The
Apostle Paul, Asian Diaspora and Mission Article by Kirk Franklin, Wycliffe International
Introduction
This paper
analyses the characteristics of the biblical Jewish Diaspora
and the Septuagint Scriptures and synagogues that were
important to them. It analyses the Apostle Paul and his
missionary bands’ strategy of visiting
the Diaspora synagogues as a base for their ministry.
It then looks at the contemporary Asian church’s
mission vision and how this might correspond with the
Asian Christian Diaspora in Australia and how they can
become a greater force of ‘new’ missionaries
in the world today.
The Jewish Diaspora
The term ‘diaspora’ means the scattering
of the people of God (the Jews) ‘in the midst of
a hostile environment’ (De Ridder 1975:215). Oxford’s
Concise Dictionary defines ‘diaspora’ as
the ‘dispersion of the Jews among the Gentiles
mainly in the 8-6th Century BC’ (Moore 1997:364).
In Germany the term ‘is used of members of any
religious body living as a minority among those of other
beliefs’ (Cross 1974:399).
The Hebrew terms for diaspora
translated in the Septuagint (LXX) ‘all have the sense of the process of 'leading
away, deportation, or exile, or of the state of those
led away, deported or exiled'’ (De Ridder
1975:215). After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD,
the Jews did become a people without a home. Thus the
meaning of diaspora evolved to cover all the Jews who
lived outside their original homeland.
‘The ancient world was characterised by continued
movements of peoples’ (DeRidder 1975:59). During
the inter-testament times and onward, Jewish communities
dispersed in countries across the civilized world. ‘From
at least the time of the fall of Jerusalem (586 BC),
and possibly even earlier, there were large Jewish communities
living outside Palestine’ (Bray 1996: 53). The
Assyrians, Babylonians, and Romans all took Jewish captives
to their respective nations. However, there was also ‘voluntary
emigrations of Jewish settlers during the Graeco-Roman
period to all the countries bordering Palestine, and
to all the chief towns of the civilized world, for the
sake chiefly of trade’ (Unger 1966:1153).
Accounts exist of Jewish Diaspora
settling in China (referred to as Sinim in Isaiah 49:12),
India, Arabia and Ethiopia (DeRidder 1975:60-69). Other
sources indicate ‘multitudes
of Jews in North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, Anatolia
and Italy’ (Bolt & Thompson 2000:264). Jews
were not the only race to disperse during this time.
There were also movements of Greeks, Phoenicians and
Assyrians who established colonies outside their homelands.
The NT makes mention of Jewish
Diaspora when the Jews in Jerusalem said about Christ’s ministry, ‘Will
he go where our people live scattered among the Greeks…’ (John
7:35). James in his epistle begins with ‘To: Jewish
Christians scattered everywhere…’ (James
1:1). Peter addresses the same audience, ‘To: The
Jewish Christians driven out of Jerusalem and scattered
throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Ausia and Bithynia’ (1
Peter 1:1). These NT references indicate that the Jews
were dispersed from at least the Mediterranean to Western
Asia.
A place of Jewish Diaspora significance
was the ‘great
intellectual centre [of] Alexandria’ (Bray 1996:49)
in Egypt. The Jews at Alexandria were ‘deeply immersed
in Hellenistic civilization’ (1996:53). By NT times,
there were at least a million Jews living in this city
(Cross 1974:399).
There was a strong connection
between the Jewish Diaspora communities and Jerusalem. ‘Through the [payment
of the temple] tax, Diaspora communities were linked
to and participated in the temple’s life and worship.
Diaspora literature shows deep respect for the holiness
of the temple’ (Evans & Porter 2000:292). The
temple was visited by regular pilgrimages of Diaspora
communities. This meant that Palestine held significance
as their Holy Land and was important to Jewish identity.
Diaspora Judaism’s missionary impact was great.
It ‘affected early Christianity, for the Jewish
Christians kept close contact with the synagogue communities’ (Winter & Hawthorn
1981:44). ‘According to the Talmud, the scattering
of Jews among the nations was for a missionary purpose: 'The
Holy One, blessed be he, did not exile Israel among the
nations save in order that the proselytes might join
them' (Pes. 87b)’ (Bolt & Thompson 2000:275).
The Septuagint and the Jewish Diaspora
‘The Septuagint [LXX] was the Bible of early Christianity
before the NT was written’ (Unger 1966:1149). It
was the translation of the entire Hebrew Bible (the OT)
into Greek. The name comes from a story that the translation
(circa 300 BC) was done ‘in seventy-two days by
seventy-two scholars sent from Jerusalem to Alexandria’ (Latourette
1975:15) during the reign and at the request of Ptolemy
Philadelphus. However, the LXX was ‘actually the
work of many different hands’ (1975:15) over many
centuries but likely still done in Alexandria as ‘Egyptian
Jews regarded the Torah as their key text’ (Evans & Porter
2000:292).
The LXX was a powerful force ‘in both Alexandrian
Judaism and in the philosophy of the Jewish Diaspora’ (Unger
1966:1149). Its use spread to all parts of the Greek
(Hellenistic)-Jewish world. Once the Diaspora began using
Greek, there was no turning back to Hebrew. As Christianity
emerged, ‘the use of Greek was fully accepted by
most Jews, and it seemed perfectly natural that the New
Testament should be written in that language’ (1996:48).
The LXX was important for the
Diaspora and Gentiles alike as it released them from
the narrow isolation of the Hebrew language and people
and gave them to the Graeco-Roman world through the
divinely prepared instrument of the Greek language,
the lingua frank of the Graeco-Roman age… It
was a definite factor in the preparation for the coming
of Christianity and the New Testament revelation (Unger
1966:1149).
Perhaps the most significant
contribution the LXX offered was the translation of
the proper name of ‘God’ in
Hebrew being ‘Yahweh’ to the Greek ‘kyrios’ meaning ‘Lord’ or ‘Master’.
This meant that the Gentiles did not see Yahweh as a
foreign deity ‘but that Israel was the elect people
of the God of the world’ (De Ridder 1975:87).
The LXX did contain a group of
books that were not in the Hebrew OT canon and this
caused some problems. ‘At
the time of the Reformation, these books were removed
from the Protestant canon and placed at the end, where
they are usually referred to as apocrypha (‘hidden’)
or more correctly, as deuterocanoncial (‘of secondary
status’) (Bray 1996:26).
The Diaspora Synagogues
The LXX was used for reading
and teaching in the synagogue services and therefore
it was taken throughout the entire civilized world. The
services played a crucial missionary role as they attracted
not only proselytes (Gentiles who adopted the complete
range of Jewish beliefs and practices, including circumcision)
but also a class it termed 'God-fearers' (Gentiles who accepted
most of Judaism’s ethics and some of its cultus,
but refused circumcision (Winter & Hawthorn 1981:44).
Constant contact by the Diaspora
with the surrounding Greek culture impacted the Jews’ identity and development. ‘Culture
Jews were not only Jews, but Greeks also, in respect
to language, education, and habits; and yet in the depths
of their hearts they were Jews’ (Unger 1966:1154).
Therefore the Diaspora felt a strong philosophical connection
with their ‘relatives’ in Palestine. The
synagogues were key to helping the Jewish Diaspora preserve
and uphold ‘the faith of their fathers’ (1966:1154).
The synagogue became the place
for the ‘popular
worship of God, without sacrifice, and the instruction
of the community in the implications of Scripture as
applied to living according to Yahweh’s will’ (De
Ridder 1975:77). The synagogue provided the avenue for
the religion of the Jew to be shared with the Gentile
as well as the Jew. The synagogue was a place of religious
revolution: ‘the creation of liturgy which was
not concerned with sacrifice was no small change in Jewish
life’ (1975:77). The synagogue placed Judaism on
display – ‘thrust on the world stage through
the Diaspora and Exile’ (1975:83).
The centres of the Jewish Diaspora
that included trading places, military stations, agricultural
settlements and synagogues ‘became a nucleus for the proselyting
of surrounding areas’ (1975:76). It was the Jews’ religion
that allowed them to exercise ‘a powerful influence
on the peoples with whom they were thrust into daily
contact’ (1975:76). Therefore, the strength of
Judaism ‘lay in the days of the Roman Empire in
the Diaspora, not in Judea and Galilee, for many of the
returned exiles showed their determination to continue
the association of the Jewish people with the history,
the religion, and the land of Israel’ (1975:76).
There are two ways of viewing
the Jewish synagogues: ‘a
kind of temporary measure invented by the Jews while
separated from the Jerusalem temple’ (Bolt & Thompson
2000:15) or the ‘legitimate expression of the gathering
of the people of God’ (2000:15). This later view
sees the synagogue as ‘an extension of the Old
Testament view of the ingathering of the Gentiles to
precisely the place where God gathered his people Israel’ (2000:15).
The Apostle Paul’s Missionary
Bands to the Jewish Diaspora
The Apostle Paul’s heritage was unique. His father,
while Jewish had the ‘highly prized privilege [of]
Roman citizenship’ (Latourette 1975:68). Paul was
born and raised in Tarsus, a Hellenistic (Greek) city
in Asia Minor. Therefore he was of Diaspora origin (Bray
1996:54). He knew Greek proficiently and was steeped
in the LXX. When he went on his missionary journeys,
he visited the Jewish Diaspora synagogues throughout
the Gentile region.
On his first journey, Paul preached in the synagogues
in Salamis, Cyprus (Acts 13:5), Antioch in Psidia (Acts
13:13) and he and Barnabas preached at the synagogue
at Iconium (Turkey) (Acts 14:1). On his second journey,
Paul and Silas preached in the synagogue in Thessalonica
(Acts 17:1) and Berea (Acts 17:10). Paul debated with
the Jews at the synagogue in Athens (Acts 17:17) and
spoke to the Jews and Greeks at the synagogue in Corinth
(Acts 18:4) then he was at the synagogue at Antioch of
Syria (Acts 18:19). Finally, on his third missionary
trip, Paul ministered in the synagogue at Ephesus (Acts
19:8).
Paul’s strategy was to visit important centres
of culture and trade in each area. He deliberately went
to the synagogues first. He knew the importance of these
centres meant communication spread from them to the surrounding
areas and beyond. Paul also knew that in order for the
nations to be gathered before the throne of God, proclamation
of the gospel was intended for the Jew first, wherever
they lived (Bolt & Thompson 2000:16).
Although Paul was aware of ‘his calling to the
Jews, his own people (Rom 10:1), Paul [saw] himself called
especially to be an apostle to the Gentiles’ (Verkuyl
1978:113). Therefore Paul was very adaptable to the contexts
he ministered in. ‘He could employ Palestinian-Jewish
concepts, Helenistic-Jewish concepts, and Hellenistic-Gentile
concepts as the occasion required’ (1978:113).
However, due to the success of Paul’s mission to
the gentiles,
Christianity quickly moved out
of the Jewish community and became prevailingly non-Jewish… This… was
highly significant: Christianity had ceased to be a Jewish
sect and, while having roots in Judaism, was clearly
new and different from their faith (Latourette 1975:75).
God prepared the way for the
Gentile mission through four bridging streams: the
Jewish Diaspora; their synagogues; the Scriptures in
the heart language (the LXX); and the messenger – the
Apostle Paul and his missionary bands.
Today’s Asian Church
and Asian Diaspora
The growth
of the contemporary global church has come as a surprise
to some.
What many pundits thought was
the death of the church in the 1960s through secularisation
was really its relocation and rebirth into the rest
of the world… The results
started to become visible in the last half of this century
as evangelical Christianity seemed to burst out into
a myriad different forms in a thousand places around
the globe’ (Hutchinson 1998:48).
An amazing story of growth has
been the Korean church. The Korea Research Institute
for Mission (KRIM) reports that at the end of 2000,
there were 8,103 Korean missionaries serving globally.
Korea is now the second largest missionary sending
country in the world only after the USA (Moon 2001:1).
What is so remarkable about this growth is that Korea
is a mono-ethnic and mono-cultural society. The Korean
missionary movement ‘was made possible only
with divine intervention and wisdom that chose the foolish
things and the weak things of the world to put to shame
the wise and the mighty (1 Cor 1:27,28)’ (2001:5). ‘It
is ironic [for Korean Christians] to be scattered around
the world to form diaspora communities, and even more
so to go out to save souls with the gospel’ (2001:1).
Just as the Korean church and its Diaspora have become
significant players in global missions, so to has other
parts of the Asian Diaspora. Is the later more suited
than western missionaries for outreach back into Asia?
In today’s ‘global village’ home and
overseas do not have the meaning they used to hold. So-called ‘diaspora’ workers
may not be considered cross-cultural missionaries in
the sense that they will be working alongside people
of their own ethnic group. They will not need to learn
the language of their target group since it is their
own language. However, they may be seeking to reach this
target group in another part of the world (Szto 2001:4).
The Diaspora can be mobile in
their missionary activity. For example, ‘A Singaporean missionary who had
served in Japan… could be strategically re-deployed
in Singapore to do evangelism among the Japanese in that
country’ (2001:4).
People of the same culture can
often be more effective in reaching people of that
culture. However, sometimes the opposite is true and
an outsider can be more effective than someone from
their own culture. While Asian Diaspora may be effective
back in an Asian mission context, they may find it
difficult to adapt to living and serving in poor, rural
and dangerous situations. ‘While
in many places Asian Christians have suffered much for
their faith, the present 'professional' Asian
missionary force probably has not come out of that kind
of a background’ (2001:4).
Australian Asian Christian Diaspora
‘People have carried their religions around the
globe for millennia, but this has become a far more common
phenomenon since the middle of the twentieth century’ (Hinnells
1997:682). This is due to communications, travel and
post WWII migration. The world’s major religions
such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam have been associated
with this migration (1997:683).
Migrants from Asian countries
such as China have steadily been arriving in Australia
for decades. However, many Australians tend to associate
recent migrants with the importation of pagan gods
and idols, and point to the rise of temples and mosques
as proof… interestingly
enough, though, many Hare Krishna devotees are Caucasian,
as are many Falun Gong followers. On the other hand,
there is a solid core of Chinese Christians in all the
major cities in Australia’ (Mok 2001:38).
An Australian Chinese church website lists 47 congregations
in Sydney, two in Wollongong, 33 in Melbourne, three
in Canberra, five in Brisbane, four in Adelaide, five
in Perth and one in Darwin.
Generally, these churches are
organised along ethnic lines (Hong Kong, Taiwan, East
Malaysia, etc.), since many are the result of church-planting
initiatives by 'missionaries' from 'mother' countries.
Thus the 'Bread of Life' churches are 'daughters' of
Lin Liang Tan in Taiwan, and Senior Pastor Cho Shen Zhu
makes periodic pastoral visits to Australia to oversee
his 'offspring' (Mok 2001:38).
According to an Internet listing of the Japanese churches,
there are seven in Australia. An Internet directory of
Indonesian Australian churches lists 19 congregations
12 of which are in Sydney. Melbourne is said to host
ten Filipino congregations and at least seven Korean
ones.
The Australian 1996 Census indicates
there are 4.2 million immigrants from 233 countries.
The primary Asian original homelands are China/Hong
Kong, India, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, India, Philippines
and Indonesia. Migration for Asians to Australia has
not however, been straightforward. ‘Australia’s
entry into the twentieth century was marked by anti-Asian
xenophobia. Bitter opposition to the presence of coloured
labourers [the first migrants] intensified… directed
in particular at the Chinese’ (Hinnells 1997:729).
However, Diaspora churches have
provided a cushion for Asians settling into Australia. ‘As long as there
are new migrants, the Chinese people will gravitate towards
the church for close fellowship, help and loving attention’ (Mok
2001:39). According to Dr Gordon Lee, pastor of the Hillsong
Chinese church, Sydney, the Chinese ethnic church will
survive in Australia ‘as long as the church continues
its 'cultural maintenance' practises and is
regarded by the Chinese population as the 'preservers' of
Chinese culture and language’. (2001:39).
If Asian Diaspora go back to
their original homelands or neighbouring areas as missionaries,
there is the matter of how they would best operate.
Do they imitate their western counterparts or do they
operate like their Asian counterparts? While Asian
characteristics may be visible in their mission agencies
and in the style of leadership, activities and methods, ‘on the whole [they] tend
to follow the Western pattern’ (Szto 2001:2).
Therefore Asian agencies easily
repeat mistakes that western agencies have made. ‘Issues such as denominationalism,
paternalism, over-reliance on ‘technological’ or ‘scientific’ skills
and individualism have not been grappled with’ (2001:2).
This is compounded by the ‘success-or results-oriented,
kingdom-building mentality of some of the larger churches
in the more affluent Asian countries’ (2001:2)
which can flow on to the daughter Diaspora churches in
Australia.
The question of appropriateness of western sending structures
adopted by Asian Christians is evident in the Korean
mission scene. These were copied from British and North
American structures.
There may be a need for thorough
evaluation on how much Korean agencies understood and
practised the organisational principles of the western
models… The current
western models are products of centuries long refinement
and tuning-up. However, as the point of gravity in missions
shifts toward non-western world for the first time in
history, a critical review of the appropriateness of
western sending structures is urgently needed’ (Moon
2001:8).
Asian Diaspora churches likely share with their original
homeland counterparts the need to develop Asian missiology
to tackle issues peculiar to Asian societies. These include
family or clan obligations, ancestor worship, witness
in pluralistic societies, or in antagonistic societies,
dialogue with people of other religions, and the impact
of secularism and globalism on traditional Asian cultures,
to name a few (Szto 2001:2).
A challenge for the Korean church is to forget about
its mission growth from a quantitative perspective, and
thus to reflect on the issues of qualitative growth.
[It] should embark on globalisation of its missionary
movement overcoming parochialism to be used for world
evangelisation in this global age (Moon 2001:8).
Conclusion
Just as the Apostle Paul focussed
initially on reaching the Jewish Diaspora as a means
of impacting the surrounding Gentiles with the gospel,
so too must the modern Asian Diaspora seriously consider
its part in global missions. Paul’s methods focussed
on the use of Scripture (the LXX) and places of worship
(the synagogue). Likewise, as the Asian Diaspora and
the parallel Asian Church grapples with its need to understand
the biblical mandate for mission, it may find it has
a significant role to play just as the Jewish Diaspora,
their synagogues and the LXX had in reaching the Gentiles
that surrounded them.
People from the Asian church now comprise part of the
Australian Diaspora. As this body grows in its understanding
and involvement in the biblical mandate for mission,
it too must become involved in overseas cross-cultural
ministry. It needs to develop effective strategies and
structures to do this with input from its Asian homeland
counterparts.
Bibliography
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