Week 11 - Chapter 11 - Prologue to Paul's Letters -

Paul becomes the most vivid of the early figures of the Christian church, thanks to his being portrayed in such detail in Acts and through the messages of his letters. None of the other apostles are portrayed with as much immediacy, not even Peter or James the Just, Jesus’ brother.

Paul was born Saul in the city of Tarsus in Asia Minor, the child of a Pharisee and raised as a Pharisee. Paul’s strict interpretation and zeal for Torah logically led him to become a persecutor of the early followers of Jesus (we first see him in Acts as a witness to the stoning of Stephen). Yet he received a miraculous vision of the risen Christ on the road to Damascus and as a result of that vision, he came to accept that Jesus as the Christ was part of God’s plan, rather than the traditional way of Torah. He also interpreted his vision as a commission from God to preach both to traditional Jews and to convert the Gentiles. Almost immediately he began his missionary work, first heading into Arabia (the kingdom of the Nabateans) and over the course of almost three decades (or more if he survived his trial in Rome in 60 A.D.) traveling throughout the lands bordering the eastern and northern coasts of the Mediterranean Sea where he founded and nourished a number of churches.

Paul was like a one-man wrecking crew. There are suggestions in one of de Silva’s earlier chapters that he was rather testy and difficult to get along with – including the fact that he seems to have picked up and dropped off traveling companions like Barnabas rather often, as well as the fact that he himself refers to disputes he had with “false apostles,” as in 2 Corinthians 11, and Peter himself (in Galatians 2:11-21), over the resurgence of the issue of the Jewish Christians refusing to dine with the Gentile Christians. Here is one passage in particular that jumped out at me, at Acts 9:29-31:

“He talked and debated with the Grecian Jews, but they tried to kill him. When the brothers learned of this, they took him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus. Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace. It was strengthened; and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it grew in numbers, living in the fear of the Lord.”

Since Paul seems to have caused an uproar wherever he appeared, perhaps there is some cause and effect relationship at work here.

I might suggest that Paul was exhibiting the zeal of the converted, and I think it is possible that he challenged the traditional Jews in a more overt way than the other apostles did, thereby making himself more of a target. He certainly seems to have been the target of more efforts to do away with him, judging from passages in Acts like the above one.

Paul’s is a strikingly modern voice, speaking to us across the centuries. Paul exhorts the congregations, he can be wheedling or pleading from time to time, but I think one cannot deny that his writing is not only inspired but it has a remarkable forthrightness and sincerity, and thus his messages are persuasive. I would suggest that he may have had “issues,” as the saying is today, given his failure to marry and his sometimes rather . . . dismissive comments about women, but regardless he may have been uniquely placed to move Christianity beyond its purely Judaic roots. I feel his writings are a living part of my roots – perhaps because his words have always played such a large part of the scripture readings in Protestant services.

I think part of the key to understanding Paul, and the reason he seems like such a modern voice, is that he was a cosmopolitan, a figure who was able to transcend racial and cultural barriers due to the diverse heritage he had inherited, from Pharisaic Judaism to citizen of the Helleno-Roman world. His language was most striking in its modernity, I though, where he considers the irrelevancy of circumcision or the dietary laws in perfecting one’s holiness in the sight of God. His reasoning in those matters seems to me to be both logical and rational. In addition, Paul’s contribution to the churches was very much like we would expect of a caring pastor today – he was like a counselor to his flocks, rather than a performer of miracles as was observed in the original apostles. Perhaps the fact that he was an acknowledged late-comer impelled him to “try harder.” He was like the “Energizer Bunny” of the apostles. He transformed Christianity from a sect of Judaism into a church with Christ at its core rather than the Torah, a church that had numerous branches throughout the eastern and central regions of the Empire and in which the Gentile members enjoyed equal status with the traditional Jewish Christians.