THE OFFERING: READING THE SILENCES
Calvin j. Roetzel
No scholarly silence exists about the offering for the “hoi ptôchoi tôn hagiôn,“ or the “poor among the saints” in Jerusalem. English works by Giorgi 1 and Nickle 2 are well known, and studies by Longenecker (see his bibliography) et al have dealt with benefaction in the early church. A score of UK scholars have focused on the offering as well, but most, English and German, deal with the theological not social or anthropological protocol of the offering in the ancient world. Stephan Joubert’s use of a wider disciplinary lens is exceptional, and that informs this short study.
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Following Saller’s study of Seneca, Jaubert allowed that the gift formula of North
American native, archaic peoples isolated by Marcel Mauss and that of the Roman world were similar. Jaubert like Saller showed how in Paul’s world gift transactions could and often did carry multiple and deeply symbolic meanings. In both archaic and Roman cultures failure to reciprocate a gift was seen as a repudiation of solidarity, and was considered to be an exceedingly hostile act.
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The wide-angle lens, Joubert used, was first crafted by the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss in his Essai sur le Don, an anthropological study of gift
2 Keith F. Nickle, The Collection: A Study in Paul’s Strategy. (Naperville: Alec R.
Allenson, 1966).
3 Stephan Joubert, Paul as Benefactor, Reciprocity, Strategy, and Theological
Reflection in Paul’s Collection, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen
Testament 2. Reihe, 124 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000).
4 Joubert, pp. 70—71.
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exchange protocol among North American native peoples. 5 Mary Douglas called that study “profound and original,” a welcome antidote to the individualistic emphases of most studies of archaic peoples, and exceedingly relevant for contemporary interdisciplinary study. The works of Mauss and Joubert serve here as the optic through which I view Paul’s offering project. Those studies, I believe, have profound significance for the study of the offering project that Paul promoted.
The structure of the gift exchange formula Mauss identified and that Jaubert appropriated inform our study of the offering project that Paul accepted, promoted and defended for five years or more, and with which he combined an apocalyptic fervency and symbolism that validated his Gentile mission. Embedded in Mauss’ gift formula was the absolute and unalterable obligation to reciprocate the initial gesture with an equal or greater gift. While one may legitimately question the relevance of Mauss’ anthropological study of archaic peoples for an investigation of the social exchanges in the Roman empire centuries later, Joubert’s study isolates resemblances of the two too close to be ignored. In the Empire as well as among the archaic North American native peoples, the initial gift mandated reciprocity with an offering of equal or superior worth. That reciprocal gift affirmed a solidarity, or even a kindship with the one/s proffering the gift, and any disruption of that transaction formula was considered an egregious offense. A refusal of the initial gift from a
5 I have been guided to this student by Prof. Dr. Susanna Fioratta and am grateful for her comments. First published in Paris in1925, Mauss’s little tractate belatedly appeared in English in 1954 (Free Press), then again in 1990, 2000 (Routledge), and
2011 (Martino Publishing).
5 It gained further attention in the works of Claude Lévi-
Strauss’ Les Structures Elémentaires de la Parenté in 1971, and R.P. Saller on patronage in the early Roman empire. Introductions to English translations by such notables as Evans-Pritchard and Mary Douglas lent it additional stature.
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super-ordinate brought shame and dishonor on the projected recipient/s and any refusal to accept the reciprocal gesture from the sub-ordinate was deemed a repudiation of solidarity, and was tantamount to saying, “I want nothing to do with you.” Such a rejection at either end of the formulaic exchange heaped shame and dishonor on the one/s refusing the gesture and could foster an enduring hostility or even trigger violence..
The studies above so briefly noted provide the optic for this short discussion of Paul’s offering project. Both the multi-year nature of Paul’s project and the broad geographical compass of its appeal combine to underscore its importance. While its target was the poor among the saints in Jerusalem, by Paul’s own admission it came from dirt poor converts in Paul’s churches, and suggests something special about the Jerusalem target. Jerusalem as object alone highlights its importance, but when
Paul overlaid the singular facts of the offering exchange with an apocalyptic vision the result is breathtaking, and that makes it difficult to overstate its symbolic importance.
Let us begin our short treatment by noting Paul’s post-hoc recall of his
Jerusalem consultation with the “so-called pillars” (stuloi )” noted in Galatians 2:6--
10 to gain their endorsement of his emergent Gentile mission. That consultation with the Jerusalem core group of disciples and kin wittingly or no insinuated their super-ordinate status. Paul’s visit to Jerusalem, his symbolic axis mundi, in the quest of such an endorsement presumes that Paul recognized an authority there to endorse or reject his apocalyptic version of the Gentile gospel. That presumption
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accords an enormous amount of power to that Jerusalem cohort (Peter, James and
John) attests to their super-ordinate rank and Paul’s sub-ordinate status.
Their handshake may have sealed an agreement, but it was hardly a pact between equals. In their endorsement of Paul’s gentile mission, the Jerusalem circle became Paul’s benefactor with the authority to specify that Gentile converts
reciprocate with a gift for the “poor (anawim, ebionim, or ptochoi)” in Jerusalem, which Paul somewhat disingenuously recalls, “I was eager to do” (2:10).
Nevertheless, multiple Pauline letters (1 Cor. 16:1—4; 2 Cor. 8 & 9, Rom. 15:22—32, and Gal. 2:1--10) chronicle his years-long commitment to enlist his Gentile converts in this reciprocal gesture (15:22--32). But that offering would do more, much more, than meet basic human need, though it did do that, it would affirm a solidarity, a koinonia, or even a kinship announced with words like “adoption” into the elect
(Gal. 4:5; Rom. 8:15, 23; 9:4), and becoming kin, “heirs” or “joint-heirs” (Gal. 3:29;
4:1, 7; Rom. 8:17), with them. Thus the offering eloquently affirmed an eschatological union of Jew and Gentile in the arriving rule of God which Paul elsewhere enunciated.
Paul would later clearly recapitulate the initial gift/reciprocal-gift formula in a letter written on the cusp of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem with the delegation commissioned to deliver the offering: “For if the ethnê [Gentiles] shared in the
pneumatikoî [spiritual things] of them [Jerusalem] they ought also to minister to them with sarkikoîs [i.e. fleshly things]” (Rom. 15:27). So in spite of all of Paul’s gainsaying in Galatians that he was commissioned by God directly to preach a gospel and perform a ritual of adoption of Gentile converts into the elect as heirs to Israel’s
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special status (Gal. 1:11—17; 2:6) or kin, his protestations conflict with the realities he seems to acknowledge. That post-hoc recall reported in Galatians 2:1—10 of the
Jerusalem endorsement legitimating his Gentile mission received some qualification, however, in 2 Corinthians 8.
I cannot here fully account for the relevance of 2 Corinthians 8 for this discussion, but note two passages that bear on our topic. The first is the
Christological summary in 8:9, with the Lord Jesus as the supreme gift (charis, cf. 1
Cor.16:3; 2 Cor. 8:4, 6, 7, 19: gift): “For you know that the grace (charis) of our Lord
Jesus, that though he was rich became poor, in order that you who are poor might become rich.” Here it is the God who sent Jesus who is the presumptive, primal super-ordinate (not the Jerusalem “pillars”); this statement grounded Paul’s adaptation of the traditional gift formula, and disrupted it. The traditional formula that Paul so clearly enunciated in Romans 15 may in light of 2 Corinthians 8 suggest to some that Paul was inconsistent for there Paul allows what he states elsewhere that salvation came from the Jews, but here God is given the status of the primal super-ordinate giver. Is this a contradiction or a paradox? Inasmuch as Paul allowed differing scribal instructions for differing contexts, it may be that our concern with consistency was not his, or even that his ascribing to both “the Jews” and God primal giver status was in no way as contradictory to Paul. These two differing ascriptions may have simply been differing responses to differing contexts, for Romans 14 clearly presumes some conflict between Jewish and Gentile congregations, and that alone may have required a sensitive application of the gift formula.
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The disruption of the formulaic, presumptive subordinate status of a hierarchy that placed the Jerusalem “pillars” at the apex as super-ordinates is more obvious in 2 Corinthians 8:13—14. There, you will recall, Paul recognized the limits that the Corinthian abject poverty imposed on the size of the offering (Bartchy estimates 1/3 were slaves and 1/3 freed).
6 Here Paul noted: “I do not mean that there should be relief for others and a burden (thlipsis) for you, but it is a question of
isotétos (equality) between your present abundance (perisseuma), and their need
(husteréma), so that their abundance (perusseuma) may be for your need
(husteréma), in order that there may be isotétos (equality).” Please note the order of giver to receiver is reversed and an equity is affirmed that would have disrupted the formula Paul may have grudgingly recognized in Galatians 2:9. And, there is little concern for equality in the traditional formula.
While I partially agree with Joubert that Paul “conceptualized the collection as an undertaking that was intended to address Jerusalem’s poverty” (p. 146), I think it was more. To the oft-presumed beneficent act and to the Roman formula
Paul added a powerful apocalyptic signifier that forged the symbol of a solidarity of
Jew and Gentile in the elect of the Messianic age and/or the age to come. Its acceptance would not only have met real need, but more importantly it would have affirmed a kinship in the shadow of the dawning end-time; Jew and Gentile were bound together in a single lump.
In 2 Corinthians 9 Paul imaged an end-time drama of a breath-taking presentation of the offering to the Jerusalem “poor.” (I avoid here any discussion of
6 Bartchy, S. Scott, MALLON CRÊSAI: First-Century Slavery and the Interpretation of 1
Corinthians 7:21. SBLDS 11 (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1973).
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the chronological priority of ch. 8 or 9 for obvious reasons). In chapter nine Paul imaginatively placed his Gentile readers of Achaia in the presence of their Jewish brothers and sisters in Jerusalem gathered to receive an offering that echoed the grand, eschatological dream of Isaiah 45:14; 60:1—22; Micah 4:1—2, 13, and the
LXX of Isaiah 23:14—24:1. That imaginary vision of Jew and Gentile joining voice to voice in one great act of praise, so transported Paul that he involuntarily exclaimed:
“Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift” (2 Cor. 9:15).
That transported moment, however, gave way perhaps only a short time later when Paul wrote Romans 15. While enjoying the hospitality of Gaius, Paul’s one-time convert, in Corinth, and dictating the letter to the Roman churches, dark thoughts about the Jerusalem offering invaded his thought. As Paul wrote or dictated the letter, the collection was complete, the chosen delegation waited with him for the spring shipping season to open in April when the joint pilgrimage to deliver the offering would begin. As Paul pondered the offering delivery his mood darkened (Rom. 15:31); the bright exultation of 2 Corinthians 9 gave way to a sober, pensive, anxious, almost palpable dread. The pain of the public shouting match with
Peter still throbbed. The memory of the pain caused by the presence of “those of
James” also lingered. The prospect of a face-to-face encounter with the so-called
“pillars” (Gal. 2:11—14) and elders and the likelihood of a confrontation again with hostile synagogue factions that inscribed their marks on his back (2 Cor. 11:24) Paul requested that the Roman churches pray that “my ministry (diakonía, offering) may be acceptable to the holy ones (hagíois)” (15:31). That material (fleshly) gift that would reciprocate Jerusalem for “spiritual blessings “ (15:27) would also affirm a
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koinonía (i.e. solidarity). A rejection of the gift in Jerusalem would repudiate everything Paul fought, bled and almost died for, and would have brought his gospel of a grand eschatological vision in question, would have jeopardized the future of the Gentile mission and would have heaped shame and dishonor on Paul and his
Gentile converts.
With Paul’s prayer request, his voice goes silent. For our information about the gift’s reception, we are inevitably driven to the later, perhaps much later, account of Luke’s Acts.
7 Given Luke’s immersion in Greek and Roman culture it is impossible to imagine that he was unaware of the importance of the traditional gift formula. As Joubert has well noted, Luke did know a good deal about the offering.
He knew from whence the offering came and to whom it was going. He recognized its symbolic significance. He knew about the opposition to Paul’s “circumcision free” gospel and about Judean accusations that Paul was antinomian (Acts 21:21).
He knew of Paul’s meeting with the Jerusalem church leaders. Nevertheless, his silence about the reception or rejection of the offering is deafening. What can that possibly mean?
Roloff put it best when he said: “Er übergeht die Kollekte nicht etwa, weil sie in seinen Augen unwichtig wäre, sondern – paradoxerweise – weil er von ihrer überragenden Bedeutung wusste! Ihm war aus seinen Quellen bekannt, dass die Jerusalemer das Opfer der Heiden nicht angenommen haben.” 8 In other words, “Luke passed over the collection not because it was unimportant, but, paradoxically, because he knew it was supremely
7 Pervo, Richard, The Dating of Acts (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 2006).
8 Roloff, J., Die Apostelgeschichte, NTD5 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1981), p. 312.
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important. From his sources he knew that the Jerusalem cohort had not accepted the offering of the Gentiles.” With minor adjustments Pesch and Gerd Lüdemann have both supported Roloff’s judgment.
Joubert also recognized the heaviness of Luke’s ominous silence, and he offers an unsatisfying and specious “happy ending.” Joubert believes, Paul struck a deal with the Jerusalem pillars that allowed him to prove that he was indeed lawabiding and thus to satisfy the gainsayers. Through a contrived performance of the
Nazarite vow – i.e. the shaving of head, offering of lambs and all that (p 214)--Paul could assuage the worries of the Jerusalem elders.
9 That concession, Joubert believes, refuted the critics and made it possible for the Jerusalem church to accept the offering. But not a single word appears in Acts that would support that view.
Joubert continues that even if the Jerusalem church did not accept the offering, the sheer performance of the rite made it possible for Paul to taste success even in failure, i.e. the offering’s rejection. But, in the aftermath of this gesture of conciliation, Acts reports that Paul was arrested, and accused by hostile Jews of bringing a gentile into the temple (21:27—36), and offers no record of protests from the Jerusalem “elders.” Thus in Joubert’s view Paul would have succeeded even when he failed and that I think is too clever by half.
Although there is much that is valuable about Joubert’s treatment, I cannot go with his final reading of the silence about the offering in Acts. The question with which we are left, is that more, much more, needs to be done on the Acts account,
9 Please note that Luke credited the Jerusalem leadership solely for the Nazarite strategy, but surely Paul played some role in any such strategy if one took place at all (p. 214).
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and the outcome’s relevance for interpreting 2 Corinthians 8 and 9. Is it historical?
Do its silences speak volumes? Is this the first crack in the solidarity of Jews and
Gentiles in the emergent Jesus movement that will slowly unwind into the absolute split that Boyarin has sought to trace?
10 And what might the reasons have been for
Luke’s deliberate omission of a reference to the rejection of the offering?
It is true that a report of the rejection of the offering and the solidarity its acceptance would have symbolized, would also have placed the Gentile mission Paul led under a cloud. I think that Mauss’ construction of the gift formula and the commentary by Mary Douglas, have the potential to better attune us to the supreme importance of the presentation of the offering that Paul reported accepting in
Galatians and so assiduously promoted in letters 1 Corinthians 15, 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, and owned in Romans 15, and promoted through his co-workers, Titus,
Timothy, et al. The question is do Paul’s recall and the expectations of the superordinate core agree? Does the super-ordinate status of that core entitle them to control the legitimating process and/or the withdrawal of that endorsement?
Moreover, might the tensions emerging in the Levant in the fifties that David
Rhoads has so brilliantly analyzed, have so enflamed xenophobic tendencies making solidarity of law-observant Jewish Christians with Gentile converts difficult if not dangerous? Also, might Paul’s self acknowledged opposition by Judaizers in Philippi,
Corinth, Galatia, and elsewhere (see Rom. 3:8), have made the environment so toxic that acceptance of the offering was already compromised before Paul arrived in
Jerusalem with the delegation? Would such a reading better help us understand the
10 Boyarin, Daniel. Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity. (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).
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Pauline reclamation projects of Luke, Marcion, et al and better appreciate the concern about the wall of separation the Deutero-Pauline, Ephesians, notes in
2:14b? One small final caveat is in order. Even if the offering were rejected we need not presume that that rejection would have triggered an absolute break with the
Jewish Christian church and the Judean antagonists of Jerusalem. It might have precipitated an ugly family quarrel, but the ultimate painful divorce of the emergent
Christian tradition from the Judaisms of the day, Daniel Boyarin has shown, did not become a fact until after the time of Constantine and his installation of Christianity as the official religion of the empire. But a rejection of the offering by the Jerusalem
“pillars” most assuredly would have aggravated an intramural family quarrel that would have complicated future conversations and aggravated continuing disputes.
The point here is that the offering had a powerful symbolic significance that went well beyond a benevolent response to a human need in Jerusalem, and its rejections had the potential to foster an enmity harmful to both the Jewish and Gentile missions.
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