Debbie Watson on Paul's collections for Jerusalem

I've just finished reading Watson, Deborah Elaine (2006) Paul's collection in light of motivations and mechanisms for aid to the poor in the first-century world, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Thesis Online, here.

While benefaction was common in the Graeco-Roman world, it was not given to the poor, but to those who were able to reciprocate in some way. Watson states that concern for the poor "seems to have been largely absent from the Graeco-Roman world" (p12). In contrast she shows, from a wide range of documents, that the obligation to help the poor was a central feature of the Jewish faith. She then argues that the early Christians inherited this Jewish concern for the poor (I am inclined to think that they went even further than the (other) Jews).  She concludes "this thesis has demonstrated the importance of aid to the poor as central to Jewish and Christian identity, and uncovered the surprising neglect of this crucial aspect of Jewish identity in the scholarly material" (p185).

In Gal 2:10 Paul writes, "They asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do." Many suppose that the Jerusalem apostles were here placing an obligation on Paul, asking him to collect money as a condition for their acceptance of the gentile churches. Watson, however, rejects this interpretation (rightly, I think). She also (rightly) rejects any link between Gal 2:10 and Paul's collection of money from Macedonia and Achaia. Instead she says that "Gal 2:10 functioned more as a reminder to Paul to continue to convey to his church members this central aspect of the godly life about which Gentiles who came into the church without first having come through the synagogue likely would have been ignorant". Here I would wish to question Watson's assumption that the Gentiles in the church had not attended synagogue. However, Watson is right that when the apostles said "remember the poor" they were not making a deal with Paul, but were simply reminding him about this important aspect of the Christian faith.

Watson gives abundant evidence that sabbatical years were observed in the first century and caused real hardship for the poor. One such year was in 48/49 C.E., and followed a famine (Acts 11:27-30). My own view is that Paul and Titus organized the collection from (south) Galatia at that time (though not as part of any deal with the Jerusalem apostles).

Watson shows that money was transported in the form of coins and it had to be accompanied by guards. The party of 8 mentioned in Acts 20:4 would have had this security role.

It is unfortunate that Watson does not speculate on how the Roman authorities might have responded to Paul's Aegean collection, if they had learned about it. If, as Watson argues, the Romans would have found the concept of aid for the poor baffling, is it not likely that they would have been suspicious of Paul's collection, or even considered it subversive? Would they not have banned it, just as Flaccus forbade the delivery of the temple tax from Asia (p140)? Watson shows that aid to the poor was foreign to Graeco-Roman culture, and it seems to me that this makes it more likely that Paul's collection was of questionable legality. This, in turn, supports the view that the plot of the Jews of Acts 20:3 was an attempt to get the Romans to prevent the delivery of the collection (see here). The questionable legality of the collection can also explain why Luke does not mention it (to avoid getting his readers into trouble).

Fulton on the role of co-senders in Paul's letters.

Karen Fulton's PhD thesis, "The Phenomenon of Co-Senders in Ancient Greek Letters and the Pauline Epistles", is now available online for free. She examines 87 letters with co-senders and this is the most thorough study of co-senders so far produced and it deserves to be read widely. In particular, she corrects some common misconceptions about the role of co-senders and about the rarity of the phenomenon. Here I give her conclusions and expand on some of the implications.

 How common was it to include co-senders?
While Fulton recognizes that "Paul had a preference for including others as co-senders" (p229), she shows that the phenomenon was much more common than many suppose. She finds that about 20% of ancient letters had co-senders. Official letters, in particular, frequently had co-senders (p152).

The role of co-senders

Fulton corrects a lot of misinformation about the purpose of including co-senders. They were neither letter-carriers (p212-4), nor secretaries (p214-6). They were not generally co-authors either (p216-9). So what role did they play? Fulton concludes: "Rather, it would seem that those named in the letter prescript as the senders of the letter are those who take responsibility for the contents of the letter." (p218). 

She finds that Paul's co-senders were no exceptions:

"His co-senders joined him in taking responsibility for the letter and would be perceived by the recipients as being in agreement with its contents." (p229)

It is therefore not surprising that, when Paul writes to a church, he includes as co-senders those who had helped him establish that church. Timothy and Silvanus, naturally had authority in the communities that they helped to found, so their endorsement of Paul's letters carried weight. Thus Fulton writes:

"In selecting co-senders Paul generally selected someone who not only worked alongside him but was also known to the recipients and involved in founding the church."(p181)

Similarly she writes:

"From the viewpoint of the recipients of the letters, the co-senders, like Paul, were part of the team who founded the community." (p174)

But then she says, without evidence, that "Sosthenes may be in a different category" (p174). This seems to me to be special pleading. Acts 18:8 reads:

"Crispus, the official of the synagogue, became a believer in the Lord, together with all his household, and many of the Corinthians who heard become believers and were baptized."

It seems to me that Crispus-Sosthenes was a co-founder of the Corinthian church, in that many Corinthians followed his lead. His founding role also explains why he was given the name "Sosthenes" (saving strength), and why he was beaten (Acts 18:17), and why Paul chose him as his co-sender. Crispus was just the kind of person whose endorsement Paul would want for his letter to Corinth. Fulton's observations about the role of co-senders therefore supports the view that Sosthenes was Crispus renamed.

Timothy is Paul's co-sender in every letter except Galatians, Romans, and 1 Corinthians. These exceptions are explicable since Timothy did not help to found the churches of either Galatia or Rome, and he was already on his way to Corinth when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians. It is significant that, in the other letters, Paul consistently seeks Timothy's endorsement. This, along with texts such as 1 Thess 3:2 and 2 Cor 1:19, demonstrates that Timothy had more authority than the Pastoral Epistles suggest (e.g 1 Tim 4:12).

It seems to me that Paul's choice of co-senders confirms that churches generally respected their founders because they were their founders. This, in turn, supports my hypothesis that the agitators in Galatia were appealing to Paul's (not Jerusalem's) authority, saying that Paul had yielded to their view that circumcision was necessary.

The use of first person singular and plural

Fulton finds that epistolary plurals are rare. She also observes that Paul uses the singular (I, me) more often than other letters that have co-senders.

Letter endings.

The closing of a letter, where the author (or one of the authors) writes in his own hand is called the "subscription" or "autograph". Fulton writes,

"In all of the extant Pauline letters the autographs are generally attributed to Paul alone, even when the letter is from Paul and others. ... this deduction seems reasonable"(p202)

This raises the question of whether Paul's co-senders would have been held responsible for the contents of the autographs. Did the readers assume that the co-senders endorsed the body of the letter, but that the author alone was responsible for the autograph? If so, Paul may have reserved his severest rebukes for his autographs in 2 Corinthians and Philippians so as not to jeopardize the relationship between Timothy and the churches. See here.

The role of letter carriers

Fulton suggests that letter carriers could pass on information that could not be safely put in writing:

"more 'sensitive' matters were dealt with by verbal messages rather than by written messages which could be intercepted." (p130)

Name order (p159-60)

In the new testament people are invariably listed in descending order of their importance (to the context). Likewise, Fulton concludes that, from the letters that she has examined, co-senders are generally named in hierarchical order. She finds 7 letters that name a female as well as a male co-sender, in only one of these cases is the female mentioned first.

Stephen Carlson on Gal 2:12, and the Antioch/Sydney incident

Stephen Carlson has generously made his dissertation available online, here. On pages 162-4 he discusses the textual variants in Gal 2:12, building on his 2006 blog post. He shows that, instead of  ἦλθον (they came), Paul wrote ἦλθεν (he came), which is witnessed by most of the best manuscripts. This is an immensely important finding and gives us the following text for Gal 2:11-12.

11 But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned; 12 for before certain people came from James, he used to heat with Gentiles. But when he came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction.

11 Ὅτε δὲ ἦλθεν Κηφᾶς εἰς Ἀντιόχειαν, κατὰ πρόσωπον αὐτῷ ἀντέστην, ὅτι κατεγνωσμένος ἦν. 12 πρὸ τοῦ γὰρ ἐλθεῖν τινας ἀπὸ Ἰακώβου μετὰ τῶν ἐθνῶν συνήσθιεν: ὅτε δὲ ἦλθεν, ὑπέστελλεν καὶ ἀφώριζεν ἑαυτὸν, φοβούμενος τοὺς ἐκ περιτομῆς.

Carlson writes,

Paul’s account of the Antioch incident begins with a statement that when Cephas came (ὅτε δὲ ἦλθεν Κηφᾶς) to Antioch, he confronted him.  After giving background information in v.12a that Cephas used to eat with gentiles before the coming of people from James, Paul restarts the account by repeating the triggering phrase ὅτε δὲ ἦλθεν in v.12.  On this reading, only the arrival of Cephas triggered the incident, which is what Paul claimed in v.11.  With the ἦλθον reading, on the other hand, there are two separate triggering events for the Antioch incident.  

On any hypothesis, Paul first mentions the dispute with Cephas (2:11) and then mentions Cephas's earlier practice of eating with Gentiles (2:12a). At first sight this time jump seems unnecessary. Why did Paul not place the events in chronological order? Well, the text is explicable if Cephas's practice of eating with Gentiles was before Paul's Jerusalem visit of Gal 2:1-10. That fact gave Paul no choice but to skip back in time. Paul therefore wrote Gal 2:1-10 and Gal 2:11 in their correct chronological sequence, then went back in time to give the background information about Cephas's earlier practice in Gal 2:12a, and then resumed his chronological sequence in Gal 2:12b. He indicates that he is resuming his chronological sequence by repeating the phrase, ὅτε δὲ ἦλθεν. Cephas presumably visited Antioch twice and ate with Gentiles on his first visit, but not on this second. This confirms the ἦλθεν reading and gives us the following sequence of events:

1. Cephas visited Antioch and ate with Gentiles (Gal 2:12).
2. Some men from James arrived in Antioch (Gal 2:12; Acts 15:1).
3. Paul, Barnabas, and Titus went to Jerusalem (Gal 2:1, Acts 15:2-3) and met with James, Cephas and John (Gal 2:1-10), and (then) with a larger assembly (Acts 15:4-29).
4. Paul and Barnabas returned to Antioch (Acts 15:30-35).
5. Peter made a second visit to Antioch and did not eat with Gentiles (Gal 2:11, 12b)

It can be seen that the men from James of Gal 2:12 can be equated with the men from Judea of Acts 15:1. Now, Acts 15:24 suggests that James and the elders had sent these men, but had not approved their message. We therefore have no solid evidence that James opposed the inclusion of Gentiles. Placing Gal 2:1-10 after Peter's meals with Gentiles has the further advantage of explaining why Peter changed his policy. Paul had graciously agreed to take over Peter's tasks among the Gentiles, allowing Peter to focus exclusively on the Jews (Gal 2:7-9), so it was subsequently expedient for Peter to eat with Jews.

Carlson concludes that, "Instead of being intimidated at Antioch into changing his mind, Cephas came to Antioch with no intention of eating with the gentiles." I fear that Carlson has gone beyond the evidence here. Cephas could have decided not to eat with gentiles after finding members of the circumcision faction in Antioch. Perhaps the men from James stayed in Antioch while Paul visited Jerusalem, and perhaps they were still in Antioch when Cephas came back.

I have argued at length that the background to Galatians is as follows.

1. James and the elders wrote a decree, saying that Gentile believers did not need to be circumcised.

2. Paul visited (south) Galatia and delivered the decree, but circumcised Timothy, a Gentile.

3. Paul left Galatia.

4. Some agitators in Galatia debated with the Galatian believers:

Agitators:  You should be circumcised because the scriptures require it. Paul knows this and that is why he circumcised Timothy with the intention of preaching circumcision in his new mission fields. 

Galatians:  But Paul told us that circumcision was not necessary.

Agitators:  He does not really believe that. He delivered the decree out of loyalty to the Jerusalem church leaders (who are not experts in the scriptures). He preaches against circumcision to you because your territory comes under the jurisdiction of the Jerusalem church.

This ties in nicely with the  ἦλθεν reading of 2:12, which exonerates James. This dramatically changes our understanding of why Paul brings up the Antioch incident. It is usually supposed that Paul is here trying to discredit Cephas. However, on my hypothesis, Gal 2:11-14 serves to show the Galatians that Paul's support for Gentile liberty was genuine and not just motivated by a desire to please Cephas and the other Jerusalem church leaders. To illustrate this I will quote the "Sydney incident", which is part of an account of someone's experience in the Australian army:

One evening my section was on a boys night out on the town in Sydney, doing bit of a pub crawl. I was not a heavy drinker, so I was the only sober one in the group by 9. 00 p.m. In one of our excursions across a park, several of us walked passed a couple of gay men innocuously holding hands as they strolled through the park. As they walked by, however, one of my group (the highest ranked member in fact) began yelling all sorts of hateful things interspersed with vicious expletives at them. He pushed his way over towards them as the couple quickly hurried their pace. Sensing the potential for fruitless violence at two innocent citizens, I grabbed my superior (and let it be known that this guy was built like Sylvester Stallone in his 80s physique) and dragged him back towards the group

Now, why did the author write this? At first sight it might appear that his purpose was to show that the Australian army contains drunken homophobes, even among the higher ranks. However, the original readers of this piece, which was written by a famous biblioblogger, knew the background: the blogger had been accused of bigotry and was writing to have us believe that he was not homophobic. This piece is not about the Australian army at all. It is about the blogger himself. In the parentheses he slips in the key pieces of information that he wants us to know: he had courageously been the first to take a stand against homophobia by taking on a man who was his superior officer and was aggressive and built like Sylvester Stallone. The emphasis in this story is on the commitment of the author.

Similarly, Paul illustrates his own commitment to Gentile liberty by bringing up the Antioch incident. He slips in the facts that he had taken on Peter, a high ranking apostle, and had opposed him to his face. He lets the readers know that he had been the only one to take a stand and had opposed Peter in the presence of all. All this is written with the sole purpose of demonstrating the genuineness of his commitment to Gentile liberty. He later reinforces the point by pointing to his persecutions (Gal 5:11) and wounds (Gal 6:17). Both the blogger and Paul have had their commitment questioned, and both respond by pointing to the physical risks that they took and the fact that they had taken a solitary stand on the issue in question and had done so against an authority figure.

Preference for praenomina in the New Testament

This is, I think, the first study of the conventions governing the use of Latin first names (praenomina) in the New Testament. I will show that believers, and especially gracious hosts, in the New Testament tended to be called by their praenomina.

Following  E.A. Judge , I suggest that Roman citizens were often selected to be church envoys in the NT because of the protection that their Roman status gave them for this dangerous work. This explains the very high proportion of Latin names, particularly among Paul's close companions. In the New Testament we have about 53 male believers who had Greek names and 27 with Latin names. In the first century male Roman citizens held three names: a praenomen, nomen, and cognomen. What seems to have gone unnoticed is that out of the 27 men with Latin names, about 30% are named with a praenomen. This is a very high proportion, even allowing for the possibility that some of the Greek names were also cognomina. Eleanor Dickey (1) reports that when Romans were named by a single name, the praenomen was used only 6% of the time. The praenomina in the NT are

1. Gaius (1 Cor 1:14; Rom 16:23)
2. Gaius (3 John 1)
3. Mark (Acts 12:12, 25; 13:5, 13; 15:37, 39), who seems to be in view in Col 4:10 also.
4. Mark (Philemon 24), whom I take to be different from the Mark of Acts.
5. Lucius (Acts 13:1), whom I take to be the same person as the Lucius of Rom 16:21 and the Luke of Philemon 24 (and Col 4:14).
6. Titus (Gal 2:1,3; 2 Cor 2:13; 7:6, 13, 14; 8:6, 16, 23; 12:18; 2 Tim 4:10; Tit 1:4).
7. Gaius (Acts 20:4)
8. Gaius (Acts 19:29)

Others will find more Lukes and fewer Marks, but will arrive at a similar total number of people. The only (presumed) non-believer who is given a Latin praenomen is:
9. Publius (Acts 28:7-8), who hosted Paul and his companions in Malta.

Why are these men named using praenomina? Can it be explained by the contexts in which they are mentioned, and the social ethos of the early church?

As is widely agreed, praenomina were used primarily by family members and intimate friends (2). Since the early Christians were a close-knit group and considered each other to be "family" (consider the fictive kinship language of e.g. Mark 3:34), we should not be surprised that they often used praenomina. Romans preferred to use their nomina and cognomina in public because a praenomen alone did not necessarily display their citizen status. It is sometimes inferred from this that the NT praenomina were held by non-citizens. Bauckham writes, "Those whose Latin name is merely a common Latin praenomen (Marcus, Lucius) were certainly not Roman citizens" (3). For a similar view see Judge p111. However, not everyone was keen to display his high status (4) and it is particularly doubtful that Christians were so snobby about their Roman citizenship. Paul, at least, seems to have been reluctant to display his citizenship (Acts 16:37-39; 22:25-28). Since, in Christ, there was no "slave or free" (Gal 3:28), it would not seem right for citizen believers to laud it over the others by flaunting their nomina and cognomina. The praenomen had the advantage of being more humble. The humility of early Christian naming conventions is shown by three observations:
1) The authors of the gospels and Acts and Hebrews avoid naming themselves at all, as does Paul in 2 Cor 12:2-5.
2) Hypocoristic name forms are common in the New Testament (see appendix 1).
3) Paul himself probably chose his name, which means "small", out of humility (see here).

Let us now examine the data on individual holders of Latin praenomina in the NT to see whether they were Roman citizens and why their praenomina are used.

Publius of Malta
Publius (Acts 28:7-8) was the leading man of Malta so he was undoubtedly a Roman citizen. Commentators have puzzled over why Luke uses his praenomen instead of nomen or cognomen. The explanation can be found, I think, in his relationship to the author of Acts. He "entertained us hospitably for three days" and Paul visited his sick father (presumably in his house) and cured him. Luke is saying that Publius was a gracious host. The use of his praenomen in this passage serves to reinforce the point that Publius had treated Paul and Luke as intimate friends. Publius might well have invited Paul and Luke to use his first name, especially after they cured his father.

Gaius of Corinth
Just as Luke uses the praenomen of his host in Malta; in the same way Paul uses the praenomen of his host in Corinth (1 Cor 1:14; Rom 16:23). Some or perhaps all of those whom Paul greets in Rom 16:3-15 had travelled (returned) to Rome from the east and Gaius may have hosted them during their journey to Rome. In any case, he hosted Paul and the whole Corinthian church. His house must have been large so it is likely that he was a Roman citizen or freedman, rather than a Greek who had only the one name. The use of his praenomen here suggests that he treated his guests as intimate friends or family members. Rather than lording it over them, he encouraged them to use his praenomen. Now, it seems to me that the kind of man who would allow people to know him by his praenomen would not be the kind of person who would have been comfortable with the fact that high status believers humiliated low status believers in his house. This suggests that Gaius was not complicit in the problems that arose in the church meetings (1 Cor 11:17-33). He must, therefore, have been ineffective in asserting his authority as host over the arrogant Corinthian believers. This neatly explains why Paul must urge the Corinthians to show the household of Gaius Titius Justus Stephanas (who was one man) "a little respect" in 1 Cor 16:15-18.

Gaius of 3 John
Gaius is urged to support traveling Christians (3 John 5-8) so he was probably wealthy and likely a Roman citizen. The author writes:

The elder to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth.

The use of the praenomen is not surprising because the author and Gaius were intimate friends and the author may have wanted to emphasize their closeness in order to more effectively influence his friend. Dickey (p65) mentions that praenomina could sometimes be used when making requests.

John-Mark
Acts 12:12-13 tells us that "many had gathered" in the house of Mary, who had a servant and an outer gateway and was the mother of John-Mark. If Col 4:10 is correct, he was a cousin of Barnabas, who was a benefactor (Acts 4:36-37). Both sources therefore suggest that he was from a wealthy family, and this makes it more likely that he was a Roman citizen. Williams (5) points out that the name "Mark" was often held by Jews who were Roman citizens and only in Cyrenaica was it held by non-citizen Jews. In any case he was surely given the name "Mark" at birth. The common assumption that he took that name only when he became a missionary is untenable since the name had nothing to recommend it. The name "Mark" has no appropriate meaning and nor is it a close homophone of "John". Nor is it likely that a Jerusalem Jew, who was not already a Roman citizen, would associate himself with the Roman administration by choosing a Latin name. All the other double names in the NT make better sense (Saul-Paul, Silas-Silvanus, Simon-Peter, Jesus-Justus, Joseph-Barnabas etc.).

The others
In previous blog posts I have discussed the Mark of Philemon 24, Lucius/Luke, and Titus-Timothy. These, along with the Gaius of Macedonia (Acts 19:29) and Gaius of Derbe (Acts 20:4) and John-Mark, were probably all travelers. The Mark of Philemon 24 and Lucius (Rom 16:21), you see, send greetings because they had met (many of) the addressees on their travels. Excluding those with purely Semitic names, about 40% of those who travelled on church business in the New Testament had Greek names, about 30% had Latin praenomina, and about 30% had either a nomen or a Latin cognomen. Why do so many of Paul's travel companions have Latin praenomina? A very low percentage of non-Romans were called by a praenomen (See appendix 2), so it is likely that many of these men were freeborn citizens (or freedmen). Presumably believers who were Roman citizens travelled more than those who were not, because they could afford it and because their citizenship gave them protection.

Given that about 60% of Roman citizens were called either Lucius, Gaius, or Marcus, great confusion would have been created if the use of praenomina had become universal among the Christians. The use of praenomina, while it seems to have been favored, would then be self-limiting.

I am grateful for the feedback that I received from E.A. Judge on these issues. My thinking also owes much to Larry Welborn (An End to Enmity p298-9), who suggests that Gaius of Corinth is called by his praenomen out of humility, but he oddly ascribes this humility to Paul rather than to Gaius.

Appendix 1: Hypocoristic names in Acts-Revelation

Here are the diminutive forms and their probable formal equivalents.

Priscilla (Acts 18:2, 18, 26); Prisca (1 Cor 16:19; Rom 16:3; 2 Tim 4:19)

Sopater (Acts 20:4); Sosipater (Rom 16:21)

Apollos (Acts 18:24; 19:1; 1 Cor 1:12; 3:4, 5, 6, 22; 4:6; 16:12; Tit 3:13); Apollonios

Stephanas? (1 Cor 1:16; 16:15, 17)

Epaphras (Philemon 23; Col 4:12); Epaphroditus (Phil 2:25)

Demas (Philemon 24; Col 4:14); Demetrios (Acts 19:24, 38)

Lukas (Philemon 24; Col 4:14); Lucius (Acts 13:1; Rom 16:21)

Patrobas (Rom 16:14); Patrobios?

Olympas (Rom 16:15); Olympiodoros

Hermas (Rom 16:14); Hermogenes (2 Tim 1:15)

Zenas (Tit 3:13); Zenodotos

Artemas (Tit 3:12); Artemidoros

Antipas (Rev 2:13) Antipatros

Appendix 2: It was not common for non-citizens to hold a Latin Praenomen.
There were only about 15 praenomina in common use. Here is the list with their approximate frequencies:
Lucius 21%; Gaius 21%; Marcus, 16%; Quintus, 10%; Publius, 9%; Gnaeus 4%; Aulus 4%; Titus 3%; Sextus 2%; Manius, Numerius, Decimus, Servius, Tiberius, Spurius, each 1%. Of those recorded in the six volumes of the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, less than 1% held a Latin praenomen as his only recorded name, and some of these may have been citizens. The Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity Part III The Western Diaspora 330 BCE-650 CE gives the names of 810 male Jews who have Greek names, and 326 with Latin names. Of these 326 males, only 24 are known to us only by a praenomen, and 5 of these 24 are almost certainly Roman citizens. The Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity Part 1 Palestine 330 BCE-200 CE identifies 2509 male Jews, of which 71 have Latin names. Of these 71, only 9 possible non-citizens possess a Latin Praenomen. The index of Josephus contains not a single praenomen that was held by a non-citizen.

The above statistics may underestimate the occurrence of praenomina in the first century since the sources cover wider spans of time. Much more needs to be done to reconstruct the frequencies of the praenomina in question in the first century in the relevant regions among Romans and non-Romans. However, it does seem that it was not common for non-citizens to boast a Latin praenomen.

Update:
Following helpful comments from Richard Bauckham, I have assembled statistics for the first century.

		Christians in the New Testament	Probably first century men in Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity III	First century men in Lexicon of Greek Personal Names Vols 1-5
1	Number of men with Greek names	53	530	11068
2	Number of men with Latin names	27	100
3	Number of men recorded by Latin praenomen only	8	14	203
	Row 3 divided by row 1	15%	2.6%	1.8%
	Row 3 divided by row 2	30%	14%

It can be seen that, even in the first century, it was rare for men to hold a Latin praenomen as their only recorded name. The number of such men in our sources is only 2% of the number of men with Greek names. From this we should expect to have only one believer in the New Testament recorded by praenomen alone.

Notes on how these statistics were compiled:
The 14 men with praenomen alone in the LJNLAIII comprise 9 men from Cyrenaica who are dated, "Pre-117CE", 1 from Cyrenaica on a "pre-70CE" ossuary, 3 others from Cyrenaica who are definitely first century, and 1 from Egypt. I did not include a certain Lucius or his son Lucius because the father was likely a Roman citizen who had passed his praenomen to his son. Similarly I did not include Quintus or his son, Quintus.
For the LGPN the statistics are limited to those who are designated as certainly first century. I estimated the number of first century men with Greek names by counting those on pages 50, 100, 150, 200, etc. in each of the six volumes.


Notes
(1) Latin Forms of Address p56
(2) Adams writes, "The praenomen was the most intimate of the tria nomina. It was mainly used within the family and between close friends." (Conventions of Naming in Cicero, The Classical Quarterly XXVIII, p161).
Harold Axtell, Men's Names in the Writings of Circero, Classical Philology X 1915, p399, writes, "In cases other than that of direct address the praenomen is more freely used to indicate intimacy".
(3) Paul, Luke and the Graeco-Roman World, p204
(4) Concerning Asia, Kearsley finds evidence that men were not always keen to indicate their high status in Greek inscriptions and he suggests that this may mean that estimates of the number of Roman citizens may need to be increased. Greeks and Romans in imperial Asia: mixed language inscriptions and linguistic evidence for cultural interaction until the end of AD III, 2001. p150-1, brought to my attention by E.A. Judge.
(5)  Williams, "Palestinian Jewish Personal Names in Acts" in The Book of Acts in its First Century Setting Vol 4 p105

How Saul-Paul got his names

Here I argue that Saul-Paul received that name "Saul" only after he moved to Jerusalem and that he later took the name "Paul", which means "small", out of modesty.

His name "Saul"
Saul-Paul was born in Tarsus and moved to Jerusalem as a child (Acts 22:3). It is often assumed that he  held both names from birth. This is unlikely because the giving of double names at birth was relatively rare among diaspora Jews. Williams finds just 54 ancient diaspora Jews who held double names (1). These had no tendency to have names with a phonetic similarity to each other, but Palestinian Jews often took names that sounded similar to their Hebrew name (Silas-Silvanus, Joseph-Justus-Barsabbas, Barkosiba-Barkokhba, Abram-Abraham, Sarai-Sarah, Oshea-Joshua). The similarity in sound between "Saul" and "Paul" therefore suggests that this double name was not completed before Paul moved to Jerusalem. Also, Bauckham writes, "the name Saul is very rare among Diaspora Jews but relatively common in Palestine" (2). And for what it is worth, archaeology has found no Hebrew name in Tarsus.

It is much more likely that Saul received his name when (or after) he moved to Jerusalem. Saul, being a Roman citizen (Acts 22:28), will have had Latin names at birth but such names would not have served him well in Jerusalem. As Bauckham writes, "A Latin name would not imply culture, as a Greek name might, but alignment with Roman political rule. Few Palestinian Jews would have wanted a name that proclaimed allegiance to Rome."(3) Saul needed his Hebrew name to integrate into Judean society. Possible parallels may be found in inscriptions at Jaffa that refer to an Isaac of Tarsus and a Judah son of Joseph of Tarsus.

In any case, he belonged to the tribe of Benjamin (Phil 3:5) and was no doubt named after king Saul, the most famous member of that tribe (1 Sam 9:1-2).

His name "Paul"
The name "Paul" is introduced in Acts 13:6-10

When they had gone through the island as far as Paphos, they met a certain magician, a Jewish false prophet, named Bar-Jesus. He was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, an intelligent man, who summoned Barnabas and Saul and wanted to hear the word of God. But the magician Elymas (for that is the translation of his name) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul away from the faith. But Saul, also known as Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, "You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord?"

Bar-Jesus, like Saul, had a double name. As I explained in my last post, this false prophet had taken the name of Elam, the grandson of Noah. He, like Simon Magus, had probably become a follower of Jesus of sorts and had presumptuously taken the name "Bar-Jesus", which means "son of Jesus" or "disciple of Jesus". In any case, whether Bar-Jesus was a follower of Jesus or not, Paul will have thought that he did not live up to his name. In this passage Luke records Paul confronting Elymas's presumptuous name-taking by calling him "son of the devil". Paul is telling Bar-Jesus here, "you are not the son of Jesus, you are the son of the devil. Note that the ancients were much more attuned to the meaning of names than we are. The meaning of prophets' names was particularly important (consider the attention given in the New Testament to the names of Jesus and John the baptist, and the new names given to Barnabas, Barkokhba and other prophets).

It is often said that the name "Paul" is introduced here because Saul was moving from a Jewish mission field to a Gentile one. However, if that were the case we would expect the name "Paul" to have been introduced at Acts 13:7 or Acts 13:1 or even Acts 11:25 or Acts 11:30. The name "Paul" is introduced in Acts 13:9 when Paul is addressing a Jew, not a Gentile. I do not doubt that Paul used his Latin name when addressing Gentiles, but that is not why Luke introduces the name "Paul" here.

Rather, Luke introduces Saul's other name, Paul, in the context of this discussion of the presumptuous name-taking by Elymas/Bar-Jesus. The name Paul means small and Luke is surely here contrasting  this humble name-meaning with the arrogant names of the false prophet. Luke records Paul's criticism of the name "Bar-Jesus" and points out that Paul himself was satisfied with a name with a much more humble meaning.

While it is possible that Saul held the name Paul from birth, there are reasons to suppose that he took the name while he was a Christian, probably after meeting Sergius Paulus:

1. Paul's response to arrogant rivals is always to take the humbler part to show up their hubris. Consider  the "fools speech" in 2 Corinthians where he says, "I will boast of the things that show my weakness", and consider the way be points to his lowliness in 1 Cor 4:8-13 to counter those who were "puffed up". It is therefore possible that Saul took the humble name, "Paul", in response to the magician's arrogant names.

2. Humility was an integral part of Paul's identity. He writes:

"For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God." (1 Cor. 15:9)

Augustine, who was much closer than modern commentators to ancient naming conventions (4), realized that Paul took his name out of humility:

"Christ then by one word laid Saul low, and raised up Paul; that is, He laid low the proud, and raised up the humble. For what was the reason of his change of name, that whereas he was afore called Saul, he chose afterwards to be called Paul; but that he acknowledged in himself that the name of Saul when he was a persecutor, had been a name of pride? He chose therefore a humble name; to be called Paul, that is, the least. For Paul is, "the least." Paul is nothing else but little. And now glorying in this name, and giving us a lesson of humility, he says, "I am the least of the Apostles."" (Augustine sermon 27)

The name "Paul" therefore fits Paul's self-identity. There is other evidence of humility in self-reference in the New Testament:
a) the anonymity of the gospels, Acts, and Hebrews.
b) the frequent use of informal name-forms and praenomina. I hope to devote a future blog post to this phenomenon.

3. The name Saul represented his membership of the tribe of Benjamin, which he no longer valued (Phil 3:4-7). Saul and Luke were familiar with 1 Sam 9:1-2 (see Acts 13:21), from which he had been given the name Saul. These same verses (and 1 Sam 10:23) say that Saul "stood head and shoulders above  everyone else". The name Paul (small) could therefore have been a conscious rejection of what the name Saul represented. Saul (tall) became Paul (small). The phonetic similarity of the names also suggests a connection between them and demonstrates that they were probably not both given at birth (see above).

4. The name of the proconsul, Paul, could have given Saul the idea of taking the same name.

5. The name Paul, when used as a cognomen, was very distinguished. See E.A. Judge's paper here. When Greeks were granted Roman citizenship they retained their Greek name as their Roman cognomen. Colin Hemer notes here (p182) that "most of the Tarsian expatriates I have noted in the epigraphy, at Athens or elsewhere, bear Greek names in a Greek context". How, then, could the name Paul have come into Saul's family? Murphy O'Connor (p42) judges it "impossible" that such a distinguished name should be held by a Jew in Tarsus, where citizenship had been granted only a generation earlier. The problem is solved if we suppose that Paul was not his cognomen but rather an agnomen taken in adult life.

Counter-arguments
The name Paul is Latin, whereas most new names taken by Christians in the New Testament were Greek. However, as McDonough (5) points out, only a little Latin would be needed to understand the name. It's like someone taking the name "Petit".

There is a Jew called Paul in the 3rd century Aphrodisias inscription and another in the 4th century Sardis inscription. These Pauls are sometimes taken as evidence that the name Paul was commonly  used as an equivalent to the name Saul. However the name combination Saul-Paul is unlikely since the names do not even start with the same letter.  If someone wanted a near homophone of Saul they would surely have chosen another name, such as the Latin Sallus or the Greek Sallous or Saulikon. Furthermore, there is little evidence that Jews followed conventions about which Greek/Latin name was considered the equivalent of which Hebrew/Aramaic name and such double birth-names were, in any case, not common.

Summary
After moving to Jerusalem he was given the name Saul because he was of the tribe of Benjamin. Later, perhaps to counter the influence of the arrogantly named Bar-Jesus/Elymas, Saul took the name Paul (small). The presence of Sergius Paulus may have brought the name to Saul's attention. This Latin name, meaning small, symbolized Paul's rejection of his Hebrew name, which represented pride in his membership of the tribe of Benjamin and physical stature.

Notes
(1) Margaret H. Williams "The Use of Alternative Names by Diaspora Jews in Graeco-Roman Antiquity" Journal for the Study of Judaism 38 (2007) 307-327
(2) R. Bauckham, ‘Paul and other Jews with Latin names in the New Testament’ in Paul, Luke and the Graeco-Roman World ed. A.Christophersen et al Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 217. P 208
(3) Gospel Women p182
(4) Murphy O'connor (Paul: A Critical Life p44) writes condescendingly and without reason that Augustine's view "has nothing to recommend it, except as an opportunity for rhetorical piety"
(5) Sean M. McDonough, "Small Change: Saul to Paul, Again", JBL 125 (2006): 390-391

Elymas-BarJesus named himself after Elam and Jesus

Here I reproduce some earlier thoughts in support of the work of Rick Strelan who argues that the false prophet, Elymas (Acts 13:6-11), took his name from Elam, the grandson of Noah, and that he became a Christian of sorts and named himself "BarJesus" accordingly.  See Strelan "Who Was Bar Jesus (Acts 13,6-12)?" Biblica 85 (2004) 65-81. Acts 13:6-11 reads:

"When they had gone though the whole island as far as Paphos, they met a certain magician, a Jewish false prophet, named Bar-Jesus. He was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, an intelligent man, who summoned Barnabas and Saul and wanted to hear the word of God. But Elymas the magician (for that is the translation of his name) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul away from the faith. But Saul, also known as Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, "You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord? And now listen - the hand of the Lord is against you, and you will be blind for a while, unable to see the sun. Immediately mist and darkness came over him, and he went about groping for someone to lead him by the hand"

The name “Elymas”
Commentators have long been puzzled about how the name "Elymas" can be interpreted to mean "magician" in the passage above. However, Rick Strelan appears to have resolved the problem. In his paper he suggests that the magician had taken the name of Elam, the eldest son of Shem, the son of Noah, and that Elam was considered an archetypal magician. The name "Elymas" would then have signified "magician" and this would explain Acts 13:8. In support of his proposal Strelan quotes Josephus: "For Elymos left behind him the Elamites, the ancestors of the Persians" (Ant 1.6.4) and notes that the magoi were commonly associated with the Persians. There is also evidence, not mentioned by Strelan, that Shem was considered a magician. Firstly, in the Book of Jubilees a book of healing arts is given by Noah to his eldest son, Shem:

"And we explained to Noah all the medicines of their diseases, together with their seductions, how he might heal them with herbs of the earth. And Noah wrote down all things in a book as we instructed him concerning every kind of medicine. Thus the evil spirits were precluded from (hurting) the sons of Noah. And he gave all that he had written to Shem, his eldest son; for he loved him exceedingly above all his sons."

The Treatise of Shem is a Pseudepigraphic work, written in the name of Shem, probably in the first century BC. It is an astrological treatise and therefore shows that Shem was associated with astrology.

To sum up: Noah's eldest son was Shem, whose eldest son was Elam, whose name was written "Elymos" by Josephus in the first century. The evidence suggests that there was a tradition that the magical arts of astrology and perhaps healing passed down the Noah-Shem-Elam line. Therefore, by accepting the name "Elymas", Bar-Jesus was identifying himself as a magician in an ancient Jewish tradition.

The name "Bar-Jesus"
Strelan argues that Elymas was, like Simon Magus, a follower of Jesus, of sorts. He suggests that Elymas took the name "Bar-Jesus" because he considered himself to be a disciple of Jesus. Strelan cites several cases where the term "Bar" or "Son of" is used to mean "disciple of". While "Jesus" was a common name for Jews, Strelan is probably right. Someone who had named himself after Elam and had then started to perform his magic in the name of Jesus, might well have taken the name "Son of Jesus" to reflect the new source of his power or inspiration. Also, Paul's accusation, "You son of the Devil" seems to be a reference to the presumptuous name "BarJesus". Paul seems to be saying here, "you are not a son of Jesus but a son of the Devil". In a future post I hope to argue that Luke here is contrasting Saul's humble name "Paul", meaning "small", with the magician's arrogant self-naming.

Strelan goes on to suggest that Luke intended to suggest that the name "Bar-Jesus somehow represented the name "Elymas". This suggestion seems entirely unnecessary, given Strelan's own convincing explanation of the name "Elymas".

Atomus
It is clear that "Elymas" was not his birth name. The name "Bar-Jesus", on any hypothesis, cannot have been his only name in infancy, so he must have had another name. Josephus describes a Jewish magician from Cyprus:

"At the time when Felix was procurator of Judaea, he beheld her; and, inasmuch as she surpassed all other women in beauty, he conceived a passion for the lady. He sent to her one of his friends, a Cyprian Jew named Atomus, who pretended to be a magician, in an effort to persuade her to leave her husband and to marry Felix." (Josephus Ant.20.142)

Both Atomus and Elymas were Jewish magicians from Cyprus who associated with high Roman officials. Felix was procurator from A.D. 52-59 so Atomus incident was only about a decade later than the Elymas incident. It is therefore chronologically possible that they were one and the same person. If, as seems likely, Elymas was employed by Sergius Paulus, he might well have lost his job after the encounter with Paul. If his other name, Bar-Jesus, indicates that he had been in contact with the Jesus movement, he may have had Judean connections. Thus it would not be surprising if Elymas left the employment of Sergius Paulus and attached himself to Felix in Judea.

The similarity in sound between "Atomus" and "Elymas" makes the identification more likely. The western text of Acts has "Etoimos", which may be a form of the name "Atomus". There are many examples of cases where Jews were given a new name, in part, because of its phonetic resemblance to the original name (Baucham, Gospel Women 182-4, lists Silvanus-Silas, Joseph-Justus-Barsabbas, Jesus-Justus, Saul-Paul, Symeon-Simon, Alkimos-Jakim/Eliakim, Aster-Esther, Cleopas-Clopas, Jason-Jesus, Mnason/Mnaseas-Manasseh, Mousaios-Moses, Annia-Hannah, Annianus-Hanina/Hananiah, Julius/Julanus-Judah, Lea-Leah, Maria-Mary, Rufus-Reuben and I would add BarKosiba/BarKokhba/BarKoziba, Titus-Timothy and Mary-Magdalene).

Paul's churches consisted of households, not house-church cells

1 Cor 14:23 refers to occasions when the "whole church comes together" and Gaius was "host to me and to the whole church" (Rom 16:23). In addition to these meetings of the entire church, many assume that there were also smaller house-church cells. This view depends on:

The churches of Asia send greetings. Aquila and Prisca, together with the church in their house (οἶκον αὐτῶν ἐκκλησίᾳ), greet you warmly in the Lord. (1 Cor 16:19)

Greet Prisca and Aquila .... Greet also the church in their house. (Rom 16:3-5)

See also Col 4:15 and Philemon 2.

Now, it was common for whole households to follow the faith of the head of the house (Acts 10:2: 16:15; 16:29-34; 18:8; 1 Cor 16:15). In light of this, E.A. Judge has suggested that the phrase "the church in their house" may simply refer to the assembly of believers who were members of that particular household (Social Distinctives of the Christians in the First Century p25). The assembly in the house of Aquila and Prisca may have comprised only their family members and servants. I offer the following observations which support this view.

1.  Aquila and Prisca and, presumably, the members of their household had previously been part of the  Corinthian church,  so they would naturally want to send greetings to Corinth after moving to Ephesus (1 Cor 16:19). It is hard to explain why Paul mentions "the church in their house" as senders of warm greetings if it consisted mainly of Ephesians who had not been part of the Corinthian church. Paul would then have been making an invidious distinction between them and the other Ephesian believers.

2.  Similarly, Paul greets the assembly that meets in the house of Prisca and Aquila in Rome (Rom 16:3-5). This is explicable if the members of that assembly were dependents of Prisca and Aquila who had known Paul from their time in Corinth and Ephesus.

3.  We have no evidence that Prisca and Aquila formed churches around themselves. In Corinth this role was taken by Titius Justus (Acts 18:7), =Stephanas (1 Cor 16:15), and Crispus (Acts 18:8). In Asia the role was taken by Epaenetus (Rom 16:5) and Paul preached there in the hall of Tyrannus, not from the house of Aquila and Prisca.

4.  Prisca and Aquila were with Paul in Ephesus (1 Cor 16:19) shortly before Pentecost (1 Cor 16:8). Paul planned to send the collection to Judea the following spring at the latest (1 Cor 16:3-6). Acts 20:2-6) confirms that the collection was sent in the spring, at the very beginning of the travel season, and there is no reason to suppose that it was a later spring than the one envisaged in 1 Corinthians. Romans was written before this time. Now, if the assembly of believers in the house of Prisca and Aquila in Rom 16:3-5 consisted of people other than the dependents of the couple, then we have a rather compressed chronology. We would have to suppose that Prisca and Aquila travelled to Rome soon after 1 Corinthians was written and that within about 4 months of arrival they established a house church and that someone then traveled from Rome to Corinth before the end of the same travel season and told Paul about this house church. This does not seem likely. Why would believers in Rome so quickly join the house church of Prisca and Aquila in preference to their own house churches? If Prisca and Aquila were successful evangelists, why is there no evidence of this from their time in Corinth or Ephesus? The problems are solved if we suppose that the assembly consisted of dependents of Prisca and Aquila. Paul knew that they had travelled with the couple to Rome and would continue to be part of their household. There is then no need to supposed that Paul had received recent news from Rome.

5. The (putative) author of Colossians had not visited Colossae, yet he appears to have known Nympha and the assembly in her house (Col 4:15). It is possible to imagine Nympha and many believing members of her household visiting Paul (in Ephesus for example). It is hard to imagine that "Paul" would have come to know the members of this assembly if it consisted of members of many households.

For these reasons I think that the assembly of believers in the house of Prisca and Aquila consisted of members of their household.

If this hypothesis is correct we can abandon the romantic notion that Prisca and Aquila travelled to Ephesus and to Rome to plant churches. They were the target of persecution (Rom 16:4) and had left Italy because of persecution (Acts 18:2), so it is most likely that they left Corinth because of persecution, just as Sosthenes did following his beating (Acts 18:17; 1 Cor 1:1). Presumably they returned home to Rome as soon as they could following the death of Claudius.

Some conjecture that Stephanas was the head of a house church cell and that his household placed themselves at the service of the other members of that cell (1 Cor 16:15). This now looks less likely. Rather, as I have argued before, Stephanas was Gaius, the host of the whole church.