Jewish Apostle Paul within Roman Empire

The difficulty with understanding Paul’s (apparent) contradictions lies in the following: The letter to the Romans defends and affirms the Jewish people, while the letter to the Galatians seemingly disparages the Law (Torah) and the covenantal identity of the Jewish People. In what follows, I will show why the content of what Paul wrote to each congregation makes perfect sense in each case.

Paul in Jerusalem

We need to begin in a somewhat unusual place – the eyewitness account of Luke (Lucius), who documented much of the Apostle Paul’s life. The reason I say this is an unusual place to begin is because people normally delve straight into Romans or Galatians to reconcile Paul’s words in that immediate context. However, I think this approach is premature. My reasoning is that most of what Paul writes in Romans does not relate to his own practice regarding Torah, but rather how the Nations should live in worship of the same God that the faithful remnant of Israel continues to worship. In other words, while we know what Paul wrote to the Nations in Christ, we do not know from his letters what advice he would have given his fellow Jews. How Paul himself lived, interestingly enough (and perhaps predictably), is covered in more detail by Luke, to whom we now turn for information.

We begin in Acts 21:17 when Paul arrived in Jerusalem with his co-workers in the Gospel, where they were warmly greeted by the Christ-following community. After Paul and his party rested from their journey, they attended a meeting with Yakov/Jacob (whom the English Bibles incorrectly continue to call James) and the elders of the Jerusalem congregation/s. Once the introductions were over, Paul began to relate his story of God’s amazing (and, to most of them, unexpected) work among the Nations through the unlikely medium of his own ministry (Acts 21:18-19). When the elders and Jacob (who seems to be the presiding elder among them) heard Paul’s testimony, they praised God with true sincerity but quickly turned to a matter that struck much closer to home – the rumors about the Apostle Paul, which they believed to be false.

It is important to remember that this was not the first time Paul met Jerusalem’s elders. He was there at the “Jerusalem Council,” where he joyfully accepted “the decree,” carrying the apostolic letter with its decisions (Acts 15-16), implementing it among his congregations (churches).  However, we read in Acts 21:20-21 of one central and two supporting accusations against Paul regarding the misinformation that Paul has applied the same directives to the Jews as to the Nations:

“And when they heard it they began glorifying God; and they said to him, ‘You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed, and they are all zealous for the Torah; and they have been told about you, that you are teaching all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children nor to walk according to the customs.”

Paul’s slanderers accused him of teaching the Jews to forsake the Torah by means of 1) not circumcising their sons and 2) departing from the Jewish ancestral ways. The core of the accusation was that Paul was allegedly instructing Jews to convert from Judaism. As we have seen in previous sections of our study, the reverse was the case. Just as Paul believed that the Nations must remain as the Nations, he was equally convinced that Jews must remain as Jews.

Here, I refer to the rule that he set up in all his congregations as per 1 Cor. 7:17. Jacob, along with the elders, came up with a simple test that if Paul passed publicly (which they were convinced he would), should silence all the lying tongues:

“What, then? They will certainly hear that you have come. Therefore, do this that we tell you. We have four men who are under a vow; take them and purify yourself along with them, and pay their expenses so that they may shave their heads; and all will know that there is nothing to the things which they have been told about you, but that you yourself also walk orderly, keeping the Torah (Law). But concerning the Gentiles who have believed, we wrote, having decided that they should abstain from meat sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication.” (Acts 21:22-25)

Jacob and the elders were not confused. They knew exactly where the false rumors came from—they came from people who did not understand that the Jerusalem council had clarified that the members of the Nations who came to worship Israel’s God were only under obligation to observe the requirements enjoined in the Torah for the sojourners with Israel (Acts 15:22-29; Lev. 17-20). That decision never implied that the Jews in Christ should now be free to have a ham sandwich and enjoy some forbidden seafood. The elders understood this, and so did Paul.

Paul did exactly as Jacob suggested, affirming the very point Jacob had made about him: that he “walk(s) orderly, keeping the Torah” (Acts 21:24). Paul was not known to be fickle and always stood for that in which he firmly believed, we read in verse 26:

“Then Paul took the men, and the next day, purifying himself along with them, went into the temple giving notice of the completion of the days of purification, until the sacrifice was offered for each one of them.”

For any Jew who would have judged Paul by his deeds, the case was settled. Paul walked orderly, keeping the Torah, and therefore could not possibly be instructing his fellow Jews to do otherwise. As for the Nations who followed the Jewish Christ, Paul taught that they should follow the injunctions of the letter sent earlier by the elders and the apostles in Jerusalem. There was no inconsistency in this.

The Jews in the Roman Empire

Most people are surprised to realize that the Israelite movement in the Roman Empire was between 6-10% of the entire population. This means there was a formidable minority present in every city, including the capital itself – Rome. This minority was large and influential enough to cause significant problems for the Roman government. Rome itself boasted of at least eleven exquisite Jewish synagogues, which although they are today a completely Jewish institution, were not so in the time of Paul.

Synagogues, or the places of gathering, were Roman public institutions heavily used by the Jewish community but were also open to the Roman public. This sets Acts 15:21 in its proper historical context. When Jacob/James announced his opinion that members of the Nations who followed the Jewish Christ needed to ensure that they observed the set of laws enjoined by the Torah upon the sojourners with Israel, he explained his reasoning:

“For the Torah of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.” (Acts 15:21)

While Jewish influence in the Roman Empire and Rome itself was significant, the opinions of the Roman powerbrokers varied from admiration and great respect for the Jews to complete disgust and distrust. Following are a few examples of positive (although confused) statements about the Jews by Greco-Roman authors:

Josephus wrote that one Clearchus of Soli (ca. 300 BCE) narrated a story in which his teacher, Aristotle, had met a Judean. Aristotle was duly impressed and found the Judean to be “Greek in both language and soul” in spite of the fact that Judeans are “descended from the Indian philosophers” (Josephus, Against Apion 1.180 = Stern no. 15). Tacitus, a Roman senator, historian and orator, famous for his surviving works Annals and Histories, writes:

“As I am about to describe the last days of a famous city, it seems proper for me to give some account of its origin. It is said that the Jews were originally exiles from the island of Crete who settled in the farthest parts of Libya at the time when Saturn had been deposed and expelled by Jove. An argument in favor of this is derived from the name; there is a famous mountain in Crete called Ida, and hence the inhabitants were called the Idaei, which was later lengthened into the barbarous form Iudaei…” (Tacitus, Histories 5.2).

When the great Roman writer Varro, a Roman scholar and prolific author of hundreds of books on jurisprudence, astronomy, geography, education, satires, poems and discourses, argues that the gods of Rome must not have pictures, he refers to the Jews and their God.

“He [Varro] also says that the ancient Romans worshipped the gods without an image for more than 170 years. ‘If this usage had continued to our own day,” he says, “our worship of the gods would be more devout.’ And in support of his opinion, he adduces, among other things, the testimony of the Jewish race” (Varro, Antiquities, c. 116-27 BCE, cited by Augustine, City of God 4.31, c. 354-430 CE).

Here are a few examples of negative statements about Jews by Greco-Roman authors that I have not mentioned in previous sections. Some of these statements have only survived in much later sources as quotations. Josephus relates a common Roman myth as used by Apion about the Jews:

“…[they] kidnap a Greek foreigner, fatten him up for a year, and then convey him to a wood, where they slew him, sacrificed his body with their customary ritual, partook of his flesh, and, while immolating the Greek, swore an oath of hostility to the Greeks” (Josephus, Against Apion 2.94-96).

Or consider this:

“…the Judeans then took up residence in Jerusalem and its environs and ‘made their hatred of people into a tradition’ and ‘introduced outlandish laws: not to break bread with any other race, nor to show them any good will at all’” (Photius, Bibliotheca 244.379).

When speaking of the Jews, Seneca, a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist, says:

“Meanwhile, the customs of this accursed race have gained such influence that they are now received throughout all the world. The vanquished have given laws to their victors.” (Seneca quoted by Augustine, City of God, c. 5 BCE–65 CE)

As we can see, the attitudes of Greco-Roman authors were varied and no doubt represented the situation among the citizens of Rome, which was difficult. When Roman God-fearers first joined the Jesus movement in Rome, they did so just like others—in connection with the Jewish community. As far as they were concerned, they were now, in some way, part of the Jewish-friendly community, which acted as a political buffer zone between the Jews and the Nations residing in the confines of the Roman Empire. However, at some point, Emperor Claudius expelled all the Jews from Rome. This is how ancient Roman history is recounted:

“Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestos [misspelling of Christ?], he [the Emperor Claudius] expelled them from Rome” (Divius Claudius 25).

This is the same Emperor who executed several members of his own family for conversion to Judaism, seeking to show himself as the true protector of the honor and service of the Roman gods. The New Testament decisively confirms this account:

“After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome” (Acts 18:1-2).