The Beginning of the Gospel: Paul, Philippi, and the Origins of Christianity

By Joshua D. Garroway

In this innovative study, Joshua D. Garroway offers a revised account of the origin of the all-important Christian word “gospel,”  yielding significant new insights into the development of early Christian history and literature. Long thought to have originated on the lips of Jesus or his disciples, “gospel” was in fact coined by Paul midway through his career to describe his controversial new interpretation of Jesus’ death and resurrection. For nearly a decade after the crucifixion, the thoroughly Jewish Jesus movement demanded circumcision and Law observance from Gentile converts. Only in the early 40s did Paul arrive at the belief that such observance was no longer necessary, an insight he dubbed “the gospel,” or good news. The remainder of Paul’s career featured clashes with authorities over the legitimacy of the gospel, debates that continued after his death in the writings of Mark, Matthew, and Luke-Acts. These writings obscured the original context of the gospel, however, and in time the word lost its specific association with Paul and his scandalous notion of salvation outside the Law. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Jun 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9783319899961

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© The Author(s) 2018

Joshua D. GarrowayThe Beginning of the Gospelhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89996-1_1

1. Introduction

Joshua D. Garroway¹  

(1)

Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Joshua D. Garroway

In the late spring of 43 CE (Common Era), a ship arrived in the harbor of Neapolis on the north shore of the Aegean Sea. Its passengers included Paul of Tarsus and his Cypriot colleague, Barnabas, two Jews on a peculiar mission. They alighted at midday and began the ten-mile trek along the Via Egnatia northward to the Roman colony of Philippi. A few days after their arrival, they set up in a stall of the Philippian marketplace offering services in tent repair and manufacture.

But the two were not there to make tents.

The business provided food and shelter while they went about pursuing the real reason for being there: to meet people and to share their astounding news. Within a few weeks, word spread through the market of the Jews at the leather stall who ramble on enthusiastically about what they call the euangelion, the good news or gospel.¹ Paul and Barnabas told anyone who would listen about the God of the Jews, whom they called the only living God. Someday soon, they said, this God would bring the world as it was known to an end. God promised to redeem his people of Israel centuries ago, and now, at long last, it was time. To prepare for the end, however, God had to deal with the problem of sin. How, after all, could God redeem people who were anything less than perfect? God therefore sent his own son into the world, in the form of a Jewish man called Jesus, to perform an extraordinary feat. This Jesus was killed—crucified, no less—but then raised from the dead to everlasting life, which in turn gave Jews the hope for eternal life in the wake of Jesus’s return. By trusting in the God who resurrected Jesus, and by reenacting the death and resurrection by immersing themselves in water, Jews would be able to withstand judgment when Jesus, the anointed son of God, returns to judge the world.

To Philippians wondering why this good news for Jews had anything to do with them, what came next rang the bell. Philippians too, said Paul and Barnabas, could survive the impending judgment, as could Thessalonians, Romans, Ephesians, Parthians, or any of those whom the Jews called the nations, or Gentiles, of the world. The God of the Jews, they said, was also the God of the Gentiles, and thus for Jews and Gentiles alike baptism into the death and resurrection of the anointed Jesus ensured salvation.

For Philippians understandably reluctant to cast their lot with the Jews and their God, there was further good news. Gentiles could join the Jews without becoming Jews. They would not have to adopt the infamously quirky Jewish rites such as Sabbath observance, abstention from pork, and, most famous of all, circumcision. Faith in the Jewish God and baptism into the death and resurrection of God’s son, the anointed Jesus, would suffice to pass the judgment. Judgment was nigh, however, so Philippians who ignored the invitation to baptism did so at their own peril.

Most Philippians opted to chance peril, probably chuckling at what they dismissed as ballyhoo. Not infrequently did representatives from this god or that exasperate marketgoers with promises of prosperity or salvation. At times, kicks and punches might even have accompanied the jeers.² Nevertheless, at least a few Philippians found Paul and Barnabas compelling. Initiates persuaded by the proofs adduced from Jewish scripture, or perhaps by wonders they saw performed, submitted to baptism and to a whole new way of understanding the world. Among them was a pair of wealthy matrons, Euodia and Syntyche, who provided a safe space to congregate for Paul, Barnabas, and their new peers. A Philippian congregation was born.

After a year or so, Paul and Barnabas left the fledgling congregation to its own devices. With a bit of treasure provided by their new Philippian friends, they set off once more on the Via Egnatia. One hundred miles to the west lay Thessaloniki, where they would start all over again.³

* * *

The premise of this book is, in the simplest sense, the vignette just described. I will be arguing that Paul and Barnabas introduced the euangelion, or gospel, in Philippi around the year 43 CE. On the face of it, this proposal seems ordinary. It has been said many times before. Historians might disagree with the date selected for the arrival of Paul in Philippi, preferring instead a date later in the 40s or even the early 50s; or with the inclusion of Barnabas, who may have parted ways with Paul before the journey to Macedonia; or with the specific rendering of Paul’s presentation of the gospel. But responding to such objections hardly requires an entire book.

Naturally, there is a twist. I will not be arguing simply that Paul preached the gospel in Philippi in the early 40s. More importantly, I contend that Paul’s introduction of the gospel to the Philippians represents a watershed moment in the development of Christianity. Why so? Because Paul’s arrival in Philippi marked not merely the first opportunity for the Philippians to hear the gospel, it marked the first time the gospel was ever preached.⁴

The gospel itself, this book contends, was born in Philippi in the year 43 CE.

The Origin of the Gospel in Philippi

Preaching about Jesus traced back a decade earlier, of course. Others had proclaimed salvation through Christ long before Paul and Barnabas stepped foot in Philippi. I intend to show, however, that this earlier preaching never included the term gospel, or the message about salvation for Gentiles that Paul’s gospel would eventually proclaim.

Following his crucifixion in the year 33 CE, the disciples of Jesus came to believe that he had been resurrected, that he was God’s Messiah, or Christ, and that in this capacity he would return to redeem Israel in a grand consummation of history.⁵ Hastening to spread the word among fellow Jews, these disciples drew upon the language of Isaiah 52:7 and 61:1, in which the prophet praises messengers who bring glad tidings about peace, consolation, salvation, and the reign of God—all the things Jesus would soon restore for Israel, the disciples said.⁶ To bring good news, in Hebrew, is the verb lĕbaśēr. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, renders it with the verb euangelizomai. When the followers of Christ first spread into the Jewish communities of Greek-speaking realms—Antioch, for example—this Greek verb was used to describe their ministry. Followers of Christ were bringing good news this way and that, but the noun euangelion, gospel, was not a part of their lexicon.

Within a short time, certain followers determined that their tidings about Christ should be preached among Gentiles as well, especially among the so-called God-fearers who participated in Jewish communities without joining in the capacity of proselytes. If ever there was a time for these hangers-on to become circumcised (if male) and to take on the yoke of Jewish Law, the preachers said, it was now. By joining the Jewish people and submitting to baptism, these erstwhile Gentiles would be saved alongside their baptized Jewish companions.

Following his dramatic change of heart in the year 34 or 35 CE, when he switched from persecuting the followers of Jesus to joining their ranks, Paul of Tarsus became a participant in these earliest overtures to Gentiles. He may even have initiated them. Over the course of the late 30s and early 40s, he and his partner, Barnabas, trekked further and further west, from Syria to Cilicia and then even deeper into Asia Minor, in search of Gentiles wishing to become Jews in advance of Christ’s return. All the while, however, they knew nothing of the gospel.

No one did.

Not until sometime early in the year 43 CE, somewhere in Asia Minor. Paul says he received a revelation from Christ, who told him that the mission to Gentiles in which he was engaged did not fully appreciate the accomplishment of Jesus on the cross. Yes, Paul learned, baptism into the death and resurrection of Christ afforded Jews the opportunity to pass the imminent judgment, but that was not the whole story. It gave Gentiles that chance just the same! Indeed, the very purpose of the resurrection had been to eliminate Jewish Law as the criterion for determining a person’s suitability before God. Gentiles, therefore, could be saved through faith and baptism alone. No longer appropriate was Paul’s mission to the Gentiles demanding the observance of Jewish Law.

Paul was astounded by the experience. He realized that the scope of the approaching redemption would be far grander than he had imagined. Christ had died not only so that Israel might be redeemed, but so that all the nations of the world might be redeemed as well. He was delighted, too. Until then, Gentile converts had been difficult to come by because of their reluctance to undertake Jewish rites. Men, especially, recoiled from the idea of circumcision. Now, they just might come in droves. Hundreds, thousands, perhaps even more, might be saved in the little time remaining before Christ’s return. This was good news, to be sure, and Paul named it appropriately. While he and others had referred to spreading the good news of Christ’s resurrection using the verb euangelizomai, Paul figured this new revelation about the salvation of Gentiles through baptism apart from the Law was the best news of all; it was the good news, so he called it "the euangelion," the gospel.

Aware his predecessors in the movement might look askance at his sudden acceptance of uncircumcised initiates, Paul calculated his next move carefully. Wishing to avoid interference as much as possible, he charted a westward course beyond the current mission field, virgin territory in which to initiate the propagation of his newly forged announcement about Gentile salvation.

The destination was Philippi.

And so, we arrive back where we began: in the late spring of 43 CE, Paul and Barnabas sailed into Neapolis to preach the gospel—ready, that is, to preach the gospel for the very first time.

Challenging Views from the Past

Now elaborated, the premise of this book appears more controversial. It does battle with two entrenched assumptions in Pauline scholarship.

The Circumcision-Free Gentile Mission

First is the widespread view that a Law-free mission to the Gentiles originated well before the early 40s.⁷ The influential writings of Martin Hengel led many historians to locate the origins of this mission in the earlier dispute between Hebrews and Hellenists described in Acts 6:1–6.⁸ While the believing community was still yet bound to Jerusalem, Acts reports, the Hellenists grumbled against the Hebrews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution [of food] (Acts 6:1).⁹ According to Hengel, the actual clash between theHellenists and the Hebrews ran deeper. The author of Acts conceals the fact that the Hellenists, Greek-speaking Jews from the Diaspora, had followed the lead of Jesus’s more radical teachings and developed an increasingly critical stance toward the Temple and Jewish Law. Such criticism drew ire from more traditionalist followers of Jesus, dubbed Hebrews, who in turn hounded the Hellenists out of Jerusalem (Acts 8:1–3). TheHellenists fled to Antioch, where they began preaching about Jesus to Gentiles (Acts 11:19–20) without requiring circumcision. These so-called Hellenists, not Paul, initiated a circumcision-free mission to Gentiles.

In recent years, a growing number of historians—perhaps the majority now—have taken issue with Hengel’s interpretation of the events reported in Acts.¹⁰ After all, Acts does not say specifically that the Hellenists of Antioch, however critical they were of Jewish Law, neglected circumcision in their initial overtures to Gentiles.¹¹ James D. G. Dunn therefore raises the alternative possibility that it was Paul, upon his conversion, who appreciated the antinomian direction in which the Hellenists were ineluctably headed and inspired them to abandon their imposition of the Law upon baptized Gentiles. Dunn concedes, however, that our sources preclude us from determining whether it was Paul or Paul’s predecessors among the Hellenists who first arrived at that pivotal conclusion. All we can say with confidence, he concludes, is that whenever Saul/Paul began to preach the gospel to Gentiles, he did so without requiring them to be circumcised.¹²

Only one recent voice has gone so far as to say that the circumcision-free mission to the Gentiles may have emerged even later. Douglas A. Campbell has argued that Paul spent the first three years of his ministry calling upon Gentiles baptized into Christ to take on the yoke of the Jewish Law.¹³ Chief among the passages supporting this view is Galatians 5:11, in which Paul concedes—astonishingly—that, at some point in his past, he preached circumcision. Commentators usually understand Paul to be admitting either that he had preached circumcision in some capacity before his so-called conversion to Christ or, based on the testimony of Acts 16:1–4, that on one unique occasion he tolerated the circumcision of his companion, Timothy. According to Campbell, neither view is correct. Paul rather intimates that earlier in his career as a follower of Christ he demanded circumcision from Gentile initiates as a matter of course. Only upon his arrival in Antioch, three years after his conversion, did Paul and other like-minded colleagues determine that relinquishment of the Law was the proper way forward.

In these pages, I push Campbell’s position even further by arguing that the Antiochene missions continued to demand Law observance from Gentiles long after Paul came aboard. Into the late 30s and early 40s, as Paul and other missionaries pressed from Syria to Cilicia and then further west into Asia Minor, they understood their enterprise to be a thoroughly Jewish one. They preached Christ as an invitation to Judaism, a final opportunity for Gentiles to become circumcised, to embrace God’s revealed Law, and to prepare for the judgment to follow. Only after several years of such preaching did Paul blaze a new trail by formulating the gospel, his unique and proprietary announcement about salvation for Gentiles outside the Law.

The Term Euangelion

The other assumption unmoored by this book, naturally, deals with the term gospel itself. Steve Mason has observed that euangelion enjoys a privileged status in biblical scholarship.¹⁴ While it has long been commonplace for historians to acknowledge that followers of Jesus in the first century varied widely (and often contentiously) in their beliefs and language, the meaning of the term euangelion is rarely reckoned to have been one of the matters in dispute. As Mason puts it, historians assume that "the term euangelion … is what early Jesus- or Christ-followers of all varieties held in common. They may have disagreed about the nature of the good news, but surely no follower of Jesus objected in principle to the notion that Jesus brought, or his death and resurrection resulted in, ‘good news.’¹⁵ In perhaps the most oft-cited work on the matter, Helmut Koester was therefore able to say that even though Paul believed he preached a special version of the gospel, his gospel was nevertheless part and parcel of the common gospel of the entire enterprise of the Christian mission."¹⁶

Just when and where euangelion entered the Christian lexicon, however, are hardly clear.

Before the Jesus movement, the singular, neuter noun euangelion was exceedingly rare in Greek. The euangel- root, including all verbs and nouns, occurs only about 200 times in non-Christian Greek texts, and the neuter noun accounts for a mere 30 or so of these. The root conveys ideas related to the delivery of news: the act of delivering news, the reward given to a messenger bearing good news, or the (good) news itself. Of the 30 occurrences of the neuter noun, the plural form predominates. The singular occurs but 7 times, 6 of which have the anarthrous form that lacks the definite article. In other words—and here is the upshot of this parade of numbers—the singular, neuter, articular noun euangelion (the good news) occurs a grand total of once in Greek literature before the rise of Christianity.¹⁷ In the earliest writings of the Jesus movement, the seven undisputed letters of Paul, it occurs more than 40 times. The word gospel, in other words, the expression that ultimately came to epitomize Christianity, was for all intents and purposes born out of thin air.

Interpreters have struggled to explain how, when, and why this virtual neologism emerged so suddenly in the early Jesus movement.¹⁸ Two general trends have prevailed. One follows the lead of the great Adolf von Harnack, who considered the origin of euangelion in a lengthy essay more than a hundred years ago.¹⁹ He concluded that the term originated within the Semitic-speaking circle of Jesus himself. Either Jesus or his followers soon after his death began to use the Hebrew bĕśôrâ (good news) to denote the arrival of the kingdom of God about which Jesus preached. Greek-speaking Jews subsequently chose euangelion as the appropriate substitute for bĕśôrâ and introduced that term into the Diaspora. Since Harnack, several leading scholars have likewise traced the Christian use of euangelion back to a Hebrew or Aramaic original employed by the first followers of Jesus, or perhaps even to Jesus himself.²⁰ An insurmountable problem scuttles this view, however. While it is conceivable that Jesus and/or his earliest followers used the Hebrew noun bĕśôrâ to convey the glad tidings of the coming kingdom, it is inexplicable that Greek-speaking colleagues would have rendered this noun with the neuter singular, euangelion. Recall that the plural form of that word, rare as it is, far outnumbers instances of the singular in pre-Christian Greek. The Septuagint, moreover, the source Hellenistic Jews would have consulted when seeking an appropriate Greek rendering of bĕśôrâ, never once uses the neuter singular euangelion. The Septuagint translates bĕśôrâ with the neuter plural on one occasion and five times with the unprecedented feminine singular form euangelia. Had the Hellenistic followers of Jesus sought a translation for bĕśôrâ, they would have chosen either the neuter plural or feminine singular form.

Recognizing the difficulty in postulating a Semitic antecedent for euangelion, others have charted a second course by seeking the origin of the term in the Hellenistic world.²¹ They argue that early preachers of the resurrection in Greek-speaking realms appropriated the word euangelion from the propaganda surrounding the worship of Hellenistic rulers, especially the Roman imperial cult. This tack was aided early in the twentieth century by the discovery of the Priene inscription, a well-preserved copy of a proclamation posted throughout the province of Asia to announce the institution of Rome’s Julian calendar. The inscription celebrates the birthday of Augustus, on which day the new calendar year begins, as ‘good news’ for the world.²² As expected, the Greek form of euangelion is in the plural, as it is in every other example of good news propagated by monarchs before the rise of Christianity; so, again, one runs up against the problem of the curious preference for the singular form among the earliest followers of Christ. The switch to the singular is nevertheless easier to explain if the term was deliberately appropriated from imperial propaganda. Whereas a Roman emperor might have proclaimed various glad tidings in his life—for example, his birth, his accession, or his success in battle—followers of Christ emphasized the uniqueness of their single glad tiding, their one euangelion as opposed to the many euangelia of a Caesar.²³

Locating the origin of euangelion in the appropriation of language from the imperial cult comes with its own difficulties, however. It might explain why believers in Christ opted for the nearly unprecedented singular form, but at the same time it is stymied by the fact that neither Paul, the Synoptists, nor any other early follower of Christ explicitly distinguishes their euangelion from rival Roman euangelia. It remains possible that euangelion first emerged in this polemical context, but the absence of corroborating evidence thwarts any attempt to assert that view with confidence. Beset by difficulties on both sides, it is not hard to see why Ernst Käsemann, writing in 1980, determined that the derivation of euangelion presents a puzzle yet to be solved.²⁴

This book proposes that one important piece of that puzzle—indeed, perhaps the single most important clue—has been consistently overlooked. Paul tells us, I think, exactly when and where the euangelion originated, and he provides enough hints here and there to help us determine the course of events leading up to that historic moment. In writing to the Philippians in the early 50s, some ten years after his first visit there, Paul describes his initial arrival and departure from Macedonia as occurring "in the beginning of the euangelion (Phil. 4:15). To repeat, in the beginning of the euangelion." Paul says exactly when and where the euangelion originated. It began when he first arrived in Macedonia; yet, because historians assume that both the term euangelion and the general preaching it represents originated before Paul set foot in Macedonia, no one has ever construed Paul’s statement in the most straightforward sense. Commentators have understood Paul to say that his time in Macedonia marked either "the beginning of the euangelion [for the Philippians] or that it occurred in the early days, not specifically the beginning," of the euangelion. These interpretations are not unreasonable, but I wonder whether Paul might be saying what he appears quite simply to be saying—namely, that his stay in Philippi marked the actual beginning of the euangelion, the very first time the gospel was ever preached.

What would Paul have been preaching before the voyage to Macedonia? Paul tells us that, too. Recall that Paul, writing to the Galatians in the 50s, concedes that at one time he had been a preacher of circumcision (Gal. 5:11). Before his arrival in Philippi, I surmise, Paul preached circumcision. When he underwent the change of heart that turned him from a persecutor to a follower of Jesus, the experience he describes in Galatians 1:15–16, he began, as he puts it, to preach glad tidings about [Jesus] to the Gentiles (Gal. 1:16). Whether he was the first to approach Gentiles with the news of Christ’s death and resurrection or he joined missions already underway in Damascus, Arabia, or Antioch, the terms in which these missions were couched knew only the verbal form of the euangel- root. Paul preached glad tidings (euagglizomai) about either Jesus (Gal. 1:16) or the faith (Gal. 1:23). Upon hearing these tidings, Gentiles were expected to join the Jewish people through circumcision and Law observance.

Only later, some eight to ten years after his so-called conversion, did Paul realize that a new tiding was in order, the bold and novel proclamation that Gentiles could be saved by Christ without circumcision—that is, the gospel. As these pages will show, Paul set out to preach the gospel for the first time in Philippi, and in so doing he altered the course of Christian history. On the one hand, Paul precipitated a decades-long dispute among fellow believers regarding the relationship between Jews and Gentiles. Powerful elements in the believing community came to oppose the gospel vehemently and endeavored to undermine it and its supporters, Paul chief among them. Paul would nonetheless find enthusiastic legions, and in time his successors would win the day and establish Christianity as a religion unbound by Jewish Law. On the other hand, the term Paul coined, gospel, would eventually become synonymous with Christianity itself. Through the work of Mark, a devout Paulinist, euangelion would come to denote the preaching of Jesus himself, while through the work of Matthew, a reluctant Paulinist, it would come to denote a book portraying the life of Jesus.

The Plan of the Book

This early history of the term gospel unfolds in two discrete sections. Part I (Chaps. 2, 3, and 4) considers the origin of the gospel in the ministry of Paul; part II (Chaps. 5, 6, 7, and 8) examines the legacy of Paul’s terminology in the following century.

The second chapter relies heavily on the pioneering work of Steve Mason. Tucked away in his Josephus, Judea, and Christian Origins (2009), a collection consisting mostly of previously published articles, Mason includes a chapter in which he considers the possibility that "it was indeed Paul who came up with the term euangelion."²⁵ His argument, which is taken up at much greater length here, emphasizes the distinctly proprietary language Paul uses when talking about the gospel. Over and again, it is my gospel, our gospel, the gospel I preach, and other expressions indicating that Paul considers the gospel to be his personal possession. This proprietary language, alongside Paul’s insistence that he received the gospel from Christ and not from other men—despite what 1 Corinthians 15:1–3 is so often understood to say—leads me to confirm Mason’s hypothesis, to which I add my own understanding of the gospel as an announcement dealing particularly with thesalvation of Gentiles without submission to Jewish Law.

The origin of the gospel is taken up in the third chapter, in which I suggest that Paul’s career as a minister of Christ was divided into two distinct phases. The gospel, it turns out, appeared only in the latter period. Moored around Galatians 5:11 and Philippians 4:15, this chapter proposes that Paul, in the wake of the revelatory experience that brought him to Christ, began a ministry