Some people think the apostle Paul might have been married at one point in his life. In fact, there was an early Christian tradition about it. Eusebius the church historian in the early fourth century quoted Clement of Alexandria, who wrote at the turn of the third century. Thanks for reading Gallagher! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Clement, whose words we cited recently in the context of the previous quotation, enumerates, on account of those who reject marriage, those of the Apostles who were married, saying, “Or will they disapprove even of the Apostles? For Peter and Philip begat children, and Philip even gave his daughters to husbands, while Paul himself does not hesitate in one of his letters to address his wife whom he did not take about with him in order to facilitate his mission.” (Eusebius, Church History 3.30.1 [Loeb], quoting Clement, Stromata 3.52–53; see here, p. 289) What is Clement talking about? Paul addressed his wife in one of his letters? He is referring to the “true yokefellow” of Philippians 4:3. For some reason, Clement thinks this is Paul’s wife. Origen knows this same tradition about Paul’s marriage. Paul, then, if certain traditions are true, was called while in possession of a wife, concerning whom he speaks when writing to the Philippians, “I ask you also, my loyal mate, help these women.” Since he had become free by mutual consent with her, he calls himself a slave of Christ. But if, as others think, he had no wife, nonetheless he who was free when he was called is yet a slave of Christ. (Commentary on Romans 1:1(3), trans. Scheck, p. 62) If Paul had a wife at one time, what happened to her? Well, we can think of the options: death and divorce. Maybe the apostle was a widower, as some people think based on the Greek of 1 Corinthians 7:8, as we will discuss in a moment. Or maybe there was a divorce. We could imagine a couple scenarios. The Pharisee Saul of Tarsus might have divorced his wife for any number of reasons, assuming he adhered to the views of R. Hillel, who was pretty lenient on such matters. Or, maybe after the up-and-coming Jewish leader became an adherent to the way of Jesus, his wife left him. What sort of evidence might suggest that Paul was at one time married? It may also be that Paul was married prior to the time that he wrote 1 Corinthians in the mid-50s. In that letter, he indicates he was not married (7:7, 9, 38, 40; 9:4). Some scholars have noted, however, that Paul employs the term agamoi, which may be rendered “widowers,” in 1 Cor 7:8 and suggest that the apostle included himself among that group. If Paul were at one time married, this would coincide with Jewish traditions that praised and even stipulated marriage. Such an expectation was probably present among Pharisaic Jews in the first century. As a result, Paul might well have thought it both appropriate and prudent to marry. (Longenecker and Still, 2014, p. 27) So, possibly Paul called himself a “widower” in 1 Corinthians 7:8. Here’s the verse in the ESV: “To the unmarried (agamos) and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am.” Some interpreters think Paul included himself in the categories of “agamos and widows,” and since he cannot be calling himself a widow, he must be calling himself an agamos—but what does this word mean? According to Danker, it means “an unmarried man/woman,” but some people think that in the context of 1 Corinthians it must mean widower, since it is contrasted with the widow. So, if the word suggests “widower” and if Paul is including himself in the categories mentioned at 1 Corinthians 7:8, then Paul would be self-identifying as a widower. I think this argument fairly weak. But maybe there’s another rout to a married Paul. What if it was expected of Jews in the first century? Here’s F. F. Bruce: It may be pointed out that marriage was normal and, indeed, expected in pious Jews when they came of age. [He cites Avot 5.21.] True, Jesus had spoken of certain exceptions – those who, as he said, had “made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:12) – among whom he may have included John the Baptist himself. But Paul was not presumably influenced by considerations of this kind in his pre-Christian days. What then? Was he a widower? Perhaps he was: the question has received a positive answer from Joachim Jeremias, for example. Rather more probable is the view that his wife left him when he became a Christian: that when he “suffered the loss of all things” [Philippians 3:8] for the sake of Christ he lost his wife too. This cannot be proved, of course, but if something like this did happen it might explain Paul’s specially sympathetic understanding of the domestic situation in which the unconverted partner walks out on the husband or wife who has become a Christian: “in such a case the brother or sister is not bound” (1 Corinthians 7:15). Paul, for his part, was not “bound” either way: he knew that he could fulfil his commission more wholeheartedly if he remained free from the marriage bond. (Bruce, 1977, pp. 269–70) (For another argument for a married Paul, see Jerome Murphy-O’Connor (1996). I don’t see that E. P. Sanders (2015) mentions it.) The idea that Jews in the first-century—pious, Torah-observant Jews—were generally expected to marry was argued a century ago by Joachim Jeremias in two very brief articles in the journal Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft. Here are the references. Jeremias, “War Paulus Witwer,” ZNW 25 (1926): 310–12; “Nochmals: War Paulus Witwer?” ZNW 28 (1929): 321–22. Jeremias is pretty confident in his interpretation. He says that a unanimous rabbinic teaching regarded marriage as a religious obligation. Here’s the evidence as he cites it. The Mishnah (Yevamot 6.6) states that Jewish men—and, maybe, Jewish women—are under obligation to fulfill the commandment of Genesis 1:28 to “be fruitful and multiply” (on the history of interpretation of this verse, see Jeremy Cohen’s 1989 monograph), and the sages suggest that a person can consider himself to have performed the mitzvah if he has produced two children, at least one of whom is male. Indeed, so important is the mitzvah that after ten years of marriage with no children, a man needs to seek a different wife. This mishnah is quoted in the Babylonian Talmud at Yevamot 61b §15, which then leads to a long discussion, but at the very beginning of the discussion it becomes clear that some Rabbis thought that a Jewish man was obligated to have a wife irrespective of children—in other words, even if he already had children, he still needed a wife. Being married was a separate obligation. In another part of the Talmud, at Pesachim 113b §14, there is a list of seven categories of people who are “ostracized by Heaven,” and first on the list is a Jew without a wife. This all seems pretty clear, but there are two problems with the argument of Jeremias that I want to mention. First, we’re using the Talmud for evidence for a first century Jew (Paul). The Talmud is not first century, it’s from some centuries later, maybe around AD 600. It definitely contains traditions from the first century, but the trick is knowing how to identify them, and I cannot do it. Scholars these days are much more reticent than in the days of Jeremias to use the Talmud to establish something in the first century. The same basic issue applies also to the Mishnah, though to a smaller degree, since the Mishnah is much closer to the New Testament (around AD 200). Second, there is another lifestyle that some faithful Jews pursued: they avoided marriage to devote themselves to God. Philo (Hypothetica 11.14) and Josephus (War 2.120; Antiquities 18.21) both mention celibacy in regard to the Essenes. (The extracts of Philo’s Hypothetica are preserved in the Preparation of the Gospel by Eusebius, book 8, but also printed in the Loeb edition of Philo, vol. 9, p. 443.) Even if they are not exactly accurate in their descriptions of the Essenes (see Crawford, pp. 299–302), the fact that they imagined Jewish celibacy and even presented it as an ideal is suggestive. The Talmud likewise presents such a case, at least with reference to one scholar, Ben Azzai. His example is presented in the Talmud at Yevamot 63b §18. (See also the Tosefta, Yevamot 8.5.) Why didn’t Ben Azzai get married? He explains: נפשי חשקה בתורה, “my soul yearns for Torah.” He acknowledges that procreation is a universal command, binding on him as well as others, but his love of Torah takes precedence. His attitude was: let others keep the human race going, I’m devoted to Torah. According to scholar of rabbinics Michael Satlow, Everyone agrees that procreation is good, but, Ben Azzai says, there can be a conflict between this good and the (better) good of Torah study. Ben Azzai feels that he can have only one erotic attachment, and “lusts” for Torah rather than women. (p. 30) As Satlow goes on to discuss, another passage in the Talmud, Kiddushin 29b §§14–15, centers on the same dynamic. Which takes precedence: marriage or study of Torah? The first (anonymous) advice is to study Torah first and then marry, and only reverse that order if … ahem … you need a wife. This all sounds strangely familiar to the reader of Christian Scripture. Isn’t there someone in the New Testament who also talks about forgoing marriage so that you can devote yourself to God? Who was that? To shift gears for just a moment, I want to acknowledge that this take on marriage as a hindrance to spirituality is not the only view that there is, and is not the only view expressed in the New Testament. Certainly it is in the New Testament. As we saw earlier, Jesus mentioned people who had become eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, an
