Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Titus 3:9-15, A divisive person, winter at Nicopolis, and Zenas and Apollos
Titus is to avoid foolish controversies, genealogies and quarrels about the law, and to warn a divisive person twice before having nothing more to do with him; Paul plans to winter at Nicopolis and asks Titus to send Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their way with everything they need.
Titus 3:9-15, in every translation this tool compares.
Titus is to steer clear of foolish disputes, genealogies and fights over the law, which do no good. A person who stirs up division should be warned twice and then avoided. Paul closes with travel plans, asking Titus to join him at Nicopolis for the winter and to supply Zenas the lawyer and Apollos well for their journey, and he urges the believers to give themselves to good works.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/genealogies\/","n":"Family trees, myths and genealogies","s":"Lists of ancestors that proved who you were: a true Israelite, a priest, an heir of David. Matthew opens with one. Some teachers also spun stories and family trees out of the Bible's lists, which 1 Timothy calls myths and endless genealogies.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/put-out-of-the-synagogue\/","n":"Put out of the synagogue","s":"A Jewish community could punish a member by shutting him out of its life for a time or for good. Since the synagogue was the center of town life, expulsion cut a person off from neighbors and worship, and often from a living.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/sea-travel\/","n":"Travel by sea","s":"Outside winter, ships were the quickest and cheapest way to travel, but they were built for cargo, not passengers, and from mid-September the sea grew dangerous. The great grain ships of Alexandria fed Rome.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/letters-of-recommendation\/","n":"Letters of recommendation","s":"A traveler often carried a letter from someone his hosts trusted, vouching for him and asking them to receive him. Such letters opened homes, synagogues and churches.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/hospitality\/","n":"Hospitality to travelers","s":"Taking in travelers was one of the great virtues of the ancient Mediterranean, above all among Jews. Messengers could travel light because they expected to be housed.","r":""}
Genealogies and disputes over the law were trifles (Keener), and Wright takes the quarrels as about reading the Jewish law as a Christian. Jewish ethics called for correction in private first, and expulsion was the last step (Keener and his notes; the ESV Study Bible). Nicopolis, built by Octavian to celebrate his victory over Antony (the Zondervan dictionary), lay on the Greek side of the Adriatic, and Paul would winter there because ships did not sail (Keener and his notes). Carson, Moo and Morris place Paul in or on the way to it after a release from Rome; Wright offers, as a maybe, that Paul was leaving Crete on his last voyage, meaning to winter there before Rome, until the winds of Acts 27 intervened. Keener thinks Zenas a jurist of Roman law, the cultural backgrounds notes and the dictionary more likely an expert in the Jewish law; the dictionary adds that the view that Titus was to bring him to Paul rests on the King James Version's mistaken Bring. The verse works as a small letter of recommendation, help meaning supplies for the voyage (Keener and his notes).
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Titus 3:9, 3:10-11, 3:12 and 3:13
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Titus 3:10, 3:12 and 3:13
- ESV Study Bible, study note on Titus 3:10-11
- N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: The Pastoral Letters, comment on Titus 3:8b-15
- D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament, ch. 15, The Pastoral Epistles: Titus, Provenance
- J. D. Douglas and Merrill C. Tenney, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, entries Nicopolis and Zenas
