Titus-Timothy passed as a Jew

I have already argued that Gal 2:1-3 and Acts 16:1-3 confirm that Titus was Timothy (see here and here). This post continues the discussion, focusing on the Jewish side to Titus's heritage.

Titus
1. The purpose of the visit to Jerusalem of Gal 2:1-10 was to discuss the circumcision question. This is clear from Acts 15:1-2. In Gal 2:2 suggests that Paul had received a revelation to the effect that he should go up to Jerusalem to lay out the gospel that he preached among the Gentiles (i.e. his gospel of non-circumcision). Further, Carlson's work suggests that the men from James of Gal 2:12 had arrived in Antioch before Paul's Jerusalem visit and could have precipitated it (see my discussion here).
Now, if Titus, like Timothy, had Jewish heritage, the circumcision question would have been particularly relevant for him, and this could explain why he was selected to accompany Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem.

2. Titus's Jewish heritage, if known to the Galatians, would also explain the "not even" (οὐδὲ) in Gal 2:3. We could then paraphrase: "Not even Titus (whom you know had Jewish heritage), ... was compelled to be circumcised.

3. Back in 1998 Christopher Hutson sent me useful feedback of an early form the Titus-Timothy hypothesis, and included the following paragraph, which I reproduce with permission. 

"On the other hand, it seems to me that Gal 2:3 is potentially very important for your case. As I rad this, it strikes me that the modern critical editions have an odd punctuation here, setting off the words hELLHN WN with commas, as if they were a separate phrase. But to my eye, it makes much more sense to treat the participle WN with the definite article hO, so that the entire phrase hO SUN EMOI hELLHN WN is one grammatical unit, not two. This seems to be the way Lightfoot read it. So Check WH and other critical editions prior to NH26 and UBS3. Notice also that EMOI is emphatic (as opposed to the enclitic MOI). So you could translate, "who was with ME as a Greek." For your purposes, you might consider whether this implies that Titus presented himself in other circumstances as a Jew. That would suggest that Titus, like Timothy of Acts 16, stood between Jewish and Gentile worlds. Hmmm."

Hutson now prefers to translate, "who with ME was a Greek", which is nearly the same. Now, I don't think we can prove that EMOI is emphatic, but it is an attractive possibility. Hutson's reading does have the clear advantage that it avoids the cumbersome commas, and I think Askwith suggested a similar reading. It raises the possibility that in Gal 2:3 Paul alludes to an occasion, known to the Galatians, where Titus had passed as a Jew. This would create a rather smooth transition to the next verses, where this occasion seems to be mentioned:

4. Gal 2:4-5 is explicable if the "false brothers", through their spying, had found out that Titus was not actually a Jew. These verses, therefore, contain a further hint that Titus had, on another occasion, passed himself off as a Jew.


Therefore, we have hints that Titus had some Jewish heritage, was able to pass as a Jew, and had done so on an occasion known to the Galatians, until he had been found out.

Timothy
We have the same information about Timothy, who had a Jewish mother.

The Babylonian Talmud reads: 

‘And Rav also ruled that the child is fit, for once a man appeared before Rav and asked him, "What [is the legal position of the child] where an idolator or a slave cohabited with the daughter of an Israelite?" "The child is fit," the Master replied. ..... Rav Yehudah also ruled that the child is fit, for when one came before Rav Yehudah, the latter told him, "Go and conceal your identity or marry one of your own kind." When such a man appeared before Rava he told him, "Either go abroad or marry one of your own kind."’ (b. Yev 45a-b)

This passage concerns advice for men who, like Timothy, are born to a Jewish mother, and a gentile father. Yehudah suggests that they conceal their half-gentile parentage. Rava gives essentially the same advice, suggesting that they go abroad (where their gentile fathers will not be known). Thus, we should not be surprised if Timothy passed as a Jew on some occasion. Acts 16:1-3 says that Timothy was circumcised because it was known (by then) that his father had been a Greek, suggesting that he would have passed (or continue to pass) as a Jew if his Gentile status had not been known.

Titus-Timothy

Putting the pieces together we then get the following reconstruction: Titus-Timothy was born in Antioch to a Jewish mother and a Gentile father. He went to Jerusalem with Paul to help resolve the circumcision question. Paul sent him to (south) Galatia to organize a collection. He passed himself off as a Jew there, until some 'false brothers' found out that he was a Gentile. He then had to be circumcised (Acts 16:1-3). Paul later wrote to the (south) Galatians: "Not even Titus-Timothy [the half-Jew], who with me was  a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised. But because of false brothers secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might enslave us - we did not submit to them for an hour so that the truth of the gospel might always remain with you [Galatians]."

I'm not saying that Gal 2:1-5 demands to be read in this way, but it surely does work well as commentary on the events of Acts 16:1-3.

Gal 2:1-5, Acts 16:1-3 and Titus-Timothy

Continuing the series of blog posts on Titus-Timothy, we turn now to Gal 2:1-5 and Acts 16:1-3.

Gal 2:1 Ἔπειτα διὰ δεκατεσσάρων ἐτῶν πάλιν ἀνέβην εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα μετὰ Βαρναβᾶ, συμπαραλαβὼν καὶΤίτον: 2:2 ἀνέβην δὲ κατὰ ἀποκάλυψιν: καὶ ἀνεθέμην αὐτοῖς τὸ εὐαγγέλιον ὃ κηρύσσω ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν, κατ'ἰδίαν δὲ τοῖς δοκοῦσιν, μή πως εἰς κενὸν τρέχω ἢ ἔδραμον. 2:3 ἀλλ' οὐδὲ Τίτος ὁ σὺν ἐμοί, Ελλην ὤν, ἠναγκάσθη περιτμηθῆναι: 2:4 διὰ δὲ τοὺς παρεισάκτους ψευδαδέλφους, οἵτινες παρεισῆλθον κατασκοπῆσαι τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἡμῶνἣν ἔχομεν ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, ἵνα ἡμᾶς καταδουλώσουσιν: 2:5 οἷς οὐδὲ πρὸς ὥραν εἴξαμεν τῇ ὑποταγῇ, ἵνα ἡ ἀλήθεια τοῦ εὐαγγελίου διαμείνῃ πρὸς ὑμᾶς.

Gal 2:1 Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me.  2:2 I went up in response to a revelation. Then I laid before them (though only in a private meeting with the acknowledged leaders) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure that I was not running or had not run, in vain. 2:3 But even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. 2:4 But because of false believers secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might enslave us - 2:5 we did not submit to them even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might always remain with you.

Acts 16:1 Κατήντησεν δὲ [καὶ] εἰς Δέρβην καὶ εἰς Λύστραν. καὶ ἰδοὺ μαθητής τις ἦν ἐκεῖ ὀνόματι Τιμόθεος, υἱὸς γυναικὸς Ἰουδαίας πιστῆς πατρὸς δὲ Ελληνος,16:2 ὃς ἐμαρτυρεῖτο ὑπὸ τῶν ἐν Λύστροις καὶ Ἰκονίῳ ἀδελφῶν.16:3 τοῦτον ἠθέλησεν ὁ Παῦλος σὺν αὐτῷ ἐξελθεῖν, καὶ λαβὼν περιέτεμεν αὐτὸν διὰ τοὺς Ἰουδαίους τοὺς ὄντας ἐν τοῖς τόποις ἐκείνοις, ᾔδεισαν γὰρ ἅπαντες ὅτι Ελλην ὁ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ ὑπῆρχεν.

Acts 16:1 Paul went on also to Derbe and to Lystra, where there was a disciple named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer; but his father was a Greek. 16:2 He was well spoken of by the believers in Lystra and Iconium. 16:3 Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him; and he took him and had him circumcised because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek.

Acts 16:1-3 concerns a time shortly after the Jerusalem visit of Gal 2. Paul meets Timothy in Lystra, which is in south Galatia, the region to which Paul later wrote Galatians. There is a consistency between the data on "Timothy" and that on "Titus":

1.  Titus and Timothy were both associates of Paul by the start of the "second missionary journey".

2. Both were subordinates of Paul at that time.


3. Both were uncircumcised Greeks at the time of Paul's Jerusalem visit of Gal 2:1. On Timothy's Greek status see D. Daube, Ancient Jewish Law (Leiden: Brill, 1981), pp. 22-32. Also S.J.D. 

Cohen, ‘Was Timothy Jewish (Acts 16:1-3)? Patristic Exegesis, Rabbinic Law, and 

Matrilineal Descent’, JBL 105/2 (1986), pp. 251-68.

4. Both were probably known to the Galatians. Titus is mentioned without introduction in Gal 2:1, which suggests that he, like Timothy, was known to the Galatians.

5. At first sight it appears that Timothy was from Lyrsta, in contrast to Titus, who was from Antioch. However, a closer inspection shows that both were probably from Antioch.

There will have been few Jews, if any, among the believers in Lystra. Acts mentions no synagogue in Lystra and Paul's letter to the (south) Galatians seems to be written exclusively to Gentiles. In Antioch, on the other hand, there were many Jews, for Josephus tells us that Jews were "particularly numerous in Syria", and, ‘it was at Antioch that they specially congregated’ (BJ 7.45). There were many Jews in the church there (Acts 13:1; Gal 2:13), so it is there, not in Lystra, that we should look for Timothy's mother.

The Jews of south Galatia were strict about maintaining their ethnic boundary, for they required the circumcision of Timothy. It is therefore unlikely that many of them would have married Greeks. In Antioch, however, mixed marriages will have been common, for Josephus says of the Jews of Antioch that "they were constantly attracting to their religious ceremonies multitudes of Greeks, and these they had in some measure incorporated with themselves" (BJ 7.45) (consider also Nicolaos,  This also suggests that Timothy's mother was from Antioch, not Lystra.

Timothy was a fellow missionary of Paul (2 Cor 1:19), and Paul even calls him "God's co-worker" (1 Thess 3:2). He must have been a prominent fellow-worker of Paul at the time of Acts 16:1-3, otherwise his circumcision would not have been required. However, if Timothy was from Lystra, it is hard to see how he could have been qualified for the task. A Lystran Timothy would have been a relatively new believer, who had had little contact with Paul, and was from a rustic village, spoke mainly Lycaonian (Acts 14:11), and probably had no synagogue. It is hard to imagine Paul choosing one of the "foolish Galatians" to be an important member of his missionary team.

Paul circumcised Timothy, but told the Galatians in the strongest terms not to be circumcised. This is consistent if Timothy was very different from the Galatians in some key respect(s), such as being qualified to preach to Jews or having been brought up with Jewish traditions. This confirms that Timothy was not a Galatian.

I have already argued that Luke was from Antioch. We have no evidence that Paul recruited new converts as fellow-missionaries. I will argue in a future post that Paul had probably sent Titus-Timothy to south Galatia to organize a collection for Jerusalem. In any case, Timothy's role as Paul's envoy explains why we read that the believers in Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him: the believers reported that Timothy had represented Paul well, so Paul chose him to be part of his team to function as an envoy on future occasions.

6. The 'not even' (οὐδὲ) in Gal 2:3 works well if Titus was Timothy, who was perhaps the most likely person to require circumcision. The sense would then be, "not even Titus (who you know has a Jewish mother and is my closes co-worker), ... was compelled to be circumcised".

7. Gal 2:4-5 appears to refer to the events of Acts 16:1-3. Gal 2:4-5 as it stands, with its broken grammar, is hopelessly ambiguous. If, however, it refers to events well known to the south Galatians, such as the events surrounding the circumcision of Timothy, the text need not have been ambiguous to the intended audience.

Paul's purpose for yielding (or not yielding) was that "the truth of the gospel might continue with you". "you" here refers to the Galatians, suggesting that Paul's response to the false brothers was for the benefit of the Galatians in particular. It is unnecessary to suppose that "you" here refers to all Gentile believers. The 'you' here connects the events of Gal 2:4-5 with south Galatia, and this works well if Titus was Timothy. While Gal 2:3-5 on its own does not tell us whether Titus was eventually circumcised, we can say that the circumcision or otherwise of Titus, like that of Timothy, is of importance to the south Galatians. This is surely no coincidence.

Gal 2:4-5 and Acts 16:1-3 combine nicely. Here is a possible scenario. The false brothers discovered through their spying (whether in Jerusalem or in south Galatia) that Titus-Timothy's father was a Greek. They then revealed this fact to the south Galatians Jews, who then required that Titus-Timothy be circumcised. Gal 2:5 is still ambiguous (to me). Perhaps Paul denies that he gave way for more than the few minutes required for the circumcision of Timothy, or perhaps he is saying that the circumcision of Timothy was in no way a yielding of the principle.

For further discussion see my "Was Titus Timothy?", JSNT 81 (2001).

In summary, Gal 2:1-5 when combined with Acts 16:1-3 provides significant points of agreement between "Titus" and "Timothy". This confirms what we have already seen from the Corinthian correspondence - Timothy was Titus renamed.