The Pauline Circle: Engaging Portraits of Paul's Friends, Co-Workers, Hosts and Hostesses

By F. F. Bruce

“Paul,” writes F.F. Bruce, “attracted friends around him as a magnet attracts iron filings.”

In each of the first ten chapters, Professor Bruce engagingly pictures one of Paul’s associates: Ananias and the disciples at Damascus, Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, Luke, Priscilla and Aquila, Apollos, Titus, Onesimus, and Mark. The last two chapters briefly introduce co-workers and hosts and hostesses, who “had no other motive in being so helpful than love of Paul and love of the Master whom he served.”

In creating these portraits, Professor Bruce, widely known as one of the foremost Pauline scholars, examines the relationships of the first-century Christians and gives a clear understanding of people who influenced the New Testament church.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 1, 1985
• ISBN: 9781912149179

F. F. Bruce

F. F. Bruce (1910-1990) was Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester. Trained as a classicist, Bruce authored more than 50 books on the New Testament and served as the editor for the New International Commentary on the New Testament from 1962 until his death in 1990.

Book preview

The

PAULINE

CIRCLE

by

F. F. BRUCE

M.A. (Cambridge), D.D. (Aberdeen)

To

Jeremy And Margaret Mudditt

CONTENTS

Publisher’s Introduction

Preface

Introduction

1. Ananias and the disciples at Damascus

2. Barnabas, the Levite from Cyprus

3. Silas/Silvanus

4. Timothy of Lystra

5. Luke, the beloved physician

6. Priscilla and Aquila

7. Apollos of Alexandria

8. Titus of Antioch

9. Onesimus of Colossae

10. Mark, the cousin of Barnabas

11. Paul’s co-workers

12. Hosts and hostesses

Index

F.F. Bruce

Other Books by F.F. Bruce

Copyright

PUBLISHER’S

INTRODUCTION

F.F. Bruce was the Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at Manchester University for 19 years—from 1959 to 1978. Retirement, he told Carl Armerding in 1979, is wholly enjoyable. It seems to be just as full of activity as my regular teaching timetable. ¹ Indeed, biographer Tim Grass points out that no less than eighteen of the four dozen books he wrote appeared after 1978. ²

Five years after his retirement, Professor Bruce wrote a series of articles in The Harvester, a Christian periodical published by Paternoster Press, the primary publisher of Bruce’s books. The articles about Paul’s closest friends and associates were republished in 1985 as The Pauline Circle.

This book is dedicated to Jeremy and Margaret Mudditt. Bruce had a long relationship with Howard Mudditt, who founded Paternoster Press in 1935, and continued that relationship with Howard’s son, Jeremy, who became Managing Director of Paternoster in 1975, three years before Bruce’s retirement. Upon Jeremy’s death in 2010, Robin Parry, Editorial Director of Paternoster, said of him, far more than being a living encyclopedia of publishing, Jeremy had a passionate faith in the triune God and saw the mission of Paternoster very much in terms of divine calling. This was not just business; it was mission!—a vivid insight into the relationship between F.F. Bruce and Paternoster Press. They partnered together in their divine callings.

In each of its first ten chapters, The Pauline Circle engagingly pictures one of Paul’s associates: Ananias and the disciples at Damascus, Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, Luke, Priscilla and Aquila, Apollos, Titus, Onesimus, and Mark. The last two chapters briefly introduce coworkers and hosts and hostesses, who had no other motive in being so helpful than love of Paul and love of the Master whom he served.

It’s worth noting a comment Tim Grass makes about The Pauline Circle. It was during Bruce’s retirement that his views regarding women in church life came to fullest and most outspoken expression—views that gave women a greater role in church leadership than was common among the Brethren of Bruce’s day. Grass says that Bruce mentioned in The Pauline Circle a variant reading of Acts 18:26 which put Aquila rather than Priscilla first, [and said] that the [manuscript] editor ‘may have felt that it was unfitting that a woman should take the lead in a teaching ministry. Today some would put that editor down as a male chauvinist.’ And of Euodia and Syntyche, Paul’s fellow labourers to whom he appealed in Philippians 4:2-3, [Bruce] wrote: ‘Whatever form these two women’s collaboration with Paul in his gospel ministry may have taken, it was not confined to making tea for him and his circle—or whatever the first-century equivalent to that activity was.’³

It would be easy to read these comments in The Pauline Circle today without realizing the importance of what F.F. Bruce was saying at the time. Grass also says, Bruce’s assertions regarding the full equality of women were borne out by his conduct—another insight into the man who was F.F. Bruce.

* * * * *

The Pauline Circle is published under the Kingsley Books imprint of F.F. Bruce Copyright International.

When Robert Hicks, a British book publisher, realized that many of the works of F.F. Bruce were not readily available, he wanted to correct that situation. Of the nearly 60 books and hundreds of magazine articles written by the Dean of Evangelical Scholarship, Robert felt many of those not in print could be presented in a visually appealing way for the modern reader.

After receiving the support of F.F. Bruce’s daughter, Sheila Lukabyo, Robert enlisted the help of Larry Stone, an American publisher. Together they contacted nearly twenty of F.F. Bruce’s publishers. Some of Bruce’s books are being reformatted into printed booklets suitable for evangelism and Bible study in universities and in church groups. Many of Bruce’s printed books as well as collections of articles never before appearing in book form are being made available as reasonably-priced ebooks that can be easily distributed around the world.

The purpose of F.F. Bruce Copyright International is to encourage an understanding of Professor Bruce’s teaching on the Scripture, to encourage his spirit of humility in approaching the Bible, and encourage academic scholarship among today’s evangelical students and leaders.

For the latest information on the availability of ebooks and printed books by F.F. Bruce and his friends, see www.ffbruce.com.

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1 Quoted by Tim Grass in F.F. Bruce: A Life (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2011, and Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2012), p. 183.

2 Ibid, p. 196.

3 For a discussion of Bruce’s views on women, see F.F. Bruce: A Life, pp. 191-196.

PREFACE

THE TWELVE CHAPTERS IN THIS LITTLE BOOK APPEARED originally in successive issues of The Harvester, in the section Exploring the Bible, throughout the year 1983. I am grateful to the publishers and editors, and especially to the sectional editor, Mr. John Polkinghorne, for giving them house-room in that form, and now I am grateful to The Paternoster Press for publishing them in this form.

F. F. B.

INTRODUCTION

ON THE BOOKSHELF WHICH ACCOMMODATES WORKS on the Fourth Gospel may be seen such titles as The Johannine Circle, ⁴ The Johannine School, ⁵ and The Community of the Beloved Disciple. ⁶ These are devoted to the associates or disciples who are believed to have gathered around John the Evangelist, especially after his migration to Ephesus. But to give an account of these people calls for a fair degree of imaginative reconstruction—a task, nevertheless, well worth undertaking.

If, however, we think of the Pauline circle, the evidence for its membership lies plentifully before us in the New Testament, both in Paul’s own writings and in the Acts. Paul attracted friends around him as a magnet attracts iron filings. His genius for friendship has been spoken of so often that it has become proverbial—almost a cliché, in fact. There are about seventy people mentioned by name in the New Testament of whom we should never have heard were it not for their association with Paul, and over and above these there is a host of unnamed friends. He appears to have had the gift, moreover, of readily winning the friendship of non-Christians, like the Asiarchs⁷ in Ephesus (Acts 19:31) and the centurion Julius (Acts 27:3, 43).⁸ Although he was nothing much to look at, he plainly had that warm and outgoing kind of personality which draws out people’s good will and affection. The other side of the coin is shown by those who could not stand him at any price—people were rarely neutral towards him.

Our primary source of information about Paul’s friends and associates is, naturally, his own letters. All the letters that bear his name are laid under contribution here. However uncertain the life setting of the Pastorals (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) may be, their personal notes have a special interest, particularly where the persons mentioned are known to us from the other letters. Part of the special interest in the Pastoral notes on those people lies in trying to fit the references to them into their careers as otherwise known to us.

Our principal secondary source of information is Acts. Confidence in the trustworthiness of the references in Acts to members of Paul’s circle is enhanced by the unforced way in which those references chime in with the references to the same people in Paul’s letters. On another occasion I have argued for an affirmative answer to the question, Is the Paul of Acts the real Paul?⁹ Here I think evidence is made available for a similarly affirmative answer to the question, Is the Pauline circle of Acts the real Pauline circle?

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4 By O. Cullmann (SCM Press, 1975).

5 By R. A. Culpepper (Scholars Press, Missoula, 1975).

6 By R.E. Brown (Geoffrey Chapman, 1979).

7 A body comprising leading citizens from the chief cities in the province of Asia. See p. 49.

8 Even when one cannot speak of Paul as making friends, he appears (according to Luke) to have made a not unfavourable impression on many persons in positions of power—on the proconsuls Sergius Paullus and Gallio (Acts 13:7-12; 18:12-17), on Felix, procurator of Judaea, with his wife Drusilla (Acts 24:22-26), and on his successor Festus, together with Herod Agrippa II and his sister Berenice, the elder sister of Drusilla (Acts 24:27-26:32).

9 Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 58 (1975-76), pp. 282-305.

CHAPTER 1

ANANIAS AND THE DISCIPLES

AT DAMASCUS

PAUL’S FIRST FRIEND AFTER HIS CONVERSION was Ananias of Damascus, the first man to call Paul brother in the Christian sense. Ananias was a friend in need if ever there was one. At one blow Paul