One more book on the Apostle Paul? Haven't scholars, historians and theologians  written enough about the life, the travels, and the theology of this man? Certainly, a great deal has been published about him if one considers only the 84 books on St. Paul listed in the Subject Guide to Books in Print 1970, or the 2987 articles entered in the Index to Periodical Literature on the Apostle Paul. By far the majority of these books and articles on St. Paul, however, are unavailable to the tourist interested in retracing the steps of the Apostle Paul in Greece unless he is determined to research in the famous Gennadion Library on the southern slopes of Lycabettus in Athens. Otherwise the inquisitive visitor will find it virtually impossible to obtain much information about the Apostle's ministry in Greece. While serving as pastor of St. Andrew's American Church in Athens during the past few years, I have seen many visitors go out of their way for guidance and information about the actual places associated with the spread of Gospel in Greece. The following pages are written in response to this interest, in the hope that they will help the historically oriented and religiously motivated tourist find his of her visit to some of the ancient biblical sites a more meaningful encounter with the past. At the very outset of these pages we want to acknowledge the widespread and popular dispute about the relationship of the message of Jesus to that of S. Paul.  Neither the person nor the message of the Apostle need any apology, but there are many sincere Christians who hesitate to get too deeply involved with the life and writing of the missionary Apostle. Endorsing the 19th century slogan of liberal Protestantism, "Back to Jesus," many Christians feel that they can rely exclusively  on the sayings and the portrait of the "historical Jesus" as the norm for their Christian life and, therefore, react negatively to the "religion about Jesus" as spelled out by St. Paul. Others accuse him for having perverted the simplicity of Jesus' message b unnecessarily shrouding it in theological and Christological concepts. No matter where we turn, there are many people who say "no" to St. Paul while at the same time affirming a strong "yes" for Jesus. The debate about the great missionary and theologian of the early Church and his message is, of course, as old as the Christian Church.  Even during his lifetime his opponents regarded him as an illegitimate apostle and an adulterator of the Christian Gospel, and the fathers of the early Church were inconsistent in their judgment.  The author of Pseudo-Clement, for example, compared him with Simon Magnus, the heresiarch par excellence, while others gave him the highest consideration and quoted his letters at length in their own writings. Whether or not the Apostle was familiar with the message preached by Jesus is a question to which historians and theologians  have given different answers, although it is certain that none of the Gospels in the form as they appear in the New Testament were known to him. St. Paul stressed a different aspect. Jesus proclaimed the messages of the Fatherhood and the Kingdom of God. The apostle emphasized the Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus as the Christ.
Whatever the differences, St. Paul's travels and ministry are tremendously meaningful, especially because of the intensely situational character of his preaching. If anyone ever looked at the world realistically, it was the Apostle Paul; if anyone ever recognized the need for revolutionary faith and ethic, again, it was the Apostle Paul. As are a few Christians in the 20th century, he was able to relate the liberation power of the Gospel to concrete situations, and this is especially evident in his writings to the churches in Greece. St. Paul wrote in response to immediate problems in the lives of people he knew, and he could never have dreamed that his explicitly situational correspondence would ever be collected and then accepted as a norm for Christian theology and ethics. As a messenger of the power of God unto salvation, St. Paul ought to be regarded as a prototype rather than as an example to be followed blindly. He served as mouthpiece of the very God who revealed himself in Jesus as the Christ, and as such the Apostle's message is invaluable to our understanding of the Christian Gospel. That there are contradictions or various degrees of emphasis in his statements should only enhance him to us for, though always conscious of his divine mission, he remained a man of flesh and blood. He was a theologian, not a systematician, and to press his statements into a preconceived dogmatic mold is methodologically illegitimate and robs him and his writings of their liberating power.

As for the source material, we are in the fortunate position of knowing more about St. Paul than about any other person of the early Church. Our knowledge about most of the Holy Apostles is very limited, and many of the legends and traditions related about them developed long after they lived. Even with respect to the person of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the central theme of the Apostle's message to the churches in Greece, the historian is in a much more difficult situation, for whatever we know about Jesus must be seen and evaluated through the eyes of the fellowship of believers. The gospel narratives, therefore, are statements of confessions of faith of the post-resurrection Church rather than biographical descriptions of what has been called the "historical Jesus." We posses no evidence, for instance, that Our Lord ever wrote a letter, not to mention a book. In contrast, St. Paul's personality and a great deal of other information pertaining to the personality and a great deal of other information pertaining to the Apostle's life are reflected in the New Testament epistular literature, of which thirteen documents claim his authorship.

This brief preface is not the place to discuss the thorny and certainly still undecided issues with respect to the authenticity of the various letters that carry the name of the Apostle. At the same time, we must recognize that the majority of these letters are invaluable for any kind of reconstruction of the Apostle's ministry. The letters, especially those addressed to the churches in Greece ( the letters to the Thessalonians, Corinthians, and Philippians), are primary sources for our study. These letters, addressed to his newly founded communities on the European mainland, were unquestionably written by St. Paul. Furthermore, in evaluating this material it is important for us to remember that, for example, the first Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians constitutes the very beginning of Christian literature. It was written about the middle of the first century, only twenty years after the death and resurrection of Our Lord. For that matter, all the letters with which we are concerned in this particular essay date to the fifties of this century. They were written at least a decade before the writing of the oldest Gospel, the Gospel of St. Mark.

The second New Testament source relevant to our study is the Acts of the Apostles, in which St. Luke sketched the beginnings of  Christianity, especially Christianity in Greece. The narrative begins with a description of the Jerusalem Church and culminates in Rome, where the Christian faith, mysteriously, ha already been established. More than half of this book centers around missionary activities of the Apostle Paul. Many scholars have considered the Acts as their principal source for their understanding of the Apostle's ministry. This is unfortunate because thee Acts of the Apostle's ministry. This is unfortunate because the Acts of the Apostles was written at a much later time, when the Christian Church was fairly well established in the eastern Mediterranean world. it is a pity that St. Luke was unacquainted with the Pauline letters, since they would, of course, have been of great value to him when writing about the life and work of St. Paul. St. Luke, furthermore, did not merely repeat what he had heard or read from the several sources at his disposal, but used his material to instruct his readers. He portrayed St. Paul not only as having died, but as already having become a hallowed memory. In the Acts, St. Paul is no longer a man grappling with difficulties as he is in his letters; he has become a heroic figure towering above priests, officers, governors, and kings.

A comparison of the image which St. Paul portrays of himself in his own writings with that presented to us almost fifty years later in the Acts of the Apostles reveals differences which force us to rely on St. Paul's own letters rather than categorically follow the Lukan version of the Acts. A list of the numerious discrepancies between these two sources can be found easily in any reputable study of the Apostle. In case of conflicting statements, we give preference to the personal testimony of the Apostle. Despite it's limitations, the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles gives us a welcome guideline to the itinerary of the Apostle's travels in Greece. All quotations from the Holy Scriptures are from Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyrighted in 1946 and 1952 by the Divison of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. For many helpful and invaluable suggestions, I should like to thank my colleagues of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and, finally, I must express my sincere gratitude to my secretary, Mrs. Sophia Hanazoglu, for preparing the manuscript for the press.