Following the conversion of Cornelius and those gathered in his home in Caesarea Maritima, how would Peter and other Christian leaders have responded, if Cornelius had then asked that a written Gospel be provided, which captured the message of Peter concerning the life and teachings of Jesus?
As a centurion of the Italian Cohort, stationed at the provincial capital of Caesarea Maritima (Acts 10), Cornelius would not only be responsible for supervising part of the security contingent, but also the military staff which provided secretarial, judicial, interpretive, correspondence, and clerking services to the local governor, prefect, or whomever.1 The military contingent would also have a role in the collection of taxes and custom duties, traffic control, intelligence gathering, etc.2 Furthermore, centurions “could be requested to investigate crimes” and to uphold “law and order throughout the countryside.”3 Official records would need to be produced, reviewed, and approved, and Cornelius would have a role in such.4
Accounts from the era indicate that the rank of centurion could be granted to experienced soldiers, to soldiers with literary skills, or to those who joined the army with a high social status.5 While Brian Campbell reports that there was a variety of literacy levels within the centurion ranks, it seems apparent that those who had achieved this rank would either be literate or have ready access to those who were.6 For centurions serving in administrative roles under a provincial ruler, literary skills would be even more essential, in contrast to those centurions strictly serving in battle-ready legions.
My point in surveying the administrative world of a centurion assigned to a provincial capital, such as Caesarea Maritima, has been to impress on the present reader that it is entirely reasonable to speculate that these converts in Caesarea Maritima would be eager to have a written copy of the story of this Jesus in whom they had just believed, tailored for a Greco-Roman audience such as themselves, especially if there was a potential that they might be reassigned to duties elsewhere. Given the close proximity between Caesarea Maritima and Jerusalem, some of these recent converts would no doubt be aware that Matthew’s Gospel had recently been published for the benefit of the Jewish community and would be eager to request that one of Peter’s traveling companions publish a comparable selection of Peter’s sermons.7
If Cornelius were to make such a request, would we anticipate that his request would be honored or rejected?
- Alexander Kyrychenko, The Roman Army and the Expansion of the Gospel (De Gruyter, 2014), 33; William Hamblin, “The Roman Army in the First Century,” Brigham Young University Studies 36, no. 3 (1996), 337. Graham Webster, The Roman Imperial Army of the First and Second Centuries A.D., 3rd ed. (University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 270. Clerking records within a given legion included granary records, tracking the property of men who died in service, accounts, receipts, daily rosters, etc. Webster, Roman Imperial Army, 117. ↩︎
- Webster, Roman Imperial Army, 270. ↩︎
- Kyrychenko, The Roman Army and the Expansion of the Gospel, 84. ↩︎
- “The sophisticated operation of the Roman military bureaucracy has left a long trail of paperwork and records.” Campbell, War and Society, 32. ↩︎
- Kyrychenko, The Roman Army and the Expansion of the Gospel, 19. ↩︎
- J. Brian Campbell, War and Society in Imperial Rome, 31 BC-AD 284 (Routledge, 2002), 33. ↩︎
- I am suggesting a request akin to what is reported in Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 2.15.1–2; 3.39.14-16. ↩︎
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