Paul's Collection and the Book of Acts Revisited

New Testament Studieshttp://journals.cambridge.org/NTS

Additional services for New Testament Studies:

Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click here

Paul's Collection and the Book of Acts Revisited

DAVID J. DOWNS

New Testament Studies / Volume 52 / Issue 01 / January 2006, pp 50 - 70DOI: 10.1017/S0028688506000038, Published online: 12 December 2005

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0028688506000038

How to cite this article:DAVID J. DOWNS (2006). Paul's Collection and the Book of Acts Revisited. New TestamentStudies, 52, pp 50-70 doi:10.1017/S0028688506000038

Request Permissions : Click here

Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/NTS, IP address: 65.118.138.58 on 04 Jul 2014

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 04 Jul 2014 IP address: 65.118.138.58

Paul’s Collection and the Book of ActsRevisited*

DAVID J. DOWNSPrinceton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ 08542, USA

The narrative of Acts has often been mined for historical information about the mon-etary collection that Paul raised among the Gentile churches of his mission for thesaints in Jerusalem. Most scholars have assumed that Acts refers to the Pauline col-lection, either in 11.27–30 or 24.17. Against this consensus, this paper contends thatthe narrative of Acts, when read on its own terms and without the imposition of infor-mation from the Pauline epistles, neither mentions nor alludes to Paul’s collectionfor Jerusalem. In its narrative context, Acts 24.17, far from being a reference to the col-lection, identifies Paul before his accusers as a faithful Jew whose individual piety isdemonstrated by almsgiving and worship. Information from the book of Acts, there-fore, cannot be used to write the final chapter of the historical reconstruction of thePauline collection.

I. Introduction

Whether reflected in Paul’s statements about support obtained from some

of his churches (2 Cor 11.8; Phil 4.10–20), in his vigorous refusal to request or

receive compensation for his work from others (1 Thess 2.9–12; 1 Cor 9.3–18; 2 Cor

2.17; 11.7–11), or in his willingness to incur personal debts for the sake of a ‘beloved

brother’ (Phlm 16–19), Paul’s epistles are rich with information about the econ-

omic life of the earliest Christian communities. Perhaps not coincidentally, all of

the undisputed epistles of Paul refer to financial transactions on behalf of the

Pauline mission – while those letters deemed pseudepigraphical typically refrain

from mentioning the funding of missionary work.1

50

* I would like to thank Professor Beverly Roberts Gaventa, my colleagues in the ‘Luke–Acts’

Seminar at Princeton Theological Seminary, Dr Verlyn Verbrugge, and the anonymous

readers at NTS for their helpful input on earlier drafts of this paper. I am especially grateful

to Professor Gaventa for the guidance and encouragement that she offered from the initial

stages of this project. Any errors or deficiencies in the present work are, of course, no one’s

responsibility but my own.

1 This point is made by Mark Kiley in Colossians as Pseudepigraphy (Sheffield: JSOT Press,

1986) 46–7.

New Test. Stud. 52, pp. 50–70. Printed in the United Kingdom © 2006 Cambridge University PressDOI:10.1017/S0028688506000038

http://journals.cambridge.org


Interestingly, given the prominence of pecuniary issues in the Pauline epistles,

the depiction of Paul and his churches in the narrative of Acts is relatively free of

details about the financial affairs of the Pauline mission. There are, to be sure, sev-

eral references to Paul’s trade, identified in Acts 18.3 as tent-making, by which

activity the apostle is able to support both himself and his fellow servants (Acts

20.34–35; cf. 1 Cor 4.12; 1 Thess 2.9). Moreover, there are at least three episodes in

Acts in which the effective power of and witness to the gospel by Paul and his

associates have negative economic repercussions for individuals associated with

pagan religions: slave owners in Philippi are deprived of a source of income when

Paul exorcises their divining servant (16.16–24); converted magicians burn fifty

thousand silver coins’ worth of magic books in Ephesus (19.18–19); and Demetrius

and the Ephesian silversmiths instigate a riot because the success of Paul’s

preaching jeopardizes their trade (19.21–41). For the most part, however, very little

is actually recorded in Acts about the economic life of Paul’s churches, about

issues of wealth and poverty in the Pauline mission, or about the sources of fund-

ing for Paul’s extensive travels.2 This stands in contrast not only to the situation

represented in the letters of Paul, but also to the portrayal of the Jerusalem church

earlier in the narrative of Acts, which provides a number of details about the

common life of the first believers. These include two summary statements about

the sharing of possessions (2.43–47; 4.32–37), the negative example of ‘benefaction

gone wrong’ in the tale of Ananias and Sapphira (5.1–11),3 and the dispute between

the Hellenists and the Hebrews about the daily distribution of food (6.1–7).4 It is

clear that the themes of wealth, poverty, and possessions hold great interest for

Luke,5 but these matters do not surface as issues of major concern in large por-

tions of the narrative devoted to Paul.6

Paul’s Collection and the Book of Acts Revisited 51

2 See Luke Timothy Johnson, The Literary Function of Possessions in Luke–Acts (SBLDS 39;

Missoula, Mont.: Scholars, 1977) 29–36. It would be incorrect to imply that only the opening

chapters of Acts display a concern for the responsible use of wealth, and Johnson’s focus on

Acts 1–8 may not adequately account for the complexity of the material (see, e.g., 9.36–41;

16.16–24; 19.13–41; 20.34–35; 24.26; Beverly Roberts Gaventa, The Acts of the Apostles [ANTC;

Nashville: Abingdon, 2003] 81). The more limited point being made here is that, while the

theme of possessions is relevant to the portrayal of Paul and his preaching in Acts, not much

information is provided about the economic life of his churches.

3 Richard S. Ascough, ‘Benefaction Gone Wrong: The “Sin” of Ananias and Sapphira in

Context’, in Text and Artifact in the Religions of Mediterranean Antiquity: Essays in Honour of

Peter Richardson (ed. Stephen G. Wilson and Michael Desjardins; SCJ 9; Waterloo, ON:

Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2000) 91–110.

4 See Johnson, Literary Function, 36–8.

5 With the conventional designation ‘Luke’, this paper refers only to the implied author of

Luke–Acts and does not assume that this individual was a co-worker or associate of Paul.

6 There is an extensive bibliography devoted to the issues of wealth, poverty, and possessions

in Luke–Acts; for a helpful overview of the most important writings, see the bibliographical

essay by Thomas E. Phillips, ‘Reading Recent Readings of Issues of Wealth and Poverty in

Luke and Acts’, CBR 1, no. 2 (2003) 231–69.



The most notable discrepancy between the epistles and Acts regarding the

issue of money in Paul’s churches, however, is the failure of Luke anywhere

explicitly to mention the one economic endeavor of signal importance for the

apostle, namely, the relief fund that Paul organized among his churches in

Macedonia, Achaia, and Galatia for the Christian community in Jerusalem, a proj-

ect commonly called ‘the collection for the saints’ (hJ logeiva eij~ tou;~ aJgivou~, 1

Cor 16.1). It would be difficult to overstate the significance of this collection for

Paul’s mission as apostle to the Gentiles. That the organization and implemen-

tation of the collection demanded a considerable amount of Paul’s time and

energy over the course of a number of years is revealed in his comments about the

undertaking in 1 Cor 16.1–4; 2 Corinthians 8–9; and Rom 15.25–32. So portentous

was the collection for Paul that he reports in Rom 15.30–32 his willingness to risk

both his life and the possible rejection of his efforts by the Jerusalem church in

order to deliver the funds personally to Jerusalem:

I urge you, brothers and sisters, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love ofthe Spirit, to join with me in prayers to God on my behalf, that I may berescued from the unbelievers in Judea, and that my ministry to Jerusalemmay be acceptable to the saints, so that in joy I may come to you by God’swill and be refreshed together with you.7

The book of Acts does, of course, briefly mention two instances in which Paul

is associated with the bringing of money to Jerusalem, and both of these refer-

ences have sometimes been connected with the Pauline collection. First, in Acts

11.27–30, reacting to the prophecy of severe famine by the Jerusalem prophet

Agabus, the church in Antioch dispatches Barnabas and Saul on a mission to bring

‘aid to the brothers and sisters living in Jerusalem’ (11.29). Some have suggested

that this incident is a misplaced account of Paul’s final visit to Jerusalem to deliver

the relief fund raised among his Gentile communities.8 Second, in his defense

before the Roman governor Felix at Caesarea, Paul declares, ‘Now after many

years I came to give alms to my nation and sacrifices’ (24.17). The vast majority of

interpreters takes the reference to ‘almsgiving’ (ejlehmosuvnh) in this context as an

52 david j. downs

7 Unless otherwise noted, all biblical translations in this essay are my own.

8 Paul J. Achtemeier, The Quest for Unity in the New Testament Church: A Study in Paul and

Acts (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987) 46; Nicholas Taylor, Paul, Antioch, and Jerusalem: A Study

in Relationships and Authority in Earliest Christianity (JSNTSup 66; Sheffield: Sheffield

Academic Press, 1989) 52, 214–17; Gerhard Schneider, Die Apostelgeschichte. II. Teil.

Kommentar zu Kap. 9,1–28,31 (HTKNT 5.2; Freiburg: Herder, 1982) 113; Martin Dibelius, ‘The

Acts of the Apostles as an Historical Source’, in Studies in the Acts of the Apostles

(trans. Mary Ling; ed. Heinrich Greeven; London: SCM, 1956) 106–7; Charles H. Buck,

‘The Collection for the Saints’, HTR 43 (1950) 1–29. Cf. Gerd Lüdemann, Paul, Apostle to

the Gentiles: Studies in Chronology (trans. F. Stanley Jones; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984)

149–52.



allusion to Paul’s collection for Jerusalem.9 Joseph Fitzmyer’s comment is typical:

‘At length, Luke allows Paul to mention the collection that he had taken up in the

Gentile Christian churches founded by him in Galatia, Macedonia, and Achaia’.10

This interpretation, however, makes little sense of the narrative of Acts, which

until this statement in 24.17 has given the reader no indication whatsoever that

Paul has been involved in raising a contribution among his Gentile churches to be

distributed during his final journey to Jerusalem. Fitzmyer himself appears to be

conscious of this tension: ‘Readers of Acts may, indeed, not be aware of the

importance of that collection in Paul’s sight, because Luke has not emphasized it

to the same extent as did Paul himself. How could he have known about its

importance, not being with Paul when he wrote those important letters?’11

The aim of this paper is to show that the author of Acts has not simply failed to

‘emphasize’ the collection; rather, the narrative of Acts makes no mention of

Paul’s collection for Jerusalem at all. The argument will proceed in two parts. First,

it will be suggested that Acts 11.27–30 may, indeed, preserve an authentic tradition

of Paul and Barnabas, as representatives of the church in Antioch, delivering a


9 Scholars who view Acts 24.17 as an allusion to the Pauline collection include: Stephan

Joubert, Paul as Benefactor: Reciprocity, Strategy, and Theological Reflection in Paul’s

Collection (WUNT 124; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000) 92, 210–15; Joseph Fitzmyer, The Acts

of the Apostles: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 31; New York:

Doubleday, 1998) 736; C. K. Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the

Apostles, XV–XXVIII (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998) 1107–8; Ben Witherington, The Acts of

the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) 712; Paul W.

Walaskay, Acts (Westminster Bible Companion; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998) 216;

Justin Taylor, Les Actes Des Deux Apôtres. VI. Commentaire Historique (Act. 18,23–28,31) (Paris:

Librairie Lecoffre, 1996) 107–9, 170–1; J. D. G. Dunn, The Acts of the Apostles (Narrative

Commentaries; Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity, 1996) 313–14; Brian Rapske, The Book of Acts and

Paul in Roman Custody (vol. 3 of The Book of Acts in Its First Century Setting, ed. Bruce W.

Winter; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994) 163; F. F. Bruce, The Acts of the Apostles: The Greek

Text with Introduction and Commentary (3d ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990) 481; Hans

Conzelmann, Acts of the Apostles (trans. James Limburg, A. Thomas Kraabel, and Donald H.

Juel; Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987) 199; Rudolf Pesch, Die Apostelgeschichte (Apg

13–28) (EKK 2.5; Zürich: Neukirchener, 1986) 258; Schneider, Apostelgeschichte, 348–9; I.

Howard Marshall, The Acts of the Apostles: An Introduction and Commentary (Grand Rapids:

Eerdmans, 1980) 378–9; Klaus Berger, ‘Almosen für Israel’, NTS 23 (1977) 180–204; Johannes

Munck, The Acts of the Apostles: Introduction, Translation, and Notes (AB 31; Garden City,

N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967) 230; Keith F. Nickle, The Collection: A Study in Paul’s Strategy (SBT 48;

Naperville, Ill.: Alec R. Allenson, 1966) 70, 148–50; Paton J. Gloag, A Critical and Exegetical

Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1870) 340.

10 Fitzmyer, Acts of the Apostles, 736.

11 Ibid., 736. Cf. the statement by Conzelmann: ‘Finally the collection is mentioned, but only in

passing and ad hoc, in order to refute the charge of stavsi~, “insurrection”, and to demon-

strate the solidarity of Paul with his people. The reader of Acts can scarcely understand the

allusion here; it is clear that Luke knows more than he says’ (Acts of the Apostles, 199 [empha-

sis added]).



relief fund to Jerusalem. This tradition can plausibly be connected with the

request of the leaders of the Jerusalem church in Gal 2.10 that Paul and Barnabas

‘remember the poor’, however, and not with the fundraising project that Paul

undertook among the congregations of his own mission many years later. Second,

a careful analysis of Paul’s speech before Felix, combined with an examination of

the role that almsgiving plays in the larger narrative of Acts, will show that Acts

24.17, far from being a reference to the collection, identifies Paul before his accus-

ers as a faithful Jew whose individual piety is demonstrated by almsgiving and

worship. Finally, a further corollary follows from the claim that Paul’s relief fund

for Jerusalem is not mentioned in Acts: information from the book of Acts cannot

be used, as is often done, to write the final chapter of the historical reconstruction

of the Pauline collection.

II. Acts 11.27–30: Aid from Antioch

According to the story in Acts 11.27–30, the Christians in Antioch learn from

the Spirit-inspired prediction of Agabus, who had come to Antioch with other

prophets from Jerusalem, that there would be ‘a severe famine over all the world’

(ejfΔ o{lhn th;n oijkoumevnhn, 11.28). The author of Acts locates this food shortage

temporally during the reign of Tiberius Claudius (41–54 C.E.). In response, the dis-

ciples in Antioch decide, ‘each according to one’s ability, to send aid (diakoniva)

to the brothers and sisters who live in Judea’ (11.29). After reporting that this relief

is sent to the elders (presumably of the Jerusalem church) by Barnabas and Saul,

the vignette ends without further comment.12

54 david j. downs

12 The matter is actually slightly more complicated since, as is well known, the earliest and best

manuscripts of Acts 12.25 include the phrase eij~ ΔIerousalh;m after the statement ‘Paul and

Barnabas returned’ (a, B, 81). Apparently uncomfortable with this difficult reading, which is

hard to reconcile with the implication of the narrative that Paul and Barnabas have never left

Jerusalem, some witnesses substitute the prepositional phrase eij~ ΔAntioceian (E, 104, 323,

945, 1175, 1739) or change the preposition from eij~ to ejx (P74, A, 33, 945, 1739) or ajpov (D, E, Y,

36, 323, 453). See J. Dupont, ‘La misson de Paul “à Jérusalem” (Actes xii, 25)’, NovT 1 (1956)

275–303; Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (2d. ed.; New

York: United Bible Societies, 1994) 350–2. If the more difficult and better attested reading is

accepted, it may be possible to take eij~ ΔIerousalh;m with the following participle

plhrwvsante~: ‘they returned, having completed their ministry to Jerusalem’ (Fitzmyer, Acts

of the Apostles, 493). Buck suggests, rather implausibly, that this verse ‘must mean that Paul

and Barnabas, having delivered the relief from Antioch, left Jerusalem to complete the col-

lection and returned to Jerusalem with the proceeds of this further effort’ (‘The Collection for

the Saints’, 16). This assertion becomes the basis for Buck’s unlikely claim that the collection

described in Paul’s letters followed very shortly after the first delivery of the relief fund in

Acts 11.27–30, which leads Buck to a ‘drastic revision of the accepted chronology of Paul’s life

and writing’ in which 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Romans, 2 Corinthians 1–9, and 2 Corinthians

10–13 are all dated before 48 C.E. (16).



This episode is difficult to harmonize with events in ancient history broadly

and with the chronology of the Pauline mission more narrowly. Regional famines

are attested throughout the period of Claudius’ rule, particularly in the eastern

part of the Empire (Pliny Nat. V.58; XVIII.1168; Suetonius Claud. 18–19; IG 2712).

Josephus chronicles a severe famine in Judea circa 46–48 C.E., during which

Helena, Queen of Adiabene, while on a trip to Jerusalem to worship God in the

temple, observed many people dying for want of food and ‘sent some of her atten-

dants to Alexandria to buy grain for large sums and others to Cyprus to bring back

a cargo of dried figs’.13 Yet there is no extant evidence of a ‘worldwide’ famine

during this period, which may indicate that Luke’s language at this point is char-

acteristically hyperbolic.14

More important for the purposes of the present essay are attempts to identify

the relief fund in Acts 11 with the collection effort expressly mentioned in Paul’s

letters. The view of Paul Achtemeier, for example, is that, although there is an

apparent allusion to Paul’s delivery of the collection to Jerusalem in Acts 24.17,

Luke has transposed the account of the collection’s conveyance to an earlier place

in the narrative. According to Achtemeier, who follows John Knox on this point,

Luke was aware that Paul transported a peace offering from his Gentile communi-

ties to the Jerusalem church at the end of his life.15 Both Knox and Achtemeier

understand Acts 24.17 as a clue that Luke had some knowledge of the collection as

the reason for Paul’s final trip to Jerusalem, but they suggest that Luke either mis-

construed its significance or, more likely, purposely desisted from mentioning it,

at least explicitly, in his narrative. Because Luke establishes harmony between

Paul and the Jerusalem leadership during the conference in Acts 15, there is no

need for a peace offering at the end of the narrative.16 Achtemeier suspects that

Luke knew of a tradition in which Jerusalem refused Paul’s collection.17 In relocat-

ing the delivery of the collection to ch. 11, and in making it a special gift from

Antioch to Jerusalem, Luke was therefore able ‘to avoid the negative implications

for church unity which would have been embodied in a rejection of the offering’.18


13 Josephus Ant. XX.51–53, Feldman; cf. Ant. III.320–22.

14 Cf. Acts 19.27, where the phrase o{lh hJ ΔAsiva kai; hJ oijkoumevnh is used in a similarly exagger-

ated fashion. For a helpful summary of the evidence of famines during the reign of Claudius,

see Bruce W. Winter, ‘Acts and Food Shortages’, in The Book of Acts in Its Graeco-Roman

Setting (ed. David W. J. Gill and Conrad Gempf; vol. 2 of The Book of Acts in Its First Century

Setting, ed. Bruce W. Winter; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993) 59–78.

15 Cf. John Knox, Chapters in a Life of Paul (rev. ed.; ed. Douglas R. A. Hare; Macon, Ga.: Mercer

University Press, 1987) 48–51.

16 Ibid., 51: ‘[Paul’s] offering was essentially a peace offering, but according to Luke–Acts there

had been peace in the church for many years—indeed ever since the apostolic council, early

in Paul’s ministry’.

17 Achtemeier, Quest for Unity, 46.

18 Ibid., 46.



There are reasons to question this interpretation, however. As it stands, the

relief fund represented in Acts 11.27–30 seems an odd candidate as a displaced ref-

erence to the collection for Jerusalem mentioned in the Pauline epistles. While the

exchange in Acts, which is motivated by the request of prophets from Jerusalem

and undertaken in response to the crisis of an impending famine, takes place only

between the churches of Antioch and Jerusalem, Paul’s collection engaged several

different communities – Antioch not being one of them – and seems to have taken

a number of years to coordinate (1 Cor 16.1–4; 2 Cor 9.2; Rom 15.25). Also, though

Barnabas plays a crucial role in Acts 11, even receiving first mention in 11.30, he

appears not to have been involved in raising money among the churches in

Macedonia, Galatia, and Achaia, an activity whose leadership Paul seems almost

exclusively to reserve for himself.19

Moreover, the Antioch–Jerusalem connection, the motif of possessions, and

the significance of Barnabas in the deputation to Jerusalem all echo essential

strains of Lukan theology. At a key point in the narrative, the assistance from

Antioch to Jerusalem embodies the unity between the mixed Jewish–Gentile com-

munity in Syria and the Jewish leadership in Judea. As F. Scott Spencer writes,

‘Although the two groups do not physically sit down to eat together, the sharing of

food symbolically betokens an experience of table-fellowship in line with the

recent breakthrough in Cornelius’ house’.20 Similarly, with respect to the theme of

possessions, Luke Timothy Johnson has shown how goods are used in the early

chapters of Acts to represent the relationship of individuals to the authority of the

Jerusalem church. Johnson maintains that this theme is applied to Paul in Acts 11:

‘Having already seen how Luke has used possessions both to symbolize the auth-

ority of the Twelve and the transmission of authority to the Seven, it is difficult to

avoid the impression that he is doing the same thing here in regard to Paul’.21

Barnabas has already served as a model of responsible stewardship by laying the

proceeds of the sale of his field at the apostles’ feet in 4.36–37; now he and Paul

undertake a journey designed to share the resources of the disciples at Antioch

with the community in Jerusalem. Barnabas’ presence with Paul in this delegation

also hints at a continuation of the mediating role that Barnabas has played pre-

viously in the narrative, introducing Paul to the apprehensive apostles in 9.27 and

56 david j. downs

19 Note how frequently Paul’s language about the delivery of the collection is dominated by

first person verbs and pronouns: 1 Cor 16.3–4: ‘And whenever I arrive, I will send any whom

you approve with letters to take your gift to Jerusalem. If it seems fitting that I should go also,

they will go with me’; Rom 15.30–31: ‘Join with me in prayers to God on my behalf, that I may

be rescued from the unbelievers in Judea, and that my ministry to Jerusalem may be accept-

able to the saints, so that in joy I may come to you by God’s will and be refreshed together

with you’. On Gal 2.1–10, see below.

20 F. Scott Spencer, Acts (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997) 122.

21 Johnson, Literary Function, 219.



again to the Christians in Antioch in 11.25–26.22 The episode in Acts 11.27–30, there-

fore, is so tightly woven into the contours of Luke’s story that it is unnecessary to

judge the assistance rendered to Jerusalem as a misplaced reference to the

Pauline collection.

Of course, the integration of this passage into its literary context could simply

be the result of Luke’s successful coloring of an earlier tradition regarding the con-

veyance of a relief fund to Jerusalem near the end of Paul’s life. In fact, in his

redaction-critical commentary on Acts, Alfons Weiser has proposed that in Acts

11.27–30 Luke combines several strands of tradition available to him, including: (1)

a tradition about an early Christian prophet named Agabus who had forecast a

large famine; (2) a tradition that Paul had presented Jerusalem with the proceeds

of a collection; and (3) a tradition that the Jerusalem community had eventually

come under the direction of a body of elders.23 This, of course, raises the rather

complicated, and perhaps unanswerable, question of the sources of Acts, particu-

larly with respect to the so-called Antiochene source.24 In his analysis of Acts

11.19–30, for example, Gerd Lüdemann suggests that ‘the traditions behind vv.

19–26 are without doubt historical, namely that the Hellenists began the mission

to the Gentiles in Cyprus, Phoenicia and Antioch’.25 Turning to the mention of the

relief fund in 11.27–30, Lüdemann opines that ‘a journey with the collection at this

point [in Paul’s life] is ruled out by the Pauline chronology’.26 According to

Lüdemann, Luke ‘apparently took over the motive of the collection from the tra-

ditional material used in Acts 21 and probably also the figure of the prophet

Agabus’.27 Lüdemann, then, like Knox and Achtemeier, implies that Luke has

transposed material associated with the delivery of the collection at the end Paul’s

life to an earlier point in his narrative. Lüdemann does not, however, entirely rule


22 On the credibility of Barnabas as a character in Acts, see William S. Campbell, ‘Who Are We

in Acts? The First-Person Plural Character in the Acts of the Apostles’ (Ph.D. diss., Princeton

Theological Seminary, 2000) 151–60.

23 Alfons Weiser, Die Apostelgeschichte. Kapitel 1–12 (ÖTK 5/1; Würzburg: Güttersloh & Echter,

1981) 274–5; see also Robert W. Funk, ‘The Enigma of the Famine Visit’, JBL 75 (1956) 130–6.

24 Unlike some scholars, Weiser does not hold that these pieces of tradition stem from the

Antiochene source, although he does suggest that other features in 11.19–30 (including the

connection between Paul and Barnabas) probably reflect Luke’s usage of traditions from

Antioch (Apostelgeschichte, 275). For discussions of the sources of Acts, see Weiser,

Apostelgeschichte, 36–8; Fitzmyer, Acts of the Apostles, 80–9; Jacques Dupont, The Sources of

Acts: The Present Position (New York: Herder & Herder, 1964); Rudolf Bultmann, ‘Zur Frage

nach den Quellen der Apostelgeschichte’, in New Testament Essays: Studies in Memory of

Thomas Walter Manson, 1893–1958 (ed. A. J. B. Higgins; Manchester: Manchester University

Press, 1959) 68–80.

25 Gerd Lüdemann, Early Christianity according to the Traditions in Acts: A Commentary (trans.

John Bowden; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989) 137.

26 Ibid., 138.

27 Ibid., 138.



out the possibility that Acts 11.27–30 preserves ‘historically reliable evidence of the

tradition of a collection made by the community at Antioch for the Jerusalem

community’.28

At this point, it is wise to remember the still-fitting counsel of Henry J. Cadbury

regarding the sources of Luke–Acts: ‘[The] attempt to establish and distinguish

written Greek sources for the passages recorded only by Luke seems doomed to

prove unsatisfactory and largely subjective’.29 Although these words were orig-

inally penned with reference to the Gospel of Luke, they are perhaps even more

appropriate for Acts, for at least some identifiable sources obtain for the Third

Gospel. Whether Luke possessed a tradition of Paul’s delivery of the collection to

Jerusalem, which he then imported to an earlier point in his narrative, is imposs-

ible to say with any degree of certainty. This view rests largely on the assumption

that Acts 24.17 reveals that Luke had some information about the collection, a sup-

position that will be questioned presently. Ultimately, we cannot answer ques-

tions about what the author of Luke–Acts may or may not have ‘known’; we can

only evaluate what he has reported, and proper evaluation of the traditions pre-

served in Acts is possible only when those traditions can be tested against other

evidence, particularly from the letters of Paul.30

58 david j. downs

28 Ibid., 138.

29 Henry J. Cadbury, The Making of Luke–Acts (2d. ed.; New York: Macmillan, 1958; repr.,

Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1999) 69.

30 In this context, one thinks of Jacob Neusner’s oft-repeated dictum, ‘What we cannot show,

we do not know’. This slogan comes to expression in many of Neusner’s writings; see, for

example, Rabbinic Literature and the New Testament: What We Cannot Show, We Do Not

Know (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity, 1994).

It could be objected that the list of names in Acts 20.4 constitutes evidence that Luke was

indeed aware that a large party of delegates (seven named individuals plus at least one

included in the ‘we’ of 20.5) from the churches of Macedonia and Greece traveled with Paul

to Jerusalem in order to deliver the collection (cf. 1 Cor 16.3–4; 2 Cor 8.19; 9.4). This view has

significant proponents (recently, Dietrich-Alex Koch, ‘Kollektenbericht, “Wir”-Bericht und

Itinerar: Neue [?] Überlegungen zu einem alten Problem’, NTS 45 [1999] 367–90). A. J. M.

Wedderburn, for example, calls this ‘one of those pieces of detailed information that Acts

contains, and that many are disposed to regard as traditional, particularly if their content

does not seem to serve an obvious purpose in the story that the author of Acts wishes to tell’

(‘Paul’s Collection: Chronology and History’, NTS 48 [2002] 95–110 [esp. 103–4]). Wedderburn

then suggests that this verse, along with 24.17, indicates that Luke was aware of Paul’s collec-

tion but suppressed mention of it in his account because the gift was rejected by Jerusalem

(104, n. 27).

There are two problems inherent in Wedderburn’s assertion, however. First, it is incorrect

to claim that this verse ‘does not seem to serve an obvious purpose in the story that the

author of Acts wishes to tell’. Rather, this list symbolizes the growth and success of Paul’s

ministry in the larger regions of Macedonia, Greece, and Asia, as well as in particular locali-

ties like Beroea, Thessalonica, Derbe (Robert C. Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke–Acts:

A Literary Interpretation. II. The Acts of the Apostles [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990] 246;



Yet there may be one point of contact between the story of Barnabas and

Paul’s visit to Jerusalem in Acts 11.27–30 and the authentic epistles, a point of con-

tact that would speak strongly against the identification of the relief fund in Acts

11 as a misplaced account of Paul’s collection for Jerusalem. The astute reader will

have noticed that Gal 2.10 has not thus far been listed as one of the references in

the letters of Paul to the collection for Jerusalem. This conscious omission is due

to the fact that several scholars, among them J. Louis Martyn and A. J. M.

Wedderburn, have recently argued that Gal 2.10 should not be counted as evi-

dence that Paul was involved in raising the collection at the time Galatians was

written.31 At the conclusion of his own narration of the conference in Jerusalem

detailed in Gal 2.1–10, Paul states:

When James and Cephas and John, who were acknowledged as pillars,recognized the grace that had been given to me, they gave to me and toBarnabas the right hand of fellowship, signifying that we were to go to theGentiles and they to the circumcised. They asked only one thing, that we


Gaventa, Acts, 277–8). The entourage may also draw attention to yet another of the many par-

allels between Jesus and Paul, both of whom embark on ill-fated journeys to Jerusalem

accompanied by a coterie of followers (so Spencer, Acts, 278). Second, the list in Acts 20.4

does not include representatives from churches that are known to have participated in Paul’s

collection, specifically Corinth and Philippi (so Lüdemann, Early Christianity, 225; cf. 1 Cor

16.1–4; 2 Cor 8.1 [cf. Phil 4.15]; Rom 15.26; while the Galatians might be added to this list since

they are named in 1 Cor 16.1, their ultimate participation is uncertain because they are not

mentioned in Romans 15). It is doubtful, therefore, that this list should be seen as an indica-

tion of Luke’s knowledge of the collection’s delivery, particularly since only Trophimus is

named in the account of Paul’s stay in Jerusalem (21.29). (Aristarchus strangely reappears on

the ship bound to Rome in 27.2.)

There is not space here to discuss in detail my understanding of the ‘we’ passages in Acts

(16.10–17; 20.5–15; 21.1–18; 27.1–28.16). Needless to say, I do not believe that the ‘we’ passages

necessarily reflect the eyewitness testimony of an historical observer, either that of the

author of Acts or of one of his sources. I find more convincing Campbell’s literary expla-

nation that, in light of the use of first-person narrative in ancient historians like Thucydides,

Polybius, and Josephus, ‘the “we” narrator appears intermittently as one of two characters in

Acts (the other being Barnabas) who draw attention to the issue of Paul’s credibility, attest to

the reality of the divine instructions he receives, and reassure the reader that the situations

that confront Paul during his missionary journeys are part of the plan of God’ (Campbell,

‘Who Are We in Acts?’, 188). For other recent assessments of the ‘we’ passages, see A. J. M.

Wedderburn, ‘The “We”-Passages in Acts: On the Horns of a Dilemma’, ZNW 93 (2002) 78–98;

Samuel Byrskog, ‘History or Story in Acts—A Middle Way? The ‘We’ Passages, Historical

Intertexture, and Oral History’, in Contextualizing Acts: Lukan Narrative and Greco-Roman

Discourse (ed. Todd Penner and Caroline Vander Stichele; SBLSymS 20; Atlanta: Society of

Biblical Literature, 2003) 257–83.

31 J. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 33A;

New York: Doubleday, 1997) 222–8; Wedderburn, ‘Paul’s Collection: Chronology and History’,

95–110.



remember the poor, which was the very thing I was eager to do (movnon tw`nptwcw`n i{na mnhmoneuvwmen, o} kai; ejspouvdasa aujto; tou`to poih`sai).

There are several indications that this request from the Jerusalem leadership

should not be linked with the relief fund later organized by Paul among the

churches of his orb and that it is quite appropriate to speak, as Martyn does, of

Paul’s ‘collections’.32 This bears on the view that Acts 11.27–30 is a misplaced

account of Paul’s (singular) collection.

First, the connection with Antioch in Galatians 2 is important. On the one

hand, although Paul asserts in Gal 2.2 that he went up to Jerusalem ‘because of a

revelation’ (kata; ajpokavluyin), he nevertheless serves, along with Barnabas and

Titus, as a representative of the Antioch community. The request of the Jerusalem

leadership, phrased in the first person plural verb mnhmoneuvwmen (2.10), should be

understood as a petition directed to the believers in Antioch and mediated

through the agency of their delegates. On the other hand, there is no evidence that

Antioch actually participated in Paul’s collection, which is not at all surprising if

the events recounted in Gal 2.11–14 imply a break between Paul and Antioch.

Moreover, as Wedderburn points out, ‘nowhere in all his explicit mentions of the

collection (if one does not count Gal 2.10 as such) does Paul connect the project

with the carrying out of an agreement reached between himself and the Jerusalem

church; nothing suggests that in the raising of the collection he saw himself as

carrying out his side of that particular bargain’.33 Indeed, it is hard to explain

Paul’s trepidation about the possibility of Jerusalem’s rejection of his efforts in

Rom 15.30–31 if, in fact, he is doing nothing more than fulfilling an accord pre-

viously established with the Jerusalem leadership. This suggests that Paul may

have been involved in the delivery of at least two relief funds to Jerusalem: one

from Antioch and one from the churches of his own mission many years later. It

appears, then, that Paul’s own collection could have been modeled after but not

synonymous with an earlier relief fund from Antioch to Jerusalem.

Second, separating the stipulation in Gal 2.10 from the collection later organ-

ized among Paul’s churches helps to make sense of the problematic aorist verb

ejspouvdasa used by Paul to summarize his response to the leaders of the

Jerusalem church. This verse has often been viewed as a crux interpretum not only

because the first person singular awkwardly follows the first person plural sub-

60 david j. downs

32 For a different perspective, one which argues that Gal 6.6–10 functions as an appeal to par-

ticipate in the collection, see Larry W. Hurtado, ‘The Jerusalem Collection and the Book of

Galatians’, JSNT 5 (1979) 46–62. As inventive as Hurtado’s reading is, however, it is too subtle

to be convincing (see Martyn, Galatians, 551–2).

33 Wedderburn, ‘Paul’s Collection’, 99. This point highlights a crucial weakness in Stephan

Joubert’s argument that the collection among the Gentiles originated in the context of recip-

rocal benefit exchange between Paul and the Jerusalem leadership (see Paul as Benefactor,

esp. 73–115).



junctive mnhmoneuvwmen, but also because the aorist (as opposed to a present or

future) implies a completed action: ‘They asked only one thing, that we remem-

ber the poor, which was the very thing I was eager to do’ (Gal 2.10). Knox accurately

and succinctly distinguishes three ways in which this response can be under-

stood: (1) as an indication of ‘a regular, more or less constant effort on Paul’s part

to raise and send money to Jerusalem, which he is now asked to continue and

which he expresses himself as eager to do’; (2) ‘as a reference to some special col-

lection for Jerusalem that antedates the offering being raised in the period of the

Corinthian letters’; and (3) as an allusion to the Pauline collection mentioned in 1

and 2 Corinthians and Romans.34 Knox and most commentators settle for the

third of these options. However, in light of the considerations identified above, it

is quite possible that Paul intends with the aorist ejspouvdasa to refer to a collec-

tion already completed, either at the time of the Jerusalem conference or shortly

thereafter (but before the writing of Galatians).

All assertions that Acts 11.27–30 preserves a misplaced account of Paul’s col-

lection assume that Paul was involved in the delivery of only one relief fund to

Jerusalem. The evidence of Gal 2.10, however, suggests that not only was the col-

lection that Paul eventually organized not the result of a pact with Jerusalem, but

also that Paul may have served as a representative of the Antioch church in the

administration of an earlier contribution to ‘the poor’ in Jerusalem. Significantly,

this corresponds broadly to the story in Acts 11.27–30. In fact, F. F. Bruce and

others have explicitly argued for a connection between these two passages: ‘Paul

means [with the aorist ejspouvdasa] not only that he henceforth adopted this

policy, but that he had already done so – he thinks of the famine relief which he

and Barnabas brought to Jerusalem from Antioch, according to Acts 11.30’.35

Granted, Paul does not explicitly identify the foundation of this relief fund in the

prediction of Agabus or prophets from Jerusalem,36 and the account of Paul’s


34 Knox, Chapters in a Life, 37–8.

35 F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Grand

Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982) 126; see also Wedderburn, ‘Paul’s Collection’, 98–100; idem, ‘Some

Recent Pauline Chronologies’, ET 92 (1981) 103–8; Witherington, Acts of the Apostles, 375,

817–20. Although Knox equates Paul’s second visit to Jerusalem (Gal 2.1–10) with the visits

reported in Acts 15.1–29 and 18.22, he does not entirely dismiss the theory that the visit of Gal

2.1–10 should be identified with Acts 11.29–30 (Chapters in a Life, 44 n. 1). For a thorough dis-

cussion and bibliography related to the identification of Acts 11.27–30 and Gal 2.1–10, see

Richard N. Longenecker, Galatians (WBC 41; Dallas: Word, 1990) lxxii–lxxxviii.

36 It is at least possible that with the statement ‘I went up [to Jerusalem] because of a revelation

(kata; ajpokavluyin)’ Paul is referring to the prophecy of Agabus. Clearly Paul’s rhetoric in

Gal 1.11–12 demands the view that he received the gospel through an ajpokavluyi~ of Jesus

Christ, and not, as Paul says, ‘from a human’ (Gal 1.11). The use of the word ajpokavluyi~ in

Gal 2.2, however, does not eliminate the possibility that Paul’s ‘revelation’ concerning the

necessity of a visit to Jerusalem was mediated to him through a human agent (cf. 1 Cor 14.6,



meeting with the apostles in Galatians is missing from Acts 11, but the similarities

between Gal 2.1–10 and Acts 11.27–30 should not be dismissed.37

The intention of this paper is not to argue for the historical reliability of Luke’s

presentation of Paul’s activity – far from it. There is little doubt that Luke gener-

ally presents a rosier picture of the relationship between Paul and the Jerusalem

church than a critical investigation of the authentic Pauline letters indicates (cf.

Gal 2.11–14), or that Luke frequently takes liberties with the chronological ordering

of the Pauline material. Luke’s account of Paul’s mission, then, can only with the

greatest restraint be used to complement events described in the letters of Paul.

The oft-cited methodological principle of John Knox remains as true today as

when it was first expressed more than fifty years ago:

The distinction between primary and secondary sources in [the case of Pauland Acts] is of such importance that we can justly say that a fact onlysuggested in the letters has a status which even the most unequivocalstatement of Acts, if not otherwise supported, cannot confer. We may, withproper caution, use Acts to supplement the autobiographical data of theletters, but never to correct them.38

Acts 11.27–30 appears to be one instance in which information from Acts can shed

light on, if not exactly ‘supplement’, the chronology of the epistles, however. The

significance of this point for the present paper lies in the question it poses to those

who would claim that the story of Antioch’s famine assistance for Jerusalem is

merely a ‘misplaced’ account of the Pauline collection. Both the literary suitabil-

ity of Acts 11.27–30 and its general correspondence to the events narrated in Gal

2.1–10 suggest that claims that this passage represents a misplaced account of

Paul’s Jerusalem collection, whether they are ascribed to Luke’s confusion or to

his deliberate intention, cannot be substantiated.

III. The Collection and Acts 24.17

If a minority of scholars claims to find evidence of the Pauline collection in

Acts 11.27–30, a far greater number interprets Paul’s statement in Acts 24.17 that

62 david j. downs

26), though he does not directly attribute this revelation to the prophecy of Agabus. Of

course, given the circumstances in which the letter to the Galatians was written, such an

omission would be entirely understandable. On the connection between Gal 2.2 and Acts

11.27–30, see Longenecker, Galatians, 47.

37 Indeed, no matter how one correlates the three (post-conversion) visits to Jerusalem men-

tioned in Paul’s letters (Gal 1.18–21; 2.1–10; 1 Cor 16.4; Rom 15.25–32) with the five reported in

Acts (Acts 9.26–27; 11.29–30; 15.1–29; 18.22; 21.15ff.), one is faced with significantly different

descriptions of both the events and the characters involved. For this point, see Knox,

Chapters in a Life, 44.

38 Knox, Chapters in a Life, 19.



he came to Jerusalem ‘to give alms to my nation and sacrifices’ as a transparent

reference to the offering of the Gentiles.39 Scholars more attuned to the narrative

contours of Acts have occasionally challenged the consensus view that Acts 24.17

is an allusion to the collection. For example, both Robert Tannehill and Beverly

Gaventa have suggested that 24.17 refers more directly to the activity of worship,

which has been the subject of Paul’s speech since 24.11.40 The prevailing senti-

ment, however, is that Acts 24.17 provides at least a hint of Luke’s knowledge of the

collection, information which, for a variety of proposed reasons, he has ostensibly

suppressed in his narrative. In fact, the scholarly consensus has hardly changed

since Clayton R. Bowen asked over eighty years ago, ‘[Does] Acts 24.17 refer to the

collection at all?’ With a few notable exceptions, Bowen’s answer could aptly

describe the situation today: ‘No commentator has, to the present writer’s knowl-

edge, hitherto doubted it’.41

The Journey to Jerusalem

The difficulty begins in Acts 19.21, which sounds the first note of necessity

with reference to Paul’s final trip to Jerusalem: ‘After these things had been ful-

filled, Paul resolved in the Spirit to go through Macedonia and Achaia, and then to

go on to Jerusalem. He said, ‘After I have gone there, I must also see Rome’.’

Although the phrase e[qeto oJ Paulo~ ejn tw/ pneuvmati can be translated either

‘Paul resolved in the Spirit’ or ‘Paul set in his own spirit’, it is more likely that this

verse evokes the theme of guidance by the Holy Spirit. Such a reading makes sense


39 As the previous discussion has shown, these groups are not mutually exclusive. For refer-

ences to scholars who hold that Acts 24.17 is an allusion to the collection, see n. 9 above.

40 Tannehill, Narrative Unity, 300; Gaventa, Acts, 328. John B. Polhill (Acts [NAC 26; Nashville:

Broadman, 1992] 484 n. 117) appears to follow Tannehill in questioning whether 24.17 is, in

fact, a reference to the collection. Earlier in his commentary, however, Polhill maintains,

with an appeal to 24.17, that Luke was clearly informed of the collection yet deliberately de-

emphasized its importance: ‘[Luke] was certainly aware that Paul took a collection to

Jerusalem, for it is mentioned explicitly in Paul’s later speech before Felix (24.17)’ (417).

41 Clayton R. Bowen, ‘Paul’s Collection and the Book of Acts’, JBL 42 (1923) 49–58 (esp. 53).

Bowen’s insightful essay has unfortunately never received the attention it deserves, either by

commentators on Acts or authors dealing with the Pauline collection. For example, among

the important monographs on the collection, Bowen’s article is not listed in the bibliogra-

phies of Georgi (Remembering the Poor: The History of Paul’s Collection for Jerusalem

[Nashville: Abingdon, 1992]), Nickle (The Collection), Beckheuer (Paulus und Jerusalem:

Kollekte und Mission im theologischen Denken des Heidenapostels [EH 23; Frankfurt: Peter

Lang, 1997]), Joubert (Paul as Benefactor), or Kim (Die paulinische Kollekte [TANZ 38; Basel:

Francke, 2002]). Somewhat surprisingly, the article is listed in Fitzmyer’s bibliography (Acts

of the Apostles, 737), but Fitzmyer does not interact with Bowen’s thesis in his commentary.

The present essay is, of course, fundamentally indebted to the questions posed and the

answers offered by Bowen, although the main features of this paper were developed before I

located Bowen’s work.



of the divine purpose that often compels and controls the missionary work in Acts

(cf. 13.1–2, 4; 16.6–10), and which is more directly signaled in the declaration that

Paul ‘must’ (dei) see Rome.42 As Gaventa writes, ‘Journeying to Rome reflects

neither Paul’s personal desire for travel nor his own discernment of what the wit-

ness requires but the divine will, conveyed to him by means of the Holy Spirit’.43

Apart from the assertion of divine necessity, Luke initially provides no other

reason for Paul’s final visit to Jerusalem. This is problematic for interpreters of

Acts because, as readers of Paul’s letters, they know very well the reason for this

journey to Jerusalem: Paul intended to deliver the collection raised among his

largely Gentile churches. As Paul himself announces to believers in Rome in his

last remaining comments about the collection: ‘But now I am going to Jerusalem

with aid for the saints, for Macedonia and Achaia were pleased to establish fel-

lowship with the poor among the saints in Jerusalem’ (Rom 15.25–26; cf. 1 Cor

16.3).44 Yet the narrative of Acts provides little indication of the reason that Paul is

obliged to travel to Jerusalem. The trace of a motivation emerges in 20.16, where it

is stated that Paul ‘was eager to be in Jerusalem, if possible, on the day of

Pentecost’. This verse, however, only raises the question: Why must Paul reach

Jerusalem by Pentecost?

The problem is intensified as the narrative continues. Paul’s farewell speech to

the Ephesian elders portrays Jerusalem as a destination that the apostle, literally

bound by God’s will, cannot avoid: ‘And now, as a captive to the Spirit, I am going

to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy

Spirit warns me in every city that imprisonment and persecutions are waiting for

me’ (20.22–23). That this speech forebodes Paul’s eventual death is suggested not

only by the reference to imprisonment and persecutions, but also by the note of

reservation evident in Paul’s view of his own future (20.24), by the pronounce-

ment that none of the believers in Ephesus will ever see Paul’s face again (20.25),

and by the pathos of the final scene (20.36–38).45 Similar episodes appear in the

following chapter: in Tyre, the disciples plead with Paul not to continue on to

Jerusalem (21.4); in Caesarea, Agabus returns to predict Paul’s arrest and the

people urge Paul not to go up to Jerusalem (21.10–14). A sense of finality is achieved

64 david j. downs

42 Pace Charles H. Cosgrove, ‘The Divine DEI in Luke–Acts’, NovT 26 (1984) 168–90 (esp. 178).

Cosgrove’s perceptive article helpfully draws attention to the parallel between 19.21 and

20.22, the latter of which speaks of Paul ‘being bound in the Spirit’. However, Cosgrove states

of 20.22, ‘Here the “spirit” is clearly distinguished from the Holy Spirit in that the following

verse speaks explicitly of to; pneu`ma to; a{gion’ (178 n. 26). The close connection between

vv. 22 and 23 actually mitigates Cosgrove’s argument, for to; pneu`ma in v. 22 should be inter-

preted in light of its usage in the following verse (Fitzmyer, Acts of the Apostles, 677).

43 Gaventa, Acts, 268.

44 On this rendering of the construction koinwnivan tina; poihvsasqai, see G. W. Peterman,

‘Romans 15.26: To Make a Contribution or Establish Fellowship’, NTS 40 (1994) 457–63.

45 Pace Witherington, Acts of the Apostles, 618–20.



in 21.14 when the narrator remarks, ‘Since he would not be persuaded, we

remained silent except to say, “The Lord’s will be done” (tou kurivou to; qevlhmaginevsqw)’. This declaration underscores the extent to which the narration of

Paul’s final journey to Jerusalem depicts that expedition as motivated by nothing

other than the will of God. In Luke’s account, it is divine necessity, and not the col-

lection, that compels Paul on his fateful trip to Jerusalem.

The Defense before Felix

Interestingly, Paul’s speech before the Roman governor Felix in Acts 24 pro-

vides a slightly different motivation for the trip to Jerusalem, although one not

necessarily at odds with the allusion to Pentecost in 20.16. Paul’s defense is

intended to reply to the charges leveled against him by the orator Tertullus, who

had accused Paul before the Roman official of being an agitator and troublemaker,

a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes, and one who had attempted to profane

the temple (24.5–6). In response, after beginning with a brief captatio benevolentiae

that acknowledges the ‘many years’ that Felix has served as a judge for the nation,46

Paul states, ‘As you are able to perceive, it is not more than twelve days since I went

up to worship in Jerusalem (ajnevbhn proskunhvswn eij~ ΔIerousalhvm)’ (24.11).47

Since this assertion stands in tension with the reason given for Paul’s pilgrim-

age to Jerusalem in the epistles, commentators often struggle to read Acts on its

own terms at this point. For example, C. K. Barrett writes of v. 11, ‘This cannot be

said to be a complete statement of Paul’s purpose in coming to Jerusalem; he

came as the bearer of a gift from the Gentile world (cf. v. 17), and probably with a

view to some form of consultation with the leaders of the Jerusalem church’.48

Although most scholars would readily acknowledge the perils of reading infor-

mation from the book of Acts into the Pauline epistles, in this case the reverse

danger of reading information from Paul’s letters into the narrative of Acts seems

to be entirely ignored. We only know from the Corinthian correspondence and

from Romans that Paul was engaged in organizing a monetary collection that

would eventually take him to Jerusalem. To say that Luke has provided an incom-

plete statement of Paul’s purpose in coming to Jerusalem is to force Acts into a

Pauline mold and to fail to treat Acts as a narrative in its own right.

Nevertheless, Barrett is surely correct to draw attention to the parallel between

vv. 11 and 17, for that latter verse introduces the concluding section of Paul’s care-


46 See Bruce W. Winter, ‘The Importance of the Captatio Benevolentiae in the Speeches of

Tertullus and Paul in Acts 24:1–21’, JTS 42 (1991) 505–31.

47 Here the future participle proskunhvswn indicates purpose (cf. v. 17; Fitzmyer, Acts of the

Apostles, 735).

48 Barrett, Acts of the Apostles, XV–XXVII, 1102. Cf. Fitzmyer’s comment: ‘No mention is made of

the purpose of Paul’s visit to Jerusalem, about which he himself writes (Rom 15:25–32), bring-

ing the collected aid for the poor (cf. 1 Cor 16:1–4; 2 Cor 8:1–9:15). Paul will mention it in v. 17’

(Acts of the Apostles, 735).



fully constructed discourse (vv. 17–21) in a way that picks up themes developed in

vv. 11–13. The syntactical similarities between vv. 11 and 17 make this clear: in

each sentence a first person aorist verb of motion (ajnevbhn, paregenovmhn) is com-

bined with a future participle (proskunhvswn, poihvswn) indicating purpose.49

Both of these units focus on the innocence of Paul’s actions in Jerusalem, whereas

vv. 14–16 detail Paul’s relationship with ‘the Way’. In all three of these sections,

however, the activity of worship is prominent: this speech affirms that Paul ‘went

up to Jerusalem to worship’ (24.11); that Paul ‘worships the God of our ancestors’

(24.14); and that Paul came to the temple to participate in acts of corporate wor-

ship, namely, almsgiving, sacrifices, and purification rites (24.17–18).

The speech before Felix, then, like Paul’s first two defense speeches in Acts

(22.1–21; 23.1–10), is specifically structured to highlight Paul as a faithful Jew. The

central section of the speech accomplishes this aim by drawing attention to Paul’s

fidelity to the Jewish scriptures (‘believing in all that is according to the law and

written in the prophets’, v. 14) and his hope in the Jewish doctrine of the resur-

rection (v. 15). Moreover, throughout the address there is an emphasis on Paul’s

piety, which is achieved through the depiction of his actions in Jerusalem as

nothing more than peaceful worship offered by a devout Jew (vv. 12–13). It is in this

context that the reference to almsgiving in v. 17 should be interpreted. Paul has

come to Jerusalem in order to worship (24.11), and he has declared himself to be a

worshipper of ‘the God of our ancestors’ (24.14). Thus, his statement in v. 17 is a

reiteration of this motif of worship: ‘Now after some years I came to give alms to

my nation and sacrifices’. Almsgiving, which cannot be separated from the paral-

lel act of offering sacrifices, is an activity of worship and a demonstration of reli-

gious devotion. The most direct antecedent for the feminine relative pronoun ai|~at the beginning of v. 18 is prosforav~, which identifies Paul’s offerings as temple

offerings.50 However, because both of the feminine plural nouns ejlehmosuvna~and prosforav~ in v. 17 are subordinated to the same future participle (poihvswn),

the construction ejn ai|~ in v. 18 should be taken as a reference to both almsgiving

and offerings. Verse 18 could thus be paraphrased, ‘While I was in the temple

offering alms and sacrifices, they found me completing the rite of purification,

without a crowd or disturbance’. This reading would locate Paul’s act of almsgiv-

ing in the vicinity of the temple (cf. Acts 3.1–10), and would suggest that the recip-

ients of this gift were not, according to Luke’s narrative, members of the Christian

community in Jerusalem.51 Luke says nothing of these alms being designated for

66 david j. downs

49 Bowen, ‘Paul’s Collection’, 55.

50 Tannehill, Narrative Unity, 300.

51 Pace Stanley E. Porter, who avows that ‘Paul came to Jerusalem with a charitable gift for the

Christians there (v. 17; the only mention of the gift in Acts)’ (‘Paul’s Apologetic Speeches in

Acts’, in Paul in Acts [LPS; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2001] 156); cf. Bruce, Acts of the

Apostles, 480.



‘the poor among the saints’, and, more decisively, the prepositional phrase eij~ to;e[qno~ mou demands a wider object for this gift, namely, the Jewish nation as a

whole, perhaps through the agency of its temple.52 Therefore, far from being an

allusion to the offering of the Gentiles, the reference to Paul’s almsgiving and sac-

rifices in 24.17 is intended to underscore Paul’s piety expressed in worship. Two

other pieces of evidence from the narrative of Acts support this claim.

First, the language of almsgiving (ejlehmosuvnh) is used seven times in three

stories in the narrative of Acts, not including the reference in chapter 24 (Acts 3.2,

3, 10; 9.36; 10.2, 4, 31). Significantly, in each episode almsgiving is either connected

to the activity of worship at the temple (3.1–10) or it is used to establish the piety of

certain individuals (9.36–43; 10.1–33). Acts 3.1–10, for instance, reports that a lame

man would customarily be placed at the gate of the Jerusalem temple where he

would ‘ask for alms (ejlehmosuvnhn) from those entering into the temple’ (3.2).

Although Peter and John, when they pass by on their way into the temple, do not

give this man alms upon his request (3.3), the narrative does imply a certain con-

nection between almsgiving and temple worship similar to that found in 24.17.

Next, in Acts 9.36–43 the act of almsgiving highlights the faithfulness of the female

disciple Tabitha and her importance for the community of believers in Joppa.

Finally, the bracketing of the Cornelius episode (10.1–33) with references to his

almsgiving (10.2, 4, 31) establishes his devotion to and even favorable status before

God (‘Cornelius, your prayer has been heard and your alms [aiJ ejlehmosuvnai sou]

have been remembered before God!’). This triptych of stories suggests a particu-

lar nuance to the word ejlehmosuvnh in Acts, namely, that the giving of alms is

associated either with worship at the temple or acts of individual piety. This cor-

responds to and illuminates the depiction of Paul as a faithful Jew in the defense

speech before Felix in Acts 24.10–21.

Second, closely related to Paul’s avowal before Felix that he had come to

Jerusalem ‘to give alms to my nation and sacrifices’ (24.17) is the episode

recounted in 21.17–26, shortly after Paul’s arrival in Jerusalem. There, in response

to the request of James and the elders in Jerusalem, and as a way of defending

himself against accusations of disregard for the law, Paul joins in a rite of purifi-

cation with four men ‘who are under a vow’ (eujch;n e[conte~ ejfΔ eJautwn) and


52 Again, Fitzmyer’s view of the phrase eij~ to; e[qno~ mou shows an inability to accept the nar-

rative of Acts on its own terms. He writes, ‘This phrase must mean what Paul himself calls

“my brothers, my kinsmen by descent” (Rom 9:3). In reality, however, the alms were meant

for converted Jews, as one learns in Rom 15:26 (“God’s dedicated people there”), but his refer-

ence also to “unbelievers in Judea” (Rom 15:31) would not mean that he would exclude

“people of my race” from sharing in that help being brought’ (Acts of the Apostles, 736

[emphasis added]). That this explanation directly contradicts the interpretation of the gift

offered in Acts 24 is symptomatic of a consistent (mis)reading of Pauline evidence into the

narrative of Acts.



funds the shaving of their heads. Whatever the exact nature of this vow,53 the lan-

guage of purification in 21.24, 26 undoubtedly corresponds to Paul’s declaration

before Felix in 24.18 that he was accosted while he was ‘engaged in completing the

rites of purification in the temple’. Not only do these three verses represent the

only instances of the verb aJgnivzw in the book of Acts, but the only occurrences of

the noun prosforav are limited to the narrative of Paul’s religious activity in the

temple in chapter 21 and his defense before Felix in chapter 24 (21.26; 24.17).

According to the narrative of Acts, then, one plausible answer to the question of

what exactly Paul did with the alms mentioned in 24.17, is that this money was in

part used to finance the purification rites in the temple. Again, the connection to

worship and piety could not be stronger.54 This fits, also, with the note in 20.16 that

Paul wanted to be in Jerusalem by the day of Pentecost and makes sense of Paul’s

journey to Jerusalem in the book of Acts. As Bowen recognized long ago:

[Paul’s monetary gift] was brought as a religious offering, so accepted andso presented, in the temple, in religious rites. Acts thus offers a perfectlyclear and consistent picture throughout, from 20:16 to 24:17. To be sure, it isnot a historic picture. Paul’s letters show us that this whole construction isin error; it is none the less a perfectly coherent and possible picture . . .55

IV. Conclusion

This paper has challenged the scholarly consensus by arguing that there is

no direct reference, nor even an allusion, in the narrative of Acts to the Pauline

collection addressed in 1 Cor 16.1–4; 2 Cor 8–9; and Rom 15.25–32. The two passages

to which appeal is most often made for support of the claim that Luke mentions

Paul’s collection, Acts 11.27–30 and 24.17, upon closer examination, reveal nothing

about the monetary contribution for the saints in Jerusalem that Paul organized

among his own churches in Macedonia and Achaia. First, the account of the aid

taken from Antioch to Jerusalem by Paul and Barnabas in Acts 11.27–30 may be an

accurate remembrance of Paul’s activity, but this likely corresponds to a relief

fund that Paul had already completed, as a representative of Antioch, by the time

Galatians was written. Second, the ‘alms’ in Acts 24.17 have nothing to do with

a large gift conveyed from Paul’s Gentile churches to Jerusalem; instead, in

context, almsgiving refers to Paul’s worship in the temple, an act of devotion

that assists Luke’s portrayal of Paul before his detractors as a pious and faithful

Jew.

68 david j. downs

53 Stanley Porter nicely lays out the options in, ‘Acts 21:17–26 and Paul, the Man for All Seasons,

or the Man Betrayed by his Friends’, in Paul in Acts, 172–86 (esp. 180–1).

54 Gaventa, Acts, 300: ‘The stipulation that Paul would pay the expenses for the shaving of the

heads would itself be generous indication of his piety’.

55 Bowen, ‘Paul’s Collection’, 56.



This fact will not stop readers of Acts, who are almost always also readers of

Paul’s letters, from asking why Luke does not refer to the Pauline collection, even

indirectly. Luke’s silence regarding the collection does not necessarily imply his

ignorance of it, although it may. Did Luke have any knowledge of the collection at

all, or was this vital aspect of Paul’s mission simply neglected in his sources?

Without the benefit of Paul’s letters, modern historians would have no knowledge

of Paul’s collection. If, as most think, it is true that Luke did not have access to the

epistles, then he would have been entirely dependent upon his sources for infor-

mation about the collection.56 If Luke did possess some basic information about

the collection, why did he refrain from mentioning it? Did he fail to understand its

significance?57 Did he know that it was illegal, a violation of Roman law concern-

ing the transportation of money?58 Was he aware of its rejection by the Jerusalem

leadership?59 Because we cannot determine from the narrative of Acts that Luke

even knew of the collection, these questions are essentially unanswerable, and

scholars would be wise to exercise a certain degree of critical restraint when spec-

ulating on the reasons for the collection’s absence in the narrative of Acts.

Perhaps more significantly, caution should also be employed by those

interested in researching the history and theological significance of the Pauline

collection itself. The obvious differences between the authentic Pauline epistles

and the narrative of Acts regarding the collection have not prevented scholars

from appealing to Acts in order to speculate on the final outcome of the Jerusalem

collection. The two latest studies of Paul’s collection, for example, both rely

heavily on material from Acts in their reconstructions of the collection’s chron-

ology.60 Stephan Joubert’s recent monograph on the collection, Paul as

Benefactor, is a case in point. Recognizing that Acts ‘is silent about the actual

delivery of the collection’, Joubert nonetheless assumes that ‘Luke did in fact pos-

sess some basic knowledge about the collection project’.61 He supports this claim

with a reference to Acts 24.17. Joubert goes on to assert that the author of Acts had

more than a modicum of reliable historical information about the collection,

including ‘the basic reason for the collection; the main parties involved; (some of)

the theological meanings attached to this project; the delivery journey to


56 Fitzmyer (Acts of the Apostles, 88), for example, brushes aside the question of Luke’s knowl-

edge of the epistles with but one sentence: ‘Lastly, I have made no mention of Paul’s letters

as a source of Acts, because I do not think that Luke read any of them’.

57 Ibid., 736.

58 Nickle, Collection, 149–50; see also Sze-kar Wan, ‘The Collection for the Saints as Anticolonial

Act: Implications of Paul’s Ethnic Reconstruction’, in Paul and Politics: Ekklesia, Israel,

Imperium, Interpretation. Essays in Honor of Krister Stendahl (ed. Richard A. Horsley;

Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity, 2000) 191–215.

59 Achtemeier, Quest for Unity, 46.

60 Joubert, Paul as Benefactor, 210–15; Kim, Die paulinische Kollekte, 137–80.

61 Joubert, Paul as Benefactor, 212.



Jerusalem; and Paul’s meeting with the Jerusalem leadership’.62 This paper has

argued that the assumption on which these claims are based, namely that Luke

had reliable information about the Pauline collection, is invalid. Since in his

narrative Luke nowhere mentions the collection that Paul organized among

his Gentile churches and accompanied to Jerusalem near the end of his mission-

ary career, theories about the collection – its history or its theological significance

for Paul’s ministry – based on the book of Acts are bound to remain nothing more

than unverifiable speculations.

70 david j. downs

62 Ibid., 212.


Paul's Collection and the Book of Acts Revisited

Documents

Transcript of Paul's Collection and the Book of Acts Revisited