Corpus-Paul

[Richard Fellows <rfellows AT shaw.ca>]

Listers,

It might be fruitful to explore the possibility that Paul's collection for
Jerusalem was designed to relieve depravation caused by the Sabbatical year
of 55-56, and that he made a similar collection seven years earlier in
response to the request of Gal 2:10.

Sabbatical years were observed in Palestine. Planting and harvesting ceased
and it is well established that this caused hardship until the first harvest
following the end of the Sabbatical year. It would therefore make sense for
Paul to organize his collection(s) to coincide with these periods of
hardship. Now, it can be shown form other chronological arguments that Paul
delivered the collection to Jerusalem in 56 or 57. Would this timing have
relieved Sabbath year poverty? Wacholder has shown that the Sabbatical year
was from autumn 55 to autumn 56 (though some still place it a year earlier).
The resulting hardship would have lasted until the harvest of the summer of
57. Therefore the collection could well have been designed to coincide with
the Sabbatical year food shortages. Some chronological confirmation is
provided by the Egyptian rebel (Acts 21:38). It has been argued that the
most likely date for the Egyptian rebel is Nisan of the Sabbatical year,
since messianic fervour coincides with Sabbatical years. If this is so, the
delivery of the collection was indeed in the Sabbatical year or shortly
after.

Now, I suggest that the '14 years' of 2 Cor 12:2 further confirms the
chronology. Paul was not a historian and rarely quantified time intervals.
Why did these 14 years come to mind and how did Paul calculate the interval?
An explanation is that 2 Cor was written during a Sabbatical year and that
the vision in question was also in a Sabbatical year. Paul recalled that the
vision was two Sabbaths earlier, and therefore instantly knew that it was 14
years ago.

It is significant, therefore, that Paul mentions a 14 year interval that
preceded his Gal 2 visit to Jerusalem. This suggests that this visit to
Jerusalem was during a Sabbath year also. Most date this visit to 48 or 49
and these dates fit well with Sabbatical year dates (autumn 48 - autumn 49
according to the modern Wacholder sequence). So, the apostles' request that
Paul 'remember the poor' (Gal 2:10) sounds very much like an appeal to
relieve the immediate Sabbatical year hardship. This raises an interesting
question: did Paul organise a collection during this Sabbatical year? 1 Cor
16:1-3 indicates that Paul did indeed organise a collection from Galatia,
and I see no reason why it could not have been in the 49 time-frame. The
Aegean collection does not seem to have included Galatia since only
Macedonia and Achaia are mentioned in Rom 15:26, so the Galatian collection
should be placed earlier. The fact that Acts does not mention a collection
in 49 is no counter argument since it does not mention a Galatian collection
on any hypothesis, and it hardly mentions the Aegean collection at all.

Now, if it is valid to combine 1 Cor 16:1-3 with Gal 2:10, we arrive at a
sequence as follows:
Paul, Barnabas and Titus went to Jerusalem. It was agreed that Paul and
Barnabas would support the mother church during Sabbath year food shortages.
Paul sent Titus immediately to Cyprus and Galatia to ask the believers there
to set aside some money on a weekly basis. Paul later arrived in Galatia,
meeting Titus in Lystra, and presumably sent the collection with envoys to
Jerusalem.

I don't remember reading speculation that a collection was made from Galatia
at the start of the second missionary journey (though Riesner comes close).
Is anything published on this?

Richard