Discovering Paul - Chapter 1: Paul the Pharisee
1. Paul the Pharisee
Henry Kissinger, in the mid-1970s, gave occasion to the term “shuttle diplomacy” as he moved between the major powers of our world seeking peace and easing international tension.
Shuttle diplomacy could perhaps describe some of the influences in the first century of the apostle Paul. What he did then, put into our terms, would be equivalent to travelling around the world debating with the Russians in Russian concerning their philosophy of history, lecturing the Chinese in Chinese on their use of power and disputing with the Americans in English on their moral standards – and forming, everywhere he went, multi-cultural communities which would affect the future history of the world. Within two hundred years of his death, what he had done would be recognised as the pervasive force within the world.
Such was the influence of the apostle Paul.
Put this into the context of a remarkable conversion, of a complete theological turnaround, of courage demonstrated in the face of frequent riots, of physical punishment, beatings and imprisonments, and of personal catastrophe such as shipwreck, and we begin to sense the variety of Paul’s life. He became at the one time one of the most influential figures this world has ever seen, second only to Jesus himself in his influence upon Christianity, while at the same time becoming one of the most controversial of all theologians.
Adolf Hitler once said of Paul: “Christ was an Aryan. But Paul used his teaching to mobilise the underworld and to organise an earlier Bolshevism.” Hitler was following his mentor, Frederick Nietzche, who in turn has said: “A God who died for our sins; redemption through faith; resurrection after death – all these are counterfeits of true Christianity, for which that disastrous, wrong-headed fellow Paul must be held responsible.”
Over the years people have blamed Paul for everything. “St Paul would almost certainly have condemned tobacco if he had known of its existence,” said Anglican Bishop Samuel Butler. The English philosopher, John Stuart Mill, commented: “I hold St Paul to have been the first great corrupter of Christianity.” The German psychologist, Carl Jung, said: “It is frankly disappointing to see how Paul hardly ever allows the real Jesus of Nazareth to get a word in.”
As opposed to these comments, consider Dean W.R. Inge: “To the historian there must always be something astounding in the magnitude of the task Paul set himself, and in his enormous success. The future history of the civilised world for 2,000 years, perhaps for all time, was determined by his missionary journeys and his hurried writings.” And as another theologian has said: “There has probably seldom been anyone at the same time hated with such fiery hatred and loved with such passion as Paul.”
How can we in this twentieth century understand the influence of such a controversial man? What made Paul what he was? There are perhaps five influences making each of us what we are: family background and heredity; early upbringing and environment; education; God’s intervention in our lives; and our personal response to all these. We will look at Paul’s life in each of these areas to discover who he was. Before examining these, however, we should answer the question: how do we know about Paul anyway?
Paul is not known outside of the New Testament; there are no writings by Greek, Jewish or Roman scholars about him during his lifetime. The authors of the day did not notice his profound influence and, indeed, it took three centuries before the impact of his work was such as to change the history of the Roman world.
Sources of information on Paul
There are only two sources for our information on Paul: the letters he wrote, which are important primary sources, and a history of the early church written by Luke when we know as “The Act of the Apostles”.
1. His letters
The letters of Paul were particularly personal, yet written as an official statement for public reading. Even the personally addressed letters such as the letter to Philemon, were also addressed “to the church that meets in your house”. 1
One of his letters, that to the Romans, was a carefully constructed treatise, yet even this long and carefully argued theological presentation had a personal purpose.2
As Bishop J.B. Lightfoot said: “In the whole range of literature there is nothing like St Paul’s letters. Other correspondence may be more voluminous, more elaborate, more studiously demonstrative. But none is so faithful a mirror of the writer.”
The letters of Paul were typical in their construction to that of other letters in the ancient world. They started with the salutation to the recipient, mentioned the name of the sender (how much more sensible than our modern practice of leaving the name of the sender until the end of the letter), presented a greeting and a thanksgiving to the recipient, and concluded with some personal information and final signature.
Paul used to dictate his letters to a secretary or “amanuensis” who would take down in a form of shorthand the dictation of Paul, scribing with a stylus on a waxed tablet the notes which were then written in longhand, transcribed by pen and ink onto papyrus scrolls. Once the amanuensis identified himself as Tertius. 3 It is possible that Luke and Timothy also acted as secretary to Paul. However, Paul always personally signed his letters – as he indicated a number of times. 4
Thirteen of the letters in the New Testament have Paul’s name on them. While some theologians think that the personal letters to Timothy and Titus were written by a disciple of Paul, I would accept that all of the thirteen letters were written by him personally. The letter to the Hebrews, which was ascribed in the King James Version as being a letter of Paul, is universally accepted now as being written by someone else.
Paul’s letters have a number of features. There are some very carefully written passages, such as in Roman 1:16-17 where his theme for the whole letter is spelt out and developed over the next eight chapters. Sometimes Paul breaks into the most beautiful of lyrical writing, such as the great chapter on love. 5 However, these lyrical passages have been found by scholars to be very careful in their construction. Paul used chiasmus – the lyrical device of developing a theme in one sentence word-by-word, then reversing the order in the remaining half of the sentence (look, for example, at 1 Thessalonians 2:19-20). Some scholars have identified many places where the form of Paul’s sentence goes abc-cba.
Paul frequently quoted other authors, even on occasions quoting hymns from the early church. One such hymn is found in the great passage on the incarnation of Christ ; 6 another is in his letter to Timothy, where he encouraged loyalty to Christ. 7 When he addressed the philosophers in Athens, he quoted Greek poets and quoted on other occasions extensively from the Old Testament.
Some of his letters have passages which could be summaries of sermons that he had given outlining the true consequences of the Old Testament law. The balance between law and faith as found in Galatians (chapter 3 and 4) could quite easily have been a sermon summary.
Frequently, Paul concluded his letters with a number of personal exhortations to live a lifestyle consistent with the teaching of Jesus. 8 Yet in everything Paul wrote, there is one central theme that he constantly returned to no matter what subject he was writing about: the centrality of Jesus Christ. To be “in Christ” was to give a totally new worldview, a new way of living, and a new standard of personal faith and conduct. Everything changes when we become members of his body.
In the past decade, scholars have tended to support the more traditional views of the authorship of Paul’s letters. Statistical analysis of the use of his particular phrases, key words, and sentence structures – even down to the use of conjunctions like “and” and “but” – have found the grammatical and vocabulary styles of each letter to be consistent with that found in the majority.
2. The Acts of the Apostles
The historian Luke wrote not only the Gospel which bears his name but the Acts of the Apostles as well. He did not repeat the details of the letters of Paul when, after Paul’s death, he wrote his history of the early church. While there are a few similarities with the letters of Paul, there are no direct quotes and the few similarities in wordage can be accounted for by being about the same subject. While we have none of the original copies of Paul’s letters to check, Luke’s knowledge of them may have been firsthand – from his role as an amanuensis, or from hearing them read in the churches he attended.
The Acts of the Apostles is our best secondary source on the life and teaching of Paul, helping us with our understanding of the sequence of the events in Paul’s life. Unfortunately, the New Testament arranges the letters of Paul in order of their length: first to churches, then to individuals. Acts, however, helps us to arrange the letters in chronological sequence with his life.
According to the Acts of the Apostles, Paul’s life centred around three trips to Jerusalem after his conversion, three journeys round the Mediterranean world and one long trip to Rome in his legal appeal to Caesar. Because the focus of Acts is primarily on the geographic expansion of Christianity, we have no biography of Paul in the sense that we have in the Gospels of the life of Jesus.
The Acts of the Apostles is an account of how the Christian church grew from its Jewish origins in Jerusalem by an author who, for the most part, was present with Paul during a dramatic period of Paul’s ministry. Luke’s presence is signalled by his sudden use of the term “we” in passages indicating that he was there with Paul at the time.9 As for the rest of the material covering those times when Luke himself was not present, he obviously selected it from his personal research as he did with his Gospel. 10
Luke follows the sequence of Acts 1:8. The early Christians were to be witnesses to Jesus throughout Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and then to the ends of the earth. The book of Acts is actually broken into four sections where Luke indicates the expansion of Christianity from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria, and finally to Rome. Each of these sections concludes with a summary of how, through faith and the power of the Holy Spirit, the gospel spread throughout the known world. 11
The early part of Acts focuses on significant people in the early church: the apostles Peter and John, the first Christian martyr Stephen, the evangelist Philip and then the story of Saul who became Paul. The rest of the book of Acts centres on Paul and his activities, even though the other apostles were still active. Peter’s journeys, for example, were quite impressive, but we have no written record of his preaching, teaching or ministry after the early chapters of Acts simply because he did not have an amanuensis with him like Paul. Two letters written late in his life are all we possess.
Paul’s visits to Jerusalem are difficult to fit in with any timetable based on the information found from the letters. The fact is we have not sufficient information for an exact chronology of either the life and travels of Paul, or of the sequence of his letters. Many have tried and have twisted either the letters or the Acts of the Apostles to suit their framework. The fact is it is not possible to recover an exact sequence of either activities or writings.
The early life of Paul
Based then upon these significant primary and secondary source documents, what do we know about Paul’s early life?
1. Family background
Paul would have had three names: his forename, his family name and additional name (his praenomen, nomen and cognomen). We do not know Paul’s family name although his forename would have been Saul, Latinised into Paul.
His father was a Jewish community-leader and a Roman citizen. Citizenship was conferred by Romans upon distinguished local people in the provinces who helped Rome in its governing of a community or conquering of it. Tarsus was a major Roman provincial centre governed under generals including Pompey and Antony. Paul’s father, or possibly his grandfather, performed some meritorious service to the Romans. As the family business was tent making, perhaps he provided the tents in large numbers for the army.
Paul was taught a trade as was customary with all Jewish boys, even though he would have belonged to a fairly affluent or at least middle-class family. Paul once spoke with a sense of pride of his own achievements as a worker: “You yourselves know that I have worked with these hands of mine to provide everything that my companions and I have needed”. 12 This is not the comment of a labourer, but the comment of an intellectual proud of the fact that he could be independent due to his skill with his hands.
His early life, Paul believed, was marked out by God for a special purpose. In Galatians he used the following ideas of Jeremiah: “I chose you before I gave you life, and before you were born I selected you to be a prophet to the nations”. 13 Paul was born about 3 or 4 BC. His death occurred probably in his sixty-eighth year. He was proud of the fact that his family tradition was as correct and privileged in the Jewish faith as any:
I was circumcised when I was a week old. I am an Israelite by birth, of the tribe of Benjamin, a pure-blooded Hebrew. As far as keeping the Jewish Law is concerned, I was a Pharisee, and I was so zealous that I persecuted the church. As far as a person can be right by obeying the commands of the Law, I was without fault.” 14
He was called Saul after the most outstanding of his forefathers, the first king of Israel, who belonged to the same tribe. Living in a Roman-governed, Greek-speaking city posed problems for an orthodox Jew like Paul. In practice, he would need to be tri-lingual. At synagogue school he would learn Hebrew from the local rabbi. Travelling to Jerusalem, he would have spoken Aramaic, the Semitic language which originally came from Syria. He would also be fluent in Greek, the common language of the world of his day.
There was a fourth language in widespread use at the time: Latin. The sign on the cross of Jesus “This is the King of the Jew”, was in Greek, Latin and Hebrew. Citizenship enabled Paul to have free and unfettered travel throughout the Roman Empire, giving him the privilege of a fair public trial (when accused) and providing him with protection many times during his life. The Romans put to death any who claimed citizenship falsely. A citizen usually carried a small tablet which acted as a birth certificate, giving his birth registration and number. Paul’s citizenship was the passport to the Roman Empire.
Roman citizenship was a tremendous privilege. The military tribune’s words in Jerusalem indicated how he envied Paul’s acquiring of citizenship by birth: “I became a citizen by paying a large amount of money”. 15
2. Early environment
Paul once stated: “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of an important city.” 16
Tarsus was one of three university cities of the ancient world, the other two being Athens and Alexandria. As a busy seaport, it became a key trading centre for caravans of camels from both east and west. The Jews of the community lived in their own part of the town, by the river Cyndus. As a Roman citizen from a Greek city with a Jewish education, Paul had unique credentials that fitted him for leadership within the Christian church.
In the mountains round Tarsus the goats were kept for their hair which made a waterproof cloth called cilicium. Giving good protection against heat and rain, this material was used to make tents, and was famous for its durability. It is possible that Paul’s father or grandfather had founded the firm of tentmakers in the city. Its university was filled with students – including those from other centres. Augustus Caesar had been a student in this cosmopolitan university city.
Today, the roman town of Tarsus lies buried beneath the modern town. Archaeological excavations since 1947 have unearthed a number of significant Roman mosaics. There is a small Roman theatre, the remains of a temple and large public buildings – possibly connected with the university.
In Paul’s day the city may have had a population of close to 500,000. It had a history that went back to the second millennium BC, It is well known in ancient literature. Many writers recorded the visits of Cyrus the Younger, and Alexander the Great. The Greek historian, Xenophon, described in great detail the curing of illness in Tarsus, praising the city for its culture and medical facilities, four centuries before Paul. Forty years before Paul’s birth, Cleopatra reputedly sailed there from Egypt to meet Mark Antony, Roman General for the province. It was there one of their famous love scenes, celebrated by Shakespeare, was played out.
Greek culture pervaded the Roman Empire. The Roman orator Horace once commented, “Captive Greece took Rome captive.” From the second century when tens of thousands of Greek prisoners were brought back to Rome as slaves, their language, philosophy and culture dominated the Roman Empire. The Koine or common Greek became the language of communication throughout the Roman Empire. The Greek mystery religions were Romanised, with the early beliefs about Dionysus, Aphrodite, Zeus and Artemis all being mentioned during the travels and preaching of Paul.
The Jewish religion was the most consistent yet exclusive within the known world. Based upon the Mosaic Law, the followers of the one God Jehovah kept their racial identity pure, while their distinctive dress, diet and habits set them apart. Some of the Jewish community looked for a coming Messiah who would redeem them from their sins and free them from their political lords.
Such was the multi-culturalism of this community that the young Paul would have been forced to mix with cultural Greeks and pragmatic Romans, with slaves and free men, with traders and sailors — all bringing with them traditions and customs from every corner of the known world. Little did Paul realize that this mixed cultural background would provide the stage on which he would play such an important part.
3. Education
Paul’s education started at five years when he attended the synagogue school. There he began to learn by heart the Old Testament Law and to read the scriptures — probably in the Greek Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. He frequently quoted from this translation. However, because his father was a Pharisee, Paul also learnt Hebrew, the exclusive language of the learned.
After his early schooling in Tarsus, Paul went for graduate studies at the feet of the most famous Pharisee of his day, Gamaliel, in Jerusalem. Gamaliel was head of the Hillel School of orthodox belief. The Hillel School was strictly orthodox. Gamaliel was a member of the Sanhedrin, acknowledged as a wise and careful counselor. It was his advice to his fellow members of the Sanhedrin which led to the decision not to make martyrs of the early Christians. 17 While he was in Jerusalem, Paul probably lived with a relative. Later in his life he was warned by his sister’s son of a plot against him.
The Pharisees developed as a party within orthodox Judaism shortly after the time of the revolt of Judas Maccabaeus against the Greek overlords in the middle of the second century BC. They were called ‘the separated ones’, separating themselves from other forms of religious belief within Judaism to be the ‘godly people’ known for their piety and correct obedience to the Law. They observed 365 commandments concerning the things they must not do, and around these added, like a hedge, a protective barrier of oral instruction and prohibition designed to protect themselves from inadvertently breaking the Law of God. They traced their origins to those spoken about by the prophet Malachi:
Then the people who feared the Lord spoke to one another and the Lord listened and heard what they said and in his presence there was written down in a book a record of those who feared the Lord and respected him. ‘They will be my people,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘On the day when I act, they will be my very own.’ 18
The Pharisees believed that they belonged to this chosen group who would be spared from the judgment of God. In the time of Jesus there were about 6,000 Pharisees out of two million people in all Palestine. The population of Jerusalem in the time of Jesus was 100,000, except during feast times like the Passover when crowds would have exceeded 500,000 persons.
Paul was proud of his training as a Pharisee. Following his training, he returned home to Tarsus for approximately six years. It was during this time he missed the most significant events in the history of Israel: the public ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. Shortly afterwards, he returned to Israel and became a member of the Sanhedrin, a great honour for a young man of about thirty years.
The Sanhedrin was the supreme Jewish legal and civil court. Paul determined that as one of the upholders of the faith and traditions of his people he would make sure that all perverseness would be stamped out. He immediately became a persecutor of the Hellenistic Jews, those Jews who were so influenced by Greek culture that they had allowed their Greek culture to influence their Jewish faith: ‘He also talked and disputed with the Greek-speaking Jews, but they tried to kill him.’ 19
This same zeal led Paul to seek permission from the council to stamp out the new heretics, the people of the Way:
I myself thought that I should do everything I could against the cause of Jesus of Nazareth. That is what I did in Jerusalem. I received authority from the chief priests and put many of God’s people in prison; and when they were sentenced to death, I also voted against them. Many times I had them punished in the synagogues and tried to make them deny their faith. I was so furious with them that I even went to foreign cities to persecute them. 20
It was at this point in Paul’s life that God decided to intervene. God had other plans for Paul. He was to be his chosen messenger to take the gospel into the known world.
Despite problem of physical health which were to dog his tracks throughout his life, he always gave himself completely to the service of God. As a committed Pharisee determined to uphold the Jewish law, Paul opposed any who sought to change the traditions and customs of the Jews, whether the Hellenists (by adapting their religious faith to Greek influence) or the early Christians (by worshipping Jesus as the Messiah). After he had met the risen Christ, Paul saw Jesus as the fulfillment of all the Old Testament pointed to. The foe of the Christian faith became its friend; the persecutor became the preacher; the greatest adversary of the Christian faith became its greatest advocate.
Despite his family background, early environment and education, God intervened in Paul’s life.
If you take your life and look back upon it, can you see God working a pattern through your family background, your early environment and your education? How does one respond to God’s intervention? That’s the theme to which we now turn.
Endnotes
1. Philemon 1-2
2. See Romans 1:8-15; 15:14-33
3. Romans 16:22
4. 1 Corinthians 16:21
5. Philippians 2:5-11
6. Philippians 2:5-11
7. 2 Timothy 1:11-13
8. Romans 12:9-13;Philippians 4:8-9
9. See, for example, Acts 16:16-17; 20:5-15; 21:1-18; 27;1-28
10. Acts 1:1-4; Luke 1:1-4
11. See Acts 6:7; 12:24 16:5; 19:20
12. Acts 20:34
13. Galatians 1:15, using Jeremiah 1:5
14. Philippians 3:6
15. Acts 22:28
16. Acts 21:39
17. Acts 5:38
18. Malachi 3:16-17
19. Acts 9:29
20. Acts 26:9-11
For personal reading
Theme: Paul’s rich heritage
Monday : Paul’s Jewish upbringing (Acts 26:2-8)
Tuesday : Gamaliel’s role in Paul’s life (Acts 5:33-39)
Wednesday : Paul’s education (Acts 22:1-5)
Thursday : Paul, a Pharisee (Acts 23:1-10)
Friday : Paul, a Roman citizen (Acts 22:25-30)
Saturday : Paul’s authority based on the scriptures (Acts 13:16-25)
Sunday : Paul’s zeal (Acts 21:37-40 and Acts 22:1-3)
For group reading
Topic: Resurrection power and new life
1. How did Paul influence his world?
2. What are the main personal letters of Paul?
3. How would you describe the construction of a ‘typical’ letter of Paul?
4. Could you describe some distinctive features in Paul’s letter? Are they any different from a modern day personal letter?
5. How important would you say is one’s family tradition and background?
6. Paul was influenced by the multi-cultural community in a Roma province, which was also the centre of a Greek culture. Describe how these factors, together with his religious upbringing, would later work in his life.
7. Who do you think you are? Do you see God at work in your childhood, youth and adult life?
