Sha’ul’s Second Missionary Journey ~ Part 2

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 We continue our ongoing story of Sha’ul’s Second Missionary Journey beginning in Acts 16:1.

 ¹ Sha’ul came down to Derbe and went on to Lystra, where there lived a talmid named Timothy. He was the son of a Jewish woman who had come to trust and a Greek father.

 He was the son of a Jewish woman and, therefore, a Jew, not a Gentile. Many Believers suppose he was a Gentile for at least these two reasons: (1) At Numbers 1:2, God calls for a census of Israel “by their families, by their fathers’ houses.” (2) The genealogies in the Tanakh always mention the men and only rarely the women. Nevertheless, while legal responsibilities and entitlements are passed from father to son, Jewish and non-Jewish descent are invariably traced through the mother, not the father. The child of a Jewish mother and a Gentile father is Jewish, and the child of a Gentile mother and a Jewish father is Gentile. If a Gentile woman converts to Judaism, she is a Jew, and her subsequent children are likewise Jewish. The questions for us are, first, whether this was the case in the first century, and second, even if it was, is it authorized biblically? The conclusion that Timothy was a Jew and not a Gentile is important for understanding v. 3.

 Timothy was the son of a Jewish woman and a Greek father. Since exogamy (marrying outside one’s social group) violates Jewish law, an explanation is called for, although any conclusion must be a conjecture. Stern believes the most likely reason for Timothy’s mixed parentage is that Timothy’s mother, Eunice (2 Timothy 1:5), like many Jews today, was assimilated into the dominant Gentile culture around her and did not observe halakhah (Jewish Rabbinical Law). Before coming to the New Covenant faith, she married a non-Jew. Still, afterward, her pagan and nonbelieving husband left or died, after which she raised her son in the faith “from childhood” (2 Timothy 3:15). Possibly, she and Timothy went to live with her Messianic Jewish mother Lois (2 Timothy 1:5).

 ² All the brothers in Lystra and Iconium spoke well of Timothy. ³ Sha’ul wanted Timothy to accompany him, so he took him and did a b’rit-milah because of the Jews living in those areas, or they all knew that his father had been a Greek. ^[1]

Sha’ul… took him and did a b’rit-milah, implying that he had an expert mohel (“circumciser”) perform the operation. While Sha’ul had both Jewish ritual knowledge (Acts 22:3) and at least some manual dexterity (Acts 18:3), circumcising an adult is not a simple operation and typically requires a specialist.

Because of the Jews living in those areas, several non-Messianic Jewish thinkers have a high regard for Yeshua. Even if they don’t acknowledge Him as the Messiah, they consider Him to have been a good Jew whose teachings were well within the rulebook of Judaism and whose life can serve as an example to all.

Sha’ul’s detractors would say that his circumcising Timothy was motivated by sheer opportunism, that he did not care a whit about the commandment itself (see Acts 15:1) and, in fact, explicitly taught that circumcision didn’t matter at all (1 Corinthians 7:19; Galatians 5:6, 6:15), and that he circumcised Timothy only “because of” the Jews, that is, to conciliate them, so that they would not raise the issue.

But this theory conflicts with the New Testament evidence. Sha’ul himself observed the Torah to the end of his life and never taught Messianic Jews to stop observing it (Acts 21:20–27).

So, if “because of the Jews” does not mean to appease them, what does it mean? It means that even though it was not Sha’ul’s responsibility to have Timothy circumcised, he took it upon himself because he did not want Timothy’s uncircumcision to provoke questioning that would impede the Gospel. The Gospel contains the stumbling block of the Messiah’s death (1 Corinthians 1:23), and a good proclaimer of the Gospel will remove all other stumbling blocks if he can. That is the point: Sha’ul anticipated the problem and solved it.

Had Timothy been a Gentile, there would have been no problem. Jews were glad to welcome Gentile “God-fearers.” It is because Timothy was, in fact, Jewish by having a Jewish mother, yet uncircumcised because his Gentile father had not had him circumcised, and because this was widely known, there was danger of the Gospel’s being misrepresented as contrary to Judaism. ^[2]

Personal Note: I debated with myself on this post between what I have presented above about Timothy versus waiting until we got to the Letter to Timothy. I hope you agree that I chose wisely.

In our next post, we will continue to explore Shaul’s Second Missionary Journey, starting in chapter 6:4.

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^[1]Acts 16:1-3

^[2] All the commentary in this post is taken from: David H. Stern, Jewish New Testament Commentary, Ac 16:1-3.