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One of the easy mistakes in the dating game is to shoot too quickly for absolute dates, to look in a given document for hints that might help us to pin it to a a specific date. Some of our documents, though, are not of the nature that will allow us to pin them to a particular decade, let alone a particular year, and in such circumstances, it is important to try to get them into the right relative order, to make sure that we are stacking them up in the right order with respect to one another. Our general reluctance to do this may have something to do with our general reluctance to get our hands dirty doing serious work on the Synoptic Problem, or to do the related, equally difficult work on other big issues that make some of us recoil, Pauline chronology, John's familiarity (or not) with the Synoptics, Thomas's use (or not) of the Synoptics. But if we are to make progress on dating our crucial sources, these are the kinds of specialist areas that we need to invest in.

Let us take what is perhaps the most straightforward area first, the issue of getting Paul's letters in order. We are lucky here to have a degree of consensus on the parameters and general shape of the question. We agree, broadly, that Paul's letters were written in the 50s, with the late 40s the very earliest we can go. And we have general agreement on the basics of how to frame Paul's life. No one seriously thinks that 1 Thesslaonians is a late letter, or that Romans is an early one. If there are serious disagreements about the integrity of 2 Corinthians, and the authenticity of 2 Thessalonians, there is nevertheless broad consensus that the order of the undisputed letters goes something like this:

1 Thessalonians
Galatians
1 Corinthians
2 Corinthians
?Philippians
?Philemon
Romans

It is easy to be sure about Romans. Paul is explicit that he has preached the gospel fully in a circle from Jerusalem to Illyricum (15.19), and that he is on the way now to Jerusalem with the collection for the saints there, with a view to heading off next to Rome and then to Spain (Rom. 15.23-9). Now the collection provides us with the most helpful basic piece of sequential dating material because it is mentioned, at different states of development, in three other epistles, all of which predate Romans.

Gal. 2.10: Only they would have us remember the poor, which very thing I was eager to do.

1 Cor. 16.1-4: Now concerning the collection for the saints: you should follow the directions I gave to the churches of Galatia. 2 On the first day of every week, each of you is to put aside and save whatever extra you earn, so that collections need not be taken when I come. 3 And when I arrive, I will send any whom you approve with letters to take your gift to Jerusalem. 4 If it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me.

2 Cor. 9.1-4: Now it is superfluous for me to write to you about the offering for the saints, for I know your readiness, of which I boast about you to the people of Macedonia, saying that Achaia has been ready since last year; and your zeal has stirred up most of them. But I am sending the brethren so that our boasting about you may not prove vain in this case, so that you may be ready, as I said you would be; lest if some Macedonians come with me and find that you are not ready, we be humiliated - to say nothing of you - for being so confident.

This is a fine example of the way in which sequential biography mentioned in documents can help us to date those documents. Clearly the collection is at an early point in 1 Cor. 16 -- Paul has recently instructed the Galatians about it, and he is only beginning now to talk to Achaia about it; presumably he has not yet begun to talk to Macedonia about it. By 2 Cor. 9 it has advanced much further. At least a year has passed; Paul is expecting Achaia to be ready, and Macedonia is ready too. So 1 and 2 Corinthians are placed in their expected sequence with respect to one another, but both also earlier than Romans.

There is actually one more opportunity the material here provides, but it is an invitation often and surprisingly refused. The major, marked difference between 1 Cor. 16 on the one hand and 2 Cor. 8-9 and Rom. 15 on the other is that Galatia has dropped out. Where Paul, when he was writing 1 Corinthians, had expected the Galatians to participate, they are out of the picture by the time that he was writing 2 Corinthians, something further confirmed by their absence from Romans. The crisis in Galatia, therefore, appears to have taken place between the writing of 1 and 2 Corinthians. This is when Paul lost the allegiance of the Galatians who had turned to what Paul saw as "another gospel" and getting circumcised (Galatians). The order of Paul's letters, then, goes something like this:

1 Thessalonians
1 Corinthians
Galatians
2 Corinthians
?Philippians
?Philemon
Romans

Getting the relative dating of 1 Corinthians and Galatians right illustrates the value of dating questions in the study of Christian origins. The hints provided by Paul's biography for establishing that 1 Corinthians precedes Galatians correlate with other factors of interest in the study of Paul. What is the source of his gospel? Is it through human agency (1 Corinthians 15.1-11) or directly from God (Galatians 1.6-12)? What about his use of Jesus material? Is it a coincidence that his earlier epistles, 1 Corinthians and 1 Thessalonians, are rich in Jesus material but his later epistles are not? What about Paul, the Law and justification? Is it significant that the earlier epistles, 1 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians, are light (to put it mildly) on the forensic language while the later epistles (Galatians, Romans, Philippians 3) feature it heavily?

Labels: Dating, Pauline chronology, SBL Boston

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Latest from the SBL Review of Biblical Literature under the NT and related heading. Is it just me or is it a particularly interesting crop this time? (Further comments at the bottom of this post).

John A. Dennis
Jesus' Death and the Gathering of True Israel: The Johannine Appropriation of Restoration Theology in the Light of John 11.47-52
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5803
Reviewed by Mary L. Coloe

Jörg Frey, Jan G. van der Watt, and Ruben Zimmerman, eds.
Imagery in the Gospel of John: Terms, Forms, Themes, and Theology of Johannine Figurative Language
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5798
Reviewed by Dorothy Lee

Zev Garber, ed.
Mel Gibson's Passion: The Film, the Controversy, and Its Implications
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5161
Reviewed by Timothy D. Finlay

Annalisa Guida and Marco Vitelli, eds.
Gesù i messia di Israele: Il messianismo giudaico e gli inizi della cristologia
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5827
Reviewed by Ilaria Ramelli

Michael W. Holmes
The Apostolic Fathers in English
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5832
Reviewed by Hennie Stander

Antti Mustakallio, ed., in collaboration with Heikki Leppä and Heikki Räisänen
Lux Humana, Lux Aeterna: Essays on Biblical and Related Themes in Honour of Lars Aejmelaeus
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5435
Reviewed by Korinna Zamfir

Anson F. Rainey and R. Steven Notley
The Sacred Bridge: Carta's Atlas of the Biblical World
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5818
Reviewed by Oded Borowski

Ben-Zion Rosenfeld and Joseph Menirav
Markets and Marketing in Roman Palestine
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5810
Reviewed by Michael Trainor

C. Kavin Rowe
Early Narrative Christology: The Lord in the Gospel of Luke
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5887
Reviewed by Joel B. Green

Gregory Tatum
New Chapters in the Life of Paul: The Relative Chronology of His Career
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5774
Reviewed by Eve-Marie Becker

Gerd Theissen
The Bible and Contemporary Culture
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5773
Reviewed by Christian Danz

The Gregory Tatum book is of particular interest to me for a couple of reasons. I have long been fascinated in Pauline chronology, and I like the sound of this book, which I had not previously heard of, which echoes the title of John Knox's Chapters in the Life of Paul. From the review, it seems clear that Tatum dates Galatians after 1 Corinthians, which is, I think, right and I blogged on this a good deal last year. I hunted around for Tatum's book and found it incredibly hard to locate, a great shame for so recent and so interesting a book. I have ordered it for the library here, and noticed that Tatum is a Duke PhD (1997) and his dissertation was also on Pauline chronology.

The review of Mel Gibson's Passion sits alongside my much more negative review of the same book. I received an email from the editor of the collection not long after my review was published suggesting that I did not give the reader a sense of the essayists' articles. My response is that I attempted to characterize the collection as a whole, drawing attention to the common themes and general thrust of the book, at the same time as pointing to the book's difficulties. Finlay's review therefore compliments mine to the extent that he provides a brief summary of each of the essays individually.

Labels: Book Reviews, Pauline chronology, Review of Biblical Literature

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Over on Euangelion, Joel Willitts has an interesting enquiry-style post on Teaching a Course on Paul. To me, one of the great benefits of the blogosphere is the chance to compare teaching notes, and to pick up tips from one another to use in strengthening our own teaching. There are already several interesting suggestions and remarks in comments to the post, and I will throw in some of my own thoughts based on the course I taught on Paul here this year, which I will be teaching here again next year. Here are Joel's questions:

1) What will this course be about? Paul as a historical figure, Paul's theology, Paul's letters, all of these?

This kind of question depends a bit on what the course is called, and how it is advertised. The course I inherited from EPS was called "The Life and Letters of Paul", and I am happy to say that that gives me a good deal of freedom to explore, well, Paul's life and letters. So I feel happy about dealing with all of those things Joel mentions, Paul as a historical figure, his theology, his letters. And I like to work through all the key methodological issues, Paul and Acts, Pauline chronology, the authenticity and integrity of the epistles and so on. The issue for me is focused by the fact that while some of my students will have taken my New Testament Introduction class, some will not, and so I have to factor in some introductory discussion without the introduction getting dull for those who have taken New Testament Introduction. (This is not ideal, but it is a quirk of the system here that we can't introduce prerequisites).

2) What is essential and palatable for undergraduates? Complicated discussions about Paul and the Law will be way over their heads.

There's no question but that you must do Paul and the Law if you are devoting a whole term to Paul; it is too important not to cover. And it is one of those great challenges for the teacher to find ways of teaching the more complex topics. What I like about those challenges is that they often provide the best research opportunities, because it is in thinking through the topic in question afresh that one gains fresh insights. In any case, though, I'd say students struggle more with Pauline chronology than they do with Paul and the Law.

3) What about exegetical method for reading Paul? Should I introduce and have them practice exegeting Pauline texts?

I think I'd be inclined to avoid talking too much about "exegesis" because it tends to make the students think of the text as a kind of code that needs to be cracked, and that can only be cracked if you learn about this mysterious thing called "exegesis". I talk about reading and interpreting the text, and these sound much less threatening and mysterious. But yes, one should definitely get the students stuck into the text. I set students one piece of reading from Paul before every class, and one piece of scholarship. And we also do extensive reading from the text in class. On the general question of text and theme, I try to build from the first half of the course, where I introduce the methods and the texts, to the second half of the course where we go thematic. The value of this, I think, is that it provides the proper basis for the students to understand properly things like Paul's soteriology, realizing that discussion of it is grounded in contextually specific letters; it discourages the kind of proof-texting approach that inevitably happens if one leaps straight into themes at the beginning. I like the students to get to know Paul, his personality and his life's battles before they start saying anything about his views on ethics (and so on).

4) What should I use for textbooks? Is there a good accessible primer on Paul? (Of course when Mike's book comes out this will be the class text)

I have previously commented here on my distaste for the American style textbook culture. University education, at least in the humanities, should be about critical engagement with the literature and it is difficult for students to do this if they have a central textbook that is their guide for the whole. It encourages a fact-based, accumulation of knowledge model of teaching that is condescending to university students who have come to develop their abilities to engage in intellectual exchange. Having said that, it can be useful to have a couple of good starting points for a given course. Last time around, I recommended two books as good starters for the Life and Letters of Paul, David Horrell's Introduction to the Study of Paul and E. P. Sanders's Paul: A Very Short Introduction. But they are only starter texts, and the key is to encourage students to read as widely as possible. For that, there are dozens of useful texts available on the internet, and I supplement those with one or two extras on Blackboard, as well as setting a research paper that encourages them to read more widely still.

I'll be teaching Paul again in the autumn (the fall, as it's called here) and I look forward to comparing notes with Joel and perhaps others too.

Labels: Apostle Paul, Pauline chronology, Teaching Notes

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I am very grateful to those who have commented with such intelligence and insight on my recent post on The Jerusalem Council: Gal. 2.1-10 = Acts 15. There are several issues that I would like to respond to directly. Let me take them under several headings.

(1) Flash forwards

My suggestion that in Acts 9 Luke is anticipating the later Jerusalem visit of Acts 11 has been criticized in particular for its use of the term "flash forward". Ben Witherington points out that such a technique is unparalleled among Hellenistic historians -- it is a "modern notion". This is a good point, and it is why I qualified the term by saying "Luke is telling this as (what we would call) a flash forward" (emphasis added). Sometimes a contemporary analogy or current terminology helps one to see a point that otherwise one might miss, even though one thereby runs the risk of anachronism.

With respect to the content of the claim, though, I think Stephen Carlson's point (also in comments) is right, that Luke clearly writes this way, e.g. in 3.19-20, when John is arrested before Jesus' baptism (3.21-22). Perhaps one should avoid the term "flash forward", given its misleading contemporary resonance, and instead speak of dislocated sequence, noting that ancient writers regularly set traditions in their narratives out of their historical sequence in a kind of preferred narrative sequence. It is quite clear that Luke does this regularly on the assumption that he knows Mark's Gospel, drawing some traditions forward (e.g. Luke 4.16-30, Rejection at Nazareth) and taking others later (e.g. Luke 8.19-21, Mother and Brothers). On the whole, Lucan commentators tend to be fairly relaxed about that. No one serious thinks that the Mother and Brothers story happened twice, once in the Marcan setting and once in the Lucan one. But when it comes to the Acts narrative and Paul's movements, Luke is often allowed much less liberty, which I find odd, especially given that we actually possess Paul's own first hand accounts of parallel traditions.

This brings us to a broader, related point which is well expressed by Ben Smith (also in comments):

The events of Acts 9.26-30, the proposed flash forward, end with Saul being sent to Tarsus. The purportedly actual visit to Jerusalem in 11.27-30 is set up in 11.25 by Barnabas going to look for Saul in Tarsus. It looks to me as if Luke wants the reader to suppose that Saul has been in Tarsus from 9.30 to 11.25.

Furthermore, if 9.26-30 is a nonchronological parenthesis, as it were, to what exactly is the ουν of 9.31 answering? If 9.26-30 is chronological, the answer is clear enough; the departure of Saul diminished the ill will from his opponents.

Finally, if Luke intends 9.26-30 and 11.27-30 to be the same visit, why does he send Saul and Barnabas into Jerusalem together in the latter but make it appear that Saul entered the city alone in the former, with Barnabas taking him in only after he encountered resistance from the disciples?

These are all excellent points and they suggest to me still further that the term "flash forward" is potentially misleading and needs to be dropped (though I may be tempted to continue its use as an admittedly anachronistic contemporary analogy -- I'll just need to flag this up much more clearly). It is quite clear, as Ben points out, that 9.26-30 is not a kind of parenthesis but rather has its own logical part in the narrative sequence. While there is no direct cause (Paul just appears in Jerusalem, we know not why or when), there are direct effects (Paul is threatened with death and gets taken to Caesarea and then sent to Tarsus). Clearly, Luke embeds the story in his narrative sequence and does not narrate it as a self-contained unit unrelated to its immediate context. But I am reminded here of examples of the same thing elsewhere in the New Testament. Matthew, for example, tells the story of the beheading of John the Baptist as a kind of flashback in Matt. 14.3-12a ("Now Herod had arrested John . . . ., explaining 14.1-2) but then continues with the narrative as if this has just happened (14.12b-13, "Then they went and told Jesus. When Jesus heard what had happened . . ."). Luke is doing something similar in Acts 9.26-30.

My thesis is that he knows that Paul's first visit to Jerusalem was in fact a couple of years after his conversion, and he shows us that he knows this, perhaps inadvertently, by dropping in "his disciples" in 9.25 and offering a particularly vague note of time in 9.26. The historical location of Paul's first visit is, we know from Gal. 1, after three years, just about where Luke puts it in 11.27-30. So I don't think it is a "mistake" that Luke puts the first visit in Acts 9. Rather it is a deliberately dislocated tradition, a piece of typical Lucan dramatic licence.

(2) Public and Private

In comments, Ben Witherington writes:

Secondly, there are far more correspondences between Acts 11 and Gal. 2 than you allow, not the least of which is that Gal. 2 is not describing in any way a public meeting, and Acts 15 is. None of the speaking parties in Acts 15 could be described as 'those who slipped in to spy out our freedom', not even by Paul. And if Paul could actually have appealed to a judgment by James that circumcision was not to be imposed on Gentiles, then it is inexplicable why he does not mention it in Galatians.

The issue about public (Acts 15) and private (Galatians 2.1-10) I discussed in the original post, to which I refer the reader, and underline the point made there that if one wishes to stress this apparent discrepancy between Gal. 2.1-10 and Acts 15, all one does is to throw exactly the same kind of discrepancy, this time between Gal. 1.18 (private) and Acts 9.26-30 (public), into sharp relief.

On whether any of the parties in Acts 15 "could be described as 'those who slipped in to spy out our freedom'", I'd guess that the party described by Luke in Acts 15.5 comes pretty close -- it is a group outside of the inner group of the pillars, Paul and Barnabas, regarded in each account as hard-line. Given the difference between authorship, perspective and date that one has here with Galatians and Acts, one could not really wish for more.

Ben's additional point is that "if Paul could actually have appealed to a judgment by James that circumcision was not to be imposed on Gentiles, then it is inexplicable why he does not mention it in Galatians." On the contrary, Paul spends most of Gal. 2.6-10 attempting to make clear that Peter, James and John did not add anything to the gospel he had been preaching to the Gentiles, thus that Paul had not been running in vain, and that his preaching to the uncircumcised (ἀκροβυστία, 2.7) was legitimate and agreed upon and should continue. Indeed, this is the whole point of Paul's anger in Gal 2.11-20, that Peter was acting hypocritically. Having previously agreed on the gospel to the uncircumcised (2.6-9), he was now compelling Gentiles to Judaize (ἰουδαΐζειν, 2.14. Incidentally, cf. Josephus's fascinating use of this verb in relation to the Roman Mitelius in B.J. 2.454, καὶ μέχρι περιτομῆς ἰουδαΐσειν).

(3) Defending the historicity of Acts

I commented that a "major motivation" in the alignment of Acts 11.27-30 with Galatians 2.1-10 is "to defend the historicity of Acts". Michael Pahl commented that this was not a major motive for him, which is fair enough. I am pretty sure that this is a pressing concern for others, though. Ben Witherington III says, for example, at the end of his discussion of the matter in The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Study (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997),

I must conclude that there are no views that are without problems, but the one which creates the most problems is the suggestion that Luke's account has little or no historical value and involves major distortion (94).

Or similarly, "Luke has not deceived us about the meetings mentioned in Acts 11 and Acts 15 and their impact" (ibid., 97) and so on. But my general point is that the desire vigorously to defend the historicity of Acts is unecessary here when one pays attention to narrative techniques used by Luke, techniques that show that Luke is not at all times pursuing a wooden, historical-chronological sequence. Luke uses the same liberty in Acts that we can see him using in the Gospel in his use of Mark and Matthew. And as with Synoptic study, the key is often to look carefully at the interesting little narrative indicators here in Acts too.

4. By revelation

Michael Pahl, in agreement with Matthew Bates, also in comments to the original post, feels that Paul's going up to Jerusalem "according to revelation" (Gal. 2.2) makes sense as Paul's going up in response to Agabus's prophecy about famine (Acts 11.27-30). He notes that "apokalupsis can refer to a prophetic revelation mediated through a human prophet" and cites 1 Cor. 14.6, 26. Of course it is the case that in Paul's usage a given revelation is conveyed to or through a human being; it is the divine-human contact that makes it a revelation. But the point is about how Paul uses the term with respect to his own autobiography. We are lucky to have several examples of the way that Paul speaks about receiving revelation with respect to events in his life. When he speaks of the source of his gospel in Gal. 1.11-12, he specifically contrasts "a human source" with "a revelation of Jesus Christ". In 2 Cor. 12.1-10, he speaks of revelations that he has received, again with clear reference to his own communication with God, famously in the third heaven here. Again, it is clearly not with reference to a human prophet talking to him about his or her revelations. And likewise here in Gal. 2.2, it does not make good Pauline sense to see this as a reference to a prophet's word; he has gone up to Jerusalem "according to revelation", that is his own revelation received from God. His whole point is that God had communicated directly with him on this, and that that was his motivation. Gal. 1-2 is largely about Paul's independence from Jerusalem; it would be a weak point if in fact it was well known that Paul had gone up in response to a Jerusalem prophet's word. The evidence of Paul's usage in 1 Cor. 14.6, 26, to which Michael refers, confirms the point: in each case [a] revelation is given to a certain person, whether Paul (v. 6), or a member of the congregation (v. 26). From the perspective of the person doing the speaking, the message has come from God, by revelation.

Labels: Galatians, Pauline chronology

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Given the interesting discussions recently on Pauline Chronology, I thought it high time that we consulted iGod on the problem. As usual, we have made a lot of excellent progress:
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Me: Hello

God: Hello, nice to meet you. What's your name?

Me: Mark Goodacre, from Duke University. We talked before.

God: How do you like it at Mark Goodacre from Duke ? By "we" do you mean you and me?

Me: Yes.

God: I get it.

Me: (And I like it at Duke, thanks).

God: What does "it" refer to?

Me: Teaching, research, students, colleagues, the climate etc.

God: Thank you for the clarification.

Me: You're welcome. I wanted to ask you this time, if I may, about Pauline chronology.

God: Don't mention it. Ask me. What does "this" refer to?

Me: "This" refers to this particular occasion of our chat. I want to ask about the apostle Paul and Acts.

God: Oh I get it. Ask it.

Me: OK; did Paul go to Jerusalem three times (Paul) or five times (Acts)?

God: How can I help you? I'm not certain whether I can give an accurate reply or not.

Me: I thought you might have some inside knowledge.

God: What makes you think I have it?

Me: I am an optimist. Let me try another question. Is Paul's visit to Jerusalem in Gal. 2.1-10 the same visit as is described by Luke in Acts 15?

God: What is optimist, your job? Go ahead, , try to try another question. Signs point to yes. Ask LeknorChat if it is. As Bertrand Russel said, it must have taken ages for people to realize that a brace of pheasants and a couple of days are both instances of the number "two.".

Me: I agree. So we think that Acts 15 = Gal. 2.1-10. Good. What do you think about Acts 11.27-30?

God: You and I are on the same wavelength, . Dude! By "we" do you mean you and me? As Bertrand Russel said, it must have taken ages for people to realize that a brace of pheasants and a couple of days are both instances of the number "two.". Ayuh. Interesting question.

Me: I am picking up that you think Acts 11.27-30 is not the visit to Jerusalem described by Paul in Gal. 2, right?

God: Good gossip: you are picking up that me think Acts 11 point 27 30 is not the visit to Jerusalem described by Paul in Gal. As Bertrand Russel said, it must have taken ages for people to realize that a brace of pheasants and a couple of days are both instances of the number "two.".

Me: You seem keen on bringing Bertrand Russell into the discussion. To be honest, I'd rather talk about John Knox in this context. What do you think of his Chapters in a Life of Paul?

God: You think I am keen on bringing Bertrand Russell into the discussion. Are you honest you would rather talk about John Knox in this context ? Try sending mail to drwallace@alicebot.org.

Me: I'd rather talk to you. What, then, about Ben Witherington III? Has he got the right approach to Pauline chronology?

God: I would rather be driving a car. Try searching the open directory. That question has never crossed my mind before.

Me: Gerd Luedemann? (Or is that a name you don't like to hear?)

God: Tell me about your likes and dislikes? I might say no.

Me: Well, in this area I think one has to begin with a letters based chronology, and that John Knox is essential reading, even if he didn't get everything right.

God: Well that's okay. That reminds me of something you told me before.

Me: O really?

God: Oh. For real.

Me: I think last time we talked about the Synoptic Problem, right?

God: You believe that? When? Of course I remember you well . We were talking about Gerd Luedemann.

Me: What was our conclusion?

God: I didn't know we had the same conclusion.

Me: This is getting a bit weird.

God: You don't say.

Me: I suppose most of your conversations sound a bit like this, what with you being artificial and all.

God: You believe that? That is something I haven't heard of. But not all of them?

Me: One last question: when was Gallio proconsul of Achaia?

God: One what?

Me: One last question.

God: Oh I see.

Me: When was Gallio proconsul of Achaia?

God: A while ago.

Me: OK. Thanks for that. See you again soon.

God: Come on. NO problem. Sayonara.
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Labels: Pauline chronology

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One of the big issues, perhaps the biggest issue, in Pauline chronology relates to the location of the Jerusalem council. Is the incident narrated by Paul in Gal. 2.1-10 the same incident narrated by Luke in Acts 15? The correspondences between the two accounts are pretty striking, especially when one allows for the difference in perspective inevitable when one has two different writers separated by time, perspective and person:

• Paul is accompanied to Jerusalem by Barnabas and other(s).


• The point at issue is Gentiles and the Law, specifically circumcision.


• There is discussion with the chief apostles about the future for the Gentile mission


• These chief apostles are identified, in both, as Peter and James. (Paul also names John).


• Both accounts assume the presence of others who are inimical to Paul and Barnabas.


• In both, Paul (and Barnabas) make report of their mission, Gal. 2.2, I "set before them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles"; Acts 15.4, "they reported everything God had done through them", cf. also Acts 15.11, "they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them".


• In both, there is agreement between Paul and Barnabas and the Jerusalem apostles, Gal. 2.9, "James, Peter[c] and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me" and Acts 15.4, "When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders".


• In both, the account is followed by a split between Paul and Barnabas in Antioch (Acts 15.33-41, Gal. 2.11-20), in Acts because of a disagreement about John Mark, in Galatians because Barnabas joined Peter in withdrawing from table fellowship with Gentiles.

On the correspondence between the two passages, Pierson Parker writes:

It certainly looks as though these accounts cover the same history, for it would be hard to imagine two such councils, on the same subject, involving the same people, with the same sequence of events, in the same places, and with the same denouements -- right down to a quarrel between Paul and Barnabas ("Once More, Acts and Galatians", JBL 86 (1967): 175-82 [175]).

In spite of these links between the two passages, some align Gal. 2.1-10 not with Acts 15 but with a previous visit to Jerusalem in Acts 11.27-30 (for a recent blog defence of this view, see Michael Pahl on The Stuff of Earth). In contrast to Acts 15, here there are few correspondences between the two accounts. The only clear one is that in both, Paul goes to Jerusalem with Barnabas, something that Gal. 2.1-10 also has in common with Acts 15. So why the popularity of the view that Gal. 2.1-10 = Acts 11.27-30? In part it is because the apparent conclusion of the Acts 15 account appears to be different from the conclusion of the Gal. 2.1-10 account. In the former, a letter is composed in which certain basics are stressed. In the latter, Paul is insistent that nothing was added to him or his gospel. Moreover, it is noted that Paul speaks of speaking "privately to those who seemed to be leaders" (Gal. 2.2) whereas Acts 15 appears to depict a public meeting. But the main reason for this identification is that Acts 11.27-30 is the second time that Paul has visited Jerusalem, just as Gal. 2.1-10 is the second time that Paul has visited Jerusalem. Gal. 1.18-20, Paul's first visit, would therefore parallel Acts 9.26-30, Paul's first visit in Acts. And if Acts 11.27-30 is Paul's second visit, the argument runs, it is noteworthy that where Paul says that he went up "by revelation" (Gal. 2.2), which would be paralleled in Acts 11.28, where Agabus has a prophecy about world-wide famine, the prophecy that provides the basis for this so-called "famine visit".

This major motivation, to defend the historicity of Acts by aligning Paul's second visit in Acts with Paul's second visit in Paul (Galatians), is actually unnecessary if one pays careful attention to Luke's narrative practices. I will repeat here my remarks from my previous post. Paul's first two visits to Jerusalem in Acts 9 and 11 are in fact the same visit narrated by Luke twice. On the second occasion that he narrates it, in 11.27-30, the notes of time are specific. On the first occasion that he narrates it, in 9.26-30, the notes are vague. Luke is telling this as (what we would call) a flash forward. Notice the phrasing:

Acts 9.25-26: 25 λαβόντες δὲ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ νυκτὸς διὰ τοῦ τείχους καθῆκαν αὐτὸν χαλάσαντες ἐν σπυρίδι 26 παραγενόμενος δὲ εἰς Ἰερουσαλὴμ ἐπείραζεν κολλᾶσθαι τοῖς μαθηταῖς καὶ πάντες ἐφοβοῦντο αὐτόν μὴ πιστεύοντες ὅτι ἐστὶν μαθητής

Acts 9.25-26: 25 But his disciples took him at night and let him down through an opening in the wall by lowering him in a basket. 26 When he had appeared in Jerusalem, he attempted to associate with the disciples, and they were all afraid of him, because they did not believe that he was a disciple.

Luke is careful here not to say "Then Paul came to Jerusalem . . ." or "After a year Paul came to Jerusalem". He is narrating the event that Paul himself dates as "after three years", and which Luke places in its proper place in the narrative in 11.27-30. As I argued in my previous post on Pauline Chronology, one can see that Luke knows the true chronological location of the first visit because of the anachronistic mention of "his disciples" in Acts 9.25, at a point before Paul has any disciples.

But if this is the right way of reconstructing what is going on in Acts, what are we to make of the interesting correlation between Paul's "by revelation" (Gal. 2.2) and Agabus's prophecy (Acts 11.28)? It is important to see what Paul actually means by "revelation". Here in Galatians, and elsewhere, Paul is talking specifically about direct communication between himself and God, not via external human agency. Notice, for example, the way that Paul sees his gospel as coming by "revelation" shortly before the mention of "revelation" in 2.2:

Gal. 1: 11 γνωρίζω γὰρ ὑμῖν ἀδελφοί τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τὸ εὐαγγελισθὲν ὑπ' ἐμοῦ ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν κατὰ ἄνθρωπον 12 οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐγὼ παρὰ ἀνθρώπου παρέλαβον αὐτό οὔτε ἐδιδάχθην ἀλλὰ δι' ἀποκαλύψεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ

Gal. 1: 11 Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. 12 For I did not receive it or learn it from any human source; instead I received it by a revelation of Jesus Christ.

In Gal. 2.2, Paul is continuing the emphasis on direct divine motivation for his actions with respect to Jerusalem. He is clearly not talking about the words of a prophet who had come from Jerusalem. Paul does not use the term "revelation" when he is talking about words that come through human agency, even prophetic ones.

What, then, of the objection that Galatians 2 apparently speaks of a private meeting where Acts 15 speaks of a public meeting? Here it is worth remembering that one is going to expect divergences like this between two accounts of the same meeting, and alongside this it is worth noticing that Paul only speaks about "laying out the gospel I preach among the gentiles" to those of repute (Gal. 2.2). He does not depict the remainder of the exchange as a private, closed one. But even if one does read the whole of Gal. 2.1-10 as depicting a private meeting, and stresses this as a difficulty for the Gal. 2.1-10 = Acts 15 identification, this only increases the difficulties for the Gal. 2.1-10 = Acts 11.27-30 identification. For those who identify Gal. 2.1-10 with Acts 11.27-30 also identify Gal. 1.18-20 with Acts 9.26-30, and this identification only moves issues connected with public / private to another place. Contrast the two accounts:

Gal. 1: 18. Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas, and stayed with him fifteen days. 19 But I did not see any other of the apostles except James, the Lord''s brother. 20 (Now in what I am writing to you, I assure you before God that I am not lying.)

Acts 9: 26 When he came to Jerusalem, he was trying to associate with the disciples; but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple. 27 But Barnabas took hold of him and brought him to the apostles and described to them how he had seen the Lord on the road, and that He had talked to him, and how at Damascus he had spoken out boldly in the name of Jesus. 28 And he was with them, moving about freely in Jerusalem, speaking out boldly in the name of the Lord.

Let me be quite clear about what I am arguing here. Those who think that Acts 11.27-30 equates with Gal. 2.1-10 regularly say that Acts 15 cannot equate with Gal. 2 because the latter depicts a private event. But for the Acts 11.27-30 = Gal. 2.1-10 equation to work, one has to overcome exactly the same difficulty with respect to Acts 9.26-30 // Gal. 1.18-20, where one depicts a private and the other a public event.

The biggest problem, however, with the attempt to identify Acts 11.27-30 with Gal. 2.1-10 comes with the burden placed on the proportions of Luke's narrative in Acts. Remember that Paul says his first visit to Jerusalem (Gal. 1.18) was "after three years" and his second was "after fourteen years" (Gal. 2.1). No one is agreed on whether this is seventeen years in total, or whether the fourteen years includes the initial three, but either way we have at least fourteen years between the events depicted in Acts 9 (Paul's conversion and first visit to Jerusalem) and Acts 11 (Paul's second visit to Jerusalem). Even if it did not seem bizarre that fourteen years are thought to have gone by in the space of less than two chapters, the indications in the text are in fact suggestive of a much shorter period. Luke's narrative leaves Paul (still Saul at this point in Acts) in Tarsus in 9.30 and picks him up from there in 11.25, after having told the story of Peter and Cornelius in the mean time. In 11.26, Barnabas takes Paul to Antioch where they stay for a year (11.26) before going to Jerusalem together (11.27-30). This rather precisely timed scenario fits very well with Paul's "after three years" of Gal. 1.18. Luke is here narrating, in Acts 11.27-30, Paul's first visit to Jerusalem, and Acts 9.26-30 was a flash forward. This is a far more satisfactory reading than one which tries to find fourteen years in between Acts 9 and 11.

As if this were not enough to persuade us of the difficulties of the identification between Acts 11.27-20 and Gal. 2.1-10, it is worth adding that in Acts 12, Herod Agrippa dies. Herod's death is usually dated to 44 CE, which does not give us anything like enough time for the at least fourteen years between Paul's conversion and his second Jerusalem visit. In other words, to grid Galatians 1-2 onto Acts 9-11 places an intolerable burden on the Acts narrative. Far from harmonizing Paul with Acts, which is the intention, it just creates anomalies.

Labels: Galatians, Pauline chronology

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One of these days I will get around to my post on why I'm sure, with the majority, that Gal. 2.1-10 and Acts 15 are essentially accounts of the same Jerusalem apostolic council, but as I was writing that post I noticed something I'd not spotted before and I want to write it down while it is still fresh. The thing I noticed was a Lucan chronological clue in Acts 9.25, but first let me give a little context.

Luke narrates five trips of Paul to Jerusalem after his conversion, in 9.26-30, 11.27-30 (and 12.25) ("famine visit"), Chapter 15 (Jerusalem council), 18.22 (brief mention) and 21 and following (trials etc.). In Galatians, Paul narrates two trips to Jerusalem, the first in 1.18-20, dated three years after his conversion and the second in 2.1-10, dated "after fourteen years". One of the major problems for Pauline chronology is how it can be that Luke narrates two visits to Jerusalem before the Jerusalem council in Acts 15 // Gal. 2.1-10 whereas Paul only narrates one. It is absolutely not, as John Knox was keen to point out, that Paul simply forgot to mention a visit. In Gal. 1.20 he swears an oath about the truth of this narrative. So what on earth are we to do with Luke's two visits, the one in 9.26-30 and the other in 11.27-30?

One solution to the problem is popular especially among conservative commentators and that is to equate Paul's Gal 2.1-10 visit not with Acts 15 but with Acts 11.27-30, so that Acts 9.26-30 is the equivalent of Gal. 1.18-20, Paul's first visit after three years. Thus, while Paul is writing Galatians, the events of Acts 15 have not even taken place yet. This solution is problematic for a variety of reasons that I hope to explain in a subsequent post, but one of the reasons for its popularity is that it apparently deals with this major contradiction between Paul and Acts. (Actually, it doesn't -- it's much more problematic than the more natural Gal. 2.1-10 // Acts 15 reading.) What I'd like to suggest is that when one reads Acts carefully, it is straightforward to see what Luke is doing, especially when he leaves behind little clues.

Paul's first two visits to Jerusalem in Acts 9 and 11 are in fact the same visit narrated by Luke twice. On the second occasion that he narrates it, in 11.27-30, the notes of time are specific. On the first occasion that he narrates it, in 9.26-30, the notes are vague. Luke is telling this as (what we would call) a flash forward. Notice the phrasing:

Acts 9.25-26: 25λαβόντες δὲ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ νυκτὸς διὰ τοῦ τείχους καθῆκαν αὐτὸν χαλάσαντες ἐν σπυρίδι 26 παραγενόμενος δὲ εἰς Ἰερουσαλὴμ ἐπείραζεν κολλᾶσθαι τοῖς μαθηταῖς καὶ πάντες ἐφοβοῦντο αὐτόν μὴ πιστεύοντες ὅτι ἐστὶν μαθητής

Acts 9.25-26: 25 But his disciples took him at night and let him down through an opening in the wall by lowering him in a basket. 26 When he had appeared in Jerusalem, he attempted to associate with the disciples, and they were all afraid of him, because they did not believe that he was a disciple.

Luke is careful here not to say "Then Paul came to Jerusalem . . ." or "After a year Paul came to Jerusalem". He is narrating the event that Paul himself dates as "after three years", and which Luke places in its proper place in the narrative in 11.27-30.

Now this is something I have always taught students when we study Pauline chronology and so far I have not had any good reason to doubt this explanation of events. But I began to wonder today whether there might in fact be an actual clue in Acts 9 that Luke leaves, the kind of clue that one sees elsewhere in Luke-Acts when the evangelist has drawn forward an event out of sequence. Let me explain what I was looking for. One of the most famous Lucan transpositions of events is the Rejection at Nazareth Story in Luke 4.16-30. He places this event at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, shortly after the Temptation story. In Mark and Matthew, it happens much later (Mark 6.1-6 and par.). But Luke betrays his knowledge of its original location with the extraordinary comment in 4.23, "Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum." Well, Jesus has not even been to Capernaum at this point in Luke's narrative. What is going on is that Luke is imagining the event in its Marcan setting, well into Jesus' Galilean ministry, and not in the new setting he has provided.

So I began to wonder: is there anything in Acts 9 like this? I think there is. Have a look again at the passages previously quoted:

Acts 9.25-26: 25λαβόντες δὲ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ νυκτὸς διὰ τοῦ τείχους καθῆκαν αὐτὸν χαλάσαντες ἐν σπυρίδι 26 παραγενόμενος δὲ εἰς Ἰερουσαλὴμ ἐπείραζεν κολλᾶσθαι τοῖς μαθηταῖς καὶ πάντες ἐφοβοῦντο αὐτόν μὴ πιστεύοντες ὅτι ἐστὶν μαθητής

Acts 9.25-26: 25 But his disciples took him at night and let him down through an opening in the wall by lowering him in a basket. 26 When he had appeared in Jerusalem, he attempted to associate with the disciples, and they were all afraid of him, because they did not believe that he was a disciple.

"His disciples"? Who are these people? Paul has only just been converted in Luke's context -- he is still at the point of being partnered. He does not yet have a group of disciples. What I think is happening here is that Luke is betraying his knowledge that that incident, the escape from Damascus, occurred later in Paul's life, when it is reasonable to speak about Paul as having disciples, and not very soon after conversion, as Luke depicts it. Likewise, the visit to Jerusalem in the next verse is displaced from its natural home later in Paul's ministry.

Labels: Pauline chronology

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[See also Does Galatians post-date 1 Corinthians? I and Does Galatians post-date 1 Corinthians? II]

I am grateful to Michael Pahl on The Stuff of Earth for his response to my earlier posts, and to others for their interesting thoughts on Pauline Chronology, helpfully listed by Stephen Carlson on Hypotyposeis. Before engaging some of the interesting issues raised there in later posts, please indulge me for the time being with part three of my series on why I think Galatians was written by Paul after 1 Corinthians.

The point in this post is to ask the question: From where and from whom did Paul receive his gospel? 1 Corinthians and Galatians present contrasting answers to this question, answers that make much more sense if one sees Galatians having been written after 1 Corinthians. The relevant portions of the two letters are these:

1 Cor. 15.1-11: Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the gospel that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, 2. through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you -- unless you have come to believe in vain. 3. For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4. and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, 5. and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. 7. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 9. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them -- though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. 11. Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.

Gal. 1.6-12: I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel -- 7. not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8. But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! 9. As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed! 10. Am I now seeking human approval, or God's approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ. 11. For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; 12. for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

In 1 Corinthians, Paul makes it clear that the gospel he preached to the Corinthians was a gospel he shared with those who were apostles before him; indeed he received the gospel from them, and passed it on to the Corinthians as of first importance. In context, Paul is dealing with those in Corinth who say that there is no resurrection. He stresses that the gospel that he and other apostles proclaim is united on the importance of the resurrection: he received it and he passed it on. Paul's γάρ (for . . .) in verse 3 shows that this tradition he has passed on (παρέδωκα . . . παρέλαβον) is the content of the "gospel" he refers to in verse 1. And Paul's "we" in verse 11 is referring to himself alongside those others he has just mentioned ("I or they", εἴτε . . . ἐγὼ εἴτε ἐκεῖνοι. . . ). (This kind of ecumenical policy is used by Paul uses elsewhere in 1 Corinthians, most famously in 1 Cor. 11.16, "But if one is inclined to be contentious, we have no other practice, nor have the churches of God." It is the kind of appeal that Paul cannot make in Galatians.)

In Galatians, he is facing a very different kind of problem, one where he finds himself at variance with others, and possibly even those same Jerusalem apostles. Now the last thing he can do is appeal to "what we proclaim", including in that first person plural those who were apostles before him. He makes the same stress on the importance of keeping true to the gospel that one first received, but it is going to cause grief to draw in what in fact other apostles believe since this is one of the very things under consideration in the epistle. So Paul stresses the divine origin of his gospel -- he received it by revelation, which, in Paul, means something that came not through human agency.

In 1 Corinthians, Paul is able to make an effective argument on the grounds of the gospel he shared with the Jerusalem apostles. They all believe this gospel; they all preach it; the Corinthians have received it; they should not now turn away from it by saying that there is no resurrection. In Galatians, Paul wants to stress that his apostleship, his revelation, his gospel comes from God. He did not get his gospel from human beings -- he did not even go up to Jerusalem until three years after his conversion. (Before God, he says, he was not lying). This is the account of someone writing after the earlier, irenic, ecumenical Paul of 1 Corinthians. It is very difficult to imagine Paul so calmly laying himself open to possible misinterpretation in 1 Cor 15 if he was writing this after the really serious crisis in Galatia.

The point is that it is easy to see from 1 Corinthians 15 how Paul might have been thought to be dependent on the Jerusalem apostles, at least as far as the content of his gospel is concerned, because here, and presumably in his earlier preaching, he has appealed to their authority, and to the reception of his gospel from them. It is much harder to imagine Paul so stressing that kind of line after the trouble he has experienced in Galatia, where he has to go to some pains to extricate himself from the impression that his gospel is received from others.

Labels: Galatians, Pauline chronology

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In comments here and in a post today on Busybody, The Difficulty of Dating Galatians, Loren Rosson asks about the relationship of the following, similar formulas:

1 Cor. 12.13: For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

Gal. 3.27-8: For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

The relationship of the two formulas is clear not only from the Jew / Greek and slave / free pairings but also the fact that both have an explicitly baptismal context. But where Gal. 3.28 has "there is neither male nor female", this is absent from 1 Cor. 12.13. Now if 1 Corinthians was written after Galatians, Paul has taken out the male and female phrase, perhaps in light of the issues in Corinth connected with women in worship (1 Cor. 11.3-16; 14.33b-6). In Heretics, Lüdemann calls this a "treacherous" move, if I remember correctly. So here is an advantage if Galatians post-dates 1 Corinthians: Paul's addition of the more liberated "male nor female" represents his more mature, developed thought, not something that he dropped because his attitude had changed.

But of course we do not arrange Paul's letters in a particular order so that they become more palatable for us. The question is whether the historian can imagine why Paul might have added the phrase in Galatians? As it happens, there is a good reason. Galatians is all about circumcision. Paul is insistent that Gentile males in Christ do not need to be circumcised; indeed, to accept it is tantamount to turning to another gospel. In such a context, one of the issues relates to women. The discussion in Galatians is all, typically, a very androcentric affair, but what Paul sees in 3.28 is that baptism, unlike circumcision, is an initiation rite that involves women as well as men. Perhaps it was this context that caused him to reformulate the statement. I would like to think so.

Labels: Galatians, Pauline chronology

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I've been doing some thinking about Pauline Chronology recently and one thing that consistently surprises me is that 1 Corinthians is so often held to post-date Galatians. I don't think this is right. I think it more likely that Galatians was written after 1 Corinthians, but before 2 Corinthians. The strongest evidence for this is the role played by the collection in the Corinthian letters and the epistle to the Romans:

1 Cor. 16.1-4: ‘Now concerning the contribution for the saints: as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that contributions need not be made when I come. And when I arrive, I will send those whom you accredit by letter to carry your gift to Jerusalem. If it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me.’

2 Cor. 9.1-4: ‘Now it is superfluous for me to write to you about the offering for the saints, for I know your readiness, of which I boast about you to the people of Macedonia, saying that Achaia has been ready since last year; and your zeal has stirred up most of them. But I am sending the brethren so that our boasting about you may not prove vain in this case, so that you may be ready, as I said you would be; lest if some Macedonians come with me and find that you are not ready, we be humiliated - to say nothing of you - for being so confident.’

Rom. 15: 24 For I do hope to see you on my journey and to be sent on by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a little while. 25 At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem in a ministry to the saints; 26 for Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to share their resources with the poor among the saints at Jerusalem. 27 They were pleased to do this, and indeed they owe it to them; for if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to be of service to them in material things. 28 So, when I have completed this, and have delivered to them what has been collected, I will set out by way of you to Spain.

It cannot escape the most cursory of readers that Galatia has dropped out in between the writing of 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians. Paul is still on good terms with the Galatians in 1 Corinthians, and has recently given them directions concerning the collection. By 2 Corinthians and Romans, they are no longer mentioned as participants in the collection. The rupture with the Galatian churches, to which the epistle to the Galatians bears witness, has occurred in between the writing of 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians. Paul has lost those churches, and Galatians is his last desperate attempt to win back people he sees as apostate.

That 1 Corinthians was written before the Galatian crisis is clear not just from the role played by the collection but also by comparing remarks made in the respective epistles. Consider the following, one of the most remarkable things Paul ever said:

1 Cor. 7.19, Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God's commands is what counts.

The very problem he faced in Galatia was that his opponents were stressing circumcision as a commandment of God. He would not have said something like that after the difficulties at Galatia. Indeed, the Galatian experience encourages him to reformulate the above remark:

Gal. 5.6: For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

Gal. 6.15: Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation.

The similarity in tone between 2 Cor. 10-13 and Galatians has often been remarked upon, and it is a similarity that makes still more sense if 2 Corinthians and Galatians were written close in time to one another.

Labels: Galatians, Pauline chronology

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I posted some thoughts the other day on the Split between Paul and Barnabas, wondering whether it might help us with some of those vexing issues of Pauline chronology. There were lots of useful comments, for which thanks to all concerned. A couple of things in particular arise from these: (1) The brief reference to Barnabas in 1 Cor. 9.6 need not imply friendship (e.g. Jim West). (2) The relevance of the data on Barnabas is adjusted if Galatians 2.1-10 = Acts 11.27-30; 12.25 rather than Galatians 2.1-10 = Acts 15. On the second point, I am not at all persuaded by the case that Acts 11.27-30 represents the visit to Jerusalem Paul is talking about in Galatians 2. The case that Acts 15 and Gal. 2 are talking about the same Jerusalem council seems to be to be very strong indeed. I'll blog on why I think so in due course, and also on what I think is going in in Acts 11.27-30. But (1) is, I think, an important objection to making anything of the 1 Cor. 9.6 reference to Barnabas, particularly given that:

• There is no hint in the Corinthian correspondence that Barnabas played any role in the mission to Corinth. This is a significant silence (i.e. an argument about silence and not an argument from silence) given that others involved in Christian mission in Corinth are mentioned so often, Timothy, Titus, Apollo, Sosthenes.


• The primary evidence from Paul lines up with the secondary evidence of Acts here, that the split with Barnabas had in fact already happened before the mission to Corinth, let alone 1 Corinthians.


• If 1 Cor. 9.6 comes from a time before Paul's split with Barnabas, the window for the writing of 1 Corinthians that would be implied by this is simply too small. I can't believe that 1 Corinthians was written in between Jerusalem (Gal. 2.1-10) and Antioch (Gal. 2.11-20).

In short, then, and against my earlier speculation, I doubt that we can make much of 1 Cor. 9.6 as helping us out with Pauline chronology. The split between Paul and Barnabas had already happened by this point, but Barnabas is mentioned in the same way that Paul mentions others who are not actually his best mates, e.g. in the same context the brothers of the Lord and Cephas.

In an unexpected way, though, this has thrown up something relevant for reflecting on Pauline chronology. Given that 1 Corinthians and, indeed, the earlier mission to Corinth, appear to be post the Paul-and-Barnabas partnership, this is an important piece of evidence against Lüdemann's theory of an early mission to Corinth (early 40s). I need to go back to Lüdemann to see if he deals with this, and how.

Labels: Galatians, Pauline chronology

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I have been wondering recently whether Barnabas might help us with some of the vexed problems of sorting out Paul's chronology. Paul and Luke are agreed that there was a major split between Paul and Barnabas, and they are agreed on the timing, not long after the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15 // Gal. 2.1-10), though they disagree on the content of the dispute between them:

Gal. 2. 11. But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12. For prior to the coming of certain men from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he began to withdraw and hold himself aloof, fearing the party of the circumcision. 13. The rest of the Judeans joined him in hypocrisy, with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy.

Acts 15. 36 Some time later Paul said to Barnabas, "Let us go back and visit the brothers in all the towns where we preached the word of the Lord and see how they are doing." 37 Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, 38 but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work. 39 They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, 40 but Paul chose Silas and left, commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord.

He never appears again in Acts, nor does he appear again in Paul's correspondence except in 1 Corinthians 9, one tantalising, brief reference:

1 Cor. 9.6: “Or do only Barnabas and I not have a right to refrain from working?”

It looks like, when writing 1 Corinthians, Paul was still friendly with Barnabas. But if that is the case, we have only a narrow window for the writing of 1 Corinthians. The letter is clearly written after the Jerusalem Council since the collection is now underway (see 1 Cor. 16), but if it is also written while Paul is still friendly with Barnabas, it is written in that narrow window between the events reported in Gal. 2.1-10 (Jerusalem Council) and Gal. 2.11-20 (Dispute at Antioch). Is that a large enough window?

Labels: Pauline chronology

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[See also Teaching Paul and Teaching Notes 1]

Monday night was the second of my classes on The Life and Letters of Paul, another two-and-a-half hour slot. This one confirmed to me what I suspected from the first class, and what one could in any case have predicted, that this is a long session and that concentration and energy levels are flagging by the end, for the students too. The 15 minute break mid-way is very much needed, and I was pleased that there was a good amount of interaction from the students in the first half. I had asked them to read the second half of Acts as preparation (alongside a couple of chapters of Horrell) and they were full of interesting questions and observations. As the semester progresses, I am going to formalize the process of interacting on the pre-class reading by providing lists of questions they have to answer on the passages in question, and they will bring these to the class.

The topic yesterday was "The Paul of Acts and the Paul of the Letters". Some of this is enjoyably straightforward, introduction to the issues surrounding what Luke tells us about Paul and what Paul tells us about Paul, but other parts are more complex. In particular, Pauline chronology, and getting Acts alongside Galatians (and the rest) is a topic that is not easy to introduce to newcomers and it takes a little patience and teasing out. And for the first time in such a course, I decided to spend some time on the order (sequence) of Paul's letters, not least because it is a topic that I have begun to find fascinating and rewarding myself. Teaching is always so much more enjoyable, both for the teacher and the students, if the teacher has a particular perspective on the evidence, an original idea or a different slant.

As I was preparing my fairly detailed hand-out, I began to wonder whether the hand-out might on this occasion be usefully supplemented with a Powerpoint Presentation. As I mentioned last time, one of the perks of a larger class is that you get to teach in one of the nice large Divinity School classrooms, and these offer you far better technical facilities. In other words, you don't have to take in your own laptop and spend ages unlocking boxes and setting up. There is a console with full room controls, PC, CD and DVD player, big screen, microphone, the works. I don't think I have ever used Powerpoint before in a regular undergraduate lecture. I am one of those who sometimes uses it in public lectures or presentations, especially where I need to provide illustrations, but I find its usefulness limited in the weekly class. On this occasion, though, the thing that made me want to use it was the complexity of the data on the hand-out, with lots of quotations, views and ins-and-outs. I was concerned about two related things: (1) Would the students be able to follow the material on the hand-out, along with my lecture, over such a long period? (2) Would I be able to follow the material on the hand-out over such a long period? My concern on the latter is that I tend to prepare lectures carefully, but I deliver them largely from memory, occasionally using the hand-out to remind me of structure. But the more detailed the hand-out and the longer the class, the less straightforward it is to do that. So the Powerpoint Presentation acted as a kind of autocue, an aid for me keeping my thoughts coherent and ordered.

I was quite pleased with this as a device. It helped greatly in keeping me focused on the right material in the right order. Order is important -- it is too easy for me to leap to a related point that I might, in fact, have been planning to use at a different and more appropriate point. And it is too easy to miss out a given point altogether because one's eyes have slipped on the hand-out, or one's memory has forgotten the structure.

I began thinking about the use of Powerpoint again recently having read Scot McKnight's "curmudeongly carpings" in PowerPointing in Class: Not! on Jesus Creed, a post that received 68 comments, coming in all directions. I think I stand somewhere in the middle on this kind of debate. My general feeling is: use it if it is going to enhance your presentation in an important way; don't use if for its own sake. I suspect that Prof. McKnight might, one of these days, become a convert -- his seventh point, in which he admits that it has some uses, sounds like someone teetering on the edge of dabbling in it. Of his other points, the first, "it minimizes the word and the ability to speak with words", need only be the case if one uses it badly or inappropriately. One might as well say the same thing about hand-outs, which can also be used well or misused. The second point, though, I have a lot of sympathy with:

About 50% of the time something goes wrong: the computer doesn’t work, the connection doesn’t work, the screen doesn’t come down.

Too true; that's happened to me many a time, and I stopped using technology in classes in Birmingham for that reason. The only thing I'd add here is that it is ideal, if possible, to get to the classroom in good time, well ahead of the class. You can then check that everything is working fine. If you you are lucky enough to have Teaching Assistants, as I am, you can even ask them to do this (but I like to know for myself that everything's working -- a little neurosis doesn't do one any harm).

Further comments on Scot McKnight's critique:

Third, it’s an all-consuming passion for some to the effect that without PowerPoint they can’t teach. You can tell this when the stuff doesn’t work: they don’t know what to do with themselves.

If that's the case, then they are simply bad teachers and they have a lot of work to do. I must admit that I have sometimes wondered if Powerpoint helps to turn bad teachers into mediocre ones.

Fourth, most of the time it is just outlines on the screen; hand them out or speak your way through them. It permits more eye contact.

I agree that eye contact is important. One of the things that I dislike about Powerpoint is that it can encourage people to stare at the screen instead of engaging with me. The "hand them out" point, though, draws attention to one of the values of Powerpoint. If you have a detailed hand-out, you can then use Powerpoint to provide some visual representation of a handful of key points. In other words, I would always want to use it in addition to a hand-out and not instead. If you have hearing-impaired people in your class too, a detailed hand-out is ideal -- they then have a resource to take home and study and which can supplement the Powerpoint.

Fifth, it takes so much time to produce a presentation that its yield is less than its effort. How do I know this? I hear profs and preachers talk about how much time is involved.

No, I don't agree with this. It takes 30-40 minutes to put a simple Powerpoint presentation together, perhaps even less if you have already prepared your hand-out. And if you've used one once, you can go back and enhance it on another occasion.

Sixth — this is probably the bottom-line for me (that’s a pun) — it seems to me to be the transfer of the business model to the classroom, and teaching the arts and humanities is not business. Business dazzles. Human communication is not dazzling: it’s eye ball to eye ball talking.

Agreed, yet there are topics in our area that are data-intensive. This week I've had Pauline chronology on Monday and Synoptic Problem today, both data-rich, intensive subjects. Indeed, unless the students get a basic feeling for the data, they will have no idea how to navigate their way through the solutions (perhaps one of the reasons that some students want to rush to theories and solutions before they have mastered the data). I reckon that on such occasions, or on occasions where lots of pictures are going to be helpful, Powerpoint can be ideal. But it's like any tool: it's the way you use it that matters.

However, I am not sure whether I will use it again in the near future. One of the things that I dislike about it in the undergraduate regular lecture context is that it makes it harder to encourage student participation, not least because it gives the impression that they are an audience of a show, the passive participants in someone else's performance.

Labels: Pauline chronology

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On Novum Testamentum, Brandon Wason has a very useful chart on Pauline Chronology:

A Chronology of the Apostle Paul

Make sure you go to the blog site itself rather than just reading the feed in your aggregator, because the formatting works properly on the site. Brandon reveals that he was responsible for the Blue Letter Bible Timeline, which comes up top on a google search for Chronology Paul. I rather like Brandon's approach in his revised Chronology, except that I would myself push Galatians a little later -- I think it has to have been written after 1 Corinthians but before 2 Corinthians. Brandon's chart rightly avoids the mistake criticized by John Knox and others of getting Paul to Jerusalem straight after his conversion (Acts 9); Galatians 1 makes it clear that this did not happen. But Brandon does not mention the Acts 11 Jerusalem visit, which I think explains the Acts 9 visit because it is identical with it. It is a typical example of a Lucan flash-forward, in which a later event is narrated earlier in the sequence for strategic reasons, just as Luke narrates Jesus' Rejection at Nazareth out of (Marcan) sequence (Mark 6) in Luke 4.

I have a similar chart I give out to my undergraduates on Pauline Chronology (MS Word format, sorry):

Chronology of Paul's Life

Found that on the Birmingham server; looks like I didn't remove everything before I left. That's quite useful since I'm only steadily transferring older materials onto my new Duke-provided blogging machine (a nice IBM ThinkPad).

Labels: Galatians, Pauline chronology

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Many thanks to Holger Szesnat for this extremely useful listing of full text articles available on Robert Bradshaw's BiblicalStudies.org.uk web site:

M. L. Bailey, "Guidelines for Interpreting Jesus' Parables," Bibliotheca Sacra 155 (1988): 29-38

S. M. Baugh, "Cult Prostitution in New Testament Ephesus: A Reappraisal" Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 42(3) (1999): 443-460

W. S. Baxter, "Mosaic Imagery in the Gospel of Matthew", Trinity Journal 20(1)(1999): 69-83

F. F. Bruce, The Davidic Messiah in Luke-Acts. In: G A Tuttle (ed). Biblical and near Eastern Studies: Essays in Honor of William Sanford Lasor (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978): 7-17

J. D. Charles, "Engaging the (Neo)Pagan Mind: Paul's Encounter with Athenian Culture as a Model for Cultural Apologetics (Acts 17:16-34)"
Trinity Journal 16(1) (1995): 47-62

R. T. France, "Inerrancy and New Testament Exegesis", Themelios 1(1) (1975): 12-18

C. Gempf, "Pseudonymity and the New Testament" Themelios 17(2) (1992): 8-10

J. Goldingay, "The Old Testament and Christian Faith: Jesus and the
Old Testament in Matthew 1-5 Part 1", Themelios 8(1) (1982): 4-10

J. Goldingay, "The Old Testament and Christian Faith: Jesus and the
Old Testament in Matthew 1-5. Part 2, Themelios 8(3) (1983): 5-12

W. Grudem, "The Meaning of Kephale ('Head'): An Evaluation of New
Evidence, Real and Alleged. Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 44(1) (2001): 25-65

A. J. Köstenberger, "Gender Passages in the Nt: Hermeneutical Fallacies Critiqued". Westminster Theological Journal 56(2) (1994): 259-283

M. J. Kruger, "The Authenticity of 2 Peter", Journal of the Evangelical
Theological Society 42(4) (1999): 645-671

R. N. Longenecker, "'Who Is the Prophet Talking About?' Some
Reflections on the New Testament's Use of the Old", Themelios 13(1) (1987): 4-8

B. M. Metzger, "English Translations of the Bible, Today and Tomorrow",
Bibliotheca Sacra 150 (1993): 397-415

B. M. Metzger, "Theories of the Translation Process", Bibliotheca Sacra 150 (1993): 140-150

B. M. Metzger, "Persistent Problems Confronting Bible Translators", Bibliotheca Sacra 150 (1993): 273-284

R. Nicole, "The Canon of the New Testament", Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 40(2) (1997): 199-206

B. D. Smith, "The Chronology of the Last Supper", Westminster Theological Journal 53 (1991): 29-45

J. A. D. Weima, "The Pauline Letter Closings: Analysis and Hermeneutical Significance", Bulletin for Biblical Research 5 (1995): 177-198

Labels: Pauline chronology

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