Paul leaves Ephesus with the intention of returning to Jerusalem for the purpose of delivering the collection to the Jerusalem church at Pentecost. The collection was a gift from the Gentile churches to the Jerusalem believers. Romans 15:26 states that “Macedonia and Achaia were pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem,” a text written from Corinth in the three-month period after Paul’s Ephesian ministry.
Paul has does this sort collection for Jerusalem before. Before the first missionary journey in Acts 13, Paul delivered funds to Jerusalem collected by the Antioch church. This visit is the subject of Gal 2:1-10. In Gal 2:10 Paul said that the James had only encouraged him to “remember the poor.” The “poor” in mind here are the members of the Jerusalem church, the very people the famine visit was intended to help.
The Jerusalem appears to be still living in a sort of shared community, supported by gifts. Given a famine (and possibly a Jubilee year), the poor believers in Jerusalem were even more dependent on Antioch than ever. Ben Witherington wonders if the handshake was an agreement to continue the financial arrangements between the Antioch church and the Jerusalem church (Acts, 429). This is possible since the same sort of language appears in Acts 15 as well, although the collection is not mentioned.
The Collection was unique in the ancient world. The Greco-Roman world has a system of public benefaction, but nothing like a modern “fund-raiser” where people are solicited for money which is then distributed to the poor. Likewise, in Judaism the poor received Alms from individuals, but money was not collected in mass for re-distribution to the poor. Which the exception of Queen Abiabene, who brought relief to Jerusalem (Antiq. 20:51-51), there are no other examples of this sort of collection of funds.
Since Paul is collecting this money in the Greek world, it would have been unprecedented and would have looked very suspicious. Likely as not, the inclusion of representatives of the churches was meant to give confidence to the churches that Paul was not going to steal the funds and disappear. Notice that in Acts 20:4 there is a list of names traveling with Paul, all likely representatives of Paul’s churches in Macedonia (Thessalonica, Berea) Asia Minor (Derbe) Paul was careful to separate his own ministry from the Collection for the Saints. While he did not require churches to give to support him, he is adamant that churches “give what they can” to the Collection.
What is unusual is that Luke does not mention the collection at all, although that seems to be the point of the large part traveling back to Jerusalem at the time of Pentecost. Why Luke would omit this collection is a mystery – some have speculated that the collection was not well-received by the Jerusalem church, perhaps even rejected. The scene is rather tense in Jerusalem when Paul arrives with a large contingent of Gentiles to deliver the gift.
What was the “point” Paul was trying to make with this collection? If the collection was rejected, why would James (or the Jerusalem Christians) reject the generosity of the Gentile churches?
Bibliography: Dunn, Beginning from Jerusalem, 932-947; S. McKnight, “The Collection for the Saints” in DPL, 143-147. The collection is mentioned in 1 Cor 16:1-4, 2 Cor 8-9 and Rom 15:25-32.
Phillip, have you not answered the mystery yourself when you point out that the collection looked suspicious? Perhaps the “plot of the Jews” in Acts 20:3 was to tip off the Romans about Paul’s suspicious collection. This would explain why he had to take a circuitous route. In any case the questionable legality of the collection can explain why Luke does not mention it. Luke’s readers were probably around the Aegean and he did not want to get them into trouble by putting down in writing that they had made such a collection. If his readers already knew about the collection then he could honor Sopater, Aristarchus and the others by mentioning their names, but he did not want to be responsible for getting them arrested or giving them a bad reputation among the Romans, so he kept silent about the collection. Luke’s silence about the collection is a protective silence, isn’t it?
If Jerusalem had rejected the collection Luke could have kept silent about the rejection by still have mentioned the collection itself.
Luke does tend to remain silent on discontent (the Antioch Incident from Galatians, the undercurrent of anti-Paulinism in James’ church in Jerusalem, maybe Jewish-Christian congregations in Ephesus, etc). He wants to highlight the ‘tranquility” of the early Christian church, to point out the rejection of the Collection is a sign of discord among the earliest followers of Jesus.
Protective silence, indeed, but a very loud silence from this end of history.
Phillip, I am not convinced by your assertion that Luke has a tendency to remain silent about discontent in the church. Luke reports conflicts in the church at Acts 5:1-10; 6:1; 8:18-24; 11:2-3; 15:1-2; 15:5; 15:37-38; 15:39-40; 19:13-16; and 21:20-21.
You mention “the Antioch Incident from Galatians, the undercurrent of anti-Paulinism in James’ church in Jerusalem”. I think you are mis-reading Gal 2:11-14 here. Luke DOES mention the men from James. He does so at Acts 15:1, 24. Also, you may know that on my interpretation of Gal 1-2 the Antioch incident was mentioned by Paul precisely because he and Peter were in agreement on the Gentile question, not because they disagreed. I’m not sure what you have in mind by “Jewish-Christian congregations in Ephesus”.
You did not engage with my suggestion that Luke was silent about the collection because the Romans would have found it too suspicious. I think I am following Nickle here, if I remember rightly.