Notes on the Historical Paul and his Intellectual Activity

Introduction

I begin with a rather modest (although in the view of some, perhaps immodest) question: what was Paul? For many New Testament scholars, the answer has seemed utterly obvious. He was a prolific missionary; he was erudite theologian; and he was bold reformer of his Judaean heritage. These views, however, are largely theological conclusions, and do not go very far in explaining, from a sociological perspective, what Paul was doing when he journeyed around the Mediterranean and wrote his frequently aggressive letters to his audiences. I am interested in the sociological matrix that renders his intellectual activities comprehensible and how these activities fit with broader social theories about the work of intellectuals and their role in establishing group identity. That is, how can we view his letters as specific forms of cultural production that allow us to analyze the role that Paul played in shaping the self-understanding of his audiences as members of a Christ group. This essay thus explores Paul as a mediating intellectual who uses the space in his letters to imagine a new social form, and likewise to establish it in the minds of his audience in a persuasive way. Through this analysis, Paul emerges as a kind of educated, axial figure who wanted to mold a diverse constituency into a new social form affiliated with Christ. Some of the strategies whereby he aims to do this are the subject of this discussion.

Previous Theorizing of Intellectuals and Group Identity

These ideas were first presented in the newly-established Historical Paul unit of the Society of Biblical Literature. When I was invited to give an earlier version of this essay, my first instinct was to protest, “But I’m not a Paul scholar.” But the panel organizers hoped that I might use my sociological research on the authors of the Sayings Source Q to generate new insights about the historical Paul. This earlier work on Q was completed during my dissertation and subsequent first monograph,[1] and so I’ll briefly outline its framework here, to set the stage for my discussion of Paul.

My research on Q was focused on exploring the authors of the document in socio-cultural comparison and trying to explain the emergence of the text as a function of their socio-economic experiences. What kind of people, I wondered, were in a social position to have access to education and other forms of cultural capital, but at the same time, produced a written document of moderate sophistication that championed the poor and the oppressed? Especially in the ancient context, one would expect such educated figures to strive to affiliate up the social hierarchy and view themselves as closer to the elite rather than in the same boat as the peasants or urban poor. Ancient honor codes and assumptions about social status would have predisposed them to do so. Yet my cross-cultural research on other groups of social reform in structurally similar socio-economic contexts, especially involving sub-elite classes, revealed that the tendency to affiliate down the social ladder was rather more typical. Moreover, such figures tended to share a common set of characteristics: structural marginality (not necessarily poverty, but a social position that was found on the hinge or cusp of other, more stable or unified social locations); the capacity and skills to engage in intellectual creativity or innovation (often present on the intellectual or political products that the mediating figure created); and finally, the interest in political advocacy or social reform (which could take the form of not only political action, but also intellectual expression). Examples of all these features can be found in Q, I argued. And thus, the content of Q is an entirely ordinary kind of intellectual, cultural product when its authors are properly understood in cross-cultural comparison.

So, when it came to Q, I was interested in how the authors—like other mediating intellectual figures in other contexts—mobilized intellectual resources to create a persuasive discursive project. This project, I argued, just so happened to co-opt the authority of the legendary figure of Jesus with a goal of appealing to a broad swath of social groups to craft its constituency. What I was focused on in Q was not the content of the teachings, per se (especially since there is little that is unique about the content when viewed in a broader context of antiquity) but rather how such content was framed, presented, and made meaningful by the authors.

Speaking of Paul

Similarly, here, I am interested in how Paul uses cultural and intellectual resources to transform his audiences into a coherent constituency with a common identity. By creating a “constituency,” I mean the discursive process of addressing a group in such a way as to emphasize their shared features in order to mark them as a group that is set apart from others. My assumption throughout this discussion is that when Paul writes to different groups for which he views himself as a custodian, they have not yet “congealed” into the firmly bounded communities that the modern scholar’s imagination has often presumed.[2] Instead, I view Paul as self-consciously writing to a diverse constituency, and his letters are best understood as various efforts to synthesize and codify that diversity.

Paul is not a member of the social or political elite, but he is arguably not an uneducated agricultural worker either. He resides somewhere in the middle. We can understand his intellectual activity from this middling position as an active strategy to realize his overall project, namely unified Christ groups. Importantly, his letters also show that he was interested in making an affiliation with Christ into a translocal identity—that is, one that could be shared across time, space, and ethnic boundaries. In the rest of this discussion, I will explore three strategies by which he forms his constituency: 1) his discussion of his audience’s collective relationship to Israelite traditions; 2) his efforts to codify and thus explain his audience’s diversity; and 3) his various tactics to connect his audiences to other groups that he manages and thus to create a wider network of Christ believers.

1. Israelite Heritage

One of Paul’s main strategies for uniting his addressees is to give them a shared connection to an Israelite legacy. For the Gentiles in his audiences, they would have initially perceived no natural connection to this legacy, so his letters are the discursive space to convince them that they inherit it just as Judaeans do.

Scattered throughout Paul’s writing are examples of his attempts to link his addressees with an Israelite heritage. Of course, much of this comes in the midst of his efforts to defend his (theological and actual) territory from so-called “Judaizers.” For instance, in Galatians 3, we find Paul’s famous argument stipulating that Gentiles have access to Abraham’s original blessing. In Paul’s reasoning, Abraham, acting before the Law was given, “believed” and thus was “righteous” (Galatians 3:6). Christ, in Paul’s view, has liberated Gentiles from the burden of the Law, so that, in his words, “the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:14). Thus, his Gentile audiences have a collective legacy that extends to a far earlier temporal moment than they might have thought. By his rhetorical tactics here, Paul aims to convince them that their identification as heirs of the Abrahamic blessing is a critical part of their group identity. He employs a variety of terminology to reinforce this sense of groupness: the Galatians are “children of God through faith” (3:26); they are “children of the promise” (4:28); and they inherit “Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (3:29).

In 1 Corinthians 10, as Heidi Wendt has discussed in her recent book,[3] Paul again appends an Israelite heritage to his constituency, this time in order to persuade his group to adhere to his moral stipulations. “Our fathers,” he reminds them, escaped slavery in Egypt under the auspices of “the cloud” (i.e., God) (1 Cor 10:1), before being punished for their transgressions (1 Cor 10:5). As such, these ancestors act as warnings for the present audience to heed the teachings that Paul brings. In other words, by positing an Israelite heritage in the ancestry of the Corinthians, Paul is able to get them “on the hook,” so to speak, for all number of moral obligations. This historical framework has consequences that are readymade for his intellectual purposes; he merely has to point out that in the Exodus story, 23,000 transgressors fell in one day, some destroyed by serpents, others by the Destroyer (1 Cor 10:8-10).

But the most obvious place that Paul mobilizes an Israelite identity is his letter to the Romans. As in Galatians, Paul anchors his audience’s connection to Christ in Abrahamic heritage. Because Abraham demonstrated faith before receiving circumcision, Paul reasons, he became “the father of all who believe without being circumcised” (Romans 4:11; i.e., the ancestor of the Gentiles). Furthermore, in his complex arguments in Roman 9-11, he acknowledges the prestige that accompanies an Israelite identity: “the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, the promises…the patriarchs” (Romans 9:4-5). But this prestigious identity, he goes on to explain, is accessible to Gentiles. Not only do “not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel” (9:6), but also inheritance here is based on merely being understood as the recipient of the promise, regardless of whether or not the descendants do any particular actions (i.e., actions prescribed by Judaean law). Paul uses the metaphor of grafting a wild olive tree (Gentiles) on to a cultivated one (the people Israel) to explain how Gentiles can access the benefits of Israelite identity. Some branches of this cultivated tree were broken off (i.e., disobedient Israel), and wild shoots were grafted in “to share in the richness of the olive tree” (Romans 11: 17). Theologians have made much of Paul’s metaphors here. For my purposes, I want to highlight how these intellectual enterprises work to give a new “backstory” to non-Judeans and to think about what the Gentiles would have heard about their new identity presented through this reasoning. In short, by linking them with an Israelite heritage via Abraham and the “grafting in” metaphor, Paul is essentially giving them access to Israelite’s Law, ancestors, legacies, and epic histories.

Even in passages that do not specifically articulate an Israelite (or Judaean) identity, Paul still often makes offhand remarks that presuppose such a connection for his audience. If 1 Thess 2:14-16 is not an interpolation,[4] it contains a passing reference by Paul to “the prophets,” who were killed just like Jesus. This is classic Deuteronomistic theology, and so can only be referring to Israelite prophets and the many stories associated with them. So, for the Gentile Thessalonians, the message is that such historical moments have meaning for them, and are relevant to their group history, as well. And of course, the many references to Judaean scriptures throughout his letters to Gentiles suggests that he has endeavored to convince them that Judaean sacred writings are authoritative for them as well. Thus, what is not explicitly stated about the presence of Israelite and Judaean identity is sometimes as telling as what is stated.

Moreover, what makes Paul’s efforts to connect his audiences to an Israelite legacy more compelling is his insistence that he, too, can lay claim to such a legacy. Jennifer Eyl has recently examined Paul’s strategic claims to Hebrew and Israelite identity in several of his letters (2 Cor 11:22; Phil 3:5; Rom 9:4; 11:1). In her reading, such a claim of identity is far more valuable than the mere claim to be a Judaean. Paul, she explains, is “operating in a multi-ethnic Empire, where the ancientness of one’s group generates a degree of prestige and respect.”[5] When he connects his own and his groups’ identities to these ancient people with an epic legacy, “he simultaneously invites Gentile listeners to think of themselves as part of this ancient people who generated profound wisdom and sacred books.”[6] In other words, they, alongside Judaeans, can participate in what it means to be descendants of the Israelites.

What all this implies is that when Paul talks about his Israelite/Hebrew identity and stresses his audience’s shared connections to such legacies, he is engaging in the intellectual processes of mythmaking and social formation. To his audiences, his and their connections to such legacies are not obvious, so he uses the space in his letters to articulate them. This further implies that Judaean, Israelite, and Hebrew identities carry a kind of cultural currency; the Israelite or Hebrew legacy in particular are markers of authenticity, antiquity, and proven authority for Paul. And to reiterate, for groups that had no established temporal history together and no common biological ancestry or ethnic identity, Paul’s rhetoric offered them a communal heritage, a sense of common past, and a shared myth of origins.

Aerial view of Beit She'an, Israel [Image courtesy of the author].

2. Codifying Diversity

The shared connection to Israelite traditions goes a long way to give Paul’s diverse constituencies a common past to share. But in other ways, Paul is less concerned to make his groups homogenous and is instead concerned to explain/justify its present diversity, which, in letters such as 1 Corinthians, manifests in facets related to gender, cultic interests, social location, education, and ritual practices, among many others. Indeed, Paul expends a great deal of intellectual energy providing reasons why his audiences’ diversity is not problematic.

For instance, scholars have made much of Paul’s discussion of “spiritual gifts” in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 and the apparent disorder that it signals about the group meetings. Group members were apparently vying with one another to speak in tongues, prophecy, interpret tongues, and heal, among other practices. On one hand, from a socio-historical perspective, those are no doubt accurate conclusions to draw about the social dynamics of the situation. On the other, I would like to treat his discussion as a strategy of normalizing the diversity that he encounters in this group. Of this diversity, Paul acknowledges, “there are varieties of gifts, but the same spirit…varieties of service, but the same Lord…varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in everyone” (1 Cor 12:4-6). 1 Corinthians 14 shows a feeble attempt to restrict this diversity, in that Paul wants to limit the amount of glossolalia that is performed at meetings (1 Cor 14:1-33). On the whole, however, his discussion is aimed at explaining and justifying the diverse practices that already exist in the group, instead of trying to homogenize them.

Galatians 3 offers another instance of this strategy. Galatians 3:28-29 is often marshalled for its egalitarian ethos. “There is neither Judaean nor Greek,” Paul famously announces, “there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female. For all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” For those who want to view these early Christ groups as revolutionary, ahead of their time, and radically egalitarian, the implication of such a passage is that conventional social distinctions did not matter to Paul or to other early Christ followers—they could overlook, or even challenge them. However, we would do well to question the reality of the equality that this saying purports to offer. I find it hard to believe that Paul stopped making distinctions in reality between men and women or between slave and free citizens. In fact, his statement below in Galatians 4:7 suggests that the transformation of these status markers is really only happening at the metaphorical level, not in social reality: “So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir.” To me, this kind of statement implies that these status changes only exist on some moral, and thus likely socially inconsequential, level as a function of a certain relationship to God.

Rather, I would like to view Galatians 3:28-29 as an explicit acknowledgement of the social diversity that Paul encounters and an attempt to justify it for his constituency. To interpret it this way, we must recall that the Galatians clearly had some questions about their newfound interest in Christ and the extent to which they should alter their practices to bring them more in line with Judaean practices in order to follow Christ (Gal 5). Paul’s ostensibly “egalitarian” response can be read as a strategy of normalizing their anxiety about their diverse identity. Such an ethos recognizes that the group members might all be different, particularly when it comes to ethnic backgrounds, but those differences have little implication for members’ ability to revere Christ and should thus not cause concern—they should certainly not cause them to adopt Judaean practices to ameliorate the differences.

Paul uses the metaphor of the body to redescribe this heterogeneity and make salient differences among the group valuable and relevant to all members. In 1 Cor 6, he claims that the Corinthians’ bodies are unified as “members of Christ” (1 Cor 6:15). Shortly thereafter, he refines this metaphor considerably, with close attention to how diversity can still be present in such a unified entity. As he explains, “Just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ…. We were all baptized into one body” (1 Cor 12:12-13). He continues, stressing the value of all different parts of the body:

The body does not consist of one member but of many…The parts of the body which seem to be weaker are indispensable and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. (1 Cor 12:22-25)

So potent is this metaphor for justifying the heterogeneity in Paul’s groups that he returns to it yet again in Romans 12:4-5: “For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.” Such a positive view of diversity is further supported by how Paul describes the roles of his fellow “co-workers” in 1 Cor 3. “I planted,” Paul points out, “Apollos watered…. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each. For we are God’s servants, working together.” They all have different roles, he explains here, but their differences contribute to a collectively successful mission.[7]

Heterogeneity and diversity are justified on a cosmological scale as well. When Paul tries to explain the resurrection to the Corinthians, he makes an argument that there are different kinds of bodies in the world which are entirely ordinary and natural (1 Cor 15:35-57), so they should not be anxious about the possibility of bodies changing form for the resurrection. We might press this reasoning further: just as there are different bodies in the cosmos, so also there are different roles, talents, practices, and status markers among the group that are also entirely “natural.”

This diversity is also ameliorated by the common Israelite heritage, which was already discussed, as well as by the collective experiences that the groups engage in together. Regarding the latter, for instance, Paul extols the notion of his audiences being “crucified with Christ.” Elsewhere, he uses “baptized in Christ” in a similar way (Romans 6:3; Galatians 3:27).[8] Such encounters, even if they are only metaphorical (what Paul actually means by them is another matter entirely), provides common experiential language that people of diverse backgrounds can share.

The need to codify and thus justify diversity clarifies some of Paul’s thinking that has routinely been explained with appeal to his unique theology. For instance, why does Paul really care if people “remain in the state in which [they] were called” in 1 Corinthians 7:17-24? One scholar typifies the way this passage is usually treated: “The main point of 7:17-24 is that conversion, while altering moral and spiritual life, does not necessarily alter status in life.”[9] Taking a somewhat different view, Dale Martin has proposed that Paul redefines status markers, at least within the context of the Christ group.[10] Both of these interpretations share the assumption that this passage is an expression of Paul’s coherent theology. What if, however, we consider the passage to be the result of social diversity, that is, his response to the real possibility that his groups have competing statuses and interests that can never be neatly reconciled? We can consider this passage to be a way of intellectually codifying such diversity, and arguing that what is, is what ought to be. The notions that Christ groups are like bodies, that diverse forms can be found in the cosmos, that people should remain in the state they are called—these idealizations are not prescriptions of what should be happening in this group; they are descriptions of what is happening, styled as though they are merely Paul’s observations and advice. By codifying them into a systemic framework, Paul is making their diversity or lack of social homogeneity into a desirable feature of their collective identity. This is classic mythmaking for the purposes of identity formation.

3. Lateral Connections Among Christ Groups

I turn now to the final strategy of identity formation in my discussion: Paul’s efforts to establish lateral connections among the Christ groups with whom he communicates. In some ways, the first tactic that I discussed—Paul’s efforts to connect his addressees to an Israelite legacy—was one of the primary ways that Paul could make connections among his groups. Despite their geographical distance and social differences, members of his Christ groups could feel connected via their common mythic predecessors. There are even more specific ways that Paul’s letters work to outline the connections among his audiences, and in keeping with his efforts of identity formation, he encourages them to see social networks that did not exist before his arrival.

The last chapter of 1 Corinthians demonstrates this forging of lateral connections well, and here this strategy unfolds in numerous steps. First, he exhorts the Corinthians to make a financial contribution to the “saints” in Jerusalem, a group of people geographically and almost certainly ethnically distinct from the Corinthians. Second, he compares this obligation to the very same one given to the Galatians, yet another group geographically removed from the Corinthians (1 Cor 16:1). Regardless of such distance, Paul suggests, they shared a financial duty as part of networks devoted to Christ. Third, through relating in his own travels, he further extends this network of relations to the Ephesians (1 Cor 16:8) and other churches in Asia (1 Cor 16:19). In doing so, Paul links the Corinthians’ identity to the Galatians, the Ephesians, to other groups in “Asia,”[11] as well as to the Jesus movement in Jerusalem. Such language communicates to the Corinthians that their new affiliation as part of a Christ group is not merely local; it is part of a wide network throughout the eastern Mediterranean. And crucially for my discussion, such identity is in many ways brought into being through Paul’s articulation.

This tactic of crafting a lateral network of believers appears in other letters as well. In 1 Thessalonians 1:7-8, for instance, Paul commends the Thessalonians for becoming exemplars to Macedonians and Achaeans. The precise reason for their exemplary status is difficult to pin down for this concise passage,[12] but in terms of identity formation, Paul is making the argument that the conduct and public reputation of the Thessalonians has some relevance for Christ groups elsewhere (and presumably vice versa). Phil 4:14-18 also encourages its audience to understand themselves in comparison to other Christ groups. In this case, the sense is even more competitive: the Philippians have outperformed other Christ groups with respect to financially supporting Paul. These groups, it seems, could measure their practices and reputations (and thus the success of their identity as Christ associations) against one another, and Paul seems to encourage this.[13]

Paul also employs a variety of terminology to solidify the social networks that he is producing. He treats the people who travel with him and others as “fellow workers” (e.g., 1 Cor 3:9; 16:3; etc), refers to his addressees as “brothers” (passim), and in Philippians even uses the odd terminology of “yokefellow” (Phil 4:3). The function of such language for identity formation is indispensable: there seems to be no natural reason why people in, say, Thessalonica or Corinth should have any interest in Christ believers in other locales, so Paul’s task is to convince them that, via the linkages he has established, the experiences of the Christ believers in other regions are relevant to them as well. Language of fictive kinship and terminology that emphasizes sharing labor and collective experience can be understood as discursive strategies to make these disconnected groups feel connected across time and space.[14] Parenthetically, this might be particularly useful with the Roman Christ group, because Paul needs to convince them that the way that the Galatians, Corinthians, Thessalonians, and others relate to him should be how the Romans treat him, that is, as an authoritative figure worthy of financial support.

These discursive tactics provide the means for Paul to further craft the individual understanding of his audiences. By placing his groups in relation to one another as part of a wider network of believers, a shared sense of commonality in each group and among groups emerges. The result is that the notion of a broad constituency of Christ believers comes into view for geographically isolated groups, and they can all imagine themselves as part of this larger phenomenon. That is, the nature of what Paul hopes it means to be a Christ follower emerges through his dialogue with his audiences and interlocutors. This is similar to the way that some such as Daniel Boyarin have argued that rabbinic Judaism emerged: in dialogue with and in response to Christian intellectual identity formation.[15] In other words, to broaden this principle even more, social identities do not form in vacuums, but only in relation to other social phenomena and processes of socio-cultural exchange. Here we see Paul deliberately managing the self- and group- understanding of his constituencies, by linking them to one another and stressing their shared obligations and import to each other. What it means to be a Christ-believer in the social scape of the Roman Empire—Paul’s understanding, that is—starts to surface through this intellectual work.

Concluding Remarks on Paul as a Mediating Intellectual

In all of these cases, Paul’s intellectual work in his letters creates “groupness” of various sorts. In my first case, I explored how he appended an “Israelite” heritage to his groups to give them a common ethno-historical reference point. In the second example, I suggested that he contributed to their sense of groupness by turning their apparent diversity into a crucial feature of their identity. And in the final case, I highlighted how his efforts to make connections among the various groups in his network helps his constituents understand their own place as a group in the social scape of the Roman Empire.

In many cases, I have interpreted Paul’s theological ideas for their social effect. Being crucified with Christ; remaining in the state that one was called; being children of Abraham’s promise; and treating other Christ believers as “family”—these are ideas that have typically been treated as unique features of Paul’s theology. I have been less interested in what their theological implications are, than the effect on identity formation that they might have on people on the receiving ends of such sentiments.

One conclusion that I might draw from this discussion is that Paul is a politician, in the modern sense of the word. He is manipulating his audiences with his intellectual resources. I do not mean this in a snide or accusatory way. Indeed, many of his efforts were probably quite sincere. But he has an agenda, and his letters are evidently the space wherein he struggles to realize his goals. By attending to the ways in which he creates and manages his constituency, gives it a life and a history, and bridges connections within and among his groups, we can learn more about the sociological dynamics involved in the emergence and spread of early Christ groups around the Mediterranean.

[1] Sarah E. Rollens, Framing Social Criticism in the Jesus Movement: The Ideological Project of the Sayings Gospel Q (WUNT II 274; Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014).

[2] Stanley K. Stowers, “The Concept of ‘Community’ and the History of Early Christianity,” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 23.3 (2011): 238–56.

[3] Heidi Wendt, At the Temple Gates: The Religion of Freelance Experts in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

[4] On this issue, see my discussion in Sarah E. Rollens, “Inventing Tradition in Thessalonica: The Appropriation of the Past in 1 Thessalonians 2:14–16,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 46.3 (2016): 123–32.

[5] Jennifer Eyl, “‘I Myself Am an Israelite’: Paul, Authenticity, and Authority,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 40.2 (2017): 148–68, here 163.

[6] Jennifer Eyl, “‘I Myself Am an Israelite’: Paul, Authenticity, and Authority,” 163.

[7] It also functions to downplay the competition for authority between Paul, Apollos, and others, that is almost certainly lurking behind these verses. On the conflict of these teachers, see Stephen J. Patterson, The Lost Way: How Two Forgotten Gospels Are Rewriting the Story of Christian Origins (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2014), 222-241.

[8] Observe that Paul compares this to an Israelite experience as well: the Israelites were “baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (10:2).

[9] Mark Taylor, 1 Corinthians: An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture (The New American Commentary 28; Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2014), 178.

[10] Dale B. Martin, Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 66.

[11] It is unclear if the Galatians are simply one of other churches in Asia, or if their identity is somehow unique.

[12] On this matter, see Richard S. Ascough, 1 and 2 Thessalonians: Encountering the Christ Group at Thessalonike (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014).

[13] A related maneuver for sowing connections among disconnected groups is to emphasize their unity for purposes of honoring some group members. Put differently, Paul capitalizes on a broadly construed audience of Christ followers, stitched together from his network of groups, in order to display members for commendation. In doing so, he bolsters the idea that individual members of specific groups should care deeply about their role in a wider network. The classic instance of this comes in Romans 16, where Paul lists numerous people and praises them for their work. As some have noted, the purpose of this is likely to bestow honor on these figures. Yet honor only results in a social situation that is primed to generate it. Bestowing honor and practices of patronage and benefaction only work in social contexts that affirm their meaning. Paul as a mediator/facilitator of these benefits 1 Cor 16:15-18

[14] David M. Bossman, “Paul's Fictive Kinship Movement,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 26.4 (1996): 163-171.

[15] Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010).

Sarah E. Rollens is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College.