It is useful here to consider the location of this event. Philippi had been the site of the famous Battle of Philippi, in which the forces of Marcus Antonius and Octavian (Mark Anthony and Augustus) defeated the forces of the assassins of Julius Caesar in 42 BCE. The victors settled veteran legionaries in this city and refounded it as Colonia Victrix Philippensium, only to be renamed again later as Colonia Augusta Iulia Philippensis around 27 BCE after Octavian officially received the title “Augustus” from the Senate. The Book of Acts actually describes Philippi as a “colony” and the most important city in the area. This, again, provides valuable context for our theory. According to one historian:
The population of Colonia Augusta Iulia Philippensis, which included Romans, Greeks, and Thracians, guaranteed that pluralism and syncretism would mark the religious life of the colony. The Augustan character of the colony, and the control of Philippi by the Roman elite, however, assured the imperial cult of a position of prominence at the very center of the settlement’s religious and social life. (Emphasis added.) (67)
So it should not be so surprising that it was to his Philippian converts years later that Paul would write from Rome, thanking them for the gifts they had sent through his “brother, co-worker and fellow soldier,” Epaphroditus. Paul also commends his other co-worker, who is named Clement, and closes that letter with warm greetings from those “in Caesar’s household.” (68)
We will return to this astonishing post-script later. For now, we must note that key associates of Paul are named Titus, Clement, Epaphroditus and Joseph (who takes the name “Barnabas”).
As Paul travels to Thessalonia, Athens, and Corinth, making new converts along the way, he continues to irritate, above all, the Jews. (69) One exception in the New Testament is when Paul makes converts of two Jews who had been expelled from Rome under Claudius for those disturbances caused by “Chrestus” that were reported by the historian Suetonius. Possibly, these two had been messianic Jews of the rebellious kind. (70)
This particular act of Paul may reveal an underlying imperial purpose for his mission that would explain why it enjoyed so much official support by Nero’s government: the pacification of militant messianic Jews by converting them to something more palatable to the Romans and more easily assimilated into their Hellenized culture. Both the narrative in Acts and the content of Paul’s message suggest that he was acting as a Roman operative in a “psy-ops” program that anticipated the later Flavian project by trying to convert messianic Jews into good Roman citizens.
A measure of the success of Paul’s program, in the long run, at least, is the subsequent triumph of Christianity itself.
Paul had, after all, offered a way for Jewish messianic theology to co-exist with Roman society, thereby permitting its survival. In Part I, we read from a Pauline (if not Paul’s own) letter to the Christians in Ephesus how “the dividing wall of hostility” had been “broken down” with Christ’s sacrifice “by abolishing” aspects of the Mosaic Law. We have also read Paul’s commands for obedience to the state as God’s own agent on earth in one of his earliest epistles. The alternative way Paul offered, however, only became viable after the total victory of the Flavian generals in Judea. And, since it was designed as a religious justification for Roman rulers, Christianity would become the perfect validation for a thousand years of kings to follow, surviving long past the empire that created it for this purpose.
In Corinth, once more, Paul reports that the Jews attacked him. And once more the Roman governor steps in to protect him:
While Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews of Corinth made a united attack on Paul and brought him to the place of judgment. “This man,” they [the Jews] charged, “is persuading the people to worship God in ways contrary to the law.”
Just as Paul was about to speak, Gallio said to them, “If you Jews were making a complaint about some misdemeanor or serious crime, it would be reasonable for me to listen to you. But since it involves questions about words and names and your own law—settle the matter yourselves. I will not be a judge of such things.” So he drove them off. (Emphasis added.) (71)
Acts reports that the crowd then turned against a Jewish leader who had led the assault on Paul and beat him in front of the Roman governor, who shows no concern whatsoever for the fate of the Jew—and none of the same solicitude he had previously shown Paul. (72) Once more, we have a Roman governor who believes an accused Christian leader to be innocent, and, once more, we see what can only be official sanction of Paul’s mission by Roman authorities. And this time, the governor is a high-ranking “proconsul,” and none other than Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus, the older brother of the Stoic philosopher Seneca, whose ideas bear such a striking resemblance to those found in the New Testament. Yes—even the philosopher Seneca’s brother makes a favorable appearance in the Bible.
Parallels to the ideas of Seneca are only to be expected in Paul’s own ideological counter-insurgency—that is, if it took shape early in the reign of Nero or late in that of the Emperor Claudius.
At Ephesus, again, we are told that a “city clerk”—one with the apparent authority to “dismiss the crowd”—intervened to quell rioters at an anti-Christian demonstration. (73) This time, however, the rioters comprise both pagans and Jews, but the official Roman response is once again favorable to Paul.
Time and again in the New Testament we are told how Paul’s continuing missionary efforts are dogged by “Jews” who “plotted against him.” (74) Paul’s followers warn him not to visit Jerusalem, according to Acts, and one can certainly see why. But fear of Romans was not one of their reasons.
As it turns out, their warnings to Paul were well-grounded. The Christian community in Jerusalem, that is, the Jewish-Christian community of Torah purists, seems to share the same worries of Paul’s followers. After hearing news of Paul’s many conversions in the area of Greece, they tell him:
“… You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law. They have been informed that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn away from Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or live according to our customs. What shall we do? They will certainly hear that you have come, so do what we tell you. There are four men with us who have made a vow. Take these men, join in their purification rites and pay their expenses, so that they can have their heads shaved. Then everyone will know there is no truth in these reports about you, but that you yourself are living in obedience to the law. As for the Gentile believers, we have written to them our decision that they should abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.” (Emphasis added.) (75)
Notice that Paul’s accusers are not just any Jews—they are Jewish-Christians, those who “have believed,” according to the description of the Jerusalem Apostles. Far from Christ’s message as reported in the Gospels, it is they who are “zealous for the law.” It is they who are a violent threat to Paul. Remarkably, Paul does not defend his doctrine against circumcision in Jerusalem. If Acts is to be believed, he didn’t have to—the established Apostles accept his message without the slightest complaint at this point. This flies in the face of the argument suggested in Paul’s heated letter to the Galatians.