A dear brother emailed me his question about Otis Q. Sellers‘s view of the circumstances of the Apostle Paul’s transition from his Pentecostal commission to the dispensation of Grace, which he announced at Acts 28:28. Answering him forced me to think carefully about the complexity of Paul’s situation in the late 60s and its significance for understanding one of the distinctives of Sellers’s biblical theology. I thought I’d memorialize this exchange here. I took the liberty of lightly copyediting my friend’s text.—AGF
I’ve been going through Otis’s study on Romans [my friend writes]. It’s been a long time since I spent time in this challenging Book. In Romans 1:7, Paul addresses his letter written approx. AD 58 clearly, “To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints . . . ” In numerous places—too many to cite—Paul confirms that he is writing primarily to a Jewish audience. I’m now on Chapter 6. A question struck me which I had never thought of before and that I could not provide a reasonable answer to myself, so I am going to ask you, Tony.
The question centers on Acts 28 where Paul is in Rome (AD 61+/-) and he has beckoned the “chief of the Jews together” beginning in verse 17. Here God sets the stage for one of the greatest historical events in world history. When they are gathered together before Paul, he explains what preceded his coming and why he is in Rome. It is because “for the hope of Israel I am bound with this chain.” And what was the response of the chiefs of the Jews? They said, “We neither received letters out of Judaea concerning thee, neither any of the brethren that came shewed or spake any harm of thee. But we desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest: for as concerning this sect, we know that every where it is spoken against.”
My question is how do you explain that these chief men of the Jews in Rome said they had never received letters concerning Paul, and they had no knowledge about the Lord’s death, burial, resurrection, the first coming of the Holy Spirit, etc. that was the beginning of the Jewish Christian “sect” when considering the following Scriptures:
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- In Acts 2:5 at the day of Pentecost, “there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men out of every nation under heaven.” And in verse 10, this included “strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes”
- Paul wrote Romans—a letter direct to the Jewish believers in Rome—expounding the most important and fundamental basis for the Christian faith! A letter that was written several years before he arrived in Rome.
How is it that the chief men of the Jews in Rome at the close of the Acts period were completely ignorant concerning Paul’s experiences, Jesus the Christ, and the new resultant “sect? What am I missing, Tony?
Here’s the answer I cobbled together yesterday. I welcome any critical feedback that may occur to my visitors.
I think you hit on an important issue, and once I started down that rabbit hole, I couldn’t stop. Let me think out loud on paper (so to speak).
There were the Jews in Rome who believed; the Jewish population and leaders in Rome generally; and what the Roman Jewish leaders meant when they said they had heard nothing about Paul. Acts 28 doesn’t say Roman Jews were ignorant of Christianity. What they said, as you know, is:
“We neither received letters out of Judaea concerning thee, neither any of the brethren that came shewed or spake any harm of thee.”
They don’t say, “We have never heard of Jesus,” or “We know nothing about this new sect.”
Rather, they immediately add “for as concerning this sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against.”
What they claim not to know is that Paul himself is a matter of concern, either from letters sent ahead from Judea or from brethren who had come to Rome and reported against him. That is, “We haven’t received any dossier on you. We know Christianity is controversial, however, and we’d like to hear your version.”
Verse 23 says they came to Paul’s lodging “in great number,” and Paul spent the whole day “expounding and testifying the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus.” The passage gives us no reason to think these men were ignorant of Jesus, his death, resurrection, Pentecost, or the Christian movement.
You say “Paul confirms that he is writing primarily to a Jewish audience.” Romans 1:7 says: “To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints.” That’s not “to the Jews in Rome.” Paul tells us whom he has in mind: “I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise” (1:14). “For I speak to you Gentiles” (11:13). Romans 16 lists names, many of which are hard to characterize as Jewish.
Romans has a lot of stuff about Israel, the Law, circumcision, Abraham, Jewish privilege, the problem of Israel’s unbelief, and so forth, but that doesn’t make its primary audience Jewish. In fact, Romans 9–11 makes good sense if Paul is addressing a mixed Jewish-Gentile community in which Gentile believers need to understand their relationship to Israel. Your implied argument—Roman Jews existed in Acts 2, therefore the Jewish leaders in Rome in Acts 28 ought to have known what Paul was teaching in Romans—skips steps.
Acts 2:10: “strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes.” But these were Roman Jews who happened to be in Jerusalem for Pentecost. We don’t know which ones returned to Rome; whether they became believers; whether they remained in Jerusalem; whether they were connected with the Roman synagogue leadership; whether they ever communicated with the Roman Jewish authorities; or what they communicated if they did. Luke [who penned The Acts of the Apostles] doesn’t tell us that the Roman Jewish community was founded by the Pentecost visitors, although that’s a reasonable possibility.
There’s a chronological gap. Pentecost happens around 30; Paul reaches Rome around 60–61. Even if some Pentecostal converts returned to Rome and formed a Christian community, that tells us nothing about whether the Jewish leaders summoned by Paul in Acts 28 were themselves Christians or had direct knowledge of Paul’s ministry.
Romans was written to Christians in Rome, not to the “chief of the Jews.” The people who received and circulated Paul’s letter were (presumably) members of the Christian communities in Rome. There’s no reason to suppose the Jewish leaders whom Paul summons in Acts 28 had read it.
Romans could have been well known within the Christian community while remaining virtually unknown to the Jewish leadership. If Romans was written around 56–57 and Paul arrived in Rome around 60–61, that’s only three or four years. The existence of one of Paul’s letters circulating among Roman believers doesn’t entail that it circulated among unbelieving Jewish leaders.
“We have heard nothing about you” doesn’t imply “we have heard nothing about Christianity.” The Greek in Acts 28:21 is quite concrete:
οὔτε γράμματα περὶ σοῦ ἐδεξάμεθα ἀπὸ τῆς Ἰουδαίας
“We received no letters concerning you from Judea.”
And
οὔτε παραγενόμενός τις τῶν ἀδελφῶν ἀπήγγειλεν ἢ ἐλάλησέν τι περὶ σοῦ πονηρόν
“nor did any of the brothers who came report or say anything bad concerning you.”
The subject is Paul.
περὶ μὲν γὰρ τῆς αἱρέσεως ταύτης γνωστὸν ἡμῖν ἐστιν
“For concerning this sect, it is known to us…”
We haven’t heard anything about Paul, but about the sect, yes, we know about that.
Acts 28:17 says Paul: “called the chief of the Jews together.” That doesn’t mean Luke is assembling every Jewish religious authority in Rome into one room. It may mean prominent representatives of the Jewish communities. Rome’s Jewish population was hardly a monolithic synagogue with a single information network. The Jewish community was dispersed among numerous associations and synagogues and had been profoundly affected by the Claudian expulsion of the Jews.
So, it doesn’t follow from “Some Roman Jews knew about Christianity in 30” that “the Jewish leaders whom Paul meets in 60 must know everything about the Christian movement.”
The remarkable thing in Acts 28 isn’t that the Roman Jews had never heard of Christ. They had heard of the sect bearing His Name. The remarkable thing is what happens after Paul’s day-long exposition.
“And some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not.” (28:24)
After quoting Isaiah 6 Paul announces that “the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and that they will hear it.” (Acts 28:28) Luke concludes: “And when he had said these words, the Jews departed and had great reasoning among themselves.” (28:29)
So, the great Acts 28 event does not require the Roman Jews to be ignorant of Christianity beforehand. The issue is rather their response to Paul’s testimony about the kingdom of God and Jesus and Paul’s consequent declaration concerning the Gentiles.
In other words, I wouldn’t try to solve your problem by constructing a theory explaining why the Roman Jewish leaders somehow had never heard of Jesus, Pentecost, the Christian sect, or Paul’s gospel. The text doesn’t say that. It says something considerably narrower.
Sellers’s answer to your question in Seed & Bread [hereafter, SB] 177–178 doesn’t sit comfortably with the wording of Acts 28:21. He does teach that Romans was written to Jews in Rome. In “Rightly Dividing Romans” (SB177), Sellers argues that the letter’s recipients were Israelites in the Roman dispersion. He interprets Acts 2:5, 10 as referring to Roman Jews who had settled in Jerusalem, not visitors who would return to Rome after Pentecost. He calls the latter opinion “pure moonshine.”
Sellers says there were about a hundred thousand Israelites in Rome, and “it was to this company of Israelites that the Roman epistle was addressed.” He then appeals to Romans 2:17, 3:1–2, and especially 4:1 (“Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh”) as evidence that Paul was addressing Israelites. In SB178, Sellers doubles down: God inspired Paul to write “an exceedingly important letter to the 100,000 Jews that lived in Rome,” and insists that recognizing the Israelite identity of the recipients of Romans is key to interpreting it. So, within his framework, your assumption that Romans was addressed to Jewish believers in Rome is correct. But he made a distinction: “believing Roman Jews” does not mean the “chief of the Jews.”
Sellers says (in SB178): “That there were believers in the Lord Jesus Christ among the Jews in Rome is true.” But he immediately adds: “these were not commissioned to herald the gospel to the Israelites dispersed among the nations.” Sellers didn’t say there weren’t any Jewish believers in Rome before Paul got there. On the contrary, Romans was written to them. But Sellers denies the standard reconstruction in which those converts at Pentecost returned to Rome, evangelized the city, and established a large Christian congregation.
So . . . Roman Jewish believers existed; evangelization by them did not imply an apostolic commission; the “chief of the Jews” in Acts 28 were a different constituency.
Yet, Sellers says Roman Jews “had not yet heard the gospel”: “The Romans had not yet heard the Gospel so they are neither credited with belief nor charged with unbelief.” A few lines later: “The Jews in Rome had not yet come under this responsibility.” Then he says that when Paul finally arrived: “They heard the gospel.” Is that close to what you were getting at?
Sellers seems to be distinguishing already believing Roman Jews from the larger body of Roman Israelites to whom Paul intended to herald the Gospel. Romans could therefore have been written to believing Israelites without implying that the Jewish population had received Paul’s apostolic presentation.
Sellers makes much of Luke’s use of ἐπιδημέω (epidēmeō) in Acts 2:10. He understands these Romans as people who had returned to the land of their fathers, having been born or raised in Rome, and who had settled in Jerusalem—not simply visitors who went back to Rome after Pentecost.
“Roman Jews at Pentecost” is not identical with “Roman Jewish evangelists who returned to Rome.” At least not necessarily.
Here’s the verse we need to pay attention to: “We neither received letters out of Judaea concerning thee, neither any of the brethren that came shewed or spake any harm of thee.” (Acts 28:21) And then: “for as concerning this sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against.” (Acts 28:22) Don’t interpret this to mean they knew nothing about Paul, Jesus, Pentecost, resurrection, and so forth.
The Greek is specific: γράμματα περὶ σοῦ (grammata peri sou) “letters concerning you.” And: τι περὶ σοῦ πονηρόν “anything evil concerning you.” The repeated περὶ σοῦ (“concerning you”) is important. They’re answering Paul’s explanation of why he’s there in chains. They’re not saying: “We have never heard of you.” And they certainly aren’t saying: “We have never heard of this sect.” Because in the next breath they say that they do.
Your puzzle isn’t: “How could they have known nothing about Christianity?,” but rather, “How could the chief men of the Roman Jews have had no information about Paul’s case, despite his having written Romans to Jewish believers in their city several years earlier?”
Look at this sentence in SB178. After saying Paul arrived in Rome and called the chief men together, Sellers writes: “They responded readily, their minds already prepared by the letter they had received.” What letter? Almost certainly Romans. This is intriguing, because Sellers has just argued that Romans was written to the Israelites in Rome.
Sellers’s apparent reconstruction is: Paul writes Romans; the Roman Israelites receive Romans; Paul arrives later; the leading Jews meet him with minds prepared by Romans; Paul gives them the climactic Acts-28 testimony.
Sellers believes not that Rome’s Jewish leaders were ignorant of Paul’s message, but rather that he regarded Romans as the preparation for Paul’s final testimony in Acts 28.
Yes, Acts 28:21 says they got no letters about Paul from Judea, but that’s not the same as saying: “We got no letter from you, Paul”! But why does Sellers describe them as prepared by “the letter they had received” if Acts 28 itself says nothing about their having received a letter? Perhaps he means that they had Romans, but that it wasn’t “concerning” Paul’s legal case. This would be the most natural reconciliation.
In other words, Paul says: I’m here because I’ve been imprisoned in Jerusalem and appealed to Caesar. I am not here because I committed an offense against Israel. I am here “for the hope of Israel.” To which they answer: We haven’t received any letters from Judea concerning you, nor has anybody come from there and spoken anything bad about you. In other words, they had Romans. But they had not received the Jerusalem Jews’ accusation against Paul. Those statements are logically compatible.
Romans was not a letter “from Judea concerning” Paul’s legal troubles, but a theological letter addressed to Roman Israelites. So, when Sellers says their minds were “already prepared by the letter they had received,” I think he’s probably referring to Romans, while Acts 28:21 refers to the absence of adverse communications from Judea about his case.
That all-day meeting in Acts 28 is not simply a Bible study in which Paul explains the faith to people who have never encountered it. Writing Acts, Luke wrote that Paul “expounded and testified to the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses, and out of the prophets, from morning till evening.” (Acts 28:23)
Paul isn’t starting off with: “Let me tell you about Jesus.” He’s expounding the kingdom of God from Israel’s Scriptures and persuading them concerning Jesus. And then: “some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not.” (28:24) Fifty-fifty. This is an apostolic presentation to Israel at the very end of the Acts period.
In SB178, Sellers says Roman Jews had not come under the responsibility associated with an apostolic heralding of the Gospel. Paul now gives them that credentialed presentation. Then comes the verdict of Isaiah 6:9-10, which Paul draws on in Acts 26-27, leading to 28:28.
As you said, “Here God sets the stage for one of the greatest historical events in world history.” Sellers would agree, but locate the event differently. The climactic event isn’t: “The Roman Jews finally discover Christianity,” but rather: “Israel, through its representative leadership in Rome, is apostolically confronted with the kingdom message one final time. Their response is unbelief.” Paul therefore announces the new authorization of the salvation-bringing message to the nations.
That’s how Sellers frames Acts 28:28. In “The Importance of Acts 28:28,” he argues that the statement marks the close of the Acts dispensation and the beginning of the Dispensation of Grace. He says that the all-day meeting with the chief Jews culminates in Paul’s declaration that the salvation-bringing message has now been “authorized” to the nations.
Your puzzle isn’t that the chief men of the Jews in Rome were completely ignorant concerning Paul, Jesus Christ, the resurrection, Pentecost, and the new sect.
Acts 28 neither says nor implies that. And Sellers himself doesn’t seem to believe that.
In SB178 he says the Roman Jews were “already prepared by the letter they had received.” I’d reframe your question this way:
If Romans was written to the believing Israelites in Rome, and if the foremost Jews there were prepared by that letter, what do they mean in Acts 28:21 when they say that they had gotten no letters about Paul from Judea? And how did the believing Roman Israelites relate to the “chief of the Jews” whom Paul summoned?
That’s a difficult and worthwhile question. It forces us to ask whether “the Jews in Rome” in Romans and “the chief of the Jews” in Acts 28 constitute the same identifiable group—or overlapping but distinct constituencies.
Sellers’s wording—“their minds already prepared by the letter they had received”—deserves a closer look, because if that sentence isn’t merely shorthand, it may give us Sellers’s own solution to what’s puzzling you.
If I may clarify: saying that Acts 28:21 refers to Paul’s legal case is part of the answer, but not the whole answer. Start with Romans. Paul has not yet been to Rome. In Romans 1:8–13 he thanks God for their faith, that he prays for them continually, that he longs to see them, and that he has repeatedly intended to visit them but has been “let hitherto.” Romans 15 says much the same thing: Paul has been “much hindered” from coming to them and now intends to visit them on his way to Spain. So, whatever we make of the identity of the Roman recipients, Paul has not previously visited them. This is important in Sellers’s interpretation. The picture is not Paul evangelizing Rome, then writing Romans, then returning, but Paul having a relationship with believers in Rome through correspondence and through the network of believers associated with him, while not yet having personally carried his apostolic ministry there.
If we follow Sellers, Paul has not evangelized the Roman Israelites, yet he has written them an extraordinarily important letter. We therefore need to distinguish personal apostolic proclamation from apostolic correspondence. The Roman Israelites could possess Paul’s written exposition without having personally heard him proclaim his message. That distinction becomes crucial in Acts 28.
Sellers’s reconstruction implicitly gives us at least three groups:
(1) Israelites in Rome who had become believers, to whom Romans was addressed;
(2) the wider body of Israelites in Rome, who were not necessarily believers and had not necessarily received Paul’s apostolic testimony; and (
3) the “chief of the Jews” whom Paul summons in Acts 28, prominent Jewish representatives with whom he deliberately initiates contact after arriving in Rome.
Your question assumes that the people who received Romans and the “chief of the Jews” were necessarily the same identifiable group. The text does not establish that identity.
Now put Acts 28:17 alongside Romans 15. Paul arrived in Rome and, three days later, “called the chief of the Jews together.” He explains that he has been delivered into the hands of the Romans and says, strikingly, that it is “for the hope of Israel” that he is bound with his chain. He does not say he has come to establish a church, nor does he introduce himself simply as the author of Romans. He frames his imprisonment in terms of Israel’s hope, which is entirely consistent with Sellers’s understanding of Paul’s Acts-period ministry.
When Paul wrote Romans, he was still planning to go to Jerusalem, then Rome, and then Spain: “When therefore I have performed this, and have sealed to them this fruit, I will come by you into Spain.” But what actually happens? He goes to Jerusalem, is arrested, and eventually reaches Rome as a prisoner. The Paul who wrote Romans envisioned coming to Rome as an active apostle on his way to Spain; the Paul who arrives in Acts 28 arrives in chains. Yet the explanation he gives the Roman Jewish leaders for those chains is “for the hope of Israel.” Thus Acts 28 is almost the dramatic realization of Romans 15 under circumstances radically different from those Paul had anticipated.
Romans itself is also informed by the very kingdom/Israel/nations framework that Sellers sees as belonging to the Acts period. Romans 9–11 deals extensively with Israel, the promises, Israel’s stumbling, and the nations; Romans 15:12 quotes Isaiah concerning the Root of Jesse who will rise to reign over the nations. Romans and Acts 28 should therefore not be treated as though Romans were simply “Christian doctrine” and Acts 28 were an unrelated later episode. In Sellers’s system, Romans belongs to the Acts-period drama that culminates in Acts 28:28.
So what did the Roman Jewish leaders know? I would answer cautiously.
They knew there was a controversial Jewish sect; they knew the sect was widely spoken against; presumably they knew something about its teachings; and, if Sellers is right about their having received Romans, at least some of them knew a substantial amount about Paul’s theological argument.
What they did not know was what had happened to Paul personally, what charges Jerusalem had brought against him, what communications had been sent concerning his imprisonment, and, most importantly, they had not yet heard Paul’s final apostolic testimony in person. The distinction is therefore not simply ignorance versus knowledge, but partial or inherited knowledge; direct apostolic confrontation; official response; dispensational change.
This is what you might be “missing.” You may be treating “the Jews in Rome” as though Luke, in writing Acts, uses that expression to identify one homogeneous group. But Sellers’s interpretation forces us to disaggregate them: the believing Israelites addressed by Paul in Romans, the wider Roman Jewish population, the prominent Jewish representatives whom Paul summons in Acts 28, and the Roman Jews who happened to be in Jerusalem at Pentecost are not necessarily the same people. Once those distinctions are made, the apparent logical tension becomes much smaller.
One loose thread: Sellers’s statement that the Roman Jews’ minds were “already prepared by the letter they had received” deserves to be taken seriously. If he means Romans, then he has implicitly answered your question: the Roman Jews were not ignorant of Paul’s teaching; Acts 28:21 concerns communications about Paul’s personal situation, not the existence of Paul’s letter. But if Sellers means something else, we would need to know what. I therefore think the best answer is not that you have discovered an insoluble contradiction (which you never claimed), but that you’ve conflated several different constituencies and several different kinds of knowledge.
The more precise question is: if Romans was written to believing Israelites in Rome, and if the foremost Jews in Rome were apparently prepared by that letter, what precisely do they mean in Acts 28:21 when they say they had gotten no letters concerning Paul from Judea, and how did those believing Roman Israelites relate to the “chief of the Jews” whom Paul summoned? That, I think, is the genuinely interesting question, and it can be answered without making Acts 28:21 say that they never heard of Christ or Christianity.
Thanks for occasioning this study, my friend!