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  • From: Richard Fellows <rfellows AT shaw.ca>
  • To: Corpus-Paul <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Corpus-Paul] The defection of Corinthian God-fearers to Paul
  • Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2006 23:00:21 -0700

Last week I attended a talk by John Dominic Crossan, who suggested that
Paul's converts were mainly God-fearers. Reflecting on this theory, I am
struck by how much sense it makes of Acts 18:4-17.

The God-fearers are introduced in 18:4, where we are told that Paul tried to
convince Jews and Greeks in the synagogue. In 18:6 Paul parts company with
the Jews, and turns to the Gentiles (and from what follows it seems that we
are to think here of the God-fearers, rather than pagans). In 18:7 Paul goes
to the house of Titius Justus, a God-fearer. We are told that his house was
adjacent to the synagogue. It seems reasonable to suppose that Paul choose
this house as his base so that he could target the God-fearers who attended
the synagogue. Paul, in effect, was creating a rival synagogue right next to
the synagogue and we should expect this provocative act to have caused
dissensions and opposition. Luke gives us this detail to explain the attacks
on Paul and Sosthenes that follow.

Then, in 18:8 we are told that the synagogue ruler, Crispus, defected to
Paul's camp. Synagogue rulers were highly influential individuals and this
must have been a big catch for Paul. We are then told that many of the
Corinthians, hearing (that Crispus had become a believer), became believers
and were baptized. When Luke says "many of the Corinthians", we are
presumably to suppose that he means many of the God-fearers. Crispus would
have had influence over the God-fearers and it is not surprising that his
decision to join Paul would have triggered an avalanche of defections. Many
of the God-fearers would have been reluctant to declare their support for
Paul, for fear of upsetting their synagogue friends, but after Crispus took
a stand the viability of the fledgling Christian community was assured and
it was safe for them to jump ship. In the same way, when a big-name
politician defects to a new political party, a wave of other defections
often follow.

In 18:9 the Lord tells Paul not to fear. This verse makes sense if the wave
of conversions reported in 18:8 were God-fearers. The defection of
God-fearers will have weakened the synagogue and will have angered the Jews.
It is not surprising, then, that Paul was fearful.

In 18:12-3 the Jews did indeed make an attack on Paul and accuse him of
persuading men to worship God in ways contrary to the law. This further
confirms that the converts were God-fearers. The Jews would not have cared
about Paul's activities if he had converted pagans. They resented his
influence over their God-fearers.

In 18:15 Gallio says that he does not want to judge the case, and he says to
the Jews, "see to it yourselves". This too makes sense if Paul's converts
were God-fearers. Gallio, understandably, sees the dispute as an internal
matter for the synagogue to sort out, because Paul had caused a split in the
synagogue.

Gallio's words, "see to it yourself", gave the Jews permission to enforce
synagogue discipline against Crispus-Sosthenes, the synagogue ruler who had
caused the wave of defections. They then seized him and beat him in front of
the judgement seat.

18:4-17 is then a unity in which every detail plays its part in the
unfolding of the plot. It is a story of schism, followed by defection,
followed by the resentment of the patent community, followed by retribution.
It seems to me that the passage comes into much sharper focus when we assume
that the converts were God-fearers. Luke does not explicitly say that they
were God-fearers, but maybe he did not have to. His audience may simply have
taken it for granted.

Does this reading of the passage work? What do the Corinthian letters
indicate about whether the church was formed from Jews, pagans, or
God-fearers?

Richard.






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