Paul on “Paul’s travels”

One journey that Acts fails to mention is the very one Paul himself records:

“Nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went immediately into Arabia and later returned to Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem.“

– Galatians 1.17.

Paul has nothing to add about his stay in Arabia, nor does he say anything of the great Arab cities, like Gerasa, Suweida or Canatha. But then in Acts, Arabia does not get a mention at all.

Did Paul really travel 20.000 kilometres? (Stoughton, p88). For all the plethora of attributed letters, Paul actually provides precious little information on “missionary travels” and not one of the epistles can be accurately dated. Acts mentions some thirty-odd towns on the Paul itinerary yet the apostle himself fails to mention over half of them and he rarely confirms his presence anywhere. The letters (assuming for the moment they are not all fake) could have been written by a wandering preacher. Equally, they could all have originated in a single centre, such as Ephesus, and subsequently have been edited to crudely fit the meanderings set down in Acts.

Did Paul really evangelise in Galatia (a quite primitive region of central Anatolia populated by Gauls)? How likely is it that an itinerant Jewish preacher could have wandered into an unfamiliar town, preached to an indigenous people who spoke an alien tongue and who were steeped in the rituals of their own ancient religion, and soon after depart leaving behind a “church” to which he would send letters in polished Greek on the finer points of redemption?

“How Paul got his message across remains a mystery, because there would have been little or no common ground on which to build. I can only think that it was the compelling force of his personality as he spoke with burning fervour about Jesus as the saviour of the world.“

– Murphy O’Connor, Paul, His History, p59.

Perhaps Paul spoke slowly and loudly and handed out beads and mirrors?

To avoid the problem entirely apologists redefine Lycaonia as “south Galatia”, keeping the apostle in “safe” territory.

Paper trail

In order to preserve a tenuous compatibility with the yarn in Acts, all the letters are necessarily slotted into a few years at the end of the apostle’s purported life. Thus, the Epistle to the Galatians, for example, is traditionally ascribed to the year 60 and is said to have been written from Corinth. Though interesting for the partisan view it gives of the conflict with rival “Judaizers”, the letter gives few clues to its provenance.

A summarised career of Paul in verses 1.15-2.14 fits badly with the tale in Acts: “separated in the womb”; a “three year” sojourn in Arabia and Damascus; foray into Syria and Cilicia; unknown “by face” in Judaea; companionship of Titus; conflict with the Jerusalem apostles. The best one might say is that the references to “three years” and “fourteen years” probably puts the composition late in the writer’s career.

Similarly, the Epistle to the Romans, is also traditionally “located” in Corinth about the year 60, with Paul anticipating his first visit to Rome. Yet Corinth is nowhere referred to and the writer’s focus is actually Spain, subsequent to an imminent trip to Jerusalem:

“I have been much hindered from coming to you. But now having no more place in these parts, and having a great desire these many years to come unto you; Whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you … But now I go unto Jerusalem to minister unto the saints. For it hath pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusalem … When therefore I have performed this, and have sealed to them this fruit, I will come by you into Spain.“

– Romans 15.22,28.

Not only is it curious that the writer says he has “no more place” (that is, for missionary work) – scarcely true of pagan Greece – he also refers to having preached in what is now Croatia, again a region unmentioned in Acts.

“From Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.” – Romans 15.19.

Another major letter, the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians purports to have been written at Ephesus (16.8), with Paul on this occasion anticipating a visit to Corinth, by a route “passing through Macedonia”. He expresses a wish to over-winter in Corinth, and then receive help “whithersoever I go” (16,5,6). The intended route is bizarre, ignoring the obvious sea crossing from Ephesus to Corinth. Is this trip part of the third journey of Acts? Paul claims to have ordered a collection for the saints in Galatia (16.1), similar to the one he now orders in Corinth, yet he never returns to Galatia to collect. Perhaps he already has the saints’ loot, but then, is he really planning such a hazardous and convoluted journey with one collection of money in order to pick up another?

The 2nd Epistle to the Corinthians does nothing to convince that the sermon within is part of a genuine letter, written by a wandering evangelist. This time the favoured location is Philippi. Paul’s first letter to the independent-minded Corinthians evidently has gone down like a lead balloon and the apostle responds with sarcasm and self-pity. According to Acts (16.9) it was a “night vision” of a Macedonian which called Paul from Troas to Philippi, a “spiritual happening” that sits oddly alongside the apostle’s more prosaic explanation of his trip north:

“Now when I went to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ and found that the Lord had opened a door for me, I still had no peace of mind, because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I said good-by to them and went on to Macedonia.“

– 2 Corinthians 2.12,13.

Paul’s only other mention of Troas (NOT the raising to life the dead Eutychus! – Acts 20.10) is when he asks his sidekick Timothy to bring his notes and a forgotten cloak! (2 Timothy 4.13). As for Paul’s Christian bridgehead at Philippi the apostle actually confirms rejection not success in that city. Writing to the Thessalonians he says:

“We had previously suffered and been insulted in Philippi, as you know, but with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in spite of strong opposition.”

– 1 Thessalonians 2.2.

This could be perceived as confirming the “flogging”, the “night in the stocks” and the “miraculous earthquake” alleged by Acts – in which case we must believe that Paul not only communed with the divine, but also was a master of understatement!

A myth so grand

Whilst a missionary journey, in the manner of a wandering sage or peripatetic philosopher, is intrinsically plausible of early day Christians, the Pauline journeys, characterized by incongruities, contradiction, and the absurd, are not. In the concocted fantasy, whole cities, even provinces, are in turn, enthralled and enraged by the activity of the pioneers of the one true faith. Yet in truth, the world scarcely noticed the first stirrings of a handful of Jewish heretics or the speculation of a few pagans infatuated with Mosaic law and the musings of the Hebrew prophets. The modest efforts, and limited successes, of early 2nd century Christian sects were amplified and encouraged by a “foundation myth” of world-shaking dimension.

The Christian scribes of the 2nd century who wrote the New Testament needed to justify their own claims to eminence by the creation of noble “predecessors” who had shone like stars in a supposed apostolic golden age and had “passed on” the divine message. They confessed not to the fabrication of myth but to the inheritance of sacred testimony. To be sure, an element of truth – incidental detail and “famous names”, gleaned from the works of secular authors – is preserved in the sacred texts, but in all other respects the sham history overflows with bogus nonsense.

The two prima donnas of the Christian drama, Peter and Paul, are not merely more than human, they are not even human: they are phantoms of theological purpose. They are also rivals. Pious fraud seldom favours a monopoly of invention and in the 2nd century “golden age” of Roman peace and tolerance, any number of ambitious priests contended for popular acclaim and earthly reward.

The candidate of the Roman ecclesiasta, St Peter, was promoted as the pre-eminent apostle in response to the challenge of the Asiatic school of soothsayers and their apocryphal traveller St Paul, who, like Mercury, was a messenger from the gods (and Paul is so-named in Acts 14.12!). Peter was accorded none of the trials and tribulations which tested the mettle of Paul (“in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one”, etc., etc. – 2 Corinthians 11) but instead was especially favoured by the transcendent, beginning with a divine appointment by JC himself (Matthew 16.18). No baying Jews after the blood of this guy!

Peter is a simple hero, suited to those enamoured of the miraculous and impatient of hair-splitting theology. Thus, when Peter, like Paul, was briefly imprisoned, it was an angel of the Lord who arrived to effect his release – not a battalion of Roman troops! (Acts 12.7,10). For Peter, none of the closely argued “rules on food” of Romans 14. Instead, a great sheet descended from the sky full of “beasts and creeping things”’ and God himself boomed out “Rise, Peter; kill, and eat.” (Acts 10.9,16).

Though Paul lays claim to be “apostle of the Gentiles” in contradistinction to Peter, the “apostle to the circumcised”, nonetheless it is Peter who converts the first Gentiles (Acts 10.48) and it is Peter who performs the first apostolic miracle. In Lydda, merely the shadow of the great man heals a “multitude” (Acts 5.15,16) and by curing a single sufferer of palsy (Acts 9.33,35) Peter converts the entire town, as well as all the residents of the plain of Sharon. What a star!

But “Peter” was no great theologian (any more than his creators in Rome!) and “Paul” had written a body of theological doctrines and correctives useful in the practical struggle of establishing a church universal. And whereas Peter’s “missionary activity” did not venture further than Joppa and Caesarea, barely 40 miles from Jerusalem, Paul’s journeys went far and wide.

Everywhere, the thirteenth apostle had met the violent hostility of “the Jews”, and the caprice of the high and mighty, with the unyielding truth of Christ. No challenge was too great for this guy. In the furious 2nd century wrangle for “orthodoxy”, the valuable theological legacy of “Paul” was sequestered for the greater Catholic cause.