In Acts 16:1 we are told that Paul met Timothy in Lystra, in south Galatia. Most

commentators assume from this that Timothy was a resident of Lystra.(1) However,

we should consider the possibility that Timothy was from Antioch and was only

visiting Lystra. This is quite possible since Timothy was Paul’s envoy (1 Cor. 4:17;

16:10; Phil. 2:19-23, 1 Thess. 3:2,6; Acts 19:22). The fact that Luke does not

mention the journey of Timothy to Lystra is no argument against the theory, since,

as we shall see, Luke has a relative disinterest in the movements of Paul's

companions.

Consider the case of Mark-John who is in Jerusalem in Acts 12:25 and suddenly

appears without explanation in Salamis in Acts 13:5. Consider also Silas, who was

sent to Jerusalem in Acts 15:33, but is chosen by Paul in Antioch in Acts 15:40

and is not mentioned again until Acts 16:19. The reader is left to guess how Silas

came to return to Paul after departing for Jerusalem. It is clear that Luke’s focus in

this section is on Paul, and he did not feel obliged to give the movements of Silas.

Nor does Luke feel the need to record the conversion of Timothy, who is already a

Christian in Acts 16:1. Therefore, we cannot deduce anything directly from Acts 16:1

about Timothy's place of origin. Luke tells us only the location of Timothy when Paul

arrived, not Timothy’s place of residence, and we should not let the mind supply

what is lacking in the text.

Also the silence of Acts about Timothy’s journey to south Galatia is to be expected

if his mission was to organize a collection for Judea, as will be argued below.

A possible collection at this time

Rainer Riesner suggests that the famous Judean famine lasted from C.E. 44-49. (2)

Even if weather conditions were favorable during the Sabbath year of C.E. 48-49,

the prohibition of agricultural labour would have prevented the harvest. It was normal

for Jews to store grain in the non-Sabbath years, to prevent food shortages in

Sabbath years, but the recent (or ongoing) famine will have prevented this kind of

provisioning. Now, Paul’s Gal 2 visit to Jerusalem can be dated to the Sabbath year

of 48-49 (see on Barsabbas). Gal. 2:10 reads, ‘They asked only one thing, that we

remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do.’ As has often been

suggested, it is likely that here Paul and his friends were asked to send funds to

help poor Christians in Judea. Given the urgent need arising from the combination of

the crop failures and the Sabbath year, we can be confident that Paul responded

immediately to this request. This can be combined with 1 Cor. 16:1-3, ‘Now

concerning the collection for the saints: you should follow the directions I gave to

the churches of Galatia. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put aside

and save whatever extra you earn, so that collection need not be taken when I

come. And when I arrive, I will send any whom you approve with letters to take your

gift to Jerusalem.’ It therefore seems reasonable to suppose that Paul responded to

the request of the apostles (Gal. 2:10) by sending an envoy to the churches of

south Galatia to ask them to organize a collection. Some have supposed that the collection for Galatia mentioned in 1 Cor. 16:1 must have been at the same time as the collection from Corinth, but there is no evidence for this. The text makes perfect sense if the collection from Galatia was completed 6 years before 1 Corinthians was written. Paul would have told the Corinthians about the earlier Galatian collection when he first introduced the collection project to them. In 1 Cor 16:1-3 he asks them to set aside money at home. He tells them how to manage their own money in their own homes and even tells them on which day of the week to do so! So, lest they feel that he is insulting them by treating them like a child with a piggy bank, he reassures them that he had given the same instructions to the Galatians. Paul’s reference to the Galatian collection therefore works well whenever that collection had been. There is no need to suppose that the Galatian collection was still in progress at the time of writing.

So, the sequence of events may be as follows:

1. Paul, Barnabas and Titus went to Jerusalem (Gal 2 & Acts 15) and were asked

to contribute to the poor.

2. Paul sent an envoy to Galatia to arrange the collection (alluded to in 1 Cor

16:1-3)

3. Paul himself went to Galatia (Acts 16:1).

The obvious choice of envoy would be Titus himself. He had been with Paul in

Jerusalem when the apostles requested assistance for the poor, and he would

therefore be well qualified to communicate the Judean Christians' need to the

churches. Also, Titus had enthusiasm for such collections (see 2 Cor. 8:6, 16-17).

Furthermore, as Gal. 2:11-14 indicates, Paul had lost confidence in the Christian

Jews of Antioch, so his choice of qualified envoys was limited.

Now, it is not surprising that Luke fails to mention this collection from Galatia, for he

only gives the slenderest retrospective reference to the later collection (Acts 24:17).

On any hypothesis he fails to mention that the apostles requested Paul to

remember the poor (Gal. 2:10). Luke's silence about Titus-Timothy's journey from

Jerusalem to south Galatia is entirely in keeping with his general silence about the

collections.

The Jewish community in Timothy’s home town

Timothy had a Jewish mother, so there must have been a Jewish presence in his

home town. Timothy himself was probably observant of Jewish traditions and

practices, because otherwise Paul would not have circumcised him. It is therefore

hard to imagine that Timothy was not brought up within a Jewish community.

Josephus tells us that Jews were "particularly numerous in Syria", and, ‘it was at

Antioch that they specially congregated’ (BJ 7.45). Jews in Antioch numbered

25,000 - 65,000.(3) In contrast, we have no evidence of a Jewish presence in Lystra

or elsewhere in the region that spoke the Lycaonian tongue, and Acts mentions no

synagogue there.

The Jews in Timothy’s home town accepted uncircumcised men in their community

Paul wrote to the Galatians, "Behold, I, Paul, say to you that if you practice

circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. And again I testify to every man

that is being circumcised that he is under obligation to perform the whole law." This

is consistent with Paul’s circumcision of Timothy if Timothy, unlike the

uncircumcised Galatians, was observant of the rest of the law from prior to his

conversion. Timothy would then be in a very different situation from the Galatians,

and Paul’s language would be explicable. The fact that Timothy had remained

uncircumcised suggests that the Jews in his home town were not strict on the

circumcision issue. We are told that Timothy's father was a Greek, though his

mother was a Jew, and this proves an intermingling between Jews and Greeks. This

confirms that the Jews in Timothy’s home town were accepting of uncircumcised

males in their midst.

All this fits Antioch well. Josephus says of the Jews of Antioch that "they were

constantly attracting to their religious ceremonies multitudes of Greeks, and these

they had in some measure incorporated with themselves" (BJ 7.45). So, while

Tacitus makes the generalization about Jews, "They will not feed or intermarry with

gentiles." (Tacitus, The Histories 5.5), Antioch may have been exceptional.

Furthermore, Acts tells us that Antioch became the first major centre of Gentile

Christianity (Acts 11:19-26), and this also suggests an acceptance of the

uncircumcised by the Jews there. It is interesting to observe that Peter ate with

Gentiles in Antioch, and that "those from James", not local Jews, caused his

change of behavior (Gal. 2:11-12). The "Dictionary of Paul and his Letters"(4)

describes Antioch as "A huge, wealthy and cosmopolitan city where barriers of

religion, race and nationality were easily crossed - and where toleration may have

been a matter of civic pride". It is easy to imagine a Jewess marrying a Greek in

Antioch and having a son whose uncircumcised state was accepted by the Jewish

community there.

On the other hand, if Timothy was from Lystra, it is more difficult to explain the

mixed union of his parents, or why his circumcision had not been required long

before it was. Acts tells us that Timothy was circumcised because of the Jews. If

these are the same Jews with whom Timothy had always lived, why had they not

insisted on his circumcision at some point during the years preceding Paul’s

arrival? Given Paul’s strong opposition to circumcision, it is odd that Timothy should

yield to the wishes of his Jewish neighbors only after coming under the influence of

Paul. It is possible to hypothesize that Timothy had not been particularly active in

the Jewish community prior to Acts 16:3, and had not been involved in evangelism,

and that his circumcision had consequently not been required. However, it is

doubtful that Paul would have chosen Timothy as a traveling companion if he had

not demonstrated an interest in the religious life of his community. If Timothy was

not experienced, why did Paul pick him? If he was experienced, why did he not

need to be circumcised earlier?

Paul’s letter to the Galatians is devoted primarily to the circumcision issue, but he

does not feel the need to explain why he circumcised Timothy. A simple

explanation of this is that the uncircumcised addressees were in a different

category from Timothy. If they were much less Jewish than Timothy in their

traditions and parentage, the precedent of Timothy would not have force for them.

This, too, suggests that Timothy was not from Galatia.

F.F. Bruce explains how Paul could have circumcised Timothy, "That he should

have done so is remarkable enough, in view of his strong language on this subject in

the Epistle to the Galatians; but Timothy’s was an exceptional case."(5) Here Bruce

is surely correct, in that the strong language on circumcision in Galatians shows

that the likes of Timothy were not represented among the addressees: he was

exceptional among them. However, Bruce also writes, "The statement that

Timothy’s Jewish mother … had married a Gentile suggests that a less exclusive

standard obtained in Asia Minor than in Palestine." This is unconvincing, and

Bruce’s arguments conflict: if less exclusive standards obtained in Asia Minor, then

Timothy would not have been exceptional. It was in Antioch that less exclusive

standards seem to have applied, so the home of Timothy and his parents is to be

sought there.

Timothy’s maturity in the faith

The Christian faith was new to Lycaonia, and Paul had visited only once before. We

can therefore assume that the believers there at the start of the second missionary

journey had no better an understanding of Paul’s gospel than the addressees of

Galatians and 1 Thessalonians at the times that those letters were written. They

were new to the faith and to Paul, and it is hardly possible that Paul would have

chosen one of them for the important task of sharing in his preaching work.

Timothy’s role was to preach the word of God, and to represent Paul as an

emissary (2 Cor. 1:19; 1 Cor. 4:17; Phil. 2:19-23; 1 Thess. 3:2-6). Would Paul

entrust one of the "foolish Galatians" or one of the novice Thessalonians with these

important tasks? It is rather more likely that Timothy was from Antioch and had

been taught there by Saul (Acts 11:25-26), and had worked with him in some

capacity for some years.

Language

Finally, it is probable that Timothy was fluent in Koine Greek, for his work would

have required it. It seems likely that Koine Greek was more widely used as a

mother tongue in Antioch than in Lystra, where Luke records Lycaonian as the main

tongue (Acts 14:11).

Recap

Interpreters have focused on trying to explain why Paul circumcised Timothy, but it

is also important to ask why he remained uncircumcised for so long, and why Paul

chose him as a fellow evangelist. The first and third questions can be solved by

appealing to Timothy’s Jewish observance, and experience in promoting Paul’s

gospel. However, these assumptions make it impossible to explain how Timothy

could have remained uncircumcised for so long. The dilemma is solved by placing

Timothy’s home in Antioch, not Lystra. All this amounts to a further reason to

identify Timothy with Titus, for both appear to have been from Antioch.

(1) Though Origen believed he was from Derbe (Orig.lat. on Rom. 16:21).

(2) Rainer Riesner, Paul's Early Period (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1998)

(3) L.M. McDonald, "Antioch (Syria)" in Dictionary of New Testament Background

Ed. C.A. Evans, S.E. Porter (Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 2000).

(4) J. McRay, ‘Antioch on the Orontes’, in Dictionary of Paul and his Letters Ed.

G.F. Hawhorne, R.P. Martin, D.G. Reid (Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1993).

5. (5)F.F. Bruce, The Book of Acts (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1965) 322.
   

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