Four years ago I spent a few days with a group of people studying with John Dominic Crossan, focussed on the work of the apostle Paul. We talked a lot about much of what Crossan talks about in our Living the Questions videos, but in greater depth and detail.
For me, the most revealing new learning came from work that Crossan did with archeologist Jonathan Reed, detailed in two different books, Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts, and In Search of Paul: How Jesus' Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom. These books offer fascinating details about the actual historical sites associated with the earliest Christian communities including this one.
Outside of Palestine itself, in the "diaspora," or "dispersion," synagogues from the middle first century, many of which served as primary gathering places for the teachings of Jesus to be shared, often listed the names of those who contributed to the construction of the buildings on pillars and walls. Crossan and Reed conclude that a careful look at the names suggests that only about 50% of them were Jewish by birth, 3 or 4% were converts to Judaism, and 46 to 47% of were people called "God-worshippers," Gentiles who had not fully or formally converted to Judaism, but who met regularly and worshipped in the synagogues. The author of the Gospel of Luke, Crossan contends, was one of these "God-worshippers," as were many of those the Apostle Paul led to call themselves "Christians."
This suggests two things to me. First, the often bitter struggle between Paul's approach to following Jesus and the Jerusalem Church's approach, is likely about much more than whether a new Jesus follower, in order to be a true follower, had to become a Jew first, and may be a continuation of the purity arguments that Jesus had with the Pharisees and others.
Second, all this suggests that the earliest Christian communities, at least outside Jerusalem, were more diverse, more cosmopolitan, less poverty-stricken, less primitively superstitious, less dogmatic, and less exclusionary that we had previously believed.
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3 comments:
OK, I'm confused. If the followers are 50% Jewish and 46% "God-worshippers", or "proselytes" heavily leaning towards the Jewish faith, then why was Paul worried about them falling back to idol worship or other strangeness?
I was also curious about this term "proselytes" and it appears as early as Leviticus. So conversion from paganism to becoming Jewish was not a new thing. This is not to contradict the controversy between Paul and James, but just me being curious :>)
I ran across some other miscellaneous stuff. Thessalonica was the major city of Macedonia at the time having around 40,000 inhabitants. Religious tolerance, perhaps as a result of local autonomy, allowed Egyptian followers of Osiris, adherents of the pantheon of Roman/Greek deities as well as the Jewish people to practice their beliefs freely at the time of Paul's visit. So it had roughly the same number of people as Lombard.
Two quick things about the English word "proselyte" and how it's used in common Biblical translations.
First, in the things Crossan argues about the makeup of the group that gathers at synagogues in the dispersion, "proselyte" would more accurately describe the approximately 3% of those gatherings Crossan calls "converts." The "God-worshipper" group are more likely a group who like the social and civic emphasis of the synagogue, but who ware not ready at all to do the things (eg. tithing, circumcision, etc) that "true" conversion demands.
Second, the Hebrew word (Old Testament) and the Greek word (New Testament)that most often get translated as "proselyte" mean two distintively different things. The Hebrew word "shuv" means something like "restore" or "return to," as in "his lost fortune was restored to him." The Greek word is "proselutos" (from which we obviously get the word)which means something like "immigrant" and, peculiarly in the New Testament, refers to someone not from Israel who has converted to Judaism.
For whatever that's worth!
Rob
Ah-ha! Thanks, Rob. But in a sense, all of these people were gathering to Paul through synagogue doors. Then it would appear that the Jewish community, or at least this particular group, was perhaps more open than others; such as in Jerusalem. Although I did read somewhere in my meanderings, that Paul was driven from Thessalonica by the Jewish hierarchy.
Stephen
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