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1994-12-10
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CHAPTER 1
THE MAN
The man Saul was born in tarsus, the capital of Cilicia.
[KING JAMES VERSION: Frank Charles Thompson, CHAIN-REFERENCE
BIBLE (Indianapolis: B. B. Kirkbride Bible Company, Inc.
1934), s.v. "Tarsus"--Acts 9:11; 11:25; 21:39]. [J. Gresham
Machen, THE ORIGIN OF PAUL'S RELIGION (New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1921), p. 44]. Saul was
circumcised on the eighth day, of the
people of Israel, of the tribe of
Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to
the law a Pharisee.... (Acts 22:28,
Revised Standard Version).
Ramsey sees the purpose of God fulfilled in Saul of Tarsus,
and quotes Paul's own testimony:
. . . God . . . set me apart from birth
and called me by his grace, was pleased
to reveal his Son in me so that I might
preach him among the Gentiles . . . .
(Galatians 1:15, NIV).
Paul was a Jew who was raised among Gentiles. He was a
member of the "conquering aristocracy of Romans." Tarsus
"best . . . united the oriental an western chartacter." [W.
M. Ramsey, THE CITIES OF ST. PAUL (New York: George H. Doran
Company, 1907), pp. 85-88]. Moffatt also has a similar
view. [James Moffatt, PAUL AND PAULINISM (New York: The
Pilgrim Press, 1910), p. 12].
Andrews notes,
There is little evidence that Paul was trained in
Greek culture or had firsthand knowledge of the
mystery cults. (ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, 1965
ed., s.v. "Paul, Saint," by Elias Andrews).
However, Paul spoke and wrote Koine Greek, the universal
language of his time. The New Testament was written in Koine
Greek. To understand the Greek language was to understand
the Greek culture.
Paul also spoke Aramaic, the language that the Jews
spoke in Jesus' day.
Paul probably knew Latin also.
Paul knew ancient Hebrew, the language with which the
Old Testaemnt was written. He was a biblical scholar, having
studied in Jerusalem under the greatest rabbi of his day,
Gamaliel, grandson of Hillel. [Edgar J. Goodspeed, PAUL
(Philadelphia: The John C. Winston Company, 1947), p. 10].
The personal experience of Paul is the key to his
success as a Christian. Before his conversion, he sought in
Pharisaism to fulfill the law. Paul
had to be right before God, and to achieve that
condition there had to be an inner witness that
the requirements of the Law had been met. This
inward witness was lacking. He did not know it,
but at this point Paul was a man in search of
grace, and this is what he found when he found
Christ. He discovered that he was to cease taking
the initiative in his own salvation and to behold,
in the life and death and resurrection of Christ,
the initiative God had taken. He was to
understand that the divine act in Jesus Christ was
God's declaration to man that the divine-human
relationship is a gift imparted on the ground of
faith and issuing in a sense of inner emancipation
enabling man to live according to a new law, the
spirit or law of Christ, the law of love.
(ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, 1965 ed., s.v.
"Paul, Saint," by Elias Andrews).
In order to discover the truth, let us look deep into the
spirit of the Apostle Paul.
Jesus, THE LIVING WORD OF GOD, transcends the written
Word of God. So Paul, the living manifestation of
regenerating grace, transcends words written about him.
Jefferson comments,
What Jesus said to men when he faced them in his
highest mood was not "Believe this" or "Accept
that," but "Follow me!" [Charles Edward Jefferson,
THE CHARACTER OF PAUL (New York: The Macmillan
Company, 1924), p. 3].
Jefferson places Paul's character and not his doctrines as
the key to understanding Paul. (Jefferson, THE CHARACTER OF
PAUL, p. 10). Jefferson studied Paul a thoroughly:
I have earned my right to guess by reading
everything of importance published on the question
within the last fifty years, and by living with
the Apostle [Paul] on intimate terms summer and
winter, day and night for more than a third of a
century. I may be pardoned for claiming the right
to say I know him. I know his accent, his
intonations, his overtones and his undertones, his
subtle mannerism, and the flavor of his
individuality. (Jefferson, THE CHARACTER OF PAUL,
p. 24).
Deissmann adds these important thoughts:
This is exactly the task of the modern
investigation of Paul; to come back from the paper
Paul of our western libraries, from the
Germanized, dogmatised, modernised, stilted Paul,
to the historic Paul, through the labyrinth of the
`Paulinism' of our New Testament Theology to gain
contact once more with the actual Paul of ancient
days. [Adolf Deissmann, PAUL (New York: George H.
Doran Company, 1926), p. 4].
Paul's conversion was the pivotal experience of his
life:
The crisis of his conversion had been the dawn of
a new world. It was as if God had said, LET THERE
BE LIGHT, AND THERE WAS LIGHT. (2 Cor. iv:6) The
conception of Jesus as the Messiah who had
suffered on the cross and risen form the dead was
a vision which meant not only a revision of all
his prevous messianic ideas but a re-casting of
his nature; indeed, this radical change, in which
his whole nature was melted and moulded by the
power of the Lord, completely altered his religous
opinions about Messiah or the Christ, and the
latter change began from the moment when he
stumbled to his feet on the highroad outside
Damascus. (Moffatt, PAUL AND PAULINISM, pp. 17-
18).
Paul had failed to live up to the Mosaic ideal as a
strict Pharisee. When he met Christ on the road to
Damascus, he knew that he was in right relationship with God
through Christ. His heart was changed in the new birth, and
he received power from the Spirit of God to live more in
line with the Mosaic ideal.
Paul must now abstract from the Scripture, in light of
his personal experience with Christ, Christian theology.
Then he must communicate this theology, this good news, to
others in order that they too might experience this new life
in Christ!
END