Not Paul, but Jesus

by Jeremy Bentham

Neither of the occasion of it, nor of any individual occurrence which took place in the course of it, have we any account—from any other source than the history of the Acts. Paul's account is all in generals.

3. Paul's Jerusalem Visit the Second.—According to the Acts, Acts 11:30, "which also they did, and sent it to the Elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul," between these two indisputable interviews of Paul's with the Apostles occurs another visit, herein designated by the name of the Money-bringing Visit. Under the apprehension of a predicted dearth, money is sent from the Antioch to the Jerusalem saints. Barnabas, and with him Paul, are employed in the conveyance of it. Time, assigned to this Visit, A.D. 43. Of this visit, not any the least trace is to be found in any Epistle of Paul's. Yet, in this Epistle of his to his Galatians, he will be seen undertaking in a manner, to give an account, of every visit of his to Jerusalem, in which, with reference to spiritual dominion, between himself and the Apostles, anything material had ever passed.

By this silence of Paul's, no counter-evidence is opposed, to the account given of this visit in the Acts. What may very well be is,—that he went along with the money, and departed, without having had any personal communication with any Apostle, or even with any one of their disciples.

4. Deputation Visit. Paul's Jerusalem Visit the Third—say his Deputation Visit. According to the Acts,[22] Paul being at the Syrian Antioch, certain men came thither from Judea, teaching, that Mosaic circumcision is necessary to Christian salvation. Dissension being thus produced, Paul, and Barnabas as usual with him, are dispatched to confer on this subject with the Apostles and the Elders—Time, assigned to this visit, A.D. 52. Interval between the first and this third visit—years 15.

In addition to the first Jerusalem Visit, mentioned as above by Paul, to wit, in the first chapter of his Epistle to his Galatians,—in the second, mention is made of another.

Of the incidents mentioned by Paul, as belonging to this other visit, scarcely can any one, unless it be that of his having Barnabas for a companion, be found, that presents itself as being the same with any incident mentioned in the Acts, in the account given of the above named Deputation Visit. But, between the two accounts, neither does any repugnance manifest itself: and, forasmuch as, in a statement, the purpose of which required that no interview, in which anything material passed between him and the Apostles, should pass unnoticed,—he mentions no more than one visit besides the first,—it seems reasonable to conclude, that it was but one and the same visit, that, in the penning of both these accounts, was in view.

As far as appears, it is from the account thus given by Paul of the second, of the two visits mentioned by him as made to Jerusalem, that the received chronology has deduced the year, which it assigns to the Deputation Visit, as recorded in the Acts.

In Paul's account alone—in Paul's, and not in that in the Acts—is the distance given in a determinate number of years. According to one of two interpretations, 17—the number above mentioned as adopted in the current chronology—is the number of years mentioned by Paul as intervening between those two visits. But even in this place, a circumstance that must not pass altogether unnoticed is,—that, according to another interpretation, to which the text presents itself as almost equally open, the length of the interval would be considerably greater. Galatians i. 17: "Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were Apostles before me: but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days." After what period?—after that of his conversion? or after the expiration of this his second visit to Damascus? Reckoning from this latter period, the interval may be ever so much greater than that of the three years: for, to the three years may be added an indefinite length of time for the second, and even for the first, of his abodes at Damascus. But, as we advance, reason will appear for concluding, that, being in the eyes of the Damascus rulers, as well as the Jerusalem rulers, a traitor—in the highest degree a traitor—his abode at Damascus could not, at either of these times, have been other than short as well as secret.

Gal. ii. 1: "Then, fourteen years after, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and took Titus also." This being supposed to be the Deputation Visit, these fourteen added to the former three, make the seventeen.