The Apostles' Quarrel

Some of Paul’s early letters to the Galatians and Corinthians tell us of a bitter dissension between Paul and the Palestinian apostles, especially James and Peter. How severe was this conflict and what were its consequences?

Only if we accept the narrative of Acts as historically accurate, does there appear to have been some compromise between the Palestinian Christian community on the one hand, and Paul (Acts 15:1-31; 21:17-26). Paul appeared to confirm this compromise in Galatians 2:1-10.

The conflict was long in developing. Scholars often quote a statement by the Roman historian Suetonius that such a serious controversy about one “Chrestus” among Jewish citizens that Emperor Claudius banished them from Rome in 49 CE. According to Acts Paul arrived in Rome about 58 CE and continued teaching under house arrest, presumably until his death.

As he reported in Galatians Paul had met James, Peter (Cephas) and John in Jerusalem and agreed with them that he would minister to the Gentiles while they continued to minister to Jews. (Gal. 1:18-19; 2:8-10) Subsequently he confronted Peter and others in Antioch about their withdrawing from eating with Gentiles when delegates came from James in Jerusalem. (Gal. 2:11-14).

Paul did admit in 1 Corinthians 9:20-21 that while with Jews he lived as a Jew and with Gentiles as a Gentile. Yet in Galatians 5:2-6 he charged that anyone accepting circumcision as a condition of belonging to Christ was actually cutting him or herself off from Christ. Any inconsistency of his views disappeared in writing 2 Corinthians 10 to 13 where his language implied that he would brook no interference from other apostles with his work among Gentiles. (2 Cor. 11:1-5, 12-15; Phil. 3:1-7)

Today leading Roman Catholic scholars no longer believe that either Peter or Paul were the founders of the Christian community in Rome. In the 2^nd century the tradition arose that both apostles died during Nero’s persecution in the mid-60s CE. In later centuries, the Church ignored this controversy between them. Tradition associated Peter and Paul so closely that their names were remembered together in ancient and modern church art and architecture all over the world.

James D. Tabor is certain that in the end Paul won the struggle for dominance among the Greek-speaking congregations of the Roman Empire. Toward the end of the 1^st century it was either the community in Antioch or Ephesus that began to circulate Paul’s authentic and attributed letters. Tabor further claims that Paul’s teaching also greatly influenced the writing of the gospels, especially the three earliest, Mark (ca. 70 CE), Matthew (ca. 80 CE) and Luke (ca. 90 CE).

Thus, by the end of the 1^st century Paul’s views were dominant in Christian communities all over the Roman Empire. The first true Christian historian, Eusebius (ca. 260-340 CE), stated that at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, Christians there fled to Pella, east of the Jordan River. At the end of the 2^nd century, a Christian sect there, the Ebionites, were condemned as heretics by Irenaeus (ca. 120-200 CE). Paul’s triumph coloured Christian history thereafter.