Paul

Life, Setting, Work, Letters

Oda Wischmeyer

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780567630919
• eBook ISBN: 9780567312440
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

This new work aimed at upper level undergraduates provides an invaluable handbook for students seriously engaging with Paul's life, letters and context. This new coursebook assesses Paul from four key areas. This book is written by several co-authors, all experts in their given fields, to give the most up-to-date and accurate information to readers - but also to present a sense of authorial continuity throughout the book. This book is divided into three main parts; the environment, life, work and person of Paul; Paul's letters and theological themes; and, the reception of Paul and his letters. As such it provides a comprehensive overview of scholarship on Paul and is the perfect handbook for the serious student wishing to engage with some of the most important writings in the New Testament. This book features maps, tables, text-boxes, up-to-date bibliographies and key points are identified throughout.

PART I

HISTORICAL, RELIGIOUS, CULTURAL CONTEXTS AND CONDITIONS

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION TO PART I

Oda Wischmeyer

Paul is the first and only apostle of the emerging Christian communities who puts things in writing.¹ In this function as an apostle who writes he has influenced the whole of Christianity up to the present day, and this book is designed to show him in this perspective. In his letters we encounter Paul as preacher of the Gospel, church organizer and communicator – in his own words simply as ‘Apostle of Jesus Christ’ – and at the same time as a person who even in writing continues to articulate, develop and reflect himself.

The broad classifications used for the understanding and interpretation of Paul – Paul the apostle, Paul the missionary, Paul the creator of Christianity, Paul the inventor of high Christology, Paul the theologian, Paul the religious hero – are all aspects of the ‘many-faceted interpretation of Paul’ for which Udo Schnelle called.² We have here chosen a perspective on Paul, the only apostle in early Christianity who put things into writing, which embraces the aspects mentioned. At the same time it does justice to the fact that the way to Paul lies in his letters in which he presents himself and interprets himself as an apostle.³

Paul’s letters are the main sources for the reconstruction of his life and his mission. But we also reconstruct his person, his life and his work from other sources.

The following secondary sources and early witnesses to his influence can be added to his own letters:

• The Acts of the Apostles
• The deutero- and trito-Pauline letters
• Reports and representations from early Christian writings, beginning with I Clement and leading into the apocryphal acts of the apostles.

Acts connects Paul to the route of the Gospel through the oikumene and divides Paul’s life into three great missionary journeys. The deutero- and trito-Paulines take up his theological and church-leading activities and use his authority for the ordering of their congregations. The ‘acts’ of the apostles describe him anew in the categories of their time as miracle-worker and saint.

This book deals with the aspects named within the framework of a historical representation which combines the reconstruction of Paul’s life and work with the interpretation of his letters.

The historical enquiry is given the most extensive interpretation and does most justice to the universal significance of Paul’s person and work and the history of his influence which has now lasted almost 2,000 years. It integrates the theological perspective with those of religious history and psychology – i.e. reconstructing his confessing, argumentative and paraenetic speech about God and the world (theology) and examining his primarily religiously defined person, beginning with the so-called ‘Damascus Road’ experience (religious history and psychology).

The first part of this volume places Paul’s person and work in his own time, first in the world of the early Roman Empire, which formed his political and cultural environment (Chapters 2 and 3). Here we concentrate on the world of politics, religions and philosophical schools that Paul encountered in his missionary activity. Particular interest is paid to contemporary Judaism from which he came (Chapter 4). Against this background we develop the picture of Paul from the sources with particular consideration of his own missionary activity and journeys (Chapters 5 and 6) and his person (Chapter 7).

Notes

1. O. Wischmeyer (2004), ‘Paulus als Autor’, in: id. Von Ben Sira zu Paulus, Gesammelte Aufsätze zu Texten,Theologie und Hermeneutik des Frühjudentums und des Neuen Testaments (WUNT 173), ed. E.-M. Becker, Tübingen, 289–307.

2. U. Schnelle (2003), Paulus. Leben und Denken, Berlin/New York, 24.

3. In contrast to Luke, who does not describe his hero Paul as an apostle in Acts. Cf. here J. Frey (2005), ‘Paulus und die Apostel. Zur Entwicklung des paulinischen Apostelbegriffs und zum Verhältnis des Heidenapostels zu seinen “Kollegen”’, in: E.-M. Becker and P. Pilhofer (eds), Biographie und Persönlichkeit des Paulus (WUNT 187), Tübingen, 192–227.

Chapter 2

THE POLITICAL SITUATION AT THE TIME OF PAUL: THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Andreas Mehl

This chapter is intended to describe the historical framework within which Paul carried out his work in the development of Christianity. This framework was the Roman Empire, not simply Rome. Hence the emphasis will lie on the former and not, as was the case in Roman historiography, on the latter. Further, the task amounts to describing the situation during a particular period, from Augustus to Nero (44/27 BCE–68/69 CE). Admittedly historians find it difficult to describe situations to the extent that their main ‘business’ does not deal with things that remain the same, the ‘long duration’ (longue durée) of the French Annals School, but describes, explains and substantiates events, changes in the sense of fluctuations and developments over a shorter or longer period, in the ideal case historical processes leading at least retrospectively to a recognizable goal.

1
Constancy or Development?

The subject to be considered here actually makes it impossible to describe a pure situation. That might seem surprising; in the view of both non-Christian and Christian antiquity, in the time of Augustus, and through him, the Roman Empire had received at least in its internal structure a new form or constitution it was destined to retain for centuries. The modern historian of antiquity is certainly quite prepared to accept the reality contained in this view, but will also point out that the very constitutional changes pushed through by Augustus involved a compromise between Republic à la Rome and Monarchy à la Hellenism which virtually demanded further changes in form. This could, at least for a time, lead to a back and forth, to a fluctuation between Republic and Monarchy. It could also be put this way: The usual talk of the Roman ‘Empire’, which on the ancient pattern of interpretation is mostly taken as starting with Augustus, claims to describe a state in which, despite the designation, much is not yet ‘Empire’. If, following modern custom, one talks here of the ‘Emperor’, it must be pointed out that only the terms ‘Princeps’ and ‘Principate’, the man himself or his position in the first rank, are correct. Since between the time of Augustus and that of Nero († 68 CE) this position was exposed to changes that finally led towards Monarchy, even if not expressly hereditary Monarchy, the other Roman decision-making and executive institutions, the Senate and the senatorial offices (magistracies), were inevitably also exposed to change, as was the subordinate administrative machinery: the former running counter to the position of the Princeps, the latter in the sense of its extension, indeed of initial emergence. In fact, the emergence and extension of a governmental administration were made possible and perhaps even necessary through the development of the Principate to a Monarchy.

From the time of Augustus’ reign, specifically after the annexation of Egypt, the territorial extent of the Empire might suggest constancy. But this is not really the case. On the one hand, the popular, yet long recognized as inappropriate, talk of Augustus’ switch of foreign policy from expansion to conservation is misleading. Between Augustus and Trajan’s taking up of office in 98 CE there were certainly no more conquests and founding of Provinces on a large scale, but both still happened. On the other hand, the way the agents at the time understood the structure of the Roman Empire and the view of modern ancient historians differ in a characteristic way. In the report of his deeds (Res Gestae), Augustus did not in fact establish a clear boundary for the Empire. In particular, countries ruled by their own princes appear as subject to his decisions so far as he appoints rulers there or members of the ruling houses find themselves as his guests or – more accurately – as hostages. From this perspective, even the kingdom of the Parthians, the only evenly matched opponent of Rome in the longer term, was subject to the commanding authority, i.e. to the Imperium of Rome. The vagueness of the concept cast in the two words Imperium Romanum, which one may all too quickly be inclined to misunderstand as direct rule over a clearly defined territory, allows much to be considered as part of the Roman Empire which must, according to the modern definition of a state, have been a land of its own. This comes halfway towards the Roman claim to world domination, which precisely in the time of Augustus was officially and semi-officially proclaimed and formed an element of Augustus’ own legitimation to rule. The Roman conception of ‘Empire’ also means that for a modern view the border between imperial territory and the outside world can often not be drawn as a simple line but stretches through areas of decreasing exercise of authority to merely occasional exertion of influence. Today one would only accept those so-called Roman client-states as parts of the Roman Empire whose client status belonged to an early stage of their relationship to Rome and was sooner or later superseded by their transformation into a Province. Here we have indeed mentioned a development which led to areas outside Italy and dependent on Rome being made into Provinces. Although in the period under consideration Rome had command over a large number of Provinces, there was no standardized provincial control and by no means were all government measures at that time oriented to such control.

2
The Empire from the City of Rome to the Provinces and Beyond

In the history of the world Rome probably represents a unique case of the emergence of a great power and world empire from a city. Parallel to the growth of Rome’s power and territorial control people flocked from increasingly more parts of the known world into the city, and there they continued practising various religions and cults, some tolerated by the Roman authorities, some forbidden, but in every case kept under observation. Rome, however, never became the intellectual capital of the Roman Empire. Its manner of governing was absolutely typical of the city as the germ-cell of an Empire: The People, Senate and Consuls were responsible for the city of Rome and for everything else at the same time. The recognition that this was not practical led already in the time of the Republic to the seconding of individual magistrates to administer territories annexed and controlled outside of the Italian peninsula – Provinces in the particular territorial meaning of this Latin word. From the time of Augustus special permanent posts were created for the city of Rome. These were concerned with administration and technology, e.g. the supply of water and grain for the city. Meanwhile the responsibility for the welfare of the city population still lay not with a separate authority but with the Princeps, in whom the government of the whole Empire was concentrated. His particular responsibility for the city of Rome can be seen in the fact that he had foodstuffs and even money distributed at his own expense to Roman citizens living in the city, and even distributed them himself. Further, not only the magistrates but he himself financed and organized games for the Roman urban population in the Circus and Amphitheatre, and from Claudius onwards the widening of the harbours at Ostia and Portus on both sides of the Tiber estuary was driven forward by the emperor for the better provision of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Titlepage
• Contents
• Foreword
• Part I Historical, Religious, Cultural Contexts And Conditions
• Part II Letters. Theology
• Part III Reception Of Paul
• Authors
• Index of Persons
• Index of Cities