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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Loren Rosson <rossoiii AT yahoo.com>
  • To: Corpus-paul <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Hurd's chronology
  • Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 05:46:09 -0800 (PST)


John,

Thanks for posting your chronology. For now, a few
observations:

> 40 Heard that the Thessalonian church
> was being persecuted and that
> Caligula's attempt to have his statue
> erected in the Temple at Jerusalem
> had caused them to believe that the Day
> of the Lord had already come (2 Thess.
> 1:4-7; 2:1-2).

> 41 2 THESSALONIANS [written]

I was struck by your remarkably early date for II
Thessalonians. I suppose the Caligula event could have
given rise to the sort of apocalyptic fervor which
characterizes the letter, but consider Paul’s allusion
to the bogus letters (II Thess. 2:2). I doubt Paul was
renowned enough by the year 40 (especially in Greece)
that letters were already circulating in his name.

> [Late 30s] Founded church in Corinth
> with Silvanus and Timothy (2 Cor.
> 1:19; 10:14; 1 Cor. 3:6; 4:15) [cf.
> Acts 18:1-18].

You place Paul’s evangelical visit to Corinth in the
late 30s, and (as Richard noted) you scrap the Gallio
reference in Acts 18:12 (which has traditionally
placed Paul in Corinth around 50-52). Richard beat me
to certain questions about the use of Acts. Granted
that the approach of John Knox led to some necessary
reappraisals as to the reliability of Acts, we can
only push skepticism so far. If we can’t trust a
reference like the one in Acts 18:12, what can we
trust?

> 47 Second ("Conference") Visit to
> Jerusalem (after "fourteen years")
> with Barnabas and Titus taking
> famine relief from Antioch (Gal. 2:1-10)
> [cf. Acts 11:27-30; 12:25; 15:2-33].
> Apostolic Council giving Paul
> authority over his mission field
> but binding him to require of his
> Gentile converts the three minimum
> points of Jewish morality (avoid
> idolatry, immorality, and blood;
> Acts 15:20, 29; 21:25) and to collect
> money for the Jerusalem church from his
> converts (Gal. 2:10; 1 Cor. 16:1-3;
> 2 Cor. 8--9; Rom. 15:25-28).

[Richard]
> I particularly like the suggestion that
> the famine visit and the Acts 15 visit and
> the Gal. 2:1-10 visit are one and the same
> and belong just after Acts 18:22.

As I’ve argued before (see the archives), I also like
the idea that the famine visit (Acts 11:27-30) was the
one reported in Gal. 2:1-10 -- but not the one in Acts
15. First of all, it is not unlikely (indeed, it seems
more than likely) that the apostles would have seen
the need for more than one conference/council during
this long and controversial period. As you yourself
note, Richard, it is not always methodologically
advantageous -- nor does it always make sense -- to
simply “remove duplications”. The sense I get from
Acts 15 (however accurately reported) is that its
purpose was to address controversies which had erupted
in Antioch, Galatia -- and perhaps elsewhere in Asia
Minor -- which, in turn, resulted directly from the
more general and open-ended decision of the Gal.
2:1-10 conference.

We’ve been discussing the collection lately, and I
should note here that THIS was what Paul had to agree
to during the famine visit -- and that was more than
enough to start with. The pillars were strongarming
him as it was (“pay our franchise fee or you can’t
play this game”) without adding stipulations like the
ones later delineated in Acts 15:19-20. (Paul may have
been blasé about the matter in saying that the
collection was the “only thing” required of him (Gal.
2:10), but that’s a face-saving statement.) If the
apostles had dumped too much on Paul at once, they may
have alienated him. (But of course they didn’t. Paul
recognized the primacy and authority of Jerusalem
right up to the end. He wouldn’t have kept collecting
money and worrying over his acceptance if he was as
independent a missionary as so many make him out to
be.)

> [Mid 50s] Caesarean Imprisonment
> [Acts 23:12--24:27]
> COLOSSIANS, PHILEMON, "EPHESIANS"
> (probably to Laodicea) [written]

What specific advantages, John, do see in the
Caesarean imprisonment theory over the Roman one?

Again, thanks for posting this chronology. It’s much
at variance with my own, but quite stimulating.

Loren Rosson III
Nashua NH
rossoiii AT yahoo.com

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