Paul and his religious social networks:
The relations within the Jerusalem and Antioch communities
Introduction
Paul's relationship both with the church and the apostles Peter and James has extensively been studied from the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Where James and Peter were part of the Jerusalem church, Paul was an apostle and member of the church in Antioch. They were two different communities, each with a different way of proclaiming the Christian faith and each with its own network. Because it is clear that Paul has a lot to do with the spread of Christianity and also had contact with the Jerusalem community in this study is investigated which role Paul played in the social networks of Christianity. There is a lot of research into Paul's ties within the Antioch and Jerusalem church, but researchers are only now beginning to use social network analysis. Social network analysis focuses on different relationships between different people, countries and regions. It mainly involves what types of relationships exist within a given network and who is related to whom. Since I aim to figure out what role Paul played in the social networks of the spread of Christianity, social network analyses appears as an especially useful tool.
Context
Around 3 AD Paul was born in Tarsus. Between 62 and 64 he died in Rome. What makes him still important today is the fact that he was an apostle in the name of Jesus Christ and God, and that he played an important role in the spread of Christianity in the Mediterranean region. In his youth Paul belonged to the Pharisees, a Jewish group. The Jewish group practiced their religion by observing both the written and oral Torah. Paul was trained by the Jew Gamaliel in Jerusalem and at first he persecuted the followers of the Christian movement. On his way to Damascus, he had a vision in which Jesus appeared which requested him to be an apostle to the Gentiles (people who were converted to Christianity, but had no Jewish background).
Three years after Paul was in Damascus he first went to Jerusalem to get to know the Apostle Peter. Next to Peter he met Jesus' brother, James. After his visit he traveled to Tarsus and Antioch. (The current Antakya in Turkey) Antioch was the capital of the Roman province of Syria and the third largest city of the Roman Empire. From 37 AD Paul stayed in Antioch and worked with other self-appointed apostles. His mentor was Barnabas who was the leader of the Antioch church. In the year 40 Barnabas let him join the church community of Antioch. The Antioch church was appealing to Paul because both Jewish Christians and Gentiles were in the community. The community was not allowed to hold public services, so there were home churches. Even though the Jews and Gentiles together lived in the same community, both groups went to separate churches.
After fourteen years Paul returned to Jerusalem to attend a meeting on the Gentiles. The discussion was whether the Gentiles were allowed to join the Christian faith without circumcision. The Jerusalem church include only Jews converted to the Christian faith. At the meeting were John, James and Peter present from the Jerusalem church and from the Antioch church Paul, Barnabas and the uncircumcised Titus, who served as an example. Paul was against circumcision and eventually won the debate. People who were uncircumcised could join the faith of Christians. Peter, James and John would focus on circumcised converts while Paul, Barnabas and Titus focused on the uncircumcised people. Peter came a few months later on a visit to Antioch and Paul wrote this about his visit:
But when Cephas (Peter) came to Antioch, I've openly opposed him, because his conduct was reprehensible. He always ate with the Gentiles, but when emissaries of James arrived, he withdrew and he ate separately, for fear of the advocates of circumcision. The other Jews joined him, and even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy (Gal. 2: 11-14)
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Paul confronted Peter with his behavior, because Peter had ensured that Jews and Gentiles did not grow closer together, but were further removed from each other. Barnabas supported Peter, so the cooperation between Barnabas and Paul came to an end. For Paul, this also meant an end to his participation in the community of Antioch Church. Instead of depending on the Antioch church, Paul was depending only on God.
Contacts and links
During the time that Paul was a member of the Antioch church he built up many contacts with different people, regions and communities. Even today we cannot figure out all of Paul's contacts, but the key is that he probably mentioned his nearest contacts in the Bible. Paul's contacts are divided into three categories which are discussed below by category. The various groups are the contacts that were colleagues of Paul, the contacts from Jerusalem and those who preached under the name of Paul.
The colleagues
Barnabas and Paul were together in the Antioch community. They worked together for fourteen years and traveled together numerous times. Barnabas was the leader of the community, which meant that Paul was under him. Barnabas was sent by the Jerusalem community and Barnabas was the link between the Jerusalem church and the Antioch church. On the trips Barnabas had lived together as the senior partner with Paul. Paul and Barnabas worked and traveled together so there was personal contact and personal knowledge. This link is a strong tie, because they were personally close together and they had much to do with each other. One of the characteristics of a strong tie is to develop new contacts through this strong tie, and this happened. Paul received by Barnabas contact with the Jerusalem community.
Apollos was a Christian missionary in the period when Paul met him. They have both worked in Corinth, but they both had a different purpose. Paul laid the foundation of the Christian way of life and Apollos has built on this foundation. They both worked independently, but the doctrine preached Apollos was taught to him by two disciples of Paul. These two disciples, Aquila and Priscilla were at first those who had contact with Apollos. Through his disciples, Paul also got in touch with Apollos, but although they were good colleagues, their contact was purely business and they did not see each other often. The link between Paul and Apollos is therefore a weak tie.
Silvanus came from the Jerusalem community and has traveled with Paul. Silvanus also spread Paul's letter to the Thessalonicenzers. After the trip they made together, there aren’t more sources of Silvanus and the connection with Paul. The only thing that is known, is that they have traveled together and that Silvanus is derived from the Jerusalem community. Since no sources exist of what Silvanus carried out after the journey and Paul no longer has written about him, we can assume that the relationship between Paul and Silas had ceased to exist or was watered down. As the relationship was not so close and was only work related and even later, it no longer existed. So the relationship between Paulus and Silvanus is another weak tie.
The Jerusalem community
On the Jerusalem community Paul had contact with the two leaders, Peter and James. Barnabas was the one that Paul brought into contact with Peter and James. Because Barnabas had both a strong tie with Paul as with Peter and James, (because he also belonged to the Jerusalem community) they had a connection with each other. Since the connection between them is only about Christian matters, that means that the link between Paul on the one hand and Peter and James on the other hand is also a weak tie.
Paul's pupils
Paul and his pupils had much personal contact and often accompanied a student Paul during his travels. So he met Aquila and Priscilla, his wife. He moved in with them and worked for them (Acts 18: 3). As already mentioned above, It provides a strong tie and Paul created also links between other people. A couple of times he let different students work together. The network of pupils consists of a hierarchical network, which means that Paul the central point is for the pupils, and that they knew each other through their mutual cooperation with Paul.
The entire network
Paul has both strong ties and weak ties with several contacts. In the network of the pupils, he is the node who connected his students with each other. In the Jerusalem community the ties were weak and Barnabas was his broker. By the colleagues it differs per person how strong the ties were. It is clear in any case that Paul has not a centralized network. Not everything in its network of individuals were focused on himself. Now the question is whether Paul has a distributed or decentralized network. I think Paul has a decentralized network, because Paul is at the center with his pupils, regardless of the mutual links between the students, but to his colleagues and the Jerusalem community not. For example, in the Jerusalem community Peter and James stood central, which means that we actually have to deal with various central nodes, which in turn means that we are dealing with a decentralized network. Paul had a fairly large role in the spread of Christianity by several new communities and faith to preach in many areas. Probably he had a fairly large role in the spread of Christianity, but he was not the only who spread Christianity, and it is also not to say with certainty whether it was the largest distributor of this period.
Further reading
Barrett. C.K. On Paul: essays of his life, work and influence in the early church. Londen: Continuum. 2003.
Czachesz, Istvan. ”Women, charity and mobility in early christianity: weak links and the historical transformation of religions” in Changing minds: Religion and cognition through the ages. Leuven: Peeters. 2011.
Duling, Dennis C. “Paul’s Aegean Network: The Strength of Strong Ties”, in Biblical Theology Bulletin No 3 , Vol 22. 2013.
Horrell, David. An introduction to the study of Paul. Londen: Continuum. 2000.
Lietaert Peerbolte, Bert Jan. Paulus en de rest: Van Farizeeër tot profeet van Jezus. Zoetermeer: Uitgeverij Meinema. 2010.
Malkin, Irad. ”Preface: Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean”, in Mediterranean Historical review no. 1, vol. 22 . Londen: Routledge. 2007.
M.E.