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[First posted 2012; continuing the series on Paul, the real founder of Christianity. This is from the book (see image on the left). We encourage serious students of biblical studies to own this book, if only to get straightened out on the history of Christian beliefs and whose thinking and writings shaped this religion.—Admin1]
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The Galatians were Celts who had migrated to Anatolia in the 3rd century BC and who had thrown in their lot with the expanding Roman Empire. The vast Roman province of Galatia had been established in 25 BC, Acts makes it quite clear that Barnabas and Paul only visited cities int he south — Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe, where there were Roman, Jewish and Greek populations. They concentrated their teaching in the synagogues and on the Gentiles associated with them. Acts records in intense Jewish opposition to their visits and, although it appears that Paul and Barnabas were able to set up small congregations under elders and visit each city twice, they may soon have been on the way back to Antioch.
It was in Antioch that the issue festering within the Christian communities broke into an open sore. It was quite natural for the early Christian leaders (of whom James, the brother of Jesus, was now dominant), to insist on circumcision for converts but it is likely that, faced with the knife and the isolation from fellow Gentiles that would follow if they practised Jewish dietary laws, most Gentiles balked at conversion. Could the movement expand if it was not prepared to compromise on its principles? Even Acts, which plays down the conflicts within early Christianity, talks of ‘much controversy’ on the matter. Paul and Barnabas set off, as part of a delegation, to Jerusalem and it was here that James masterminded a plan that allowed Gentiles to convert so long as they refrained from meat offered in sacrifice and from fornication. The Jerusalem leaders appointed two of their own representatives, Silas and Judas, to pass the decision on to the community in Antioch. Paul and Barnabas accompanied them back to Syria.
It may have been soon after this that the visit of Peter to Antioch, which caused much distress to Paul, took place. Barnabas joined Peter in submitting to the demands of the Jewish Christians that they withdraw from eating with the Gentiles. We do not know how dependent Paul had become on his companion but it must have been a major blow. Worse was to come. News now reached Paul that the Galatian Christians he believed to be his own had been swayed by ‘another gospel’, none other than that of the Jewish Christians. One can hardly criticise them for this. Paul may have convinced some Galatians but they were probably still uncertain of what they were supposed to be convinced of, so when missionaries arrived also preaching Christ, but int he different context of Judaism, they must have been bewildered.
It was a personal crisis that shook Paul to the core. He was incandescent with rage at what had happened. Whether he wrote his Letter to the Galatians then or later, it is a fitting example of how his personal emotions, here an intense sense of rejection, drove his theology. There is a single commandment, Paul tells his recipients: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’, yet his own letter was certainly not one that showed any love for ‘you stupid Galatians.’ It begins with a long-winded justification of his role as apostle, culminating in an extraordinary identification with Christ himself: ‘I have been crucified with Christ the life I live now is not my life, but the life which Christ lives in me’ (2:20). This was a desperate, perhaps even blasphemous, claim and would have been deeply offensive to those Christians who had actually known Jesus while he was still alive. Imagine the shock to real-life witnesses to the crucifixion if they had read or heard this.
Paul was now forced to develop a theological justification for his conviction that Christ had brought a new era. He goes back to a promise from God that in Abraham ‘all nations shall find blessing’. This, he argues, includes all Gentiles who have faith in Jesus Christ. they are now no longer subject to the Law, which was a temporary measure until the coming of Christ. He goes further: if the Galatians continue to observe the Law they will have cut their relationship with Christ; ‘you will have fallen out of the domain of God’s grace.‘ He goes on to outline the fruits of faith in Christ. Those who have faith have reached a higher level as a result of having ‘crucified’ their lower nature with its base passions, fornication, impurity, idolatry, selfish ambitions, drinking bouts, and orgies. Now (Galatians 6:11) Paul grabs the pen from his scribe and finishes the letter himself. the reason why the Galatians are required to be circumcised, he claims, is only so that they have some outward sign of the numbers who have been converted! He ends with emotional blackmail: ‘In the future let no one make trouble for me, for I bear the marks of Jesus branded on my body.’ How the Galatians received this letter is unknown. Were they cowed by it, did they ignore it as an emotional rant or did it simply deepen their confusion over what they were supposed to believe?
When Paul proposed that he should visit the Galatians again, he quarreled with Barnabas over their choice of traveling companion and the friendship was finally broken. Instead Silas agreed to go with Paul. It was a sensible choice: Silas, an appointed representative of the Jerusalem Church, enjoyed an authority Paul did not have and he would have been able to expound the agreement that had been made over Gentile conversion. So Paul set out again. In Lystra they came across a convert called Timothy, of mixed Jewish Christian and Gentile parentage whom Paul actually circumcised ‘out of consideration of the Jews who lived in those parts.’ It seems a direct contradiction of all he had told the Galatians but he could perhaps claim that Timothy was Jewish, rather than Gentile, by blood. It also made sense to enter synagogues, his initial port of call in most cities, only in the company of other circumcised Jews. Timothy now joined them and was to prove Paul’s most loyal follower.
Clearly things were not easy in Galatia. Paul did not linger and Luke explains that ‘The Spirit’ forbade him to go into new areas such as Bithynia. Perhaps Silas, with his contacts with Jerusalem, felt that this was now Jewish Christian territory into which Paul should not intrude. They proceeded instead westwards through Asia Minor to reach the coast of Troas from where they took a boat across to Macedonia. Although Acts reports later visits by Paul to Galatia, there is no archeological record of an early Christian community there. It is not until the 3rd century that Christian activity in this area is attested and even then there is no evidence to link it to the activities of Paul.
There was always the hope that new journeys would bring success. Silas, Paul and Timothy now arrived in Philippi, a Roman colony settled in the late first century BC by veterans of the Roman civil wars. Unlike in most cities of the east, Latin was the dominant language and the city was also distinct in having no Jewish community. Paul attracted a wealthy dye merchant by the name of Lydia who was baptised along with other women. Women were certainly easier to convert as the tricky question of circumcision could be avoided. Lydia welcomed the travellers into her household but the hospitality did not last long. Paul and Silas were hauled before the magistrates after complaints by the owners of a slave girl whose lucrative fortune-telling business had been quelled by Paul. They were beaten and imprisoned for a night before being released when the authorities discovered that they were Roman citizens. Paul may have found it difficult to advertise his status.
Philippi was on the Via Egnatia, the great Roman road built in 130 BC that ran across northern Greece. The next major city on the road was Thessalonica, capital of the Roman province of Macedonia, a thriving port whose position on the main road with access to the Danube basin to the north had made it the most prosperous city of the region. There was a mixed population of Romans and Greeks and also a large Jewish community. Once the travellers had arrived Luke records that Paul spent three successive Sabbaths preaching in the synagogue but here again resentment from the Jews was Paul’s undoing. The Jews simply could not grasp how the risen Christ could be assimilated into Judaism. Although Luke records that Paul did make some conversions, the Jews hounded the trio out and then followed them to the neighboring city of Beroea to interrupt their preaching there. For some reason the three now became separated and Paul is recorded as having taken a boat southwards to Athens on his own.
Anyone who had had even rudimentary contact with Greek culture would have known of the aura of Athens. Plato and Aristotle and a host of other great philosophers, playwrights, historians and others had debated here. If Paul’s own acquaintance with Greek philosophy had been through the Stoics he would have known that the movement had been founded there and Stoicism was still strong in the city. Even though the powerhouse of Greek learning, in science and mathematics, was now Alexandria, Athens retained great prestige and still had influential patrons prepared to shower money on it.
Yet it was hardly fertile territory for Paul. The sophistication of its philosophers mingled with their arrogance towards outsiders. Luke records how Paul was exasperated by the mass of statues of gods he saw — idols of course, to anyone raised as a Jew. Nevertheless he was treated with some grudging respect and given a hearing before the Court of the Areopagus. One of the duties of this ancient court was to oversee new cults being brought into the city and Paul’s individual teaching must have appeared to fall into this category. While int he city he had seen an altar inscribed “To the Unknown God.’ Ingeniously he argued that this was perhaps the same god that he preached — implying that he was not introducing anything new. Even though his speech as Luke records it is relatively sophisticated rhetoric, Paul’s talk of a man being raised by God from the dead was hardly likely to convince trained intellectuals and he was widely scoffed at. When Paul denigrates the ‘wisdom of the wise‘ in his letters, it may have been this humiliating experience that haunted him. He remained an outsider to the world of the Greek philosophers.
He was far better off in a city where there were marginal groups ready to give allegiance to new religious movements and he did not have to travel far to find one. The ancient trading city of Corinth had long exploited its position on an isthmus as a crossing place for goods and boats wishing to avoid the tortuous voyage around the Peloponnese. The city had been sacked by the Romans in 146 BC before being reconstituted by Julius Caesar as a Roman colony. It had quickly regained its former prosperity and its port was one of the busiest in the empire. As a mixing bowl of nationalities and cultures, it provided Paul with the opportunity for a fresh initiative to make up for the disappointments he had suffered.
He was lucky to find a husband-and-wife team, Aquila and Prisca, who were, like him, tent makers. (This is the first mention of Paul as tent maker. Even though it seems a rather low status job for one of such education, it must have provided him with a means of keeping his independence.) Aquila and Prisca were among those Jews who had been expelled from Rome by Claudius and there is circumstantial evidence that they might also have been freedmen. It is possible that another Corinthian Christian, Erastus, who rose to city treasurer, was a freedman. In short, their relationship may have been cemented as much by a shared background as by shared skills. Certainly this was not a Christian community of high status. ‘Few of you are men of wisdom, by any human standard; few are powerful or highly born,’ was Paul’s own assessment.
Next: Paul 5 – Conflict with the Jews, and emerging Pauline theology
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