Who was Sosthenes? Every reader of the New Testament has come across his name. Many will have hardly noticed it. Sosthenes was clearly a prominent figure in the early Church, so prominent that he figures in the cohort of associates who were close to Paul, but we know less about him than we know about Silas, for example, or Barnabas. In fact we know nothing.
If this is true, we have a salutary reminder that our knowledge of the days that saw the Council of Jerusalem and the visits and letters of Paul is extremely limited. Much was going on of which we are completely unaware. The implication is that we should be alert to the possibility that we are reading into events an interpretation that may be altogether unjustified.
This should not surprise us. History is full of mysteries. We have only to think of the Marie Celeste, the flying Dutchman and the Sandringham company at Gallipoli. There was probably a King Arthur in the sixth century but so prominent did he become in later generations that the Round Table and its knights have gained a place if not in history, then in folklore that Athelstan might have coveted. The roll-call of the dimly perceived goes on: Prester John, the Wandering Jew among them.
If we know nothing about Sosthenes, why bother? No reason at all except that he is just one of the company of Christian believers of whose existence we should be unaware if we were to lose the last chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans. In view of the rapid expansion of the Christian community in the eastern area of the Mediterranean, not to mention what might have been going on in Spain, there are likely to have been flourishing communities and even celebrities coming into earshot while the Gospels were being written.
Early on at that stage Armenia may well haves taken the pole position. It is said that the Gospel took root there in 40 CE. By 301 it had become the state religion. Christianity did not always move in a westerly direction. Most of us are ill-informed about this aspect of the progress of the Gospel, which means we have a somewhat unbalanced view of Christian beginnings.
GRAY’S ELEGY
‘Full many a flower is born to blush unseen And waste its sweetness on the desert air.’ Unknown believers are hidden away not only in Stoke Poges and other country churchyards and in the oceans. We also get glimpses of such people whenever we open a New Testament. We should like to know more about not only Sosthenes but Ananias of Damascus, a tanner named Simon in Joppa and Dionysius, a well-known citizen in Athens. One day the books will be opened.
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