Galatians #14

GALATIANS # 14

HISTORY

An overview (13)

10/11/10

“The Way”, which was in its birth at the time of Stephen’s execution, was in deadly peril from the onslaught led by the Pharisee, Saul. (Acts 8: 1 - 4; 9: 1); then we see a sudden, shocking, change in this Saul (9:28 -31)!

Why the persecution? Why the change? Who was this Saul?

We now approach the apostle of the Gentiles who decided the victory of Christianity as a universal religion, who labored more, both in word and deed, than all his colleagues, and who stands out, in lonely grandeur, the most remarkable and influential character in history. His youth as well as his closing years are involved in obscurity, save that he began a persecutor and ended a martyr, but the midday of his life is better known than that of any other apostle, and is replete with burning thoughts and noble deeds that can never die, and gather strength with the progress of the gospel from age to age and country to country. (Libronix)

Saul was not a madman, a maniacal mass murder, who delighted in sadistically torturing and murdering people, he was just the opposite; he was a devout Israelite, deeply committed to his religious tradition, searching for the Messiah, and then suddenly finding Him (or maybe better stated being “found” by Him!), completely transformed by Christ:

Philippians 3:4-14 ( KJV )
Though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more:
Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee;
Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.
But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.
Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,
And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:
That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;
If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.
Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.
Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Paul was very well educated in the Hebrew culture, traditions, and religion, fluent in the “Hebrew tongue”:

Acts 21:39-40 ( KJV )
But Paul said, I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city: and, I beseech thee, suffer me to speak unto the people.
And when he had given him licence, Paul stood on the stairs, and beckoned with the hand unto the people. And when there was made a great silence, he spake unto them in the Hebrew tongue, saying,

And also in Greek, demonstrated here with his citing both epicurean and stoic philosophical points:

Acts 17:22-29 ( KJV )
Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars’ hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.
For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.
God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;
And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;
That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:
For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device.

Which also shows his knowledge of Greek philosophy; Titus 1:12 shows his knowledge of Cretian poetry:

The New American Commentary:
17:17 Paul evidently stuck to his usual pattern of missionary preaching. On the Sabbath he reasoned with the Jews, evidently following the same method of scriptural proof that Christ was Messiah as he used at Thessalonica (v. 17). But during the week, on a daily basis, he bore his witness in the agora, the famous marketplace and hub of Athenian life. There he got his most pronounced response, especially from some of the philosophers. The Epicureans and Stoics were among the leading schools of the day, 66 and they serve as representatives of the confusion caused by Paul’s preaching.
17:18 Epicurians were thoroughgoing materialists, believing that everything came from atoms or particles of matter. There was no life beyond this; all that was human returned to matter at death. Though the Epicureans did not deny the existence of gods, they saw them as totally indifferent to humanity. They did not believe in providence of any sort; and if one truly learned from the gods, that person would try to live the same sort of detached and tranquil life as they, as free from pain and passion and superstitious fears as they.
The Stoics had a more lively view of the gods than the Epicureans, believing very much in the divine providence. They were pantheists, believing that the ultimate divine principle was to be found in all of nature, including human beings. This spark of divinity, which they referred to as the logos, was the cohesive rational principle that bound the entire cosmic order together. Humans thus realized their fullest potential when they lived by reason. By reason, i.e., the divine principle within them which linked them with the gods and nature, they could discover ultimate truth for themselves. The Stoics generally had a rather high ethic and put great stock on self-sufficiency. Since they viewed all humans as bound together by common possession of the divine logos, they also had a strong sense of universal brotherhood. The mention of these schools is not incidental. Paul would take up some of their thought in his Areopagus speech, particularly that of the Stoics, and thoroughly redirect it in line with the Creator God of the Old Testament.
It was not particularly complimentary when the philosophers dubbed Paul a “babbler.” They used a colorful word (spermologos), “seed-speaker,” which evoked images of a bird pecking indiscriminately at seeds in a barnyard. It referred to a dilettante, someone who picked up scraps of ideas here and there and passed them off as profundity with no depth of understanding whatever.67 They could not understand Paul’s concept of resurrection at all. Epicureans did not believe in any existence after death, and Stoics believed that only the soul, the divine spark, survived death.68 So what was this idea of a bodily resurrection (anastasis)? “He must be speaking of a new goddess named resurrection (“Anastasia”) along with this new god Jesus he keeps talking about” (author’s paraphrase).69 How ironical that they were making Paul into a polytheist like themselves. Before the Areopagus he would eliminate such thinking with his clear monotheistic exposition of God the Creator. (Libronix Digital Library System)

This group of learned philosophers was very erudite, educated and articulate, a very formidable, intimidating bunch - Paul’s discourse as an equal, demonstrates his wide ranging education, proving his fluency in classical Greek as well as the common Greek shown in his day to day discourse,

A bit more Pauline information:

Title : Who's Who in Christian History
Edition : First
Copyright : Copyright © 1992 by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

PAUL, THE APOSTLE (SAUL OF TARSUS) (c. 10–67) Prominent leader of the first-century church; apostle to the Gentiles; author of thirteen New Testament Epistles

FAMILY AND CULTURAL BACKGROUND
Paul was born a Jew in a family of Pharisees (Acts 23:6) of the tribe of Benjamin (Phil. 3:5) in Tarsus of Cilicia (Acts 9:11; 21:39; 22:3), a center of commerce and learning that embraced the Hellenistic spirit and Roman politics. It was a city of which he could be proud (Acts 21:39). His parents named him Saul after the first king of Israel, who was also a Benjaminite (1 Sam. 11:15; Acts 13:21), but Acts 13:9 notes that he “was also called Paul” (niv).He uses the Roman name Paul throughout his letters. From religious parents Paul received knowledge of the Law and Prophets and the Hebrew and Aramaic languages (Acts 21:40; 22:2-3; 23:6; Gal. 1:14; Phil. 3:5, 6). Tarsus, however, was not a Jewish city. Rather it had a Greek character where the Greek language was spoken and Greek literature was cultivated. This accounts for Paul’s familiarity with Greek (Acts 21:37), the language of the streets and shops of Tarsus. Jews were brought to Tarsus, the capital of the Roman province of Cilicia, in 171 b.c. to promote business in the region. At that time Paul’s ancestors were probably given Roman citizenship. Paul inherited from his father both Tarsisian and Roman citizenship, which would prove to be of great value to Paul in his later life as he traveled with the gospel through the Roman Empire (Acts 16:37; 22:25-29; 23:27). Paul may have had several brothers and sisters, but Acts 23:16 mentions only one sister whose son performed a lifesaving act for his uncle. Like all Jewish sons Paul called his father “Abba,” an Aramaic word Paul later wove into the fabric of the Christian faith as an affectionate and intimate title for God the Father (Rom 8:15; Gal. 4:6). Paul was a tentmaker (Acts 18:3). He may have learned this trade from his father, or he may have selected it as a means of self-support as was the custom of those in rabbinical training. Tarsus was well known for the goat’s hair cloth called cilicium. It was the weaving of this cloth and the fashioning of it into tents, sails, awnings, and cloaks that gave Paul his economic independence during his apostolic ministry (Acts 18:3; 20:34; 28:30; 2 Cor 11:9; 1 Thess. 2:9; 2 Thess. 3:8).

EDUCATION
Although born in Tarsus, Paul testified to the Jews in Jerusalem that he had been “brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel” (Acts 22:3). It is not clear when Paul was first brought to Jerusalem, but it is likely that sometime between the ages of thirteen and twenty he began his formal rabbinical studies. His teacher, Gamaliel, was the grandson of Hillel, who began the Pharisaic school whose teachings run through the Talmudical writings to this day. This is the same Gamaliel whose wisdom persuaded the Sanhedrin to spare the lives of Peter and the apostles (Acts 5:33-40). No doubt it was while studying under Gamaliel in Hillel’s school that Paul began to advance in Judaism beyond many Jews of his own age and became extremely zealous for the traditions of his fathers (Gal. 1:14). Perhaps then also Paul began to experience the struggles with the law he would later describe in Romans chapter 7. While Paul was studying the Jewish law in Jerusalem, Jesus was working as a carpenter in Nazareth. Then Jesus gathered the disciples who would one day be Paul’s fellow workers in the gospel, fulfilled his ministry, and accomplished redemption on the cross of Calvary (a.d. 30). Christ’s resurrection gave birth to the church, which was baptized in the Holy Spirit at the feast of Pentecost in Jerusalem. THE PERSECUTOR Shortly after these world-changing events, the members of certain synagogues in Jerusalem, including the Cilician synagogue, that of Paul’s native land (Acts 6:9), could not withstand the wisdom and spirit (Acts 6:10) of a member of the church in Jerusalem named Stephen (Acts 6:5, 8). They accused him of blasphemy before the Sanhedrin (Acts 6:11-15) and after his eloquent defense (Acts 7:1-53) dragged him out of the city, where he was stoned to death, thereby becoming the first Christian martyr. The record does not fully reveal the role Paul played in these proceedings, but we know that he was present and prominent because the witnesses against Stephen, who were required to throw the first stones in the execution, “laid their clothes at the feet of a young man called Saul” (Acts 7:58, niv). At Stephen’s trial, Paul heard Stephen’s historical method of defense, and he later used it himself at Antioch of Pisidia (Acts 13:16-41). He witnessed the man with the face of an angel (Acts 6:15), full of the Holy Spirit, looking above and proclaiming “the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56). Later Paul would write to the Colossians to “seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God” (Col. 3:1). Stephen’s death initiated the events that would culminate in Paul’s conversion and commission as the apostle to the Gentiles. But at the time, “Saul was consenting unto his death” (Acts 8:1). Paul became a leader of the oppressors of the church. He breathed threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord (Acts 9:1) and “persecuted the church of God, and wasted it” (Gal. 1:13), “binding and delivering into prisons both men and women” (Acts 22:4), “and being exceedingly mad against them, I persecuted them even unto strange cities” (Acts 26:10-11).

Saul or Paul341 was of strictly Jewish parentage, but was born, a few years after Christ,342 in the renowned Grecian commercial and literary city of Tarsus, in the province of Cilicia, and inherited the rights of a Roman citizen. He received a learned Jewish education at Jerusalem in the school of the Pharisean Rabbi, Gamaliel, a grandson of Hillel, not remaining an entire stranger to Greek literature, as his style, his dialectic method, his allusions to heathen religion and philosophy, and his occasional quotations from heathen poets show. Thus, a "Hebrew of the Hebrews,"343 yet at the same time a native Hellenist, and a Roman citizen, be combined in himself, so to speak, the three great nationalities of the ancient world, and was endowed with all the natural qualifications for a universal apostleship. He could argue with the Pharisees as a son of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin, and as a disciple of the renowned Gamaliel, surnamed "the Glory of the Law." He could address the Greeks in their own beautiful tongue and with the convincing force of their logic. Clothed with the dignity and majesty of the Roman people, he could travel safely over the whole empire with the proud watchword: Civis Romanus sum.

DISCUSSION

1. Who is “Saul”?
2. When was he born?
3. What was the extent of his education?
4. What was his original religious inclination?
5. How did he change?
6. Where was Saul from?
7. What is significant about this?
8. How did Paul become a Roman citizen?
9. Why was this significant?
10. Give an example of Paul demonstrating his knowledge of Greek art and philosophy.