John Gresham Machen - The Origin of Paul's Religion

At Antioch, the disciples were first called "Christians" (Acts xi. 26). The objections, especially linguistic, formerly urged against this assertion of Acts have now for the most part been silenced. The assertion is important as showing that the Church was becoming so clearly separate from the synagogue that a separate name had to be coined by the Gentile population. Tremendous importance is attributed to the Christian community at Antioch by Bousset and Heitmüller, who believe that the religion of that community had diverged in fundamental respects from the religion of the primitive Jerusalem Church, and that this extra-Palestinian Christianity, and not the Christianity of Jerusalem, is the basis of the religion of Paul. According to this hypothesis, the independence of Paul which is attested in Galatians is apparently to be regarded as independence merely over against the intimate friends of Jesus; apparently Paul had no objection against taking over the teaching of the Greek-speaking Christians of Antioch. This representation is out of accord with what has just been established about the relations between Paul and the Jerusalem Church. It must be examined more in detail, however, in a subsequent chapter.

After at least a year—probably more—Barnabas and Saul, according to Acts xi. 30; xii. 25, were sent up to Jerusalem to bear the gifts of the Antioch Church, which had been collected in view of the famine prophesied by Agabus. This "famine visit" is the second visit of Paul to Jerusalem which is mentioned in Acts. The second visit which is mentioned in Galatians is the one described in Gal. ii. 1–10, at which Paul came into conference with the pillars of the Jerusalem Church. May the two be identified? Is Gal. ii. 1–10 an account of the visit which is mentioned in Acts xi. 30; xii. 25? [41]

Chronology opposes no absolutely insuperable objection to the identification. The apparent objection is as follows. The famine visit of Acts xi. 30; xii. 25 took place at about the same time as the events narrated in Acts xii, since the narrative of those events is interposed between the mention of the coming of Barnabas and Paul to Jerusalem (Acts xi. 30) and that of their return to Antioch (Acts xii. 25). But the events of Acts xii include the death of Herod Agrippa I, which certainly occurred in 44 A.D. The famine visit, therefore, apparently occurred at about 44 A.D. But the visit of Gal. ii. 1–10 took place fourteen years (Gal. ii. 1) after the first visit, which in turn took place three years (Gal. i. 18) after the conversion. Therefore the visit of Gal. ii. 1–10 took place seventeen (3 + 14) years after the conversion. But if that visit be identified with the famine visit and the famine visit took place in 44 A.D., the conversion must have taken place seventeen years before 44 A.D. or in 27 A.D., which of course is impossible since the crucifixion of Jesus did not occur till several years after that time. At first sight, therefore, it looks as though the identification of Gal. ii. 1–10 with the famine visit were impossible.

Closer examination, however, shows that the chronological data all allow a certain amount of leeway. In the first place, it is by no means clear that the famine visit took place at exactly the time of the death of Herod Agrippa I in 44 A.D. The author of Acts has been carrying on two threads of narrative, one dealing with Antioch and the other dealing with Jerusalem. In Acts xi. 19–30 he has carried the Antioch narrative on to a point beyond that reached in the Jerusalem narrative. Now, when the two narratives are brought together by the visit of Barnabas and Paul to Jerusalem, the author pauses in order to bring the Jerusalem narrative up to date; he tells what has been happening at Jerusalem during the period in which the reader's attention has been diverted to Antioch. The events of Acts xii may therefore have taken place some time before the famine visit of Acts xi. 30; xii. 25; the famine visit may have taken place some time after 44 A.D. Information in Josephus with regard to the famine, [42]combined with the order of the narrative in Acts, permits the placing of the famine visit as late as 46 A.D. In the second place, it is by no means certain that the visit of Gal. ii. 1–10 took place seventeen years after the conversion. The ancients sometimes used an inclusive method of reckoning time, in accordance with which "three years" might mean only one full year with parts of two other years; January, 1923, would thus be "three years" after December, 1921. According to this method of reckoning, the "fourteen years" of Gal. ii. 1 would become only thirteen; and the "three years" of Gal. i. 18 would become only two years; the visit of Gal. ii. 1–10 would thus be only fifteen (13 + 2) instead of seventeen (14 + 3) years after the conversion. If, then, the visit of Gal. ii. 1–10 be identified with the famine visit, and the famine visit took place in 46 A.D., the conversion took place in 31 A.D. (46 - 15), which is a possible date. Moreover, it is not certain that the "fourteen years" of Gal. ii. 1 is to be reckoned from the first visit; it may be reckoned from the conversion, so that the "three years" of Gal. i. 18 is to be included in it and not added to it. In that case, the conversion took place only fourteen (or, by the inclusive method of reckoning, thirteen) years before the visit of Gal. ii. 1–10; or, if the visit of Gal. ii. 1–10 be identified with the famine visit, fourteen (or thirteen) years before 46 A.D., that is, in 32 A.D. (or 33 A.D.), which is a perfectly possible date.

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