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Bible Dictionaries
Spain
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or (Σπανία)
Spain was St. Paul’s objective during the later years of his missionary activity. It was characteristic of him that he was always thinking of ‘the parts beyond’ (τὰ ὑπερέκεινα, 2 Corinthians 10:16). Sensitively regardful of ‘the province (κανών) which God apportioned’ him, and determined not to intrude ‘in another’s province’ (2 Corinthians 10:13; 2 Corinthians 10:15-16), he felt drawn to the fresh fields of the distant West. It is in his letter to the Romans (Romans 15:24; Romans 15:28) that he first broaches the idea of evangelizing Spain. Eager as he was to ‘see Rome’ and to preach the gospel in it, he did not purpose to remain there long. The metropolis was not in his κανών, for others had already laboured there, and he intimates that in his visit to the Roman Christians he would be en route (διαπορευόμενος) for his proper sphere. He would ‘go on by’ them (ἀπελεύσομαι διʼ ὑμῶν) as he journeyed westward. The Imperial width of his horizon and boldness of his policy were worthy of his Roman citizenship, and the fact that Spain was the most completely Romanized of all the provinces no doubt made it seem a very attractive and promising mission field. It is true that half a century after St. Paul’s time Juvenal could still write, ‘Horrida vitanda est Hispania’ (Sat. viii. 116), but he was doubtless thinking of the barbarous tribes of the northern mountains. In the beginning of our era Strabo (III. ii. 15) says that the southern Spaniards, ‘especially those who dwell about the Baetis (Guadalquiver), have been so entirely converted to the Roman mode of life as even to have forgotten their own language.’ Carrying over the permanent benefits of an earlier Phcenician and Carthaginian civilization, Spain had become a Roman province at the end of the Second Punic War (201 b.c.), and by the days of Cicero and Caesar the southern districts were almost wholly Italian. ‘If preparation was anywhere made by the republic for the great all-significant work of the imperial period-the Romanising of the West-it was in Spain.… In all Spain under Augustus there were numbered fifty communities with full citizenship; nearly fifty others had up to this time received Latin rights, and stood as to inward organisation on a par with the burgess-communities.… Like the Roman dress, the Roman language was largely diffused even among those Spaniards who had not Italian burgess-rights, and the government favoured the de facto Romanising of the land’ (T. Mommsen, The Provinces of the Roman Empire, 1910, i. 67-70). Many of the writers of Rome’s silver age, notably Lucan, the two Senecas, Martial, and Quintilian, were Spaniards, The Emperors Trajan and Hadrian were born in Spain.
If St. Paul ever reached this goal, he must have made Latin for a time his missionary language, for even when half the population of Rome was speaking Greek, Spain was never in any degree Hellenized. But the question whether the Apostle succeeded in carrying out his purpose cannot be confidently answered. There are only two authorities for a Spanish journey-the Muratorian Fragment on the Canon, and Clement of Rome. The writer of the former (about a.d. 200) may have had independent knowledge, but it is more likely that when he mentions the ‘profectionem Pauli ab urbe ad Spaniam proficiscentis,’ he is merely drawing an inference that the purpose expressed in Romans 15:24; Romans 15:28 was fulfilled. The words of Clement (ad Cor. v.) are well known: ‘Paul … having taught the whole world righteousness, and having come to the bound of the West (ἐπὶ τὸ τέρμα τῆς δύσεως ἐλθών), and having borne witness (μαρτυρήσας) before the rulers, so was released from the world and went to the Holy Place, having become the greatest example of patience.’ Lightfoot interpreted ‘the bound of the West’ as Spain, but, since the next clauses certainly refer to St. Paul’s testimony and martyrdom in Rome, it seems natural to take ἐλθών and μαρτυρήσας together, and difficult to interpolate a journey between them. Sanday-Headlam (‘Romans’5 [International Critical Commentary , 1902], 414) ask: ‘Is it quite certain that a Jew, as Clement probably was, speaking of St. Paul, another Jew, would not look upon Rome relatively to Jerusalem as the τέρμα τῆς δύσεως, “the western limit”?’ It is significant that the Pastoral Epistles contain no suggestion of a campaign, possible or actual, in the West.
Literature.-J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, 1891, Biblical Essays, 1893, p. 423 f.; A. C. McGiffert, A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age, 1897, p. 415 f.; C. von Weizsäcker, Apostolic Age, ii. [1895] 137 f.
James Strahan.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Spain'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/s/spain.html. 1906-1918.
