Re: PTWCOI = the community of the STULOI

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Tue Apr 23 1996 - 09:40:47 EDT


At 6:03 AM -0600 4/23/96, Shaughn Daniel wrote:
> Carl Conrad spake thus saying:
>
> >Very interesting. Throws a different light on matters if we read Paul in
> >Galatians 2:10 as saying " ... however, we should remember the street
> >people [or 'the homeless']." Furthermore, I've just noticed something I
> >never noticed before, that Gal 2:10 does NOT specificy these PTWCOI as
> >being members of the Jerusalem church, as it has always been understood.
> >
> >And now, as I think on screen, another purely speculative ramification of
> >Gal 2:10 teases my mind: IF "PTWCOI" should be a designation for the
> >missionaries sent to evangelize in accordance with the Missionary Discourse
> >parallels in the Synoptic Gospels, which have at least occasionally been
> >thought to be post-Easter regulations for missionary work in the primitive
> >community, then perhaps the "collection" that Paul conscientiously sought
> >from his Gentile congregations was never intended to relieve poverty in the
> >Jerusalem church but rather to promote its missionary activities? What
> >think ye about that?
>
> Carl, the following thoughts are not as clear as I could wish, but are
> submitted here for mutual edification and discussion:
>
> PTWCOI in Gal 2.10 could refer to members of the early community when
> compared to Ro 15.25f, the PTWCOI TWN AGIWN TWN EN IEROUSALHM. But that
> doesn't mean that the PTWCOI and the AGIWN are synonymous because AGIWN is
> a partitive genitive. The collection in Ro is grounded in the
> responsibility to "the poor," interpreted by Schlier and Bammel as an
> abbreviation of a messianic honorific title for the earliest Jerusalem
> community (perhaps in connection with the sermon on the mount--MAKARIOI OI
> PTWCOI TW PNEUMATI OTI AUTWN ESTIN H BASILEIA TWN OURANWN--but in what way,
> I don't recall. Their "blessedness," however, to read back between the
> lines, rests not only in possessing and/or belonging to the kingdom of
> heaven, but also in directing it).

Shaughn, let me say once again that I'm not pushing for PTWCOI as mendicant
missionaries--certainly not at this point--as the solution to the problems
raised by the use of the term PTWCOI, "beggars, rather than PENHTES, "poor
people." What I'm trying to explore is whether counter-arguments such as
you are raising here decisively undercut the possibility that I've
suggested. Perhaps they do; certainly the Rom 15:25-27 passage is more
convincing than the passage from 2 Cor that we considered yesterday. I find
myself somewhat troubled, however, by the notion that PTWCOI should be an
"honorific" title; but if it IS, then my question would be, How did it
become that? (My first inclination is to say that, as soon as Paul said he
wanted to do missionary work among the Gentiles, they started begging him
for money from any churches he founded--but I'm hardly serious!) Is the
reference to the Matthaean form of the beatitude yours or does it come from
Schlier & Bammel? There's a question of the dating of the Matthaean form,
and the Lucan form is commonly thought earlier. But supposing that we do
refer back to the "Q" or double-tradition beatitudes, there remains the
question who these MAKARIOI are and why they are MAKARIOI: are they people
so impoverished as to need to beg for sustenance--if so, it would appear
that their being fed is awaited in the Age to Come. Or could they just
possibly be those mendicant missionaries of the synoptic missionary
discourses? If we examine the Lucan form in 6:20b-23, we note, for one
thing, that Luke has this addressed "to his disciples"--that would seem to
be redactional, but nevertheless it seems likely enough to have been
addressed to the same group as those addressed in the missionary discourse,
as Lk 10. We note also that Lk 6:22 is addressed particularly to being
social outcastes because one is acting out today the role the prophets
played in the past. So I ask, could the "honorific" title of "beggars" have
come upon the Jerusalem community because their traditions included these
Jesus-saying identifications of missionary-appointees with beggars? I don't
know.

> Somewhere in the great debate of Gal is the idea that Paul's opponents were
> accusing him of a. dependence on men and b. a mishandling of apostolic
> responsibilities. This comes most in focus when one argues for a collection
> as a substitution of a form of temple taxes in the earliest community (K.
> Holl).

I've heard this mentioned before, but is it really anything more than
hypothetical (as my own suggestions about the PTWCOI are admittedly purely
hypothetical)?

> The argumentational logic of Gal 1-2 would seek to a. show Paul's
> independence from "men" and b. a proper handling of apostolic
> responsibilities (like in the collection: Paul has good marks is the claim
> of Paul himself). Paul's collection should prove that he is working in
> conjunction with/for the PTWCOI of Jerusalem (James, Cephas, and John are
> the STULOI "pillars").

One thing that is not at all clear to me is whether you are saying that the
STULOI are themselves the PTWCOI and that Paul is working for the
STULOI--or whether you really mean that the PTWCOI are the community under
the oversight of the STULOI.

> Of course, what happened with the collection once it
> reached Jerusalem is another matter altogether. For the moment, however, we
> are just focussing on Paul's motives for the collection, which can be
> summarized as: 1. indebtedness and responsibility to the PTWCOI of
> Jerusalem (Ro), 2. the agreement between Paul and the "pillars" and HIS
> subsequent "eagerness" to do it (Ga; notice the change from plural to
> singular in 2:10), and 3. to enhance the fellowship between Gentile and
> Jewish groups in the early church (Cor--where "abundance" balances out
> "need.").

I'm puzzled also as to whether we are to have it both ways: that PTWCOI is
an HONORIFIC title for the STULOI and that it implies that the Jerusalem
community REALLY IS economically destitute.

> Rohde asks an interesting question in his discussion of Gal 2.10:
> "Auffaellig ist, dass Paulus in diesem Vers wieder aus dem Plur. in den
> Sing. uebergeht. Ist das moeglicherweise ein Hinweis auf die Trennung von
> Barnabas, von der Apg. 15.37-40 berichtet?" ("It is noticable that Paul in
> this verse goes from the plural to the singular. Is that possibly a hint at
> the separation from Barnabas which Acts 15.37-40 reports?" my translation;
> Rohde ThHK 93f).

Das waere zwar moeglich, but I'd be disinclined to build a case on this
shift in number; 1st person plural for 1st person singular is pretty common
in both Latin and Greek; I haven't a list of examples handy, but it seems
to me that a shift back and forth from 1st sg. to 1st pl. or 1st pl. to 1st
sg. is by no means uncommon.

In sum, I'd have to say that the Romans 15 passage would appear to make a
stronger case for the "collection" being to meet economic need in the
Jerusalem community. But I really remain very puzzled as to why PTWCOI
should seriously be considered an honorific name for the STULOI.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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