I've become fairly convinced of the theory that the Pudens and Claudia of 2 Timothy 4:21 are the same as Aulus Pudens and Claudia Rufina mentioned by the poet Marital. I mentioned this in I don't think Nero Persecuted Christians.
Now that belief often gets tied into British Israelism or other ways to try and develop a very Britannia centrist view of History, of Anglicans and other English Speaking Protestants attempting to argue the British Church is the True Church. Those kinds of views I don't agree with. But what I do believe is that very early on The Gospels reached every corner of the then known world. And so my believing it reached the British Isles also ties into my desire to talk about it's history in East Asia, Africa and Arabia, subjects I'll be posting more on in the future.
The thing is, a lot of the people who think Aulus Pudens was Saint Pudens are very Conservative Christians. So that's why I want to point out an implication of this identification they've overlooked.
Aulus Pudens was Bisexual, Marital records his marriage to Claudia Rufina, but also records his passions for young male slaves.
And that can lead us to another potential answer to the objection that Pudens and Claudia aren't right next to each other in 1 Timothy 4:21. Claudia Rufina was from Briton, and Julius Caesar records that the Celtic Britons practiced Polyandry. And believe it or not examples of Polyandry occurred in Rome as well. There is a common assumption that Polyandry can't ever by compatible with Biblical Laws, only Polygyny can. But that's derivative of assumptions about the Pre-Marital Sex being a Sin which I've already deconstructed. And it's easy to make an argument for Fraternal Polyandry from the reasoning behind the Levirate Marriage. So maybe what Marital left out is that Pudens wasn't the only husband of Claudia.
Here's the thing. To the extent that the names dropped at the end of 2 Timothy are Aulus Pudens and his wife Claudia, what that tells you is that the anonymous ecclesiastical author of 2 Timothy (late 2nd, early 3rd century CE) read Martial and included the names in order to strengthen the fictional date of his pseudepigraph. Just like the gospel authors sprinkled their stories with personages mentioned in the works of Josephus in order to strengthen the 1st century setting of the narratives.
ReplyDeleteIf he was just using Marital as a source then we woudln't have the issue of them not being named right next to each other, and he probably would have used the name Aulus.
Delete