Constructing Paul (The Canonical Paul, vol. 1)

Luke Timothy Johnson

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781467458481
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

First of a two-volume work providing a framework for understanding the life and thought of the apostle Paul

In this methodological tour de force, Luke Timothy Johnson offers an articulate, clear, and thought-provoking portrait of the life and thought of the apostle Paul.

Drawing upon recent developments in the study of Paul, Johnson offers readers an invitation to the Apostle Paul. Rather than focusing on a few of Paul’s letters, Johnson lays out the materials necessary to envision the apostle from the thirteen canonical letters of Paul and the Acts of the Apostles.  Constructing Paul  thus provides a framework within which an engagement with Paul’s letters can take place. Johnson demonstrates the possibility of doing responsible and creative work across the canonical collection without sacrificing literary or historical integrity.

By bringing out the facets of the apostle from the canonical evidence, Johnson shows the possibilities for further and better inquiry into the life and thought of Paul. This first volume imagines a plausible biography for Paul and serves as an introduction to the studies in the second volume.  Constructing Paul  addresses all the pertinent questions related to the study of Paul. Johnson uses the canonical material as building blocks to make a case for why Paul ought to be heard today as a liberating rather than oppressing voice.

Part 1

PRELIMINARY SCAFFOLDING

Chapter 1

Assessing the Sources

In contrast to Jesus and James of Jerusalem, who have at least minimal attestation from extracanonical sources,¹ Paul is not mentioned by any ancient outsider source, a fact that reminds us that we ought not to confuse Paul’s canonical dominance and subsequent influence with the impact he had in his own time.² There are, however, multiple sources for Paul outside the canonical writings that deserve attention, if only to clear the way for a closer consideration of the sources in the New Testament. Besides providing useful ground-clearing, a cursory look at extracanonical sources also establishes background for a discussion of the critical issues concerning the New Testament Acts and Letters.

The case of James, in fact, offers a helpful point of reference for analyzing the extracanonical sources concerning Paul. In the New Testament, James appears as the author of a letter, briefly in the narrative of Acts (12:17; 15:13–21; 21:18–25), and passingly in Paul’s letters (1 Cor 15:7; Gal 1:19; 2:9–12). But a substantial amount of lore concerning James developed in later Christian circles. Some was straightforwardly encomiastic, such as the several accounts of James’s martyrdom.³ But some was also plainly ideological, advancing a particular vision of Christianity through its depiction of James. One ecclesiastically centered stream of tradition, for example, portrays James as the first bishop of Jerusalem;⁴ a set of gnostic compositions sees him as a privileged recipient of revelations;⁵ and in the pseudo-Clementine literature, James appears as the champion of a law-observant Christianity, whose opponent is a certain Simon, possibly a stand-in for Paul, described as an opponent of the law and therefore of the Christianity supposedly represented by James.⁶ None of these traditions, remarkably, seem to have had the least connection with the canonical letter ascribed to James.

Traditions about Paul

The earliest—and particularly precious—testimonies concerning Paul come from Clement of Rome (ca. 95), Ignatius of Antioch (ca. 110), and Polycarp of Smyrna (between 110 and 140). They provide evidence for the circulation of Paul’s letters and “fill in gaps” of his life and death. Clement writes to the church in Corinth that Peter and Paul together are “righteous pillars of the church [who] were persecuted and contended unto death” (1 Clem. 5.2). Concerning Paul in particular, he writes, “Through jealousy and strife Paul showed the way to the prize of endurance; seven times he was in bond, he was exiled, he was stoned, he was a herald both in the East and in the West, he gained the noble fame of his faith, he taught righteousness in all the world, and when he had reached the limits of the West he gave his testimony before the rulers, and thus passed from the world and was taken up into the Holy Place—the greatest example of endurance” (5.5–7).⁷

Clement also refers explicitly to 1 Corinthians, telling his readers to “take up the epistle of the blessed Paul the Apostle,” which Paul wrote to them “at the beginning of his preaching,” and displays knowledge of the letter’s content (1 Clem. 47.1–4).⁸ If the conventional dating of 1 Clement is accepted, this letter from an elder in Rome testifies to the spread of at least one of Paul’s letters to that city within about forty years of its composition and about thirty years of Paul’s probable death. More fascinating, it takes Paul’s journey to Spain and second defense as something of which the Corinthians would be aware. The nonchalance of the notice suggests that such an oral tradition had circulated before Clement’s time, and if the tradition was based on guesswork from Romans and 2 Timothy, it supports the position that these letters were already known and associated with Paul.

Ignatius of Antioch mentions Paul twice. In To the Ephesians 12.2, he speaks of martyrs and would-be martyrs like himself as “fellow initiates with Paul, who was sanctified, who gained a good report, who was right blessed, in whose footsteps may I be found when I attain to God, who in every epistle makes mention of you in Christ Jesus.” As in Clement, Paul is praised for his character and witness. The reference to Paul mentioning the Ephesians in “every epistle” is clearly erroneous if we take the entire canonical collection into account, but it suggests that Ignatius had some group of Paul’s letters in which Ephesus is in fact mentioned.⁹ In To the Romans 4.3, Ignatius urges the church against preventing his martyrdom, stating, “I do not order you as did Peter and Paul; they were apostles, I am a convict; they were free, I am even until now a slave.” We note here the similarity to the contrast that Clement had drawn between Paul’s generation and his own (1 Clem. 47.4–5).

Sometime before the middle of the second century, Polycarp of Smyrna had been asked by the Philippian church to send them a collection of Ignatius of Antioch’s letters. Polycarp composed a missive of his own to accompany that collection, To the Philippians, the entire set of compositions delivered by Polycarp’s delegate, Crescens (Pol. Phil. 14.1). Polycarp speaks of Paul as a model of endurance together with “the other apostles” (Pol. Phil. 9.1), and alludes to Paul’s praise of the Philippians “in the beginning of his epistle” to them (Pol. Phil. 11.3). But Polycarp also characterizes Paul’s ministry and provides a florilegium of Pauline texts. He states, “I write to you concerning righteousness, not at my own instance, but because you first invited me. For neither am I, nor is any other like me, able to follow the wisdom of the blessed and glorious Paul, who when he was with you in the presence of the men of that time taught accurately and steadfastly the word of truth, and also when he was absent wrote letters to you, from the study of which you will be able to build yourselves up into the faith given you” (Pol. Phil. 3.1–2).¹⁰ Polycarp proceeds to weave together a set of moral instructions, which he regards as coming from Paul’s letters, and in which we can detect loose citations or allusions to many of them (Galatians, Romans, Philippians, 1 and 2 Corinthians), including ones that scholars dispute as authentic (2 Thessalonians, Colossians, Ephesians, 1 and 2 Timothy). Only 1 Thessalonians, Philemon, and Titus are not represented.

The use of Paul changes in the middle of the second century, when his letters are appropriated by Marcion of Sinope (ca. 85–160) as the basis for what he claimed was the only true form of Christianity,¹¹ using all of Paul’s letters—except for the Pastorals, which he rejected¹²—against the Old Testament (sponsored by the evil creator god) and the “Judaizing” elements of the New Testament, a dialectical stance illustrated by his Antitheses.¹³ In his rebuttal of Marcion, Tertullian (ca. 212) plays the good lawyer and carefully refrains from employing the Pastoral Letters that Marcion rejects, but otherwise draws from all the other letters in the canon; and in his other writings, Tertullian uses the Pastoral Letters as well, considering them authentically Pauline. Similarly, in his massive response to Marcion and the gnostics—among Valentinians, in particular, Paul was popular¹⁴—Irenaeus of Lyons (ca. 180) employs all the letters attributed to Paul in the canon, including the Pastorals, omitting only Philemon.¹⁵ These exchanges are the beginning of a long history of theological debate in which Paul’s canonical letters play a central and controverted role. However fascinating that history is to follow, our present interest is in traditions about Paul himself as sources of knowledge concerning the apostle and his writings.

Before turning to apocryphal writings attached to Paul, then, we can quickly note further positive statements. The second-century (?) Epistle of the Apostles has the risen Jesus instructing the apostles about the conversion and ministry of Paul.¹⁶ The second-century Acts of Peter repeats the belief we saw already in 1 Clement that Paul preached in Spain before a second trial before Nero.¹⁷ Clement of Alexandria (ca. 215) concludes from Paul’s reference to “my true companion” (Phil 4:3) that he was married.¹⁸ Ambrosiaster (late fourth century) argued Paul worked harder than any other apostle because he practiced his trade as well as preached.¹⁹ John Chrysostom (ca. 390) devoted a series of encomiastic homilies to Paul as the exemplar of virtue.²⁰ Jerome can appropriately conclude this list with his entry on Paul in his On Illustrious Men (late fourth century), which once more states that Paul preached in the West before having a second trial and being beheaded under Nero in the year 68; Jerome lists all thirteen of Paul’s letters, carefully distinguishing the Letter to the Hebrews on the grounds of “style and language,” supposing it to be the work of Barnabas, or Luke the Evangelist, or Clement of Rome. He notes that “some read one also to the Laodiceans, but it is rejected by everyone.”²¹

As I noted earlier, however, not everyone praised Paul. He was criticized by some Hellenistic critics of Christianity,²² but even more severely by Jewish Christians who saw him as “the enemy” whose liberating message for gentiles was perceived as inimical to their own law-observant version of the gospel. It is important to emphasize, despite some scholarly opinion, that the canonical Letter of James should not be read as an anti-Pauline composition.²³ Epiphanius (ca. 375) reports on the Ebionites that they “slander Paul, using certain charges trumped up by the malice and error of their pseudo-apostles.”²⁴ By far the most important (and most difficult to disentangle) Jewish-Christian hostility to Paul is expressed in the so-called Pseudo-Clementine literature, which is a complex set of novelistic compositions from sometime before the fourth century²⁵ but possibly containing earlier sources.²⁶ Among such hypothetical earlier sources is The Ascents of James, found within the Recognitions.²⁷ It pictures James as leading a debate with Jewish leaders and almost winning them over, before “the hostile man”—later identified as Paul—disrupts the meeting and almost kills James by throwing him from the steps of the temple.²⁸ There are also sections of the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies that contain Peter’s polemic against “Simon Magus,” which some scholars take to be a veiled attack on Paul.²⁹ With the Pseudo-Clementine writings, however, we find ourselves entering into another category of sources for Paul—namely, apocryphal literature.

Before turning attention to the Acts and Apocalypses and letters that seek to portray Paul—all more positively than the hostile witnesses I have just reviewed—through such acts of imaginative art, it is helpful to review what has been learned from the first set of witnesses surveyed. First, apart from his martyrdom, the earliest traditions about Paul are largely dependent on the canonical letters; even the modest “filling in of the gaps” (such as Paul having a wife, or working long hours, or preaching in Spain) are drawn by inference from hints in his letters, and the more extravagant portrayal of opposition between Peter (and James) and Paul could derive from an ideologically driven reading of the letters. Second, with the exception of his champion Marcion on one side and his enemies the Jewish Christians on the other, Paul is less noted as a theologian than as a moral teacher and model of endurance (see above all Polycarp). Third, again with the exception of Marcion, these sources affirm the canonical collection, including the Pastorals, while denying the Pauline authorship of Hebrews on the grounds of style and rejecting the Letter to the Laodiceans altogether. In short, the sources so far considered build on but do not significantly add to what is stated or implied by the canonical sources.

Apocryphal Compositions

Apocalypses

Two extant compositions called “apocalypses” feature Paul as one who ascends the heavenly realms through a visionary experience. Each is plainly based on Paul’s own account in 2 Cor 12:1–4 of having gone up into the third heaven—“snatched into paradise”—and heard words he was not able to express.³⁰ The first is the Visio Pauli or Apocalypse of Paul, probably composed in the mid-third century.³¹ Paul plays the passive role of seer. The descriptions of the fate awaiting those who had died had a significant impact on later descriptions of the afterlife,³² but the composition adds nothing helpful to our store of knowledge about Paul. The second is the much shorter Revelation of Paul in Coptic found in the Nag Hammadi codices (V, 2).³³ This vision also depicts the fates of sinners but has Paul ascend to the tenth heaven, where he is at the end united with the twelve apostles. Like the Visio Pauli, the gnostic apocalypse ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• PART 1: PRELIMINARY SCAFFOLDING
• PART 2: THE MATERIALS
• PART 3: THE ELEMENTS
• Bibliography
• Index of Authors
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Sources