Acts has ended. From here the story is pieced together from the last letters and from what the church remembered afterward, and it is worth saying plainly which is which. 1 Timothy · Titus · 1 & 2 Peter · 2 Timothy · Hebrews · Jude

Released, and travelling again

The letters to Timothy and Titus describe Paul in places and situations that do not fit anywhere in Acts — leaving Titus in Crete, wintering at Nicopolis, sending for a cloak he left at Troas. The usual conclusion is that the appeal to Caesar succeeded, that he was released around A.D. 62, and that he had a few more years of travel before a second and final arrest.

1 Timothy and Titus, about A.D. 63–65. These are working letters to two younger men left in charge of difficult situations — what to look for in an elder, how to handle disputes, how to conduct yourself in a household of faith. Less soaring than Romans, and more use on an ordinary week.

The fire

In July of A.D. 64 much of Rome burned. The Roman historian Tacitus — no friend of Christians — records that Nero fastened the blame on them to quiet the rumor that he had started it himself, and that they were put to death in ways that eventually produced pity even in a hostile city. This is the moment the faith stops being a curiosity and becomes a capital risk in the capital.

1 Peter, about A.D. 64. Written to believers scattered across northern Asia Minor who are being slandered and pressured, and telling them how to live under it: keep your conduct honorable, be ready to explain your hope with gentleness, do not be surprised at the fiery trial. Peter sends greetings from “Babylon,” which is generally understood as Rome.

2 Peter and Jude, about A.D. 65–68. Both deal with teachers inside the church who are exploiting it. The two letters overlap so closely that one almost certainly knew the other. 2 Peter reads like a man setting his affairs in order — he says as much.

Hebrews, about A.D. 65–68. Anonymous. It never claims an author, and the guesses began early and never settled. It is written to Jewish believers under pressure to go back to what they came from, and its argument is that everything they would be returning to was the shadow, and Christ is the substance. If it was written before A.D. 70 — and it speaks of the temple sacrifices as still going on — then its readers were about to watch that whole system end.

2 Timothy, about A.D. 66–67. The last thing Paul wrote. He is in prison again, and this time it is cold, and most people have left. He asks Timothy to come before winter, and to bring the cloak and the books. He also asks him to bring Mark — the young man he had refused to travel with twenty years earlier — because he is useful to him for ministry. Then: I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

What tradition says happened next

Here the sources change character, and I want to be honest about it. The New Testament records the death of only one apostle, James the brother of John, in a single verse. Everything below comes from later Christian writers, some of them writing a century or more afterward, and the accounts sometimes disagree with each other.

According to that tradition: Paul was beheaded at Rome under Nero, around A.D. 67 — beheading rather than crucifixion because he was a citizen. Peter was crucified at Rome about the same time, and the detail that he asked to be crucified head downward comes from a later source still. Barnabas, John Mark and James son of Alphaeus are all remembered as dying in these years.

One death in this period is recorded outside the church’s own memory: Josephus reports that James the brother of Jesus, the same James who gave the verdict at the Council, was executed in Jerusalem in A.D. 62 during a gap between Roman governors.

By about A.D. 68, then, the two men who had led the story since Pentecost were both gone, and Jerusalem was four years from catastrophe.

That is the next part.