aims to provide the public at large with a curriculum similar to that which must be mastered by clergy at accredited seminaries.

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Naples, Florida 34106

The Theological Center of Naples is proud to endorse the Church Without Walls Biblical Scholarship Program led by the Reverends Sam and Bunny Sewell. Sam and Bunny are active supporters, contributors and leaders of the TCN.

The TCN partnership with the Church Without Walls demonstrates the commitment of TCN in providing high quality biblical education programs to lay persons interested in expanding their understanding and appreciation of the scriptures & their relevancy to personal and spiritual growth.

The TCN encourages clergy to promote and support The Biblical Scholarship Program. The program meets on Sundays from 7 -9PM. For more information contact Rev Bunny at 591-4565 or ChurchWOW@comcast.net 10202 Vanderbilt Dr, Naples, Fl 34108

Peace and Blessings,

Rev. Michael Harper
President, TCN

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Introduction to The Book of Acts

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I. Luke-Acts: Its Unity and Common Authorship
It is of the utmost importance to visualize the Third Gospel and the book of Acts as two parts of a single whole. Scholarship has been greatly handicapped by their conventional treatment in introductions and commentaries as separate books, and a commentary which will deal with the whole of Luke's work as a single unit is still greatly to be desired. Amidst the sharpest division of opinion concerning many of the critical problems of Acts, modern scholars are almost unanimous that Luke and Acts have a common author. Even among radicals, Norden and Loisy (see pp. 14, 20) stand almost alone in attributing to the author of the Third Gospel, not the whole of Acts, but only its principal source--the travel diary. Apart altogether from the witness of tradition, the linguistic evidence (see pp. 7-8) seems conclusive that however diverse the sources of his information, one ultimate editor has left his own hallmark upon the whole of his varied materials from the beginning of Luke to the end of Acts. For conservative and radical scholars alike to accept or deny the "Lukan" authorship of Acts means the acceptance or denial of the "Lukan" authorship of the Gospel.
A study of the major interests of the two books (see Intro. to Luke's Gospel, Vol. VIII) confirms the impression of unity of authorship. Both regard Christianity as the new universal religion that recognizes no limitations of race (Luke 2:32; 4:23-27; 10:29-37; 17:15-18--and note the omission of the material of Matthew 7:6; 10:5-6; 15:21-28; 18:17--Acts 10:34-35; 13:46-47; 17:26-28; 28:28). Both continually emphasize the power of the Holy Spirit at work, first in the ministry of Jesus himself, and subsequently in the apostolic missions (Luke 1:15, 35; 2:25-27; 3:22; 4:1, 18; 10:21; 24:49; Acts 1:2, 8; 2:14, 38; 8:14-17, 29, 39; 10:44-47; 13:2, 4, 9; 15:28; 16:7; 19:1-7; etc.). Both show a marked sympathy for the poor (Luke 3:11; 4:18; 6:20; 16:22; Acts 2:44-45; 4:34-35; 9:36, 39), a certain antipathy to the rich (Luke 1:53; 6:24; 12:13-21; 16:14, 19 ff.; Acts 8:18-24), and stress the duty of the proper stewardship of wealth (Luke 12:42-48; 16:1-13; 19:12-27; Acts 4:36-37; 5:1-11; 20:35). Both seem specially interested in the part played by women in the Christian community (Luke 1:39-56; 2:36-38; 7:37-38; 23:27-29; 24:10; Acts 5:1 ff.; 9:36 ff.; 12:12-13; 16:13-15, 16-18; 18:2; 24:24; 25:13). Both give much attention to such subjects as prayer (Luke 11:5-13; 18:1-5, 9-14; 22:39-46--and note the references to Jesus at prayer, not in Mark, in Luke 3:21; 6:12; 9:28-29; 11:l--Acts 1:24-25; 2:42; 4:31; 6:6; 10:2, 9; 12:12; 13:3; 16:25; 21:5), "grace" or "favor" (the word ca6riv, which is used by neither Mark nor Matthew, occurs nine times in Luke and seventeen times in Acts), and the forgiveness of sins (Luke 1:77; 7:47; 11:4; 15:11-32; 24:47; Acts 2:38; 5:31; 10:43; 13:38; 26:18). We even have hints in the Gospel of what we shall find to be one of the main postulates of Acts--that Christianity is not to be considered a subversive sect, but on the contrary was in general regarded with favor by the Roman authorities, who but for the inveterate hatred of the Jews would have refused to condemn either Jesus or his apostles (Luke 20:20-26; 23:4, 13-16, 20-22, 47; Acts 13:7, 12; 16:35-40; 18:12-17; 19:31, 37; 23:26-30; 24:23; 25:25-27; 26:30-32; 27:43; 28:30-31).
But not only have Luke and Acts a common author; they are two parts of one continuous work. Nor should we think of Acts as a mere "sequel" to the Gospel, written it may be years later as an afterthought. The second volume was almost certainly part of the author's original plan for a two-volume work. Indeed it has been conjectured that he orginally intended to write a third volume, and that only so can the abrupt ending of Acts be satisfactorily explained (see Exeg. at end of ch. 28). However that may be, that Luke planned at least two volumes seems conclusively proved by the twin prefaces (see below, p. 20 and Exeg. on 1:1). Both volumes are addressed to the same The ophilus. The opening verses of Luke appear to be a general prooimion covering both volumes, for the words "the things which have been accomplished among us" (Luke 1:1) obviously have reference not only to the contents of the Gospel, but to the whole story of the birth and growth of Christianity, which is the theme of both books. Similarly the preface of Acts is a conventional proekthesis, which refers to "the first book" (Acts 1:1), or "volume one," as we should say, and picks up the thread of events where it was there broken off. The Gospel ends with Jesus' assurance that he will "send the promise of my Father upon you," with his command to "stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high," and with the briefest possible account of how "he parted from them." Acts opens with a reminder of this promise and command, a picture of the disciples waiting at Jerusalem for its fulfillment, a fuller account of the Ascension, and a vivid description of the fulfillment of the promise by the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost. Just as volume one looked forward to volume two, so does volume two look back to volume one. Both are parts of a single planned whole.
The unity and common authorship of Luke and Acts being thus assumed, how are we to explain the early separation of the two books in the arrangement of the New Testament writings? The first volume corresponded in character and contents with other outlines of Jesus' life and teaching, and together with the three other "Gospels" it passed into the New Testament canon as one of a clearly defined group of four which, with certain variations in order, were also transmitted together. The second volume, the Acts, appeared to belong to a different category of writings. It too had a number of close relatives in early Christian literature, memorabilia about the apostles, but alone in this class of writings it won a place in the canon. It thus became separated from its companion volume, and its place in the order of the New Testament books varies according as it is related more closely to the Catholic epistles or to the Pauline epistles.
The book was canonised first of all as a supplement to the catholic epistles,--to make up for the fact that many of the apostles had left no writings behind them,--and, in the second place, as a link between the Pauline and the catholic epistles, by way of documentary proof that Paul and the twelve were at one.2
The most ancient tradition seems to have closely associated Acts with the Catholic epistles, and we have the order: Gospels, Acts, Catholic epistles, Pauline epistles. This is the order of the codices A, B, and C, of the Fathers Athanasius and Cyril of Jerusalem; and among modern editors Tischendorff, Westcott and Hort, and von Soden have adopted it. A rarer order, but one which still associates Acts with the Catholic epistles, is: Gospels, Pauline epistles, Acts, Catholic epistles. This is the order in Codex Sinaiticus, and it is also attested by Epiphanius and Jerome. Sometimes, on the other hand, Acts is associated more closely with the Pauline epistles, so that we have the order: Gospels, Acts, Pauline epistles, Catholic epistles. This order is found in none of the more ancient manuscripts, but it is attested among other authorities by the Muratorian Canon, Eusebius, and the Codex Amiatinus of the Vulgate. Most of the early editors--Erasmus, Stephanus, Théodore de Bèze, the Elzeviri--followed it, so that it became the recognized order in the Textus Receptus and consequently in nearly all modern translations.
What title, if any, the author gave to his two-volume work, we do not know. Ancient writers commonly entitled their books "Concerning So-and-So," or used the name of their patron: in Luke's case the title would be, if dedicated in Latin, Ad Theophilum. Only after the separation of the two volumes would the title Acts (pra6xeiv) of the Apostles be applied to the second. The word pra6xeiv had previously been used as a book title, as, for example, by Callisthenes, a contemporary of Alexander the Great, who wrote The Acts of Alexander. The title Acts of the Apostles does not correspond particularly well with the contents of the book, which has nothing to say about any of the original "apostles" save Peter and John. It probably reflects the point of view of the second-century church for which Peter and Paul were the "apostles" par excellence. But pra6xeiv was a simple and natural word to employ as a title, and it was probably not originally intended to indicate any formal literary classification. Nevertheless once it had been applied to the canonical "Acts," the latter became in fact the prototype of a succession of apocryphal "Acts" which, however inferior in quality, were felt to belong to the same literary genre.
II. Luke-Acts: The Witness of Tradition
Tradition is unanimous in ascribing both the Third Gospel and Acts to Luke, but it is not till the latter part of the second century that Acts is expressly quoted as his work. The writings of the Apostolic Fathers contain what may well be echoes of Acts, but they are never so precise as to demand direct dependence. Clement of Rome, for example, speaks of "giving more willingly than receiving,"3 which recalls the words of Jesus quoted in Acts 20:35, "It is more blessed to give than to receive," but is hardly a direct quotation. Similarly the fact that in the same epistle Ps. 89:20 and I Sam. 13:14 are combined in the same manner as in Acts 13:22 may indicate no more than that both writers are dependent on the same collection of "testimonies," or messianic proof texts.
In Did. 4:8 we have the words, "Thou shalt share everything in common with thy brother, and thou shalt not say that it belongs to thee personally," which again reads like an echo of Acts 4:32, but is not close enough to be regarded as an actual quotation.4 Similarly Barnabas, Ignatius, Polycarp, and Hermas all contain phrases which are more or less closely reminiscent of Acts and create a presumption, which however fails short of certainty, that they were familiar with Luke's work.5
In the last quarter of the second century the evidence becomes perfectly definite. In the Western church Irenaeus regards Acts as holy Scripture and cites it as Lucae de apostolis testificatio.6 The Muratorian Canon is still more explicit: "The Acts of all the Apostles are written in a single book. Luke compiled for 'most excellent Theophilus' everything that happened in detail in his presence ..."--a statement evidently intended to exclude from the canon the various apocryphal "Acts." Similarly Tertullian in the church of Africa speaks of Acts as a "commentary of Luke," and in Alexandria Clement7 recognizes it as an authentic Lukan writing.
Thereafter the testimony of tradition regarding Acts no less than the Third Gospel is so unanimous that it is unnecessary to cite witnesses. As Moffatt puts it: "What helped eventually to popularise [Acts] and to win canonical prestige was its ecclesiastical emphasis on the apostles and Paul as leaders of the catholic church--a trait which became particularly grateful in the controversy with Marcion."8
III. Luke the Physician in the New Testament and in Tradition
Apart from what we can deduce from Acts, on the assumption that it, or at least the diary source, is to be ascribed to him, the New Testament tells us little of Luke. In Col. 4:14 Paul calls him "the beloved physician," and he is mentioned as if in Paul's company along with Aristarchus, Mark, Jesus Justus, Epaphras, and Demas. The first three are called "the only men of the circumcision among my fellow workers" (Col. 4:11), whence it may be deduced that Luke was a Gentile by origin. The same names, except that of Justus, are mentioned in Philem. 24:1 and are called by Paul "my fellow workers." In II Tim. 4:10-11 Luke is again mentioned alongside Demas, which suggests some possible relationship between them. But "Demas ... has deserted me ...; Luke alone is with me." Doubt as to the authenticity of the Pastorals lessens the value of this allusion.
Efforts have been made to find references to Luke elsewhere in the New Testament. Theophylact and Gregory the Great wished to identify him with the unnamed companion of Cleopas on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13 ff.); but this is pure speculation. Tradition numbered him among "the seventy" (Luke 10:1), but this is most improbable if he was of pagan origin. An allusion to him has been supposed in "the brother, whose praise is in the gospel throughout all the churches" (II Cor. 8:18 KJV), who was sent by Paul with Titus to Corinth. But the correct translation is "the brother who is famous among all the churches for his preaching of the gospel" (RSV); and to see in a letter written as early as II Corinthians, as do Origen and Jerome,9 an allusion to Luke's Gospel is of course an anachronism. Luke has been identified also with one or other Lucius mentioned in Acts 13:1 (see Exeg., ad loc.) and Rom. 16:21 on the supposition that the Greek form Loukas is an intimate abbreviated form of Loukios, which inscriptions show was used in the vernacular koine for the Latin Lucius. Finally the attempt to identify Luke with Silvanus (Silas)--on the ground presumably that the Latin term lucus is a synonym for silva--can only be pronounced with Alfred Plummer "a caricature of critical ingenuity."
Later traditions outside the New Testament have little if any historical value. In some lists of apostles Luke is given a place beside Paul and Mark to the exclusion of Philip, Thaddaeus, and James the son of Alphaeus. He is said variously to have conducted missions in Italy, Greece, Dalmatia, Gaul, Bithynia, Africa--in fact over all the known world. One legend makes him a notable painter. In others he appears as bishop either of Alexandria or Laodicea. Traditions about his death are equally conflicting. Sometimes he dies a natural death, both at Thebes in Boeotia and at Ephesus; sometimes he suffers a martyr's death, either by decapitation at Alexandria or in a mass slaughter with "169 brothers" at Rome. His relics were allegedly transferred to Constantinople in A.D. 357 with those of Andrew and Timothy.10
The one tradition which is so ancient and widespread as to appear likely to have some substance is that Luke hailed from Antioch in Syria. Eusebius expressly describes him as "being by birth of those from Antioch and by profession a physician," and his statement reappears in Jerome who speaks of "Luke the physician, an Antiochian."11 The Western text after Acts 11:27 reads: "And there was great rejoicing; and when we were gathered together one of them stood up and said ..."--as if Luke himself were present. Even though this is only a Western addition, it may witness to the early belief that Luke was associated with the church at Antioch during the first stay there of Paul and Barnabas. Harnack12 has attempted with some success to show from the internal evidence of Acts its author's special interest in Antioch. On the other hand it is possible that the tradition merely grew out of a false Western reading which, by introducing a "we" at Antioch in Acts 11:27, invited the deduction that this was Luke's place of residence. It has even been plausibly suggested that Luke's alleged Antiochene origin is a deduction from that of Theophilus. The title "most excellent" indicates a man of rank. The romance called the Clementine Recognitions13 pictures Theophilus as a wealthy resident of Antioch. Later Christian writers transformed him into a bishop, and finally confounded him with the famous apologist at the end of the second century, Bishop Theophilus of Antioch. Has Luke simply been assigned to the same city as his patron? Nevertheless only one other city seriously rivals Antioch as Luke's possible birthplace. Ramsay, following Renan, claims the honor for Philippi, arguing that the "man of Macedonia" (16:9) whom Paul saw in a vision at Troas, was in fact Luke, who had visited Paul to plead the claims of his own city to hear the gospel. The first authentic "we passage" begins in the very next verse, and Paul makes his way directly to Philippi. Luke's native pride is evidenced in 16:12, where he calls Philippi "the leading city of the district of Macedonia." S. C. Carpenter ingeniously suggests that "the two views [as to Luke's place of origin] may perhaps be combined by supposing that he was an Antiochene who was in medical practice at Philippi."14 To the much-debated question when Luke became a Christian, many possible answers have been suggested. Was it at Antioch when Paul came there with Barnabas? Or at Troas, when according to Ramsay, he met Paul for the first time? Or at Antioch in Galatia, when, as Rackham suggests, Paul may have called him in to attend him? Harnack's conclusion is the wisest: "We have no knowledge when and by whose influence he became a Christian, nor whether he had previously come into sympathetic touch with the Judaism of the Dispersion; only one thing is certain--that he had never been in Jerusalem or Palestine."15
IV. Luke-Acts: Its Style, Vocabulary, and Literary Character
The author of Luke-Acts is an accomplished and versatile literary artist, and his style is very supple and varied. As is evident from a study of the Synoptic parallels, he does not hesitate to polish and embellish the language of his Marcan source to a much greater extent than does Matthew. In Acts some of his narratives--the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost, the story of Philip the evangelist, the conversion of Cornelius--are written in an archaic, redundant style which is characteristically Hebraic; while others, such as the account of Paul's appearance before the Areopagus, are so wholly Greek in color and outlook as to suggest that they could be written only by a pure Hellene. The truth is that the book is written, not in one style, but in several; and this can be explained, not merely by the use of varied sources, but by the author's practice of skillfully adapting his style to suit the atmosphere of the situation which he is describing. As J. H. Moulton has said, "He steeps his style in Biblical phraseology, drawn from the Greek Old Testament, so long as his narrative moves in Palestinian circles, where the speakers use Greek that obviously represents a foreign. idiom," whereas he "instinctively departs from that style when his subject takes him away from the Biblical land and people."16 As Cadbury has pointed out, it is sometimes difficult to decide whether imitation is conscious or unconscious. The "biblical flavor" of writers like Bunyan and Lincoln was unconscious; but Luke belonged to an age in which imitative style was not uncommon, so that it is likely enough that some of the more obvious Semitisms, especially in the speeches of Acts, are deliberate biblical imitation. Note too the Hebrew prepositional use of parts of the body: "to the face of" (before), "from the face of" (away from), "on the face of" (upon), "by the hand of," "by the mouth of." Nor, one feels, would any Greek man of letters, as was Luke, use except by way of imitation such characteristic Semitic parallelisms as "in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity" (8:23) or "that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God" (26:18).17
In a series of elaborate linguistic studies Harnack and in particular J. C. Hawkins18 claim with justice to have proved a unity of style between the Third Gospel and Acts. There are undoubtedly more affinities of vocabulary between these two books than between any other two New Testament writings. There are, for example, seventeen words found both in Acts and Matthew but nowhere else in the New Testament; fourteen words found only in Acts and Mark; thirteen only in Acts and John; but no fewer than fifty-eight found only in Acts and Luke. By similar methods of analysis the linguistic unity of the whole book of Acts can be demonstrated, for the characteristic "Lukan" expressions occur in all sections--in the early chapters as well as in the diary source. This would seem to suggest either that the writer of the diary is the author of the whole book, which is the traditional view; or that the author of the book as a whole has imposed his own style on someone else's diary; or even conversely that a later editor has assimilated his own style to that of the Lukan diary source which he is incorporating. Of the three alternatives the first appears much the most probable. The third alternative seems very unnatural, though Maurice Goguel pleads in its favor that Harnack's statistics show the "we-sections" to be "not only Lukan but hyper-Lukan." They are the fountainhead of the Lukan style, which is more diluted throughout the rest of the book.19
Much weight has also been put on the linguistic argument that the author of Luke-Acts is a physician.20 It is questionable whether this line of research would ever have suggested itself were it not stated in Col. 4:14 that Luke the companion of Paul was a physician: it would therefore be strong confirmation of the traditional theory of authorship if it could be proved that the author's language is characterized by technical medical terms. There are in fact numerous points of contact between the vocabulary of Luke and that of Greek medical writers such as Hippocrates (ca. 460 B.C.) and Galen (ca. A.D. 130), and technical terms are more numerous and more precise in the stories of healing in Luke-Acts than in the other Gospels. But more recent work, particularly that of H. J. Cadbury,21 has largely undermined the purely linguistic argument. Of the 400 supposed medical terms listed by Hobart 360 are found in the Septuagint; other nonmedical authors, such as Philo and Lucian, supply as many "medical terms" as does Luke. Practically all Luke's alleged technical terms are used also by nonmedical writers; both Plutarch and Lucian use 90 per cent of them; if Josephus and the Septuagint are taken together, no less than 390 out of the 400 can be paralleled. The truth seems to be that the language of Greek doctors was not highly specialized, and that the use made by Luke of so-called technical terms does not exceed what might be expected of any writer of wide general culture. It would indeed be equally easy to prove from the number of nautical terms used in ch. 27 that Luke was a sailor, or that he was a lawyer from the considerable number of legal expressions used in the closing chapters.
The fallacy of most of the linguistic statistics must be admitted. But the argument is not one from language only but also from medical interest, and it is indubitable that the whole of Luke-Acts shows this to a remarkable degree. In the Gospel, to a greater extent than in any of the others, attention is focused on the healing and care of the sick. Luke alone tells the parable of the good Samaritan. For him Jesus' cures are a signal proof of his messiahship (Luke 7:18-23). In Acts great emphasis is laid on the numerous cures wrought by the apostles in general at Jerusalem (5:12-16) and by Paul at Ephesus (19:11). Such cures are proof that the power of Jesus himself is still at work (3:12-13; 4:7-10). Harnack indeed rightly calls attention to Luke's disposition to see in miracles of healing the chief function of the mighty forces of the new religion. When we recall such vivid descriptions of healing as Luke 4:38-41 or Acts 3:1-10--or note how tactfully Luke 8:43 modifies Mark 5:26 in the interest of the good name of the medical profession!--the impression is cumulative that the author may well have been a doctor. This would probably be generally admitted by scholars were there not other reasons--some of them undoubtedly strong--which have prejudiced them against the traditional view that the author is Luke the physician. But as Windisch, himself an opponent of the traditional view, confesses: "We cannot demand unconditionally that the medical calling of an author should appear in an evangelic and apostolic history. If, however, we do find traces of such a professional education, we appear to have an unexpectedly brilliant confirmation of the tradition."22
Finally it may be asked under what literary genre Luke-Acts should be classified stylistically. The truth is that it belongs, strictly speaking, to none of the recognized literary types of antiquity. The Gospels appear at first sight to fall under the category of "biography" alongside, for example, Plutarch's Parallel Lives, Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars, Tacitus' Agricola. An even closer parallel might seem to be provided by memorabilia, such as Xenophon's Recollections of Socrates or Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana. But it is of the nature of memorabilia that the author should claim to be present at the events he records, and this, apart from the diary source, the author of Luke-Acts does not. Moreover Cadbury23 well remarks that, quite apart from their admitted apologetic and religious purpose, the factor distinguishing the Gospels from ancient literary "biography" or "memoirs" is their "popular" character--not in the sense that they are written for plain folk in a popular style, but rather in the sense that they grew out of the common popular life of the church. The material is the spontaneous creation of the Christian community, and the final recorder is content to set it down much as it came to him. Though Luke's Gospel has more claim to be literature than have Matthew and Mark, it is still "popular" in this sense. And this is just as true of Luke's second volume. Still less can it be classified as biography, for though full of biographical interest, it makes no attempt to trace the full career of the principal characters--Peter, Stephen, Philip, Paul--who pass across the pages more like the actors in a drama than the subjects of a formal biography. For Acts "history" might appear to be a more apt classification; and indeed it has many points of contact with typical histories of antiquity--the working up of earlier sources, the introduction of speeches, the use of a series of outstanding names as a thread on which to carry forward the continuous narrative. But once again, only with many reservations can Acts be classified as formal history. The narrative is too disjointed, and too noticeably lacking in balance and proportion;24 the gaps in the story of the church's growth are too obvious; the selection of the material is determined too clearly by motives which are not primarily historical. Once again Luke appears as a transmitter of popular Christian tradition rather than as a formal littérateur. This of course is not to deny that his book contains a vast amount of valuable and reliable history. But it does mean that other motives than that of pure historical research lie behind his writing, and that we can understand his book only as we appreciate that fact.
V. The Greek Text of Acts
The problem presented by the text of Acts is unique in the New Testament. The manuscripts have preserved two types of text, and the divergent readings in this or that family are so general and consistent as to suggest to some scholars that we have to do, not merely with a large number of independent variants, but rather with two separate recensions of the original text. The "Neutral" text as given in most modern critical editions is based on our oldest uncials--Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus--supported by the Vulgate Latin, the Peshitta Syriac, and the Greek fathers such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Chrysostom. The "Western" text, which in Acts differs much more widely from the "Neutral" than in other New Testament books, derives chiefly from Codex Bezae (D) and Codex Laudianus, supported by the Old Latin, certain Syriac authorities, in particular the margin of the Harclean Syriac, Irenaeus, and the Latin fathers such as Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine. The regular occurrence of the same variant (for example, the important variants in the text of the "apostolic decrees" in ch. 15) in all the manuscripts of a Western type has led to the theory that they must all come from a common source, and that we are dealing, not with a collection of more or less fortuitous variants, but with a separate edition of the original text.
The most important development of this theory is that of Friedrich Wilhelm Blass. Following up the work of Bornemann25 and of Paul de Lagarde,26 both of whom gave preference to the Western text, Blass27 propounded the hypothesis that Luke had in fact issued two editions of Acts. Having composed the book at the end of the two years of Paul's imprisonment at Rome, Luke carefully revised it and sent a copy of the revision to Theophilus at Antioch. This copy was the prototype of the Neutral recension (Blass's a text). Luke then handed over his original draft to the Christians of Rome, and this in turn became the source of the Western or Roman recension (Blass's b text). Curiously, while in Acts the Western readings are uniformly longer than the Neutral, in the Gospel the reverse is usually the case. This Blass explained by the converse theory that in the case of the Gospel the original draft, written before Luke arrived in Rome, lies behind the Neutral text, while the Western text has its origin in a revised edition which Luke specially made for the Roman church.
There would seem to be three tenable views concerning the relationship to each other of the two types of text: (a) The view of Blass, which though ingenious has found little support, that Luke did in fact himself issue two editions. (b) The view that the Western text is nearer the original, the Neutral representing a later scholarly revision. Though the tendency today is certainly to pay greater respect to Western readings, and the priority of the Western text has been urged with great cogency by A. C. Clark,28 this view has not yet found general acceptance. Matthew Black, an Aramaic expert, has emphasized the value of the text of the Bezan Codex and holds that "D represents the Aramaic background of the Synoptic tradition more faithfully than do non-Western manuscripts."29 (c) The view that the Neutral text is most nearly primitive, while the Western readings are merely the corrections, paraphrases, and expansions of successive scribes, or are possibly in part at least due to a later redaction of the Lukan text, as is argued by Harnack and more recently by J. H. Ropes.30
The more interesting Western variations are noted throughout the commentary. A study of them in detail seems, generally speaking, to confirm the priority of the shorter Neutral text. Some of the Western variations are evidently designed to bring the text into line with some parallel passage: for example, the Western expansion of 9:5-6 (cf. KJV with RSV) is evidently based on 22:10 and 26:14; and the addition in 13:33 of the words "Ask of me and I shall give thee the Gentiles for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession" merely completes the quotation from Ps. 2:7-8. In 18:27 the Western addition that "some Corinthians urged him [Apollos] to go with them to their country" can perhaps be explained by reference to I Cor. 16:12. Other additions aim at giving greater precision to circumstances of time (1:5, "at Pentecost"; 5:21, "rising up early"), or of place (12:1, "some who belonged to the church in Judea"; 12:20, "they came to him in a body from both the cities"). Others again appear to be purely stylistic and due to a scribe or editor who, as Adolf Jülicher says, "occasionally even altered from the mere joy of altering."31 See 2:37 and especially 19:14, where in both passages, particularly the second, the text is greatly expanded without anything essentially new being said. If it is the Neutral scribe who is responsible for a later abbreviation of such passages, it is difficult to understand how his zeal for abridgment could have spared him room for three accounts of Paul's conversion and all the redundancies of the story of Cornelius.
When the Western variant is not merely stylistic but factual, it is again usually most easily explained as an expansion of an originally shorter text. In the Western text of 5:39, where Gamaliel says, "You will not be able to overthrow them, neither you nor emperors nor tyrants," we see reflected the church's later experience of state persecution. The confession of faith in 8:37 (KJV) is evidently added under the influence of later baptismal practice. For the very important variants in the text of the apostolic decrees in 15:20, 29 see Exeg., ad loc., where again the Neutral text is preferred.
It is true that certain Western readings leave the impression that they are based on good authority. Such are the first occurrence of a "we" in 11:28, the mention of the "seven steps" in 12:10, of Trogyllium in 20:15 and of Myra in 21:1, the remark in 28:16 that "the centurion delivered the prisoners to the stratopedarch." But even in these cases, if the readings were indeed original, it is difficult to understand why such vivid details should have been deliberately excised at a later editing, whether by the author, by a subsequent redactor, or by a mere scribe. The conclusion is that while certain individual Western readings may have some claim to originality on their own merit, the Western text as a whole is almost certainly secondary, and has probably resulted, except perhaps in the case of certain key passages such as the apostolic decrees, from a fortuitous accumulation of scribal alterations, paraphrases, and expansions, rather than from a systematic redaction of the entire Lukan text.

Peter and Paul the Movie - Starring Anthony Hopkins as Paul - Oct 25th and Nov 1

2009-10-24T16:35:00.000-07:00

Did you ever wonder what life was like in Jesus’ times?

Church WOW Biblical Scholarship Series Special Presentation –
October 25th and Nov 1 - Peter and Paul the Movie–
Starring Anthony Hopkins as Paul

Church Without Walls Biblical Scholarship Special Presentation for two Sunday evenings October and 25th and Nov 1 from 7 to 9 PM. This special film will serve as an introduction to the group’s study of the Book of Acts

The regular class meets every Sunday from 7PM to 9PM in the media room at 10202 Vanderbilt Drive, Naples, FL. There is no tuition fee but love offerings are appreciated. Class is led by Revs. Sam and Bunny Sewell. The Biblical Scholarship series is sponsored by the Theological Center of Naples.
ChurchWOW@comcast.net
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Winner of Two Emmy Awards
"Two key pillars of Early Christianity and Western Civilization. But in their own day, the world didn't want them."

This epic mini-series brings to life the precarious existence of early Christianity. The new movement is beset by violent opposition from without and constant turmoil from within. Two key leaders emerge--Peter and Paul--who struggle to keep the faith alive. This dramatic presentation follows the pair, together and separately, through three epochal decades.
"This is the best. Great acting with Anthony Hopkins, Raymond Burr, Jose Ferrer. Filmed beautifully. The entire three hours presentation follows very closely to the Scripture. It will give you a marvelous visual of new testament times." You will be blessed by this film! You'll be blessing your friends by inviting them watch it. They don't make them any better than this.”

Directions? – More information? – and please RSVP - Rev Bunny at 591-4565 or ChurchWOW@comcast.net 10202 Vanderbilt Dr, Naples, Fl 34108
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PO Box 1196
Naples, Florida 34106

The Theological Center of Naples is proud to endorse the Church Without Walls Biblical Scholarship Program led by the Reverends Sam and Bunny Sewell. Sam and Bunny are active supporters, contributors and leaders of the TCN.

The TCN partnership with the Church Without Walls demonstrates the commitment of TCN in providing high quality biblical education programs to lay persons interested in expanding their understanding and appreciation of the scriptures & their relevancy to personal and spiritual growth.
The TCN encourages clergy to promote and support The Biblical Scholarship Program. The program meets on Sundays from 7 -9PM, beginning on April 6th. For more information contact Rev Bunny at 591-4565 or ChurchWOW@comcast.net 10202 Vanderbilt Dr, Naples, Fl 34108

Peace and Blessings,

Rev. Michael Harper
President, TCN
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Also see:
Ordinary and Marvelous AND The Secrets of the Universe
Ordinary and MarvelousANDThe Secrets of the Universe
http://wowchurch.blogspot.com/2009/10/ordinary-and-marvelous-and-secrets-of_06.html

ALSO AVAILABLE AS AN ATTACHED WORD DOCUMENT UPON REQUEST.