Roman-period column with inscribed base found during renovation of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Homs, Syria. Courtesy Maamoun Saleh Abdulkarim.

Archaeology at Emesa (modern Homs, Syria) does not give a single dramatic moment of religious revolution. Instead, it offers something more historically valuable: layers. Coins, tombs, mosaics, and reused sacred spaces—including recently uncovered inscriptions on column bases—reveal the slow transformation of a powerful pagan city into a Christian and then Muslim one. For Bible readers, the site allows a glimpse into the long arc of Christianity’s development within the Roman world.

The earliest well-attested stratum at Emesa shows the dominance of pagan culture. A mosaic of Hercules reveals the city’s syncretistic religious culture, where local Syrian worship blended with broader Greco-Roman traditions. A richly furnished mausoleum—yielding a gold funerary mask and other elite grave goods—points to a powerful ruling priestly family, one of whose members, Elagabalus, would later become the Roman emperor.

Roman-period coins depict the grand Temple of the Sun housing the sacred black stone embodying the Emesan sun god Elagabal (later linked to Emperor Elagabalus), while column-base inscriptions praise divine cosmic power and royal authority linked to this deity. These Greek inscriptions, uncovered during restoration of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri, survived centuries of redevelopment. Professor Maamoun Abdulkarim of the University of Sharjah (UAE), who published the finds, explained in personal correspondence: “In my view, the Temple of the Sun should not be understood as a lost structure, but as a dynamic sacred space that was religiously redefined across successive periods.”

Roman coin minted in Homs depicting a sacred stone inside the Temple of the Sun. Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. http://www.cngcoins.com, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The strong pagan character of Emesa began changing in the third century CE. Burial practices shifted. Catacombs in the al-Shorfa area contain corridors, niches, lamps, and symbolic decoration associated with early Byzantine Christianity. Grave inscriptions emphasize themes resonant with Christian theology, like resurrection and eternal life. The evidence from Emesa is not explosive or revolutionary, but subtle. Christianity first appeared at the margins—in burial customs, naming patterns, and small communal spaces.

This layered material record mirrors what unfolds in the Acts of the Apostles. Acts describes Christianity beginning as a small, socially vulnerable movement operating within cities dominated by temples and civic cults. Paganism coexists alongside emerging Christian practices, gradually giving way to transformation.

FREE ebook: Paul: Jewish Law and Early Christianity. Paul’s dual roles as a Christian missionary and a Pharisee.

Email(Required)

REQUEST FREE BOOK

Geography reinforces this textual connection. Emesa lay a little more than 100 miles from Antioch, the early Christian hub where disciples were first called “Christians” (Acts 11:26). Situated on trade routes linking Antioch and Damascus, Emesa was well within the communication network of Roman Syria. Antioch served as a launching point for missionary activity. For example, Saul (Paul) departed from there on his first journey. Cities like Emesa would have made natural destinations of early Christian missions.

The archaeological silence of monumental churches at third-century Emesa suggests that Christianity had not yet reshaped public space. This was a time when Christians faced persecution under emperors like Decius, Valerian, and later Diocletian. Public Christian expression was risky and often suppressed. The decisive transformation of Emesa likely came in the fourth or fifth century. After legalization under Constantine the Great and later imperial decrees under Theodosius I, many pagan temples were repurposed for Christian worship in that time.

The Book of Acts ends with Paul preaching in Rome, leaving the future unwritten. In a sense, Emesa shows what that future looked like on the ground. Christianity did not immediately erase paganism; it infiltrated, adapted, endured persecution, and over time took root.

Lauren K. McCormick is an assistant editor at Biblical Archaeology Review and a specialist in ancient Near Eastern religions, visual culture, and the Bible. She holds degrees in religion from Syracuse University, Duke University, New York University, and Rutgers University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship on religion and the public conversation at Princeton University.

Become a BAS All-Access Member Now!

Read Biblical Archaeology Review online, explore 50 years of BAR, watch videos, attend talks, and more

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Paganism Under Constantine

Is the World’s Oldest House Church in Dura-Europos?

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

Windows Into Julian’s Mind

The post Archaeology and the First Christians appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

What can we reliably know about Paul and how can we know it? As is the case with Jesus, this is not an easy question. Historians have been involved in what has been called the “Quest for the Historical Jesus” for the past one hundred and seventy-five years, evaluating and sifting through our sources, trying to determine what we can reliably say about him.[i] As it happens, the quest for the historical Paul began almost simultaneously, inaugurated by the German scholar Ferdinand Christian Baur.[ii] Baur put his finger squarely on the problem: There are four different “Pauls” in the New Testament, not one, and each is quite distinct from the others. New Testament scholars today are generally agreed on this point.[iii]

Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860)

Thirteen of the New Testament’s twenty-seven documents are letters with Paul’s name as the author, and a fourteenth, the book of Acts, is mainly devoted to the story of Paul’s life and career—making up over half the total text.[iv] The problem is, these fourteen texts fall into four distinct chronological tiers, giving us our four “Pauls”:

1. Authentic or Early Paul: 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans, Philippians, and Philemon (50s-60s A.D.)
2. Disputed Paul or Deutero-Pauline: 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians (80-100 A.D.)
3. Pseudo–Paul or the Pastorals: 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus (80-100 A.D.)
4. Tendentious or Legendary Paul: Acts of the Apostles (90-130 A.D.)

Though scholars differ as to what historical use one might properly make of tiers 2, 3, or 4, there is almost universal agreement that a proper historical study of Paul should begin with the seven genuine letters, restricting one’s analysis to what is most certainly coming from Paul’s own hand. This approach might sound restrictive but it is really the only proper way to begin. The Deutero-Pauline letters, and the Pastorals reflect a vocabulary, a development of ideas, and a social setting that belong to a later time.[v] We are not getting Paul as he was, but Paul’s name used to lend authority to the ideas of later authors who intend for readers to believe they come from Paul. In modern parlance we call such writings forgeries, but a more polite academic term is pseudonymous, meaning “falsely named.”

FREE ebook: Paul: Jewish Law and Early Christianity. Paul’s dual roles as a Christian missionary and a Pharisee.

Email(Required)

REQUEST FREE BOOK

Those more inclined to view this activity in a positive light point to a group of followers of Paul, some decades after his death, who wanted to honor him by continuing his legacy and using his name to defend views with which they assumed he would have surely agreed. A less charitable judgment is that these letters represent an attempt to deceive gullible readers by authors intent on passing on their own views as having the authority of Paul. Either way, this enterprise of writing letters in Paul’s name has been enormously influential, since Paul became such a towering figure of authority in the church.

The Pastorals (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) are not included in our earliest extant collection of Paul’s letters, the so-called Chester Beatty papyrus, that dates to the third century A.D.[vi] Paul’s apocalyptic urgency, so dominant in the earlier letters, is almost wholly absent in these later writings. Among the Deutero-Pauline tier, 2 Thessalonians was specifically written to calm those who were claiming that the day of judgment was imminent—the very thing Paul constantly proclaimed (2 Thessalonians 2:1-3).

In tiers 2 and 3 the domestic roles of husbands, wives, children, widows, masters, and slaves are specified with a level of detail uncharacteristic of Paul’s ad hoc instructions in his earlier letters (Ephesians 5:21-6:9; Colossians 3:18-4:1; 1 Timothy 5:1-16). Specific rules are set down for the qualifications and appointment of bishops and deacons in each congregation (1 Timothy 3:1-13; Titus 1:5-9). There is a strong emphasis on following tradition, respecting the governmental authorities, handling wealth, and maintaining a respectable social order (2 Thessalonians 2:15; 3:6-15; 1 Timothy 2: 1-4; 5:17-19; 6:6-10; Titus 3:1). The Pastorals, in particular, are essentially manuals for church officers, intended to enforce order and uniformity.

Some have argued that the passing of time and the changing of circumstances might account for the differences, but detailed studies of the commonly used vocabulary in Paul’s undisputed letters, in contrast to the Deutero-Pauline and Pastoral letters, has settled the question for most scholars. I will make little use of these later documents in trying to reconstruct the “historical Paul.”

Our website, blog and email newsletter are a crucial part of Biblical Archaeology Society's nonprofit educational mission

This costs substantial money and resources, but we don't charge a cent to you to cover any of those expenses.

If you'd like to help make it possible for us to continue Bible History Daily, BiblicalArchaeology.org, and our email newsletter please donate. Even $5 helps:

The book of Acts, tier 4, presents a special problem in that it offers fascinating biographical background on Paul not found in his genuine letters as well as complete itineraries of his travels. The problem, as I mentioned in the Introduction, is with its harmonizing theological agenda that stresses the cozy relationship Paul had with the Jerusalem leaders of the church and its over-idealized heroic portrait of Paul. Many historians are agreed that it merits the label “Use Sparingly with Extreme Caution.” As a general working method I have adopted the following three principles:

1. Never accept anything in Acts over Paul’s own account in his seven genuine letters.
2. Cautiously consider Acts if it agrees with Paul and one can detect no obvious biases.
3. Consider the independent data Acts provides of interest but not of interpretive historical use.

This latter principle would include biographical information, the three accounts of Paul’s conversion that the author provides, the various speeches of Paul, his itinerary, and other such details.[vii]

Before applying these principles here is a skeletal outline of Paul’s basic biographical data drawn only from his genuine letters that gives us a solid place to begin. Here is what we most surely know:

• Paul calls himself a Hebrew or Israelite, stating that he was born a Jew and circumcised on the eighth day, of the Jewish tribe of Benjamin (Philippians 3:5-6; 2 Corinthians 11:22).
• He was once a member of the sect of the Pharisees. He advanced in Judaism beyond many of his contemporaries, being extremely zealous for the traditions of his Jewish faith (Philippians 3:5; Galatians 1:14).
• He zealously persecuted the Jesus movement (Galatians 1:13; Philippians 3:6; 1 Corinthians 15:9).
• Sometime around A.D. 37 Paul had a visionary experience he describes as “seeing” Jesus and received from him his Gospel message as well as his call to be an apostle to the non-Jewish world (1 Corinthians 9:2; Galatians 1:11-2:2).
• He made only three trips to Jerusalem in the period covered by his genuine letters; one three years after his apostolic call when he met Peter and James but none of the other apostles (around A.D. 40); the second fourteen years after his call (A.D. 50) when he appeared formally before the entire Jerusalem leadership to account for his mission and Gospel message to the Gentiles (Galatians 2:1-10), and a third where he was apparently arrested and sent under guard to Rome around A.D. 56 (Romans 15:25-29).
• Paul claimed to experience many revelations from Jesus, including direct voice communications, as well as an extraordinary “ascent” into the highest level of heaven, entering Paradise, where he saw and heard “things unutterable” (2 Corinthians 12:1-4).
• He had some type of physical disability that he was convinced had been sent by Satan to afflict him, but allowed by Christ, so he would not be overly proud of his extraordinary revelations (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).
• He claimed to have worked miraculous signs, wonders, and mighty works that verified his status as an apostle (2 Corinthians 12:12).
• He was unmarried, at least during his career as an apostle (1 Corinthians 7:8, 15; 9:5; Philippians 3:8).[viii]
• He experienced numerous occasions of physical persecution and deprivation including beatings, being stoned and left for dead, and shipwrecked (1 Corinthians 3:11-12; 2 Corinthians 11:23-27).
• He worked as a manual laborer to support himself on his travels (1 Corinthians 4:12; 1 Thessalonians 2:9; 1 Corinthians 9:6, 12, 15).
• He was imprisoned, probably in Rome, in the early 60s A.D. and refers to the possibility that he would be executed (Philippians 1:1-26).

This is certainly not all we would want but it is all we have, and considering that we have not a single line written by Jesus or any of his Twelve apostles, having seven of Paul’s genuine letters is a poverty of riches.[ix]

The book of Acts provides the following independent biographical information not found in the seven genuine letters:

• Paul’s Hebrew name was Saul and he was born in Tarsus, a city in the Roman province of Cilicia, in southern Asia Minor or present-day Turkey (Acts 9:11, 30; 11:25; 21:39; 22:3)
• He came from a family of Pharisees and was educated in Jerusalem under the most famous Rabbi of the time, Gamaliel. He also had a sister and a nephew that lived in Jerusalem in the 60s A.D. (Acts 22:3; 23:16)
• He was born a Roman citizen, which means his father also was a Roman citizen. (Acts 16:37; 22:27-28; 23:27)
• He had some official status as a witness consenting to the death of Stephen, the first member of the Jesus movement executed after Jesus (Acts 7:54-8:1). He received an official commission from the high priest in Jerusalem to travel to Damascus in Syria to arrest, imprison, and even have executed any members of the Jesus movement who had fled the city under persecution. It was on the road to Damascus that he had his dramatic heavenly vision of Jesus, who commissioned him as the apostle to the Gentiles. (Acts 9:1-19; 22:3-11; 26:12-18).
• He worked by trade as a “tentmaker,” though the Greek word used probably refers a “leather worker” (Acts 18:3).

Become a BAS All-Access Member Now!

Read Biblical Archaeology Review online, explore 50 years of BAR, watch videos, attend talks, and more

That Paul’s Hebrew name was Saul we have no reason to doubt, or that he was from Tarsus in Cilicia, though he never mentions this in his letters. Paul says he is of the tribe of Benjamin, and Saul, the first king of Israel, was also a Benjaminite, so one could see why a Jewish family would choose this particular name for a favored son (1 Samuel 9:21). Since Paul reports that he regularly did manual labor to support himself, and Jewish sons were normally taught some trade to supplement their studies, it is possible he was trained as a leather-worker. There is an early rabbinic saying that “He who does not teach his son a trade teaches him banditry.”[x]

Whether Paul was born in Tarsus one has to doubt since Jerome, the fourth century Christian writer, knew a different tradition. He says that Paul’s parents were from Gischala, in Galilee, a Jewish town about twenty-five miles north of Nazareth, and that Paul was born there.[xi] According to Jerome, when revolts broke out throughout Galilee following the death of Herod the Great in 4 B.C., Paul and his parents were rounded up and sent to Tarsus in Cilicia as part of a massive exile of the Jewish population by the Romans to rid the area of further potential trouble. Since Jerome certainly knew Paul’s claim, according to the book of Acts, to have been born in Tarsus, it is very unlikely he would have contradicted that source without good evidence. Jerome’s account also provides us with the only indication we have as to Paul’s approximate age. Like Jesus, he would have had to have been born before 4 B.C., though how many years earlier we cannot say. This fits rather nicely with Paul’s statement in one of his last letters to a Christian named Philemon, written around A.D. 60, where he refers to himself as a “old man” (Greek presbytes), a word that implies someone who is in his 60s.[xii]

Jerome’s account casts serious doubt on the claim in Acts that Paul was born a Roman citizen. We have to question whether a native Galilean family, exiled from Gischala as a result of anti-Roman uprisings in the area, would have had Roman citizenship. We know that Gischala was a hotbed of revolutionary activity and John of Gischala was one of the most prominent leaders in the first Judean Revolt against Rome (A.D. 66-70).[xiii] Paul also says that he was “beaten three times with rods” (2 Corinthians 11:25). This is a punishment administered by the Romans and was forbidden to one who had citizenship.[xiv] The earliest document we have from Paul is his letter 1 Thessalonians. It is intensely apocalyptic, with its entire orientation on preparing his group for the imminent arrival of Jesus in the clouds of heaven (1 Thessalonians 1:10; 2:19; 3:13; 4:13-18; 5:1-5, 23). One might imagine Paul the former Pharisee with no apocalyptic orientation whatsoever, but it is entirely possible, if Jerome is correct about his parents being exiled from Galilee in an effort to pacify the area, that Paul’s apocalyptic orientation was one he derived from his family and upbringing. Luke-Acts tends to mute any emphasis on an imminent arrival of the end and he characteristically tones down the apocalyptic themes of Mark, his main narrative source for his Gospel.[xv]

Acts is quite keen on emphasizing Paul’s friendly relations with Roman officials as well as the protection they regularly offered Paul from his Jewish enemies, so claiming that Paul was a Roman citizen, and putting his birth in a Roman Senatorial province like Cilicia, serves the author’s purposes.

Acts’s claim that Paul grew up in Jerusalem and was a personal student of the famous rabbi Gamaliel is also highly suspect. The book of Acts has an earlier scene, when the apostles Peter and John are arrested by the Jewish authorities who are threatening to have them killed, in which Gamaliel stands up in the Sanhedrin court and speaks in their behalf, recommending their release (Acts 5:33-39). The story is surely fictitious and is part of the author’s attempt to indicate to his Roman audience that reasonable minded Jews, like noble Roman officials, did not condemn the Christians. It is likely that the author of Acts, in making Paul an honored student of Gamaliel, the most revered Pharisee of the day, is wanting to further advance this perspective. Throughout his account he constantly characterizes the Jewish enemies of Paul as irrational and rabid, in contrast to those “good” Jews who are calm, reasonable, and respond favorably to Paul (Acts 13:45; 18:12; 23:12).

Whether Paul even lived in Jerusalem before his visionary encounter with Christ could be questioned. In Acts it is a given, but Paul never indicates in any of his letters that Jerusalem was his home as a young man. He does mention twice a connection with Damascus, the capital of the Roman province of Syria (2 Corinthians 11:32; Galatians 1:17). Whether he was in Damacus, which is 150 miles northwest of Jerusalem, in pursuit of Jesus’ followers, or for other reasons, we have no sure way of knowing. The account in Acts of Paul’s conversion, repeated three times, that has Paul sent as an authorized delegate of the High Priest in Jerusalem to arrest Christians in Damascus, has so colored our assumptions about Paul that it is hard to focus on what we find in his letters.

Paul connection to Jerusalem, or the lack thereof, has much to do with the oft-discussed question of whether Paul would have ever seen or heard Jesus, or could he have been a witness to Jesus’ crucifixion in A.D. 30. Since he never mentions seeing Jesus in any of his letters, and one would expect that had he been an eyewitness to the events of that Passover week he surely would have drawn upon such a vivid experience, this argues against the idea that he was a Jerusalem resident at that time.

Likewise, Paul’s high placed connections to the Jewish priestly class in Jerusalem we can neither confirm nor deny. All he tells us is that he zealously persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it (Galatians 1:12). Some translations have used the English word “violently,” but this is misleading and serves to reinforce the account in Acts that Paul was delivering people over to execution. The Greek word Paul uses (huperbole) means “excessively” or zealously. We take Paul’s word that he identified himself as a Pharisee, but there is nothing in his letters to indicate the kind of prominent connections that the author of Acts gives him.

Outside the New Testament

Our earliest physical description of Paul comes from a late second-century Christian writing The Acts of Paul and Thecla. It is a wildly embellished and legendary account of Paul’s travels, his wondrously miraculous feats, and his formidable influence in persuading others to believe in Christ. The story centers on the beautiful and wealthy virgin Thecla, a girl so thoroughly mesmerized by Paul’s preaching that she broke off her engagement to follow Paul and experienced many adventures. As Paul is first introduced one of his disciples sees him coming down the road:

And he saw Paul coming, a man small of stature, with a bald head and crooked legs, in a good state of body, with eyebrows meeting and nose somewhat hooked, full of friendliness; for now he appeared like a man, and now he had the face of an angel.[xvi]

We have no reason to believe this account is based on any historical recollection since the Acts of Paul as a whole shows no trace of earlier sources or historical reference points. The somewhat unflattering portrait most likely stemmed from allusions in Paul’s letters to his “bodily presence” being unimpressive and the subject of scorn, whereas his followers received him as an angel (2 Corinthians 10:10; Galatians 4:13-14).

It might come as a surprise, but outside our New Testament records we have very little additional historical information about Paul other than the valuable tradition that Jerome preserves for us that he was born in the Galilee. The early Christian writers of the second century (usually referred to as the “Apostolic Fathers”) mention his name less than a dozen times, holding him up as an example of heroic faith, but nothing of historical interest is related by any of them. For example, Ignatius, the early second century bishop of Antioch writes:

For neither I nor anyone like me can keep pace with the wisdom of the blessed and glorious Paul, who, when he was among you in the presence of the men of that time, accurately and reliably taught the word concerning the truth.[xvii]

Some of the second and third century Christian writers know the tradition that both Peter and Paul ended up in Rome and were martyred during the reign of the emperor Nero—Paul was beheaded and Peter was crucified.[xviii] The apocryphal Acts of Peter, an extravagantly legendary account dating to the third or fourth century A.D., explains that Peter insisted on being crucified upside-down so as to show his unworthiness to die in the same manner as Jesus.[xix]

Ironically it seems that we moderns, using our tools of critical historical research, are in a better position than the Christians of the second and third centuries to recover a more authentic Paul.

Dr. James Tabor is Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where he is professor of Christian origins and ancient Judaism. Since earning his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1981, Tabor has combined his work on ancient texts with extensive field work in archaeology in Israel and Jordan, including work at Qumran, Sepphoris, Masada and Wadi el-Yabis in Jordan. Over the past decade he has teamed up with with Shimon Gibson to excavate the “John the Baptist” cave at Suba, the “Tomb of the Shroud” discovered in 2000, Mt Zion and, along with Rami Arav, he has been involved in the re-exploration of two tombs in East Talpiot including the controversial “Jesus tomb.” Tabor’s latest book is Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity. You can find links to all of Dr. Tabor’s web pages, books and projects at jamestabor.com.

Notes

[i] The Quest was given both its history and its name by Albert Schweitzer, whose groundbreaking book, published in 1906 with the nondescript German title, Von Reimarus zu Wrede (from Reimarus to Wrede), was given the more provocative title in English, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, translated by William Montgomery (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1910).

[ii] The beginning of the modern Jesus Quest is usually dated to around 1835 with the publication of David Strauss’s Life of Jesus. The full German title of Strauss’s work, Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet (Tübingen: 1835-1836) was published in English as The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined (3 vols., London, 1846), translated by George Eliot, the penname of British novelist Mary Ann Evans. Baur’s major work, Paulus, der Apostel Jesu Christi, sein Leben und Wirken, seine Briefe und seine Lehre (Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ: His Life and Works, His Letters and His Teaching) was published in1845. Strauss was a student of Baur at the University of Tübingen.

[iii] Most recently, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church’s Conservative Icon (New York: HarperOne, 2009). A more conservative, but nonetheless critical treatment relying more on the letters of Paul than the book of Acts is that of Jerome Murphy-O’Conner, Paul: A Critical Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

[iv] An English copy of the New Testament, Revised Standard Version, with text only and no notes or references, runs 284 pages total. The thirteen letters attributed to Paul, plus the book of Acts, add up to 109 pages of the total—just over one-third.

[v] See Bart Ehrman’s summary analysis “In the Wake of the Apostle: The Deutero-Pauline and Pastoral Epistles,” in The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 4^th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 272-394.

[vi] “Chester Beatty Papyri” in Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 1 (New York: Doubleday, 1992), pp. 901-903.

[vii] Not only was the composition of such speeches common in Greek literary histories, it was expected. Thucydides, in his History of the Peloponnesian war, says that he composed speeches according to “what was called for in each situation” ( 1. 22. 2). Josephus, a contemporary of the author of Acts, is a prime example; see Henry Cadbury, The Making of Luke-Acts (New York: Macmillan Company, 1927), and Arthur J. Droge and James D. Tabor, A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom Among Christians and Jews in Antiquity (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), pp. 53-112.

[viii] It is possible that Paul was once married since he says he advanced within Judaism beyond his peers. Jewish men his age would normally marry; not to marry would be considered abnormal. In his letters he speaks of the “loss of all things” and also refers to a situation where an “unbelieving wife” might leave one who has joined his movement, so it is possible he is alluding to his own personal situation since he says the brother or sister, so abandoned, should not feel obligated to heed Jesus’ teaching that there can be no divorce for any cause (Philippians 3:7; 1 Corinthians 7:12-16).

[ix] The letter of James and Jude might be exceptions though many scholars question if these two brothers of Jesus were part of the Twelve and others questions the authenticity of the letters themselves. Few scholars consider the letters of 1 and 2 Peter as written by Peter. 1 Peter, in particular, is surprisingly “Pauline” in tone and content and fits nothing we know of Peter based on more reliable sources—including Paul’s genuine letters. The letters of John are not from John the fisherman, one of the Twelve, but from a later John, sometimes referred to as “John the Elder,” who lived in Asia Minor (see Eusebius, Church History 3.39.4-7).

[x] Pirke Avot 2. 3.

[xi] Jerome, De Virus Illustribus (PL 23, 646).

[xii] See Jerome Murphy-O’Conner, Paul: A Critical Life, pp. 1-5. The translation “ambassador,” found in the Revised Standard Version, is conjectural, with no manuscript support. It assumes the misspelling of the Greek word “ambassador” (presbeutes), as “elder” (presbytes), but “elder” is the reading in all our manuscripts. The New Revised Standard Version and New Jerusalem Bible correctly have “elder.”

[xiii] Josephus, Jewish War 7. 263-265. Josephus mentions John of Gischala often in his history of the revolt.

[xiv] See Digest 48. 6-7, a compendium of Roman law in The Digest of Justinian, ed. T. Mommsen, translated by A. Watson (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1985).

[xv] A comparison of Mark 13, sometimes called the “Synoptic Apocalypse,” or the “Little Apocalypse,” with Luke 21, which is the author’s rewriting of Mark, one sees how the “end of the age” is indefinitely extended and no longer tied to the Jewish-Roman war of A.D. 66-74.

[xvi] Translation by Wilhelm Schneemelcher in Edgar Hennecke’s New Testament Apocrypha, edited by William Schneemelcher, translated by R. McL. Wilson, volume 2 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1965), pp. 353.

[xvii] Ignatius, Philippians 3:2.

[xviii] See Eusebius, Church History 2. 14. 5-6 and 3.1.2, who says he is relying on Origen, an early third century Christian theologian.

[xix] An expanded legendary account is found in the apocryphal Acts of Peter 37-38.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Paul and the New Covenant

Paul’s First Missionary Journey through Perga and Pisidian Antioch

The Great Paul Debate

When Did Saul Become Paul?

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

Paul

Paul, “Works of the Law” and MMT

Why Paul Went West

Dinner with Jesus & Paul

The Enigma of Paul

A Woman Equal to Paul

The post The Quest for the Historical Paul appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Discovering gospel meaning or understanding revelations in the Bible has baffled readers for centuries. In this 13th-century mosaic in the cupola of the Baptistry in Florence, a voracious Devil devours sinners. Historical Bible study indicates that when Revelation’s author refers to the place inhabited by Satan, he was thinking of Pergamon’s well-known monument: the Great Altar to Zeus. Coppo di Marcovaldo, The Hell (public domain)

Whether we’re looking for gospel meaning or struggling with understanding revelations in the Bible, historical Bible study can help us find our way.

Ben Witherington III, author of the following article, “Asking the Right Question,” once hitched a ride from a couple who believed the Earth was flat. Why? Because the Book of Revelation says that angels stand on the Earth’s four corners. Can we use that logic when we’re understanding revelations in the Bible? Historical Bible study doesn’t treat Revelation as a cosmology textbook.

The New Testament includes books that are biographies, histories, letters, sermons, and one book of apocalyptic prophecy. Each genre must be studied with some awareness of historical context and historical Bible study. Ancient biographies are different from modern. The gospel meaning reveals the character and purpose of the subject through episodes, not personal details. For example, the gospel meaning of Mark is evident in Mark’s emphasis on Jesus’ death and resurrection. He never mentions Jesus’ birth or childhood. He saved his precious papyrus for what was important to him: his gospel meaning. In the following article, Witherington notes that “a text without a context is just a pretext for whatever you want it to mean.”

If you’re looking for gospel meaning, consider looking into more aspects of historical Bible study—starting with this article by Ben Witherington III.

FREE ebook: The Holy Bible: A Buyer's Guide 42 different Bible versions, addressing content, text, style and religious orientation.

Email(Required)

REQUEST FREE BOOK

Asking the Right Question

To get the most out of the New Testament, you need to know what kind of books you’re reading.

By Ben Witherington III

Ben Witherington III

In the late 1960s, my car broke down in the mountains of North Carolina, and I had to hitchhike home to the middle of the state. I was picked up by an elderly couple driving an ancient Plymouth. After a little conversation, I discovered they were “Flat-Earthers,” by which I mean they did not believe the world was round.

Honest.

I pressed them on this and asked, “Why not?”

The elderly man’s response was, “It says in the Book of Revelations [sic] that the angels will stand on the four corners of the earth. The earth couldn’t have four corners if it was round.”

The problem was that the gentleman had made a genre mistake. He though the Book of Revelation was intending to teach cosmology, but it’s not. It’s a piece of apocalyptic literature that teaches theology, history and ethics, and involves prophecy. In this particular passage (Revelation 7:1), the author, John of Patmos, is simply indicating that angels would come from all points of the compass.

The conversation brought home an important message: In order to interpret any book of the New Testament properly, you need first to determine what sort of information it intends to give you. Just as you don’t go to the phone book to look up a word, or to the dictionary to figure out what’s wrong with your car, you don’t turn to Revelation to find the layout of the cosmos.

Read “Who Is Satan?” and “How the Serpent Became Satan” in Bible History Daily.

So, then, what sort of documents do we have in the New Testament? In my opinion, we have (1) three ancient biographies—Matthew, Mark and John; (2) a two-volume Hellenistic historical monograph—Luke-Acts; (3) various letters (like 2, 3 John), some of which (including Paul’s) are in truth rhetorical speeches with the framework of letters; (4) several ancient homilies or sermons—Hebrews, 1 John and James; and (5) one work of apocalyptic prophecy of a hybrid sort—Revelation. Each of these different kinds of documents needs to be approached in a different manner.

Even when we have identified the genre, we must still beware of the dangers of anachronism. An ancient biography, letter or sermon is not the same as a modern one. One example will suffice.

When we think of modern biographies, we think of hefty tomes that mention everything a person did (and often what they didn’t do, too) from birth to death. When I say that Mark is a biography, we might immediately assume that it is a womb to tomb description of Jesus’ life. Of course, that’s not the case. The Gospel of Mark opens with Jesus as an adult, and at least 30 percent of the text that follows is devoted to the last week of Jesus’ life.

FREE ebook: The Holy Bible: A Buyer's Guide 42 different Bible versions, addressing content, text, style and religious orientation.

Email(Required)

REQUEST FREE BOOK

Ancient biographies, unlike their modern counterparts, were highly selective in character and were anecdotal. In part, they were selective because the author was limited by the length of papyrus he had to write on. Further, ancient authors didn’t have access to our modern data-gathering tools. He couldn’t look up every reference to, say, Jesus in Capernaum, in a computerized database. Ancient biographies reveal the character of the person in question not by recording exhaustive detail but by focusing on revealing episodes in his life or particular historic moments. When you want to know the character, significance and identity of an important ancient person, you turn to an ancient biography. In Mark, the death and resurrection of Jesus are the crucial salvific moments that Mark devotes extensive space to, not least because they best reveal Jesus’ character. (This is different from historical monographs like Luke-Acts, which focus solely on those words and deeds of a person that were deemed to be of historic moment.)

How then can modern people avoid making a genre mistake when reading a book of the New Testament? How can they avoid bringing the wrong sort of expectations to the text? By studying the Bible in its original historical, literary, rhetorical and social contexts. As I often say, a text without a context is just a pretext for whatever you want it to mean. Any serious student of the Bible must be prepared to do his or her homework on the genre question and read good commentaries on the various books of the Bible. Only then will they be truly able, in Paul’s words, to “rightly divide the Word.”

“Asking the Right Question” by Ben Witherington III was originally published in Bible Review, April 2003. It was first republished in Bible History Daily in March 2013.

Ben Witherington III is professor of biblical studies at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky and doctoral supervisor for St. Andrews University in Scotland. For more on the genres of Mark and Acts, see his books The Gospel of Mark: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Eerdmans, 2000) and The Acts of the Apostles (Eerdmans, 1998).

Related reading in Bible History Daily:

Can A Pre-Christian Version of the Book of Revelation Be Recovered?

Blending into One: The “Left Behind” Movie, the Book of Revelation and the Rapture

Who Is Satan?

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library:

Ephesus: Key to a Vision in Revelation
Satan’s Throne: Revelations from Revelation

Not a BAS Library or All-Access Member yet? Join today.

The post Understanding Revelations in the Bible appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Mark Fairchild

Ancient Cilicia’s Jewish population is mentioned several times in literary sources, including the Acts of the Apostles and the writings of Paul in the New Testament. Yet no ancient synagogues have been conclusively identified in this southeastern region of Turkey. Mark Fairchild of Huntington University in Indiana now believes he has found two unexcavated ancient synagogues, including possibly the earliest known in the area of ancient Cilicia.

The second of the ancient synagogues proposed by Mark Fairchild is at the Cilician site known only by its modern name, Catioren; the ancient name of the site is unknown. There, on a brush-covered ridge, a worn stone lintel nearly buried in rubble displays a carved menorah as well as a lulav, or palm branch—both iconic Jewish symbols used frequently in ancient synagogues. A nearby Greek inscription offers solid evidence of a Jewish community with a synagogue at the site. Based on the architecture and weathering of the structure, Fairchild dates it to the Hellenistic period. If he is right, it is the earliest known example of a synagogue still standing.

Only professional excavations can offer conclusive proof about the character of the structures at Korykos and Catioren.
 
To read Mark Fairchild’s full report about the two newly identified ancient synagogues in the region of ancient Cilicia, see: Mark Fairchild, “Turkey’s Unexcavated Synagogues,” Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2012.
 

 
Curious about what recent excavations teach us about religious practices? Uzi Avner’s lecture “The Biblical-Time Sanctuary in the Timna Valley and Its Social Religious Implications” is one of several highlights of the BAS DVD Digging Deeper: The Latest Archaeological Research from the Biblical World
 

 
* Mark R. Fairchild is professor and chair of the Bible and Religion Department at Huntington University in Huntington, Indiana, as well as program director for the Ephesus Meeting, an academic conference at the ancient site of Ephesus in Turkey.

The post The Lost Sites of Ancient Cilicia appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

by Burton MacDonald

Oxford and Oakville: Oxbow, 2010, 252 pp.
$29.95 (paperback)
 
 
 
 

Biblical Turkey

by Mark Wilson

Istanbul: Ege Yayinlari, 2010, 395 pp.
$39.95 (paperback)
 
 
 
Reviewed by Jerome Murphy-O’Connor
 
Biblical Turkey and Christian Jordan are not terms in common currency. Yet these two guidebooks convincingly demonstrate that their titles are entirely justified. The adjectives also hint that these guides are selective. MacDonald does not treat all Christian pilgrimage sites in Jordan, but only those that have a Biblical basis and have been excavated. Wilson casts his net more widely and covers all Turkish cities, regions, provinces and natural features mentioned in any document from the Old Testament through the New Testament to the Apostolic Fathers.

Both authors display a rather relaxed attitude to the application of their own criteria. Wilson, for example, includes Hattusha (Bogazköy), the capital of the Hittite empire 1650–1200 B.C., because Abraham met Hittites in Hebron, and Uriah, husband of Bathsheba, was a Hittite. If this appears rather tenuous, the mere mention of Pontus and Bithynia in 1 Peter 1:1 permits him to assume that all the ancient cities on the south coast of the Black Sea as far west as Byzantium, and even the Celtic cities in Northern Galatia, were “Peter’s Communities.” The lack of even the most remote link with the Bible is easily dealt with by his use of a box category called “Sidetrips.” Thus Ç atalhöyük is included because it is only 37 miles from Iconium. The benefit of this sleight of hand is that Wilson deals in some depth with virtually all the important archaeological sites in Turkey. MacDonald is much more restrained. Nonetheless, he includes sites like Gadara/ Umm Qays, Machaerus and Umm er-Rasas, which he candidly admits were never places of pilgrimage, but which should be of interest to Christians today.

Glossy paper in both books guarantees perfect reproduction of informative color photographs. While these whet the reader’s appetite, they are not really helpful for the tour of a site. The visitor needs a detailed but uncluttered map that he can follow from A to B. In this respect MacDonald deserves the higher praise. Excellent site maps are complemented by plans of every important building discussed. Moreover, he tells the reader exactly how to get to every site and indicates the amount of time that should be allowed. No one who reads him will try to get to remote Jebel Haroun without extremely careful planning.

Very little of this practicality appears in Wilson. The best parallel to his approach is Pausanias’s Description of Greece (c. 180 A.D.), which introduced visitors to the places worth seeing by outlining their history (Wilson does this very well) and left it up to local guides (exegetai) to provide detailed information and practical guidance on the site. Thus site maps taken without change from other publications are never tied to the explanatory text. Sometimes they span two pages, which means that the center part is unusable.

Both authors are to be praised for their reader friendly citation of sources. MacDonald quotes in full the Gospel texts and/or the reports of early pilgrims in his discussion of each site. In Wilson this is paralleled by an adroit use of boxes to give voice to an ancient author associated with the site, or an important inscription.

Their use of sources is another matter. Both exhibit a tendency to take them at face value, when in many cases they cry out for critical evaluation. In this respect, Wilson is much less satisfactory than MacDonald, who makes few errors. MacDonald’s most important is his acceptance of the reality of “Bethany beyond the Jordan” (John 1:28), even though his (highly accurate) summary of the archaeological history reveals no hint of first-century occupation. Wilson, for his part, appears to be unaware of recent studies on the Acts of the Apostles. In consequence, he overestimates its historical value with the result that the dates he ascribes to first-century events are highly suspect. On the contrary, the bibliographies that he appends to virtually all sites are selective but up-to-date.

A guidebook must be serviceable. I wonder how the ink on these stiff pages will respond to heated hands, and I would be surprised if the spines lasted very long.
 

 
Jerome Murphy-O’Connor is professor of New Testament at the École Biblique et Archéologique in Jerusalem and the author of many books including The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide (Oxford, 1998), Paul: His Story (Oxford: 2004), and Keys to First Corinthians: Revisiting the Major Issues (Oxford, 2009).

The post Pilgrimage in Early Christian Jordan and Biblical Turkey appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.