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  • From: Ron Price <ron.price AT virgin.net>
  • To: Corpus-Paul elist <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Sabbatical years and Paul's collections
  • Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 18:52:44 +0000

David Hindley wrote:

> It almost sounds like you're saying the believers of Macedonia and Achaea
> could not, maybe even should not, have had any sympathy
> for those lazy Jews in Judea ....... lazy Jews ........

David,

Nowhere did I call the Jews in Judea "lazy". Attempting to demolish a
distorted argument does not necessarily demolish the original argument.

> Yet, as alleged as you say that observance of
> sabbatical years was, it is attested several times in
> the literature of the 1st century as Mr. Fellows has correctly stated.

I inadvertently used the word "supposed" in reference to the sabbatical year
custom when I meant to use it in reference to the connection between the
custom and the collection.

> For some gentiles, Jewish respect for their ancestral traditions, even when
> it
> worked against their economic or human interests, was
> something to be admired.

Do you have evidence that any contemporary Gentiles admired the custom under
consideration?

Jewish respect for their ancestral traditions was one of the primary causes
(if not *the* primary cause) of friction between James and Paul (Acts 15).
Paul was to express his willingness to abandon it all for the sake of Christ
(Php 3). If Gentiles had generally admired Jewish ancestral traditions there
might never have been a separate religion called Christianity.

> So I do not think it is necessary to postulate that Paul actively used
> famine
> relief as the means to motivate the Macedonians or
> Achaeans, even though famine relief may have been how the money was intended
> to be expended.

You write as if Paul's attempts at motivation have been entirely lost from
view. Yet postulation is unnecessary here.

If we analyse the issue there seem to be four questions:

1. What was James' purpose in requesting the collection?
2. Why did Paul agree to organize it?
3. How was Paul's appeal expressed?
4. What motivated the predominantly Gentile churches to contribute?

Question 3 can be answered from 2 Cor 8-9. The collection was to help
relieve poverty (8:4 c.f. 8:9). Also Paul called on the Corinthians' loyalty
to him (9:3-4). Here are some of Paul's attempts at motivating the
Corinthians on full view to modern historians.

We can reasonably suppose that the answer to question 4 is along the same
lines.

Any alternative plot (such as the idea that the collection had more to do
with James forcing Paul to show subservience to the Jesus community in
Jerusalem) would have been confined to items 1 and 2 above.

As to the reason for their poverty, Richard's idea that the sabbatical year
was the prime cause has no clear evidence. On the other hand the
experimental early communism practised by the Jesus community in Jerusalem
(evidenced in Acts 2:44-45; 5:1-11) "was a recipe for long-term poverty"
(J.Painter, "Just James", p.249), albeit probably unintended.

Whereas Paul would have been guilty of deceit if he had not mentioned
sabbatical-year-induced poverty, he might not even have realized it if the
poverty was mainly the result of the experimental early communism. Not, of
course, that I would always defend Paul, but in this case we do not need to
postulate that he was guilty of deceit.

Ron Price

Derbyshire, UK

Web site: http://homepage.virgin.net/ron.price/index.htm





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