Continuing reading Nina Livesey’s [NL] The Letters of Paul in their Roman Literary Context, we now come to the question of the stark differences between the Paul of the letters against the Paul of the Acts of the Apostles. In Acts Paul is submissive to the Jerusalem authorities and sympathetic to law-keepers; in the letters Paul is dismissive of the Jerusalem authorities and expresses hostility towards those insisting on circumcision and the law. What’s going on here?
NL revisits what we know of many letter collections from antiquity. It was common practice for authors to compose letters in the names of well-known “historical or or supposedly historical figures”:
Alongside those already discussed [Cicero, Pliny, …], there also survive from antiquity sets of letters attributed to a whole series of historical or supposedly historical figures dating from between the sixth century B.C. and the second century A.D. The full list of the texts printed in Rudolf Hercher’s monumental Epistologmphi graeci of 1873 embraces the letters of Aeschines, Anacharsis, Apollonius of Tyana, Aristotle, Artaxerxes, Brutus, Chion of Heraclea, Crates, Demosthenes, Dio, Diogenes, Euripides, Heraclitus, Hippocrates, Isocrates, Periander, Phalaris, Plato, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, Socrates and the Socratics, Solon, Thales, Themistocles and Xenophon. . . . It has been generally (and rightly) accepted that the vast majority are not what they claim to be, but instead the work of later authors impersonating these great figures of the past (hence ‘pseudepigraphic’, involving a false or lying attribution). (Trapp, 27)
For NL, the New Testament letters of Paul fall in the same category. A biography of a famous person would present a life of action, adventure, while a later author would take such a figure and present them in a more contemplative manner through letters in their name:
[P]seudonymous letter collections customarily follow on what is known of ancient figures either from the individual’s own works, or from the character’s creative biography. Whereas the biography of a figure tends to depict the character as active, the letters written in the character’s name depict the figure by contrast as not only a letter writer but as reflective. Letters extend the life of an ancient figure and take that life into new and different directions. In the Introduction, I outlined various important conceptual differences between Acts and Pauline letters, but one of the main distinctions concerns the characterization of Paul. Acts stresses Paul’s continued adherence to Jewish beliefs and practices, whereas the letters, especially Galatians, has the Apostle Paul rejecting the requirements of the Jewish law and circumcision for gentiles.
Again, rather than a historical Paul, we have instead “Christian” epistolographers who – deploying a common and contemporary genre – adopted and extended the characterization of Paul from its creation in Acts into new directions for the promotion of theological/philosophical teachings. (Livesey, 90)
So in NL’s view, Marcion drew upon the figure of Paul — who was evidently a prominent name otherwise known in some early version of Acts — to promote his version of Christian teachings. This perspective is the reverse of one I have held. I have thought of Acts as being added to a revised, anti-Marcionite version of Luke, as part of an attack on Marcionism. I have been most influenced by a study by Joseph Tyson. NL would have me reconsidering an alternative view of Shelley Matthews that Luke-Acts belongs to a world prior to the extreme split between “orthodoxy” and “gnosticism” and rather belongs to “a more variegated context of early Christian pluralism.” (Matthews) Though Earl Doherty also would not have liked moving much of our earliest evidence to the second century he would certainly have been partial to the notion of Christianity emerging from a seedbed of “riotous diversity”.
Areas of overlap between the letters and Acts listed by NL, indicators of borrowing, but not necessarily in the direction you thought:
- Paul is presented as a Jew: Acts 21:39; 22:3; cf. Phil 3:5; 2 Cor 11:22
- Paul changed from persecutor to a convert: Acts 9:3-19; 22:3-16; 26:12-18; cf. Gal 1:13-15, Phil 3:5-16
- Paul addresses circumcision: Acts 15:1-35; cf. Gal 5:1-6, Rom 2:25-29, 1 Cor 7:18-19
- Paul reports to an authoritative body of church leaders in Jerusalem: Acts 15:2-25; cf. Gal 2:1-9
- Paul experiences prison and being bound: Acts 16:16-40; 21:27-28:30; cf. Rom 16:7; 2 Cor 11:23; Phil 1:7, 13-14, 17; Phlm 1, 9, 10, 13, 23
- Paul suffers various adversities, including lashings: Acts 16:22-23; 2 Cor 11:23-25
- Paul is threatened by other Jews: Acts 9:23-24; 29; 14:1-7; 20:2-3; 21:27-31; 22:22; 23:12-15; cf. 2 Cor 11:24-27).
Common characters:
- Barnabas: Acts 13:42, 43, 46, 50; 14:1; 15:2, 22, 35; cf. 1 Cor 9:6; Gal 2:1, 9, 13
- James: Acts 1:13; 12:2, 17; 15:13; 21:18; cf. 1 Cor 15:7; Gal 1:19; 2:9, 12
- Peter: Acts 10:44-48; cf. Gal 2:7, 8
- Aquila and Priscilla/Prisca: Acts 18:2, 18, 26; cf. Rom 16:3; 1 Cor 16:19
Regional name references:
- Antioch: Acts 15:22, 23, 30, 35; 18:22; cf. Gal 2:11
- Syria and Cilicia: Acts 15:23, 41; cf. Gal 1:21
- Ephesus: Acts 19:1, 17, 26, 35; 20:16-17; ch 1 Cor 15:32; 16:8
- Philippi: Acts 16:12; 20:6; cf. Phil 1:1; 1 Thess 2:2),
- Corinth: Acts 18:1; 19:1; cf. 1 Cor 1:2, 2 Cor 1:1, 23
- Thessalonica: Acts 17:1, 11, 13; 20:4; 27:2; cf. Phil 4:16, 1 Thess 1:1
- Galatia: Acts 16:6; 18:23; 1 Cor 16:1; Gal 1:2
- Rome: Acts 19:21; 23:11; 28:14; ch Rom 1:7, 15
All of the above alerts us to intertextuality (NL 109).
But are there not clear historical references in both the letters and Acts? NL examines each of them.
2 Cor 11:32-33
In Damascus the governor under Aretas the king kept the city of the damascenes with a garrison, desirous to apprehend me: and through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and escaped his hands.
In context it reads like an afterthought. Being lowered down a wall or through a window is a trope known well in Scripture (Joshua’s spies, David) and other writings. Some scholars have considered the passage to be an interpolation. It functions to link Paul with scriptural (and perhaps even other) heroes. NL, after discussing what the sources inform us about Aretas, believes the author was motivated by a similar escape story of Saul/Paul in Acts.
Acts 18:12
While Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews of Corinth made a united attack on Paul and brought him to the place of judgment.
NL discusses problems around the archaeological evidence for determining a date for Paul.
Acts 18:1-3
. . . Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome . . .
NL demonstrates that the sources are far from clear that Claudius ever did expel the Jews from Rome. The Roman historian Suetonius wrote of a Jewish disturbance in Rome involving a certain “Chrestus”, but Chrestus was a common Greco-Roman name and Suetonius’s account reads much like other standard anti-Jewish tropes.
NL discusses the above passages in some depth, concluding that they are consistent with what we find in other fictional narratives to lend them a touch of realism. The practice blending historical persons with fictional tales is also found in the gospels of Matthew and Mark.
In my view, the absence of independent evidence to support the historicity of the claims in the letters (and Acts) along with known practices of drawing on historical knowledge to infuse fresh life into fictions, and not forgetting the rhetorical (persuasive) impact of the touches of verisimilutude, leaves the balance of probability on the side that the letters are indeed fictions. In other words, I am siding with NL’s interpretations.
Church Communities?
NL next takes aim at the historicity of the communities assumed by scholars to have been the real recipients of the letters.
And once again I find it reassuring to see more references to books and articles I have discussed here over the years. With respect to the questionable historicity of the kinds of church communities many scholars have posited as the recipients of the letters, as well as communities as hubs of shared oral traditions about Jesus that eventually found their way into the gospels, NL refers to “The Concept of ‘Community’ and the History of Early Christianity” by Stanley Stowers. I quoted a key passage from that article here, and addressed the related view of Stowers arguing that earliest Christianity more likely resembled philosophical schools of the day than the kinds of communities as understood in much of New Testament studies. Recall also the recently quoted remark of Lord Raglan that according to the fields of anthropology and sociology mythical tales of the kind we are addressing originate among the literate classes, not from campfire tales shared among the illiterate.
Yet, as indicated in recent scholarship, group composition of ancient literature, as envisioned in that scholarship, has no ancient parallels. Astutely argued in her book, The Origins of Early Christian Literature, Robyn Walsh notes that theories that posit communities as communal authors are based on romantic understandings of Christian origins and a misapprehension that oral storytelling lies at the heart of early Christianity. (NL, 101)
As for the references to “house churches” in both Acts and the epistles, apart from the absence of independent evidence for such communities, it is worth taking note of the literary functions of the image of household communities:
There are, however, alternate interpretations for references to the home or house in ancient literature. In her Feeling Home: House and Ideology in the Attic Orators, Hilary Lehmann explains how ancient authors deployed the notion of home for its ability to elicit feelings of comfort and order. According to her, ancient authors were aware of the many positive connotations the notion of home provided and exploited them in support of their arguments. (NL, 105 – link is to the PhD thesis online)
NL cites the work of Paola Ceccarelli and others, Letters and Communities Studies in the Socio-Political Dimensions of Ancient Epistolography that illustrates the ways letters were used to both promote a particular ideology and build community following. What might at first glance be assumed to be the writing of an artless innocent in surviving letter collections can be shown to be the works of high literary sophistication.
NL concludes this second chapter with accounts of the various witnesses to the letters of Paul — 1 Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, 2 Peter — and the findings of scholars such as Markus Vinzent and Jason BeDuhn to demonstrate that there are good reasons for dating these other sources no earlier than the middle or later second century.
So the argument at this point is that an early form of Acts was in existence prior to Marcion, that this Acts introduced the figure of Paul to explain the spread of Christianity to non-Jews, and that Marcion produced letters in the name of that Paul.
If we work with this scenario, we might well accept the later claims by Church Fathers (Irenaeus, Tertullian) that Marcion did indeed revise an earlier version of the Gospel of Luke. If we accept Shelley Matthew’s view of Luke-Acts, we can imagine Marcion producing the letters of Paul to supersede the Paul of Acts. (Such a view need not preclude further anti-Marcionite additions by the “proto-orthodox” to the gospels.) These are some of the scenarios one mulls over on reading The Letters of Paul in their Roman Literary Context. We might be advised to work with a model of a beginning of Christianity from “schools” that were more structured and organized than the loosely affiliated informal house communities we have been used to imagining.
In chapter 3 NL compares Seneca’s and Paul’s letters.
Livesey, Nina E. The Letters of Paul in Their Roman Literary Context: Reassessing Apostolic Authorship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.
Stowers, Stanley. “The Concept of ‘Community’ and the History of Early Christianity.” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 23, no. 3 (2011): 238–56. https://doi.org/10.1163/157006811X608377.
Trapp, Michael, ed. Greek and Latin Letters: An Anthology with Translation. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Neil Godfrey
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