Corpus-Paul

[Jill and Dale Walker <jilldale AT rcn.com>]

How Paul paid travel expenses is an interesting question, but I would
like to point out that the use of the word budget is tendentious. How do
we know Paul had a budget?  Perhaps the history of his travels and
letters is simply the history of lucky opportunities, rather than planning.
(Perhaps the word budget wasn't meant as precisely as I'm
taking it.)  Moreover, the problem of how Paul would finance a proposed
hypothetical journey applies to every other journey.  To say that
having money is a problem for advocating a hypothetical journey
is no less a problem for any other journey.  If it's a problem for Paul
to finance a trip, then perhaps other journeys are not factual.  Or, perhaps
the reason for Paul's lengthy stay in Ephesus is the expense of the
emergency trip to Corinth, which precluded his leaving Ephesus until
he'd worked some more to save up more cash.  I think there are a lot
of imponderables that make the argument below inconclusive.

Dale Walker
Chicago



At 04:23 PM 4/26/03 -0700, you wrote:
> Most commentators believe that Paul made an unplanned trip to Corinth
> shortly after 1 Corinthians, and that he then sent Titus to Corinth. But the
> commentators do not explain how these hypothetical journeys were funded.
> Paul would not have budgeted for these unscheduled trips.
>
> In 1 Cor 4:11 we read that Paul and his companions were hungry, thirsty,
> poorly clothed and homeless. How, then, could they afford to make the
> unscheduled trips to Corinth that the commentators propose? Given that Paul
> was barely able to feed and clothe himself, he surely did not command the
> resources to fund journeys for which he had not budgetted. I find it
> difficult to reconcile the language of  1 Cor 4:11-12 with the idea that
> Paul had a store of money reserved for unexpected journeys. Nor is it
> sufficient to propose that the journeys were paid for by the Ephesian
> church. If they were able to pay his travel expenses, why did they not look
> after him properly in Ephesus? It is hard to imagine that the Ephesian
> Christians would have paid for Paul and Titus to go to Corinth to discipline
> the Corinthian church, but let them go hungry in Ephesus.
>
> The problem, of course, disappears once we realize that the journeys never
> happened. Titus-Timothy (one and the same person) had already been sent to
> Macedonia, and the churches there probably assisted him on his journey on to
> Corinth. And Titus never planned nor undertook a sea voyage to Troas.
>
> Does anyone have information on the cost of travel by land and sea in the
> ancient world?
>
> Richard Fellows.
>
>
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