The churches Paul evangelized...

[rgprice]

It's clear at least in 1 Thessalonians that Paul is writing to a community that previously did not worship the Jewish God. It's difficult to imagine how Paul could have converted some community of pagans to worshiping the Jewish God with stories about how the Jewish God raised his son from the dead.

But aside from Thessalonica, what can be said about Corinth and Philippi or whatever locations there were in Galatia? I always get the impression that Paul was evangelizing about Jesus to communities that were already Judaized and potentially were already part of some organization that was in association with Jerusalem. The term church is used in Paul's letters. What does that mean? The letter to the Philippians implies an existing hierarchy.

Other than the Thessalonians, was Paul going out to satellites of an organizational structure that already reported to Jerusalem? Was there some pre-existing shared liturgy among the locations Paul visited?

For example, if a member of the leadership of the central Mormon church declared that he had a new revelation of Moroni and he sent people out to tell Mormons around the world about this revelation, they would set out and go to existing Mormon churches and be told about this new revelation and teaching. Is that what Paul was doing?

Or it is like, a member of the leadership of the central Mormon church declared that he had a new revelation of Moroni, and as a result, Mormon missionaries went out and started by telling non-Mormons they had no prior contact with about this new revelation?

[GakuseiDon]

It's clear at least in 1 Thessalonians that Paul is writing to a community that previously did not worship the Jewish God. It's difficult to imagine how Paul could have converted some community of pagans to worshiping the Jewish God with stories about how the Jewish God raised his son from the dead.

One possible group that Paul was preaching to were the God-fearers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God-fearer

God-fearers or God-worshippers were a numerous class of Gentile sympathizers to Hellenistic Judaism that existed in the Greco-Roman world,[2][3][4][5] which observed certain Jewish religious rites and traditions without becoming full converts to Judaism.[1][2][3][6][7][8] The concept has precedents in the proselytes of the Hebrew Bible...

Judaising Gentiles and God-fearers are considered by modern scholars to be of significant importance to the growth of early Christianity;[27][28] they represented a group of Gentiles who shared religious ideas and practices with Jews, to one degree or another.[6][8] However, the God-fearers were only "partial" converts, engaged in certain Jewish rites and traditions without taking a step further to actual conversion to Judaism, which would have required full adherence to the 613 Mitzvot (including various prohibitions such as kashrut, circumcision, Shabbat observance etc.) that were generally unattractive to would-be Gentile (largely Greek) converts.[6][8] The rite of circumcision was especially unappealing and execrable in Classical civilization[28][29][30] because it was the custom to spend an hour a day or so exercising nude in the gymnasium and in Roman baths, therefore Jewish men did not want to be seen in public deprived of their foreskins.[29][30] Hellenistic and Roman culture both found circumcision to be cruel and repulsive.

My own personal amateur theory is that it all came down to magic: "Jesus Christ" was a name that could be invoked to heal the sick, protect against spirits, etc, and this attracted a lot of pagans, both sincere and non-sincere. They didn't care about the rest of the religious trappings, as they just wanted to get to the good stuff! This to me was what made Christianity grow quickly in its early days, especially in the poor areas of the Empire. I can't prove it though, but it remains part of my own personal "head canon".

[rgprice]

Yeah, demonology appears to be a part of it. But what I'm trying to understand is, was this a situation where James/Peter/whomever said, "Okay Paul, go visit our brothers in Corinth and tell them about Jesus. They've been contributing money to us every year, so go collect their payments and tell them about the coming of Christ while you're at it. Here is where you can find them, and tell'em James sent ya'."

Or was this like, Paul just set out and went to Corinth and just wandered around the city poking his head into various temples or synagogues saying, "Hey strangers, let me tell ya' 'bout Jesus!"

In some letters I get the impression that Paul came into organizations that already had a hierarchy of Gentile leaders who read the Torah and studied Jewish prophecy, and who already went on pilgrimages to Jerusalem or payed the Temple tax (God-fearers as you mention), and these groups were already in regular communication with Jewish religious leaders in Jerusalem.

Now, when it comes to what was going on with Paul and the Jerusalem sect, who were apparently requesting that converts get circumcised, it sounds very much like their primary interest was in converting people to traditional Judaism.

Now, if Paul was collecting money for the poor, as he says in his letters, where was this money going to? To the Temple? Or was the James group running some independent project that was collecting and distributing funds to poor people in Jerusalem? If Paul was collecting money and bringing it to Jerusalem, it implies some kind of organization that would have had some level of recognition and approval in Jerusalem.

[Ben C. Smith]

Paul bringing money from gentile congregations to the Jerusalem "mother church" would have been a deliberate and transparent attempt to fulfill the prophecy:

Isaiah 60.5, 11:

5 Then you will see and be radiant,
And your heart will thrill and rejoice;
Because the abundance of the sea will be turned to you,
The wealth of the nations [ἐθνῶν, gentiles] will come to you.

....

11 Your gates will be open continually;
They will not be closed day or night,
So that people may bring you the wealth of the nations,
With their kings led in procession.

(Alternately, if Robert happens to be right about the whole thing being a Pauline scam, then this prophecy would have been its pretext. In either case, Isaiah is what lurks behind the whole idea.)

[MrMacSon]

It's clear at least in 1 Thessalonians that Paul is writing to a community that previously did not worship the Jewish God. It's difficult to imagine how Paul could have converted some community of pagans to worshiping the Jewish God with stories about how the Jewish God raised his son from the dead.

But aside from Thessalonica, what can be said about Corinth and Philippi or whatever locations there were in Galatia? I always get the impression that Paul was evangelizing about Jesus to communities that were already Judaized and potentially were already part of some organization that was in association with Jerusalem. The term church is used in Paul's letters. What does that mean? The letter to the Philippians implies an existing hierarchy.

The implication of an existing structure in Philippi may be just that, an implication, as might an inference or impression these communities in Galatia, Anatolia, and across and around the Aegean Sea were part of an organisation in association with Jerusalem.

Whether Paul was evangelising/proselytizing to communities that were already Judaized invites consideration of how they might have been Judaized, eg. by having been proselytized by Jews from a distance? or by immigration of Jews ie. by part of the Jewish Diaspora?

Considering Jewish Diaspora leads to consideration of when? and where from? My understanding is there was little movement out of Jerusalem by the general Jewish citizens after the First Roman-Jewish War (though the priests and their associates moved out), yet there was after the Third War (the bar Kokhba Revolt).


From the link GakuseiDon provided

Origin, history, status and diffusion

see also: History of the Jews in the Roman Empire and Second Temple Judaism

Over the last 50 years a growing number of scholars of Judaic studies and history of Judaism became interested in the subject of God-fearers and their relationship with Hellenistic Judaism and early Christianity. According to the most common assumption, Jews that lived in the Greco-Roman world during the Hellenistic and Roman period were not involved in active missionary efforts of mass conversion among Pagans,[10][11] although many historians disagree.[9][12][13][14]

As Jews emigrated and settled in the Roman provinces of the Empire, Judaism became an appealing religion to a large number of Pagans, for many reasons;[6][7][13] God-fearers and proselytes that underwent full conversion were Greeks or Romans, and came from all social classes: they were mostly women and freedmen (liberti), but there were also artisans, soldiers and few people of high status, like patricians and senators. Despite their allegiance to Judaism, the God-fearers were exempted from paying the "Jewish tax" (fiscus Judaicus).

The class of God-fearers existed between the 1st and the 3rd century CE. They are mentioned in Latin and Greek literature, Flavius Josephus' and Philo's historical works, rabbinic literature, early Christian writings, and other contemporary sources such as synagogue inscriptions from Diaspora communities (Palestine, Rome and Asia Minor).

-------------------

9 Sand, Shlomo; Ilany, Ofri (21 March 2008). "Shattering a 'National Mythology'". Haaretz. Tel Aviv. Archived from the original on 24 May 2018. Retrieved 30 August 2020 [and now, by me].

• a. The Wikipedia article has [today]:
  • "The people did not spread, but the Jewish religion spread. Judaism was a converting religion. Contrary to popular opinion, in early Judaism there was a great thirst to convert others. The Hasmoneans were the first to begin to produce large numbers of Jews through mass conversion, under the influence of Hellenism. The conversions between the Hasmonean Revolt and Bar Kochba's rebellion are what prepared the ground for the subsequent, wide-spread dissemination of Christianity. After the victory of Christianity in the fourth century, the momentum of conversion was stopped in the Christian world, and there was a steep drop in the number of Jews. Presumably many of the Jews who appeared around the Mediterranean became Christians. But then Judaism started to permeate other regions – pagan regions, for example, such as Yemen and North Africa. Had Judaism not continued to advance at that stage and had it not continued to convert people in the pagan world, we would have remained a completely marginal religion, if we survived at all."
  b. I gleaned:
  • "He tries to prove that the Jewish people never existed as a "nation-race" with a common origin, but rather is a colorful mix of groups that at various stages in history adopted the Jewish religion [which would encompass more than Antiquity or the 1st to say 3rd centuries c.e.].
    
    "..." the first buds of Jewish nationalism...has its source in the mythical Kingdom of David.''
    
    'Inventing the Diaspora'
    
    "After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people remained faithful to it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom" - thus states the preamble to the Israeli Declaration of Independence. This is also the quotation that opens the third chapter of Sand's book, entitled "The Invention of the Diaspora." Sand argues that the Jewish people's exile from its land never happened.
    
    "The supreme paradigm of exile was needed in order to construct a long-range memory in which an imagined and exiled nation-race was posited as the direct continuation of 'the people of the Bible' that preceded it," Sand explains. Under the influence of other historians who have dealt with the same issue in recent years, he argues that the exile of the Jewish people is originally a Christian myth that depicted that event as divine punishment imposed on the Jews for having rejected the Christian gospel.
    
    "I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land - a constitutive event in Jewish history ... But to my astonishment I discovered that it has no literature. The reason is that no one exiled the people of the country. The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so even if they had wanted to ... From this, in effect, the whole book was born: in the realization that Judaic society was not dispersed and was not exiled."
  Then, shortly after, the passage the Wikipedia article cites in [9], above^.

But, Prof Sand seems to be mostly talking about lands further afield: Spain, Europe, Russia, etc., in the passages I cited; and he is somewhat contradictory about Galilee and Judea with "The Romans did not exile peoples" cf. "After being forcibly exiled from their land...".

ie. there is no indication in that article that Sands further or comprehensively addresses short-distance Jewish emigration out of Galilee or Judea to adjacent regions in the eastern Mediterranean or that his book or research has addressed that.

• eta: and the article states: "the exile from the land - a constitutive event in Jewish history ... has no literature." ie, no written history.

Re -

Or it is like, a member of the leadership of the central Mormon church declared that he had a new revelation of Moroni, and as a result, Mormon missionaries went out and started by telling non-Mormons they had no prior contact with about this new revelation?

- I'd say it might 've been more likely that -

• 'an eccentric or rogue member of a Jewish church [perhaps in middle leadership but unlikely to be any higher] decided he had a new revelation of a new messenger or version of God, and as a result, he went out and started telling non-Jews - Gentiles- about this new revelation (and eventually tried or said he tried* to co-opt some Jewish leaders ie. Peter, James, and John)'
  
  * and wrote one account which eventually became two, ie. Gal 1:18-Gal 2:10, by his hand or others' hands.
  
  (but even then the attempt to co-opt fell apart ie. Gal 2:11ff, 1 & 2 Cor, but others eventually riffed off Peter James and John and eventually wrote greater parts for them ...)

eta: religio probably did not exist in Antiquity, in Gentiles at least: people of the Roman Empire would have been aware of and engaged in numerous religious practices and events

nb: tweaked/edited several times in the nearly first 30 mins since first posting

.