Source: “Paul: The Pagan’s Apostle”, by Paula Fredriksen, 2017.
Paul Mission And Persecution.wav
This podcast explores the complexities of Paul's mission and the early Christian movement within its Greco-Roman context, emphasizing the differences between Paul's own letters and the account in Acts of the Apostles. It critically examines the historical arguments for Jewish missions to gentiles, arguing that such widespread proselytizing was unlikely and that the "persecution" Paul experienced was often due to the social disruption caused by gentile Christ-followers abandoning their ancestral gods. The podcast highlights how Paul's "eschatological gentiles"—pagans who exclusively worshipped the God of Israel without fully converting to Judaism—posed a unique challenge to both Jewish and pagan communities, leading to divine and human opposition. Ultimately, it posits that the primary tension arose from the early Christian demand for exclusive worship of Israel's God by gentiles, which risked alienating pagan deities and disrupting societal harmony.
Topic 1: Paul's Identity and the Reliability of Sources Understanding Paul's life and mission is complex due to the nature of the available historical sources. Paul's own letters, such as 1 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Philemon, Galatians, and Romans, are considered the primary and most reliable means to reconstruct his historical actions and theological views. These letters are genuine communications addressing specific issues within particular communities, offering a direct, albeit partial, glimpse into his half of an ongoing dialogue. In contrast, the Acts of the Apostles, written by Luke, presents a more narrative history of Paul. However, there are notable discrepancies between Acts and Paul's letters. For instance, Acts mentions Paul's Hebrew name ("Saul"), his home city (Tarsus), his Roman citizenship, and his practice of preaching in synagogues—details not found in his own correspondence. Furthermore, Acts describes Paul's initial encounter with the risen Christ as an auditory epiphany with blindness, while Paul himself emphasizes seeing the risen Christ. These differences lead to questions about how much historical material Luke had and how much of Acts might be his own invention or derived from evolving traditions. While some aspects of Acts may be historically reliable, Paul's own letters are given priority for a quest for the historical apostle. Paul's background triangulated between fellow Jews, proximate pagans, and pagan gods, reflecting his textual homeland in Jewish scriptures in Greek and his social homeland in the multiethnic Greco-Roman city, with Jerusalem being a significant exception to this urban mix of gods and humans due to its overwhelmingly Jewish population.
Topic 2: The Character and Interpretation Challenges of Paul's Letters Paul's writings are not systematic theological treatises but authentic letters, written in the style common to the Greco-Roman world of his time. This means they were occasioned by specific incidents, issues, and problems within particular communities, with much of their original context now lost. Interpreting these letters requires careful attention to the specific questions Paul was responding to, such as concerns about the deaths of believers or correct sexual relations, which often provide more reliable footing. However, when Paul engages in heated arguments against unnamed opponents, distilling their positions from his impassioned rhetoric becomes a significant challenge. The antiquity of these letters further complicates interpretation; they were dictated to scribes in the mid-first century, and no original manuscripts survive. Early Greek texts lacked word breaks and punctuation, which were later additions, meaning that even basic sentence structure depends on interpretive decisions. Moreover, widespread copying and circulation over centuries introduced accidental and sometimes deliberate changes, leading to numerous textual variants and uncertainty about Paul's original phrasing. Some scholarly views suggest that certain current texts, like Philippians and 2 Corinthians, might even be redactions of multiple letters. Finally, Paul's letters employ Greco-Roman rhetorical conventions, including diatribe (illustrative argument) and prosopopeia ("speech in character"). Understanding these rhetorical techniques, particularly the adversarial nature of ancient rhetoric which aimed for persuasion rather than accurate depiction of an opposing side, is crucial when weighing Paul's complaints about his apostolic competitors.
Topic 3: Ancient Concepts of Jewishness and Pagan "Conversion" The process of a pagan "becoming" a Jew in antiquity was complex and multifaceted, challenging modern notions of conversion. Ethnicity in antiquity was often seen as essential ("by nature"), making a transition from pagan to Jew conceptually difficult for some. Within Jewish tradition, there were divergent views on whether a pagan could truly become a Jew. Some, like the Qumran community, held a stringent sectarian view, arguing that certain statuses like priest or Levite were inherited, and similarly, one could not simply "become" a Jew. This perspective even extended to discouraging marriage between priests and lay Israelites or with gerim (foreigners attached to Israel), who were seen as forever outsiders despite later rabbinic views considering them "Israelite in all ways." For male pagans, circumcision was widely recognized by Jewish, pagan, and Christian writers as the premier mark of both a native Jew and an "ex-pagan new Jew." It signified not just a physical act but a commitment to Jewish law and customs. However, even within Jewish communities, there was latitude on this issue, as seen in Philo's debate with Alexandrian allegorizers who believed physical circumcision was merely a symbol pointing to a higher, spiritual meaning. For pagan women, marriage to a Jewish husband was a common pathway to entering the people of Israel, aligning with larger social conventions where wives adopted their husbands' household gods. Despite varying internal Jewish views, the male pagan's circumcision combined with an exclusive commitment to Israel's God was most conspicuous to pagan observers and often drew hostile comments, who viewed it as disloyalty to family, ancestral customs, and native gods.
Topic 4: The Debate on Organized Jewish Missionary Efforts The question of whether ancient Jews actively sponsored missions to convert pagans into Jews has been a subject of scholarly debate. Some scholars have argued for such missions based on speculative population surges of Jews in antiquity, the abundance of Hellenistic Jewish literature in Greek (presumed to be apologetic aimed at pagans), and the ferocity of later Christian anti-Jewish rhetoric (interpreted as evidence of intense missionary competition). However, these arguments face significant critiques. The population figures are highly uncertain and not supported by sufficient demographic data. Hellenistic Jewish literature, while expressing Jewish excellence and pride, was likely primarily consumed by other Greek-speaking Jews themselves. The intense Christian invective against Jews in later centuries is better explained as stemming from intra-Christian diversity and competition for "ownership" of Jewish scriptures and the title "Israel," rather than direct missionary rivalry with Judaism. Importantly, there is a distinct lack of internal Jewish evidence for organized missions; no specific Jewish missionaries are named, nor are there reckonings of missionary procedures or rabbinic prescriptions for such practices. Instead, pagan interest in Judaism appears to have been the result of individual, freelance efforts or incidental contact within diaspora synagogue communities, rather than a systematic, empire-wide organized effort. The text concludes that the theory of competitive marketing of rival Jewish/Christian missions is implausible and unnecessary to explain the long-lived anti-Jewish rhetoric.
Topic 5: The Distinction Between Eschatological Gentiles and Converts A crucial distinction in understanding the inclusion of non-Jews in the divine plan is between "eschatological gentiles" and "converts" to Judaism. Jewish apocalyptic traditions, found in prophetic texts and intertestamental writings, anticipated that at the End of the Age, the nations would "turn" from their native gods and exclusively commit to the God of Israel. This "turning" (epistrephō in Greek, often mistranslated as "convert") did not imply that they would become Jews by adopting Jewish ancestral practices like circumcision, food laws, or Sabbath observance. Rather, these "ex-pagan pagans" or "eschatological gentiles" would retain their native ethnicities but would worship exclusively the God of Israel, acknowledging their idols as non-gods. They would be included in Israel's redemption as gentiles, not as individuals who had transmuted into Jews. This contrasts with the quotidian reality of proselytes, who did assume a significant number of Jewish ancestral practices to become fully Jewish. Paul's writings, particularly Romans, align with this eschatological inclusion, emphasizing that the nations glorify God and hope in Christ while remaining distinct from Israel. This understanding challenges the modern argument that ancient Jews engaged in missions to "convert" pagans, as the End-time vision suggests God himself would address the "gentile problem," and even then, gentiles would remain distinct.
Topic 6: A Broader Understanding of Paul's "Persecution" Paul's accounts of "persecution," both his own past actions as a persecutor and his later experiences as one persecuted, extend beyond purely intra-Jewish disciplinary actions or theological disputes. While some scholars have attributed his past persecution of the early Jesus movement to the offensive message of a crucified messiah (seen as "cursed by the Law") or to the "lax observance" of itinerant apostles associating with uncircumcised gentiles, the text argues against these interpretations. The idea that a crucified man was automatically "cursed of God" is presented as a Pauline rhetorical construct rather than a standing Jewish view. Furthermore, the presence of uncircumcised gentiles in diaspora synagogues was not inherently problematic, as pagans had long participated in synagogue life. Jewish communities in the Diaspora exhibited wide variability in practice, making "lax observance" an unlikely, actionable offense for disciplinary flogging. Paul's lists of sufferings in 2 Corinthians go beyond synagogue harassment, including beatings with rods (a Roman punishment), stoning by crowds, dangers from pagan robbers, and impediments from cosmic forces. This suggests that Paul's "persecution" encompassed a wider array of hostile agents, both human (Jews, Roman officials, pagan crowds) and divine (lower cosmic gods). The real reasons for both Paul's past persecution and his later suffering must account for this diverse set of "persecutors."
Topic 7: The Hostility of Pagan Gods and Its Societal Impact A critical element in understanding the "persecution" experienced by Paul and early Christ-following gentiles is the concept of divine anger from pagan gods. In Paul's worldview, these "lower deities," referred to as "rulers of this age" or "demons," were actively hostile, having crucified the son of Paul's God and now afflicting Paul and his communities. The non-negotiable requirement of the early Jesus movement was that interested pagans absolutely cease their traditional worship and make an exclusive commitment to the God of Israel. This abandonment of ancestral cults was seen as a direct affront to the pagan gods. In ancient society, where gods were believed to be intimately connected to families and cities, ceasing to honor them risked alienating heaven and thereby endangering the commonweal. Divine wrath was feared to manifest as natural disasters (earthquake, flood, famine) or diseases, posing a direct threat to civic stability. Unlike Judaism, which was an ancient and ancestral cult and thus largely tolerated, the new Christian movement, lacking such established credentials, produced "deviant pagans" in the eyes of the majority culture. These deviant pagans, by refusing to honor their traditional gods, were perceived as jeopardizing the crucial balance and security provided by the pax deorum (peace of the gods), leading to uncoordinated local initiatives and occasional imperial attempts to coerce their cultic conformity. This fear of alienating the gods motivated pagan persecutions of early Christians, as they were seen as posing a tangible risk to their cities and families.
Topic 8: The Early Jesus Movement's Unique Gentile Policy The early Jesus movement developed an "improvised gentile policy" as it expanded beyond Jewish villages and into the Diaspora, where it unexpectedly encountered pagan god-fearers in synagogues. Unlike traditional Jewish proselytization, which often involved circumcision for males, the apostles set a higher bar for gentile involvement in the ekklesia (assembly): male pagans joining could no longer sacrifice to their own gods. They were required to make an exclusive commitment to Israel's God alone and shun all forms of idol worship, reflecting Paul's exhortations to his gentile communities. This policy was deeply informed by Jewish apocalyptic traditions, which envisioned the nations "turning" from idols to the God of Israel at the End of Time without necessarily "converting" to Judaism. The positive response from pagan sympathizers, particularly their pneumatic behavior, served as a profound confirmation of the apostles' eschatological convictions, reinforcing their belief that the Kingdom was truly at hand. This "gentile policy" was affirmed by key leaders like James, Peter, and John in Jerusalem, becoming operative even in gentile assemblies founded independently of Paul. The demand for absolute cessation of traditional pagan worship, based on this eschatological expectation, distinguished the Jesus movement's approach to gentiles from the more tolerant "god-fearing" practices within diaspora synagogues.
Topic 9: Social and Political Consequences of Gentile Inclusion in the Early Movement The early Jesus movement's policy of integrating gentiles had significant social and political ramifications, particularly for the Jewish communities in the Diaspora. By not requiring complete ethnic affiliation with Judaism via circumcision, but simultaneously insisting on the complete renunciation of native pagan cults, the early apostles led Christ-fearing pagans into a "social and religious no-man's land." This created anxiety among the pagan majority because, from their perspective, these gentile Christians were deviants who risked disrupting the delicate balance between heaven and earth necessary for civic well-being. Ancestral obligation and public acts of worship were paramount, not private beliefs. This deviance was socially disruptive not only for the city but also for the Christ-following pagans themselves, as the movement initially lacked the respectability of antiquity and ancestry that Judaism possessed. Furthermore, this approach posed a risk to the security of Jewish communities in diaspora cities. Their safety depended on not interfering with the civic and religious life of the gentile majority. When itinerant Jewish apostles succeeded in drawing pagans away from their ancestral practices towards an exclusive commitment to Israel's God, it was perceived as a destabilizing and inflammatory message. This could lead to local anxieties and resentments targeting the entire Jewish urban community, as evidenced by casualty figures in mixed cities during revolts. Roman magistrates also viewed such activities as interference, leading to punishments for apostles like Paul.
Topic 10: The Delay of the Kingdom and the Expanded Mission The initial motivation for Jesus's teaching and his disciples' activities was an intense expectation of the imminent arrival of God's Kingdom. The post-resurrection appearances of Christ further reconfirmed this conviction, as the resurrection of the dead and the vindication of the righteous—two prime promises of the messianic age—were believed to have been realized in Jesus. However, as time passed and the definitive arrival of the Kingdom did not materialize, the early Jesus-followers had to account for this delay. Paul, writing mid-century, explained the delay in terms of turning pagans to the gospel, believing that only once their "full number" came in would the final events unfold. Later, Mark offered another explanation, constructing a two-generation timeframe and interpreting the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem temple as a sign indicating the nearness of Jesus's second coming. To address the perceived delay and continue Jesus's preparatory work, the original community in Jerusalem, sustained by spiritual empowerment, burst into energetic activity. They expanded their mission beyond Galilee and Judea into the Jewish communities of the Diaspora, proclaiming the good news. In these mixed cities and diaspora synagogues, they unexpectedly encountered a significant pagan presence. The positive response from these pagan sympathizers, who committed exclusively to Israel's God, further confirmed the apostles' eschatological convictions, validating their belief that the Kingdom was indeed at hand and driving the expansion of the movement.