In her excellent book, Christian Responses to Roman Art and Architecture, Laura Nasrallah argues that Luke presents Paul as the founder of a type of Christian Panhellenion in the book of Acts. The historical Panhellenion was a “league of cities headed by Athens,”[1] established by Hadrian around 132CE, in relation to which participating cities would send “representatives to Athens to engage in cultic, cultural and diplomatic activities.”[2] The three elements that a city required to join the league were “their cities’ Greek ancestry, their histories of good relations with Rome, and Hadrian’s benefactions.”[3] Nasrallah holds to a second-century date for Acts, in the range of 115–130 CE,[4] and so views Acts and Hadrian’s reign (117–138 CE) as more or less contemporary with one another.
In her argument, Nasrallah makes the following statement:
The cities to which Paul travels repeatedly are in the same regions where many of the cities of the Panhellenion were, not to mention cities with statues and altars to Hadrian.[5]
She supplements this statement with a map[6] that shows the cities that are known to belong to the Panhellenion, cities that had dedicated statues in the Olympieion,[7] and most of the cities listed as locations of Paul’s missionary activity in Acts. The geographical similarities are observable. The cities of the Panhellenion/Olympieion are densely packed in Achaia, Macedonia and Asia, with others more sparsely spread further abroad in Galatia, Crete, Cyrene, Cilicia and Syria. Paul was active in all of these areas, except for Cyrene (Acts 13–19).
When one looks at the individual cities, however, the overlap of Paul’s missionary activity and Hadrian’s Panhellenion/Olympieion is less than striking. Of the twenty-three cities listed in Paul’s travels,[8] fourteen have no recorded connection to the Panhellenion/Olympieion: Damascus, Jerusalem, Syrian Antioch, Salamis, Paphos, Perga, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, Attalia, Philippi, Miletus, and Caesarea.[9] Seven of Paul’s cities (eight if you include Rome as representative of the emperor) are connected: Pisidian Antioch, Troas, Amphipolis, Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth, and Ephesus. It is also worth noting that Luke records that Paul’s time in Ephesus led to all of Asia hearing the word of the Lord (Acts 19:10), which expands the scope of this shorter list; but no ministry is recorded in Amphipolis (Acts 17:1).
The seven cities which do overlap with the Panhellenion are certainly significant in Luke’s record of Paul’s mission. Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13) and Athens (Acts 17) are the recorded locations of two of Paul’s recorded sermons. Paul spent eighteen months and three years in Corinth and Ephesus, respectively (Acts 18:11; 19:10; 20:31). Paul received the Macedonian vision in Troas, leading him and his team to take the Gospel to Europe. Importantly, however, these cities were quite significant before Hadrian’s Panhellenion existed. They are significant as Roman colonies, and major centres of trade and culture. Luke’s interest in recording Paul’s mission in these places fits a first century setting at least as well as, if not better than, an early-second century setting.
Furthermore, Luke’s interest extends beyond Greece and Asia. His narrative runs from Jerusalem to Rome. Hadrian’s Panhellenion is smaller in scope than Luke’s narrative of Christian expansion in Acts. Nasrallah acknowledges this, to some degree, in her synthesis of the counter-imperial claims of the list of nations in Acts 2[10] and Paul’s declaration of God’s authority over all nations in Acts 17:
In Acts 2, Jews of ‘every nation’ are able to hear in their own language; in Acts 17, Luke’s imperial God, communicating through Paul’s always threatened but invulnerable body, commands all people, of all nations, to repent and submit, even as he insists that all are ultimately one in origin, mythically and primordially linked.[11]
She continues:
In Athens, the heart of Hadrian’s projects, Paul offers a religious option that draws on the rhetoric, tradition, and literature of ancient Greece. He recalls the glories of ancient Greece, but also announces God’s command and impending judgment on the oikoumenē. Roman imperial command, judgment, and reign over the world, as well as Roman imperial claims to be and to represent the divine, are paltry in the face of Paul’s God.[12]
Nasrallah rightly identifies counter-imperial rhetoric in both Acts 2 and 17, but the discussion above demonstrates that the parallels with the Panhellenion she argues for are not ultimately convincing. Furthermore, the majority view of scholarship dates the writing of Acts in either the 60s or 70s/80s of the first century CE, not in the early second century. If the earlier date ranges are accepted, Luke cannot be using the Panhellenion (established in 132 CE) as a model.
This being the case, what is one to do with the suggestive location of Paul’s speech in Athens, the (future) “heart of Hadrian’s project”? It is important to recognise that Athens of the first century was in a significantly different state to the reinvigorated Athens of the Hadrianic era. In the first century CE, the city was still “sorely afflicted”[13] from its disastrous experiences of the first century BCE. In the process of recovery, the Athenians were engaged in the tension of two efforts. Now under the authority of Rome, the city courted the imperial power for benefactions and favours. In tension with this however, the Athenians also sought to maintain and strengthen their former cultural prominence. Epigraphic evidence attests to the pro-Roman influence of Ti. Claudius Novios throughout the reigns of Claudius and Nero, the period when Paul was in the city.[14]
Paul’s speech in Acts 17 engages both ends of the Athenians’s dependency—autonomy polarity. He appeals to Athens’s religious and philosophical heritage but ultimately calls it into question and thus not worth building their identity on (Acts 17:22–23; 27–29). Furthermore, he challenges any sense of Rome’s primacy. The empire may have expanded its boundaries over the Athenians, but only as an instrument is God’s ongoing providential appointment of “times and boundaries” for the nations (v. 26). Therefore, the Athenians should not look to their heritage, nor to Rome, but rather turn in repentance and faith in his appointed man, Jesus (v. 30–31).
About the Author:
David Evans
David Evans is currently a PhD candidate at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, researching Christianity in Athens during the first two centuries CE.
References
Evans, David. "A Jerusalemite Source for the List of Nations in Acts 2?". Journal of Gospels and Acts Research 2 (2018): 101-14.
Gilbert, Gary. "The List of Nations in Acts 2: Roman Propaganda and the Lukan Response." JBL 121, no. 3 (2002): 497-529.
Nasrallah, Laura Salah. Christian Responses to Roman Art and Architecture: The Second-Century Church Amid the Spaces of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Notes
1. Laura Salah Nasrallah, Christian Responses to Roman Art and Architecture: The Second-Century Church Amid the Spaces of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 96. ↩