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  • From: Richard Fellows <rfellows AT shaw.ca>
  • To: dhindley AT compuserve.com, Corpus-Paul <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] The defection of Corinthian God-fearers to Paul
  • Date: Sat, 05 Aug 2006 21:50:51 -0700

David Hindley wrote:
> Was that the lecture he gave in Detroit? I may be thinking of someone
else.
It was in Vancouver, Canada.
> Anyways, I am sure that Crossan would have based that statement on what he
found in the letters, which are more or less firsthand
> accounts, and treated Acts as secondary support, being a hearsay narrative
retelling of Paul's reputed historical actions.

Crossan said that Acts implies that Paul's converts were mainly God-fearers,
and that Acts is correct in that regard. Crossan suggested that letters such
as Galatians would not have been intelligible to pure pagans. In his book,
"In search of Paul", Crossan goes on to point out that the opposition that
Paul faced from Jews is understandable if Paul had been poaching their
God-fearers. He writes (p40) "But if his (Paul's) focus was on converting a
synagogue's sympathizers to Christianity, with the result of stripping from
Jews their intermediary buffer of support and protection, that would be
socially explosive".

Just to be clear, the interpretation of Acts 18 that I gave in my last post
is mine, not Crossan's, and I was primarily concerned with trying to
understand what the author of Acts was trying to say in this passage. For
the reasons that I gave, I think the author implies that Paul's converts in
Corinth were mostly God-fearers. Indeed, Luke has Paul converting mainly
God-fearers throughout his career, I think.

We can then ask a different question, namely whether we can use Acts to
argue that Paul's converts were mainly God-fearers. I would say yes, because
I tend to trust Acts in such matters (I tier of the "Acts is unreliable"
mantra, which is often repeated by rarely substantiated).

One other point: Luke has been criticized for saying that "many" of the
Corinthians became believers (18:8). The entire congregation probably
numbered less than 100, since they met in one house (Rom 16:23) and this is
not "many" relative to the population of Corinth, which was on the order of
30,000. However, Luke's focus here is not on the pagan masses, but on the
God-fearers who numbered perhaps a few hundred. Luke is saying that "many"
of the God-fearers from Crispus's synagogue became believers on hearing of
his conversion. This is not an exaggeration.

Your points about gentiles in Jewish households becoming Christians are well
made, David.

You also wrote:

<< It is one thing to include the Jewish God among the gods one privately
worships, and another the take those other
gods off the list completely.>>

I imagine that the gentiles who attended synagogue were very varied in their
degree of commitment to the one God, and in their attitudes towards other
gods, and in their frequency of synagogue attendance.

Richard.






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