Paul: The Apostle's Life, Letters, and Thought

Preface

This book has been written over a long stretch of time. When I finished Judaism: Practice and Belief in 1991 (published 1992), I had published a book a year for four years: Studying the Synoptic Gospels (with Margaret Davies) in 1989; Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah in 1990; Paul: Past Master in 1991; the aforementioned Judaism: Practice and Belief in 1992. I planned to write a book on Jesus and one on Paul for the elusive ordinary reader. I managed to complete The Historical Figure of Jesus in 1993 (published 1994), and I promised the publishers a similar book on Paul in the near future.

I knew that I was tired, but I was used to working hard when tired, and so for a while it seemed possible. But I was thoroughly used up; my brain did not want to work properly; my back resented my sitting at the keyboard for hours on end; and my energy declined. I reluctantly decided to save the little book on Paul until I retired, as I expected to do in the next two or three years.

I wrote little bits of the book from time to time. In 2005, when I finally retired, I sat down to write it. My brain still resisted. I went into a post-retirement slump, lacking ambition and vitality. A series of health issues arose in 2008, a year spent mostly in doctors’ offices—or so it seemed at the time. I considered asking a former student to finish the book, but I found that giving it up was even harder than working on it. Finally, in 2013, I regained enough of my energy to make my brain work and to sit at the keyboard for several hours a day.

This long tale helps to explain some of the book’s peculiarities. Because I thought of a book for undergraduates, I had originally intended not to debate with other scholars and not to use a lot of footnotes or endnotes—just the bare necessities. I believe that I succeeded fairly well on the first goal, not debating with other scholars. In any case, I could not conceivably do justice to the academic literature on Paul for the twenty years during which the book was in the works.

I could not resist, however, paying some attention to scholarly positions in order to set my own off more clearly. This has led to sporadic and probably eccentric footnoting. There is no academic principle by which I decided to cite this work and not to refer to that work, and my neglect extends to supporters and allies as well as to opponents. I discussed other literature on the Great Apostle when my memory (rather than systematic searching) brought something so forcefully to mind that I had to mention it. Because of the principle of memory called first in, last out, I usually remembered older literature rather than recent literature. I have avoided giving a roll call of the scholars who have held certain opinions, though in one or two cases I refer to originators or major early contributors of specific issues, such as the Ephesian imprisonment.

Most of the notes provide either more detail, cross-references to related discussions elsewhere in the book (since topics repeat throughout Paul’s letters), or to my own lengthier discussions in other publications. I have learned enormously from others, especially in debates with them, but in the notes there are only occasional clues that this is the case.

Though I have learned from others, I must admit that the book primarily rests on my own previous work on Paul and my continued rereading of the letters since my last publication. The newest aspect of the present book is its completeness. Previously I have written on selected themes and aspects of Paul, but this book includes everything I know (or think I know) about his life, his mission, his letters, and his thought. It is the complete Paul—as complete as I can make it.

The book falls into two halves: introductory essays on Paul’s life and environment, and exegesis[1] of the text of his letters. The amount of detail varies, depending on the level of difficulty of the text and what I perceive to be especially important and interesting. Some passages are summarized briefly, while in other parts of Paul’s correspondence the explanation of Paul’s meaning becomes a word-by-word commentary.

Because there are comments on parts of the text that are not quoted, the reader will need to have a Bible close at hand. There are numerous discussions that will make much more sense if one reads the biblical passages along with the book.

My first conception of the book (with no academic debates, few footnotes) was that it should be fairly brief. But another conception grew in importance as I wrote. I had long wished that I could cover Paul thoroughly in undergraduate lectures, and so I said to myself that I would put into the new book all of the material that I would have put into lectures and classes for undergraduate students if there had been world enough and time. These two aims came into conflict, and the desire for completeness won. Thus the book is longer and denser than I had originally hoped. When I counted the pages, I was amazed at the length of the book; but, having explained everything about Paul that I could, I was not going to delete sections.

I believe that there is nothing in the book that an ordinary reader cannot comprehend. On the other hand, the book’s length and my insistence on explaining passages in detail will require a good deal of determination on the part of a non-expert who wants to read it all.

The ideal reader will be someone who has a fair bit of knowledge about Christianity and religion in general. Undergraduates who are specializing in Christianity or biblical studies and beginning graduate students in New Testament and related fields should find the book especially useful. Perhaps needless to say, I hope for reactions from my scholarly colleagues in New Testament studies.

A main theme of the work is that one must distinguish Paul’s arguments from his conclusions, and that it is the arguments that give Paul the reputation of being difficult to understand. He argued like what he was: a first-century Jew. We are not accustomed to those forms of argumentation, and so they are difficult.

Not infrequently, readers will mistake an argument, or even a part of an argument, as the main point, and miss or downplay Paul’s own conclusion. I have tried to explain how the arguments work. That is why the book is denser than I originally intended. One cannot explain 1 Cor. 10:1-14 without going into details, and details can be tedious.

Thus the beginning student or the non-academic reader will find that parts of the book are heavy going. It will take diligence and a lot of interest in Paul to go through them all. I do not think that Paul’s arguments are too difficult for a university undergraduate to understand, but he or she may think that understanding them is more effort than the result is worth. I hope that some will accept the challenge. And I comfort myself with the thought that readers can skip some of the details and read the conclusions.

I am indebted to several people for advice and assistance. Conversation with Richard Hays clarified a few points, for which I am grateful. I also wish to thank Dr. Jane Dysart, who served as non-professional reader, and whose comments were useful at many points.

In the final days of preparing the typescript for the press, Megan Chobot typed the draft of the subject index with remarkable speed and accuracy, which saved me dozens and dozens of hours of work, and I thank her heartily.

The staff at Fortress were unfailingly helpful, and they were considerate of my difficulties, which include poor eyesight and limited working hours.

I wish to single out Dr. Neil Elliott, Acquiring Editor in Biblical Studies, for help far above and beyond what one ordinarily expects. He made dozens of improvements to the manuscript, both of style and content. His knowledge of Paul’s letters and issues of interpretation came to my rescue time after time. He proofread the final text so thoroughly that I had very little to do. I am deeply indebted to him, and without his assistance I would still be re-reading and re-writing.

My main advisor and assistant, however, was my much beloved wife, Dr. Rebecca Gray, who, in addition to holding down a full-time job, read the typescript twice and made copious notes. Discussion of her remarks and suggestions always led to greater clarity. She composed and inserted all of the headings and sub-headings—which, of course, required reading the manuscript one more time. She edited a difficult subject index, which allowed us almost to meet the publisher’s deadline.   In these and other ways Becky made the book quite a lot better than it would have been without her efforts.

In fact, without her I could not get along at all.

Becky kept my spirits up when I thought that I would never be able to finish the book, and in this task she had an assistant, whom I also wish to thank, though she will never be able to read these words: Our Little Daisy, a dog of Beagle/Corgi/Dachshund mix, who bucked me up whenever I was glum. (With apologies to Alan Jay Lerner.)

E. P. Sanders

Durham, North Carolina, October 2015

Technical terms appear in boldface and are defined in the glossary. ↵

Introduction

Paul, apostle of Jesus Christ, was one of the greatest religious leaders of all time. He is also one of the very few from the ancient world whom we can study firsthand thanks to the fact that he wrote letters and that some of them were saved, edited (very slightly), and published. We have no idea how many letters Paul wrote to churches and individuals during his apostolic career. From those that that we have, however, we learn a great deal about the world in which he lived, his activities, his personality, his assistants and colleagues, his enemies, his churches, and, most interesting of all, his thought. Throughout his life, Paul was passionately committed to his cause: first the cause of persecuting the Jews who were followers of Jesus, then of spreading the movement that he had formerly tried to stamp out. His letters express his passion; it is one of their most striking features. In this work I have tried to let Paul, the passionate man who was obsessed with his cause, shine through his sometimes difficult theological arguments.

Paul was controversial in his own day. He had heated—almost violent—arguments with other members of the early Christian movement. He denounced his opponents in vivid terms, and his letters have inspired religious polemicists (people who wage verbal warfare) for centuries.

Since Paul’s letters are occasional and informal (rather than being polished and revised for wide use), we have an intimate portrait of him and his thought. The letters are sometimes movingly self-revealing, as when he is pushed to boasting by the Corinthian opposition. He sometimes bares his soul in a way that is very rare in ancient literature.

Odd though it may seem, we know Jesus less well than Paul. Some of Jesus’ words and deeds are found in the Gospels, but the Gospels were written one or two generations after his death, and they made use of sources of varying reliability. Moreover, there are four Gospels, and each of the authors had his own views, with the result that Jesus is depicted somewhat differently from Gospel to Gospel. In my own judgment, however, the most serious problem in getting close to the historical Jesus is that the context in which he uttered his memorable sayings is usually uncertain, since many of the teachings of Jesus appear in different contexts in the Gospels. This deprives us of precise understanding. For example, he said, Love your enemies (Matt. 5:43). This is important as a generalization, but it would be nice to know if he had any enemies in particular in mind—Herod Antipas? Caiaphas? Pilate? A local landowner?[1]

The study of Paul is largely free of these problems. We have entire letters responding to problems in various churches. It is relatively simple to infer the circumstances or context from Paul’s answers and arguments. Moreover, his letters do not reveal heavy editing or revision. We sometimes suspect that a later editor, possibly the person or persons who collected his letters (see chap. 6), merged parts of two or more letters or rearranged some of the material (as we shall see when we investigate 2 Corinthians and Philippians), but there are only a few substantial problems in deciding what he wrote and the circumstances in which he wrote it.

Paul dictated to a scribe, whom we would call a secretary, but his letters seem to have been sent off unrevised, with occasional broken sentences or jarring syntax. We probably have pretty well what he himself actually dictated. The secretary played a minor role—far, far less than the authors of the Gospels.[2] The consequence is that we are reading Paul’s own words, whereas we have nothing that Jesus himself wrote, and only second- or third-hand reports of his teaching.

Paul’s surviving letters give us the earliest information about Christianity and how it was established in various cities in the Roman Empire. Paul was active as an apostle in the 30s, 40s, and 50s of the Common Era (ce). The Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles (Acts), which refer to earlier events, were actually written later than Paul’s letters, in the 70s to 90s.

Paul would be one of the most interesting people in the ancient world to study even if he occupied a smaller place in history. But, of course, he is one of the most influential figures in the history of the Near East and the West. Paul was trying to convert gentiles (non-Jews) to worship the God of Israel and to accept Jesus as Son of God and savior of the world. Other missionaries had this same task, but Paul was the preeminent apostle to the gentiles. He faced the problem of thinking up new theological expressions and new practices for a movement that, though deeply rooted in Judaism and thus in some ways old, was partly new.

It need hardly be added that the Christian movement became a largely gentile religion and that it took over the ancient Western world and part of the Near East, supplanting all the other religions in those regions except its parent, Judaism. In the course of Christian history, many of the greatest theologians, such as Augustine and Luther, were heavily indebted to Paul. Reformers, in particular, have drawn on Paul’s prose in the controversies of their own times.

This enormous influence is the result of the power of his letters. His own personality was doubtless powerful in his day, but his historical importance does not rest on the number of people whom he converted, nor on the subsequent importance of the congregations that he founded. The big three centers of Christianity would become Rome, Antioch in Syria, and Alexandria in Egypt. Paul founded none of these churches. Thus Christianity would have spread without him, but without his letters to help shape the thought of the most important Christians, its history would have been quite different.

Sources

Of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament, thirteen are attributed to Paul, and approximately half of another, the book of Acts, deals with Paul. In short, we owe about half of the New Testament to Paul and the people whom he influenced. There are, however, very serious doubts about the authenticity of six of the letters, and several reservations about the reliability of Acts. We shall consider aspects of Acts in discussing Paul’s biography, but I shall not debate the authenticity of letters that are disputed. This has been done extensively in the history of New Testament scholarship, and it is easy to find discussions of authorship. In chapter six I shall say a few more words about the letters that are classed as deuteropauline—that is, letters belonging to the Pauline school, but not written by Paul himself.

In the main body of the book (Part II) we shall study in detail the seven undisputed Pauline letters, those generally accepted as having been directly dictated by Paul himself. Paul doubtless wrote many more letters, now lost, but we must rely on the seven letters that we have. In the sequence in which they occur in the New Testament, the seven undisputed letters are these: Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon.[3]

We shall, however, consider them in their approximate chronological sequence, except for Philemon, a one-page personal letter that cannot be dated, with which we shall begin. The resulting order, which will govern Part II, is this: Philemon, 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 10–13, 2 Corinthians 1–9, Galatians, Philippians, and Romans. In the chapters on the Corinthian correspondence I shall explain why 2 Corinthians 10–13 is chronologically earlier than 1 Corinthians 1–9.

The deuteropauline letters—the letters that are attributed to Paul, but which were written in his name, rather than by him—are Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus.

The Conclusion offers a summary of some of the main theological points of the letters.

The Text of the Letters

A frequently asked question is whether or not we have Paul’s actual letters. The short answer is no, but the question requires a brief explanation of textual history. The original of each letter was sent to the church or individual to whom Paul wrote. As far as we can tell, he did not have his secretary make a copy for his own future use. He wrote ad hoc letters directed to specific problems and situations, and he seems to have given no thought to producing a systematic statement of his views — though Romans reveals reflection on previous disputes, and is in part a revision of some of Galatians and 1 Corinthians. Despite this, it too is a specific letter, addressed to a specific church, and dealing with immediate and concrete issues.

Sometime after he wrote the letters, and probably after his death, a follower went around to each of his churches, or at least several of them, and collected, edited, and published what Paul had written (see chap. 6). The editing, as we noted above, was very light, but we shall see a few traces of it. For the present, let us simply say that Paul’s letters were collected and published.

To publish a book in the ancient world the author or editor merely copied and circulated it. Multiple copies could be made in the following way: a reader stood at the back of a room and read the text, while a number of scribes copied from his dictation. The copies were proofread, and errors were corrected, either by writing the correct text above the word or phrase in question, or by marginal annotation. These copies, of course, could later be copied in the same way, or an individual scribe could produce a single copy. We do not know how Paul’s letters were copied in the first place, whether by a roomful of scribes or a single scribe. In any case, after the correspondence was compiled, multiple copies were made and sent to various Christian churches. When the occasion arose, either because a copy wore out or because new churches wanted their own scrolls containing Paul’s letters, further copies were made.

Inevitably errors crept in (some due to scribal improvements), and slightly divergent texts arose. All of the earliest copies of Paul’s letters have been lost. A few second-century fragments have been found, but we do not have a full text of Paul’s letters that was copied earlier than the fourth century. Scholars study these fragments and the earliest manuscripts, as well as the thousands of later manuscripts, to determine textual families. The ancestors of each family no longer exist, but they can be inferred from surviving manuscripts. I shall present a schematic chart that reveals the process:

In this model, there are two surviving manuscripts from the fifth generation of manuscripts. To represent the true situation, we would have to have a few more families, many more generations of manuscripts, and also many more manuscripts. With enough evidence, however, scholars can arrange generational charts and then study the characteristics of the various textual families (indicated by C and D in the chart). Some families will appear to be more reliable than others. Moreover, each manuscript can be studied, as can each individual textual variant.

I shall give an example of an individual variant. According to the generally accepted text, Paul wrote this in Gal. 3:13-14:

¹³Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us . . . ¹⁴ in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

According to some manuscripts, however, verse 14 reads as follows:

In order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the blessing of the Spirit through faith.

In the line that mentions the Spirit, which is earlier—promise of the Spirit or blessing of the Spirit? Several well-regarded manuscripts support each reading. In this case, a specialist in textual variants (a text critic) must argue solely on the basis of intrinsic probability. Would a scribe have been more likely to change promise to blessing or blessing to promise? The former is more likely, since the argument is smoother if Paul wrote blessing both times: the blessing of Abraham comes to the gentiles, the blessing of the Spirit comes to us. Scribes would have been less likely to change from blessing to promise. To determine the better reading, we reverse the probable scribal preference and follow the manuscripts in which first blessing then promise appears.

Arguments of this sort are not absolutely conclusive, but they are the best we can do: we develop hypotheses about preferred scribal improvements of the text and then follow readings that are against those tendencies.

Thus on the basis of the study of families of manuscripts and individual textual variants, scholars over the last 150 years or so have developed criticaltexts: texts based on manuscripts and on choices among them that are governed by scholarly argument. A good critical text has lots of footnotes giving variants and the evidence for them.

This may sound more uncertain than it is. There are not very many substantial questions about what Paul wrote. In the present case, for example, we would understand him perfectly well if we read blessing in both instances. Nevertheless, when we read Paul’s letters in Greek, we are reading a reconstructed text, based on comparing and studying many underlying manuscripts.

Most of us, however, actually read translations of a reconstructed text. A translation never captures the full meaning of the original, and this fact accounts for the existence of so many translations of famous books. Translations of the Bible are especially numerous. They are produced either by individuals or by committees of scholars. The best English translations overall are the official translations produced by groups of scholars: the Revised Standard Version, the New Revised Standard Version, the Jerusalem Bible, the New English Bible, and the New International Version. My own preference is the Revised Standard Version, but since it is no longer readily available I shall usually quote from the New Revised Standard Version. I shall sometimes, however, alter the wording slightly in order to present the literal translation of the Greek. And frequently I shall cite two or more translations of crucial words and phrases.

Thus we shall often have occasion to examine the question of the best translation of specific words and phrases. The comparison of different translations with the original Greek text is one of the features of this book. This can be a little tedious, but I think that it is a mistake for people to regard the text of the Bible as being the same as the text of their translation, and some comparisons will make this clear. It will turn out that modern translators, just like ancient scribes, tend to shape the text according to their own preferences.

The Goals of the Present Book

To start with, I wish to try to give the reader some feel for the ancient world and what Paul’s life was actually like. For this reason, there is a fairly substantial section (Part I) on Paul’s life, which attempts to situate him in his world. I have somewhat reluctantly decided not to offer a thumbnail sketch of the Roman Empire in Paul’s day and the history of Judaism, though both are extremely important if one is to understand Paul. My experience as a reader is that thumbnail sketches of Judaism and the Greco-Roman world are too brief to do much good.

Instead, I discuss various aspects of the historical circumstances as they arise in the study of Paul’s letters. For example, paganism is discussed in relation to 1 Thessalonians, and Greek and Jewish sexual mores are considered in the chapters on 1 Corinthians. Judaism is discussed extensively in chapter three, on Paul’s life before his conversion to Christianity.

The principal aim of this book, however, is to explain the contents of the letters. Understanding Paul’s letters requires us to study the topics or issues that he addressed; his conclusions with regard to each point; and his arguments in favor of his conclusions. I put topics, conclusions, and arguments in this sequence because I think that his conclusions usually came before his arguments—as is the case with most of us. Over a long period of time we may come to a certain conviction, but we may not arrange neat arguments in favor of it unless we need to defend it or wish to persuade someone else that it is true.

At their very best, humans can change their minds because of argumentation, and in this case it is easy for them to repeat the arguments that they found persuasive. But often finding the best argument to support one of our conclusions requires some experimentation. This can sometimes be seen in Paul’s letters.

Paul was a debater of considerable variety and great power. His arguments in favor of his convictions are often stirring—so stirring that one or more of them may be taken to be the very heart of his entire message. But we should assume that his conclusions were what mattered to him. If he produced four arguments in favor of the same point, it is unreasonable to think that one of these arguments was more important to him than the conclusion.

Paul was an ancient Jew, and so he argued like an ancient Jew, backing up his views by quotation from his Scripture. We shall see that Paul’s arguments, though scholarly in his day, are unlike those of modern scholars who argue about the meaning of texts.

It is not clear how well his original readers followed his arguments, since he sometimes explained his positions by debating at his own level, which was that of an expert, not at the level of the recipients of the letters. In our time, this is sometimes the case when a doctor or lawyer speaks to a patient or client. For this reason, Paul’s arguments usually require some explanation. Some of them are self-evident even today and even in translation. Many, however, are relatively opaque to the modern reader; some of them absolutely require study of Paul’s text in Greek; and some require study of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.

The New Testament book 2 Peter famously states, there are some things in them [Paul’s letters] hard to understand (2 Pet. 3:16). Most of these things are arguments. Paul’s conclusions are generally perfectly clear, but the logic of his reasoning is often difficult to follow. Many, many of the pages of this book are dedicated to explaining Paul’s arguments.

If the conclusions are usually easy to understand and the arguments difficult, what about the topics? We might imagine they are obvious. Unfortunately for the reader, that is not always the case. When I taught Paul to undergraduates at Duke University, I started the course with this assignment: Read 1 Thessalonians, note the topics, and in one sentence write a statement of each topic in your own words. This occasionally met ridicule: it’s too easy. How stupid does he think we are?

In the hundreds of assignments that I read over the years, only one student correctly listed all of the topics of 1 Thessalonians. The topic of 1 Thess. 4:13-15 proved especially difficult. Everyone saw that 4:16-17 is about the resurrection, but the point of the previous three verses was almost always missed. No, the students were not stupid, but the content and implication of those verses were totally unexpected and therefore incomprehensible. We cannot see what we cannot understand, and so our eyes just pass over it, just as they do when, reading our own language, we suddenly encounter words in a language we do not know. We just skip them.

In other cases, we understand the subject well enough, but not what the topic meant in the ancient world. We recognize, for example, that sexual morality is the topic of 1 Thess. 4:3-7, and everyone comprehends what sexual morality is. Without study, however, we do not perceive the contrast that Paul is drawing between you, his gentile converts in Thessalonica, and the gentiles (v. 5). His converts should not do something or other like the gentiles. This requires a little sorting out.

That is to say, not only are Paul’s arguments difficult to comprehend, but often even the topics need substantial explanation.

I have discussed topics, conclusions, and arguments, which can be studied on the page. We must also consider reasons: why did Paul come to the conclusion to which he came? That is seldom on the page in clear words, and finding Paul’s reasons requires reading his mind. This is a less certain enterprise than the study of arguments, but I believe that in some cases we can actually do it. If Paul says enough about a topic, we may discern the reason for which he held a specific view.

A final aim of the book is to regard all of the topics, conclusions, and arguments as important. Usually theology is privileged, which means that more time is spent on Galatians and Romans than on the other letters. Or one may be in search of social history, in which case 1 Corinthians comes to the fore. I shall regard 1 Thessalonians—which sometimes is barely noticed in general books on Paul—as being just as important for understanding Paul as is Romans—though undoubtedly the theology is less profound. It nevertheless tells us a lot about Paul and his mission.

The Significance of Chronological Order

I have come to the view, which is now a minority opinion, that the study of the development of Paul’s thought is worthwhile. Thirty-nine years ago, when I was committing youthful follies (rather than those of senescence), I thought that it was not,[4] but my own thought on this has developed. I now think that Paul’s thought becomes clearer when we study the letters in chronological order. Some of the large topics of Paul’s thought, such as participation in Christ and righteousness by faith, have, in my view, developed in the course of Paul’s ministry. Many scholars have found development in Paul’s eschatological passages—those concerning the last things, such as the return of the Lord and the resurrection of the dead. We shall consider this in detail when studying the Corinthian correspondence. Moreover, our study of suffering and the Spirit in Paul’s letters will reveal the development or growth of his ideas. I think that, once we read Paul’s letters in chronological sequence, growth, development, or evolution will become apparent.

Because most studies of Paul’s thought have concentrated on his theology, his letter to the Romans has often dominated the author’s view.[5] Romans is placed first in the Bible; it is a long letter; there are lots of theological themes; there is some reconsideration of topics in previous letters; it is the most profound and at the same time most difficult letter in the Pauline corpus. Moreover, Protestant scholars find it to be supportive of Luther’s theology, and Protestant scholarship has dominated Pauline studies for centuries. The importance of Romans seems to blind people to the significance of Paul’s theological statements in the letters written prior to Galatians and Romans.

I do not wish to downgrade Romans, but rather to elevate the importance of the lesser letters. We do that by reading them in order and seeing what we find. This would be true even if we were solely studying theology. In addition to wanting to understand his thought, however, the present book aims at describing and explaining Paul the man and his career; his personality; successes and failures; disagreements among the apostles; the process of starting Christianity in various places; how it fit into the Roman Empire and the Jewish Diaspora; and the like. This not to reduce the importance of Paul’s theological thought. Although I have no desire to try to create a synthesis of Paul’s theology in order to produce a system, I would like to understand each theological point in its context.

Reading the letters in chronological order requires, of course, knowing the chronology. Despite some uncertainties, there is widespread (not universal) agreement on a few main points: 1 Thessalonians is the earliest surviving letter, Romans the last. (Romans replays some of the disputes in Galatians and 1 Corinthians.) First Corinthians was written before 2 Corinthians. Most of the letters were written during the same general period: after an apostolic conference in Jerusalem and before Paul raised money to take to Jerusalem in order to support the Christians there. (This act of charity led to his trial and arrest.) Only 1 Thessalonians comes from an earlier period, prior to the apostolic conference.

Where to put Galatians and Philippians is usually seen as less certain. They are before Romans, but the relationship of each to 1 and 2 Corinthians is more difficult to determine. There are also substantial debates about how the various parts of 2 Corinthians (apparently composed of sections of more than one letter) relate to each other.

A full treatment of the chronology of the letters requires a book and, fortunately, Gregory Tatum has recently published it.[6] His work makes the present book possible—though in some instances I have not followed his precise chronology.[7] Nevertheless, his book relieves me of the necessity of including a major section on chronological issues and problems. In the appropriate places I shall point out the key passages that lead to the chronology used here, such as why it is best to put 2 Corinthians 10–13 before 2 Corinthians 1–9.[8]

As stated earlier, I shall treat the letters in the following order: Philemon, 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 10–13, 2 Corinthians 1–9, Galatians, Philippians, and Romans. This sequence includes some simplifications and leaves out of account some possible rearrangements of a few parts of Paul’s letters. I shall discuss some of the complications in the appropriate chapters.

The only chronological issue with which we are presently concerned is the sequence of the letters. We shall not reconsider the even more vexed issue of precise dates, such as the year of the Jerusalem conference and the date of Paul’s work in Corinth.[9] As noted above, Paul wrote his letters in the 40s and 50s of the first century ce, and that is adequate information for our purposes (see also pp. 163-65).

I have worried and fretted about repetition. Some repetition is useful (to recall certain points, for emphasis, etc.), but too much repetition is tiresome for the reader. The scheme of this book requires repetition. I go through each letter, paragraph by paragraph, sometimes word by word, in chronological order. Many topics appear in more than one of Paul’s letters; some topics occur repeatedly. To some degree this can be handled by using cross-references, but turning back and forth through a book to compare passages that are related to each other is also tedious. I would rather err on the side of repetition than to rely too heavily on cross- references.

To make matters slightly worse, I sometimes pull related passages that deal with large and complicated issues (such as the resurrection) out of their chronological order so that we can consider them all together. But then I have to say something about each one in its own context.

I hope that this explanation is an adequate apology to those who find too much repetition for their liking.

Genre of the Book

One last introductory note, which is of great importance: This book is a historical study of Paul, what he did, what he wrote, and what he thought. It is not about what Christians ought to believe. Throughout my life, when I have said something or other about Paul (or Jesus or the Gospels), someone has asked, Do you mean that we should believe . . . ? I do not know what other people ought to believe—except that they should love all other humans and protect the universe from destruction. Christianity flourishes in part because of its variety and its multiplicity of forms, creeds, and practices. Some of the forms of Christianity—like some of the forms of other religions—have been inimical to human welfare, and I think that people ought to give them up, since they oppose any of the conceivable lists of core Christian beliefs.

In any case, I do not have any desire to tell other people what to believe about God, Christ, the resurrection, and so on. I am not a theologian. In the sections on theology I intend only to explain what Paul thought—and sometimes, of course, what other people then thought.

Herod Antipas was the ruler of Galilee, where Jesus grew up; Caiaphas was the high priest, who also was the local ruler of Jerusalem when Jesus was crucified; Pilate was a Roman appointee who oversaw the whole of Jewish Palestine from his base in Caesarea, on the coast. ↵

Some scholars dispute this view of Paul’s letters. See below, ch. 6 n. 6. ↵

On the letters that are deuteropauline or tritopauline (written by members of his school in the generation or so after his death), see below, pp. 150-55. ↵

See E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 432–33 n. 9. ↵

James Dunn offers several reasons to justify giving primacy to Romans in writing a theology of Paul: The Theology of Paul the Apostle (London: T&T Clark, 1998), 25–26. If one is trying to write a theology to guide Protestant belief, these are important considerations. We do not, however, understand the life and work and thought of Paul by focusing on one letter. ↵

Gregory Tatum, New Chapters in the Life of Paul: The Relative Chronology of His Career, Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series 41 (Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 2006). ↵

It is probable that 2 Corinthians 1–9 was written after Galatians, but the arrangement of the present book makes it much more convenient to consider it together with the rest of the Corinthian correspondence. I shall, however, consider part of 2 Corinthians 1–9 (2 Cor. 3:7-18) in connection with Philippians. ↵

My first effort to work through the letters in chronological sequence was during a graduate seminar at Duke University on resurrection in Paul’s letters, which I led in the early 1990s. ↵

The study of calendar dates in Paul’s life is very difficult, but there have been distinguished and enlightening studies. Books available in English include John Knox, Chapters in a Life of Paul (Nashville: Abingdon, 1950); Robert Jewett, A Chronology of Paul’s Life (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979); Gerd Lüdemann, Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles: Studies in Chronology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984). Knox stated the right principle of establishing Paul’s chronology, which is to follow the letters rather than Acts. On the few occasions when I use a calendar date, I follow Lüdemann.  ↵

Paul's Life

1

Overview

Our knowledge of Paul’s life is fragmentary, and for some parts we can give only the barest sketch, though some aspects of his life permit more detailed examination. First I shall give a very brief overview of Paul’s life. The following two chapters will give fuller descriptions of Paul’s life, first before his call to be an apostle, and then after his call.[1] I shall put the appropriate chapter numbers or page numbers in parentheses.

A Brief Sketch

Paul was a Greek-speaking Jew from Tarsus (Acts 22:3), a city near the southeast corner of Asia Minor (present-day Turkey). The date of his birth is unknown, but he was in the prime of life in the 40s and 50s of the first century ce. From this we may infer that he was born about the same time as Jesus or a little later, let us say between the year 4 Before the Common Era (bce) and 4 ce. Most scholars put his death in Rome in the year 62 or 64.

In his childhood and youth, Paul learned a trade, how to work with [his] own hands (1 Cor. 4:12; cf. 9:6). As an apostle, he often continued to work at his trade, as these passages show. According to Acts, his trade was tentmaking, which presumably meant that he could do various kinds of work with leather.[2] Such an occupation makes very good sense and helps to explain important aspects of his apostleship (see chap. 4). Since he could do work that requires not only dexterity but also a lot of practice, it is doubtful that he was from a wealthy family.

His letters show that he had total command of the text of the Jewish Scripture in Greek translation. This means that he had studied it from an early age (pp. 17-18; 22-28).

His Greek (except for a few lapses) is good koinē (common) Greek, grammatically and syntactically sound. It is not the elegant literary Greek of his wealthy Jewish contemporary, Philo of Alexandria, and this too argues against the view that Paul was from a rich family. Additionally, he found it worthy of comment that he sometimes worked with his own hands, which is adequate proof that he was not a common laborer. Moreover, he knew how to dictate; he could if need be write with his own hand in large letters (Gal. 6:11), though not in the small, neat letters of the professional scribe. In the ancient world, reading was learned by reading aloud in school, and learning to write was a separate process, unconnected with reading, and involving various technical skills with knife, pen, ink, and papyrus.[3] Being able to write quickly and neatly, in small letters, was a specialized skill (see further pp. 169-71).

Paul also had a high level of organizational ability. Guessing wildly, we might suppose that his father owned a small business and that Paul knew how to do the work, but that he had also been equipped with managerial skills, such as ordering materials and supervising employees.

During approximately the first half of his adulthood, Paul was a Pharisee. Very little is known about Paul the Pharisee (except that he was, on his own report, outstanding, Gal. 1:14), but we have enough information about Pharisaism to allow us to examine this topic more fully (pp. 28-54).

The only activity that can be ascribed to the first part of Paul’s adult life with certainty is that he persecuted Jews who had accepted Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah and Son of God, having been convinced by the former disciples of Jesus (pp. 76-81).

Paul’s autobiographical statements in Galatians 1 and Philippians 3, which we shall study in detail (pp. 22-27; chap. 3) indicate that he had a vision that transformed his life. It is probable that this vision occurred in the 30s of the first century, presumably when he was in his thirties. By this date, and for the rest of his life, he appears to us as a full-time religious zealot, first as a persecutor of Christianity, next as an apostle on its behalf. We shall see that his career as a persecutor depended on his individual zeal, not on his Pharisaism (pp 32-33; 78-81).

The revelatory experience that changed his life seems not to have altered his character and personality. He was full of zeal and gave his life to his cause—even when the cause changed.

There are some uncertainties about just what the experience was, but in this Overview we leave them aside. Either on the road to Damascus (so Acts), or in Damascus (the inference from Gal. 1:15-16), God revealed Christ to him and called him to be an apostle to the gentiles (chap. 4).

His visionary experience convinced him that the followers of Jesus were right: Jesus had been raised; he was Son of God, Lord, and Christ (Messiah" in Hebrew). He would soon return, and he would save those who put their faith in him.

During the next twenty years or so, Paul worked his way west from Syria to Greece, establishing congregations in several cities in Asia Minor and in at least three cities in eastern Europe—two in Macedonia and one in Greece. His westward progression was occasionally interrupted by the need to visit Jerusalem and Antioch (in Syria) and to revisit former churches. We shall see that there was a lot of traffic between Paul and his churches (chap. 5), and that he sometimes made two or three brief visits after his founding visit (the chapters on the Corinthian correspondence and Philippians).

One of his efforts during the last years of his itinerant apostleship was to take up a collection for the Christian community in Jerusalem. In approximately the year 53 or 54, he traveled to Jerusalem, with some companions, and delivered the collection. While there, he was arrested and charged with taking a gentile into the temple, which was forbidden. After a series of trials in Caesarea, on the coast of Palestine,[4] he was finally sent to Rome to be tried by the emperor. We lose sight of him after his arrival in Rome. When the book of Acts ends, Paul is still in prison in Rome. It is probable that he was executed there in 62 or 64 ce, though it is conceivable that he was released and lived for several more years.

Both opinions can appeal to 1 Clement, a letter from the bishop of Rome to the Corinthian church in about the year 96. Clement wrote this:

[S]even times he wore fetters, he was exiled, he was stoned, he was a herald both in the east and in the west, he gained the noble renown of his faith, he taught righteousness throughout the whole world and, having reached the limit [terma] of the West, he bore testimony before the rulers, and so departed from the world and was taken up into the holy place—the greatest example of endurance. (1 Clem. 5:1-7)

The phrase "terma of the West, if taken to mean physical limit, inclines the reader to think that Paul reached Spain. If it means goal of the West, in the sense of Paul’s fixed destination or the obvious goal of any traveler from east to west, then Rome will do very well. The reference to testimony before rulers" could refer to those of Rome, though the governors of the Roman provinces in Asia Minor and Greece, or even the local magistrates in various cities, would do just as well (chap. 21).

The implication of Acts is that Paul was in Rome for only two years. Counting from his second trial in Caesarea (Acts 24–26), and allowing for the journey to Rome, some put his death in the year 62. It is often supposed, however, that both he and Peter died in the first Roman persecution of Christians. Rome suffered a major fire in July of 64. Though Nero had been away, rumor fastened the blame for the fire on him. He needed a scapegoat, and he settled on followers of the new superstition—the movement that came to be called Christianity. This is the description of Tacitus, a Roman historian:

Their execution was made a matter of sport: some were sewn up in the skins of wild beasts and savaged to death by dogs; others were fastened to crosses as living torches, to serve as lights when daylight failed. Nero made his gardens available for the show and held games in the Circus, mingling with the crowd or standing in his chariot in charioteer’s uniform. (Annals 44.3-8)

If Paul did so end his days, the hideous suffering would not have surprised him. We shall note as one of the abiding themes of his letters that he expected Christians—and especially apostles—to suffer and thus become, in that way, too, one with their Lord (1 Thess. 2:1-2, 14-15; 2 Cor. 1:3-7; and elsewhere). And he believed that he and others would be fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him (Rom. 8:17). Throughout his career he saw himself as being always given up to death for Jesus’ sake (2 Cor. 4:11), but suffering—and, no doubt, death itself—he met with this confidence:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life . . . nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:35-39)[5]

Paul’s long-term influence was so enormous that many have considered him to be a kind of second founder of Christianity. In his own day he was certainly a major figure within the very small Christian movement. On the other hand, he also had enemies and detractors, and his contemporaries probably did not accord him as much respect as they gave Peter and James (see The Church in Jerusalem, chap. 4). In studying Galatians, Romans, and the Corinthian correspondence, we shall see that Paul felt compelled to fight for his own worth and authority.

The major theological battle of his career was whether or not gentiles (non-Jews) who accepted Jesus must also become Jewish by being circumcised and accepting other parts of the Jewish law that separated Jew from gentile. Paul argued vociferously that his converts could remain gentiles, though they had to accept Jewish monotheism and most aspects of Jewish ethics. In the long run, his position prevailed: Christianity became a religion separate from Judaism and dominated by gentiles, though the gentiles accepted some aspects of Judaism. It is not clear that Paul won the argument at the time, nor can we say that he was the main person whose work led to the substantial gentilization of Christianity. The outcome was the result of many more factors than Paul’s own direct work and arguments.

Two Controversial Terms: Christianity and Palestine

In what follows I shall routinely use two words to which some people object, for quite different reasons.

The first is Christianity, which appears early and often in the following pages. Many scholars have emphasized that the word Christian does not appear often in the New Testament. According to Acts 11:26, it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called ‘Christian.’ In Acts 26:28, Agrippa asks Paul, Are you so quickly persuading me to become Christian? Christian otherwise appears only in 1 Pet. 4:16. In Acts 24:14, Paul uses the Way to designate the sect. Acts 9:2 mentions belonging to the Way, and the term occurs elsewhere (e.g., 8:25, 26; 19:23; 22:4; 24:14; 24:22). This has made many scholars reluctant to use Christian and Christianity to designate members of the church in its early days, preferring the Way or the Jesus movement.

Turning to Paul’s own usage, we note that Paul often calls the group the congregation (ekklēsia), a word that occurs alone and in a variety of phrases, such as the congregations of God (1 Thess. 2:14; 1 Cor. 10:32; 11:16). This word is usually translated church, and I often use the word church, but congregation is a better translation. The word church to us now means a building used for Christian worship, but Paul’s churches were really only congregations of people who met wherever they could, presumably in someone’s house.

In 1 Thessalonians, he also calls his group those who believe (1:7; 2:10, 13; also Rom. 1:16).

He often, however, designates his group by a phrase that includes the word Christ, such as those who are called of Jesus Christ (Rom. 1:6); those who are baptized into Christ Jesus (Rom. 6:3); those in whom Christ dwells (Rom. 8:10); joint heirs with Christ (Rom. 8:17); one body in Christ (Rom. 12:5); the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:27); those who are sanctified in Christ (1 Cor. 1:2); members of Christ (1 Cor. 6:15); those who are Christ’s (2 Cor. 10:7; Gal. 3:29); those who are in Christ (Gal. 3:27, 28); and the saints in Christ Jesus (Phil. 1:1). The dead in Christ have a special status when the Lord returns (1 Thess. 4:16).

In light of Paul’s own usage, I see no reason to avoid the use of the term Christian when discussing his converts. In this book, I use several of Paul’s own terms, but I unhesitatingly use the term Christians for people who belong to Christ.[6] For the sake of convenience, I also refer to the early followers of Jesus (e.g., Peter and John), who started the Jesus movement, as Christians. They all held that Jesus was the Christ, and I think that they deserve the title, though they themselves probably did not use it.

The second word is Palestine, the use of which sometimes produces bitter denunciations. Apparently the thought is that calling the region Palestine means that the Palestinians have sole rights to the land now controlled by the state of Israel. Someone even started the rumor that the name was never used before Hadrian, early in the second century ce, who used it pejoratively.

In fact, the word Palestine has been used to refer to this region at least since Herodotus (fifth century bce): The Phoenicians and the Syrians of Palestine practiced circumcision (Book II §106). Texts could be cited from a long list of ancient writers after Herodotus, beginning with Aristotle. Since Palestine is geographically a specific part of Syria, it was often called Syrian Palestine, as it was by Josephus (Antiq. 8.263 and about fourteen more times). Moreover, major works by modern Jewish scholars refer to the region as Palestine, as does Saul Lieberman in Greek in Jewish Palestine.

I use Palestine to indicate the geographical region and Jewish Palestine to indicate the parts of the geographical area that were occupied largely by Jews in the days of Jesus and Paul. These terms are historical and have no reference to the modern world.

On Paul’s biography, see especially John Knox, Chapters in a Life of Paul (Nashville: Abingdon, 1950). The book is still well worth reading, especially for the question of the use of Acts in reconstructing Paul’s biography. See The Nature of our Sources and The Use of our Sources on pp. 13–43. More recently, see Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Paul: A Critical Life (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996); Martin Hengel, The Pre-Christian Paul (London: SCM, 1991); Martin Hengel and Anna Maria Schwemer, Paul Between Damascus and Antioch (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997). For the very difficult problem of chronology (matching the events in Paul’s life to precise dates), see the Introduction n. 9. ↵

In the ancient world cotton was rare and very expensive, and so canvas was not available. Animal hides were plentiful. ↵

For detailed information about writing materials, see Hans-Josef Klauck, Ancient Letters and the New Testament: A Guide to Context and Exegesis (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006), chap. 2. ↵

On the use of the word Palestine, see immediately below. ↵

This section is copied from E. P. Sanders, Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 16–17. ↵

See E. P. Sanders, Paul’s Jewishness, in Paul’s Jewish Matrix, ed. Thomas G. Casey and Justin Taylor (Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press, 2011), 64–65. ↵

2

Paul Before His Call to Be an Apostle

The Acts of the Apostles: General Description

We shall now examine Paul’s life before his conversion in greater detail. We start with general comments on the book of the Acts of the Apostles, one of the sources of information about Paul, both before and after his conversion; the other source is Paul’s surviving letters. Acts is the second half of a two-volume work now often called Luke-Acts. After writing the Gospel of Luke, the author (conventionally called Luke) wrote Acts to complete his story of early Christianity. Luke’s account of Paul and his mission occupies about half of Acts. Luke introduces Saul in Acts 7:58 as a man who approved of the persecution of the members of the Christian movement. Acts uses the name Saul, which is a Hebrew name, until 13:9, after which it disappears. From that point on, the man is named Paul, which is a Roman surname. Paul is the main focus of the rest of Acts.

Estimates of the date of composition of Acts vary widely. I believe it to be safe to opt for composition sometime between 80 ce and the late 80s or the very early 90s. The primary consideration is that in the 90s of the first century there was an explosion of interest in Paul’s letters (see chap. 6). I believe it likely that Acts provided part of the stimulus for the collection of the letters. The author never mentions Paul as a letter writer, but his work puts the spotlight on Paul. The other apostles fade after Paul begins his itinerant missionary activity (Acts 13:4).

If this hypothesis is reasonable, it means that we owe an enormous debt to the author of Acts. He helped inspire the gathering of material that has helped shape Christianity ever since.

Moreover, Acts gives a good overall view of Paul’s travels, the cities he went to, his companions, and his conflicts with authorities. The work ranks as a good piece of Hellenistic historiography. More precisely, it is a good Hellenistic apologetic history and biography. Apology here means defense against doubts and accusations. Paul had his detractors, and a lot of people distrusted or disliked the Christian movement. It was a threat to old ways that were tried and true. In response to possible criticism, both Luke and Acts present Christianity as enlightened, harmless, even beneficient.[1]

Luke describes some of the worthy characteristics of his hero, and he puts in Paul’s mouth the things that the author feels that he should have said. This is a main characteristic of the writing of history in the ancient world, and it has characterized many biographies over the centuries—except modern critical works written by scholars who are scrupulous about evidence. I shall quote at some length what Thucydides, the greatest of the Greek historians, wrote on the subject:

As to the speeches