Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

COLLECTION

Paul’s collection of funds from gentile churches for the Christian community in Jerusalem in ca. 53-56 c.e. (Gal. 2:10; Rom. 15:25-32; 1 Cor. 16:1-4; 2 Cor. 8–9; cf. Acts 24:17). The Jerusalem church’s understanding of the agreement at the Apostolic Council to “remember the poor” (Gal. 2:10) is best sought in their self-designation as the faithful eschatological community (“the poor”), rather than in their economic poverty. Most studies assume that Paul considered the collection a demonstration of or a method of achieving ecclesiological unity, but there are problems with this assumption. Clearly Paul initially acknowledged the Jerusalem church’s eschatological priority and saw the collection as a visible connection between the two Christian missions. But after the Galatian controversy, Paul also envisioned the collection as proof of the reality of God’s grace among the Gentiles and as a symbolic gentile pilgrimage that would signal the eschaton. By the time he wrote Romans, Paul sought only to acknowledge the Gentiles’ historical debt to Jerusalem through economic relief. Other interpretive issues include: the relationship of the collection to the famine relief in Acts 11 and to the temple tax; Paul’s rhetoric persuading churches to contribute, and their response; and the absence of certain cities from the catalogs of participants (cf. Rom. 15:26; 1 Cor. 16:1; Acts 20:4).

Bibliography. D. Georgi, Remembering the Poor: The History of Paul’s Collection for Jerusalem (Nashville, 1992).

Jennifer K. Berenson Maclean

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

COLLECTION

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)