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This transcript has been edited for clarity and space.
David Capes
I just finished a book called, “Matthew Through Old Testament Eyes,” and I knew some of the things I wanted to talk about in the book. But there were a lot of times when I was researching the book and I discovered things that I didn’t know. There are times when you say, eureka, I found it! I didn’t know this before I started the project, but I’m glad to know it now. Did you have some of those moments as you wrote this book?
Frank Viola
I had so many of those moments that I’ve lost count, but I can share a few, if you’d like. I’ll start with Paul’s thorn in the flesh. Commentators have debated this to no end for centuries. What was Paul’s thorn in the flesh? When you take verses and you look at the Scripture through the lens of verses, you can prove all sorts of things. Maybe he had an eye disease, or he had malaria. Some people say it was temptation that he couldn’t overcome. Well, when you look at the whole story, you see the free-flowing story in chronological order, it really begins to emerge clearly. And in the book, I make a very strong case that Paul’s thorn was a ring-leader of the Judaizers who dogged his steps everywhere he traveled to plant a church. His thorn was really a religious man motivated by God’s enemy. And this becomes clear when you look at the story narratively, when you see it in chronological order. As I make that case, I cite a number of first-rate scholars who agree with this conclusion after I presented it to them. So that was really encouraging.
David Capes
That’s fascinating. I would also agree. I’ve had some similar thoughts about the fact that this is not a physical thing, but it’s more of a communal or a church problem. This person has just been a pain in my neck for a while. I think it could well be that what you say is true. That it’s a ring-leader of the Judaizers who is following after Paul and creating havoc wherever he goes.
Frank Viola
And it fits into the story when you put it together. It becomes for me, and for some of these other scholars, crystal clear. Another one is when Paul goes to Athens. Now, the story is remarkable, but it’s little known history behind it. What “The Untold Story of the New Testament Church” does is open this up historically, and it unfolds where the altar of the unknown God came from. Now, I’m not going to get into the history of it’ll because it will take too long. But the saga is riveting, and it’s a real great lesson on how to recontextualize the gospel to our current culture. So that’s another one that was just mind
blowing to me.
Another one is Paul of Tarsus when he was older in his life, he went to Ephesus. What he did there was train Christian workers, just like Jesus trained workers. Paul did it in Ephesus, Jesus did it in Galilee. Now the term worker is a term the New Testament uses for those who have a traveling, itinerant ministry. And the way Paul trained ministers of the gospel was essentially the same way and for the same amount of time that Jesus did in Galilee with the Twelve. And the story is just remarkable, and I tell it in the book.
David Capes
Interesting. Did you say a three-year period of discipleship, which is the time that he spent there?
Frank Viola
Exactly, that’s right. When you look at it all together, he spent a total of three years and change. And what he ended up doing, was he sent these workers throughout Asia Minor and all the churches that we read about in the first two chapters of Revelation. You have the church at Ephesus that Paul raised up, but you’ve got Smyrna, you have Sardis and on and on. They were raised up by these workers that Paul trained. And I make a case for this by connecting all the dots. It’s pretty fascinating.
Another one is in Matthew 9. Jesus exhorted his Twelve “apostles” to pray that God would send out more workers for the harvest. We often hear that repeated and quoted. Well, when you look at the New Testament chronologically, and that’s what this book does, you see that prayer answered. You have, for example, Stephen, whose life was cut short. He was one of the workers that God raised up. Then you have Paul himself, then you have Barnabas. You have Silas, you have Timothy, you have Titus. Now all of those men were well known, but what doesn’t get air-play are other workers that Paul trained who did amazing things, like Aristarchus, Tychicus and Epaphras. These were all giants in the land of David, and they come alive in the story. I believe readers will fall in love with them, just as I have.
But again, it’s all there in the New Testament, but we don’t see it because of the arrangement of the New Testament letters. It’s chaotic. A lot of things that are mentioned in the epistles, Luke just compresses them in his narrative. Some of them he doesn’t even mention. But you do see get them, get air-play a little bit here and there. When you put it all together, this beautiful saga emerges, and it’s just incredible.
David Capes
There are things that you do that I love so much and I want to point out how unusual it is. You take the story of the New Testament, and then you wed it with all of these letters that have historical nuggets, bits and pieces that are there, and you show how it fits together. I don’t know of any book quite like it. I think it’s unique in that way. And it’s a bold, bold thing. Go back to Ephesus. There’s a strong tradition that talks about John, the apostle being in that part of the world. Did you find anything to that, that John, in fact, did go to that part of the world? Because it’s not exactly stated in the New Testament, but it is a
strong tradition to that witness.
