International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Romans, 55-58 AD. This is the great doctrinal group, the four chief epistles of Baur. They turn about the Judaizing controversy which furnishes the occasion for the expansion of the doctrine of justification by faith in opposition to the legalistic contention of the Judaizing Christians from Jerusalem (Act_15:1-3; Gal_2:1-10). The dates of these epistles are not perfectly clear. 1 Corinthians was written shortly before the close of Paul's 3 years' stay at Ephesus (Act_20:31; 1Co_16:8; Act_20:1 f). 2 Corinthians was written a few months later while he was in Macedonia (2Co_2:13; 2Co_7:5, 2Co_7:13; 2Co_8:16-24). Romans was written from Corinth (Rom_16:23; Act_20:2 f) and sent by Phoebe of Cenchrea (Rom_16:1). The integrity of Romans is challenged by some who deny in particular that chapter 16 belongs to the epistle Moffatt (Intro, 134-38) gives an able, but unconvincing, presentation of the arguments for the addition of the chapter by a later hand. Deissmann (St. Paul, 19) calls Rom 16 “a little letter” addressed to the Christians at Ephesus. Von. Soden (History of Early Christian Literature, 78) easily justifies the presence of Rom 16 in the Epistle to the Romans: “These greetings, moreover, were certainly intended by Paul to create bonds of fellowship between the Pauline Christians and the Roman community, and to show that he had not written to them quite exclusively in his own name.” A common-sense explanation of Paul's personal ties in Rome is the fact that as the center of the world's life the city drew people thither from all parts of the earth. So, today many a man has friends in New York or London who has never been to either city. A much more serious controversy rages as to the integrity of 2 Corinthians. Semler took 2 Cor 10 through 13 to be a separate and later ep., because of its difference in tone from 2 Cor 1 through 9, but Hausrath put it earlier than chapters 1 through 9, and made it the letter referred to in 2Co_2:4. He has been followed by many scholars like Schmiedel, Cone, McGiffert, Bacon, Moffatt, Kennedy, Rendall, Peake, Plummer. Von Soden (History of Early Christian Literature, 50) accepts the partition-theory of 2 Corinthians heartily: “It may be shown with the highest degree of probability that this letter has come down to us in 2 Cor 10:1 through 13:10.” But the unity of the epistle on theory that the change in tone is a climax to the disobedient element of the church is still maintained with force and justice by Klopper, Zahn, Bachmann, Denhey, Bernard, A. Robertson, Weiss, Menzies. The place of the writing of Galatians turns on its date. Lightfoot (in loc.) argues for Corinth, since it was probably written shortly before Romans. But Moffatt (Introduction, 102) holds tentatively to Ephesus, soon after Paul's arrival there from Galatia. So he gives the order: Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans. In so much doubt it is well to follow Lightfoot's logical argument. Galatians leads naturally to Romans, the one hot and passionate, the other calm and contemplative, but both on the same general theme.

Philippians, Philemon, Colossians, Ephesians. Date 61-63, unless Paul reached Rome several years earlier. This matter depends on the date of the coming of Festus to succeed Felix (Act_24:27). It was once thought to be 60 AD beyond any doubt, but the whole matter is now uncertain. See “Chronology,” III, 2, (2), below. At any rate these four epistles were written during the first Roman imprisonment, assuming that he was set free.

But it must be noted that quite a respectable group of scholars hold that one or all of these epistles were written from Caesarea (Schultz, Thiersch, Meyer, Hausrath, Sabatier, Reuss, Weiss, Haupt, Spitta, McPherson, Hicks). But the arguments are more specious than convincing. See Hort, Romans and Ephesians, 101-10. There is a growing opinion that Philemon, Colossians and Ephesians were written from Ephesus during a possible imprisonment in Paul's stay of 3 years there. So Deissmann (Light from the Ancient East, 229; Paul, 16); Lisco (Vincula Sanctorum, 1900); M. Albertz (Theol. Studien und Kritiken, 1910, 551 ff); B. W. Bacon (Journal of Biblical Lit., 1910, 181 ff). The strongest argument for this position is that Paul apparently did not know personally the readers of Eph (Eph_1:15); compare also Col_1:4. But this objection need not apply if the so-called Ephesian Epistle was a circular letter and if Paul did not visit Colosse and Laodicea during his 3 years at Ephesus. The theory is more attractive at first than on reflection. It throws this group before Romans - a difficult view to concede.

But even so, the order of these epistles is by no means certain. It is clear that Philemon, Colossians and Ephesians were sent together. Tychicus was the bearer of Colossians (Col_4:7 f) and Ephesians (Eph_6:21 f). Onesimus carried the letter to Philemon (Phm_1:10, Phm_1:13) and was also the companion of Tychicus to Colosse (Col_4:9). So these three epistles went together from Rome. It is commonly assumed that Phil was the last of the group of four, and hence later than the other three, because Paul is balancing life and death (Phi_1:21 ff) and is expecting to be set free (Phi_1:25), but he has the same expectation of freedom when he writes Philemon (Phm_1:22). The absence of Luke (Phi_2:20) has to be explained on either hypothesis. Moffatt (Introduction, 159) is dogmatic, “as Philippians was certainly the last letter that he wrote,” ruling out of court Ephesians, not to say the later Pastoral Epistles. But this conclusion gives Moffatt trouble with the Epistle to the Laodiceans (Col_4:16) which he can only call “the enigmatic reference” and cannot follow Rutherford (St. Paul's Epistles to Colosse and Laodicea, 1908) in identifying the Laodicean Epistle with Ephesians, as indeed Marcion seems to have done. But the notion that Ephesians was a circular letter designed for more than one church (hence, without personalities) still holds the bulk of modern opinion.

Moffatt has a vigorous attack on these letters in EB, but he “almost entirely ignores the external evidence, while he has nothing to say to the remarkable internal evidence which immediately demands our attention” (Knowling, Testimony of Paul to Christ, 3rd edition, 1911, 129). Moffatt (Introduction to the Literature of the New Testament, 414) holds that the Pastoral Epistles came from one pen, but the personality and motives are very vague to him. The personal details in 2Ti_1:14-18; 2Ti_4:9-22 are not on a paragraph with those in The Acts of Paul and Thekla in the 2nd century. Many critics who reject the Pauline authorship of the Pastoral Epistles admit the personal details in 2 Timothy, but it is just in such matters that forgeries are recognizable. To admit these fragments is logically to admit the whole (Maclean in 1-vol HDB), as Moffatt sees (Intro, 414), however much he seeks to tone down the use of Paul's name as “a Christian form of suasoriae,” and “a further and inoffensive development of the principle which sought to claim apostolic sanction for the expanding institutions and doctrines of the early church” (ibid., 415). The objection against these epistles from differences in diction has been grievously overdone. As a matter of fact, each of the four groups has words peculiar to it, and naturally so. Style is a function of the subject as well as a mark of the man. Besides, style changes with one's growth. It would have been remarkable if all four _ groups had shown no change in no change in vocabulary and style. The case of Shakespeare is quite pertinent, for the various groups of plays stand more or less apart. The Pastoral Epistles belong to Paul's old age and deal with personal and ecclesiastical matters in a more or less reminiscential way, with less of vehement energy than we get in the earlier epistles, but this situation is what one would reasonably expect. The “ecclesiastical organization” argument has been greatly overdone. As a matter of fact, “the organization in the Pastoral Epistles is not apparently advanced one step beyond that of the church in Philippi in 61 AD” (Ramsay, The Expositor, VII, viii, 17). The “gnosis” met by these epistles (1Ti_6:20; Tit_1:14) is not the highly developed type seen in the Ignatian Epistles of the 2nd century. Indeed, Bartlet (“Historic Setting of the Pastoral Epistles,” The Expositor, January, 1913, 29) pointedly says that, as a result of Hort's “Judaistic Christianity” and “Christian Ecclesia” and Ramsay's “Historical Commentary on the Epistles of Timothy” (Expos, VII, vii, ix, VIII, i), “one feels the subject has been lifted to a new level of reality and that much criticism between Baur and Julicher is out of date and irrelevant.” It is now shown that the Pastoral Epistles are not directed against Gnosticism of advanced type, but even of a more Jewish type (Tit_1:14) than that in Colossians. Ramsay (Expos, VIII, i, 263) sweeps this stock criticism aside as “from the wrong point of view.” It falls to the ground. Lightfoot (“Note on the Heresy Combated in the Pastoral Epistles,” Biblical Essays, 413) had insisted on the Jewish character of the Gnosticism attacked here. As a matter of fact, the main objection to these epistles is that they do not fit into the story in Acts, which breaks off abruptly with Paul in Rome. But it is a false premise to assume that the Pastoral Epistles have to fit into the events in Acts. Harnack turns the objection that Paul in Act_20:26 predicted that he would never see the Ephesian elders again into a strong argument for the date of Luke's Gospel before 2Ti_4:21 (The Date of Acts and Synoptic Gospels, 103). Indeed, he may not have revisited Ephesus after all, but may have seen Timothy at Miletus also (1Ti_1:3). Harnack frankly admits the acquittal and release of Paul and thus free play for the Pastoral Epistles Blass (Acta Apostolorum, 24) acknowledges the Pastoral Epistles as genuine. So also Findlay, article “Paul,” in HDB; Maclean in 1-vol HDB; Denney in Standard BD. Sanday (Inspiration, 364) comments on the strength of the external evidence for the Pastoral Epistles. Even Holtzmann (Einl3, 291) appears to admit echoes of the Pastoral Epistles in the Ignatian Epistles Lightfoot (Biblical Essays, “Date of the Pastoral Epistles,” 399-437) justifies completely the acceptance of the Pauline authorship. Deissman (St. Paul, 15) has a needed word: “The delusion is still current in certain circles that the scientific distinction of a Bible scholar may be estimated in the form of a percentage according to the proportion of his verdicts of spuriousness.... The extant letters of Paul have been innocently obliged to endure again a fair share of the martyrdom suffered by the historic Paul.” See further PASTORAL EPISTLES.

Assuming, therefore, the Pauline authorship of the thirteen epistles, we may note that they, reveal in a remarkable way the growth in Paul's apprehension of Christ and Christianity, his adaptation to varied situations, his grasp of world-problems and the eternal values of life. Paul wrote other epistles, as we know. In 1Co_5:9 there is a clear reference to a letter not now known to us otherwise, earlier than 1 Corinthians. The use of “every epistle” in 2Th_3:17 naturally implies that Paul had written more than two already. It is not certain to what letter Paul refers in 2Co_2:4 - most probably to one between 1 and 2 Corinthians, though, as already shown, some scholars find that letter in 2 Cor 10 through 13. Once more Paul (Col_4:16) mentions an epistle addressed to the church at Laodicea. This epistle is almost certainly that which we know as Ephesians. If not, here is another lost epistle. Indeed, at least two apocryphal Epistles to the Laodiceans were written to supply this deficiency. As early as 2Th_2:2 forgers were at work to palm, off epistles in Paul's name, “or by epistle as from us,” to attack and pervert Paul's real views, whom Paul denounces. It was entirely possible that this “nefarious work” would be continued (Gregory, Canon and Text of the New Testament, 1907, 191), though, as Gregory argues, Paul's exposure here would have a tendency to put a stop to it and to put Christians on their guard and to watch for Paul's signature to the epistles as a mark of genuineness (2Th_3:17; 1Co_16:21; Gal_6:11; Col_4:18). This was all the more important since Paul evidently dictated his letters to amanuenses, as to Tertius in the case of Rom_16:22. In the case of Phm_1:19, Paul probably wrote the whole letter. We may be sure therefore that, if we had the other genuine letters of Paul, they would occupy the same general standpoint as the thirteen now in our possession. The point to note here is that the four groups of Paul's Epistles fit into the historical background of the Acts as recorded by Luke, barring the fourth group which is later than the events in Acts. Each group meets a specific situation in a definite region or regions, with problems of vital interest. Paul attacks these various problems (theological, ecclesiastical, practical) with marvelous vigor, and applies the eternal principles of the gospel of Christ in such fashion as to furnish a norm for future workers for Christ. It is not necessary to say that he was conscious of that use. Deissmann (St. Paul, 12 f) is confident on this point: “That a portion of these confidential letters should be still extant after centuries, Paul cannot have intended, nor did it ever occur to him that they would be.” Be that as it may, and granted that Paul's Epistles are “survivals, in the sense of the technical language employed by the historical method” (ibid., 12), still we must not forget that Paul attached a great deal of importance to his letters and urged obedience to the teachings which they contained: “I adjure you by the, Lord that this epistle be read unto all the brethren” (1Th_5:27). This command we find in the very first one preserved to us. Once more note 2Th_3:14 : “And if any man obeyeth not our word by this ep., note that man, that ye have no company with him.” Evidently therefore Paul does not conceive his epistles as mere incidents in personal correspondence, but authoritative instructions for the Christians to whom they are addressed. In 1Co_7:17, “And so ordain I in all the churches,” he puts his epistolary commands on a paragraph with the words of Jesus quoted in the same chapter. Some indeed at Corinth (2Co_10:9 f) took his “letters” as an effort to “terrify” them, a thing that he was afraid to do in person. Paul (2Co_10:11) does not deny the authority of his letters, but claims equal courage when he comes in person (compare 2Co_13:2, 2Co_13:10). That Paul expected his letters to be used by more than the one church to which they were addressed is clear from Col_4:16 : “And when this epistle hath been read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that ye also read the epistle from Laodicea.” If the letter to Laodicea is our Eph and a sort of circular letter (compare Galatians), that is clear. But it must be noted that Colossians, undoubtedly a specific letter to Colosse, is likewise to be passed on to Laodicea. It is not always observed that in 1Co_1:2, though the epistle is addressed “unto the church of God which is at Corinth,” Paul adds, “with all that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, their Lord and ours.” Philemon is, of course, a personal letter, though it deals with a sociological problem of universal interest. The Pastoral Epistles are addressed to two young ministers and have many personal details, as is natural, but the epistles deal far more with the social aspects of church life and the heresies and vices that were threatening the very existence of Christianity in the Roman empire. Paul is eager that Timothy shall follow his teaching (2Ti_3:10 ff), and “the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also” (2Ti_2:2). It is this larger view of the future of Christianity that concerns Paul very keenly. The very conception of his ministry to the Gentiles (Rom_15:16; Eph_3:7 ff) led Paul to feel that he had a right to speak to all, “both to Greeks and to Barbarians” (Rom_1:14), and hence, even to Rome (Rom_1:15 f). It is a mistake to limit Paul's Epistles to the local and temporary sphere given them by Deissmann.

For Paul's gospel or theology see later. Here we must stress the fact that all four groups of Paul's Epistles are legitimate developments from his fundamental experience of grace as conditioned by his previous training and later work. He met each new problem with the same basal truth that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, revealed to Paul on the way to Damascus. The reality of this great experience must here be assumed (see discussion later). It may be admitted that the Acts does not stand upon the same plane as the Pauline Epistles as a witness concerning Paul's conversion (Fletcher, The Conversion of Paul, 1910, 5). But even so, the Epistles amply confirm Luke's report of the essential fact that Jesus appeared to Paul in the same sense that He did to the apostles and 500 Christians (1Co_15:4-9). The revelation of Christ to Paul and in Paul (ἐν ἐμοί, en emoí, Gal_1:16) and the specific call connected therewith to preach to the Gentiles gave Paul a place independent of and on a paragraph with the other apostles (Gal_1:16 f; Gal_2:1-10). Paul's first preaching (Act_9:20) “proclaimed Jesus, that he is the Son of God.” This “primitive Paulinism” (Sabatier, The Apostle Paul, 1893, 113) lay at the heart of Paul's message in his sermons and speeches in Acts. Professor P. Gardner regards Luke as a “careless” historian (“The Speeches of Paul in Acts,” Cambridge Biblical Essays, 1909, 386), but he quite admits the central place of Paul's conversion, both in the Acts and the Epistles (ib; compare also The Religious Experience of Paul).

We cannot here trace in detail the growth of Paulinism. Let Wernle speak (Beginnings of Christianity, 1903, I, 224) for us: “The decisive factor in the genius of Paul's theology was his personal experience, his conversion on the road to Damascus.” This fact reappears in each of the groups of the Epistles. It is the necessary implication in the apostolic authority claimed in 1Th_2:4-6; 2Th_2:15; 2Th_3:6, 2Th_3:14. “We might have claimed authority as apostles of Christ” (1Th_2:6). For the second group we need only refer to 1Co_9:1 f and 1Co_15:1-11, where Paul justifies his gospel by the fact of having seen the risen Jesus. His self-depreciation in 1Co_15:9 is amply balanced by the claims in 1Co_15:10. See also 2 Cor 10 through 13 and Galatians 1 and 2 for Paul's formal defense of his apostolic authority. The pleasantry in Rom_15:14 does not displace the claim in Rom_15:16, Rom_15:23 f. In the third group note the great passage in Phi_3:12-14, where Paul pointedly alludes to his conversion: “I was laid hold of by Jesus Christ,” as giving him the goal of his ambition, “that I may lay hold”; “I count not myself yet to have laid hold.” This concentration of effort to come up to Christ's purpose in him is the key to Paul's life and letters, “I press on toward the goal.” So the golden cord reappears in Eph_3:2-13 : “How that by revelation was made known unto me the mystery, as I wrote before in few words, whereby, when ye read, ye can perceive my understanding in the mystery of Christ.” In the fourth group he still recalls how Christ Jesus took pity on him, the blasphemer, the persecutor, the chief of sinners, and put him into the ministry, “that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering, for an ensample of them that should thereafter believe on him unto eternal life” (1Ti_1:16). He kept up the fight to the end (2Ti_4:6 f), for the Lord Jesus stood by him (2Ti_4:17), as on the road to Damascus. So the personal note of experience links all the epistles together.They reveal Paul's growing conception of Christ. Paul at the very start perceived that men are redeemed by faith in Jesus as the Saviour from sin through His atoning death, not by works of the Law (Act_13:38 f). In the first group there are allusions to the “work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ” (1Th_1:3). He speaks of “election” (1Th_1:4) and “our gospel” (1Th_1:5) and the resurrection of Jesus (1Th_1:10). The Father, Son and Spirit cooperate in the work of salvation (2Th_2:13 f), which includes election, belief, sanctification, glorification. It is not necessary to press the argument for the conception of salvation by faith in Christ, grace as opposed to works, in the second group. It is obviously present in the third and the fourth. We seem forced to the view therefore that Paul's experience was revolutionary, not evolutionary. “If we consider the whole history of Paul as it is disclosed to us in his letters, are we not forced to the conclusion that his was a catastrophic or explosive, rather than a slowly progressive personality?” (Garvie, Studies of Paul and His Gospel, 1911, 32). “His gospel was included in his conversion, and it was meditation that made explicit what was thus implicit in his experience” (same place) . This is not to say that there was no “spiritual development of Paul” (Matheson, 1890). There was, and of the richest kind, but it was a growth of expression in the successive application of the fundamental Christian conception. The accent upon this or that phase of truth at different stages in Paul's career does not necessarily mean that the truth is a new one to him. It may simply be that the occasion has arisen for emphasis and elaboration.

In a broad generalization the first group of the epistles is eschatological, the second soteriological, the third Christological, and the fourth pastoral (Garvie, Studies of Paul and His Gospel, 22). But one must not get the notion that Paul did not have a full gospel of salvation in the first group, and did not come to the true motive of the person of Christ as Lord till the second, or understand the pastoral office till the fourth. See emphasis on Paul's work as pastor and preacher in 1 Thess 2 (first group), and the Lordship of Christ also (1Th_1:1, 1Th_1:3; 2Th_1:1; 2Th_2:13 f), on a paragraph with the Father.

There was a change of accent in each group on questions of eschatology, but in each one Paul cherishes the hope of the second coming of Christ up to the very end when he speaks of his own death (2Ti_4:8, 2Ti_4:18). Paul has a whole gospel of grace in all his epistles, but he presses home the special phase of truth needed at the moment, always with proper balance and modification, though not in the form of a system of doctrine. In the first group he relieves the minds of the Thessalonian Christians from the misapprehension into which they had fallen concerning his position on the immediate coming of Christ. In the second group Paul vindicates the gospel of grace from the legalistic addition of the Judaizers who sought to rob the Gentiles of their freedom by insisting that they become Jews as well as Christians. This ringing battle is echoed in Acts 15 and is the mightiest conflict of Paul's career. We hear echoes of it in Phil 3, but he had won his contention. In the third group the battle with error has shifted to the province of Asia, especially the Lycus Valley, where a mystic mixture of Judaism (Essenism) and heathen mystery-religions and philosophies (incipient Gnosticism) was so rife in the 2nd century (the various forms of Gnosticism which combined with some aspects of Christianity). It is possible also that Mithraism was already a foe of Christianity. The central position and essential deity of Jesus Christ was challenged by these new and world-old heresies, and Paul attacks them with marvelous skill in Col and Eph and works out in detail his teaching concerning the person of Christ with due emphasis on the soteriological aspects of Christ's work and on Christian life. Bruce (St. Paul's Conception of Christianity) conceives that Paul gives us his entire conception of Christianity in the four great epistles of the second group, while B. Weiss (Biblical Theology of the New Testament) sees a more developed doctrine in the third group. He is in his prime in both groups. In the fourth group the same struggle lingers on with variations in Crete and even in Ephesus. The Jewish phase of the heresy is more decided (perhaps Pharisaic), and recalls to some extent the Judaistic controversy in the second group. Paul is older and faces the end, and Christianity has enemies within and without. He turns to young ministers as the hope of the future in the propagation of the gospel of the happy God. The fires have burned lower, and there is less passion and heat. The tone is now fierce, now tender. The style is broken and reminiscent and personal, though not with the rush of torrential emotion in 2 Corinthians, nor the power of logic in Galatians and Romans. Each epistle fits into its niche in the group. Each group falls into proper relation to the stage in Paul's life and justly reveals the changes of thought and feeling in the great apostle. It is essential that one study Paul's Epistles in their actual historical order if one wishes to understand the mind of Paul. Scholars are not agreed, to be sure on this point. They are not agreed on anything, for that matter. See two methods of presenting Paul's Epistles in Robertson, Chronological New Testament (1904), and Moffatt, Historical New Testament (1901).

There is not a single date in the life of Paul that is beyond dispute, though several are narrowed to a fine point, and the general course and relative proportion of events are clear enough. Luke gave careful data for the time of the birth of Jesus (Luk_2:1 f), for the entrance of the Baptist on his ministry (Luk_3:1 f), and the age of Jesus when He began His work (Luk_3:23), but he takes no such pains in the Acts with chronology. But we are left with a number of incidental allusions and notes of time which call for some discussion. For fuller treatment see CHRONOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. Garvie (Life and Teaching of Paul, 1910, 181) gives a comparative table of the views of Harnack, Turner, Ramsay and Lightfoot for the events from the crucifixion of Christ to the close of Acts. The general scheme is nearly the same, differing from one to four years here and there. Shaw (The Pauline Epistles, xi) gives a good chronological scheme. Moffatt (Introduction to the Literature of the New Testament, 62 f) gives theories of 23 scholars:

This table shows very well the present diversity of opinion on the main points in Paul's life. Before expressing an opinion on the points at issue it is best to examine a few details. Paul himself gives some notes of time. He gives “after 3 years” (Gal_1:18) as the period between his conversion and first visit to Jerusalem, though he does not necessarily mean 3 full years. In Gal_2:1, Paul speaks of another visit to Jerusalem “after the space of 14 years.” Then again Luke quotes him as saying to the Ephesian elders at Miletus that he had spent “3 years” at Ephesus (Act_20:31). These periods of time all come before Paul's last visit and arrest in Jerusalem, and they do not embrace all the time between his conversion and arrest. There is also another note of time in 2Co_12:2, where he speaks in an enigmatic way of experiences of his “14 years” ago from the writing of this epistle from Macedonia on the third tour. This will take him back to Tarsus before coming to Antioch at the request of Barnabas, and so overlaps a bit the other “14” above, and includes the “3 years” at Ephesus. We cannot, therefore, add these figures together for the total. But some light may be obtained from further details from Acts and the Epistles.

Saul is “a young man” (Act_7:58) when this event occurs. Like other young Jews he entered upon his life as a rabbi at the age of thirty. He had probably been thus active several years, especially as he was now in a position of leadership and may even have been a member of the Sanhedrin (Act_26:10). Pontius Pilate was not deposed from his procuratorship till 36 AD, but was in a state of uneasiness for a couple of years. It is more probable, therefore, that the stoning of Stephen would take place after his deposition in the interregnum, or not many years before, when he would be afraid to protest against the lawlessness of the Jewish leaders. He had shown timidity at the death of Jesus, 29 or 30 AD, but some of the forms of law were observed. So nothing decisive is here obtained, though 35 AD seems more probable than 32 or 33.

Paul locates this humiliating experience (2Co_11:32 f) when “the governor under Aretas the king guarded the city of the Damascenes.” Aretas the Arabian, and not the Roman, has now control when Paul is writing. The likelihood is that Aretas did not get possession of Damascus till 37 AD, when Tiberius died and was succeeded by Caligula. It is argued by some that the expression “the city of the Damascenes” shows that the city was not under the control of Aretas, but was attacked by a Bedouin chieftain who lay in wait for Paul before the city. That to me seems forced. Josephus (Ant., XVIII, v, 3; vi, 3) at any rate is silent concerning the authority of Aretas over Damascus from 35-37 AD, but no coins or inscriptions show Roman rule over the city between 35 and 62 AD. Ramsay, however (“The Pauline Chronology,” Pauline and Other Studies, 364), accepts the view of Marquardt (Romische Staatsalterth., I, 404 f) that it was possible for Aretas to have had possession of Damascus before 37 AD. The flight from Damascus is the same year as the visit to Jerusalem, Paul's first after his conversion (Act_9:26; Gal_1:18). If we knew the precise year of this event, we could subtract two or three years and reach the date of his conversion. Lightfoot in his Commentary on Gal gives 38 as the date of this first visit to Jerusalem, and 36 as the date of the conversion, taking “after 3 years” in a free way, but in his Biblical Essays, 221, he puts the visit in 37 and the conversion in 34, and says “ 'after 3 years' must mean three whole years, or substantially so.” Thus we miss a sure date again.

Here the point of contact between the Acts (Act_12:1-4, Act_12:19-23) and Josephus (Ant., XIX, viii) is beyond dispute, since both record and describe in somewhat similar vein the death of this king. Josephus says that at the time of his death he had already completed the 3rd year of his reign over the whole of Judea (Ant., XIX, viii, 2). He received this dignity soon after Claudius began to reign in 41 AD, so that makes the date 44 AD. He died after the Passover in that year (44), for Peter was imprisoned by him during that feast (Act_12:3). But unfortunately Luke sandwiches the narrative about Herod Agrippa in between the visit of Barnabas and Saul to Jerusalem from Antioch (Act_11:29 f) and their return to Antioch (Act_12:25). He does not say that the events here recorded were exactly synchronous with this visit, for he says merely “about that time.” We are allowed therefore to place this visit before 44 AD or after, just as the facts require. The mention of “elders” in Act_11:30 instead of apostles (compare both in Act_15:4) may mean that the apostles are absent when the visit is made. After the death of James (Act_12:1 f) and release of Peter we note that Peter “went to another place” (Act_12:17). But the apostles are back again in Jerusalem in Act_15:4 ff. Lightfoot (Biblical Essays, 216) therefore places the visit “at the end of 44, or in 45.” Once more we slip the connection and fail to fix a firm date for Paul. It is disputed also whether this 2nd visit to Jerusalem according to Acts (Act_9:26; Act_11:29 f) is the same as the “again” in Gal_2:1. Ramsay (St. Paul the Traveler, 59) identifies the visit in Gal_2:1 with that in Act_11:29 f, but Lightfoot (Biblical Essays, 221) holds that it “must be identified with the third of the Acts” (Act_15:4 ff). In Gal 1 and 2 Paul is not recording his visits to Jerusalem, but showing his independence of the apostles when he met them in Jerusalem. There is no proof that he saw the apostles on the occasion of the visit in Act_11:29 f. The point of Lightfoot is well taken, hut we have no point of contact with the outside history for locating more precisely the date of the visit of Gal_2:1 and Act_15:4 ff, except that it was after the first missionary tour of Acts 13 and 14.

Sergius Paulus is proconsul of Cyprus when Barnabas and Saul visit the island (Act_13:7). The proconsul Paulus is mentioned in a Greek inscription of Soloi (Hogarth, Devia Cypria, 1889, 114) and Lucius Sergius Paulus in CIL, VI, 31, 545, but, as no mention of his being proconsul is here made, it is probably earlier than that time. The Soloi inscription bears the date 53 AD, but Sergius Paulus was not proconsul in 51 or 52. Hence, he may have been proconsul in 50 or the early part of 51 AD.It could not be later and may have been earlier.

The point to note here is that Gallio becomes proconsul of Achaia (Act_18:12). Paul has been apparently in Corinth a year and six months when Gallio appears on the scene (Act_18:11). Aquila and Priscilla had “lately come from Italy” (Act_18:2) when Paul arrived there. They had been expelled from Rome by the emperor Claudius (Act_18:2). On the arrival of Gallio the Jews at once accuse Paul before him; he refuses to interfere, and Paul stays on for a while and then leaves for Syria with Aquila and Priscilla (Act_18:18). Deissmann (St. Paul, Appendix, I, “The Proconsulate of L. Junius Gallio”) has shown beyond reasonable doubt that Gallio, the brother of Seneca, became proconsul of Achaia about July, 51 AD (or possibly 52). On a stone found at Delphi, Gallio is mentioned as proconsul of Achaia according to the probable restoration of part of the text. But the stone mentions the fact that Claudius had been acclaimed imperator 26 times. By means of another inscription we get the 27th proclamation as imperator in connection with the dedication of an aqueduct on August 1, 52 AD. So thus the 26th time is before this date, some time in the earlier part of the year. We need not follow in detail the turns of the argument (see Deissmann, op. cit.). Once more we do not get a certain date as to the year. It is either. the summer of 51 or 52 AD, when Gallio comes. And Paul has already been in Corinth a year and a half. But the terminus ad quem for the close of Paul's two years' stay in Corinth would be the early autumn of 52 AD, and more probably 51 AD. Hence, the 2 Thessalonian Epistles cannot be later than this date. Before the close of 52 AD, and probably 51, therefore must come the 2nd missionary tour, the conference at Jerusalem, the first missionary tour, etc. Deissmann is justified in his enthusiasm on this point. He is positive that 51 AD is the date of the arrival of Gallio.

(6) Paul at Troas According to Act_20:6 F.

When was Felix recalled? He was appointed procurator in 52 AD (Schurer, Jewish People in the Time of Christ, I, ii, 174). He was already ruler “many years” (Act_24:10) when Paul appears before him in Caesarea. He holds on “two years” when he is succeeded by Festus (Act_24:27). But in the Chronicle of Eusebius (Armenian text) it is stated that the recall of Felix took place in the last year of Claudius, or 54 AD. But this is clearly an error, in spite of the support given to it by Harnack (Chronologie d. Paulus), since Josephus puts most of the rule of Felix in the reign of Nero (Ant., XX, viii, 1-9; BJ, II, xii, 8-14), not to mention the “many years” of Paul in Act_24:10. But the error of Eusebius has now been explained by Erbes in his Todestage Pauli und Petri, and is made perfectly clear by Ramsay in Pauline and Other Studies, 349 ff. Eusebius over-looked the interregnum of 6 years between the death of Herod Agrippa I in 44 AD and the first year of Herod Agrippa II in 50 AD. Eusebius learned that Festus came in the 10th year of Herod Agrippa II. Counting from 50 AD, that gives us 59 AD as the date of the recall of Felix. This date harmonizes with all the known facts. “The great majority of scholars accept the date 60 for Festus; but they confess that it is only an approximate date, and there is no decisive argument for it” (Ramsay, Pauline and Other Studies, 351). For minute discussion of the old arguments see Nash, article “Paul” in new Sch-Herz Enc; Schurer, Hist of the Jewish People, I, ii, 182 ff. But if Erbes and Ramsay are correct, we have at last a date that will stand. So then Paul sails for Rome in the late summer of 59 AD and arrives at his destination in the early spring (“had wintered,” Act_28:11) of 60 AD. He had been “two whole years in his own hired dwelling” (Act_28:30) when Luke closes the Acts. On the basis of his release in 63 or early 64 and the journeyings of the Pastoral Epistles, Paul's death would come by early summer of 68 before Nero's death, and possibly in 67. On this point see later. We can now count back from 59 AD with reasonable clearness to 57 as the date of Paul's arrest in Jerusalem. Paul spent at least a year and three months (Act_19:8, Act_19:10) in Ephesus (called in round numbers three years in Act_20:31). It took a year for him to reach Jerusalem, from Pentecost (1Co_16:8) to Pentecost (Act_20:16). From the spring of 57 AD we thus get back to the end of 53 as the time of his arrival in Ephesus (Act_19:1). We have seen that Gallio came to Corinth in the summer of 51 AD (or 52), after Paul had been there a year and a half (Act_18:11), leaving ample time in either case for the journeys from Corinth to Ephesus, to Caesarea, to Jerusalem apparently (Act_18:21 f), and to Ephesus (Act_19:1) from the summer of 51 (or 52) we go back two years to the beginning of the 2nd missionary tour (Act_16:1-6) as 49 (or 50). The Jerusalem Conference was probably in the same year, and the first missionary tour would come in the two (or three) preceding years 47 and 48 (48-49). The stay at Antioch (Act_14:28) may have been of some length. So we come back to the end of 44 or beginning of 45 for the visit to Jerusalem in Act_11:29 f. Before that comes the year in Antioch with Barnabas (Act_11:26), the years in Tarsus in Cilicia, the “three years” after the conversion spent mostly in Arabia (Gal_1:17 f), Paul's first appearance at the death of Stephen (Act_7:58). These early dates are more conjectural, but even so the facts seem to indicate 35 AD as the probable year of Saul's conversion. The year of his birth would then be between 1 and 5 AD, probably nearer 1. If so, and if his death was in 67 or 68 AD, his age is well indicated. He was “Paul the Aged” (Phm_1:9) when he wrote to Philemon from Rome in 61-63 AD.

Ramsay chooses as the title of chapter ii, in his St. Paul the Traveler, the words “The Origin of Paul.” It is not possible to explain the work and teaching of Paul without a just conception of the forces that entered into his life. Paul himself is still woefully misunderstood by some. Thus, A. Meyer (Jesus or Paul, 1909, 119) says: “In spite of all that has been said, there is no doubt that Paul, with his peculiar personality, with his tendency to recondite Gnostic speculation and rabbinic argument, has heavily encumbered the cause of Christianity. For many simple souls, and for many natures that are otherwise constituted than himself, he has barred the way to the simple Christianity of Jesus.” That is a serious charge against the man who claimed to have done more than all the other apostles, and rightly, so far as we can tell (1Co_15:10), and who claimed that his interpretation of Jesus was the only true one (Gal_1:7-9). Moffatt (Paul and Paulinism, 1910, 70) minimizes the effect of Paulinism: “The majority of Paul's distinctive conceptions were either misunderstood, or dropped, or modified, as the case might be, in the course of a few decades.” “Paulinism as a whole stood almost as far apart from the Christianity that followed it as from that which preceded it” (ibid., 73). “The aim of some scholars seems to be to rob every great thinker of his originality” (Garvie, Studies of Paul and His Gospel, 1). Ramsay (Pauline and Other Studies, 3 ff) boldly challenges the modern prejudice of some scholars against Paul by asking, “Shall we hear evidence or not?” Every successive age must study afresh the life and work of Paul (ibid., 27) if it would understand him. Deissmann (St. Paul, 3 f) rightly sees that “St. Paul is spiritually the great power of the apostolic age.” Hence, “the historian, surveying the beginnings of Christianity, sees Paul as first after Jesus.” Feine (Jesus Christus und Paulus, 1902, 298) claims that Paul grasped the essence of the ministry of Christ “auf das tiefste.” I own myself a victim to “the charm of Paul,” to use Ramsay's phrase (Pauline and Other Studies, 27). In seeking to study “the shaping influences” in Paul's career (Alexander, The Ethics of St. Paul, 1910, 27), we shall be in error if we seek to explain everything by heredity and environment and if we deny any influence from these sources. He is what he is because of original endowments, the world of his day, and his experience of Christ Jesus. He had both essential and accidental factors in his equipment (Fairbairn, Studies in Religion and Theology, 1910, 469 f). Let us note the chief factors in his religious development.

Geography plays an important part in any life. John the Baptist spent his boyhood in the hill country of Judea in a small town (Luk_1:39) and then in the wilderness. Jesus spent His boyhood in the town of Nazareth and the country round. Both John and Jesus show fondness for Nature in all its forms. Paul grew up in a great city and spent his life in the great cities of the Roman empire. He makes little use of the beauties of Nature, but he has a keen knowledge of men (compare Robertson, Epochs in the Life of Paul, 12). Paul was proud of his great city (Act_21:39). He was not merely a resident, but a “citizen” of this distinguished city. This fact shows that Paul's family had not just emigrated from Judea to Tarsus a few years before his birth, but had been planted in Tarsus as part of a colony with full municipal rights (Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveler, 31 f). Tarsus was the capital of Cilicia, then a part of the province of Syria, but it had the title of metropolis and was a free city, urbs libera (Pliny, NH, v. 27). To the ancient Greek the city was his “fatherland” (Ramsay, Cities of St. Paul, 1908, 90). Tarsus was situated on the river Cydnus, and in a wide plain with the hill country behind and the snow-covered Taurus Mountains in the distance. It was subject to malaria. Ramsay (ibid., 117 ff) from Gen_10:4 f holds that the early inhabitants were Greeks mingled with Orientals. East and West flowed together here. It was a Roman town also with a Jewish colony (ibid., 169 ff), constituting a city tribe to which Paul's family belonged. So then Tarsus was a typical city of the Greek-Roman civilization.

It was no idle boast with Paul when he said, “But I am a Roman born” (Act_22:28). The chief captain might well be “afraid when he knew that he was a Roman, and because he had bound him” (Act_22:29). Likewise the magistrates at Philippi “feared when they heard that they were Romans” (Act_16:39), and promptly released Paul and Silas and “asked them to go away from the city.” “To the Roman his citizenship was his passport in distant lands, his talisman in seasons of difficulties and danger. It shielded him alike from the caprice of municipal law and the injustice of local magistrates” (Lightfoot, Biblical Essays, 203). As a citizen of Rome, therefore, Paul stood above the common herd. He ranked with the aristocracy in any provincial town (Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveler, 31). He would naturally have a kindly feeling for the Roman government in return for this high privilege and protection. In its pessimism the Roman empire had come to be the world's hope, as seen in the Fourth Eclogue of Virgil (Ramsay, Cities of St. Paul, 49). Paul would seize upon the Roman empire as a fit symbol of the kingdom of heaven. “Our citizenship is in heaven” (Phi_3:20); “Ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints” (Eph_2:19). So he interprets the church in terms of the body politic as well as in terms of the Israelite theocracy (Col_2:19). “All this shows the deep impression which the Roman institutions made on Paul” (Lightfoot, Biblical Essays, 205). Ramsay draws a striking parallel under the heading, “Paulinism in the Roman Empire” (Cities of St. Paul, 70 ff). “A universal Paulinism and a universal Empire must either coalesce, or the one must destroy the other.” It was Paul's knowledge of the Roman empire that gave him his imperialism and statesmanlike grasp of the problems of Christianity in relation to the Roman empire. Paul was a statesman of the highest type, as Ramsay has conclusively shown (Pauline and Other Studies, 49-100). Moffatt (Paul and Paulinism, 66) does say: “His perspective was not imperialistic,” but he shows thereby a curious inability to understand Paul. The vision of Paul saw that the regeneration of the empire could come only through Christianity. Ramsay strikingly shows how the emperor dreaded the spiritual upheaval in Paulinism and fought it steadily till the time of Constantine, when “an official Christianity was victorious, but Pauline Christianity had perished, and Paul was now a mere saint, no longer Paul but Paul, forgotten as a man or a teacher, but remembered as a sort of revivification of the old pagan gods” (Cities of St. Paul, 78). But, as Ramsay says, “it was not dead; it was only waiting its opportunity; it revived when freedom of thought and freedom of life began to stir in Europe; and it guided and stimulated the Protestants of the Reformation.” Suffer Ramsay once more (Pauline and Other Studies, 100): “Barbarism proved too powerful for the Greek-Roman civilization unaided by the new religious bond; and every channel through which that civilization was preserved or interest in it maintained, either is now or has been in some essential part of its course Christian after the Pauline form.” Paul would show the Roman genius for organizing the churches established by him. Many of his churches would be in Roman colonies (Antioch in Pisidia, Philippi, Corinth, etc.). He would address his most studied epistle to the church in Rome, and Rome would be the goal of his ministry for many years (Findlay, HDB). He would show his conversance with Roman law, not “merely in knowing how to take advantage of his rights as a citizen, but also in the use of legal terms like “adoption” (Gal_4:5 f), where the adopted heir becomes son, and heir and son are interchangeable. This was the obsolete Roman law and the Greek law left in force in the provinces (compare Gal_3:15). But in Rom_8:16 f the actual revocable Roman law is referred to by which “heirship is now deduced from sonship, whereas in Gal sonship is deduced from heirship; for at Rome a son must be an heir, but an heir need not be a son (compare Heb_9:15 ff which presupposes Roman law and the revocability of a will)” (Maclean in 1-vol HDB). So in Gal_3:24 the tutor or pedagogue presents a Greek custom preserved by the Romans. This personal guardian of the child (often a slave) led him to school, and was not the guardian of the child's property in Gal_4:2. See Ramsay, Gal, 337-93; Ball, St. Paul and the Roman Law, 1901, for further discussion. As a Roman, Paul would have “nomen and praenomen, probably taken from the Roman officer who gave his family civitas; but Luke, a Greek, had no interest in Roman names. Paulus, his cognomen, was not determined by his nomen; there is no reason to think he was an AEmilius” (Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveler, 31). It is probable, though not certain, that Paul spoke Latin (see Souter, The Expositor, April, 1911). He was at any rate a “Roman gentleman” (Findlay, HDB), as is shown by the dignity of his bearing before governors and kings and the respect accorded him by the proconsul Sergius Paulus, the procurator Porcius Festus, and the centurion Julius, whose prisoner he was in the voyage to Rome. His father, as a Roman citizen, probably had some means which may have come to Paul before the appeal to Rome, which was expensive (Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveler, 310 ff). Though a prisoner in Rome, he made Rome “his best vantage ground and his adoptive home,” and it was here that he rose to “his loftiest conceptions of the nation and destiny of the universal church” (Findlay, HDB) as “an ambassador in chains” (Eph_6:20). As a Roman citizen, according to tradition, he was beheaded with the sword and not subjected to crucifixion, the traditional fate of Simon Peter. He saw the true pax Romana to be the peace that passeth all understanding (Phi_4:7; compare Rostron, The Christology of Paul, 1912, 19).

It is not possible “to specify all the influences that worked on Paul in his youth” (Ramsay, Cities of St. Paul, 79). We do not know all the life of the times. But he was subject to all that life in so far as any other Jewish youth was. “He was master of all the education and the opportunities of his time. He turned to his profit and to the advancement of his great purpose all the resources of civilization” (Ramsay, Pauline and Other Studies, 285). I heartily agree with this conception of Paul's ability to assimilate the life of his time, but one must not be led astray so far as Schramm who, in 1710, wrote De stupenda eruditione Pauli (“On the Stupendous Erudition of Paul”). This is, of course, absurd, as Lightfoot shows (Biblical Essays, 206). But we must not forget Paul lived in a Greek city and possessed Greek citizenship also (Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveler, 33). Certainly the Greek traits of adaptability, curiosity, alertness, the love of investigation were marked features of his character, and Tarsus afforded wide opportunity for the acquiring of these qualities (The Ethics of St. Paul, 39). He learned to speak the vernacular koinḗ like a native and with the ease and swing displayed by no other New Testament writer save Luke and the author of He. He has a “poet's mastery of language,” though with the passion of a soul on fire, rather than with the artificial rules of the rhetoricians of the day (Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, 239 f). Blass (Die Rhythmen der asianischen und romischen Kunstprosa, 1905) holds that Paul wrote “rhythmically elaborated artistic prose - a singular instance of the great scholar's having gone astray” (Deissmann, Light, etc., 64). But there is evidence that Paul was familiar with the use of the diatribe and other common rhetorical devices, though he was very far from being tinged with Atticism or Asianism. It is certain that Paul did not attend any of the schools of rhetoric and oratory. Heinrici (Vorrede to 1 Cor. in Meyer's Krit. exeget. Komm.) argues that Paul's methods and expressions conform more nearly to the cynic and Stoic diatribe than to the rabbinical dialectic; compare also Wendland und Kern Philo u. d. kynisch-stoische Diatribe, and Hicks, “St. Paul and Hellenism” in Stud. Biblical, IV. How extensive was his acquaintance with Greek literature is in doubt. Lightfoot says: “There is no ground for saying that Paul was a very erudite or highly-cultivated man. An obvious maxim of practical life from Menander (1Co_15:33), a religious sentiment of Cleanthes repeated by Aratus, himself a native of Tarsus (Act_17:28), a pungent satire of Epimenides (Tit_1:12), with possibly a passage here and there which dimly reflects some classical writer, these are very slender grounds on which to build the supposition of vast learning” (Biblical Essays, 206); but Lightfoot admits that he obtained directly or indirectly from contact with Greek thought and learning lessons far wider and more useful for his work than a perfect style or a familiar acquaintance with the classical writers of antiquity. Even so, there is no reason to say that he made his few quotations from hearsay and read no Greek books (compare Zahn, Introduction to the New Testament, 52). Certainly he knew the Greek Old Testament and the Jewish Apocrypha and apocalypses in Greek Garvie is only willing to admit that Paul had such knowledge of Greek literature and philosophy as any Jew, living among Greeks, might pick up (Life and Teaching of Paul, 2), and charges Ramsay with “overstating the influence of the Gentile environment on Paul's development” (Studies of Paul and His Gospel, 8). Ramsay holds that it is quite “possible that the philosophical school at Tarsus had exercised more influence on Paul than is commonly allowed” (St. Paul the Traveler, 354). Tarsus was the home of Athenodorus. It was a stronghold of Stoic thought. “At least five of the most eminent teachers of that philosophy were in the university” (Alexander, Ethics of St. Paul, 47). It is not possible to say whether Paul artended these or any lectures at the university, though it is hard to conceive that a brilliant youth like Saul could grow up in Tarsus with no mental stimulus from such a university. Carvie (ibid., 6) asks when Paul could have studied at the university of Tarsus. He was probably too young before he went to Jerusalem to study under Gamaliel. But it is not probable that he remained in Jerusalem continuously after completing his studies till we see him at the death of Stephen (Act_7:58). He may have returned to Tarsus meanwhile and taken such studies. Another possibility is that he took advantage of the years in Tarsus after his conversion (Act_9:30; Gal_1:21) to equip himself better for his mission to the Gentiles to which he had been called. There is no real difficulty on the score of time. The world was saturated with Greek ideas, and Paul could not escape them. He could not escape it unless he was innocent of all culture. Ramsay sees in Paul a love of truth and reality “wholly inconceivable in a more narrow Hebrew, and wholly inexplicable without an education in Greek philosophy” (“St. Paul and Hellenism,” Cities of St. Paul, 34). Paul exhibited a freedom and universalism that he found in the Greek thought of the time which was not so decayed as some think. For the discussion between Garvie and Ramsay see The Expositor, April and December, 1911. Pfleiderer (Urchristenthum, Vorwort, 174-178) finds a “double root” of Paulinism, a Christianized Hellenism and a Christianized Pharisaism. Harnack is more nearly correct in saying that “notwithstanding Paul's Greek culture, his conception of Christianity is, in its deepest ground, independent of Hellenism.” The Hellenistic influence on Paul was relative and subordinate (Wendland, Die hell.-rom. Kultur in ihren Beziehungen zu Judenthum und Christenthum, 3te Aufl, 1912, 245), but it was real, as Kohler shows (Zum Verstandnis des Apostels Paulus, 9). He had a “Gr inheritance” beyond a doubt, and it was not all unconscious or subliminal as Rostron argues (Christology of St. Paul, 17). It is true that in Athens the Stoics and Epicureans ridiculed Paul as a “picker up of learning's crumbs” - Browning's rendering (An Epistle) of σπερμολόγος, spermológos. Paul shows a fine scorn of the sophistries and verbal refinements of the mere philosophers and orators in 1 Cor 1 and 2, but all the same he reveals a real apprehension of the true significance of knowledge and life. Dr. James Adam (The Religious Teachers of Greece, 360) shows instances of “the real kinship of thought between Plato and Paul.” He does not undertake to say how it came about. He has a Platonic expression, τὰ διὰ τοῦ σώματος, tá diá toú sṓmatos, in 2Co_5:10, and uses a Stoic and cynic word in 2Co_9:8, σὐτάρκειαν, autárkeian. Indeed, there are so many similarities between Paul and Seneca in language and thought that some scholars actually predicate an acquaintance or dependence of the one on the other. It is far more likely that Paul and Seneca drew upon the common phrases of current Stoicism than that Seneca had seen Paul's Epistles or knew him personally. Lightfoot has a classic discussion of the matter in his essay on “St. Paul and Seneca” in the Commentary on Phil (see also Carr, “St. Paul's Attitude to Greek Philosophy,” The Expositor, V, ix). Alexander finds four Stoic ideas (Divine Immanence, Wisdom, Freedom, Brotherhood) taken and glorified by Paul to do service for Christ (Ethics of St. Paul, 49-55). Often Paul uses a Stoic phrase with a Christian content. Lightfoot boldly argues (Biblical Essays, 207) that the later Greek literature was a fitter handmaid for the diffusion of the gospel than the earlier.

Paul as the apostle to the Greek-Roman world had to “understand the bearings of the moral and religious life of Greece as expressed in her literature, and this lesson he could learn more impartially and more fully at Tarsus in the days of her decline than at Athens in the freshness of her glory” (same place). Ramsay waxes bold enough to discuss “the Pauline philosophy of history” (Cities of St. Paul, 10-13). I confess to sympathy with this notion and find it in all the Pauline Epistles, especially in Romans. Moffatt (Paul and Paulinism, 66) finds “a religious philosophy of history” in Rom 9 through 11, throbbing with strong personal emotion. Paul rose to the height of the true Christian philosopher, though not a technical philosopher of the schools. Deissmann (St. Paul, 53) admits his language assigns him “to an elevated class,” and yet he insists that he wrote “large letters” (Gal_6:11) because he had “the clumsy, awkward writing of a workman's hand deformed by toil” (p. 51). I cannot agree that here Deissmann understands Paul. He makes “the world of Paul” on too narrow a scale.

Was Paul influenced by Mithraism? H.A.A. Kennedy has given the subject very careful and thorough treatment in a series of papers in The Expositor for 1912-13, already mentioned (see II, 5, above). His arguments are conclusive on the whole against the wild notions of W.B. Smith, Der vorchristliche Jesus; J.M. Robertson, Pagan Christs; A. Drews, Die Christus-Mythe; and Lublinski, Die Entstehung des Christenrums aus der antiken Kultur. A magic papyrus about 300 AD has “I adjure thee by the god of the Hebrew Jesu” (ll. 3019 f), but Deissmann (Light from the Ancient East, 256) refuses to believe this line genuine: “No Christian, still less a Jew, would have called Jesus 'the god of the Hebrews.' “ Clemen (Primitive Christianity and Its non-Jewish Sources, 1912, 336) endorses this view of Deissmann and says that in the 1st century AD “one cannot speak of non-Jewish influences on Christology.” One may dismiss at once the notion that Paul “deified” Jesus into a god and made Him Christ under the influence of pagan myths. Certainly pagan idolatry was forced upon Paul's attention at every turn. It stirred his spirit at Athens to see the city full of idols (Act_17:16), and he caught eagerly at the altar to an unknown god to give him an easy introduction to the true God (Act_17:23); but no one can read Rom 1 and 2 and believe that Paul was carried away by the philosophy of vain deceit of his time. He does use the words “wisdom” and “mystery” often in 1 Corinthians, Colossians, and Ephesians, and in Phi_4:12, “I (have) learned the secret,” he uses a word employed in the mystic cults of the time. It is quite possible that Paul took up some of the phrases of these mystery-religions and gave them a richer content for his own purposes, as he did with some of the Gnostic phraseology (Plērōma, “fullness,” for instance). But Schweitzer (Paul and His Interpreters, 191 f) deals a fatal blow against the notion that the mystery-religions had a formative influence on Paul. He urges, with point, that it is only in the 2nd century that these cults became widely extended in the Roman empire. The dates and development are obscure, but it “is certain that Paul cannot have known the mystery-religions in the form in which they are known to us, because in this fully developed form they did not exist.” Cumont (Lea religions orientales dana le paganisme romain, 2nd edition, 1909 (ET)) insists repeatedly on the difficulties in the way of assuming without proof that Mithraism had any influence on Paul. But in particular it is urged that Paul drew on the “mysteries” for his notions of baptism and the Lord's Supper as having magical effects. Appeal is made to the magical use of the name of Jesus by the strolling Jewish exorcists in Ephesus (Act_18:13 ff). Kirsopp Lake (Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, 233) holds that at Corinth they all accepted Christianity as a mystery-religion and Jesus as “the Redeemer-God, who had passed through death to life, and offered participation in this new life to those who shared in the mysteries which He offered,” namely, baptism and the Lord's Supper. But Kennedy (Expos, December, 1912, 548) easily shows how with Paul baptism and the Lord's Supper are not magical sacraments producing new life, but symbolic pictures of death to sin and new life in Christ which the believer has already experienced. The battle is still raging on the subject of the mystery-religions, but it is safe to say that so far nothing more than illustrative material has been shown to be true of Paul's teaching from this source.

There is nothing incongruous in the notion that Paul knew as much about the mystery-religions as he did about incipient Gnosticism. Indeed the two things may have been to some extent combined in some places. A passage in Col_2:18 has long bothered commentators: “dwelling in the things which he hath seen,” or (margin) “taking his stand upon the things,” etc. Westcott and Hort even suspected an early error in the text, but the same word, ἐμβατεύω, embateúō, has been found by Sir W.M. Ramsay as a result of investigations by Makridi Bey, of the Turkish Imperial Museum, in the sanctuary of Apollo at Claros, a town on the Ionian coast. Some of the initiates here record the fact and say that being “enquirers, having been initiated, they entered” (embateuō). The word is thus used of one who, having been initiated, enters into the life of the initiate (compare Independent, 1913, 376). Clearly, then, Paul uses the word in that sense in Col_2:18.

Paul was Greek and Roman, but not “pan-Babylonian,” though he was keenly alive to all the winds of doctrine that blew about him, as we see in Colossians, Ephesians, and the Pastoral Epistles. But he was most of all the Jew, that is, before his conversion. He remained a Jew, even though he learned how to be all things to all men (1Co_9:22). Even though glorying in his mission as apostle to the Gentiles (Eph_3:8), he yet always put the Jew first in opportunity and peril (Rom_2:9 f). He loved the Jews almost to the point of death (Rom_9:3). He was proud of his Jewish lineage and boasted of it (2Co_11:16-22; Act_22:3 ff; Act_26:4 ff; Phi_3:4-6). “His religious patriotism flickered up within his Christianity” (Moffatt, Paul and Paulinism, 66). Had he not been a Roman citizen with some Greek culture and his rich endowments of mind, he would probably not have been the “chosen vessel” for the work of Christ among the Gentiles (Garvie, Studies of Paul and His Gospel, 15). Had he not been the thorough Jew, he could not have mediated Christianity from Jew to Greek. “In the mind of Paul a universalized Hellenism coalesced with a universalized Hebraism” (Ramsay, Cities of St. Paul, 43). Ramsay strongly opposes the notion of Harhack and others that Paul can be understood “as purely a Hebrew.” So in Paul both Hebraism and Hellenism meet though Hebraism is the main stock. He is a Jew in the Greek-Roman world and a part of it, not a mere spectator. He is the Hellenistic Jew, not the Aramaic Jew of Palestine (compare Simon Peter's vision on the house-top at Joppa, for instance). But Paul is not a Hellenizing Jew after the fashion of Jason and Menelaus in the beginning of the Maccabean conflict. Findlay (HDB) tersely says: “The Jew in him was the foundation of everything that Paul became.” But it was not the narrowest type of Judaism in spite of his persecution of the Christians. He belonged to the Judaism of the Dispersion. As a Roman citizen in a Greek city he had departed from the narrowest lines of his people (Ramsay, Cities of St. Paul, 47). His Judaism was pure, in fact, as he gives it to us in Phi_3:5. He was a Jew of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin. He was a Hebrew, of the seed of Abraham (2Co_11:22). He shared in full all the covenant blessings and privileges of his people (Rom_9:1-5), whose crowning glory was, that of them came Jesus the Messiah. He was proud of the piety of his ancestors (2Ti_1:3), and made progress as a student of Judaism ahead of his fellows (Gal_1:14). His ancestry was pure, Hebrew of the Hebrews. (Phi_3:5), and so his family preserved the native Palestinian traditions in Tarsus. His name Saul was a proof of loyalty to the tribe of Benjamin as his cognomen Paul was evidence of his Roman citizenship. In his home he would be taught the law by his mother (compare Gal_1:14), as was true of Timothy's mother and grandmother (2Ti_1:5). In Tarsus he would go to the synagogue also. We know little of his father, save that he was a Roman citizen and so a man of position in Tarsus and possibly of some wealth; that he was a tent-maker and taught his son the same trade, as all Jewish fathers did, whatever their rank in life; that he was a Pharisee and brought up his son as a Pharisee (Act_23:6), and that he sent the young Saul to Jerusalem to study at the feet of Gamaliel (Act_22:3). Paul always considered himself a Pharisee as distinct from the Sadducaic scepticism (Act_23:6). Many of the Pharisaic doctrines were identical with those of Christianity. That Paul did not consider himself a Pharisee in all respects is shown later by his conflict with the Judaizers (Gal 2; Acts 15; 2 Cor 10 through 13). Paul says that he was reared as a strict Pharisee (Act_26:5), though the school of Gamaliel (grandson of Hillel) was not so hard and narrow as that of Shammai. But all Pharisees were stricter than the Sadducees. So Jerusalem played an important part in the training of Saul (Act_22:3), as Paul recognized. He was known in Jerusalem as a student. He knew Aramaic as well as Greek (and Latin), and could speak in it so as to attract the attention of a Jewish audience (Act_22:2). Paul was fortunate in his great teacher Gamaliel, who was liberal enough to encourage the study of Greek literature. But his liberality in defending the apostles against the Sadducees in Act_5:34-39 must not be misinterpreted in comparison with the persecuting zeal of his brilliant pupil against Stephen (Act_7:58). Stephen had opened war on the Pharisees themselves, and there is no evidence that Gamaliel made a defense of Stephen against the lawless rage of the Sanhedrin. It is common for pupils to go farther than their teachers, but Gamaliel did not come to the rescue. Still Gamaliel helped Saul, who was undoubtedly his most brilliant pupil and probably the hope of his heart for the future of Judaism. Harnack (History of Dogma, I, 94) says: “Pharisaism had fulfilled its mission in the world when it produced this man.” Unfortunately, Pharisaism did not die; in truth has never died, not even from Christianity. But young Saul was the crowning glory of Pharisaism. An effort has recently been made to restore Pharisaism to its former dignity. Herford (Pharisaism, Its Aim and Method, 1912) undertakes to show that the Gospels have slandered Pharisaism, that it was the one hope of the ancient world, etc. He has a chapter on “Pharisaism and Paul,” in which he claims that Paul has not attacked the real Pharisaism, but has aimed his blows at an unreal creation of his own brain (p. 222). But, if Paul did not understand Pharisaism, he did not understand anything. He knew not merely the Old Testament in the Hebrew and the Septuagint translation, for he quotes from both, though usually from the Septuagint, but he also knew the Jewish Apocrypha and apocalypses, as is shown in various ways in his writings (see articles on these subjects). Schweitzer (Paul and His Interpreters) carries too far his idea that Paul and Jesus merely moved in the circle of Jewish eschatology. He makes it explain everything, and that it cannot do. But Paul does show acquaintance with some of these books. See Kennedy, St. Paul's Conception of the Last Things (1904), for a sane and adequate discussion of this phase of the subject. Pfleiderer pursues the subject in his Paulinism, as does Kabisch in his Eschatologie. So Sanday and Headlam use this source in their Commentary on Romans. Paul knew Wisd, also, a book from the Jewish-Alexandrian theology with a tinge of Greek philosophy (see Goodrick, Book of Wisd, 398-403; compare also Jowett's essay on “St. Paul and Philo” in his Epistles of Paul). Paul knew how to use allegory (Gal_4:24) in accord with the method of Philo. So then he knew how to use the Stoic diatribe, the rabbinical diatribe and the Alexandrian allegory. “In his cosmology, angelology, and demonology, as well as eschatology, he remains essentially Jewish” (Garvie, Studies of Paul and His Gospel, 17). When he becomes a Christian he will change many of his views, for Christ must become central in his thinking, but his method learned in the rabbinical schools remains with him (Kohler, Zum Verstandnis, etc., 7). Here, then, is a man with a wonderfully rounded culture. What of his mental gifts?

We have no reliable description of Paul's stature and looks. The Acts of Paul and Thecla (section3) have a protraiture thus: “Baldheaded, bowlegged, strongly built, a man small in size, with meeting eyebrows, with a rather large nose, full of grace, for at times he looked like a man and at times he had the face of an angel,” and Ramsay (Church in the Roman Empire, 32) adds: “This plain and unflattering account of the apostle's personal appearance seems to embody a very early tradition,” and in chapter xvi he argues that this story goes back to a document of the 1st century. We may not agree with all the details, but in some respects it harmonizes with what we gather from Paul's Epistles Findlay (HDB) notes that this description is confirmed by “the lifelike and unconventional figure of the Roman ivory diptych, 'supposed to date not later than the 4th century.' “ (Lewin's Life and Epistles of Paul, Frontispiece, and II, 211). At Lystra the natives took Barnabas for Jupiter and Paul for Hermes, “because he was the chief speaker” (Act_14:12), showing that Barnabas had the more impressive appearance, while Paul was his spokesman. In Malta the natives changed their minds in the opposite direction, first thinking Paul a murderer and then a god because he did not die from the bite of the serpent (Act_28:4-6). His enemies at Corinth sneered at the weakness of his bodily presence in contrast to the strength of his letters (2Co_10:9 f). The attack was really on the courage of Paul, and he claimed equal boldness when present (2Co_10:11 f), but there was probably also a reflection on the insignificance of his physique. The terrible bodily sufferings which he underwent (2Co_11:23-26) left physical marks (στίγματα, stígmata, Gal_6:17) that may have disfigured him to some extent. Once his illness made him a trial to the Galatians to whom he preached, but they did not scorn him (Gal_4:14). He felt the frailty of his body as an earthen vessel (2Co_4:7) and as a tabernacle in which he groaned (2Co_5:4). But the effect of all this weakness was to give him a fresh sense of dependence on Christ and a new influx of divine power (2Co_11:30; 2Co_12:9). But even if Paul was unprepossessing in appearance and weakened by illness, whether ophthalmia, which is so common in the East (Gal_4:15), or malaria, or recurrent headache, or epilepsy, he must have had a tough constitution to have endured such hardship to a good old age. He had one infirmity in particular that came upon him at Tarsus (2Co_12:1-9) in connection with the visions and revelations of the Lord then granted him. The affliction seems to have been physical (σκόλαψ τῇ σαρκι, skólops tḗ sarkí, “a stake in the flesh” or “for the flesh”), and it continued with him thereafter as a messenger of Satan to buffet Paul and to keep him humble. Some think that this messenger of Satan was a demon that haunted Paul in his nervous state. Others hold it to be epilepsy or some form of hysteria superinduced by the visions and revelations which he had had. Compare Krenkel, Beitrage (pp. 47-125), who argues that the ancients looked with such dread on epilepsy that those who beheld such attacks would “spit out so as to escape the evil (compare modern knocking on wood”); compare qui sputatur morbus in Plautus (Captivi, iii. 4, 17). Reference is made to Gal_4:14, οὐδὲ ἐξεπτύσατε, oudé exeptúsate, “nor did ye spit out,” as showing that this was the affliction of Paul in Galatia. But epilepsy often affects the mind, and Paul shows no sign of mental weakness, though his enemies charged him with insanity (Act_26:24; 2Co_5:13; 2Co_12:11). It is urged in reply that Julius Caesar, Alfred the Great, Peter the Great, and Napoleon all had epilepsy without loss of mental force. It is difficult to think headache or malaria could have excited the disgust indicated in Gal_4:14, where some trouble with the eyes seems to be indicated. The ministers of Satan (2Co_11:15) do not meet the requirements of the case, nor mere spiritual sins (Luther), nor struggle with lust (Roman Catholic, stimulus carnis). Garvie (Studies of Paul and His Gospel, 65, 80) thinks it not unlikely that “it was the recurrence of an old violent temptation,” rather than mere bodily disease. “Can there be any doubt that this form of temptation is more likely to assail the man of intense emotion and intense affection, as Paul was?” But enough of what can never be settled. “St. Paul's own scanty hints admonish to caution” (Deissmann, St. Paul, 63). It is a blessing for us not to know, since we can all cherish a close bond with Paul. Ramsay (St. Paul the Traveler, 37 ff) calls special attention to the look of Paul. He “fastened his eyes on” the man (Act_13:9; Act_14:9). He argues that Paul had a penetrating, powerful gaze, and hence, no eye trouble. He calls attention also to gestures of Paul (Act_20:24; Act_26:2). There were artists in marble and color at the court of Caesar, but no one of them cared to preserve a likeness of the poor itinerant preacher who turned out to be the chief man of the age (Deissmann, St. Paul, 58). “We are like the Christians of Colesage and Laodicea, who had not seen his face in the flesh” (Col_2:1).

I cannot agree with Garvie's charge of cowardice (Life and Teaching of Paul, 173,) in the matter of the purifying rites (Act_21:23) and the dividing of the Sanhedrin (Act_23:6). The one was a mere matter of prudence in a nonessential detail, the other was justifiable skill in resisting the attack of unscrupulous enemies. One does not understand Paul who does not understand his emotional nature. He was “quick, impetuous, strenuous, impassioned” (Bevan, Paul in the Light of Today, 1912, 26). His heart throbs through his epistles, and he loves his converts like a mother or a lover (Findlay, HDB) rather than a pastor. We feel the surging emotion of his great spirit in 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Romans, Philippians, 2 Timothy in particular. He had the spiritual temperament and reaches his highest flights in his moments of rhapsody. He has elasticity and rebound of spirit, and comes up with the joy of victory in Christ out of the severest trials and disappointments. His ambition is great, but it is to serve Christ his Lord. He is a man of faith and a man of prayer. For him to live is Christ. He has a genius for friendship and binds men to him with hooks of steel - men like Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, Luke, Titus (Speer, The Man Paul, 1900, 111 ff). He is not afraid to oppose his friends when it is necessary for the sake of truth, as with Peter (Gal_2:11 ff) and with Barnabas (Act_15:35 ff). “While God made Paul like the other apostles out of the clay whereof ordinary men are fashioned, yet we may say that He took extraordinary pains with his education” (Fairbairn, Studies in Religion and Theology, 471). If ever a man, full-blooded and open-eyed, walked the earth, it was Paul. It is a debatable question whether Paul was married or not. He certainly was not when he wrote (1Co_7:7; 1Co_9:5). But, if he was a member of the Sanhedrin when he cast his vote against the disciples (Act_26:10), as his language naturally means, then he had been married.

There is in Paul the gift of leadership in a marked degree. He, though young, is already at the head of the opposition to Stephen (Act_7:58), and soon drives the disciples out of Jerusalem.

He had his share of them. He had all the gifts that others could boast of at Corinth, and which he lightly esteemed except that of prophecy (1Co_14:18-29). He had his visions and revelations, but would not tell what he had seen (2Co_12:1-9). He did the signs of an apostle (2Co_12:12-14). He had the power to work miracles (1Co_4:19-21) and to exercise discipline (1Co_5:4 f; 2Co_13:1-3). But what he cared for most of all was the fact that Jesus had appeared to him on the road to Damascus and had called him to the work of preaching to the Gentiles (1Co_15:8).

It was sudden, and yet God had led Saul to the state of mind when it could more easily happen. True, Saul was engaged in the very act of persecuting the believers in Jerusalem. His mind was flushed with the sense of victory. He was not conscious of any lingering doubts about the truth of his position and the justice of his conduct till Jesus abruptly told him that it was hard for him to kick against the goad (Act_26:14). Thus suddenly brought to bay, the real truth would flash upon his mind. In later years he tells how he had struggled in vain against the curse of the Law (Rom_7:7 f). It is probable though not certain, that Paul here has in mind his experience before his conversion, though the latter part of the chapter may refer to a period later. There is difficulty in either view as to the “body of this death” that made him so wretched (Rom_7:24). The Christian keeps up the fight against sin in spite of defeat (Rom_7:23), but he does not feel that he is “carnal, sold under sin” (Rom_7:14). But when before his conversion did Paul have such intensity of conviction? We can only leave the problem unanswered. His reference to it at least harmonizes with what Jesus said about the goad. The words and death of Stephen and the other disciples may have left a deeper mark than he knew. The question might arise whether after all the Nazarenes were right. His plea for his conduct made in later years was that he was conscientious (Act_26:9) and that he did it ignorantly in unbelief (1Ti_1:13). He was not willfully sinning against the full light as he saw it. It will not do to say with Holsten that Saul was half convinced to join the disciples, and only needed a jolt to turn him over. He was “yet breathing threatening and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord” (Act_9:1), and went to the high priest and asked for letters to Damascus demanding the arrest of the disciples there. His temper on the whole is distinctly hostile to Christ, and the struggle against his course was in the subconscious mind. There a volcano had gathered ready to burst out.

It is proper to ask whether Paul had known Jesus in the flesh, but it is not easy to give a categorical reply. It is possible, though hardly likely, that Paul had come to Jerusalem to study when Jesus as a boy of 12 visited the temple, and so heard Jesus and the doctors. That could be true only in case Paul was born 5 or 6 BC, which is quite unlikely. It is possible again that Paul may have remained in Jerusalem after his graduation the school of Gamaliel and so was present in Jerusalem at the trial and death of Jesus. Some of the ablest of modern scholars hold that Paul knew Jesus in the flesh. It will at once seem strange that we have no express statement to this effect in the letters of Paul, when he shows undoubted knowledge of various events in the life of Christ (compare Wynne, Fragmentary Records of Jesus of Nazareth, 1887). It is almost certain, as J. Weiss admits (Paul and Jesus, 41), that in 1Co_9:1 Paul refers to the Risen Jesus. The passage in 2Co_5:16 is argued both ways: “Wherefore we henceforth know no man after the flesh: even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know him so no more.” J. Weiss (ibid., 41-55) argues strongly for the view that he knew Jesus in the flesh. But in the first clause of the sentence above Paul means by “after the flesh,” not acquaintance, but standpoint. It is natural to take it in the same way as applied to Christ. He has changed his viewpoint of Christ and so of all men. Weiss pleads (ibid., p. 40), at any rate, that we have no word saying that “Paul had not seen Jesus in person.” It may be said in reply that the fact that Jesus has to tell Paul who He is (Act_9:5) shows that Paul did not have personal acquaintance with Him. But the question may be left in abeyance as not vitally important. He certainly had not understood Jesus, if he knew Him.

Space does not, permit a discussion of this great event of Paul's conversion at all commensurate with its significance. A literature of importance has grown up around it besides the lengthy discussions in the lives and theologies of Paul (see e.g. Lord Lyttleton's famous Observations on Saul's Conversion, 1774; Fletcher's A Study of the Conversion of Paul, 1910; Gardner, The Religious Experience of Paul, 1911; Maggs, The Spiritual Experience of Paul). All sorts of theories have been advanced to explain on naturalistic grounds this great experience of Christ in the life of Paul. It has been urged that Paul had an epileptic fit, that he had a sunstroke, that he fell off his horse to the ground, that he had a nightmare, that he was blinded by a flash of lightning, that he imagined that he saw Jesus as a result of his highly wrought nervous state, that he deliberately renounced Judaism because of the growing conviction that the disciples were right. But none of these explanations explains. Mere prejudice against the supernatural, such as is shown by Weinel in his Paulus, and by Holsten in his able book (Zum Evangelium d. Paulus und Petrus), cannot solve this problem. One must be willing to hear the evidence. There were witnesses of the bright light (Act_26:13) and of the sound (Act_9:7) which only Paul understood (Act_22:9), as he alone beheld Jesus. It is claimed by some that Paul had a trance or subjective vision, and did not see Jesus with his eyes. Denney (Standard Bible Dictionary) replies that it is not a pertinent objection. Jesus (Joh_21:1) “manifested” Himself, and Paul says that he “saw” Jesus (1Co_9:1), that Jesus “appeared” (1Co_15:8) to him. Hence, it was both subjective and objective. But the reality of the event was as clear to Paul as his own existence. The account is given 3 times in Acts (chapters 9; 22; 26) in substantial agreement, with a few varying details. In Acts 9 the historical narrative occurs, in Acts 22 Paul's defense before the mob in Jerusalem is given, and in Acts 26 we have the apology before Agrippa. There are no contradictions of moment, save that in chapter 26 Jesus Himself is represented as giving directly to Paul the call to the Gentiles while in chapters 9 and 22 it is conveyed through Ananias (the fuller and more accurate account). There is no need to notice the apparent contradiction between Act_9:7 and Act_22:9, for the difference in case in the Greek gives a difference in sense, hearing the sound, with the genitive, and not understanding the sense, with the accusative. Findlay (HBD) remarks that the conversion of Paul is a psychological and ethical problem which cannot be accounted for save by Paul's own interpretation of the change wrought in him. He saw Jesus and surrendered to Him.

His surrender to Jesus was instantaneous and complete: “What shall I do, Lord?” (Act_22:10). He could not see for the glory of that light (Act_22:11), but he had already seen “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2Co_4:6). The god of this world could blind him no longer. He had seen Jesus, and all else had lost charm for Paul. There is infinite pathos in the picture of the blind Saul led by the hand (Act_9:8) into Damascus. All the pride of power is gone, all the lust for vengeance. The fierceness of the name of Saul is well shown in the dread that Ananias has and the protest that he makes to the Lord concerning him (Act_9:10-14). Ananias doubtless thought that the Lord had made a strange choice of a vessel to bear the message of Christ to the Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel (Act_9:15), but there was hope in the promise of chastisement to him (Act_9:16). So he went, and calls him “Brother Saul.” Saul was filled with the Holy Spirit, the scales fell from his eyes, he was baptized. And now what next? What did the world hold in store for the proud scion of Judaism who had renounced power, place, pride for the lowly Nazarene? He dared not go back to Jerusalem. The Jews in Damascus would have none of him now. Would the disciples receive him? They did. “And he was certain days with the disciples that were at Damascus” (Act_9:19). Ananias vouched for him by his vision. Then Saul took his courage in his hands and went boldly into the synagogues and “proclaimed Jesus, that he is the Son of God” (Act_9:20). This was a public committal and a proclamation of his new creed. There was tremendous pith and point in this statement from Saul. The Jews were amazed (Act_9:21). This is the core of Paul's message as we see in his later ministry (Acts 13; Act_17:3). It rests at bottom on Paul's own experience of grace. “His whole theology is nothing but the explanation of his own conversion” (Stalker, Life of Paul, 45). We need not argue (Garvie, Studies of Paul and His Gospel, 51) that Paul understood at once the full content of the new message, but he had the heart of it right.

There was evidently a tumult in Paul's soul. He had undergone a revolution, both intellectual and spiritual. Before he proceeded farther it was wise to think through the most important implications of the new standpoint. Luke gives no account of this personal phase of Paul's career, but he allows room for it between Act_9:21 and Act_9:22. It is Paul who tells of his retirement to Arabia (Gal_1:17 f) to prove his independence of the apostles in Jerusalem. He did not go to them for instruction or for ecclesiastical authority. He did not adopt the merely traditional view of Jesus as the Messiah. He knew, of course, the Christian contention well enough, for he had answered it often enough. But now his old arguments were gone an4t he must work his way round to the other side, and be able to put his new gospel with clearness and force. He was done with calling Jesus anathema (1Co_12:3). Henceforth to him Jesus is Lord. We know nothing of Paul's life in Arabia nor in what part of Arabia he was. He may have gone to Mt. Sinai and thought out grace in the atmosphere of law, but that is not necessary. But it is clear that Paul grew in apprehension of the things of Christ during these years, as indeed he grew to the very end. But he did not grow away from the first clear vision of Christ. He claimed that God had revealed His Son in him that he might preach to the Gentiles (Gal_1:16). He claimed that from the first and to the very last. The undoubted development in Paul's Epistles (see Matheson, Spiritual Development of Paul, and Sabatier, The Apostle Paul) is, however, not a changing view of Christ that nullifies Paul's “original Christian inheritance” (Kohler, Zum Verstandnis des Apostels Paulus, 13). Pfieiderer (Influence of the Apostle Paul on the Development of Christianity, 3rd edition, 1897, 217) rejects Colossians because of the advanced Christology here found. But the Christology of Col is implicit in Paul's first sermon at Damascus. “It is impossible to escape the conclusion that the significance and value of the Cross became clear to him almost simultaneously with the certainty of the resurrection and of the Messiahship of Jesus” (Garvie, Studies, etc., 57). The narrow Jew has surrendered to Christ who died for the sins of the world. The universal gospel has taken hold of his mind and heart, and it will work out its logical consequences in Paul. The time in Arabia is not wasted. When he reappears in Damascus (Act_9:22) he has “developed faith” (Findlay, HDB) and energy that bear instant fruit. He is now the slave of Christ. For him henceforth to live is Christ. He is crucified with Christ. He is in Christ. The union of Paul with Christ is the real key to his life. It is far more than a doctrine about Christ. It is real fellowship with Christ (Deissmann, St. Paul, 123). Thus it is that the man who probably never saw Christ in the flesh understands him best (Wernle, Beginnings of Christianity, I, 159).

Saul had “increased the more in strength, and confounded the Jews that dwelt in Damascus, proving that this is the Christ” (Act_9:22). Now he not merely “proclaims” as before (Act_9:20); he “proves.” He does it with such marvelous skill that the Jews are first confounded, then enraged to the point of murder. Their former hero was now their foe. The disciples had learned to run from Saul. They now let him down in a basket through the wall by night and he is gone (Act_9:23 ff). This then is the beginning of the active ministry of the man who was called to be a chosen vessel to Gentiles, kings, and Jews, There was no need to go back to the wilderness. He had gotten his bearings clearly now. He had his message and it had his whole heart. He had not avoided Jerusalem because he despised flesh and blood, but because he had no need of light from the apostles since “the divine revelation so completely absorbed his interest and attention” (Garvie, Life and Teaching of Paul, 33). No door was open as yet among the Gentiles. Sooner or later he must go to Jerusalem and confer with the leaders there if he was to cooperate with them in the evangelization of the world. Saul knew that he would be an object of suspicion to the disciples in Jerusalem. That was inevitable in view of the past. It was best to go, but he did not wish to ask any favors of the apostles. Indeed he went in particular “to visit Cephas” (margin, “to become acquainted with” Gal_1:18). They knew each other, of course, as opponents. But Saul comes now with the olive branch to his old enemy. He expressly explains (Gal_1:19) that he saw no other apostle. He did see James, the Lord's brother, who was not one of the Twelve. It seems that at first Peter and James were both afraid of Saul (Act_9:26), “not believing that he was a disciple.” If a report came 3 years before of the doings at Damascus, they had discounted it. All had been quiet, and now Saul suddenly appears in Jerusalem in a new role. It was, they feared, just a ruse to complete his work of old. But for Barnabas, Saul might not have had that visit of 15 days with Peter. Barnabas was a Hellenist of Cyprus and believed Saul's story and stood by him. Thus, he had his opportunity to preach the gospel in Jerusalem, perhaps in the very synagogues in which he had heard Stephen, and now he is taking Stephen's place and is disputing against the Grecian Jews (Act_9:29). He had days of blessed fellowship (Act_9:28) with the disciples, till the Grecian Jews sought to kill him as Saul had helped to do to Stephen (Act_9:29). It was a repetition of Damascus, but Saul did not wish to run again so soon. He protested to the Lord Jesus, who spoke in a vision to him, and recalls the fate of Stephen, but Jesus bids him go: “For I will send thee forth far hence unto the Gentiles” (Act_22:17-21). One martyr like Stephen is enough. So the brethren took him down to Caesarea (Act_9:30). It was an ominous beginning for a ministry with so clear a call. Where can he go now?

They “sent him forth to Tarsus” (Act_9:30). Who would welcome him there? At Jerusalem he apparently avoided Gamaliel and the Sanhedrin. He was with the Christians and preached to the Hellenistic Jews. The Jews regarded him as a turncoat, a renegade Jew. There were apparently no Christians in Tarsus, unless some of the disciples driven from Jerusalem by Saul himself went that far, as they did go to Antioch (Act_11:19 f). But Saul was not idle, for he speaks himself of his activity in the regions of Syria and Cilicia during this “period of obscurity” (Denney, Standard Bible Dict.) as a thing known to the churches of Judea (Gal_1:21 f). He was not idle then. The way was not yet opened for formal entrance upon the missionary enterprise, but Saul was not the man to do nothing at home because of that. If they would not hear him at Damascus and Jerusalem, they would in the regions of Syria and Cilicia, his home province. We are left in doubt at first whether Paul preached only to Jews or to Gentiles also. He had the specific call to preach to the Gentiles, and there is no reason why he should not have done so in this province, preaching to the Jews first as he did afterward. He did not have the scruples of Simon Peter to overcome. When he appears at Antioch with Barnabas, he seems to take hold like an old hand at the business. It is quite probable, therefore, that this obscure ministry of some 8 or 10 years may have had more results than we know. Paul apparently felt that he had done his work in that region, for outside of Antioch he gives no time to it except that in starting out on the second tour from Antioch “he went through Syria and Cilicia, confirming the churches” (Act_15:41), churches probably the fruit of this early ministry and apparently containing Gentiles also. The letter from the Jerusalem conference was addressed to “the brethren who are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia” (Act_15:23). Cilicia was now part of the Roman province of Syria. So then we conclude that Saul had a Gentileministry in this region. “Independently, under no human master, he learned his business as a missionary to the heathen” (Findlay, HDB). One can but wonder whether Saul was kindly received at home by his father and mother. They had looked upon him with pride as the possible successor of Gamaliel, and now he is a follower of the despised Nazarene and a preacher of the Cross. It is possible that his own exhortations to fathers not to provoke their children to wrath (Eph_6:4) may imply that his own father had cast him out at this time. Findlay (HDB) argues that Saul would not have remained in this region so long if his home relations had been altogether hostile. It is a severe test of character when the doors close against one. But Saul turned defeat to glorious gain.

Most scholars hold that the ecstatic experience told by Paul in 2Co_12:1-9 took place before he came to Antioch. If we count the years strictly, 14 from 56 AD would bring us to 42 AD. Paul had spent a year in Antioch before going up to Jerusalem (Act_11:29 f). Findlay (HDB) thinks that Paul had the visions before he received the call to come to Antioch. Garvie (Life and Teaching of Paul, 41) holds he received the call first. “Such a mood of exaltation would account for the vision to which he refers in 2Co_12:1-4.” At any rate he had the vision with its exaltation and the thorn in the flesh with its humiliation before he came to Antioch in response to the invitation of Barnabas. He had undoubtedly had a measure of success in his work in Cilicia and Syria. He had the seal of the divine blessing on his work among the Gentiles. But there was a pang of disappointment over the attitude of the Jerusalem church toward his work. He was apparently left alone to his own resources. “Only such a feeling of disappointment can explain the tone of his references to his relations to the apostles (Gal_1:11-24)” (Garvie, Life and Teaching of Paul, 41). There is no bitterness in this tone - but puzzled surprise. It seems that the 12 apostles are more or less absent from Jerusalem during this period with James the brother of the Lord Jesus as chief elder. A narrow Pharisaic element in the church was active and sought to shape the policy of the church in its attitude toward the Gentiles. This is clear in the treatment of Peter, when he returned to Jerusalem after the experience at Caesarea with Cornelius (Acts 11:1-18). There was acquiescence, but with the notion that this was an exceptional case of the Lord's doing. Hence, they show concern over the spread of the gospel to the Greeks at Antioch, and send Barnabas to investigate and report (Act_11:19-22). Barnabas was a Hellenist, and evidently did not share the narrow views of the Pharisaic party in the church at Jerusalem (Act_11:2), for he was glad (Act_11:23 f) of the work in Antioch. Probably mindful of the discipline attempted on Simon Peter, he refrained from going back at once to Jerusalem. Moreover, he believed in Saul and his work, and thus he gave him his great opportunity at Antioch. They had there a year's blessed work together (Act_11:25 ff). So great was the outcome that the disciples received a new name to distinguish them from the Gentiles and the Jews. But the term “Christian” did not become general for a long time. There was then a great Greek church at Antioch, possibly equal in size to the Jewish church in Jerusalem. The prophecy by Agabus of a famine gave Barnabas and Saul a good excuse for a visit to Jerusalem with a general collection - “every man according to his ability” - from the Greek church for the relief of the poverty in the Jerusalem church. Barnabas had assisted generously in a similar strain in the beginning of the work there (Act_4:36 f), unless it was a different Barnabas, which is unlikely. This contribution would help the Jerusalem saints to understand now that the Greeks were really converted. It was apparently successful according to the record in Acts. The apostles seem to have been absent, since only “elders” are mentioned in Act_11:30.

The incidents in Acts 12, as already noted, are probably not contemporaneous with this visit, but either prior or subsequent to it. However, it is urged by some scholars that this visit is the same as that of Gal_2:1-10 since Paul would not have omitted it in his list of visits to Jerusalem. But then Paul is not giving a list of visits, but is only showing his independence of the apostles. If they were absent from Jerusalem at that time, there would be no occasion to mention it. Besides, Luke in Acts 15 does recount the struggle in Jerusalem over the problem of Gentileliberty. If that question was an issue at the visit in Act_11:30, it is quite remarkable that he should have passed it by, especially if the matter caused as much heat as is manifest in Gal 2, both in Jerusalem and Antioch. It is much simpler to understand that in Acts 15 and Gal_2:1-10 we have the public and the private aspects of the same issue, than to suppose that Luke has slurred the whole matter over in Act_11:30. The identification of the visit of Gal 2 with that in Act_11:30 makes it possible to place Galatians before the conference in Jerusalem in Acts 15 and implies the correctness of the South Galatian theory of the destination of the epistle and of the work of Paul, a theory with strong advocates and arguments, but which is by no means established (see below for discussion at more length). So far as we can gather from Luke, Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem with John Mark (Act_12:25),” when they had fulfilled their ministration” with satisfaction. The Pharisaic element was apparently quiescent, and the outlook for the future work among the Gentiles seemed hopeful. Ramsay (St. Paul the Traveler, 62 ff) argues strongly for identifying the revelation mentioned in Paul's speech in Act_22:20 f with this visit in Act_11:30 (Act_12:25), rather than with the one in Act_9:29 f. There is a textual problem in Act_12:25, but I cannot concur in the solution of Ramsay.

Paul had already preached to the Gentiles in Cilicia and Syria for some 10 years. The work was not new to him. He had had his specific call from Jerusalem long ago and had answered it. But now an entirely new situation arises. His work had been individual in Cilicia. Now the Spirit specifically directs the separation of Barnabas and Saul to this work (Act_13:2). They were to go together, and they had the sympathy and prayers of a great church. The endorsement was probably not “ordination” in the technical sense, but a farewell service of blessing and good will as the missionaries went forth on the world-campaign (Act_13:3). No such unanimous endorsement could have been obtained in Jerusalem to this great enterprise. It was momentous in its possibilities for Christianity. Hitherto work among the Gentiles had been sporadic and incidental. Now a determined effort was to be made to evangelize a large section of the Roman empire. There is no suggestion that the church at Antioch provided funds for this or for the two later Campaigns, as the church at Philippi came to do. How that was managed this time we do not know. Some individuals may have helped. Paul had his trade to fall back on, and often had resort to it later. The presence of John Mark “as their attendant” (Act_13:5) was probably due to Barnabas, his cousin (Col_4:10). The visit to Cyprus, the home of Barnabas, was natural. There were already some Christians there (Act_11:20), and it was near. They preach first in the synagogues of the Jews at Salamis (Act_13:5). We are left to conjecture as to results there and through the whole island till Paphos is reached. There they meet a man of great prominence and intelligence, Sergius Paulus, the Roman proconsul, who had been under the spell of a sorcerer with a Jewish name - Elymas Bar-jesus (compare Peter's encounter with Simon Magus in Samaria). In order to win and hold Sergius Paulus, who had become interested in Christianity, Paul has to punish Bar-jesus with blindness (Act_13:10 ff) in the exercise of that apostolic power which he afterward claimed with such vigor (1Co_5:4 f; 2Co_13:10). He won Sergius Paulus, and this gave him cheer for his work. From now on it is Paul, not Saul, in the record of Luke, perhaps because of this incident, though both names probably belonged to him from the first. Now also Paul steps to the fore ahead of Barnabas, and it is “Paul's company” (Act_13:13) that sets sail from Paphos for Pamphylia. There is no evidence here of resentment on the part of Barnabas at the leadership of Paul. The whole campaign may have been planned from the start by the Holy Spirit as the course now taken may have been due to Paul's leadership. John Mark deserts at Perga and returns to Jerusalem (his home), not to Antioch (Act_13:13). Paul and Barnabas push on to the tablelands of Pisidia. Ramsay (St. Paul the Traveler, 93) thinks that Paul had malaria down at Perga and hence desired to get up into higher land. That is possible. The places mentioned in the rest of the tour are Antioch in Pisidia (Act_13:14), and Iconium (Act_13:51), Lystra (Act_14:8), and Derbe (Act_14:20), cities of Lycaonia. These terms are ethnographic descriptions of the southern divisions of the Roman province of Galatia, the northern portion being Galatia proper or North Galatia. So then Paul and Barnabas are now at work in South Galatia, though Luke does not mention that name, using here only the popular designations. The work is wonderfully successful. In these cities, on one of the great Roman roads east and west, Paul is reaching the centers of provincial life as will be his custom. At Antioch Paul is invited to repeat his sermon on the next Sabbath (Act_13:42), and Luke records at length the report of this discourse which has the characteristic notes of Paul's gospel as we see it in his epistles. Paul may have kept notes of the discourse. There were devout Gentiles at these services. These were the first to be won, and thus a wider circle of Gentiles could be reached. Paul and Barnabas were too successful at Antioch in Pisidia. The jealous Jews opposed, and Paul and Barnabas dramatically turned to the Gentiles (Act_13:45 ff). But the Jews reached the city magistrate through the influential women, and Paul and Barnabas were ordered to leave (Act_13:50 f). Similar success brings like results in Iconium. At Lystra, before the hostile Jews come, Paul and Barnabas have great success and, because of the healing of the impotent man, are taken as Mercury and Jupiter respectively, and worship is offered them. Paul's address in refusal is a fine plea on the grounds of natural theology (Act_14:15-18). The attempt on Paul's life after the Jews came seemed successful. In the band of disciples that “stood round about him,” there may have been Timothy, Paul's son in the gospel. From Derbe they retrace their steps to Perga, in order to strengthen the churches with officers, and then sail for Seleucia and Antioch. They make their report to the church at Antioch. It is a wonderful story. The door of faith is now wide open for the Gentiles who have entered in great numbers (Act_14:27). No report was sent to Jerusalem. What will the Pharisaic party do now?

The early date of Galatians, addressed to these churches of Pisidia and Lycaonia before the Conference in Jerusalem does not allow time for a second visit there (Gal_4:13), and requires that the Judaizers from Jerusalem followed close upon the heels of Paul and Barnabas (Gal_1:6; Gal_3:1) in South Galatia. Besides, there is the less likelihood that the matter would have been taken a second time to Jerusalem (Act_15:2 f) if already the question had been settled in Paul's favor (Act_11:30). It is strange also that no reference to this previous conference on the same subject is made in Acts 15, since Peter does refer to his experience at Caesarea (Act_15:9) and since James in Act_21:25 specifically (“we wrote”) mentions the letter of Acts 15 in which full liberty was granted to the Gentiles. Once more, the attack on the position of Paul and Barnabas in Act_15:1 is given as a new experience, and hence the sharp dissension and tense feeling. The occasion for the sudden outbreak at Antioch on the part of the self-appointed (Act_15:24) regulators of Paul and Barnabas lay in the reports that came to Jerusalem about the results of this campaign on a large scale among the Gentiles. There was peril to the supremacy of the Jewish element. They had assumed at first, as even Peter did who was not a Judaizer (Acts 10), that the Gentiles who became disciples would also become Jews. The party of the circumcision had made protest against the conduct of Peter at Caesarea (Act_11:1 f) and had reluctantly acquiesced in the plain work of God (Act_11:18). They had likewise yielded in the matter of the Greeks at Antioch (Act_11:19 ff) by the help of the contribution (Act_11:29 f). But they had not agreed to a campaign to Hellenize Christianity. The matter had to stop. So the Judaizers came up to Antioch and laid down the law to Paul and Barnabas. They did not wait for them to come to Jerusalem. They might not come till it was too late (compare Barnabas in Acts 11). Paul and Barnabas had not sought the controversy. They had both received specific instructions from the Holy Spirit to make this great campaign among the Gentiles. They would not stultify themselves and destroy the liberty of the Gentiles in Christ by going back and having the Mosaic Law imposed on them by the ceremony of circumcision. They saw at once the gravity of the issue. The very essence of the gospel of grace was involved. Paul had turned away from this yoke of bondage. He would not go back to it nor would he impose it on his converts. The church at Antioch stood by Paul and Barnabas. Paul (Gal_2:2) says that he had a revelation to go to Jerusalem with the problem. Luke (Act_15:3) says that the church sent them. Surely there is no inconsistency here. It is not difficult to combine the personal narrative in Gal 2 with the public meetings recorded in Acts 15. We have first the general report by Paul and Barnabas to the church in Jerusalem (Act_15:4 f) to which instant exception was made by the Judaizing element. There seems to have come an adjournment to prepare for the conflict, since in Act_15:6 Luke says again that “the apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider of this matter.” Between these two public meetings we may place the private conference of Paul and Barnabas with Peter, John and James and other teachers (Gal_2:1-10). In this private conference some of the timid brethren wished to persuade Paul to have Titus, a Greek Christian whom Paul had brought down from Antioch (a live specimen!), offered as a sacrifice to the Judaizers (“false brethren”) and circumcised. But Paul stood his ground for the truth of the gospel and was supported by Peter, John and James. They agreed all around for Paul and Barnabas to go on with their work to the Gentiles, and Peter, John and James would push the work among the Jews (a division in sphere of work, like home and foreign missions, not a denominational cleavage). Here, then, for the first time, Paul has had an opportunity to talk the matter over with the apostolic teachers, and they agree. The Judaizers will have no support from the apostles. The battle was really won in their private conference. In the second public meeting (Acts 15:6-29) all goes smoothly enough. Ample opportunity for free discussion is offered. Then Peter shows how God had used him to preach to the Romans, and how the Jews themselves had to believe on Christ in order to be saved. He opposed putting a yoke on the Gentiles that the Jews could not bear. There was a pause, and then Barnabas and Paul (note the order here: courtesy to Barnabas) spoke again. After another pause, James, the president of the conference, the brother of the Lord Jesus, and a stedfast Jew, spoke. He cited Amo_9:11 f to show that God had long ago promised a blessing to the Gentiles. He suggests liberty to the Gentiles with the prohibition of pollution of idols, of fornication, things strangled, and blood. His ideas are embodied in a unanimous decree which strongly commends “our beloved Barnabas and Paul” and disclaims responsibility for the visit of the Judaizers to Antioch. The Western text omits “things strangled” from the decree. If this is correct, the decree prohibits idolatry, fornication and murder (Wilson, Origin and Aim of the Acts of the Apostles, 1912, 55). At any rate, the decision is a tremendous victory for Paul and Barnabas. If the other reading is correct, Jewish feelings about things strangled and blood are to be respected. The decision was received with great joy in Antioch (Act_15:30-35). Some time later Peter appears at Antioch in the fullest fellowship with Paul and Barnabas in their work, and joins them in free social intercourse with the Gentiles, as he had timidly done in the home of Cornelius, till “certain came from James” (Gal_2:11 f), and probably threatened to have Peter up before the church again (Act_11:2) on this matter, claiming that James agreed with them on the subject. This I do not believe was true in the light of Act_15:24, where a similar false claim is discredited, since James had agreed with Paul in Jerusalem (Act_15:19 ff; Gal_2:9 f). The new ground for complaint was that they had not settled the question of social relations with the Gentiles in the Jerusalem conference and that Peter had exceeded the agreement there reached. Peter quailed before the accusation, “fearing them that were of the circumcision” Gal_2:12) To make it worse, “even Barnabas was carried away with their dissimulation” (Gal_2:13). Under this specious plea Paul was about to lose the fruit of the victory already won, and charged Peter to his face with Judaizing hypocrisy (Gal_2:11-14). It was a serious crisis. Peter had not changed his convictions, but had once more cowered in an hour of peril. Paul won both Barnabas and Peter to his side and took occasion to show how useless the death of Christ was if men could be saved by mere legalism (Gal_2:21). But the Judaizers had renewed the war, and they would keep it up and harry the work of Paul all over the world. Paul had the fight of his life upon his hands.

The impulse to go out again came from Paul. Despite the difference in Gal_2:13, he wished to go again with Barnabas (Act_15:36), but Barnabas insisted on taking along John Mark, which Paul was not willing to do because of his failure to stick to the work at Perga. So they agreed to disagree after “sharp contention” (Act_15:39 f). Barnabas went with Mark to Cyprus, while Paul took Silas, “being commended by the brethren to the grace of the Lord.” Luke follows the career of Paul, and so Barnabas drops out of view (compare later 1Co_9:6). Paul and Silas go “through Syria and Cilicia, confirming the churches” (Act_15:41). They pass through the Cilician gates to Derbe, the end of the first tour, and go to Lystra. Here they pick up Timothy, who more than takes Mark's place in Paul's life. Timothy's mother was a Jewess and his father a Greek. Paul decided therefore to have him circumcised since, as a half-Jew, he would be especially obnoxious to the Jews. This case differed wholly from that of Titus, a Greek, where principle was involved. Here it was a matter merely of expediency. Paul had taken the precaution to bring along the decrees of the Conference at Jerusalem in case there was need of them. He delivered them to the churches. It has to be noted that in 1 Cor 8 through 10 and in Rom 14 and 15, when discussing the question of eating meats offered to idols, Paul does not refer to these decrees, but argues the matter purely from the standpoint of the principles involved. The Judaizers anyhow had not lived up to the agreement, but Paul is here doing his part by the decision. The result of the work was good for the churches (Act_16:4).

When we come to Act_16:6, we touch a crucial passage in the South-Galatian controversy. Ramsay (Christianity in the Roman Empire, chapters iii through vi; History and Geography of Asia Minor; St. Paul the Traveler, chapters v, vi, viii, ix; The Expositor, IV, viii, ix, “replies to Chase”; “Galatia,” HDB; Commentary on Gal; The Cities of St. Paul; The Expositor T, 1912, 1913) has become by his able advocacy the chief champion of the view that Paul never went to Galatia proper or North Galatia, and that he addressed his epistle to South Galatia, the churches visited in the first tour. For a careful history of the whole controversy in detail, see Moffatt, Introduction to the Literature of the New Testament, 90-106, who strongly supports the view of Lightfoot, H.J. Holtzmann, Blass, Schurer, Denney, Chase, Mommsen, Steinmann, etc. There are powerful names with Ramsay, like Hausrath, Zahn, Barrlet, Garvie, Weizsacker, etc. The arguments are too varied and minute for complete presentation here. The present writer sees some very attractive features in the South-Galatian hypothesis, but as a student of language finds himself unable to overcome the syntax of Act_16:6. The minor difficulty is the dropping of καί, kaí, between “Phrygia” and “Galatic region” by Ramsay. It is by no means certain that this is the idea of Luke. It is more natural to take the terms as distinct and coordinated by kaí. In St. Paul the Traveler, 212, Ramsay pleads for the aorist of subsequent time, but Moulton (Prolegomena, 133) will have none of it. With that I agree. The aorist participle must give something synchronous with or antecedent to the principal verb. In Expository Times for February, 1913, 220 f, Ramsay comes back to the “construction of Act_16:6.” He admits that the weight of authority is against the Textus Receptus of the New Testament and in favor of διῆλθον...κωλυθέντες, diḗlthon...kōluthéntes. He now interprets the language thus: “Paul, having in mind at Lystra his plan of going on to Asia from Galatia, was ordered by the Spirit not to preach in Asia. He therefore made a tour through the Phrygio-Galatic region, which he had already influenced so profoundly from end to end (Act_13:49).” But there is grave difficulty in accepting this interpretation as a solution of the problem. Ramsay here makes the narrative in Act_16:6 resumptive and takes us back to the standpoint of Act_16:1 at Lystra. The proper place for such a forecast was in Act_16:1, or at most before Act_16:4, which already seems to mark an advance beyond Lystra to Iconium and Antioch in Pisidia: “and as they went on their way through the cities.”

By this view Paul had not meant to stop in Galatia proper and did so only because of an attack of illness (Gal_4:13). It is possible that Luke may have come to his rescue here. At any rate, he finally pushes on opposite Mysia and Bithynia in the extreme north and was forbidden by the Spirit from going on into Bithynia. So they came down to Troas (Act_16:7 f) when Luke (“we,” Act_16:10) appears on the scene and the Macedonian call comes to Paul. Thus Paul is led out of Asia into Europe and carries the gospel successively to Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, and Corinth. The gospel is finally planted in the great provinces of Macedonia and Achaia. In Philippi, a Roman colony and military outpost, Paul finds few Jews and has to go out to a prayer-place to find a few Jewish women to whom he can tell the story of Jesus. But he gains a start with Lydia and her household, and soon arouses the hostility of a company of men who were making money out of a poor girl's powers of divination. But before Paul and Silas leave the jail, the jailer is himself converted, and a good church is established. At Thessalonica Paul has great success and arouses the jealousy of the Jews who gather a rabble and raise a disturbance and charge it up to Paul. At Philippi appeal was made to prejudice against Jews. At Thessalonica the charge is made that Paul preaches Jesus as a rival king to Caesar. In Berea Paul and Silas have even more success till the Jews come from Thessalonica and drive Paul out again. Timothy, who has come out from Philippi where Luke has remained, and Silas stay in Berea while Paul hurries on to Athens with some of the brethren, who return with the request for Timothy and Silas “to come to him with all speed.” Apparently Timothy did come (1Th_3:1 f), but Paul soon sent him back to Thessalonica because of his anxiety about conditions there. Left alone in Athens, Paul's spirit was stirred over the idolatry before his eyes. He preaches in the synagogues and argues with the Stoics and Epicureans in the Agora who make light of his pretensions to philosophy as a “babbler” (Act_17:18). But curiosity leads them to invite him to speak on the Areopagus. This notable address, all alive to his surroundings, was rather rudely cut short by their indifference and mockery, and Paul left Athens with small results for his work. He goes over to Corinth, the great commercial city of the province, rich and with bizarre notions of culture. Paul determined (1Co_2:1-5) to be true to the cross, even after his experience in Athens. He gave them, not the flashy philosophy of the sophists, but the true Wisdom of God in simple words, the philosophy of the cross of Christ (1 Cor 1:17 through 3:4). In Corinth Paul found fellow-helpers in Aquila and Priscilla, just expelled from Rome by Claudius. They have the same trade of tentmakers and live together (Act_18:1-4), and Paul preached in the synagogues. Paul is cheered by the coming of Timothy and Silas from Thessalonica (Act_18:5) with supplies from Philippi, as they had done while in Thessalonica (Phi_4:15 f). This very success led to opposition, and Paul has to preach in the house of Titus Justus. But the work goes on till Gallio comes and a renewed effort is made to have it stopped, but Gallio declines to interfere and thus practically makes Christianity a religio licita, since he treats it as a variety of Judaism. While here, after the arrival of Timothy and Silas, Paul writes the two letters to Thessalonica, the first of his 13 epistles. They are probably not very far apart in time, and deal chiefly with a grievous misunderstanding on their part concerning the emphasis placed by him on the Man of Sin and the Second Coming. Paul had felt the power of the empire, and his attention is sharply drawn to the coming conflict between the Roman empire and the kingdom of God. He treats it in terms of apocalyptic eschatology. When he leaves Corinth, it is to go by Ephesus, with Aquila and Priscilla whom he leaves there with the promise to return. He goes down to Caesarea and “went up and saluted the church” (Act_18:22), probably at Jerus (fourth visit), and “went down to Antioch.” If he went to Jerusalem, it was probably incidental, and nothing of importance happened. He is back once again in Antioch after an absence of some 3 or 4 years.

The stay of Paul at Antioch is described as “sometime” (Act_18:23). Denney (Standard Bible Dictionary) conjectures that Paul's brief stay at Jerusalem (see above) was due to the fact that he found that the Judaizers had organized opposition there against him in the absence of the apostles, and it was so unpleasant that he did not stay. He Suggests also that the Judaizers had secured letters of commendation from the church for their emissaries (2Co_3:1) to Corinth and Galatia, who were preaching “another Jesus” of nationalism and narrowness, whom Paul did not preach (Gal_1:6; 2Co_11:4). Both Denney and Findlay follow Neander, Wieseler, and Sabatier in placing here, before Paul starts out again from Antioch, the visit of certain “from James” (Gal_2:12), who overpowered Peter for the moment. But I have put this incident as more probably before the disagreement with Barnabas over Mark, and as probably contributing to that breach at the beginning of the second tour. It is not necessary to suppose that the Judaizers remained acquiescent so long.

Paul seems to have set out on the third tour alone - unless Timothy came back with him, of which there is no evidence save that he is with Paul again in Ephesus (Act_19:22). What became of Silas? Paul “went through the region of Galatia, and Phrygia, in order, establishing all the disciples” (Act_18:23), the opposite order to Act_16:6, “through the region of Phrygia and Galatia.” According to the North-Galatian view, here followed, he went through the northern part of the province, passing through Galatia proper and Phrygia on his way west to Ephesus. Luke adds, “Paul having passed through the upper country came to Ephesus” (Act_19:1). The ministry of Apollos in Ephesus (Act_18:24-28) had taken place before Paul arrived, though Aquila and Priscilla were still on hand. Apollos passed over to Corinth and innocently became the occasion of such strife there (1 Cor 1 through 4) that he left and refused to return at Paul's request (1Co_16:12). Paul has a ministry of 3 years, in round numbers, in Ephesus, which is full of excitement and anxiety from the work there and in Corinth. He finds on his arrival some ill-informed disciples of John the Baptist who are ignorant of the chief elements of John's teaching about repentance, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit (Act_19:2-7), matters of which Apollos had knowledge, though he learned more from Priscilla and Aquila, but there is no evidence that he was rebaptized as was true of the 12 disciples of John (Robertson, John the Loyal, 290-303). The boldness of Paul in Ephesus led in 3 months to his departure from the synagogue to the schoolhouse of Tyrannus, where he preached for 2 years (Act_19:8-10) with such power that “all they that dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord.” It is not strange later to find churches at Colosse and Hierapolis in the Lycus Valley (compare also Rev_1:11). Paul has a sharp collision with the strolling Jewish exorcists that led to the burning of books of magic by the wholesale (Act_19:11-20), another proof of the hold that magic and the mysteries had upon the Orient. Ephesus was the seat of the worship of Diana whose wonderful temple was their pride. A great business in the manufacture of shrines of Diana was carried on here by Demetrius, and “this Paul” had hurt his trade so much that he raised an insurrection under the guise of piety and patriotism and might have killed Paul with the mob, if he could have got hold of him (Acts 19:23-41). It was with great difficulty that Paul was kept from going to the amphitheater, as it was. But here, as at Corinth, the Roman officer (the town clerk) defended Paul from the rage of his enemies (there the jealous Jews, here the tradesmen whose business suffered). He was apparently very ill anyhow, and came near death (2Co_1:9). All this seems to have hastened his departure from Ephesus sooner than Pentecost, as he had written to the Corinthians (1Co_16:8). His heart was in Corinth because of the discussions there over him and Apollos and Peter, by reason of the agitation of the Judaizers (1Co_1:10-17). The household of Chloe had brought word of this situation to Paul. He had written the church a letter now lost (1Co_5:9). They had written him a letter (1Co_7:1). They sent messengers to Paul (1Co_16:17). He had sent Timothy to them (1Co_4:17; 1Co_16:10), who seems not to have succeeded in quieting the trouble. Paul wrote 1 Cor (spring of 56), and then sent Titus, who was to meet him at Troas and report results (2Co_2:12 f). He may also have written another letter and sent it by Titus (2Co_2:3 f). The sudden departure from Corinth brought Paul to Troas ahead of time, but he could not wait for Titus, and so pushed on with a heavy heart into Macedonia, where he met him, and he had good and bad news to tell (2Co_2:12 ff; 2Co_7:5-13). The effect on Paul was instantaneous. He rebounded to hope and joy (2Co_2:14 ff) in a glorious defense of the ministry of Jesus (compare Robertson, The Glory of the Ministry; Paul's Exultation in Preaching), with a message of cheer to the majority. of the church that had sustained Paul and with instructions (2 Cor 8 and 2Co_9:1-15) about the collection for the poor saints in Jerusalem, which must be pushed to a completion by Titus and two other brethren (possibly also Luke, brother of Titus, and Erastus). Timothy and Erastus had been sent on ahead to Macedonia from Ephesus (Act_19:22), and Timothy sends greetings with Paul to the Corinthians in a letter (2 Corinthians) which Paul now forwards, possibly by Titus. The latter part of the epistle (1 Cor 10 through 13) deals with the stubborn minority who still resist the authority of Paul as an apostle. On the proposed treatment of these chapters as a separate epistle see the earlier part of this article. Paul seems to wait a while before going on to Corinth. He wishes the opposition to have time to repent. During this period he probably went round about to Illyricum (Rom_15:19). He spent three months in Greece (Act_20:2 f), probably the winter of 56 and 57.

We have placed Galatians in the early part of this stay in Corinth, though it could have been written while at Ephesus. Romans was certainly written while here, and they both treat the same general theme of justification by faith. Ramsay (Expos, February, 1913, 127-45) has at last come to the conclusion that Gal belongs to the date of Act_15:1 f. He bases this conclusion chiefly on the “absolute independence” of his apostleship claimed in Gal 1 and 2, which, he holds, he would not have done after the conference in Acts 15, which was “a sacrifice of complete independence.” This is a curious interpretation, for in Gal_2:1-10 Paul himself tells of his recognition on terms of equality by Peter, John and James, and of his going to Jerusalem by “revelation,” which was just as much “a sacrifice of complete independence” as we find in Acts 15. Besides, in 2Co_11:5 and 2Co_12:11 Paul expressly asserts his equality (with all humility) with the very chiefest apostles, and in 1Co_15:10 he claims in so many words to have wrought more than all the apostles. Perhaps messengers from Galatia with the contributions from that region report the havoc wrought there by the Judaizers. Gal is a tremendous plea for the spiritual nature of Christianity as opposed to Jewish ceremonial legalism.

Paul had long had it in mind to go to Rome. It was his plan to do so while at Ephesus (Act_19:21) after he had gone to Jerusalem with the great collection from the churches of Asia, Galatia, Achaia, and Macedonia. He hoped that this collection would have a mollifying effect on the Jerusalem saints as that from Antioch had (Act_11:29 f). He had changed some details in his plans, but not the purpose to go to Jerusalem and then to Rome. Meanwhile, he writes the longest and most important letter of all to the Romans, in which he gives a fuller statement of his gospel, because they had not heard him preach, save his various personal friends who had gone there from the east (Acts 16). But already the shadow of Jerusalem is on his heart, and he asks their prayers in his behalf, as he faces his enemies in Jerusalem (Rom_15:30-32). He hopes also to go on to Spain (Rom_15:24), so as to carry the gospel to the farther west also. The statesmanship of Paul comes out now in great clearness. He has in his heart always anxiety for the churches that consumes him (2Co_11:28 f). He was careful to have a committee of the churches go with him to report the collection (2Co_8:19 f). Paul had planned to sail direct for Syria, but a plot on his life in Corinth led him to go by land via Macedonia with his companions (Act_20:2-4). He tarried at Philippi while the rest went on to Troas. At Philippi Paul is joined again by Luke, who stays with him till Rome is reached. They celebrate the Passover (probably the spring of 57) in Philippi (Act_20:6). We cannot follow the details in Acts at Troas, the voyage through the beautiful Archipelago, to Miletus. There Paul took advantage of the stop to send for the elders of Ephesus to whom he gave a wonderful address (Acts 20:17-38). They change ships at Patara for Phoenicia and pass to the right of Cyprus with its memories of Barnabas and Sergius Paulus and stop at Tyre, where Paul is warned not to go on to Jerusalem. The hostility of the Judaizers to Paul is now common talk everywhere. There is grave peril of a schism in Christianity over the question of Gentile liberty, once settled in Jerusalem, but unsettled by the Judaizers. At Caesarea Paul is greeted by Philip the evangelist and his four daughters (prophetesses). At Caesarea Paul is warned in dramatic fashion by Agabus (compare Act_11:28) not to go on to Jerusalem (Act_21:9 ff), but Paul is more determined than ever to go, even if he die (Act_20:13). He had had three premonitions for long (Act_20:22 ff), but he will finish his course, cost what it may. He finds a friend at Caesarea in Mnason of Cyprus, an early disciple, who was to be the host of Paul in Jerusalem (Act_21:16).

Paul had hoped to reach Jerusalem by Pentecost (Act_20:16). He seems to have done so. Luke gives the story of Paul in Jerusalem, Caesarea, and the voyage to Rome in much detail. He was with him and considered this period of his ministry very important. The welcome from the brethren in Jerusalem was surprisingly cordial (Act_21:17). On the very next day Paul and his party made a formal call on James and all the elders (Act_21:18 f), who gave a sympathetic hearing to the narrative of God's dealings with Paul and the Gentiles. He presented the alms (collection) in due form (Act_24:17), though some critics have actually suggested that Paul used it to defray the expenses of the appeal to Caesar. Ramsay's notion that he may have fallen heir by now to his portion of his father's estate is quite probable. But the brethren wish to help Paul set himself right before the rank and file of the church in Jerusalem, who have been imposed upon by the Judaizers who have misrepresented Paul's real position by saying that he urged the Jewish Christians to give up the Mosaic customs (Act_21:21). The elders understand Paul and recall the decision of the conference at which freedom was guaranteed to the Gentiles, and they have no wish to disturb that (Act_21:25). They only wish Paul to show that he does not object to the Jewish Christians keeping up the Mosaic regulations. They propose that Paul offer sacrifice publicly in the temple and pay the vows of four men, and then all will know the truth (Act_21:23 f). Paul does not hesitate to do that (Act_21:26 ff). He had kept the Jewish feasts (compare Act_20:6) as Jesus had done, and the early disciples in Jerusalem. He was a Jew. He may have had a vow at Corinth (Act_18:18). He saw no inconsistency in a Jew doing thus after becoming a Christian, provided he did not make it obligatory on Gentiles. The real efficacy of the sacrifices lay in the death of Jesus for sin. Garvie (Life and Teaching of Paul, 173) calls this act of Paul “scarcely, worthy of his courage as a man or his faith in God.” I cannot see it in that light. It is a matter of practical wisdom, not of principle. To have refused would have been to say that the charge was true, and it was not. So far as the record goes, this act of Paul accomplished its purpose in setting Paul in a right light before the church in Jerusalem. It took away this argument from the Judaizers. The trouble that now comes to Paul does not come from the Judaizers, but from “the Jews from Asia” (Act_21:27). If it be objected that the Jerusalem Christians seem to have done nothing to help Paul during his years of imprisonment, it can be said that there was little to be done in a legal way, as the matter was before the Roman courts very soon. The attack on Paul in the temple was while he was doing honor to the temple, engaged in actual worship offering sacrifices. But then Jews from Ephesus hated him so that they imagined that he had Greeks with him in the Jewish court, because they had seen him one day with Trophimus in the city (Act_21:27 ff). It is a splendid illustration of the blindness of prejudice and hate. It was absolutely untrue, and the men who raised the hue and cry in the temple against Paul as the desecrator of the holy place and the Law and the people disappear, and are never heard of more (Act_24:18 f). But it will take Paul five years or more of the prime of his life to get himself out of the tangled web that will be woven about his head. Peril follows peril. He was almost mobbed, as often before, by the crowd that dragged him out of the temple (Act_21:30 f). It would remind Paul of Stephen's fate. When the Roman captain rescued him and had him bound with two chains as a dangerous bandit, and had him carried by the soldiers to save his life, the mob yelled “Away with him” (Act_21:36 f), as they had done to Jesus. After the captain, astonished that “Paul the Egyptian assassin” can speak Greek, grants him permission to stand on the steps of the tower of Antonia to speak to the mob that clamored for his blood, he held their rapt attention by an address in Aramaic (Act_22:2) in which he gave a defense of his whole career. This they heard eagerly till he spoke the word “Gentiles,” at which they raged more violently than ever (Act_22:21 ff). At this the captain has Paul tied with thongs, not understanding his Aramaic speech, and is about to scourge him when Paul pleads his Roman citizenship, to the amazement of the centurion (Act_22:24 ff). Almost in despair, the captain, wishing to know the charge of the Jews against Paul, brings him before the Sanhedrin. It is a familiar scene to Paul, and it is now their chance for settling old scores. Paul makes a sharp retort in anger to the high priest Ananias, for which he apologizes as if he was so angry that he had not noticed, but he soon divides the Sanhedrin hopelessly on the subject of the resurrection (compare the immunity of the disciples on that issue when Gamaliel scored the Sadducees in Acts 5). This was turning the tables on his enemies, and was justifiable as war. He claimed to be a Pharisee on this point, as he was still, as opposed to the Sadducees. The result was that Paul had to be rescued from the contending factions, and the captain knew no more than he did before (Act_23:1-10). That night “the Lord stood by him” and promised that he would go to Rome (Act_23:11). That was a blessed hope. But the troubles of Paul are by no means over. By the skill of his nephew he escaped the murderous plot of 40 Jews who had taken a vow not to eat till they had killed Paul (Act_23:12-24). They almost succeeded, but Claudius Lysias sent Paul in haste with a band of soldiers to Caesarea to Felix, the procurator, with a letter in which he claimed to have rescued Paul from the mob, “having learned that he was a Roman” (Act_23:26-30). At any rate he was no longer in the clutches of the Jews. Would Roman provincial justice be any better? Felix follows a perfunctory course with Paul and shows some curiosity about Christianity, till Paul makes him tremble with terror, a complete reversal of situations (compare Pilate's meanness before Jesus). But love of money from Paul or the Jews leads Felix to keep Paul a prisoner for two years, though convinced of his innocence, and to hand him over to Festus, his successor, because the Jews might make things worse for him if he released him (Acts 24). The case of the Sanhedrin, who have now made it their own (or at least the Sadducean section), though pleaded by the Roman orator Tertullus, had fallen through as Paul calmly riddied their charges. Festus is at first at a loss how to proceed, but he soon follows the steps of Felix by offering to play into the hands of the Jewish leaders by sending Paul back to Jerusalem, whereupon Paul abruptly exercises his right of Roman citizenship by appealing to Caesar (Act_25:1-12). This way, though a long one, offered the only ray of hope. The appearance of Paul before Agrippa and Bernice was simply by way of entertainment arranged by Festus to relieve his guests of ennui, but Paul seized the opportunity to make a powerful appeal to Agrippa that put him in a corner logically, though he wriggled out and declined to endorse Christianity, though confirming Paul's innocence, which Festus also had admitted (Acts 25:13 through 26:32). Paul was fortunate in the centurion Julius who took him to Rome, for he was kindly disposed to him at the start, and so it was all the way through the most remarkable voyage on record. Luke has surpassed his own record in Acts 27, in which he traces the voyage, stage by stage, with change of ship at Myra, delay at Fair Havens, Crete, and shipwreck on the island of Malta. More is learned about ancient seafaring from this chapter than from any other source (see the article PHOENIX, and Smith, Voyage and Shipwreck of Paul, 1866). In it all Paul is the hero, both on the ships and in Malta. In the early spring of 60 another ship takes Paul and the other prisoners to Puteoli. Thence they go on to Rome, and enter by the Appian Way. News of Paul's coming had gone on before (his epistle had come 3 years ago), and he had a hearty welcome. But he is now an imperial prisoner in the hands of Nero. He has more liberty in his own hired house (Act_28:16, Act_28:30), but he is chained always to a Roman soldier, though granted freedom to see his friends and to preach to the soldiers. Paul is anxious to remove any misapprehensions that the Jews in Rome may have about him, and tries to win them to Christ, and with partial success (Act_28:17-28). And here Luke leaves him a prisoner for 2 years more, probably because at this point he finishes the Book of Acts. But, as we have seen, during these years in Rome, Paul wrote Philippians, Philemon, Colossians, and Ephesians. He still has the churches on his heart. They send messengers to him, and he writes back to them. The incipient Gnosticism of the East has pressed upon the churches at Colosse and Laodicea, and a new peril confronts Christianity. The Judaizing controversy has died away with these years (compare Phi_3:1 ff for an echo of it), but the dignity and glory of Jesus are challenged. In the presence of the power of Rome Paul rises to a higher conception than even that of the person of Christ and the glory of the church universal. In due time Paul's case was disposed of and he was once more set free. The Romans were proverbially dilatory. It is doubtful if his enemies ever appeared against him with formal charges.

The genuineness of the Pastoral Epistles is here assumed. But for them we should know nothing further, save from a few fragments in the early Christian writings. As it is, some few who accept the Pastoral Epistles seek to place them before 64 AD, so as to allow for Paul's death in that year from the Neronian persecution. In that case, he was not released. There is no space here to argue the question in detail. We can piece together the probable course of events. He had expected when in Corinth last to go on to Spain (Rom_15:28), but now in Rome his heart turns back to the east again. He longs to see the Philippians (Phi_1:23 ff) and hopes to see Philemon in Colosse (Phm_1:22). But he may have gone to Spain also, as Clement of Rome seems to imply (Clement ad Cor 5), and as is stated in the Canon of Muratori. He may have been in Spain when Rome was burned July 19, 64 AD. There is no evidence that Paul went as far as Britain. On his return east he left Titus in Crete (Tit_1:5). He touched at Miletus when he left Trophimus sick (2Ti_4:20) and when he may have met Timothy, if he did not go on to Ephesus (1Ti_1:3). He stopped at Troas and apparently expected to come back here, as he left his cloak and books with Carpus (2Ti_4:13). He was on his way to Macedonia (1Ti_1:3), whence he writes Timothy in 65-67 a letter full of love and counsel for the future. Paul is apprehensive of the grave perils now confronting Christianity. Besides the Judaizers, the Gnostics, the Jews and the Romans, he may have had dim visions of the conflict with the mystery-religions. It was a syncretistic age, and men had itching ears. But Paul is full of sympathy and tender solicitude for Timothy, who must push on the work and get ready for it. Paul expects to spend the winter in Nicopolis (Tit_3:12), but is apparently still in Macedonia when he writes to Titus a letter on lines similar to those in 1 Timothy, only the note is sharper against Judaism of a certain type. We catch another glimpse of Apollos in Tit_3:13. Paul hits off the Cretans in Tit_1:10 with a quotation from Epimenides, one of their own poetic prophets.

When Paul writes again to Timothy he has had a winter in prison, and has suffered greatly from the cold and does not wish to spend another winter in the Mamertine (probably) prison (2Ti_4:13, 2Ti_4:21). We do not know what the charges now are. They may have been connected with the burning of Rome. There were plenty of informers eager to win favor with Nero. Proof was not now necessary. Christianity is no longer a religio licita under the shelter of Judaism. It is now a crime to be a Christian. It is dangerous to be seen with Paul now, and he feels the desertion keenly (2Ti_1:15 ff; 2Ti_4:10). Only Luke, the beloved physician, is with Paul (2Ti_4:11), and such faithful ones as live in Rome still in hiding (2Ti_4:21). Paul hopes that Timothy may come and bring Mark also (2Ti_4:11). Apparently Timothy did come and was put into prison (Heb_13:23). Paul is not afraid. He knows that he will die. He has escaped the mouth of the lion (2Ti_4:17), but he will die (2Ti_4:18). The Lord Jesus stood by him, perhaps in visible presence (2Ti_4:17). The tradition is, for now Paul fails us, that Paul, as a Roman citizen, was beheaded on the Ostian Road just outside of Rome. Nero died June, 68 AD, so that Paul was executed before that date, perhaps in the late spring of that year (or 67). Perhaps Luke and Timothy were with him. It is fitting, as Findlay suggests, to let Paul's words in 2Ti_4:6-8 serve for his own epitaph. He was ready to go to be with Jesus, as he had long wished to be (Phi_1:23).

I had purposed to save adequate space for the discussion of Paul's theology, but that is not now possible. A bare sketch must suffice. Something was said (see above on his epistles and equipment) about the development in Paul's conception of Christ and his message about Him. Paul had a gospel which he called his own (Rom_2:16). I cannot agree with the words of Deissmann (St. Paul, 6): “St. Paul theologian looks backward toward rabbinism. As a religious genius Paul's outlook is forward into a future of universal history.” He did continue to use some rabbinical methods of argument, but his theology was not rabbinical. And he had a theology. He was the great apostle and missionary to the heathen. He was a Christian statesman with far-seeing vision. He was the loving pastor with the shepherd heart. He was the great martyr for Christ. He was the wonderful preacher of Jesus. But he was also “Paul theologian” (Garvie, Life and Teaching of Paul, chapter v) . There are two ways of studying his teaching. One is to take it by groups of the epistles, the purely historical method, and that has some advantages (compare Sabatier, The Apostle Paul). But at bottom Paul has the same message in each group, though with varying emphasis due to special exigencies. The same essential notes occur all through. The more common method, therefore, is to Study his gospel topically, using all the epistles for each topic. A measure of historical development may still be observed. Only the chief notes in Paul's gospel can be mentioned here. Even so, one must not turn to his epistles for a complete system of doctrine. The epistles are “occasional letters, pieces de circonstance” (Findlay, HDB), and they do not profess, not even Romans, to give a full summary of Christian doctrine. They are vital documents that throb with life. There is no theological manual in them. But Paul's gospel is adequately stated repeatedly. Paul's message is Christocentric. Jesus as Messiah he preached at once on his conversion (Act_9:20, Act_9:22). He knew already the current Jewish Messianism to which Jesus did not correspond. The acceptance of Jesus as He was (the facts about Him and teachings) revolutionized his Messianic conceptions, his view of God, and his view of man. “When he takes and uses the Messianic phraseology of his day, he fills it with a meaning new and rich” (Rostron, Christology of St. Paul, 31). Paul was not merely a new creature himself, but he had a new outlook: “Wherefore we henceforth know no man after the flesh: even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know him so no more. Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new. But all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses, and having committed unto us the word of reconciliation” (2Co_5:16-19). Perhaps no single passage in Paul's Epistles tells us more than this one of the change in Paul's theological conceptions wrought by his conversion. His view of Christ as the revealer of God (God in Christ) and the manifestation of love for men (of God, who reconciled us to Himself, reconciling the world to Himself) and the means (through Christ) by whom God is able to forgive our sins (“not reckoning unto them their trespasses”) on the basis of the atoning death of Christ (“wherefore”; for this see 2Co_5:14 f just before 2Co_5:16) with whom the believer has vital union (“in Christ”) and who transforms the nature and views of the believer, is here thoroughly characteristic. Paul's passion is Christ (2Co_5:14; Phi_1:21). To gain Christ (Phi_3:8), to know Christ (Phi_3:10), to be found in Christ (Phi_3:9), to know Christ as the mystery of God (Col_2:2 f), to be hid with Christ in God (Col_3:3) - this with the new Paul is worth while. Thus Paul interprets God and man, by his doctrine of Christ. To him Jesus is Christ and Christ is Jesus. He has no patience with the incipient Cerinthian Gnosticism, nor with the docetic Gnosticism that denied the true humanity of Jesus. The real mystery of God is Christ, not the so-called mystery-religions. Christ has set us free from the bondage of ceremonial legalism. We are free from the curse of the law (Gal_3:13). Grace is the distinctive word for the gospel (Rom 3 through 5), but it must lead to sanctification (Rom 6 through 8), not license (Col 3). Paul's Christology is both theocentric and anthropocentric, but it is theocentric first. His notion of redemption is the love of God seeking a world lost in sin and finding love's way, the only way consonant with justice, in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ His Son (Rom_3:21-31). The sinner comes into union with God in Christ by faith in Christ as Redeemer and Lord. Henceforth he lives to God in. Christ by the help of the Holy Spirit (Rom 8; Gal 5). Paul presents God as Father of all in one sense (Eph_4:6), but in a special sense of the believers in Christ (Rom_8:15 f). Jesus Christ is the incarnation of the pre-incarnate Son of God (2Co_8:9; Phi_2:5-10), who is both God and man (Rom_1:3 f). With Paul the agent of creation is Jesus (Col_1:15 f), who is also the head of the church universal (Col_1:18; Eph_1:22 f). In the work of Christ Paul gives the central place to the cross (1Co_1:17 f; 1Co_2:2; Col_2:20; Eph_2:13-18). Sin is universal in humanity (Rom 1:18 through 3:20), but the vicarious death of Christ makes redemption possible to all who believe (Rom_3:21 ff; Gal_3:6-11). The redeemed constitute the kingdom of God or church universal, with Christ as head. Local bodies (churches) are the chief means for pushing the work of the kingdom. Paul knows two ordinances, both of which present in symbolic form the death of Christ for sin and the pledge of the believer to newness of life in Christ. These ordinances are baptism (Rom_6:1-11) and the Lord's Supper (1 Cor 11:17-34). If he knew the mystery-religions, they may have helped him by way of illustration to present his conception of the mystic union with Christ. Paul is animated by the hope of the second coming of Christ, which will be sudden (1Th_5:1-11) and not probably at once (2 Thess 2), but was to be considered as always imminent (1Th_5:2 ff). Meanwhile, death brings us to Christ, which is a glorious hope to Paul (2Co_5:1-10; Phi_1:21 ff; 2Ti_4:18). But, while Paul was a theologian in the highest and best sense of the term, the best interpreter of Christ to men, he was also an ethical teacher. He did not divorce ethics from religion. He insisted strongly on the spiritual experience of Christ as the beginning and the end of it all, as opposed to mere ritualistic ceremonies which had destroyed the life of Judaism. But all the more Paul demanded the proof of life as opposed to mere profession. See Rom 6 through 8 in particular. In most of the epistles the doctrinal section is followed by practical exhortations to holy living. Mystic as Paul was, the greatest of all mystics, he was the sanest of moralists and had no patience with hypocrites or licentious pietists or idealists who allowed sentimentalism and emotionalism to take the place of righteoushess. His notion of the righteousness demanded by God and given by God included both sanctification and justification. In the end, the sinner who for Christ's sake is treated as righteous must be righteous. Thus the image of God is restored in man by the regenerating work of the Spirit of God (2Co_3:18). Paul sees God in the face of Christ (2Co_4:6), and the vision of Christ brings God to all who see.

A.B.D. Alexander, The Ethics of St. Paul, 1910; S.A. Alexander, Christianity of Paul, 1899; Anonymous, The Fifth Gospel, 1906; R. Allen, Christelegy of Paul, 1912; M. Arnold, Paul and Protestantism, 1897; Ball, Paul and the Roman Law, 1901; Breitenstein, Jesus et Paul, 1908; Bruce, Paul's Conception of Christianity, 1898; Bruckner, Die Entstehung der Paulinischen Christologie, 1903; Bultmann, Der Stil der Paulin. Predigt und die kyn. Diatribe, 1910; Chadwick, Social Teaching of Paul, 1907, Pastoral Teaching of Paul, 1907; M. Dibelius, Die Geisterwelt im Glauben des Paulus, 1909; Dickie, Culture of the Spiritual Life, 1905; Dickson, Paul's Use of the Terms Flesh and Spirit, 1883; Du Bose, Gospel according to Paul, 1907; Dykes, Gospel according to Paul, 1888; Everett, Gospel of Paul, 1893; Feine, Paul as Theologian (translation, 1908); Greenough, Mind of Christ in Paul; Goguel, L'Apotre Paul et Jesus Christ, 1904; Harford, The Gospel according to Paul, 1912; Hicks, “St. Paul and Hellenism,” Stud. Bibl., IV; Holsten, Das Evangelium des Paulus, 1898; Julicher, Paulus und Jesus, 1907; Kaftan, Jesus und Paulus, 1906; Kennedy, Paul's Conceptions of Last Things, 1904; Knowling, Testimony of Paul to Christ (3rd edition, 1911); A. Meyer, Jesus or Paul? 1909; Moffatt, Paul and Paulinism, 1910; Montet, Essai sur la christologie de Saint Paul, 1906; Nageli, Der Wortschatz des Apostels Paulus, 1905; Oehler, Paulus und Jesus, 1908; Paterson, The Pauline Theology, 1903; Pfleidercr, Paulinismus, 1873, Influence of the Apostle Paul on the Development of Christianity, 1885; Prat, La theologie de Saint Paul, 1907; Ramsay, The Teaching of Paul in Terms of the Present Day, 1913; Resch, Paulinismus und die Logia Jesu, 1904; Rostron, The Christology of St. Paul, 1912; Simon, Die Psychologie des Apostels Paulus, 1897; Somerville, Paul's Conception of Christ, 1897; Stevens, The Pauline Theology, 1894; Thackeray, Relation of Paul to Contemporary Jewish Thought, 1900; J. Weiss, Paul and Jesus, 1909; Paul and Justification, 1913; Williams, A Plea for a Reconstruction of Paul's Doctrine of Justification, 1912; Wustmann, Jesus und Paulus, 1907; Zahn, Das Gesetz Gottes nach der Lehre des Apostels Paulus2, 1892.

Taken from: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia by James Orr, M.A., D.D., General Editor