Paul and Money

A Biblical and Theological Analysis of the Apostle’s Teachings and Practices

Verlyn Verbrugge, Keith R. Krell

• Publisher: Zondervan Academic
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780310518334
• eBook ISBN: 9780310525134
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

The apostle Paul, one of the most prominent figures in the early Jesus movement, had a lot to say about money. His letters deal with real people as they lived their Christian lives in the Greco-Roman world. He finds it necessary to address “those who are rich in this present world” (1 Tim 6:17). But he also has to address those do not want to work, for whatever reason, and are “idle and disruptive” (2 Thess 3:6). Moreover, whereas most churches today have a certain socio-economic homogeneity, some of Paul’s churches had a combination of upper class wealthy people and lower class slaves worshiping side-by-side, and it inevitably created friction (esp. 1 Cor 11:17–34).

During the past twenty years a significant amount of research has been done on class-consciousness in the Greco-Roman world and on the significance of Paul’s fund-raising venture “for the poor among the Lord’s people in Jerusalem”—“the collection”—for his ministry. Relying on the surprising results of current Pauline scholarship and a careful exegesis of a variety of New Testament texts, this book offers a thorough investigation of the apostle Paul’s sayings and dealings with money.

PART 1

PAUL’S WORK AND HIS FINANCIAL POLICIES

CHAPTER 1

EARNING A LIVING FROM THE GOSPEL

THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT PAUL AND MONEY. OUR ATTITUDES ABOUT MONEY are often shaped from childhood, which includes our cultural background. The patterns we grow up with stay with us in one form or another for much of our lives. It is therefore appropriate that we try, as best we can, to see what cultural patterns shaped the Jewish boy Saul/Paul,¹ growing up in the Greco-Roman city of Tarsus in Cilicia.

We read in the book of Acts that at some point in his life, Paul must have learned the skill of working with leather;² that was his trade (cf. Acts 18:3). But we also read that relatively early on he moved to Jerusalem to be trained as a rabbi/Pharisee under Gamaliel I (22:3). Moreover, we know that when he went out on his missionary journeys in the Greco-Roman world, he used the skills of leatherworking in order to support himself, rather than expecting that the churches he was serving would provide him with basic life necessities (food, clothing, lodging, etc.). At the same time, he argues in 1 Cor 9:4 – 6 that other apostle-missionaries did accept financial support for their work — and Paul considered that perfectly acceptable.

This raises a host of questions that revolve around financial issues, which we will seek to answer in these first two chapters. Why did Paul take the attitude he did toward insisting that he pay his own way for basic living expenses as a missionary? What factors in his background may have shaped his thinking here? How might his thinking have developed over the years — both regarding himself and others? In order to begin to answer these questions, it seems that the best place to start is Paul’s training to become a Pharisee under Gamaliel I.

PAUL’S TRAINING AS A PHARISEE

Judging from the NT, we can determine that Paul’s training as a Pharisee was one of the most powerful influences on his life as a young man. As he himself admits about his “way of life in Judaism,” he advanced quickly in his knowledge of the holy Scriptures and of the traditions of Judaism, surpassing many others his own age (Gal 1:13 – 14). In fact, he became a fanatic (ζηλωτής) for the traditions of his Jewish ancestors.³ Whether this zeal for the life of the Pharisees started before or after the martyrdom of Stephen we cannot tell, but it was certainly evident at that time, for Paul was the guardian of the robes of those stoning Stephen (Acts 7:58), and even more so immediately after when he began to do his utmost to destroy (ἐλυμαίνετο) the church (8:3).⁴

TRAINING FOR JEWISH YOUTH

Our intent is not to discuss Paul the persecutor, however. What we want to probe are questions that pertain to financial matters. At what age would a young man likely seek to follow a rabbi and be trained by him? Were any fees involved, and if so, how would a young man get the necessary resources to pay those fees? Were those who were being trained in the way of the Pharisees expected to work at some job in order to earn income to support their education and perhaps also support the one who was training them in the ways of the Torah? Did this have any possible effect on his pattern of working for his own living when he became an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ?

To find first-century documentation about the process of education for Jewish boys and young men is all but impossible. Josephus does acknowledge that from ages sixteen to nineteen he took some training in the ways of the Pharisees, as well as in the ways of the Sadducees and Essenes, but he tells us nothing about how he went about doing that.⁵

However, certain aspects of the education of Jewish children have remained remarkably stable over the centuries (though, admittedly, some changes have taken place), and it will serve us well to examine them. The education of Jewish children began in the home through their parents’ consistent teaching of God’s law and how God had dealt with his people in the past (Deut 6:6 – 9; Prov 1:8). One of the key methods through which teaching took place was attendance at the annual feasts of the Israelites (especially the Passover, but also the Feasts of Weeks and Booths, each of which was connected with significant historical events in Israel’s past), which were set up as teaching events.⁶ Note Exod 12:26 – 27: “And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the LORD, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians’ ” (NIV). Moreover, undoubtedly whenever children observed sacrifices in the temple, they would ask similar questions about the purposes of those sacrifices, and the parents would teach them about the laws of Yahweh their God.

During the exilic period, when there was no longer a temple in Jerusalem, sacrifices ceased, and God’s people lived far away from their homeland, the teaching of the written Scriptures, especially the Torah, became central to Jewish religious life. While the origin of the synagogue is shrouded in mystery and scholars debate its specific details, most agree that synagogues probably started in some fashion during the exile.⁷ With the temple destroyed, “the synagogue enabled the Jews to organize their communal life and worship anywhere.”⁸ What made this institution truly unique from any other religious institution in the ancient world, including the Jewish temple (when it was standing), was “the communal reading and study of the Bible,” along with the synagogue’s “role as a community center” for almost all aspects of Jewish life.⁹ As a consequence, a shift in educational pattern started to take place as the formal teaching of the Torah began to transfer from the home to the synagogue.

The classic description that seeks to probe the history of the education of Jewish youth and adults in the exilic and especially postexilic era is “Education and the Study of the Torah,” by S. Safrai.¹⁰ Most of the data used in this article, however, comes from the Mishnah and the Talmuds (the writings of the Pharisees and their successors), and such information is not useful for trying to understand typical Jewish life prior to the destruction of the temple, when the Sadducees were the de facto rulers of the Jewish nation. The rabbinic writings may be useful for describing some of the pre-AD 70 patterns in Judea and perhaps Galilee,¹¹ but we must remember that Paul grew up in Tarsus in Cilicia.

TRAINING AS A PHARISEE

However, an important passage in Acts indicates Paul’s involvement with the movement of the Pharisees did not begin with him; he was υἱὸς Φαρισαίων (“a son of Pharisees,” Acts 23:6). This does not mean that his father was a Pharisee, but it does suggest that there were Pharisees among his ancestors. Undoubtedly young Paul learned the basics of the Scriptures as a young boy (whether he learned to read the Scriptures in Hebrew in his home province of Cilicia as most of the Pharisees are presumed to have done in Judea and Galilee, we simply do not know, though perhaps so). But somewhere early in his life a desire to study “the traditions of the fathers” grew within the heart of Paul. At some point he moved to Jerusalem in order to be trained by the Pharisees, so much so that he was able to say in Acts 22:3, ἀνατεθραμμένος δὲ ἐν τῃ̑ πόλει ταύτῃ (“[I was] brought up in this city”).¹² In general, the verb ἀνατρέϕω denotes a significant period of time. From the time that Paul first went to Jerusalem to the time he became a believer in Jesus could easily have been about the same amount of time as he had lived at home in Tarsus. Hengel suggests that this move to Jerusalem took place when he was an adolescent, perhaps about age fifteen.¹³

One of the first things Paul may have experienced in his education was to become involved with “a bet midrash [house of instruction] to sit at the teachers of the Law with other adults who studied Torah in their spare time.”¹⁴ That such “houses of instruction” existed already in the Second Temple period seems confirmed by Sir 51:23 (titled “A Prayer of Jesus ben Sirach”): “Draw near to me, you who are uneducated, and lodge in a house of instruction” (NETS).¹⁵ While such houses are not known in the Diaspora, there does seem to be evidence that they existed in Palestine. At some point in his training, promising young Paul was able to “sign on,” as it were, with Rabbi Gamaliel I, one of the most prominent leaders of the Pharisees at the time, to be one of his devoted learners (see Acts 22:3). What seems abundantly clear throughout Paul’s letters is that he was thoroughly familiar with the sorts of arguments from Scripture that we find in later rabbinic writings.

What about payment to the teachers and the sages? The evidence is somewhat mixed. First, “tannaitic literature [which is well past the NT era] repeatedly affirms the principle that teaching the Law like other public services ought to be performed without financial reward.”¹⁶ If the teacher was a member of the priestly class (at least during the time prior to the destruction of the temple), not receiving remuneration for teaching would not present a problem, since priests were already recipients of the tithes of the people.¹⁷ For nonpriestly teachers, however, such as Rabbi Gamaliel, we simply do not know. If we read the later rabbinic literature, there is evidence of ways to get around the principle of no payment for the study of the Torah. Teachers of Torah might receive pay equal to what they were losing by not doing their regular work (i.e., they received compensation for lost wages), “or they would receive a salary for teaching punctuation and accents which are not an integral part of the Torah, or for looking after the children.”¹⁸ Or in some cases there might be tuition fees paid directly by the parents. For the most part, it seems, a teacher in a bet midrash did receive some compensation, which was considered only fair.

This raises the question of whether Paul may have grown up in a home that could afford a “tuition” fee. Did he grow up in what we might call a “middle class” home, or in a home where people lived basically at subsistence level?¹⁹ Many scholars today argue that most likely Paul’s family of origin lived at a somewhat comfortable level.²⁰ The very fact that Paul’s letters appear to demonstrate a familiarity with Greco-Roman rhetoric has suggested to many he may have had some formal training in that subject,²¹ which would likely not have occurred for someone living on a subsistence level.²² Moreover, when Paul talks about his work as a leatherworker,²³ he t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Abbreviations
• Prefaces and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1: Paul’s Work and His Financial Policies
• Part 2: Raising Money for the Mother Church In Jerusalem
• Part 3: Other Issues Concerning Finances In Paul
• Select Bibliography
• Scripture Index
• Subject Index
• Author Index