2 Cor 12:2, revelations, chronology, and Paul's reluctance to boast

I will argue here that Paul's point in 2 Cor 12:2 is that, unlike the "super-apostles", he had received revelations that he had not boasted about during his stay in Corinth.

Commentators seem muddled about why Paul describes his revelation using third person singular narration (2 Cor 12:2-5), and why he mentions that the revelation was "before 14 years". I believe that Paul does these things to show that he is, and was, reluctant to boast of his revelations.

Background
Rival apostles were gaining the loyalty of the Corinthians by boasting (2 Cor 10:12, 17; 11:12-13). Paul therefore wrote to win the Corinthians back. To do this, he had to stoop to the level of the super-apostles by indulging in some boasting himself, but he did so with great reluctance, distancing himself from the boasting as he did it. Thus he repeatedly described his boasting as foolishness:

I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me! I feel a divine jealousy for you, ... (2 Cor 12:1-2)

What I am saying in regard to this boastful confidence, I am saying not with the Lord's authority, but as a fool; since many boast according to human standards, I will also boast. (2 Cor 11:17-18)

But whatever anyone dares to boast of - I am speaking as a fool - I also dare to boast of that. (2 Cor 11:21)

I am talking like a madman (2 Cor 11:23)

I have been a fool! You forced me to it. (2 Cor 12:11)

It is likely that the super-apostles had boasted about visions and revelations and that the Corinthians had compared Paul unfavorably with them. The Corinthians would have assumed that Paul had not received many revelations because he had not told them about them. Paul then needed to show the Corinthians that he had indeed received powerful revelations that he had not previously told them about. But how could he do this without, by example,  endorsing the same inappropriate boasting for which he condemned the super-apostles? This dilemma explains Paul's approach in 2 Cor 12:1-5.

Paul frames his discussion of his revelation by further emphasizing his reluctance to boast:

It is necessary to boast; nothing is to be gained by it, but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. (2 Cor 12:1)

On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, ... (2 Cor 12:5)

He also demonstrated to the Corinthians that he was reluctant to talk about the revelation:

was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat. (2 Cor 12:4)

and he may here be contrasting his own modest reticence with the unrestrained boasting of the "super-apostles".

Paul's use of third person narrative
Paul's purpose of showing his reluctance to boast is also served by his use the the third person. By transferring the story from himself to "a man in Christ", Paul makes his account sound much less boastful and by this means he expresses his disapproval of direct boasting. That this is the reason for his use of the third person is demonstrated by 2 Cor 12:5 where he virtually says as much.

Luke too uses the "modest third person", as I argued here.

The significance of "14 years" in 2 Cor 12:2
The revelation that Paul chooses to cite as an example is not mentioned elsewhere either by Paul or by Luke and its content could not be repeated (2 Cor 12:4). This suggests that Paul did not often talk about this revelation and I suggest that he had not breathed a word about it to the Corinthians during his visit(s) to them. Paul's decision to cite this particular revelation and to mention its date now become clear when we consider the chronology. Paul had visited the Corinthians in 50-51, some 5 or 6 years before the time of writing. It would therefore have been immediately obvious to the Corinthians that Paul had received his revelation well before his 18 month visit to them and that he had kept a modest silence about it throughout that time. Paul's mention of the "14 years" therefore serves to show the Corinthians that they should not conclude that Paul did not receive revelations from Paul's silence about them. By mentioning the 14 years Paul is contrasting his own modest silence about the revelation with his rivals' boasting. I think this point about the relative chronology of the revelation and Paul's first visit to Corinth may be new, as I have not seen it in the commentaries.

Paul could have written, "I have received greater revelations than the super-apostles, but, unlike them, I don't talk about them", but such a boast would have negated itself and would have been against Paul's principles (2 Cor 12:6b). The subtle mention of the 14 years allows the Corinthians to come to the same conclusion on their own, without Paul having to spell it out to them.

Implications
Some think that Paul refers to the revelation of 14 years ago because it was his most recent major revelation, and they infer that he had few revelations. Thus Barrett p 308: "So Paul must go back fourteen years ... for a suitable example of visions and revelations of the Lord. He was thus ordinarily anything but a visionary ...". This thinking is flawed. Paul mentions this revelation precisely because he received it well before his long stay in Corinth (and because he had not previously mentioned it to the Corinthians).

It seems to me that 2 Cor 12:2 lends a little support to the chronology of Acts. The text fits Paul's purposes best if he had spent several months in Corinth within the previous 9 years or so. Only then would the Corinthians have realized instantly (without counting years) that Paul had been with them for a long time without breathing a word about his earlier revelation. The 18 month stay of Acts 18:11, five or six years before the time of 2 Corinthians, works nicely.

Mary of Rom 16:6

In Rom 16:3-15 Paul asks his audience to greet 26 individuals, which is far more people than he greets in any other letter. Paul's aim here is presumably to build up his relationship with the Christians of Rome by establishing that he and they have common friends. We should therefore expect the people to be named in descending order of the strength of their connection with both Paul and the church of Rome. This does seem to be the case. The first to be mentioned are Prisca and Aquila (Rom 16:3-5), who were well known to Paul and also important to the church of Rome (since a church met in their house). Next come Epaenetus, whose importance to Paul's work I have discussed here.  Next comes Mary, whom I discuss below. Then we have Andronicus and Junia (Rom 16:7), who were prominent apostles and had been in prison with Paul. The remaining 20 individuals are mentioned in just 8 verses.

While Junia has received a lot of attention, Mary (Rom 16:6) has gone almost unnoticed. She is mentioned ahead of Andronicus and Junia, which seems surprising since Paul gives no indication of personal links with her. If she had been an important co-worker of Paul or his close friend, he surely would have mentioned it. So it seems to me that her position in the list, ahead of Andronicus and Junia, is explicable only if she was very well known and respected by the Christians in Rome. Paul's audience would, of course, have known of her prominence in their church, so Paul would have had no need to mention it. He says only that she has worked hard in Rome, and I think he is saying here that she deserves the respect that accompanies her leadership role in the church (compare 1 Cor 16:16).

Tal Ilan (Lexican of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity part III p64) counts 23 Jews with the name Mary/Mariam/Marian in the western diaspora, out of 552 females. This amounts of 4.2%. In Palestine, on the other hand, (part I p55-56) 70 Jews had the name, out of 317 female Jews. This amounts to 22.1%. Therefore the name was about 5 times more popular in Palestine than in the western diaspora. This observation, which has been overlooked by the commentators, suggests that she had moved to Rome from Palestine. She may have introduced the Christian faith to Rome, and this would account for her prominence there. It matters little whether the Latin name Μαρίαν or the Hebrew Μαριάμ was the original. A Μαριάμ could easily have adopted the name Μαρίαν after moving to Rome.

In summary, the Mary was the most prominent member of the church of Rome known to Paul.

Commentators have differed greatly in their understanding of her. Origen patronized her:

Paul is teaching here that women too ought to work for the churches of God. They work when they teach childreen how to behave, when they love their husbands, when they feed their children, when they are modest and chaste, when they keep a good household, when they are kind, when they are submissive to their husbands, when they exercise hospitality, when they wash the feet of the saints, and when they do all the other things which are allotted to women in the Bible. Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. CER 5:248

Chrysostom gave her a teaching role (Homilies on Romans NPNF 1 11:554), but in 1879 William Shedd denied her such a role. Olshausen (1849) and Dodd (1932) did not mention her at all! In 1994 MacArthur suggested that she was a founding member of the church of Rome. Osborne (2004) concludes that "she did play an important role in the life of the church" of Rome. Jewett (2007) writes, "Miriam functioned as an evangelist in Rome". It would seem, then, that commentators are beginning to recognize this Mary's importance.

New evidence that Lucius/Luke wrote Acts

In Rom 16:21-23 Paul sends greetings to the Romans from 8 individuals, including Lucius (which is the full form of the name "Luke"). I have suggested before that they are listed in descending order of their prominence in the church, but I now think we can be more precise about what kind of prominence pertains here. Paul will have sent greetings from those who were known to many of the members of the church of Rome. The greeters were therefore those who, by traveling among the churches, had met believers who subsequently moved to Rome (Tertius may be an exception since he had developed a connection with the addressees simply by writing down the letter). Many (or all?) of those greeted in Rom 16:3-15 had moved to Rome as believers from elsewhere, and the recent death of Claudius in 54 may have allowed the return to Rome of those whom he had expelled. Prisca, Aquila, Andronicus, Junia, Epaenetus, and Rufus and his mother had all moved to Rome from elsewhere. There must have been many Christians with Paul in Corinth when he wrote Romans, but only those who had travelled among the churches would have been known to more than a few of the believers in Rome. Two points confirm that Rom 16:21-23 is not a list of those who happened to pass through Paul's room when he was dictating the letter, but is rather a list of those who had traveled.

Firstly, it is significant that no women are listed among the greeters. This is in contrast to Rom 15:1-15, which mentions 27 people, of which 10 are women. The absence of women in Rom 16:21-23 is explicable if only travelers are listed, since women did not travel (see here).

Secondly, many of those listed are known to have travelled. Timothy had travelled extensively with Paul. I have argued that Jason was from Thessalonika and was Aristarchus, who was Paul's travel companion (Acts 19:29; 20:4). Sosipater was Sopater, another traveller (Acts 20:4). Gaius was, I have argued, Stephanas, who had been to Ephesus on church business. Erastus was the Erastus who had travelled around the Aegean with Timothy (Acts 19:22).

This analysis shows that Lucius too must have travelled among the churches. Indeed, he is mentioned second only to Timothy, and his prominence in the list suggests that he had been a more prolific traveller than the others (Jason, Sosipater, Gaius, Erastus and Quartus). But how widely had he travelled? I suggest that a clue can be found in 2 Cor 8:18-19 where we read of a "brother" who

"is famous among all the churches for his proclaiming the good news; and not only that, but he has also been appointed by the churches to travel with us while we are administering this generous undertaking for the glory of the Lord himself and to show our goodwill"

This brother had been appointed to accompany Paul to Judea so he was almost certainly with Paul when Paul wrote Romans just before leaving for Judea. He was well known  in "all the churches" so he was presumably known to many who had moved to Rome. It is very likely, therefore, that he is one of those who sent greetings in Rom 16:21-23. He cannot have been Timothy, not least because Timothy was Titus. Therefore he was either Lucius or he was one of those mentioned after Lucius (Jason, Sosipater, etc.). Therefore Lucius was either the man who was famous among the churches, or he was even more prominent than him.

He must surely have been the author of Acts because:

1. It is unlikely that Acts would have failed to mention one who travelled among the churches so extensively.
2. The author of Acts would almost certainly have sent greetings to the church of Rome since he would have known many of them through his extensive travel, and he was with Paul in Corinth at the time that Romans was written since he planned to travel with Paul to Judea (Acts 20:2-5). Ro 16:21-23 contains a complete list of the prominent believers who were in Corinth at the time. See also my discussion here.
3. The name "Lucius" is the full form of the name "Luke", which the church fathers unanimously attach to Luke-Acts.

In Philemon 23-24 Paul sends greetings from Epaphras, Mark, Aristarchus, Demas and Luke. Again there are no women among the greeters, which suggests that Paul is here sending greetings from those who knew Philemon from visiting his town. This is supported by the fact that Aristarchus frequently travelled on church business (Acts 19:29; 20:4; 27:2). Epaphras was also a church envoy if I am right to equate him with Ephaphroditus (see here). For what it is worth, the disputed letters also assume that Epaphras (Col 4:12), Mark (Col 4:10; 2 Tim 4:11), and Demas (2 Tim 4:10) were traveling co-workers of Paul.

I think we can be confident, therefore, that Luke was a traveling co-worker of Paul. This point tightens the argument for equating him with the Lucius of Rom 16:21 and the author of Acts.

For more on why the author of Acts = Luke = Lucius, see my earlier posts here, here and here.

The prominence of women in the early church

I have argued before that the historical Paul treated men and women equally and that he has been misrepresented by copyists and by the disputed letters. See my posts here and here. But why, then, do Paul's letters mention far more men than women? I will argue here that it is largely because women were not able to travel independently of male relatives in the ancient world.

Paul's undisputed letters

Below are listed all the Christians mentioned in the undisputed letters of Paul. Women are given in red font. Prisca, Junia and the mother of Rufus had travelled, but had done so with their male relatives (Aquila, Andronicus and Rufus). Phoebe probably travelled with servants or male relatives since she was wealthy and was probably returning to Rome following the expulsion by Claudius. It can be seen that we know of no women who travelled independently of male members of their households. The role of church envoy was taken exclusively by men.

In Rom 16:21-23 Paul sends greetings from Tertius and 7 others. These 7 were probably people who, through travel, had come to know many of those who were currently in Rome. This explains why all 7 are men. Similarly, Philemon 23-24 is probably a list of those who had visited Philemon's town. In my next post I will discuss the implications for the identity of the author of Acts.

Those mentioned in non-traveling contexts and those who traveled with family members of the other sex: ~28 men, 14 women

Phoebe (Rom 16:1-2); Prisca and Aquila (Rom 16:3-4); Andronicus and Junia (Rom 16:7); Epaenetus, Mary, Ampliatus, Urbanus, Stachys, Apelles, Aristobulus, Herodion, Narcissus, Tryphaena, Tryphosa, Persis, Rufus, his mother, Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, Philologus, Julia, Nereus, his sister, Olympas (Rom 16:1-15); Tertius (Rom 16:22); Crispus-Sosthenes (1 Cor 1:1,14); Gaius (1 Cor 1:14); Chloe (1 Cor 1:12); James (1 Cor 15:7); Euodia, Syntyche, and Clement (Phil 4:2-3); Philemon, Apphia, and Archippus (Philemon 1-2); Cephas and the Lord's brothers (1 Cor 9:5-6).

Other travelers: ~23 men

Paul; Titus (Gal 2:1); Apollos (1 Cor 1:12); Barnabas (1 Cor 9:5-6; Gal 2:1); Silvanus (2 Cor 1:19); Stephanas, Fortunatus, Achaicus (1 Cor 16:17); 2 anonymous brothers (2 Cor 8:18-23); An anonymous brother (2 Cor 12:18); Epaphroditus (Phil 2:25-30);  Onesimus (Philemon 10); Timothy, Lucius, Jason, Sosipater, Gaius, Erastus, Quartus (Rom 16:21-23); Epaphras, Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, Luke (Philemon 23-24)

The same picture emerges when we repeat the exercise for Acts and the disputed Pauline letters: women did not travel (except Priscilla with her husband).

Acts

Those mentioned in non-traveling contexts and those who traveled with family members of the other sex
Theophilus (Acts 1:1); 

Certain women including Mary, mother of Jesus (Acts 1:14); 

Jesus' brothers (Acts 1:14); 

Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1); 

Stephen, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, Nicolaus (Acts 6:5); 

Simon (Acts 8:9); 

Ananias (Acts 9:10); Aeneas (Acts 10:32); 

Tabitha (Acts 10:36); 

Cornelius (Acts 10:1); 

Simon (Acts 10:6); 

Mary (Acts 12:12); 

Rhoda (Acts 12:13); 

James (Acts 12:17); 

Barnabas, Simeon, Lucius, Manaen, Paul (Acts 13:1); 

Bar-Jesus (Acts 13:6); 

Timothy's mother (Acts 16:1); 

Lydia (Acts 16:14); Jailer (Acts 16:23); Jason (Acts 17:5); Dionysius and Damaris (Acts 17:34); Priscilla and Aquila (Acts 18:2); Titius-Justus (Acts 18:7); Crispus-Sosthenes (Acts 18:8, 17); Eutychus (Acts 20:9); 

Four daughters of Philip (Acts 21:9); 

Mnason (Acts 21:16).

Other travelers
Peter, John, James, Andrew, Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, Judas of James (Acts 1:13); Joseph Barsabbas, Matthias (Acts 1:23); Agabus (Acts 11:27); John-Mark (Acts 12:12); Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13:13); Judas-Barsabbas, Silas-Silvanus (Acts 15:22); Silas (Acts 15:40); Timothy (Acts 16:1); Apollos (Acts 18:24); Erastus (Acts 19:22); Gaius (Acts 19:29); Sopater, Secundus, Gaius, Tychicus, Trophimus(Acts 20:4).


Disputed letters attributed to Paul

Those mentioned in non-traveling contexts and those who traveled with family members of the other sex: 14 men, 5 women
Nympha (Col 4:15); Archippus (Col 4:17); Hymenaeus and Alexander (1 Tim 1:20); Lois, Eunice (2 Tim 1:5); Phygelus and Hermogenes (2 Tim 1:15); Hymenaeus and Philetus (2 Tim 2:17); Carpus (2 Tim 4:13); Onesiphorus (2 Tim 4:19); Prisca and Aquila (2 Tim 4:19); Trophimus (2 Tim 4:20); Eubulus, Pudens, Linus (2 Tim 4:21); Claudia (2 Tim 4:21).

Other travelers: 14 men

Tychicus (Eph 6:21; Col 4:7); Mark (Col 4:10); Aristarchus, Jesus called Justus (Col 4:11); Ephaphras (Col 4:12); Luke and Demas (Col 4:14); Demas and Crescens and Titus and Mark and Tychicus (2 Tim 4:9-12); Erastus (2 Tim 4:20); Artemas, Tychicus, Zenas and Apollos (Tit 2:12-13); Onesiphorus household (2 Tim 1:16).

Women and travel in the ancient world
It is difficult to find examples of women travelers in the ancient world. Travel was physically demanding and dangerous for women. This is illustrated by a boast of Ramses III in an inscription at Medinet Habu, "I caused the woman of Egypt to walk freely wheresoever she would unmolested by others upon the road." (Thanks to Jack Kilmon for pointing this out to me). There was more equality between the sexes in Egypt than in any other part of the ancient world, and safe travel from women was clearly not the norm, even there.

Conclusion
The history of the expansion of the church is inevitably the history of those who could travel. This goes a long way to explaining why we have far more men than women in Paul's letters and Acts. We have seen that, when those with exclusively traveling roles are excluded, about a third of those mentioned by Paul are women. This is a higher ratio than we find in other sources. Only 22% of Diaspora Jews known to us were female (Tal Ilan, Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity Part III The Western Diaspora 330 BCE-650 CE, p61.). In the 6 volumes of the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names only 11% of persons are female.

Al Wolters responds on Junia

Al Wolters has kindly responded to my last post where I critiqued his suggestion that we might have a male Hebrew name in Rom 16:7 instead of a female "Junia". With his permission I paste Al's comments below.

Thanks for alerting me to your discussion of my JBL article on Junia/s. Here are a few brief responses:

(1) I am pleased that you do not dispute the main point of my article: that a Hebrew name Yehunni was known and used in Paul's day, and that it would have been Hellenized as Iounias, -ou.

(2) You are right that Maria could also be a Roman name, assuming that the person in question belonged to the Roman gens Maria, or was a former slave belonging to a member of that gens. However, this doesn't affect my argument, since you agree that the Maria of Rom 16:6 "was almost certainly Jewish."

(3) You write: "A man called Yehunni, after moving to Rome, would likely have taken a Greek or Latin name, such as Junius." Might he not instead, since the name Junius would imply either that he belonged to a prominent Roman gens, or was an ex-slave, have chosen to Latinize his Hebrew name as Junias, on the analogy of names like Andreas?

(4) I am intrigued by your claim that, with virtually no exceptions, "[w]hen Palestinian Christian Jews travelled to Gentile territories where Semitic names would not have been familiar, they took a Greek or Latin name." I notice that this claim contains multiple qualifiers (Palestinian, Christian, Jewish, Gentile territories where Semitic names were unfamiliar), so that the many examples of Jews who did keep Hellenized or Latinized versions of their Hebrew names outside of Palestine, but were not Christians, or lived in places like Babylon or Egypt, cannot be cited as counter-evidence. However, even with these restrictions, in seems to me (without doing a systematic search) that the apostle John (Ioannes) is a clear counter-example, since he lived for years in Ephesus.

(5) You state: "The likely original name of Junia is Joanna," following Bauckham. I would assess this claim much as you assess my argument on Junia/s: it is just possible, but highly unlikely. If IOYNIAN does represent the female Latin name Junia, then a much closer Hebrew equivalent would be Yehunni, which could also be a woman's name, and would have the advantage (in your view) of having an almost perfect Latin "sound-equivalent."

(6) It is my own view that the much higher incidence of Junia compared to Yehunni makes it more likely that IOYNIAN in Rom 16:7 is a woman's name rather than a man's. In my judgment, however, it is only marginally more likely. There are other factors (such as the preponderance of male leadership in Paul's circle) which add weight to the other side. My article was meant to show that it is not unreasonable to defend the view that Junia/s was male. As is the case with so many exegetical questions, we need to be satisfied with degrees of probability.

Here are my own responses to the points that Al makes.

(1) I am not qualified to assess your claim that "Yehunni" would have been Hellenized as Iounias, -ou. As you know, Tal Ilan, sees Yehunni as a variant of "Honi", rather than a name in its own right. One of the two men named Yehunni was designated "the smith". This might support Ilan's view since the designation would serve to distinguish this Yehunni from all the others called Honi, which was a more common name.

(2) You seem to misunderstand my point about Maria. I was merely saying that she does not provide you with a precedent of a Christian using a Hebrew name that would be unfamiliar to his or her neighbours. Maria was able to keep that Hebrew name because it, unlike Yehunni, was also a Latin name.

(4) You are right to cite John as a possible precedent. However, the name "John" was very common and therefore might not have been completely unfamiliar to his Greek neighbours (unlike Yehunni). It was the fifth most popular name in Palestine and 11th in the Western Diaspora, according to Ilan's statistics. Also, I think it is unlikely that the author of Revelation would have wanted to identify himself in his text, for fear of reprisals. This suggests that "John" was not the name by which he was normally known. It may be that he was normally known by a Greek or Latin substitute name.

(6) We do see female leaders in Paul's circle (Prisca, Phoebe, and probably Lydia, Euodia and Syntyche). It is true that the traveling missionaries tended to be male, but we must ask why this was. I am willing to be corrected, but I suspect that it would have been hard for women to get the necessary permission from their husbands/fathers to embark on missionary journeys, and that it would have been dangerous for them to travel alone, and that they might have scandalized the very people whom they hoped to convert if they had travelled with male non-relatives. These restrictions would not have applied to Junia, who travelled with her husband (Andronicus), who was also an apostle. So the scarcity of female traveling missionaries is not necessarily an argument against Junia being one.

Even if we did not know that Junia was a female name, we would still suspect that Andronicus and Junia were husband and wife. They are greeted by Paul as a two-some and are given no separate designations. They seem to have had a long association with each other, since both were in prison with him, and both were in the faith before him. Paul greets and describes them as a two-person unit, in much the same way that he does Prisca and Aquila.

So, since the name "Yehunni" was so rare, and since apostles generally abandoned their Hebrew/Aramaic names when they went to Gentile lands, I think it is highly unlikely that Paul refers in Rom 16:7 to a man called Yehunni.

Junia, a female apostle, or a Hebrew man's name?

Suzanne McCarthy discusses a paper by Al Wolters, who argued that the name  in Rom 16:7 could be the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name Yehunni, which would make it a man's name. (JBL 127, no. 2 (2008): 397-408, available online here).

On page 398 Wolters writes:

After all, it would not be surprising if a person whom Paul numbers among his kinfolk (συγγενείς) should turn out to have a specifically Jewish name, comparable to the Μαρία of the previous verse.

Not so fast! The problem here is that Μαρία is not a specifically Jewish name. As well as the Hebrew name, we have the Latin name, Maria, which is the feminine form of Marius. For this reason Tal Ilan writes,

of the 50 Mariams recorded, only 23 are indubitably Jewish. (Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity Part III. p5)

While the Maria of Rom 16:6 was almost certainly Jewish, it is likely that she kept her original name only because it also worked as a Roman name. When Palestinian Christian Jews travelled to Gentile territories where Semitic names would not have been familiar, they took a Greek or Latin name that would be recognized there. Cephas-Peter, Simeon-Simon, Saul-Paul, Silas-Silvanus, and John-Mark are good examples. It is hard to think of exceptions to this rule. Barnabas is a special case because the name carried significant meaning (Acts 4:36), which would have been lost if he had been given a familiar Greek or Latin name. Apart from Barnabas, Paul refers to no-one in Gentile territories by a Semitic name (Jesus called Justus of Col 4:11 is no exception because he probably never existed, and his Latin name is given in any case). So Wolter's suggestion that Paul referred to the hypothetical Yehunni by his Hebrew name has no good parallels. A man called Yehunni, after moving to Rome, would likely have taken a Greek or Latin name, such as Junius, rather than transliterating his name as Wolters supposes.

The likely original name of Junia is Joanna, since it is so similar in sound. Indeed Bauckham has argued that Junia was the Joanna of Luke 8:3; 24:10 (Gospel Women p109-202). Joanna was a common name in Palestine. Tal Ilan lists 12 women of that name in Palestine out of a total of 402 women (Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity Part 1 Palestine 330 BCE-200 CE). Thus about 3% of women had that name. Wolters, on the other hand, finds only 2 men called Yehunni, which represents just 0.08% of the 2505 men listed by Tal Ilan. This figure of 0.08% for Yehunni is much less than the 3% for Joanna.

We can therefore be very confident that Junia was a woman.

Robert King on Titus-Timothy

A few weeks ago I chanced upon a book by Robert King, which argues that Titus was Timothy ("Who was St. Titus?: The Scripture Notices on the Subject Compared with Received Opinions.."). The book was published in ..... 1853! Here I will post some reflections on King's book, which is available free on-line here.

I was excited to discover King's book, but shocked that I had not come across it before, since I have worked with Titus-Timothy for 13 years. Equally alarming is that no-one else seems to have been aware of the book, including Borse, Von Lips and James Dunn, who have commented on the the Titus-Timothy hypothesis. I have found only one reference to the book: a critique in the Westminster Review of the same year, available on Google Books, here. It seems, then, that at least four people have independently come to the conclusion that Titus was Timothy, unaware of each other's work.

Why, then, has Robert King's book been so thoroughly ignored? I think there are two reasons.

Firstly, the theory that Titus was Timothy sounds bazaar to many people when they first come across it. One leading scholar, who will remain nameless, wrote to me "You don't seriously think that Titus and Timothy were the same person, do you? That would be one of the stranger ideas I have come across!". I sent him/her a link to my work on Titus-Timothy, and, needless to say, I have no reason to believe that he/she read any of it. Many have difficulty getting over their initial surprise and are unable to form a logical response. It is fascinating to read the first page of King's preface, which shows that King, too, was aware that his theory was going to struggle to overcome people's initial gut response. He wrote, "The Supposition put forward in the following pages as to the identity of SS. Timothy and Titus will naturally be regarded by most readers as a very strange and paradoxical one."

The second reason, I think, for the neglect of King's book, is that it is very badly argued. He gives a very rambling discussion, with frequent diversions, and fails to drive home his points. He takes 250 pages to say what could be said in 10, and his stronger points are lost in the verbosity.

King's main focus is on the Corinthian correspondence. He points out that the information that we have on "Titus" in 2 Corinthians is exactly what we would expect to read of "Timothy". He notices that the Titus-Timothy hypothesis explains the absence of Titus from Acts (and from Rom 16). He makes surprisingly little use of Acts 16:1-3 and Gal 2:1-5. I think he makes two mistakes that I too used to make: he assumes that Timothy was a native of south Galatia rather than Antioch, and he assumes that "Timothy" was his name from birth.

King devotes a lot of space to objections to the hypothesis, but mentions no objection that has not already been discussed on this blog. He struggled with 2 Tim 4:10. Since he accepts the Pauline authorship of the Pastoral Epistles, he is forced to suggest that there were two men called Titus in Paul's inner circle.

My own summary presentation of the Titus-Timothy hypothesis is here.