Summoning (and warning) the Jews?!

“Three days later he called together the local leaders of the Jews. When they had assembled, he said to them, “Brothers, though I had done nothing against our people or the customs of our ancestors, yet I was arrested in Jerusalem and handed over to the Romans.“
– Acts 28.17

After the short space of three days from his arrival at Rome, Paul had the effrontery to summon the Jewish leaders – and even more remarkable, three days later they dutifully assemble before him!

Who were the Jewish leaders that so readily accepted the summons from a renegade Jew from out of town? Rome had a sizable Jewish population in the mid-1st century so how exactly did Paul contact the leading men? Would they have even heard of the man from Tarsus? (“We have received no letters from Judea about you, and none of the brothers coming here has reported or spoken any evil about you.” – Acts 28.21)

As if that wasn’t absurdity enough, the Jews then agreed to return to Paul’s house for a whole day’s lecture from the heretic (“from morning until evening” – Acts 28.23).

“But we would like to hear from you what you think, for with regard to this sect we know that everywhere it is spoken against.” – Acts 28.22

Yet if, in reality, the Christian sect were “everywhere” would Jewish leaders really have remained ignorant of its claims? Had “the Way” not had an energetic presence in the city for some twenty years (let’s not forget the “Chrestus” riot during the reign of Claudius!)?

Would not the Jewish leadership years before have confronted the unnamed proselytisers who had brought the Christian heresy to the city? The rabbis surely did not need a lecture from Paul!

Paul’s alleged encounter with the Jews of Rome is decidedly not kosher. But Acts assures us that such was the remarkable persuasive power of the apostle that after their one-day seminar some of the Jewish leaders “believed”. Was the ancestral religion of the Jews so easily abandoned ? Another claim that is preposterous.

Interestingly enough, in enlightening the Jews the apostle made no reference at all to a human Jesus nor even referred to his own encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. Instead, Paul “expounded on the law of Moses and the prophets“. His Christ Jesus came from “revelation” and scriptural re-interpretation. “Paul” confirmed that the charges against him were religious: “It is for the sake of the hope of Israel that I am bound with this chain”, he insisted (Acts 28.20). Jewish leaders would not have been impressed.

Acts claims Paul succeeded in sowing dissension among the Jews but “knew” the Gentiles would listen.

“Paul made one further statement: ‘The Holy Spirit was right in saying to your ancestors through the prophet Isaiah, Go to this people and say, You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn – and I would heal them.’ Let it be known to you then that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen.” – Acts 28.24-28

The Romans had absolutely no reason to waste a continuous guard on Paul for two-years – nor would they.

Happy days in Rome?

“And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him. Preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him.”

– Acts 28.30-31

Having followed his usual performance of first lecturing the obdurate Jews on the meaning of their own scriptures and then issuing them with an ultimatum, Paul moved on to the more receptive Gentiles. His “prisoner” status made scant difference to what he might have achieved if he had not been a “prisoner” in the first place!

Paul had claimed in his epistle to the Romans that his policy was not to work where the gospel had already been preached (“not where Christ was already named” – 15.20) and it seems that the faith of the Christians in Rome was so renown that it was already “proclaimed in all the world” (1.8). This was even before Paul wrote his epistle to them. The church in the capital had evidently existed for “many years” (15.23) before Paul showed up.

Paul’s original intent had been “to pass through” Rome, enjoy the community of saints for a while, and then travel on to Spain:

“But now, since I no longer have any room for work in these regions, and since I have longed for many years to come to you, I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain, and to be sped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a little. At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem with aid for the saints … When therefore I have completed this, and have delivered to them what has been raised, I shall go on by way of you to Spain.” – Romans 15.23-28

“House arrest” had allowed the author of Acts to change Paul’s policy without losing face. The much redacted Romans also has Paul write, “I am ready to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome also” – 1.15)!

Paul resumed his preaching mission in the capital and, “without hindrance”, continued to do so in the comfort of his own home for two full years. Paul had thus fulfilled the Lord’s command “to testify about me in Rome” even if he hadn’t fulfilled the angel of God’s command to “stand before Caesar.“

The Christians in Rome?

In the mid-1st century there were as yet no gospels, so what on earth did these primordial believers believe?

It is argued by some that the very earliest Christians in Rome were among the “3000” who heard Peter’s multilingual address at the first Pentecost in Jerusalem (“Devout Jews from every nation … visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes …” – Acts 2.5,10). The violent sound of “fiery Holy Spirit” had drawn a crowd together and Peter had reminded those assembled of Jesus’s deeds of power, wonders, and signs (“done among you as you yourself know“). So the specious argument goes that Roman Jews, witnesses themselves of marvels and baptised by apostles, had returned to Rome with their heads ringing with Lord Christ Jesus.

Thus a Christian presence in Rome had self-generated from witnesses of miracles returning from Jerusalem. No charismatic apostolic founder figure had been required. By a similar logic, Christian communities could have been established everywhere else and the whole “apostolic mission” would have been undermined.

What we have here, in the “persons unknown” origin of the church in Rome, is implicitly (though certainly not explicitly!) an acknowledgement that Christian fraternities emerged from earlier enthusiasms that had preceded them – Judaism itself, and various cults blended in an ongoing syncretism.

Jews from Rome (perhaps freed slaves) may have visited Jerusalem for some particular festival and then returned to Rome “radicalised” by their experience. Rather than stand witness to miracle, and encounters with characters talking about miracles, the more rational probability is that they imbibed some strain of messianic expectation, nothing more.

And then …  a trip to Spain?

What happened to Paul subsequent to his two-years of home-based sermonising? History is silent but holy liars are ever active.

“Acts gives no hint of what happened at the close of the two whole years. Was Paul acquitted? Did the case go by default? Was he martyred under Nero? Or was his fate still undecided when Luke penned the verse? A case can be made out for all these conjectures.” – E.J. Bicknell, A New Commentary on Holy Scripture, p377

The intention expressed in Romans that Paul, after a short period of fellowship and fund-raising in Rome, wanted to resume his missionary activity in Spain, provided the basis for the assertion that the Spanish escapade did in fact happen. The document that confirmed this was another “letter”, forever known as “1 Clement” (or more formally as First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians) though in fact the letter is anonymous and Clement is nowhere mentioned. At either 13,000 or 16,000 words (depending on the choice of translation, the original Greek or later Latin) this preposterously lengthy “letter” (twice the size of Romans) stands service for many dubious claims of the church. With regard to the fate of Paul, the pertinent paragraph occurs in chapter 5:

“ Paul by his example pointed out the prize of patient endurance. After that he had been seven times in bonds, had been driven into exile, had been stoned, had preached in the East and in the West, he won the noble renown which was the reward of his faith, having taught righteousness unto the whole world and having reached the farthest bounds of the West and when he had borne his testimony before the rulers, so he departed from the world and went unto the holy place, having been found a notable pattern of patient endurance.” – 1 Clement 5 (Lightfoot translation)

Here is the vaguest possible reference to Spain (“farthest bounds of the West” – could that be Britain?) and the barest allusion to martyrdom. To make the “death and martyrdom” more evident, later copies of Clement read “suffered martyrdom under the prefects”, though even this makes no reference to when, where or how Paul died.

There are obvious problems for the theory that Paul evangelised in Spain. One of them is that Spanish church gives the honour of “founder apostle” to James, the brother of John (Santiago!). Then again, there is no evidence of 1st century Christianity in Spain at all!

Did Paul simply die of old age, perhaps? His struggle seems to have been against jealousy, not a vicious Roman emperor. There is nothing here about death in Rome, Nero, or the burning of Christians.

Death becomes you – Acts of Paul

As we saw above, the first allusion to the death of Paul is to found in that a massive diatribe known as “1 Clement”. But in fact, Eusebius, the 4th century church historian, made no reference to 1 Clement when establishing the supposed martyrdom of Paul (and Peter) although he discusses this so-called “epistle” at length.

The first testimony that is quoted by Eusebius (Church History 2.25) dates from more than a hundred years later than Clement, from a certain Caius. This Caius (possibly a presbyter in Rome during the papacy of Zephyrinus, 199-217) is reported to have written “But I can show the trophies of the apostles. For if you will go to the Vatican or to the Ostian way, you will find the trophies of those who laid the foundations of this church.”

In the Roman world, of course, trophies went with triumphs, and we have already seen Paul had a “triumphant entry” into Rome. But tropaea constructed by sectarians claiming to be persecuted is extremely unlikely. Were the Christians not supposedly hiding in the catacombs at the time of Paul’s death?!

Of course these trophies would not long have existed anyway because later Christian basilicas were constructed on the sites where supposedly they had stood. But even extant trophies would prove nothing about when, where or how Paul died.

Eusebius next cited Dionysius, a late 2nd century bishop of Corinth, who made the startling claim that Peter and Paul had taught and died together in Rome :

“You have thus by such an admonition bound together the planting of Peter and of Paul at Rome and Corinth. For both of them planted and likewise taught us in our Corinth. And they taught together in like manner in Italy, and suffered martyrdom at the same time.” – H.E. 2.25

Detail, of course, is missing and the source is suspect. The so-called bishop of Corinth claims that his own church had been “planted” by both Peter and Paul, a joint enterprise unknown either to Paul or the author of Acts! If that was the testimony of Dionysius writing of his own church his word is valueless for the church of Rome.

Eusebius throws in his own bit of questionable evidence at this point, reporting that the names of Peter and Paul were “preserved in the cemeteries of that place even to the present day.” But in the ancient world the names of thousands of fabulous entities were preserved, in burial grounds, public spaces, and popular shrines. That made none of them real. The only reality is that Peter and Paul had been “planted” in Rome.

The witness of Tacitus? NO!

It should be noted that, in substantiating the supposed “persecution of Nero,” Eusebius does NOT cite the notorious passage 15.44 from the Annals of Tacitus so beloved by today’s apologists!

This is especially telling because Eusebius, rather than cite the Roman historian (which he does nowhere in his history), chooses instead to recycle the vague assertion made by Tertullian, writing more than a century later than Tacitus, that Nero was the “first persecutor of the church“. Nearly two centuries after the alleged persecution, Tertullian urged his readers to “examine your records” without indicating his actual source:

“Examine your records. You will there find that Nero was the first emperor who wreaked his fury on the blood of Christians, when our religion was just springing up in Rome. But we even glory in being first dedicated to destruction by such a monster. For whoever knows him can understand that it could only have been something of supreme excellence that called forth the condemnation of Nero.” – Apology 5

Tertullian referred a second time to these “public records” but this time made clear his figurative use of the term:

” And if a heretic wishes his confidence to rest upon a public record, the archives of the empire will speak, as would the stones of Jerusalem.” – Scorpiace 15

“Speaking archives” have no more reality than “speaking stones”. It is more than a tad suspicious that neither Tertullian in the 3rd century nor Eusebius in the 4th century quote the historical records directly, which points towards the redaction of the text of Tacitus at a date even later than the time of Eusebius.

Tertullian is most notable for his quip about throwing Christians to the lions (“What, all of them? to a single lion?“) but he was also the first to say that Peter had been crucified: “Peter suffered a passion like his Lord’s”  (On the Prescription of Heretics, 36).

As for Paul, Tertullian reported that “Paul was crowned with the death of John” (that is a beheading, like John the Baptist). This contradicts the boast ascribed to Ignatius more than a century earlier, that the wannabe martyr “wanted to be found in the footsteps of Paul” and yet that meant being fed to the beasts! (Ignatius, Ephesians 12, Romans 1).

A fantasy itinerary for Paul – but then again, they are all fantasy!

In its wildest incarnation Paul’s later career is even more dynamic than the earlier career recorded in Acts. It is all based on a ludicrous over-interpretation of just a few verses from the fake pastoral epistles. Having made the claim that Paul travelled to Spain and the west, it seems the pastoral epistles suggest that Paul also travelled back to the east!

One claim is that Paul left Rome for Spain and then returned to Ephesus. From here Paul visited the other churches of Greece and wrote his first letter to Timothy. This claim is squeezed from a single verse:

“As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies which promote speculations rather than the divine training that is in faith.” – 1 Timothy 1.3

One problem with this bit of the new itinerary is that Timothy, according to Acts, was not with Paul when he left Ephesus!

From Greece, it has been asserted, Paul took ship to Crete and then again returned to Ephesus, where he wrote his letter to Titus. This is derived from: “When I send Artemas or Tychicus to you, do your best to come to me at Nicopolis, for I have decided to spend the winter there.” (Titus 1.12).

With the epistle of Titus moving Paul to Nicopolis, Paul’s arrest (at Nicopolis, or perhaps at Troas, where Paul left some belongings), and transport back to Rome, is extracted from just a couple verses of 2 Timothy:

“Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you for he is very useful in serving me. Tychicus I have sent to Ephesus. When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments.” – 2 Timothy 4.11-13

“Luke alone” was supposedly with Paul in Rome in his final days. All that is required now is testimony that Paul died a martyr by decapitation. But “Luke” – the “great historian” – fails to say a word.

A second jail term and martyrdom ?!

Whether it was to Spain or somewhere else, Paul supposedly left Rome and returned to the city some years later. A chronology of this last period of Paul’s life is even more problematic than earlier episodes, not least because all the claims are “traditions” woven around interpretations of epistles which themselves are inauthentic. Our only safe footstep is that if Paul existed and if he was transported to Rome as claimed by Acts, his first detention lasted until 62.

Did Paul, perhaps, return to Rome of his own volition or was he still being hounded by dastardly Jews? Was there no second dramatic voyage to Rome, involving, say, a shipwreck and snakebite miracle or something similar, worthy of the great apostle? How long was Paul’s second prison term? Was there a new charge against him or was he simply caught up in the Neronian persecution, if such an event even occurred? Did he die in 64 or as late as 68? Why did “Luke” stop documenting his hero before these crucial episodes? According to the “traditions” about Luke himself, he lived to a ripe old age of 84.

Fabricating “tradition” – the Mamertine prison

Is it remotely creditable that the original Christians of Rome, who traipsed for days just to share with Paul his first entrance into the city, not only showed no such interest in his second arrival just a few years later, but also failed to record a single word about his imprisonment, his trial, his execution and his burial?

To all of these questions we have only the “imaginative” answers from a later age. Papal ambition and pious credulity supplied what history failed to provide. Thus a suitably grim prison was identified in which Peter and Paul “must” have spent their final days. With a few added artifacts, such as chains and graffiti, authenticity was confirmed and a “tradition” was born.

Thus it was that the first and oldest prison in Rome, the Tullianum, was retroactively drawn into the Christian fable. Located on the eastern slope of the Capitoline hill, close to the forum, the lower, subterranean level of the prison had originally been a water cistern. A spring (hence the name) rose through a hole in the floor and drained into the main sewer (Cloaca Maxima). During the republican period this chamber became a holding cell for state prisoners, many held pending an inglorious display in a Roman triumph. Others simply died in this dark and damp dungeon, the only entry to which was a hole in the floor above (today there is an added flight of steps). The prisoners, often naked, were lowered or thrown into this hellhole.

Now try to imagine this … Paul writing his “2nd epistle to Timothy” from the Tullianum – and writing this!

“Do your best to get here before winter. Eubulus greets you, and so do Pudens, Linus, Claudia and all the brothers and sisters.”

– 2 Timothy 4.21.

Quite a jolly group in the dungeon. And of course there must have been a friendly jailer at hand to deliver the precious epistle!

The Tullianum was integrated into the Christian dreamscape sometime between the 5th and 7th centuries, when it was added to the pilgrim trail and repurposed for Christian worship. By then it was known as the Mamertine.

Even the spring itself was given a role in the faux drama. It owed its existence, supposedly, not to an ancient aquifer but to a miracle of Peter, who used its waters to “baptise other prisoners”. The “healing waters” would thereafter be a fillip to the burgeoning pilgrim trade.

Paul loses his head

“Patristic tradition has, by and large, placed the date of Paul’s martyrdom in Nero’s last regnal year, 68 A.D. This is, however, a late tradition with no seeming historical basis. The choice of this date is clearly theological … Nero’s fall from power and subsequent death being considered as divine punishment for his ordering the killing of the two Apostles Peter and Paul.”

– Tajra, The Martyrdom of St. Paul, 31.

The “holding cell” at the Mamertine was not the only “holding cell” of the apostle Paul. Six miles to the south, at the church of St Paul at the Three Fountains, is another delight for the Christian pilgrim. The church (with its own holding cell!) marks the spot where supposedly the apostle had his head cut off. Pope Gregory I in the 7th century confirmed it so and coins from the reign of Nero were found here in the 19th century.

From the three points where Paul’s head bounced three springs gushed forth. Apart from the assurance of the 4th century Acts of Peter and Paul, convincing evidence of this is provided by three languid fountains which show precisely where Paul’s head touched the ground. Well, not any more. They were closed off in 1950 as a health hazard. But three close altars within the church mark where they were. Apparently.

Aside from this absurd nonsense, the question to ask is, Why traipse Paul six miles to cut off his head? The best apology that defenders of the faith can muster is to suggest that a too public execution might have “caused a stir.”

Inmates of the Tullianum – Sejanas, the deposed praetorian prefect of Tiberius, for example – were killed on the spot, their corpses exposed on the Gemonium stairs or thrown into the forum.

So what was so appealing about about the area around Aquae Salviae? For one thing, the district was sacred to the ancient fertility goddess Dea Dia (one of the cults revised by Augustus) and the spring here had a venerable history long before Christianity claimed it as its own. By so doing, yet another bit of Rome’s pagan heritage was expropriated by the cult of Christ.

Although risible, the story of Paul’s “bouncing head” worked well enough during centuries of ignorance and gullibility and inspired some fine but misleading art.