Paul Among Jews

A Study of the Meaning and Significance of Paul's Inaugural Sermon in the Synagogue of Antioch in Pisidia (Acts 13:16–41) for His Missionary Work among the Jews

Zhang

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781498269940
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book challenges a popular and influential thesis in Lukan scholarship presented by the Tubingen School: Paul is a rival of Peter and Paul is an anti-Jewish apostle. Consequently, he is solely an apostle to Gentiles in Acts.Through a narrative-critical method, Wenxi Zhang studies Paul's inaugural speech in Antioch of Pisidia and its literary function in relation to Paul's missionary activity among Jews in Acts. He concludes (1) that this inaugural sermon functions as an interpretative key to understand the narrative of Paul's missionary activity among his fellow Jews; and (2) that Paul is not anti-Jewish. He remains a faithful Jew who proclaims to his fellow Jews the fulfillment of God's promise to David in Jesus' resurrection. Consequently, Acts is not anti-Jewish document.

1

A History of Research

Introduction

In this first chapter, I will review how scholars have dealt with Paul’s speech to the Jews in the synagogue of Antioch in Pisidia (Acts 13:16–41). In the first part of this chapter I will provide a general survey of historical and critical research on Acts; in the second part, I will provide a brief survey of historical and critical research and some general studies of the speeches in Acts; in the third part, I will provide a history of research of Paul’s speech; in the fourth part, I will draw a conclusion and explain how I intend to study this speech.

I. A General Study of Historical and Critical Research of Acts

Before the end of the eighteenth century, the traditional view was that Acts was a history of all the apostles and the early Church, written by Luke, Paul’s traveling companion who followed Paul and witnessed all of the events recorded in Acts, which he wrote down faithfully. This traditional view was called into question towards the end of the eighteenth century. As Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) and John Lightfoot (1602–75) observed, Acts was far from narrating the history of all the apostles as its title implied, since its author focused mainly on Peter and Paul.1

William Paley (1743–1805) studied critically the Paul of Acts and the Paul of the Pauline epistles. By comparing the two, he sought to ascertain the historicity of the events narrated in the two documents. According to W. Ward Gasque, Paley pointed out the problem of the agreements and divergencies of Acts and the Pauline epistles. The divergencies show the independence of the two, and the agreements show the substantial reliability of Acts.2

Scholars also recognized that the account of Peter and Paul was not complete in Acts, for the author of Acts is silent about many things that we learn from the Pauline epistles.3 For example, Acts fails to mention Paul’s withdrawal to “Arabia” (Gal 1:17b).4 Eugen A. Schwanbeck suggested that a possible explanation for this phenomenon is that the author of Acts was unwilling or unable to present further information about the two apostles and the early Church community. This explanation of the unwillingness of the author to present the complete life of Paul and Peter led to the development of tendency criticism, whereas theories about the inability of Luke to narrate the complete lives of the two apostles led to source criticism.5

A. Tendency Criticism

If Luke, the author of Acts, was unwilling to narrate some of the stories of other apostles in the early Church, then he deliberately omitted something that he must have known, and he must have made a selection of the material available to him. What reasons led him to make this selection? Can the readers of Acts discern the underlying purpose of the author that guided him in his selection and organization of his materials? What aim, what ‘tendency,’ was he pursuing?

According to Gasque, the modern critical study of Acts began with these tendency criticism questions.6 There are many scholars that are worth mentioning. I focus on the so–called Tübingen School, whose founder was Ferdinand C. Baur (1792–1860). Through his followers he became the dominating influence in German NT research until nearly the end of the nineteenth century.7 His basic thesis was that early Christianity was marked by severe conflicts between two groups that represented two different concepts of Christianity: a Jewish (Petrine) Christian party and a Gentile (Pauline) Christian party. Acts was an attempt to reconcile these two hostile parties. The vital question of the apostolic and subapostolic age was the issue of the legitimacy of the mission to the Gentiles. A positive contribution of tendency criticism was the recognition of the importance of the question of the purpose of Acts. It also recognized that Paul was the main character of Acts. Yet its weakness is also obvious, for “it makes an unwarranted simplification of history, rigidly differentiating ‘Gentile Christianity’ from ‘Jewish Christianity,’ and turns a problem of the initial stages into the driving force behind an epoch which had long since been moved by other questions and forces.”8

According to Ernst Haenchen, Johannes Weiss’s 1897 work, Absicht und literarischer Charakter der Apostelgeschichte, gives the impression of being a latecomer to ‘tendency criticism.’ He thought that Acts attempted to make an apology for the Christian belief before the Gentiles in the face of Jewish indictment, an apology that demonstrates how it has come about that Christianity has taken over and fulfilled the worldwide mission of Judaism. Christianity is born of Judaism, and its teaching has fulfilled Jewish hopes. Accordingly it replaces Judaism proper.9

B. Source Criticism

For tendency criticism the reason for the fragmentary character of Acts was the unwillingness of the author to say more. Another possibility was his inability to say more. This could have been occasioned by the incompleteness of his sources. In fact, if we read the prologue of the Gospel of Luke carefully, we can discern that the author did not claim to be an eyewitness. The presence and use of other sources is evident from the variety and unevenness of the style and from contradictions within the narrations. Three separate accounts of Paul’s conversion (9:1–19; 22:3–16; 26:2–18) and two of Peter’s vision (10:9–16; 11:5–17) suggest that there are multiple sources behind Acts. The author compiled Acts from already assembled written sources. These sources can be identified as Petrine and Pauline sources, or sources from different communities such as Jerusalem, Antioch, and Ephesus, as well as a travel diary.10

C. Form Criticism

Hermann Gunkel was the first to draw attention to the smaller units and their types in the field of Christian literary history. His predecessors had been accustomed to think in terms of great source documents, e.g., the Yahwist and the Elohist in the OT sources.11 In 1923, Martin Dibelius applied this ‘form–critical’ method to the study of Acts.12 He shows that Luke draws upon a great number of synoptic gospel sources in writing his Gospel. Yet we cannot presume that Luke used similar sources in writing Acts. This shows how problematic the presumption is that Luke used the same working method in writing Acts as he did in writing his Gospel. Luke is the first to write an account of the early church’s growth. In the composition of Acts, Luke did not have a great amount of source material, and he was not able to follow any predecessor that we know of who had already offered a prototype for this literary form.

According to Dibelius, there are no substantial, coherent sources behind Acts, but rather a number of smaller units, which he calls “legends,” “tales,” or “anecdotes.”13 This shows that a large amount of Acts was written by the author himself. This includes the speeches. They are intended to bear witness to the gospel. This is especially true of apostles’ missionary speeches, which probably correspond to Christian preaching about the year 90; “So does one preach—and so should one preach!”14 The apologetic speeches are intended to prepare the early Christians to use these ideas in their self-defense in a court setting. Paul’s Miletus address shows the portrait of the apostles Luke wished to present. It is also an admonition to the whole Church.

II. A Survey of H...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• List of Abbreviations
• Preface
• Chapter 1: A History of Research
• Chapter 2: The Literary Function of Jesus’ Inaugural Sermon
• Chapter 3: The Literary Function of Peter’s Inaugural Sermon
• Chapter 4: Paul’s Inaugural Sermon to the Jews in Antioch of Pisidia in Acts 13:16–41
• Chapter 5: The Significance of Paul’s Inaugural Sermon for Understanding His Ministry to Israel
• Chapter 6: Conclusion
• Bibliography