What If Paul Had Travelled East Rather Than West? 171

what if paul had travelled east rather than west? 171

WHAT IF PAUL HAD TRAVELLED EAST RATHER THAN WEST?

RICHARD BAUCKHAM University of St. Andrews

The Jewish East For first-century Jews, Jerusalem was not at the eastern edge of a world defined by the Roman Empire, the Mediterranean world depicted in maps of Paul’s missionary travels in Bibles and reference works. For first-century Jews, Jerusalem was the centre of a world which stretched as far east as it did west, and, equally im- portantly, the centre of the Jewish diaspora, which also stretched as far east as it did west. New Testament scholars rarely remem- ber the eastern diaspora. Of course, the New Testament texts give them very little occasion to call it to mind. The Acts of the Apostles, which probably more than any other New Testament document has fashioned the general impression we have of the geographical scope of the early Christian world, focuses, once the narrative leaves Palestine, exclusively on Paul’s missionary travels to the north-west and west of Palestine. But Acts in fact contains its own warning against taking this focus as more than a pars pro toto story of the spread of the Christian gospel in the early years. Its precise and accurate sketch of the geography of the Jewish diaspora (2:9-11), from Parthia in the east to Rome in the west, from Pontus in the north to Arabia in the south, with Jerusalem at the centre, is programmatic. It defines not the world that the gospel must finally reach (1:8), since in none of these directions does it reach one of the ends of the earth, as conceived at the time,1 but the Jewish world which would be reached by Jews travelling from Jerusalem to all parts of the diaspora.2 Just such a crowd of pilgrims as Acts 2 depicts would be present at every major

1 One of these, Ethiopia, does appear implicitly in Acts 8:39, as the destination to which the Ethiopian eunuch will take the Gospel when, beyond the narrative, he reaches home. 2 See R. Bauckham, ‘James and the Jerusalem Church’, in R. Bauckham (ed.), The Book of Acts in its Palestinian Setting (Carlisle: Paternoster Press; Grand Rap- ids: Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 419-22.

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festival in Jerusalem and so, surely Acts implies, the gospel would be taken home to all parts of the diaspora not just after this ini- tial preaching by the apostles at Pentecost, but continually as the leaders of the Jerusalem church continued to preach their message to the crowds in the temple court. For first-century Palestinian Jews, links with the eastern diaspora were as frequent and important as those with the western diaspora. Beyond the Euphrates in the east lived descendants of the exiles both of the northern Israelite tribes, deported by the Assyrians in the eighth century bce, and of the southern tribes, Judah and Ben- jamin, deported by the Babylonians in the sixth century bce. The largest concentrations of Jewish communities were still in the areas to which their ancestors had originally been deported. The exiles of the northern tribes, not yet regarded as ‘lost’, lived mainly in north Mesopotamia (Nisibis and Adiabene) and Media,3 while the exiles of the southern tribes lived mainly in southern Meso- potamia. In a somewhat confusing passage, Josephus seems to think that the eastern diaspora, comprising the northern as well as the southern tribes, was far more numerous than the western, comprising members only of the southern tribes (Ant. 11.131-33). His depiction of the former as innumerable myriads probably reveals his desire to see in them the fulfilment of the promises to the patriarchs, that their descendants would be innumerable (Gen. 13:16; 15:5; 32:12), but, however exaggerated, it suggests the importance of the eastern diaspora in first-century Jewish eyes. Jose- phus also recounts (Ant. 18.311-13, cf. 379) how the two cities of Nehardea (in south Mesopotamia) and Nisibis (in north Mesopo- tamia) served as the collecting points for the temple tax contributions from the eastern diaspora, where the resulting huge sums of money could be kept safe until they were conveyed to Jerusa- lem along with the caravans of pilgrims, whom Josephus numbers at tens of thousands.4 For first-century Jews, the eastern diaspora was the original, bib- lical and paradigmatic diaspora. It comprised members of all twelve tribes, all twelve of whom were expected, on the basis of the prophecies, to return from exile to form the regathered and reunited Israel of the future. Whereas much of the western

3 On the Median diaspora in this period, see R. Bauckham, ‘Anna of the Tribe of Asher (Luke 2:36-38)’, RB 104 (1997), pp. 166-69, 173-77. 4 On this passage, see Bauckham, ‘Anna’, p. 174.

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diaspora resulted from voluntary migration, though deportation and enslavement played a part in its origins, the eastern diaspora was paradigmatic in that it clearly resulted, in the narrative of the Hebrew Bible, from involuntary deportation embodying God’s judgment on his people. It was therefore from the circumstances of the eastern diaspora that the Jewish theological conception of the diaspora—as divine punishment which would be rescinded in the future—derived. For these reasons the eastern diaspora had a theological and symbolic priority over the western. Communication between Jerusalem and the eastern diaspora was frequent, especially, as already mentioned, through pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the conveyance of temple tax. There were also official letters circulated from the Jerusalem religious authorities, on such matters as the religious calendar, to the eastern as to the western diaspora.5 Jewish merchants travelled with ease along the major trade routes from Palestine as far as the Gulf and beyond (Josephus, Ant. 18.34), which were also the routes travelled by Jewish pilgrims. Natives of the eastern diaspora migrated to live permanently in Jerusalem, just as natives of the western diaspora did. (As native Aramaic-speakers, any Christian converts among the former would have been among the ‘Hebrews’ of Acts 6:1, whereas Christian converts from the latter were the ‘Helle- nists’.) It should also be remembered that, whereas Palestine’s incor- poration in the Roman Empire was a very recent development, Palestine’s participation in a cultural world which stretched east to Mesopotamia and Persia was very old and influential in count- less ways. This participation had two cultural layers: the Aramaic- speaking civilization of the Persian Empire, in which local cultures, while by no means replaced, were to some degree assimilated to an international Aramaic culture, and the Hellenization of the Middle East that followed in the wake of Alexander’s conquests, was concentrated in the Greek cities established throughout the area, and was absorbed to varying degrees by the local aramaicized cultures.6 The Romanization of the western part of this cultural world was, by comparison with Aramaicization and Hellenization,

5 Bauckham, ‘Anna’, pp. 174-76. 6 On the importance of both layers in our period, and against a one-sided emphasis on Hellenization, see A. Wasserstein, ‘Non-Hellenized Jews in the Semi- Hellenized East’, Scripta Classica Israelica 14 (1995), pp. 111-37.

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only the thinnest of veneers. Hence the demise of the Hellenistic empires, succeeded by the Parthian empire in the east and the Roman in the west, while it divided politically the world that Aramaicization and Hellenization had united culturally, by no means severed the cultural links. The Greek cities of Mesopotamia, for example, maintained close cultural relationships with those of the eastern Mediterranean. An example that nicely makes the point for our present purposes is that of the Stoic philosopher Archedemus of Tarsus who left Athens to establish a Stoic school in Babylonia.7 Thus, whether we consider Paul, native of Tarsus, as a Jew of the western diaspora or Paul, trained as a Pharisaic teacher in Jerusalem, as at home in the primarily Semitic-speaking religious culture of Jewish Palestine, he would have felt part of a cultural world that stretched east of Tarsus and Jerusalem to the Hellenistic cities of Mesopotamia and to those parts of the Jewish diaspora that had every claim to be considered the diaspora. Why should Paul not have thought of travelling east?

Why Should Paul Have Travelled East? Paul became a Christian in Damascus, following his encounter with the risen Christ on the way there. It seems that from the beginning he understood this experience as a call to proclaim Jesus the Messiah to the nations (Gal. 1:16; cf. Acts 22:14-15; 26:17-18). The impression his own account gives is that, so strong was this sense of a special vocation from God and so urgent his understanding of the task, he did not wait until he could consult those who were already apostles, but immediately set about fulfilling his call (Gal. 1:17-18). But how could he decide where to begin? It would not be surprising if he were guided by two factors: provi- dence and scriptural exegesis. He must have reflected on the fact that it was in Damascus—just outside the land of Israel—that he received his call to take the gospel to the nations. Damascus must surely be the divinely intended geographical threshold of his mission. Where would one go from Damascus? Though it was possible to travel west through Abila to the Mediterranean coast at Berytus, no Jew from Palestine would think of Damascus as the starting

7 J. Neusner, A History of the Jews in Babylonia: I: The Parthian Period (SPB, 9; 2nd edition; Leiden: Brill, 1969), p. 9.

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point for travelling west. The obvious routes were south and north- east. It was the route south through the Hauran and along the King’s Highway to Petra that we know Paul in fact took (Gal. 1:17). All of this area composed the Nabatean kingdom which Jews often called Arabia.8 This was the area inhabited by the Gentile peoples who, according to the Genesis genealogies as understood at this time (cf. Josephus, Ant. 1.221, 239), were the most closely related to Israel: the Arab tribes descended from Abraham by his wife Keturah (Gen. 25:1-4) or through his son Ishmael (Gen. 25:13-15).9 Ishmael’s eldest son Nebaioth (Gen. 25:13) was thought to be the ancestor of the Nabateans, who took their name from him (Josephus, Ant. 1.221). Their closeness, by kinship as well as geographically, to Israel would make them the obvious starting point for a mission to the nations. But this would have been confirmed for Paul by his reading of prophecy, specifically the later chapters of Isaiah, which were pivotal both for the early church’s self-understanding and for Paul’s own understanding of his role in turning the nations to the God of Israel (Gal. 1:15; cf. Isa. 49:1-6). In the pilgrimage of the nations to Zion, it is the Arab tribes of north-west Arabia that are the first to be named: Midian, Ephah, Sheba, Kedar and Nebaioth (Isa. 60:6-7), all of them descendants of Abraham (Gen. 25:2-4, 13). It is remarkable that Rainer Riesner, who argues persuasively that Paul’s later missionary travels followed a geographical programme provided by Isaiah 66:19,10 does not recognize that a first-century Jewish exegete would be likely to read Isa. 66:19-20 in connexion with Isa. 60:9.11 Tarshish (understood in Paul’s time as Tarsus) comes first among the place names in Isa. 66:19, but in Isa. 60:9 it follows the Naba- teans (60:7). Thus Paul had every reason to begin obeying his missionary calling in Nabatea. That Paul deliberately began his mission in Nabatea should be taken more seriously than it usually is, because it disturbs the

8 J. Murphy-O’Connor, ‘Paul in Arabia’, CBQ 55 (1993), pp. 732-33. 9 The Edomites, descended from Jacob’s brother Esau, had by this time converted to Judaism. 10 R. Riesner, Paul’s Early Period: Chronology, Mission Strategy, Theology (trans. D. Stott; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 245-53; but cf. the critique in J.M. Scott, Paul and the Nations: The Old Testament and Jewish Background of Paul’s Mis- sion to the Gentiles with Special Reference to the Destination of Galatians (WUNT, 84; Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1995). 11 Therefore he denies that Paul’s purpose in going to Arabia was missionary: Paul’s Early Period, pp. 258-60.

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common assumption that Paul, the strongly Hellenized Jew from Tarsus, chose as an obvious matter of cultural affinity to preach in the cities of the north-east Mediterranean world. The Naba- teans, in this period before their annexation as the Roman prov- ince of Arabia in 106, were among the least Hellenized peoples of the Near East.12 There is rather little evidence for the use of Greek. Nabatean remained the language of government, law, religion and ordinary speech.13 But Paul, a ‘Hebrew born of He- brews’ (Phil. 3:5), that is, a native Semitic speaker,14 was certainly fluent in Aramaic as well as Greek.15 There were Jewish communities in Nabatea (probably mentioned in Acts 2:11), which no doubt Paul would use as a point of contact with sympathetic Gen- tiles, as was his regular missionary strategy later. Paul’s policy of prioritizing the synagogue precisely in his Gentile mission (cf. Rom. 1:16) was not merely pragmatic. It corresponded to the prophetic expectation that in the last days the nations would come to Zion bringing with them the Israelites of the diaspora (Isa. 11:10-12; 60:4-9; 66:18-20). Paul’s Gentile mission was therefore bound to be to the lands of the Jewish diaspora, though it was in any case commonly supposed that there were Jews in every part of the inhabited world (e.g. Philo, Leg. Gai. 283-84). After a period, perhaps more than two years (Gal. 1:17-18), in Arabia Paul returned to Damascus. Why to Damascus? There were more direct routes to Jerusalem. If Paul had become persona non grata to the Nabatean authorities, as is commonly deduced from the circumstances of his leaving Damascus (2 Cor. 11:32-33), there were more rapid routes out of Nabatean territory. It must be that Paul now intended to travel the other main route from Damascus: the caravan route north-east to Palmyra and thence to Mesopota- mia. That way the whole of the eastern diaspora, the original diaspora not just of the Judean tribes, but of all the twelve tribes who must all be brought back to Jerusalem by their Gentile neighbours

12 M. Hengel and A.M. Schwemer, Paul Between Damascus and Antioch (trans. J. Bowden; London: SCM Press, 1997), p. 112, give a somewhat exaggerated impression of Hellenization in Nabatea at this time. 13 F. Millar, The Roman Near East 31 BC—AD 337 (Cambridge: Harvard Uni- versity Press, 1993), pp. 401-407. 14 M. Hengel, The Pre-Christian Paul (trans. J. Bowden; London: SCM Press, 1991), pp. 25-26; J. Murphy-O’Connor, Paul: A Critical Life (Oxford: Oxford Uni- versity Press, 1996), pp. 36-37. 15 Hengel and Schwemer, Paul, pp. 118-19.

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in the last days, lay before Paul. Moreover, the nations to the east were Semites. The descendants of Shem lived from Syria eastwards to India (Gen. 10:21-31)—or even to China, as Josephus seems to indicate (Ant. 1.143-47). On the principle of beginning with Is- rael’s closest kin, these were the nations to whom Paul should turn after the Abrahamic tribes of Arabia. Prophecy explicitly envisaged the return of the eastern diaspora along with the nations of the east (Isa. 11:10-12, 15-16; cf. 45:6, 22; 48:20; 49:12). Probably it was only the attempt of the Nabatean ethnarch in Damascus to arrest Paul and Paul’s ignominious flight from the city (2 Cor. 11:32-33) that prevented Paul following this direction to the east. The Nabateans controlled the routes north-east as well as south, and so Paul, in flight for his life, could take only the road to Jerusalem.16 Doubtless, for Paul, this was providential guidance, an instance, as he was later to see it, of God’s ability to further his purpose through Paul’s weakness (2 Cor. 11:32-12:10). From Jerusalem Paul made, as it were, a new start (cf. Acts 22:17-21), understanding the prophetic programme now to direct him first to Tarsus (Isa. 60:9; 66:19; Gal 1:21; Acts 9:30) and so in an arc from Jerusalem to the furthest west (Rom. 15:19, 23-24). His own origin in Tarsus no doubt now provided the providential indica- tion that this was his own role in the eschatological events, as missionary not to the descendants of Shem but to those of Japheth.17 The apostle who, but for the antipathy of the Nabatean authorities, might have travelled to the eastern end of the earth now followed a consistent imperative towards its opposite extremity.

Paul in the East Paul’s missionary strategy in the east would have been similar to that which we know he followed in the west. He would have targeted the Hellenistic cities with significant Jewish communities in them, like those we know him to have worked in in Asia Minor and Greece. He might, in the first place, have travelled north from Palmyra to cross the Euphrates at Nicephorium and then followed

16 Riesner, Paul’s Early Period, pp. 261-62; cf. Millar, The Roman Near East, pp. 298-99. 17 Perhaps not only the location of the places in Isa. 66:19 in the territory of Japheth, but also the priority of Japheth in the table of the nations (Gen. 10:2- 5) influenced this decision. For the territory of Japheth as the area of mission which Paul regarded as allotted to him, see Scott, Paul, ch. 3.

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the route alongside the river Balikh to the Hellenistic cities of Ichnai, Charax Sidou and Charrhae. This would also take him to Edessa, whence he could travel east to Nisibis and Adiabene, where many of the northern Israelite exiles still lived. He would be unlikely to travel further north or east to Media, but would turn south, perhaps ending this journey by crossing the Euphrates at Doura Europos, another Hellenized and (at this date) Par- thian city with a significant Jewish community, and thence back to Palmyra and Damascus. Another journey might take him to Babylonia, the area of the largest Jewish settlement in the east, travelling through Doura and south-east along the Euphrates to the Jewish settlement at Nehardea and then to Seleucia on the Tigris, the old capital of Seleucid Babylonia, the centre of Helle- nistic culture in Babylonia, with a large Jewish community. Con- tinuing south-east he could visit Antioch in Mesene and Charax Spasinou on the Gulf, perhaps also Susa. In many of these cities he might have stirred up the kind of local Jewish opposition that he encountered in some of the cities of Asia Minor and Greece, according to Acts, but he is unlikely to have been harassed by the tolerant Parthian authorities.18 Finally, Paul could have set his sights on travelling even further east, towards the eastern end of the earth, just as the Paul of Romans intended to travel west as far as Spain. This would take him as far as Alexander’s empire had stretched, to north-east In- dia, where the Acts of Thomas take their hero, the apostle Judas Thomas. Like the Palmyrene merchants who travelled down the Euphrates to Charax Spasinou where they embarked on ships,19 Paul would no doubt have travelled by sea through the Gulf to India. Although it is intrinsically likely that some Jews had already travelled this far and settled in India, we cannot be sure that there were already Jewish communities in India at this date. One difference from Paul’s travels in the west might have been that he would probably have preached in the synagogues in Ara- maic rather than Greek, and in general might have used some Greek but more Aramaic. This is difficult to judge precisely. Greek was spoken in the Hellenistic cities in which Paul would most likely have spent most of his time, and Greek is used on most Parthian

18 But the civil war in Parthia during the early years of his ministry there could have complicated matters for Paul. 19 Millar, The Roman Near East, pp. 330-31.

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coins. But Josephus, writing the first (no longer extant) version of his Jewish War in Aramaic for readers east of the Euphrates, presumably judged that this language was the most effective for reaching both a Jewish and a Gentile readership in the east. We may thus presume that the letters Paul would have written to some of his newly founded Christian communities in the Parthian empire would probably have been written in Aramaic. This is an important point for following through our speculation, because it would inhibit their circulation to the west of the Euphrates outside Syria unless they were translated into Greek. This in turn would prevent the influence of Pauline theology on Greek and Latin Christianity and their successors. But translation of Paul’s Aramaic letters into Greek would be not unlikely. Some of the earliest Christian literature in Syriac, probably all from Osrhoene, such as the Odes of Solomon, the Acts of Thomas, and some of the works of Bardaisan, were translated into Greek. The contacts with Greek-speaking Christians that would make a translation of Paul’s letters into Greek desirable and likely certainly existed at an early date. Abercius, bishop of Hierapolis, who recorded his extensive travels in a rather cryptic epitaph on his tombstone, travelled to Rome and then to the east, around the middle of the second century. He ‘saw the plain of Syria and all the cities, even Nisibis, having crossed the Euphrates. And everywhere I had associates. Having Paul as a companion, everywhere faith led the way’.20 In our present context the somewhat puzzling reference to Paul is tantalizing. Did Abercius mean that he was following in Paul’s footsteps, not only to Rome, but also to Nisibis? The lack of any other trace of a tradition that Paul ever crossed the Euphrates makes this unlikely. Perhaps Abercius meant only that, like Paul, he travelled extensively, visiting Christian communities. Perhaps he meant that his copy of the Pauline letters was something he had in common with the ‘associates’ (fellow Christians) he encountered everywhere. Would Paul’s travels in the east have made a significant difference to Christianity east of the Euphrates? If his letters had come down to us and/or he had inspired a Luke to write a Mesopo- tamian equivalent to Acts, we should certainly know a great deal more about the beginnings of Christianity in Mesopotamia than

20 Translation in J. Quasten, Patrology, vol. 1 (Utrecht: Spectrum, 1950), p. 172.

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we do. Though scholars who begin with the legends and find it impossible to ascertain the truth behind them tend to think Chris- tianity did not reach Mesopotamia in Paul’s lifetime or even in the first century,21 it has to be said that the constant communication and travel between Jerusalem and the eastern diaspora makes it virtually incredible that it did not.22 Jewish pilgrims and merchants from the east would have heard the gospel in Jerusalem and taken it back to their synagogue communities.23 This would surely have been the way Christianity initially spread to much of the diaspora, including such areas as Egypt and Cyrene, about which we know no more than we do of Mesopotamia. In addition, there is no reason to doubt the basic historicity of Addai, the apostle of Edessa, and his links with the pre-70 Jerusalem church,24 or Mari, whom traditions suggest planted the church in Seleucia- Ctesiphon, travelling there from Nisibis, in the following generation. Such names, handed down in local traditions, are often reliable even when the stories told of them are legendary.25 However, even these traditions do not indicate flourishing Chris- tian communities as early as Paul’s lifetime, other than in Edessa. Had Paul travelled east, this might have been otherwise. The churches of Seleucia on the Tigris and Charax Spasinou on the Gulf might have been as important as those of Ephesus and Corinth actually were. Moreover, the character of the Christian

21 E.g. M.-L. Chaumont, La Christianisation de l’empire Iranien des origines aux

grandes persécution du IVe siècle (CSCO, 499; Louvain: Peeters, 1988), Part 1. 22 In my view the address of James to ‘the twelve tribes in the diaspora’ (Jas 1:1) is actual evidence of this: see R. Bauckham, James: Wisdom of James, Disciple of Jesus the Sage (NT Readings; London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 14-16. 23 Compare the way in which Izates, before his accession to the throne of Adiabene in 36 ce, was converted to Judaism by a Jewish merchant in Charax Spasinou, while his mother was similarly converted by another Jew in Adiabene. Later Izates was influenced by a Pharisee from Galilee (Josephus, Ant. 20.34-35, 38-48). 24 Discussions of Addai have yet to take account of what is probably the earliest known reference to him in the First Apocalypse of James (CG V, 3) 36:15- 25. Though this text had long been published by the time he wrote, there is no reference to it in the discussion of Addai by Chaumont, La Christianisation, pp. 14-16. By linking Addai with James of Jerusalem, it makes improbable the con- clusion of Chaumont and others that, though historical, Addai’s ministry in Edessa should be dated c. 100 at the earliest. 25 Note also the possibility that relatives of Jesus were missionaries in the eastern diaspora in the early second century: R. Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1990), pp. 68-70; and the full account now of the evidence in Chaumont, La Christianisation, pp. 42-47 (he does not credit it).

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theological tradition east of the Euphrates might have been different. The great Syriac Fathers, Ephrem and Aphrahat of Nisibis, evidently formed in a theological tradition influenced by the kind of Jewish Christianity that first took root in northern Mesopo- tamia,26 knew and used Paul’s letters, but were not deeply influenced by them. Had Paul been the apostle of the east and his letters addressed to churches of the east, this might have been otherwise.

The West without Paul The most challenging issue our counterfactual hypothesis raises is that of imagining what Christianity in the Roman Empire would have been like without Paul. The prominence of Paul in Acts and in the Western theological tradition down the centuries has led to such absurd exaggerations of Paul’s significance as the claim that Paul invented Christianity or that without Paul Christianity would have remained a sect within Judaism. Since the German Liberalism of the nineteenth century, Paul has been required to effect the transition between Jesus, the preacher of ethics, the fa- therhood and kingdom of God, and the dogmatic Christianity which proclaimed a Christocentric gospel of salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus.27 In the many versions of this view, it has been Paul who Hellenized the Jewish religion of Jesus and his first followers, Paul who created Christianity as a Gentile religion for Gentiles, Paul who made Jesus the object of faith and worship, Paul who set Christianity on the road to becoming the religion of credal orthodoxy it was in the age of the ecumenical councils. All aspects of this understanding of Paul and his significance have been comprehensively refuted in recent decades, both in Pauline studies and in studies of early Jewish and non-Pauline forms of Christianity. Against such exaggerations of Paul’s role in the development of early Christianity, we must first note that, creative thinker though he was, not everything in Paul’s writings is originally Pauline. Rather than detecting Pauline influence wherever other early Christian writings employ terms or ideas also found in Paul,

26 R. Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1975), Introduction and Part 2. 27 This is still Paul’s role in, e.g., G. Vermes, The Religion of Jesus the Jew (Lon- don: SCM Press, 1993), ch. 8.

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we should take such phenomena as evidence for the extent to which Paul shared a common understanding of the gospel, a tradition to which he held himself responsible (1 Cor. 15:3), common Christian vocabulary, common Christian traditions of exegesis of the Hebrew scriptures, common paraenetic traditions, and so on. It is also clear that other major writings in the New Testament, such as the Gospels of Matthew and John, the letter to the Hebrews and the book of Revelation, are not plausibly influenced by Paul to any significant extent but develop non-Pauline versions of the Christian gospel which present it as a Christocentric message of salvation through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus no less than Paul’s version does. In comparison Paul appears as no less Jewish than these others, while, conversely, later patristic credal and doctrinal development was at least as much Johannine as it was Pauline. The New Testament without Paul and his influence would still contain a range of Christian writings, each with its own idiom, nuances and creative theological developments, but all sharing common features which must have characterized the Christian movement from its earliest Jerusalem form, all highly Christological, all focused on an eschatological-soteriological reading of the story, as well as the teachings, of Jesus, his life, death, resurrection and future coming. Some particularly Pauline features would certainly be noticeably missing—such as Paul’s special contributions to pneumatology and his use of the cross as a cultural-critical principle, as well as his thinking about justifica- tion—but the Christianity of the New Testament would be still, from the perspective of later centuries, recognizably Christianity. Moreover, we should note, in transition to our second point, that all these non-Pauline forms of New Testament Christianity are fully supportive of the Gentile mission. The second respect in which we should not exaggerate Paul’s role is in his importance in spreading the Christian gospel in the Mediterranean world of the Roman Empire. The Gentile mission began without reference to Paul’s apostolic calling (Acts 10-11) and took place quite independently of Paul in areas such as Rome and Egypt which were not evangelized by Paul.28 Though without Paul the issue of Gentile membership of the eschatological people of God would no doubt have been posed and debated in rather

28 Cf. the rather desperate attempt by Hengel and Schwemer, Paul, p. 149, to postulate Paul’s influence on the Jerusalem ‘pillar’ apostles.

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different ways, it is likely that without Paul there would have been general acceptance of the terms of the apostolic decree (Acts 15:19-20, 28-29), which did not have a Pauline theological basis but established unequivocally that Gentile Christians belong to the people of God as Gentiles, not by becoming Jews.29 The prominence of Paul’s missionary travels in Acts should not disguise their geographical limitations. In Acts, as in Romans, it is clear that Christianity—Gentile as well as Jewish—was well established in Rome (soon to be the most important church of all) quite independently of Paul.30 Though Paul had worked with some of those Christians in Rome whom he especially mentions in Romans 16 (vv. 3-4, 7, 13), it is notable that all these—Prisca and Aquila, Andronicus and Junia, Rufus and his mother (cf. Mark 15:21)— had been Christians before they met Paul. The two latter pairs must have been very early members of the Jerusalem church, as were other travelling missionaries: Peter and Philip, Barnabas and Mark, the brothers of the Lord (1 Cor 9:5), Silas/Sylvanus. Chris- tianity almost certainly reached Rome from Jerusalem, quite pos- sibly even before Paul’s conversion, and soon attracted Gentiles already associated with the Jewish synagogues in the city. Even in Luke’s account of the Pauline mission in the peculiarly Pauline mission areas of the north-east Mediterranean, we can detect hints of what might have happened even there had Paul not travelled there: Barnabas and Mark go to Cyprus without Paul (15:39); Prisca and Aquila, presumably converted to Christianity in Rome, come to Corinth (18:2); the Alexandrian Apollos is teaching in Ephesus and is assisted in his understanding of the gospel by Prisca and Aquila (18:24-26), before evangelizing in Corinth, without having met Paul (18:27-28; cf. 1 Cor. 3:6). Paul was probably the most gifted evangelist and the most fer-

29 See R. Bauckham, ‘James and the Gentiles (Acts 15.13-21)’, ch. 7 in B. Witherington III (ed.), History, Literature and Society in the Book of Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 154-84; and Bauckham, ‘James and the Jerusalem Church’, pp. 450-80. 30 On the origins of the church in Rome, see W. Wiefel, ‘The Jewish Com- munity in Ancient Rome and the Origins of Roman Christianity’ and P. Lampe, ‘The Roman Christians of Romans 16’, both in K.P. Donfried (ed.), The Romans Debate (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991, exp. edn), pp. 85-101, 216-30; R. Brändle and E.W. Stegemann, ‘The Formation of the First “Christian Congrega- tions” in Rome in the Context of the Jewish Congregations’, in K.P. Donfried and P. Richardson (eds.), Judaism and Christianity in First-Century Rome (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 117-27.

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tile theological thinker of the first Christian generation, though he himself would have seen only the power of God at work in his own weakness. But he worked within the context of the remark- ably vigorous and creative movement which was earliest Christian- ity. The attempt to make Paul solely responsible for anything is either a kind of modern theological Marcionism or a reflection of the modern notion of original genius. The historical Paul is not diminished if we conclude that, although without Paul much would have been different about the way the early Christian movement would have spread across the Roman Empire, it would still have spread, with much the same long-term effects.

Abstract For first-century Jews the eastern disapora was at least as important as the western. When Paul returned from Arabia (Nabatea) to Damascus, his intention was to travel east from Damascus to Mesopotamia, where the synagogue communities, descendants of the original exiles of both northern and southern tribes of Israel, would have been his starting point for mission to the Gentiles of the area. But when he escaped arrest by the Nabatean ethnarc, Nabatean control of the trade routes south and east of Damascus left him no choice but to travel to Jerusa- lem, where he re-thought the geographical scope of his mission. Had Paul travelled east, the Christian communities of both north and south Mesopotamia might have flourished already in the first century and Paul’s writings might have had more influence on Syriac theology. Considering how Christianity in the Roman Empire would have developed without Paul entails rejecting such exaggerated views of Paul’s significance as that Paul invented Christianity or that without Paul Christianity would have remained a Jewish sect. The Gentile mission began without Paul and took place in areas, such as Rome and Egypt, which were not evangelized by Paul. Without Paul much would have been different about the way the early Christian movement would have spread across the Roman Empire, but it would still have spread, with much the same long-term effects.

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