New Testament Documents - Are they Reliable

By Frederick Fyvie Bruce

Chapter 6

THE IMPORTANCE OF PAUL'S EVIDENCE

The earliest of the New Testament writings, as they have come down to us, are the letters written by the apostle Paul up to the time of his detention in Rome (c. AD 60-62). The earliest of our Gospels in its present form can probably not be dated earlier than AD 60, but from the hand of Paul we have ten Epistles written between 48 and 60. This man Paul was a Roman citizen of Jewish birth (his Jewish name was Saul), born somewhere about the commencement of the Christian era in the city of Tarsus in Cilicia, Asia Minor. His birthplace, 'no mean city', as he said himself (Acts xxi. 39) was in those days an eminent centre of Greek culture, which did not fail to leave its mark on Paul, as may be seen in his speeches and letters. He received an education in Jerusalem under Gamaliel, the greatest Rabbi of his day and a leader of the party of the Pharisees. He rapidly attained distincttion among his contemporaries by the diligence of his studies and the fervour with which he upheld the ancestral traditions of the Jewish nation.' He may even -though this is uncertain- have been a member of the Sanhedrin, the supreme court of the nation. This zeal for the law brought him into conflict with the early Jerusalem Christians, especially with those who belonged to the circle of Stephen, whose teaching he must have heard in the synagogue where the Cilician Jews met' and who early realized, with exceptionally farsighted comprehension, that the gospel cut at the roots of the traditional Jewish ceremonial law and culture.

At the stoning of Stephen, we find Paul playing a responsible part and giving his consent to his death, and thereafter proceeding to uproot the new movement which, in his eyes, stood revealed by Stephen's activity as a deadly threat to all that he counted dear in Judaism. To use his own words, 'Beyond all measure I persecuted the Church of God and harried it' (see Gal. i. 13) until his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus convinced his mind and conscience of the reality of His resurrection, and therewith of the validity of the Christians' claims, whereupon he became the chief herald of the faith of which he formerly made havoc.

It is reasonable to believe that the evidence which convinced such a man of the out-and-out wrongness of his former course, and led him so decisively to abandon previously cherished beliefs for a movement which he had so vigorously opposed, must have been of a singularly impressive quality. The conversion of Paul has for long been regarded as a weighty evidence for the truth of Christianity. Many have endorsed the conclusion of the eighteenth century statesman George, Lord Lyttelton, that 'the conversion and apostleship of St. Paul alone, duly considered, was of itself a demonstration sufficient to prove Christianity to be a divine revelation'.'

Here, however, we are chiefly concerned with the information we can derive from his Epistles. These were not written to record the facts of the life and ministry of Jesus; they were addressed to Christians, who already knew the gospel story. Yet in them we can find sufficient material to construct an outline of the early apostolic preaching about Jesus. While Paul insists on the divine preexistence of Jesus, yet he knows that He was none the less a real human being,. a descendant of Abraham and David, who lived under the Jewish law; who was betrayed, and on the night of His betrayal instituted a memorial meal of bread and wine; who endured the Roman penalty of crucifixion, although the responsibility for His death is laid at the door of the representatives of the Jewish nation; who was 'buried, rose the third day, and was thereafter seen alive by many eyewitnesses on various occasions, including one occasion on which He was so seen by over five hundred at once, of whom the majority were alive nearly twenty-five years later.' In this summary of the evidence for the reality of Christ's resurrection, Paul shows a sound instinct for the necessity of marshaling personal testimony in support of what might well appear an incredible assertion.

 

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