ney to Rome, and appear near the conclusion of a substantial and care-
fully considered letter written precisely for the purpose of ensuring that the
proposed journey is a success. Evidently, they are supposed to be taken
with all seriousness.
But the reality to which Paul refers is hardly commensurate with the
extravagance of the language used to describe it. His own letters provide us
with explicit evidence for ongoing churches in fewer than a dozen cities—
Thessalonica, Philippi, Corinth, Cenchreae, Ephesus, Colossae, Laodicea, and
the churches of Galatia (whose identification need not delay us here)—and
even if we were to include all of the additional references in Acts and the
Pastoral Epistles, we would not increase this total significantly (Meeks
1983, 40–42). Further, while membership estimates are difficult to come by,
the fact that a gathering of the whole church in Corinth could be accom-
modated in a single house (Rom. 16:23) suggests that we are dealing with
population totals in the lower four-digit range at most (Munck 1959, 278).
Even in those cities where churches had been planted, there was a great deal
of scope for ongoing evangelizing activity. Readers, both ancient and mod-
ern, of Paul’s letter to the Romans could be forgiven for thinking that “from
Jerusalem around to Illyricum” the proclamation of the gospel was far
from complete, and that Paul had much more “room” for preaching “in
these regions.”
Not surprisingly, modern scholarly readers have often taken note of
the striking disjunction between this claim and reality (Hultgren 1985,
131; Munck 1959, 277–78; Bornkamm 1971, 53–54; Meeks 1983, 9–10).
What is more surprising, perhaps, is the widespread assumption that it is
possible to discern from the evidence of the Epistles a coherent geograph-
ical strategy that would resolve it. Broadly considered, these reconstructions
of Paul’s strategy are built up on the basis of two elements: (1) Paul’s con-
centration on important cities, which he seems to understand in some way
as representative of larger geographical areas; and (2) the cumulative pat-
tern of these larger areas themselves, understood to be the result not only
of the negative policy of avoiding areas where others have been active, but
also of several suggested positive patterns of selection. We will discuss each
of these in turn.
Cities as Representative The urban character of Paul’s mission is readily
apparent. His efforts were concentrated in cities, and any list of the impor-
tant cities of the Roman world—important in terms of imperial adminis-
tration, trade, transportation, intellectual life, size, and so on—would
invariably include those cities in which Paul was active. A striking indica-
tion of the way Paul thinks of these churches, however, is his tendency to