(Download) "An Anchor for Pauline Chronology: Paul's Flight from "the Ethnarch of King Aretas" (2 Corinthians 11:32-33)." by Journal of Biblical Literature " eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: An Anchor for Pauline Chronology: Paul's Flight from "the Ethnarch of King Aretas" (2 Corinthians 11:32-33).
- Author : Journal of Biblical Literature
- Release Date : January 22, 2002
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 255 KB
Description
At one point in his letters Paul briefly recounts his flight--by means of a basket lowered out of an opening in the walls of Damascus--from an ethnarch responsible to King Aretas (see 2 Cor 11:32-33 and Gal 1:15-24, esp. v. 18; an incident echoed by Acts 9:23-25). The king referred to by Paul here must be Aretas IV, king of Nabataea from 8 B.C.E. Although it was clearly not Paul's intention, his concise account of this dramatic episode creates the prospect of an absolute chronological marker for his life--a datum, if it proves determinable, of near incomparable importance since it would be our only such reference from his letters. This would then also link up with his sequence of Jerusalem visits, one of our most important sets of chronological data, since Paul went directly on this flight to Jerusalem for his first visit to the holy city since his call some three years earlier (so Gal 1:18, 21; 2:1). Thus, it could constitute the chronological anchor that Pauline biographers so desperately need; one to which an entire biographical framework for his life could eventually be connected. Unfortunately, however, when we turn to the secondary literature, we encounter first a widespread pessimism about the possibility of dating this incident accurately. (1) Even more worrying, it rapidly becomes apparent that much of this discussion is tendentious--the incident tends to be marginalized often because it seems to be so chronologically inconvenient for structures attached to other events and principles, rather than because of actual historiographical difficulties. (2) Hence the clarification of the debate is overdue. Even more importantly, it is in my view also quite possible to date this incident specifically.