Historical and cultural context: Judaism, Greco-Roman world, early church.

Historical and Cultural Context: Judaism, the Greco-Roman World, and the Early Church

Why context matters for reading Paul

Paul did not write in a vacuum. His letters emerged from a living network of synagogues and house churches scattered across the empire; they responded to questions framed by Jewish Scriptures, debated in the agora, and adjudicated under Roman law. To read Paul well, we must read him in stereo—one channel tuned to Second Temple Judaism and its covenantal imagination, another to the Greco-Roman world with its languages, social hierarchies, and civic cults, and a third to the early church, a Spirit-formed community improvising faithful life between Israel’s Scriptures and the risen Lord (Sanders, 1977; Meeks, 1983; Dunn, 1998; Wright, 2013). This article maps those three worlds and then shows how their intersections illuminate Paul’s thought and practice.

1) Judaism in the Second Temple period (515 BCE–70 CE)

1.1 Covenant identity, Torah, and the rhythms of holiness

Second Temple Judaism was anchored in the conviction that Israel is God’s covenant people, called to embody holiness among the nations (Exod 19:5–6). Torah provided the grammar of this life. Practices such as circumcision, Sabbath, kashrut (food laws), festivals, and Temple worship served as boundary markers that preserved Israel’s distinct vocation amid imperial pressures (Sanders, 1977). These markers were not legalistic oddities; they were identity practices through which Israel rehearsed God’s story weekly, seasonally, and corporately. When Paul later argues that Gentiles belong to God’s people apart from “works of the law” (Gal 2–3; Rom 3–4), he is not abolishing holiness but redefining the badge of belonging around Messiah and the Spirit (Dunn, 1998).

1.2 Institutions: Temple, synagogue, and courts

• Temple (Jerusalem): The Temple was the symbolic center of the world—sacrifice, priesthood, and pilgrimage expressed Israel’s worship. Even diaspora Jews oriented life toward Jerusalem (Josephus, Ant. 14.110–118).

• Synagogue: In the land and across the diaspora, synagogues functioned as scripture-reading, prayer, and community administration hubs. They were also where “God-fearers” (Gentiles sympathetic to Israel’s God) learned Scripture—prime audiences for Paul’s mission (Acts 13:16, 26; Meeks, 1983).

• Sanhedrin and local councils: Judicial bodies enforced communal order. Disputes over halakhah (legal application) were live and sometimes sharp, as the Gospels and Acts attest.

1.3 Diversity of Jewish groups

Judaism was plural (Josephus, Ant. 13.171–173):

• Pharisees emphasized Torah interpretation in daily life, traditions of the elders, and belief in resurrection. Paul self-identifies as a Pharisee (Phil 3:5; Acts 23:6).

• Sadducees were priestly-aristocratic, Temple-centered, and rejected resurrection and oral traditions.

• Essenes fostered communal purity and apocalyptic expectation (cf. Dead Sea Scrolls).

• Zealots embodied militant resistance for some.
  This diversity explains how debates about circumcision, food, purity, and resurrection could be both intra-Jewish and heated. Paul’s letters join those debates, claiming that in Messiah the age to come has dawned, reframing the law’s role (Wright, 2013).

1.4 Diaspora Judaism, the Septuagint, and bilingual life

Most Jews lived outside Judea. The diaspora’s lingua franca was Koine Greek; many read Scripture in the Septuagint (LXX), a translation that sometimes carried interpretive nuances Paul deploys (e.g., Rom 3:10–18; Gal 3:8). Diaspora synagogues attracted Gentile God-fearers, providing a relational bridge for Paul’s “synagogue first” method (Acts 13; 17; Meeks, 1983). Paul himself, a Jew from Tarsus, moved fluidly between Hebrew/Aramaic Scripture and Greek rhetoric.

1.5 Apocalyptic imagination and messianic hope

Texts like 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra, and the Qumran corpus express an apocalyptic worldview: history is a battlefield between present evil and the imminent victory of God. Key themes—resurrection, judgment, new covenant, Spirit outpouring—pervade Paul’s letters (1 Thess 4:13–18; Rom 8; 2 Cor 5:17). Paul’s claim is not that apocalyptic hope is false, but that in Jesus’ death and resurrection it has begun, with the Spirit as the arrabōn (down payment) of the new age (Wright, 2013; Dunn, 1998).

2) The Greco-Roman world of Paul

2.1 Empire, law, and the imperial cult

Paul’s mission unfolded under the Roman Empire, whose roads, sea lanes, coinage, and administrative stability enabled travel and communication. Roman law conferred rights on citizens (e.g., protection from summary scourging, appeal to Caesar), which Paul leveraged (Acts 16:37–39; 25:10–12). Yet the empire also sacralized power: the imperial cult hailed Caesar as lord and savior, the guarantor of pax (peace). Paul’s confession that “Jesus is Lord” thus carried political resonance; it relativized Caesar’s claims and redefined peace around the crucified and risen Messiah (Wright, 2013; Horsley, 1997).

2.2 Cities, networks, and social stratification

Paul targeted cities—Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Ephesus, Rome—because cities were where trade routes, ethnic networks, guilds, and ideas converged. Urban life was sharply stratified: elites, freedpersons, slaves; patrons and clients; male household heads and dependents. Paul founded house churches that brought these strata into table fellowship, a radical social practice (Rom 16; 1 Cor 11; Meeks, 1983). His appeals to unity, mutual upbuilding, and love directly challenged the honor-shame ladder and patronal boasting.

2.3 Households, gender, and slavery

The basic social unit was the household (oikos)—including kin, clients, slaves, and renters. Philosophers provided household codes (Aristotle, later Stoics) prescribing hierarchy. Paul adapts and reworks such codes within a Christological ethic (Eph 5–6; Col 3–4): husbands love as Christ loved; masters remember they have a Master in heaven; children and parents, slaves and owners, belong to the same Lord. This does not instantly abolish slavery, but it subverts absolute claims of human ownership by locating all authority under Christ and calling the strong to cruciform love (Meeks, 1983; Dunn, 1998).

2.4 Religion, magic, and philosophy

The Greco-Roman world teemed with cults (e.g., Artemis of Ephesus), mystery religions, divination, magic, and philosophy. Paul’s encounters in Ephesus (Acts 19) expose the economic and spiritual stakes of abandoning idols and magic. His Areopagus address (Acts 17) engages Epicurean and Stoic philosophies, beginning from creation and human kinship (“we are his offspring”) before proclaiming resurrection—a stumbling block and a summons. Paul’s letters similarly blend Jewish apocalyptic and Greco-Roman rhetoric—diatribe, prosopopoeia, and virtue lists—while refusing to dilute the scandal of the cross (Hays, 2002; Dunn, 1998).

2.5 Language, literacy, and letter culture

The empire’s common tongue, Koine Greek, made letters the perfect vehicle for Paul’s pastoral presence. Ancient letter-writing involved dictation to a scribe, greetings, travel plans, and moral exhortation. Letters were read aloud in assemblies and circulated (Col 4:16). Paul’s artistry—interweaving Scripture catenae (Rom 3:10–18), hymnic material (Phil 2:6–11), and paraenesis—shows deep training in both Jewish Scripture and Greco-Roman discourse (Hays, 2002; Meeks, 1983).

3) The early church: a Spirit-formed community between synagogue and street

3.1 Origins, practices, and leadership

The early church begins as a Jewish renewal movement: Pentecost, Temple prayer, breaking bread from house to house, apostolic teaching, and care for the poor (Acts 2:42–47; 4:32–35). Leadership developed organically: apostles bore eyewitness testimony; prophets and teachers instructed; and as communities stabilized, elders/overseers were recognized (Acts 14:23; 20:17, 28). Paul’s letters show plural local leadership and distributed gifts (1 Cor 12–14; Phil 1:1).

3.2 From Jerusalem to the nations: inclusion of Gentiles

Persecution (Stephen, Acts 7–8) and mission spread the gospel. The Cornelius episode (Acts 10) and the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) established that Gentiles are incorporated without taking on circumcision and full Torah. They are asked to avoid idolatry, sexual immorality, and blood—facilitating table fellowship across Jew-Gentile lines. Paul’s polemics in Galatians and appeals in Romans 14–15 assume this settlement while navigating its pastoral complexities (Dunn, 1998; Wright, 2013).

3.3 Worship: Scripture, song, sacrament, and prayer

Early Christian gatherings were scripture-saturated (LXX readings and exposition), sung (psalms, hymns, spiritual songs), sacramental (baptism and the Lord’s Supper), and charismatically alive (prophecy, tongues, teaching; 1 Cor 11–14). Baptism signified union with Christ in death and resurrection (Rom 6:1–4). The Lord’s Supper created and displayed the community’s unity; abuses at Corinth (1 Cor 11:17–34) reveal how easily social hierarchies could reassert themselves—and how vigorously Paul resisted that re-stratification.

3.4 Suffering and public reputation

Christians faced slander (atheism, cannibalism, disloyalty), local hostility (Acts 19), and occasional state scrutiny. Paul catalogs beatings, imprisonments, and dangers (2 Cor 11:23–28). Suffering was not a surprise but a participation in Christ that authenticated the message (1 Thess 1:6; 2 Cor 4:7–12). The church’s public ethics—generosity, sexual integrity, mutual care—were its apologetic (Meeks, 1983).

4) How context illuminates Paul’s theology and practice

4.1 Justification, law, and the badge of belonging

Against the background of covenant boundary markers, Paul argues that the “righteousness of God” is unveiled in Christ for Jew and Gentile alike, received by faith apart from law-works (Rom 3:21–26; Gal 2–3). This does not demean Torah; it assigns Torah its Christological telos (Rom 10:4) and relocates the badge of belonging from circumcision to baptism and Spirit (Gal 3:27–29). Read within Second Temple debates, Paul’s point is not antinomian but eschatological: the age to come has begun; therefore, the people of God are marked by faith-union with the Messiah (Sanders, 1977; Dunn, 1998; Wright, 2013).

4.2 New creation and the Spirit

Apocalyptic expectation makes sense of Paul’s insistence that believers are a “new creation” (2 Cor 5:17), indwelt by the Spirit who fulfills prophetic promises (Ezek 36–37; Joel 2). The Spirit enables ethical transformation (“fruit of the Spirit,” Gal 5:22–23) and communal unity across ethnic and status lines. This is why divisions in Corinth or Galatia are not mere interpersonal issues; they are eschatological contradictions of the gospel’s reality.

4.3 Table, food, and idols

Greco-Roman banqueting culture, guild meals, and sacrificial meat created dilemmas for Gentile converts. Paul’s nuanced counsel in 1 Corinthians 8–10 presumes a world where idolatry is woven into commerce and friendship. He affirms monotheism, frees believers from superstitious fears, and yet binds them by love to avoid destroying a sibling’s conscience. The aim is not private scruple but communal edification and faithful witness within a pagan city.

4.4 Household life and cruciform authority

In an empire that naturalized patriarchal dominance and slavery, Paul frames relationships “in the Lord.” The Christ hymn (Phil 2:6–11) provides the logic: authority is self-emptying love; prestige is relativized by the cross. Household codes become contexts for mutual obligation moderated by Christ’s lordship (Eph 5–6; Col 3–4). The church is a laboratory of alternative power, not merely a mirror of Roman hierarchy (Meeks, 1983; Dunn, 1998).

4.5 Civic loyalty and the confession “Jesus is Lord”

Paul can urge prayer for rulers (1 Tim 2:1–2) and pay taxes (Rom 13) while proclaiming a kingdom that relativizes Caesar. The title “Lord” (kyrios) is not a casual honorific; it is an imperial predicate claimed for Jesus, the crucified Jew whom God exalted. That confession creates a people who honor authorities without idolatry and endure suffering without revenge (Wright, 2013; Horsley, 1997).

4.6 Letters, rhetoric, and communal formation

Knowing how ancient letters function helps us hear Paul’s strategies: thanksgivings shape desire (Phil 1), narratives model identity (Gal 1–2), vice/virtue lists train habits (Rom 1; Gal 5), travel plans build trust (Rom 15), and collections enact unity (2 Cor 8–9; Rom 15:25–27). Paul is not merely transmitting ideas; he is forming communities attuned to the gospel in the street-level realities of city life (Meeks, 1983; Hays, 2002).

5) Pulling it together: a three-worlds lens for reading any Pauline text

When interpreting a passage, ask:

1. Jewish world: What scriptural promises or covenant practices are in the background? Which Second Temple debates are relevant (law, purity, resurrection)? (Sanders, 1977; Dunn, 1998)

2. Greco-Roman world: What civic, economic, or philosophical pressures are in play (patronage, guilds, imperial claims, household hierarchy, rhetoric)? (Meeks, 1983; Horsley, 1997)

3. Early church: How is a multiethnic, Spirit-formed body negotiating worship, leadership, and unity under persecution? (Wright, 2013; Keener, 2012)

Applied to 1 Corinthians, this lens connects idol-meat to guild banquets, sexual ethics to temple prostitution reputations, and worship chaos to status competition. In Galatians, it ties circumcision to belonging badges and Antioch’s table schism to ethnic boundary maintenance. In Romans, it links the edict-expulsion of Jews under Claudius to fractured congregations now reuniting, requiring Paul’s careful politics of welcome (Rom 14–15).

Suggested Assignments (Week 1, Bullet 2)

1. Comparative Profile (1,800–2,200 words).
   Compare Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots using Josephus and one modern scholar. Explain how each group would likely evaluate Paul’s claim that Gentiles belong to God’s people apart from circumcision (Acts 15; Gal 2–3). Cite Sanders (1977) and Dunn (1998).

2. Diaspora Dossier (presentation + handout).
   Build a dossier on a major diaspora city (e.g., Alexandria, Antioch, or Rome): language, synagogue presence, God-fearers, civic cults, and trade networks. Conclude with three implications for Paul’s “synagogue first, then Gentiles” method (Acts 13; 17). Use Meeks (1983).

3. Household Codes Exegesis (1,500–2,000 words).
   Exegete Ephesians 5:21–6:9 or Colossians 3:18–4:1 against Greco-Roman household ethics. Identify continuities and intentional subversions. Engage one secondary source (Meeks, 1983; Dunn, 1998) and discuss pastoral implications today.

4. Idol Meat Case Study (1,200–1,600 words).
   Analyze 1 Corinthians 8–10 as moral formation in a guild-saturated economy. Provide a modern parallel (e.g., corporate hospitality implicating questionable practices) and propose a Pauline response guided by love and witness.

5. Apocalyptic Matrix (seminar handout, 2–3 pages).
   Trace five apocalyptic motifs (present evil age, resurrection, Spirit, judgment, new creation) from Second Temple literature to Paul’s letters with brief citations (e.g., 1 Enoch; 4 Ezra; Rom 8; 1 Thess 4–5). Use Wright (2013).

6. Letter Form & Rhetoric (short paper, 1,000–1,300 words).
   Identify epistolary conventions and rhetorical techniques in Romans 1–5 (e.g., diatribe, catenae, thesis-proof). Explain how each strategy serves communal formation. Engage Hays (2002).

7. Public Theology Reflection (800–1,000 words).
   “Jesus is Lord” in a world of Caesars: reflect on Romans 13 and Philippians 2:6–11. How do believers express civic loyalty without idolatry? Use Horsley (1997) or Wright (2013).

References

Barclay, J. M. G. (2015). Paul and the gift. Eerdmans.
Dunn, J. D. G. (1998). The theology of Paul the Apostle. Eerdmans.
Hays, R. B. (2002). The faith of Jesus Christ: The narrative substructure of Galatians 3:1–4:11 (2nd ed.). Eerdmans.
Horsley, R. A. (1997). Paul and empire: Religion and power in Roman imperial society. Trinity Press International.
Josephus. (1987). The works of Josephus: Complete and unabridged (W. Whiston, Trans.). Hendrickson.
Keener, C. S. (2012). Acts: An exegetical commentary (Vol. 1). Baker Academic.
Meeks, W. A. (1983). The first urban Christians: The social world of the Apostle Paul. Yale University Press.
Sanders, E. P. (1977). Paul and Palestinian Judaism. Fortress Press.
Wright, N. T. (2013). Paul and the faithfulness of God. Fortress Press.