Was Paul worried that his collection would be rejected by Jerusalem?

Paul writes

"join me in prayer ..... that my ministry to Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints, so that by God's will I may come to you with joy ..." (Rom 15:31-32).

"ministry"(διακονία) here probably refers to the collection, at least in part, given Rom 15:25. Many conclude from this that Paul thought that his collection might be rejected by the Jerusalem church. The theory is that the Jerusalem Christians might refuse to accept the money because it came from uncircumcised men.

This interpretation, which is very common, is one of the pillars of the view that Paul and the Jerusalem church leaders were in conflict over the place of Gentiles in the church. Here, however, are some counter arguments, not all of which have equal strength.

1) It would have been immodest for Paul to write "join me in prayer .... that my gift to Jerusalem may be impressive to the saints". He may therefore have chosen the phrase "acceptable to the saints" for modesty. When people give money they often underplay its potential impact by saying things like, "I hope it will make a small difference", when they actually mean "I hope it will make a big difference". Therefore, isn't it possible that Paul was hopeful that the collection would be a spectacular success, but worried that it might merely be a OK? The text need not be telling us that Paul was contemplating the possibility that the collection would be a failure or be rejected.

2) If Paul's ministry in Jerusalem is indeed "acceptable to the saints" he will come to Rome "with joy" (ἐν χαρᾷ). Paul's choice of words here shows that he was more optimistic than is often supposed. If he was hoping that the collection would be merely acceptable we would expect him to write "with relief", not "with joy".

3) There is no hint of foreboding in Rom 15:28-29

So, when I have completed this, and have delivered to them what has been collected, I will set out by way of you to Spain; and I know that when I come to you, I will come in the fullness of the blessing of Christ.

Nor is there any foreboding elsewhere. Indeed, in 2 Cor 9:11-15 Paul seems confident that the collection will be well received.

4) Why do commentators assume that the donors' foreskins were the only possible impediment to the triumph of the collection? Are there not other things that could have taken the shine off the collection? Perhaps Paul worried that the Jerusalem believers might think that the quantity of money, though generous, was not consistent with Jesus' radical teaching on giving. Perhaps he was concerned that there might be disputes about how he distributed the money. Perhaps the recipients might grumble that they had expected the collection earlier. Perhaps he worried that the amount of poverty in the Judean churches was more than he expected and that the funds would then be insufficient. There are all sorts of reasons why it was impossible for Paul to predict how successful the collection would be. The commentators' assumption that theological disputes were at the front of Paul's mind say more about the commentators' interests than about the text, in my opinion.

5) Jews often received financial support from gentiles, without objection. Indeed, the Jerusalem church leaders had asked Paul to "remember the poor" (Gal 2:10), so it is hard to imagine that they would have objected when he did so.

6) Those in poverty do not quibble about the ideology of those who offer them aid. Has anyone cited a precedent for this kind of thing?

7) Only the most uncompromising, vehement, opponents of Paul's theology would even consider rejecting his collection. It is at least questionable whether Paul would use the word "saints" to describe such people. Paul uses the word only in a very positive sense.

8) It is far from certain that there were any Christians in Judea who opposed Paul's inclusion of uncircumcised Gentiles. There were many who were zealous that the Law be observed by Jews, but we have no evidence that they wanted Gentile Christians to observe the Law too (Acts 21:20-21).

Ivar Vegge on Paul's confidence and Titus-Timothy

Ivar Vegge's influential monograph, "2 Corinthians - A Letter about Reconciliation" (WUNT2 2008), argues convincingly that Paul's expressions of confidence should not be taken at face value but are a rhetorical tactic to encourage the Corinthians to live up to those expectations. Expressions of confidence are a kind of "idealized praise" that sets the addressees up as their own example to follow. By expressing confidence in the Corinthians, Paul makes them more receptive to his appeal by making them feel that they are being encouraged rather than rebuked. Vegge shows that this style of rhetoric was common in the ancient world. This insight goes a long way towards explaining why Paul's tone is so different in 2 Cor 7, compared to 2 Cor 10-13. I highly recommend the book.

In 2 Cor 1:13-16 we read,

I hope you will understand until the end - 14 as you have already understood us in part - that on the day of the Lord Jesus we are your boast even as you are our boast. 15 Since I was sure of this, I wanted to come to you first, so that you  might have a double favour

Paul here says that he made his travel plan with confidence that the Corinthians would boast in him. Now, Vegge follows the conventional assumption that the tearful letter announced that the travel plan of 2 Cor 1:15-16 had been cancelled. This would give the following sequence, as recalled by Paul:

1. Paul was confident that the Corinthians would boast in him so he planned to visit them (2 Cor 1:14-15).
2. Paul's confidence was dashed by the Corinthians, so he had to cancel the visit.
3. Paul boasted to Titus about the Corinthians (2 Cor 7:14).
4. Paul wrote a tearful letter "in order that your zeal for us might be made known to you before God" (2 Cor 7:12).
5. Paul sent the letter with Titus to Corinth, cancelling his promised visit.
6. Paul's boasting about the Corinthians was justified (2 Cor 7:14-16).

Thus Vegge himself writes,

The rhetorical point in 1:15 is that the Corinthians themselves were the reason he had to cancel the visit. His earlier confidence in them was frustrated by them. (p177)

The problem here is that it would have been counterproductive for Paul to draw attention to earlier misplaced confidence. If Paul is here telling the Corinthians that they had let him down they would have responded with defensiveness and anger. This would have undermined Paul's purpose of achieving reconciliation. Vegge has shown convincingly that Paul's rhetorical tactic elsewhere in 2 Corinthians is to emphasize that his confidence had been well founded (e.g. 2 Cor 7:14-16), yet he would have us believe that Paul does the  opposite in 2 Cor 1:13-15. If Paul refers to earlier frustrated confidence here it would contradict Vegge's main hypothesis. If not, what would? Given the rhetorical function of expressions of confidence, the travel plan of 2 Cor 1:15-16 was not abandoned because of anything that the Corinthians had done wrong. It must have been abandoned for another reason. A further problem with Vegge's (conventional) reconstruction is that 3 and 4 look suspiciously like a duplicate of 1. Paul's confidence that the Corinthians would boast in him (1:14) looks very like his confidence that they would realize their zeal for him (7:12).

Vegge's difficulties have arisen out of his assumption that the tearful letter canceled Paul's visit. All is resolved when we realize that the travel plan had to be abandoned only after Paul ran out of time because of Titus's delayed arrival in Corinth. The sequence, as recalled by Paul, then becomes:

1. Paul sent Titus to Corinth with the tearful letter, announcing that he would visit them soon (and again after going to Macedonia). He was confident that his letter would make them zealous for him so that he would be able to visit them soon without it being a painful visit.
2. Titus was delayed so Paul had to cancel his visit because there was no longer time.

This greatly simplifies the sequence, and makes rhetorical sense. My mentioning his confidence in them, Paul is encouraging the Corinthians to live up to that confidence, as they had started to do. The sequence is confirmed by 1 Corinthians, which was written when Titus-Timothy was on his way to Corinth. Paul hoped that Titus-Timothy would encourage their zeal for him so that his next visit need not be painful (1 Cor 4:15-21). When Paul wrote there was no longer time for more than a passing visit, so he rather apologetically cancelled the visit that Titus-Timothy was about to announce (1 Cor 16:5-9). Now, this assumes that Titus and Timothy were one and the same person, which I argued in JSNT (2001). On page 20 Vegge gives a good summary of the sequence of events that my paper advocated. However, without explanation he writes, "The identification of Titus with Timothy is strained". How is it "strained"? He does not say. Perhaps he was put off by the fact that I (tentatively) partitioned 2 Corinthians. I no longer do so. Also, if the Titus-Timothy hypothesis were wrong, we would expect the (very simple) sequence of events that follows from it to run into difficulties at some point. But there is nothing in Vegge's book that contradicts that sequence, with one possible exception which I will now discuss.

I place no visit by Paul to Corinth between the writing of 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians. On page 25 Vegge says that Hyldahl's rejection of this "interim visit" "does not stand up to scrutiny". Does Vegge give evidence for the interim visit? Not really. He merely refers us to page 88 where he writes, "Nothing in 1 Corinthians indicates that Paul has been in Corinth two times before he writes this letter (an argumentum ex silentio)." As Vegge admits, this is merely an argument from silence, and it hardly justifies his confidence on the next page when he writes "Paul must have carried out his visit at a point after 1 Corinthians."

Curiously, Vegge seems to equate Titus with Timothy when he writes, "When Paul sends Titus instead of coming in person (1 Cor 4:14-17), this could easily be interpreted as a confirmation of the fact that Paul did not dare to come back to Corinth." p263. Vegge here illustrates how well our information in 1 Corinthians about Timothy's future mission to Corinth matches what we learn about Titus's past mission in 2 Corinthians.

In conclusion, Vegge's insights do not speak against the Titus-Timothy hypothesis, but almost require it. Vegge, Titus-Timothy is your friend.

Why Saul (Paul) kept his name for so long

While much has been written about the timing of the apostle's adoption of the name "Paul", commentators have failed to consider the timing of his retention of the name "Saul". The importance of name recognition has been overlooked. In this post I suggest that Paul continued to go by the name "Saul" for such a long time for the practical reason that he was already well known by that name in those regions.

Acts calls the apostle "Saul" in Jerusalem (Acts 7:58; 8:1, 3; 9:1), in/near Damascus (Acts 9:4, 8, 11, 17, 22, 24), in Tarsus (Acts 11:25), in Antioch (Acts 13:1,2) and in Paphos (Acts 13:7). While still in Paphos, the name "Paul" is introduced (Acts 13:9) and is used thereafter, including when leaving Paphos (Acts 13:13), in Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13:16), in Tyre (Acts 21:4); Caesarea (Acts 21:11, 13) and throughout his stay in Jerusalem, including in Jewish contexts (21:18 etc.). After Paphos (Acts 13:9) the name Saul appears again only at Acts 22:7, 13; 26:14 which refer back to the events of Acts 9 and quote the words of Jesus and Ananias.

It is normally assumed (without argument) that the switch of names occurs because Paul changed his focus to gentile audiences at this point. It is supposed that the name "Saul" was appropriate among Jews and the name "Paul" worked better among gentiles. This does not fit the data well. After all, he is called "Saul" as well as "Paul" in both Paphos and Jerusalem. Furthermore, he is called "Saul" in Antioch and Cyprus, which were gentile lands, and he is called "Paul" in the synagogue of Pisidian Antioch, for example.

Name recognition is very important for people in public life such as politicians and celebrities. A famous name can draw a crowd. A man who has become well known by one name may be understandably reluctant to change his name. It is common for high profile female professors and writers to keep their maiden names when they marry, instead of changing their names. Recently the famous author, JK Rowling wrote a book under a pseudonym and sold only 1500 copies until it was revealed that she was the author. Sales then increased by 150,000%!  I have no reason to suppose that name recognition was any less important in the ancient world than it is in our time. Even those who have no particular fame are reluctant to change their names because of the confusion that it would cause. We need to ask whether the name "Saul" was important for the apostle. Was it useful to his career as a teacher and evangelist, or would he have been in a hurry to break with his past by abandoning the name at the earliest opportunity?

Saul, who had been a persecutor of the Jesus-believers, became a believer himself. This was a compelling narrative that was used not only by the author of Acts but by Paul himself (Phil 3:4-8). Indeed, from Gal 1:22-23 we gather that Saul's reputation was known by those who knew him only by name, not by face:

and I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea that are in christ; 23 they only heard it said, "The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy."

Saul's reputation no doubt have helped him gain an audience. It will also have allowed him to speak with authority against the zealous views the he had once held. The name "Saul" was useful to him wherever his reputation preceded him. Now, Saul's reputation was known in Jerusalem (Acts 9:26-27), and some of those whom Saul had persecuted preceded him to Cyprus and Antioch:

Acts 11:19 Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that took place over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch.

In Antioch and Cyprus, as in Jerusalem, Saul was already known by name, at least by believers. How did he interact with those whom he had previously persecuted? Judging from 1 Cor 15:9, for example, he would have taken full responsibility for his actions:

For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

It seems that he retained the name "Saul" in those regions instead of taking an alias to disguise the fact that he was Saul, the persecutor of the church.

Tarsus in Cilicia was Saul's place of birth and presumably he had friends or relatives there. We don't know what name he was called there.

When Paul left Paphos he sailed for Perga in Pamphilia and from there he went to south Galatia. His intention may have been to go even further, since it was only because of an illness that he went to Galatia (Gal 4:13). In any case, his journey took him through territories that were further from Jerusalem and had no existing Christians, as far as we know. When Saul was in Paphos he was contemplating a journey to places where few, if any, people knew his name. It was therefore the ideal time for Saul to take a new name. The name "Paul" worked well. It's phonetic similarity with the name "Saul" helped to avoid confusion: it was easy for people who had heard of "Saul" to realize and remember that he had changed his name to "Paul". I argued in an earlier post that he took the name "Paul" because of its meaning (small) and that the name may have come to Saul's mind because of Sergius Paulus.

To sum up, the timing of the switch of names in Acts adds no support the view that Saul adopted the name "Paul" merely because it was more familiar to gentiles. The fact that he did not become "Paul" immediately after his conversion is no argument against the view that he chose the name to reflect his new Christian identity. He retained the name "Saul" because that was the name by which he was already known and he switched to "Paul" in preparation for a journey to places where he had little invested in his earlier name. He kept the name "Saul" for so long for the simple practical reason that people knew him by that name. I learned this from John Chrysostom who writes

But why did [the Holy Spirit] not change the name immediately, but rather allowed much time to pass? Because, if [the Holy Spirit] had changed his name immediately, then Paul's change, and his turn toward the faith, would not have become known... If, immediately upon leaving the Jews, he had come to us after changing his name, no one would have known that the persecutor himself was the evangelist. This was the amazing thing, that the persecutor had become the apostle. hom. 3 in Ac. 9:1 (PG 51:137; edited) quoted by Michael Compton in From Saul to Paul: Patristic Interpretation of the Names of the Apostle in  In Dominico eloquio 66-67.

Ignore Chrysostom at your peril.

Stephanas to oversee the Lord's supper

1 Cor 11:17-22 seems to have a chiastic structure:

A 17 Now in the following instructions I do not commend you
B because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse
C 18 For, to begin with, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you; and to some extent I believe it.
D 19 Indeed, there have to be factions among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine. δεῖ γὰρ καὶ αἱρέσεις ἐν ὑμῖν εἶναι, ἵνα [καὶ] οἱ δόκιμοι φανεροὶ γένωνται ἐν ὑμῖν. C 20 When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord's supper. 21 For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. 22 What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in?
B Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?
A Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you!

Whether this is a deliberately chiastic or not, it is clear that verse 19 must relate to the surrounding text. In a recent paper (1) Richard Last surveys the standard interpretations of this verse, and shows that they are inadequate. He then translates αἱρέσεις as "elections" instead of "factions", and he renders οἱ δόκιμοι as "approved ones", and φανεροὶ as "persons of distinction". Thus he offers the following translation for the verse:

19 "There need to be elections among you in order that the approved ones become persons of distinction"

He argues that Paul expected the Corinthians to elect leaders of distinction to solve the problems of division at the Lord's supper. This makes good sense to me: by appointing/electing leaders, the Corinthians will be able to prevent the chaos that characterized their meetings.

Now, Gaius and his household were the hosts of the meetings (Rom 16:23). Why had Gaius not enforced order in the meetings? Why had he not made the wealthy share their food? It is unlikely that Gaius was one of the greedy people, for two reasons:
1) Paul writes "Do you not have homes to eat and drink in?" and "34 If you are hungry, eat at home". If Gaius's household was setting a bad example, they would have replied "but we are at home!".
2) The host of the meetings had come to be known among the believers by his praenomen (Gaius). Praenomina were used among family and intimate friends, in contrast to cognomina and nomina, which asserted status. It would seem, therefore that Gaius, like Publius (Acts 28:7), was known by his praenomen because he was a gracious host who received his guests as if they were family.

It seems to me, therefore, that Gaius was not guilty of the greed displayed at the Lord's supper. It is more likely that Gaius and his household were unable to control the meetings. The believers were on first name terms with Gaius and perhaps they had become too familiar and were starting to take liberties with their host. They showed respect for those who put on airs (2 Cor 11:20), but not, it seems, for those like Paul and Gaius who treated them as brothers. The Corinthians gave their allegiance to those who lorded it over them, but not to Gaius, who did not even insist that they use his dignified names.

Now, in chapter 11 Paul does not urge the Corinthians to endorse the leadership of Gaius and his household. Nor does he recommend any criteria by which the Corinthians should choose their leaders. He does these things, I suggest, in 1 Cor 16:15-18:

15 Now, brothers and sisters, you know that members of the household of Stephanas were the first converts in Achaia, and they have devoted themselves to the service of the saints; 16 I urge you to put yourselves at the service of such people, and of everyone who works and toils with them. 17 I rejoice at the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus, because they have made up for your absence; 18 for they refreshed my spirit as well as yours. So give recognition to such persons.

It is very surprising that Paul should tell the Corinthians to defer to the household of Stephanas, rather than to the household of Gaius. As I've mentioned before, Welborn puts it well:

"Paul's demand that the Corinthians "submit" or "be subject" to Stephanas and his household is surprising, if not to say stunning, in context. Why should the other Corinthian Christians, and especially the leaders of other house-churches, men of substance such as Crispus and Gaius, subordinate themselves to Stephanas?"

All this shows that "Stephanas" was nothing more than an agnomen given to Gaius, as I have argued in more detail previously. 1 Cor 16:15-18 is just what we would expect Paul to write about the household of Gaius. The "service to the saints" is the  work of the household in hosting the church. Paul here attempts to bring order to the Corinthians' unruly meetings by urging them to defer to their hosts. Paul mentions the whole household because they, not just Stephanas, hosted the church. Richard Last has shown that in 1 Cor 11:19 Paul acknowledges that the Corinthians must appoint someone(s) to oversee the Lord's supper. In 1 Cor 16:15-18 Paul asks them to give that role to their hosts. Perhaps Stephanas et al visited Paul in Ephesus to get his endorsement.

Let me know what you think.

(1) "The Election of Officers in the Corinthian Christ-Group," New Testament Studies 59 (2013): 365-81.

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.