I can’t stand it. I just can’t stand it when scholars play fast and loose with the facts.
On Bart Ehrman’s YouTube channel earlier today, Robyn Faith Walsh asked, “Did Paul Really Persecute Christians?” In less than seven minutes, she offered her “interpretation” on the matter, which is that Paul did not persecute Christians, but rather “pursued” them in an effort to correct their bad teaching. Ten hours later, the video had already garnered over four thousand views. Walsh gave two main arguments in support of her interpretation, both of which I will address here. I will cite the video in (approximate) minutes and seconds in parentheses.
Acts: An Unhistorical Second-Century Work?
First, Walsh dismisses the account in Acts as unhistorical. According to Walsh, Acts was probably written in the second century—perhaps late in the second century—and cannot be trusted as a source of historical information. “It is a later text, second century, scholarship tends to believe, maybe a little bit even later into the second century and definitely looking to establish Paul as a real founding figure of early Christianity many decades after his lifetime” (1:11–20).
The fact is that scholars have dated Acts anywhere from the 60s to sometime in the second century, and if we are just asking what “scholarship tends to believe” (which calls for some sort of generalization as to what view dominates the academic field) the answer is that the second-century position has by far the least advocates. In 2012, Craig Keener—who does not take the usual conservative view that I do—summarized the scholarship as follows:
Of the four positions surveyed below, the centrist position (70s–80s), which I hold, has by far the most adherents (perhaps four times as many adherents as supporters of a second-century date); probably the early date (60s) is second in number of adherents (Pervo cites more than thirty scholars); a date in the 90s ranks third; and the second century (clustering toward its beginning) boasts the fewest adherents.[1]
In a footnote, Keener explains that he is deriving these statistics from Richard Pervo, one of the small number of scholars favoring a second-century date. Pervo catalogued just eleven scholars advocating a date of AD 100 or later, as compared to ninety-nine favoring dates in the first century! Pervo himself argued for a date around 115, hardly “later into the second century.” And the overall picture of Acts scholarship on this issue has not changed.
This isn’t the place to present a defense of the historical value of Acts. A lot of good work has been done on this issue, which Walsh apparently doesn’t know about or chooses to ignore.[2] It is simply a fact, however, that there is a near consensus in contemporary scholarship that Acts was written in the first century.
Is “Persecute” a Mistranslation?
Second, Walsh seeks to debunk the idea that Paul persecuted the church by arguing that the word translated “persecute” doesn’t have that meaning when referring to Paul’s pre-Christian activities. She admits that the idea is commonly found in Philippians 3 (she is referring specifically to Philippians 3:6, where Paul calls himself “a persecutor of the church”). She states that if you look up the Greek word used here, διώκων (diōkōn), while “persecute” is an option “the primary definition of this word tends to be ‘pursue.’” She goes on to comment:
As far as I know, this is the only time when we see it in Philippians that we actually translate the word as ‘persecute’ with that negative connotation. The word actually does appear in Luke, in Matthew, and you actually see it again in Paul’s letter to the Romans, and every single one of those cases it’s this idea again of pursuit, even sometimes in a really positive way. For example in Romans 12:13 he talks about how he’s basically going to pursue hospitality (2:00–3:30).
Well.
The word διώκω in all its forms occurs 45 times in the NT. Let’s break down its usage. Considering the source of this claim, I will use the NRSVue (Updated Edition) as my base translation for this analysis.
“persecute” (29): Matt. 5:10, 11, 12, 44; 10:23; Luke 11:49; 21:12; John 5:16; 15:20 [bis]; Acts 7:52; 9:4, 5; 22:4, 7, 8; 26:14, 15; Rom. 12:14; 1 Cor. 4:12; 15:9; 2 Cor. 4:9; Gal. 1:13, 23; 4:29; 5:11; 6:12; Phil. 3:6; 2 Tim. 3:12
“pursue” in a violent context (3): Matt. 23:34; Acts 26:11; Rev. 12:13 [marg. “or persecuted”]
“pursue” (or synonymous term) in a nonviolent context (13): Luke 17:23; Rom. 9:30, 31; 12:13; 14:19; 1 Cor. 14:1; Phil. 3:12, 14; 1 Thess. 5:15; 1 Tim. 6:11; 2 Tim. 2:22; Heb. 12:14; 1 Peter 3:11
As this tabulation shows, in some 70 percent of NT occurrences, the word διώκω expresses the idea of persecuting people. Flatly contradicting Walsh’s assertion, the word always has this meaning in Matthew (six occurrences). It also means to persecute in two of its three occurrences in Luke. It even has this meaning once in Romans specifically—and in ten of its eighteen occurrences in what Walsh would consider the authentic epistles of Paul (she doesn’t consider the epistles of Timothy to be Pauline).
We should also consider closely related words that also occur in the NT. The personal noun διώκτην, “persecutor,” occurs once (1 Tim. 1:13). The abstract noun διωγμός, “persecution,” occurs ten times in the NT, always with this meaning (Matt. 13:21; Mark 4:17; 10:30; Acts 8:1; 13:50; Rom. 8:35; 2 Cor. 12:10; 2 Thess. 1:4; 3:11 [bis]).
It is correct that διώκω has a negative sense only once within Philippians (3:6). The only other two occurrences in Philippians, in which the word is used positively, come later in the same passage (3:12, 14). Somewhat surprisingly, Walsh doesn’t mention or appeal to this data. Might the positive sense of the verb in those later two occurrences in the passage support a positive sense in Philippians 3:6? No. Paul gives as one indication of his basis for confidence “in the flesh” (which he eschews, Phil. 3:3–5) that he was, “as to zeal, a persecutor of the church” (3:6). Since this expression refers to his pre-Christian activity as a Pharisee, it cannot mean that he was “pursuing” the church in a positive sense. The connection with the later uses of the same word is not hard to see. Paul abandoned his activity of “pursuing” the church to cause it suffering and instead began “pursuing” sharing in Christ’s sufferings as the means to God’s upward call (3:10–14). This switch from the negative to a positive sense is rhetorically an instance of irony.
We see the same pattern in the only other Pauline text that Walsh cites: “Contribute to the needs of the saints; pursue [διώκοντες] hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute [διώκοντας] you; bless and do not curse them” (Rom. 12:13–14). Here the practice of believers pursuing kindness toward strangers is contrasted with the practice of others pursuing harm toward believers.
Finally, it is shocking that Walsh ignores the other references to Paul’s pre-Christian activities aimed at the church. I quote here only from the epistles that she and other critical scholars regard as authentically Pauline:
“For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” (1 Cor. 15:9).
“You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. . . . I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea that are in Christ; they only heard it said, ‘The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy’” (Gal. 1:13, 22–23).
Paul clearly acknowledged, to his shame, that he had persecuted the church, even doing so “violently,” with the intention of trying to “destroy” it. No translation sleight of hand can get around these statements.
Further comment seems unnecessary.
NOTES
[1] Craig S. Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012–15), 1:384.
[2] In addition to Keener’s commentary, see (for example) Colin J. Hemer, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History, ed. Conrad H. Gempf, WUNT 49 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1989); Darrell L. Bock, Acts, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007).