SCM Core Text Paul

By Geoffrey Harris

Geoffrey Harris seeks to reconcile Paul the thinker and Paul the man of action. This student-friendly textbook provides clear information about research and writing on Paul in recent years, and shows how Paul's early life held important strands of thought which informed his later theology. Paul's conversion and his reflection upon its meaning led h

• Language: English
• Publisher: SCM Press
• Release date: Jan 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9780334048176

Geoffrey Harris

Robert Geoffrey Harris is a Methodist minister who has served the church in several places, including Cameroon in West Africa. He worked for the East Midlands Ministry Training Course at University of Nottingham as Director of Studies, and then for Lincoln School of Theology at University of Lincoln as Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies. He has had two previous full-length books published: Mission in the Gospels (2004) and The SCM Core Text: Paul (2009).

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SCM CORE TEXT

Paul

Geoffrey Harris

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© Geoffrey Harris 2009

Published in 2009 by SCM Press

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The Author has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this Work

Scripture quotations are from: The Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946, 1952 and 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. From Saul to Paul

2. Paul’s Conversion and its Consequences

3. Paul’s Mission Strategy

4. To the Galatians

5. To the Thessalonians

6. To the Corinthians

7. To the Romans

8. To the Philippians

9. The Later Captivity Letters: Philemon, Colossians and Ephesians

10. The Significance of Paul for Today

Notes

Acknowledgements

The writing of a book like this in the middle of a busy working life is a massive task not to be taken on lightly. I wonder now why I accepted so readily Natalie Watson’s suggestion that I attempt this work! Perhaps it was because I knew that I was able to begin it with a period of study leave, and in that respect I am most grateful to colleagues at the East Midlands Ministry Training Course – especially Dr Clive Marsh and the Revd Jenny Morton – for making such a sabbatical period possible.

I am greatly indebted to Natalie Watson, my commissioning editor at SCM Press, who has been a constant source of encouragement and assistance throughout this project.

The librarians at St John’s College, Nottingham, and at the Hallward Library of Nottingham University have also been tremendously helpful. Nothing was too much trouble for Evelyn Pawley and Christine Ainsley at St John’s in particular, and Mary Essex at Trinity Books has also been ever willing to search for obscure texts and to send them to me or bring them to my office.

Without the support of a loving family, this kind of work is made very much more difficult, and I am very thankful that my wife Jane has made room for me to have peace and quiet and whole days in the study in order to make progress on the book. My children, Joe, Ruth and Kate, have also added voices of encouragement. My mother and father, Kate and Robert, now in their mid-eighties, have shown great interest in this project and have rejoiced at every completed chapter, while at the same time prompting me to get on with the next one.

I hope that the result lives up to all the expectations. I particularly hope that students at university and those training for ministry, as well as house fellowship groups, lay people and curious enquirers and readers, find this book stimulating, challenging and even, dare I say, inspiring.

Introduction

In recent times, the apostle Paul has had a very bad press. In a Channel 4 series on The History of Christianity, in January 2009, the presenter Howard Jacobson was determined to prove that Paul had changed the ‘simple’ message of Jesus into a new religion, based not on the tenets of Judaism but on ‘salvation by faith alone’. The second thesis of that programme was that Paul’s antagonistic stance towards members of his own race (because of their failure to accept Jesus as Messiah) later led to persecution of the Jews in general and eventually to pogroms and the Holocaust.

In fact, the idea that Paul somehow single-handedly transformed Jesus’ radical Jewish faith into a new religion has had quite a long pedigree, from Ferdinand Baur in the nineteenth century to A. N. Wilson in the late twentieth. But this idea is fundamentally misled. Paul was not the first Christian, and he inherited a tradition of faith which recognized Jesus as Son of God and worshipped him as the risen Lord. Early Christians already understood Jesus’ death as an atoning sacrifice, and his resurrection as the inauguration of a new age. They had already instituted the Eucharist into their new Sunday worship and remembered at that time Jesus’ words at the Last Supper (see Paul’s recollection in 1 Cor. 11.23–26).

Paul developed and expanded upon many of these inherited traditions and reflected theologically upon them, but he certainly did not ‘invent’ a new religion. Paul’s attitude to his fellow Jews was in any case ambivalent. He longed for his compatriots to recognize the Messiah he fervently believed in; he agonized over the fate of the Jewish people and came to the conclusion that God would remain faithful to the chosen race and would bring them to salvation in the end (see Rom. 9—11). This is a long stretch from a Paul who attacked the Jews and their faith mercilessly. He was rather engaged in a family dispute, using the Hebrew Scriptures to argue his own case, while accepting that Jewish rabbis would offer other interpretations.

Paul has also been widely perceived as a misogynist who forbade women’s ministry and who would not even let them speak in church. This view is almost diametrically opposed to the truth, as we shall see. On the ground, in his working life, Paul collaborated with both women and men at every level of ministry and on terms of equality.

The idea that Paul was ill-tempered, overbearing and opinionated is also a long way from the truth. In fact, his letters bear witness – believe it or not – to a loving pastor, a sensitive man and someone who keenly felt his responsibilities for the well-being of others and for the welfare of his churches. Two of his favourite words in the letters are ‘love’ and ‘joy’, and he uses the triad of ‘love, faith and hope’ in more than one context.

Not only that, but Paul allowed room for disagreement in the Church, while at the same time striving with might and main for unity. He accepted a diversity of views and opinions – we only need to look carefully at the debates in 1 Corinthians 7.1–16 and 8.1–13. He himself did not see eye to eye with the leaders in Jerusalem, and yet he remained in fellowship with the Jerusalem church and even took up a collection for it among his own churches. He condemned judging others harshly and did all he could to promote harmony (see Rom. 12.3–21 and 14.3–4).

Even though most of these points have been accepted in scholarly circles for quite some time, nevertheless the general public perception of Paul is still largely negative. His reputation is in urgent need of rehabilitation. Not least, he needs to be understood as a man of action as well as of interesting ideas; he should not be regarded only as someone who engaged in abstruse theological arguments about sin and righteousness. Such disputes are a baneful hangover from the Reformation.

However, it is true to say that some ideas about Paul have been a matter of heated debate right up to the present time. Since the publication in 1977 of E. P. Sanders’ influential book Paul and Palestinian Judaism, there has been something of a revolution in the way many scholars now approach Paul and interpret his writings. Sanders made it clear from the background evidence of Paul’s own time that Judaism was not a ‘religion of the law’, nor was it indeed a monolithic religion with a single theological viewpoint. It was then regarded (as now) as a way of life, and more especially, as a way of living within the covenant made with God. The breaking of the law (i.e. ‘sin’) did not lead to a breakdown in the relationship with God, but rather to a temporary setback. If repentance were genuinely expressed, forgiveness could be obtained. This would usually be through the means of sacrifices offered at the Temple, or the special sacrifice offered by the High Priest on the Day of Atonement for the sins of all the people.

It was simply not the case that the Jewish people felt that they could earn or merit their own salvation through the keeping of the law. Judaism was not a religion in which God weighed in the balance good works against sins and pronounced judgement. It was not a matter of earning God’s approval in that way.

Such was Sanders’ thesis, in its broad outlines. More subtle versions of this revisionist ‘new perspective’ have been put forward since, especially by leading Pauline scholars like J. D. G. Dunn and N. T. Wright. But first of all, it has been suggested against Sanders that in fact it is quite possible that some branches of Judaism did tend towards the idea that merit could be gained by strict law-keeping. In addition, law and grace should not be seen as absolute opposites – even Paul recognized that grace was present in the giving of the law and that the law was a fundamentally good gift from God. At the same time, Paul came close to recognizing that ‘faith’ itself could be turned into a kind of ‘good work’.

James Dunn has argued that the Jews understood the law as a thankful response to God’s mercies and as a way of living and being guided by God. This enabled the Jewish people to understand the meaning of the covenant. Dunn has also contended that ‘the works of the law’ which Paul opposed (in Galatians particularly) referred mainly to circumcision, the observing of religious calendars and the keeping of the food laws scrupulously: in other words, they referred to those things which marked out the Jews as clearly distinct from other peoples. Paul opposed these practices – these ‘works’ – because he regarded them as exclusive – as preventing Gentiles from finding salvation and from entering into a loving relationship with God. Dunn emphasized the particular historical context of Paul’s writing – an emphasis echoed in the present book too.

Tom Wright has had a somewhat different understanding of ‘the works of the law’. Like Sanders and Dunn, he has been at pains to show that Paul was not an earlier Martin Luther – he did not seek to gain release from a guilty and troubled conscience. Nor was Paul placing salvation in a law-court setting whereby God, the righteous judge, is bound to condemn all sinners and forms of sin and can only acquit a person if someone else – someone who has not committed sin – accepts the sentence and takes on the punishment. Rather, Wright argues, ‘justification’ is a word rich and pregnant with wider meaning. It is in fact a way of talking about God’s desire to bring salvation to whole peoples – first to the Jews and then to all the nations. Justification is therefore not so much about how an individual first finds acceptance with a wrathful God, but how a people can learn to live under God’s favour, in a way that pleases God.

Wright uses the metaphor of the Exile to elucidate his understanding of salvation. It is seen in terms of God’s liberation of his people from banishment and alienation – his bringing them back home and into the ‘promised land’. Some aspects of this salvation are ‘eschatological’ – that is, not fully realized until a future time of fulfilment. But Wright shows how this is Paul’s view too.

Not all scholars would find the image of the Exile to be prominent in Paul’s thinking; but there is no doubt that Paul does see salvation more in terms of liberation (note the stress on Christian ‘freedom’ in Galatians), than in terms of legal judgements and justice meted out in a law-court.

* * *

In addition to the ‘new perspective’ on Paul, which has led most scholars to be at the very least cautious in what they say about Jewish attitudes to the Law, there have been other important new approaches to Paul’s mission and theology. Among the most prominent of these have been the social scientific, the feminist and the rhetorical forms of criticism or interpretation.

Social scientific approaches could be regarded as an extension of historical criticism, but they have more specific foci and more targeted subject-matter. The German scholar Gerd Theissen published a seminal work in 1982 (based on earlier studies) entitled The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity, in which he looked carefully at the evidence concerning tensions between different social groups in the church at Corinth. He then went on to assess the social composition of the church and the different attitudes and expectations that would lead to tensions.

The publication of Wayne Meeks’ work The First Urban Christians, shortly after Theissen’s book, in 1983, brought further new insights, and widened our understanding of Paul from a narrow concentration on an academic theological approach to the letters. Meeks sought to address questions about the cultural, political and social world inhabited by the early Christians, particularly those in the churches Paul founded or wrote to. The status of different groups within the church could shed light upon internal relationships, while knowledge about the wider society in which the churches were located could help our understanding of issues arising in the letters – such as sexual mores in the first century, whether Christians could join in the civil ceremonies involving pagan sacrifices (and eating of meat ‘offered to idols’), or how far vows of allegiance could be taken to the state authorities or to an emperor who demanded ‘worship’ rather than simple respect.

Meeks and others began to link biblical studies to other disciplines – to the study of classical literature, archaeology, anthropology and sociology. Sometimes, speculation seems to be rife – for instance, with regard to the exact social make-up of a particular congregation – but in other areas, doors have been opened to allow light to flood in onto the biblical texts. For example, Paul Sampley’s handbook, Paul in the Greco-Roman World (2003) considers how various topics were understood in the Hellenistic world of Paul’s day – from adoption and inheritance to upbringing and education; from families and households to friendship and patronage; from marriage and divorce to shame and honour. Many scholars have come to realize that in matters of biblical interpretation, context must always be taken seriously and historical circumstances investigated.

Far more factual information has emerged in recent years about the economic and social structures of the first-century Roman empire, about Hellenistic culture and about the customs of more specific groups, such as the Jewish communities of the diaspora. This has given to biblical studies a great impetus to posit new theories about Paul’s mission and the nature of the cultural norms within which he was constrained to operate.

Questions then arise naturally, such as ‘How far could the gospel be inculturated in order for it to become meaningful to Gentiles heavily influenced by prevailing social and cultural norms?’ ‘How far did the gospel need to resist such social and cultural pressures and how far could it accommodate them or transform them?’ Such questions are constantly in the mind of Paul and are scattered throughout his writings. In many senses he faced the same kinds of questions as those faced by missionaries of later ages going to China, to Africa or to the native peoples of America. These are questions of life and are of vital importance to an understanding of why Paul wrote as he did, and what were the problems he was encountering. This all takes us a long way from discussions of abstract theological positions.

One of the leading questions for the social-scientific critics is this: how did men and women relate to each other in Roman society, and what roles did the sexes have in that society? Such questions take us into another modern branch of biblical criticism: that of feminism. With regard to Pauline studies in particular, questions arise in this area, such as how far women were allowed to share in the leadership of the churches’ life and mission, what was the role of the house fellowship hostesses, or of the widows in the Church or of single women or of women of noble birth and independent means. In addition, what did Christianity itself (as opposed to Hellenistic culture) have to say about the status and role of women?

Contrary to the popular perception that Paul was plainly a male chauvinist, a great deal of feminist (and other) criticism has discovered or uncovered a Paul who was more in favour of sexual equality and of honouring women with leadership qualities than had previously been imagined. It is true to say that Paul was brought up in a society where male domination and supremacy in the public arena was taken for granted. But how far he resisted and broke out of this straitjacket by taking seriously the fact that Jesus Christ had inaugurated a new society with new relationships based on equality in the sight of God and of mutual respect and recognition of spiritual gifts regardless of gender – is open to question.

Elisabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza’s book In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins was first published in 1983, and it opened the field to many later works of biblical research. Schüssler-Fiorenza attempted to recover a hidden history of women’s contributions and struggles for equality in the early Church – a history later suppressed by a Church which became patriarchal and which modelled itself on the surrounding Roman political system in order to gain respectability in Roman high society. Schüssler-Fiorenza reinterpreted certain texts in Paul, such as 1 Corinthians 11.2–16 and 14.33–35, as well as looking at the wider picture of Paul’s general views and practice in ministry. She came to the conclusion that in earliest Christianity, both in Jesus’ own teaching and in the Pauline texts, there was a vision of equality and liberation (as in Gal. 3.28 for example). Women and men intermingled in worship and fellowship and collaborated fully in the life and mission of the Church. This is evidenced particularly in Romans 16.1–24.

This fairly sanguine portrayal of the early Church has had its supporters and detractors ever since. Antoinette Wire in The Corinthian Women Prophets of 1990 portrayed a community in Corinth with serious divisions and disagreements and argued that there were prophetesses there who were at loggerheads with Paul over certain practices. They favoured the spiritual superiority of celibacy and asceticism and were also very active in the use of spiritual gifts. Paul took them to task, but on the other hand, he did not outlaw prophecy and speaking in tongues from either sex. Paul himself was actually at loggerheads with some high-status and conservative-minded males in the congregation. Some of Wire’s views have been considered as rather speculative.

Elizabeth Castelli’s book Imitating Paul: A Discourse of Power (1991) has an altogether more negative tone towards Paul. She contends that he sought to establish himself at the top of the ecclesiastical hierarchy by insisting on his apostolic authority. For Castelli, Paul’s idea of imitation of a role model – and notably himself! – smacks of self-aggrandizement and the exercise of male power. Paul’s attitude, for her, had the effect of relegating others – especially women – to positions of subordination.

To take one other example, in his writings, Neil Elliott has distinguished between the ‘genuine’ Paul – who mounted a radical social critique of pagan social mores – and the Paul of the Pastoral Epistles and of later interpretation. Paul the social campaigner was fairly swiftly replaced by Paul the authority figure and Christian patriarch. Even the earlier letters suffered from a few ‘insertions’ condemning women’s teaching ministry and leadership in churches.

* * *

Another new approach to Paul’s writings has also been met with widely differing reactions – namely, rhetorical criticism. Some scholars have seen this as the gateway to new understandings and interpretations of Paul – even going so far as to consider rhetorical criticism as capable of deciding on matters of the authenticity or integrity of certain letters. Others have tended to sideline rhetorical criticism and consider it to be a subject of minor importance and of little significance. In the present work, I have leaned towards the first position and have tried to highlight the potential importance of this form of criticism – without quite giving it the weight accorded to it by writers like Hans Dieter Betz, Margaret Mitchell, G. A. Kennedy, Ben Witherington III and Robert Jewett.

For such authors, biblical scholarship has missed a very significant aspect of study by losing sight of the paramount importance of training in rhetoric in the ancient world. Rhetoric is basically the art of public speaking and is mainly to do with techniques of persuasion, but it also relates to written texts and especially to letters, which in a real sense replace the oral word and physical presence of the writer.

A whole generation of biblical scholars, so it goes, has become ignorant of Latin and Greek classics – or at least, of the literary theory relating to writing and oratory in the ancient world. Recent rhetorical critics have come to realize that (1) Paul’s letters were actually substitutes for oral communication, (2) Paul uses the art of persuasion and techniques of apologetic to convince his audience of the force of various points of view, and (3) Paul was well educated in classical forms of speech and writing because of his Hellenistic education at Tarsus.

All this means that Paul’s letters not only follow the model(s) of classical letter-writing in the way they are structured, but further, they make use of certain classical rhetorical techniques, such as irony, sarcasm, self-praise and mock boasting. These techniques have led to Paul being misunderstood as unkind, uncouth or arrogant.

In addition, Paul makes use of different forms of rhetoric – forensic, deliberative or epideictic. George Kennedy characterizes these forms succinctly in his New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism (1984):

The species is judicial when the author is seeking to persuade the audience to make a judgement about events occurring in the past; it is deliberative when he seeks to persuade them to take some action in the future; it is epideictic when he seeks to persuade them to hold or reaffirm some point of view in the present. (p. 19)

The style of Paul’s letters therefore depends on what his intentions are and what outcomes or results he wishes to achieve.

This form of criticism can be surprisingly outspoken. For instance, with regard to the abrupt change of mood in 2 Corinthians chapter 10 onwards, some scholars have assumed that the latter section is part of a completely separate letter. But the rhetorical critics see the change of mood as a change of rhetorical style. Paul is employing a different type of rhetoric to achieve a new aim. Or, to take another example, Ephesians is sometimes regarded as a pseudonymous letter written not by Paul himself but by a disciple (or disciples) of Paul. The argument for this runs mainly along the lines of stylistic considerations. But if Ephesians is in fact representative of a special Asiatic form of rhetoric and has a different aim from most of Paul’s other letters and is in fact written in ‘epideictic’ form – that is, to state in grand terms the present achievement and standing of the Church in God’s scheme of salvation – then this shows evidence of a new rhetorical style, not evidence of a different author.

Clearly, rhetorical criticism has a major agenda and regards itself as capable of solving some thorny literary problems about the intentions and authorship of Paul’s letters. Whether this criticism can justify its great claims still remains to be seen and the jury is out. But it is certainly a form of criticism which is growing in importance all the time. But there remain two important matters to settle, which are perhaps resistant to final conclusions: namely, how far were rhetorical devices and styles transferable from oratory and the spoken word to letters and the written word? – and second, how far did Paul’s education in rhetoric and Hellenistic culture extend? Scholars have widely varying views on these subjects.

* * *

In the writing of the Core Text on Paul, I have tried to take into account new approaches to the interpretation of Paul, as well as keeping sight of the older forms of biblical criticism – linguistic, literary and historical analysis. But my overriding concern has been to link together Paul the man and Paul the theologian. This book does not separate Paul the practitioner and planner of missions (whom I call ‘Paul the missioner’) and Paul the thinker and debater. It seeks to reconcile Paul the intellectual and Paul the man of action, to give a more rounded account of Paul’s life and work. I have looked at Paul’s background, education and conversion as well as at his writings individually and in some detail. Various chapters have sections of exegetical analysis integrated into them. In addition, there are text boxes which provide much background information, all intended to assist our understanding of Paul’s society and the context for his work, as well as giving students and readers new insights and new material with which to work and form their own interpretations – or perhaps reinterpretations – of Paul’s letters or of Paul himself. He is in the end a man who bursts out of all of our interpretative straitjackets and refuses to be constrained to one age, time or place, or restricted to one person’s particular pet theology.

References and further reading

Castelli, E., Imitating Paul: A Discourse of Power (Westminster John Knox, Louisville, 1991).

Dunn, J. D. G., The Theology of the Apostle Paul (Eerdmans, Cambridge, 1998).

Elliott, N., Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle (Orbis, Maryknoll, 1994).

Jewett, R. Paul, the Apostle to America: Cultural Trends and Pauline Scholarship (Westminster John Knox, Louisville, 1994).

Kennedy, G., New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism (UNC Press, Chapel Hill, 1984).

Meeks, W., The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1983).

Sampley, P., Paul in the Greco-Roman World: A Handbook (Trinity Press International, Harrisburg, PA, 2003).

Sanders, E., Paul and Palestinian Judaism (SCM Press, London, 1977).

Schüssler-Fiorenza, E., In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (Crossroad, New York, 1983).

Theissen, G., The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity (T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1982).

Wire, A., The Corinthian Women Prophets (Fortress, Minneapolis, 1990).

Witherington, B., Paul’s Narrative Thought World (Westminster John Knox, Louisville, 1994).

Wright, N. T., Paul, Fresh Perspectives (SPCK, London, 2005).

Wright, N. T., Paul in Fresh Perspective (Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2009).

1. From Saul to Paul

Citizen of no mean city

From Luke’s writing in the Acts of the Apostles we learn that Paul and his family came from Tarsus in Cilicia. Immediately after Paul’s conversion, Ananias is told in a vision to go to ‘the street called Straight’, and, at the home of Judas, to look for ‘a man of Tarsus named Saul’ (Acts 9.11). Later on, Luke places on the lips of Paul the words, ‘I am a Jew from Tarsus’ (Acts 21.39; 22.3). This means that Paul – or Saul – lived in a Jewish community of the diaspora, or ‘dispersion’, of which there were many around the Mediterranean, and also east of Palestine into Babylonia (present-day Iraq). He would have spoken Greek – the common (koine) tongue of the eastern Roman empire, and become familiar with the Bible translated into Greek, known as the Septuagint (LXX). It was thus named because, by tradition, 70 scholars had been involved in the translation and had come to a miraculous consensus about the exact wording. These facts about Paul are borne out by the reality that Paul as a letter writer had an excellent command of colloquial Greek and could quote from the Greek Scriptures by heart (though not always perfectly).

Tarsus was an important cosmopolitan city in the first century, famed for its high culture and elevated by the Emperor Augustus to become the capital of Cilicia. The Roman author Strabo tells us that in Tarsus ‘there was so much zeal for philosophy and all the other aspects of education generally among the inhabitants, that in this respect they surpassed even Alexandria, Athens and any other place’, and he adds that the city had ‘all kinds of schools for the rhetorical arts’ (Geography 14.5, 13).1

Tarsus was a much-favoured city. Under Greek rule, in 171 BC,2 it was given the honour of being a city-state governed by its own elected magistrates, and able to issue its own coins. It was absorbed into the Roman empire under Pompey and had as its patron Julius Caesar, who visited the city in 47 BC. For a time it adopted the name ‘Juliopolis’. The city came out against Cassius after the murder of Julius Caesar and for that Cassius imposed a heavy fine on the city. All the resources of the Temple and the city were used to pay this tribute and some of the population were also sold into slavery. However, with the victory of Caesar’s party, Mark Antony later rewarded the city’s loyalty by granting it rights as a free city with exemption from taxes. This status was later renewed by Augustus after he had won the battle of Actium (31 BC). Tarsus received grants of more land – extending its territory right to the sea – and it won trading privileges and money for new schools of philosophy and rhetoric.

The relevance of this to Paul’s story is that, along with these privileges, many of the slaves in Tarsus were freed, and many of the citizens were also made citizens of Rome. This could well have been the case for Paul’s parents. Where did Paul’s parents come from, and why did Paul regard himself as a ‘Hebrew born of Hebrews’ (Phil. 3.5)? This phrase could have meant two things: first, that Paul was a member of a Jewish tribe – and indeed, he tells us that he was ‘of the tribe of Benjamin’ (Phil. 3.5); second, that he spoke and read Hebrew and was well acquainted with the Hebrew Scriptures. Either way, Paul knew that he had a very good pedigree: the tribe of Benjamin came from the Jerusalem area, and Paul, despite living in a Hellenistic Jewish colony, actually knew the mother tongue, Hebrew. So Paul’s family was highly conservative and deeply religious.

We can go even further than this, for the church father Jerome states that Paul’s parents were from Gischala in Judaea, and Jerome goes on:

When the whole province was devastated by the hand of Rome and the Jews scattered throughout the world, they were moved to Tarsus, a town of Cilicia. (Commentary on Epistle to Philemon vv. 23–24)

This tradition is clearly late (around 387–8 AD), and there is a problem with it. The only known Gischala is in Galilee, not in Judaea. However, the name ‘Judaea’ was sometimes used vaguely to refer to all of Palestine (see Luke 1.5; 23.5) and the Roman province of Judaea, after 70 AD, did in fact cover the whole area. Jerome implies that Paul’s parents were compelled to leave Tarsus and were probably enslaved and deported. If this was the case, then Paul’s parents had been residents of Galilee around the time of Paul’s birth. The good fortune that Tarsus had of picking the winning side in the Roman civil war meant that many of its citizens became Roman citizens, and, although Paul himself does not affirm this, there is no reason to disbelieve Luke’s tradition that Paul himself inherited Roman citizenship.3 Certainly, his appeal to trial in Rome can be explained by this fact.

It is difficult to answer the question whether Paul acquired his early education in the Hellenistic setting of Tarsus, or whether he was sent to Jerusalem from a very young age. Some years ago W. C. van Unnik argued4 that Paul’s education was almost entirely in Jerusalem. However, this line has been strongly disputed by Martin Hengel and by Jerome Murphy-O’Connor.5 In a way, the argument of van Unnik rests upon a fallacy – that Tarsus was purely Hellenistic and that Jerusalem was purely Jewish. In fact, the large Jewish community in Tarsus kept its own traditions and had its own synagogue schools, while, at the same time, Jerusalem had been heavily Hellenized for several hundred years, and a Hellenistic education (as well as a Jewish synagogue education) was readily available in Jerusalem.

We learn nothing of Paul’s childhood and youth from Acts nor from the Letters, but we do learn something about Paul’s excellent education from both. Luke has Paul say at the time of his arrest in Jerusalem:

I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, educated strictly according to our ancestral law, being zealous for God, just as all of you are today. (Acts 22.3)

All this implies that Paul was trained as a Pharisee, although it is unlikely that he would have started training with Gamaliel until after a preliminary elementary education. Acts again confirms the tradition: ‘according to the strictest party of our religion I have lived as a Pharisee’ (26.5).

Paul himself also confirms much of this in Philippians (3.5–6):

Circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law a Pharisee, as to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the Law blameless.

We note that there is no mention of upbringing or education in Tarsus. However, that may be because it is irrelevant to Luke’s and to Paul’s purposes. Luke wishes to portray Paul as a strict Pharisee before his conversion – to highlight the dramatic turn-around – while Paul wishes to emphasize his extreme zeal for the Law in his early life, and how there was a radical change in perspective once he became a Christian.

What is certain is that Paul is thoroughly Jewish – as he insists in 2 Corinthians 11.22: ‘Are they Hebrew? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I.’ Despite being a Jew from the Hellenistic world, Paul claims equal rights with his opponents, some presumably natives of Palestine. In Romans 11.1, Paul again asserts his claim as a Jew: ‘I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.’

Nevertheless, in spite of Paul’s pride in his ancestry, there is no reason to assume that he was educated entirely in Jerusalem. Even though Luke stresses the Jerusalem background, there may well be a polemical purpose in that, for Luke wanted Paul associated closely with the city where Jesus played out his final hours and from where the Christian mission began.

It is perfectly reasonable to assume, and in fact probable that, like most of the Hellenistic Jews of his time, Paul would have received his early education in his home town, and then, as an able and eager student, would have been allowed to progress to study and debate the Hebrew Scriptures (in the original tongue) in Jerusalem.

Paul’s education in Tarsus

In Tarsus, Paul would have seen both pagan and Jewish elementary schools, which started at the age of six. In the Jewish system, both boys and girls were educated, but separately. If Paul had gone to a synagogue school, he would have learnt the ‘3 Rs’ (reading, writing, arithmetic). As far as mathematics is concerned, children would learn how to count from 1 up to 1 million! To be a good citizen of Tarsus would inevitably mean the ability to read and write well in Greek. This would have involved not only grammar and composition, but also some knowledge of Greek writers like Homer and Euripides. Even Jewish children in Palestine and in Pharisaic circles knew some pagan writings, just as the monks of the Middle Ages in Europe knew Aristotle and Plato and others, as well as the Bible. Paul would also have learnt something of letter-writing technique.

In addition to all this, Paul would have learnt the customs and laws of the Jewish religion. This kind of education would bear similarities with Muslim children brought up in Britain today. They would go to school for a general secular education, while being required to learn Arabic, and the Qur’an in Arabic as an additional burden. Paul’s learning of the Greek Bible (LXX) would have been largely rote learning of sections and verses – particular parts of the Torah (Pentateuch) and the Psalter. It is little wonder that Paul’s letters in the New Testament contain nearly 90 quotations. In addition, Paul would almost certainly have learnt the Hebrew language, or at least the related tongue of western Aramaic, as spoken in the Holy Land, in Asia Minor and in Syria.

If Paul had progressed to his secondary education in Tarsus, at about 11 years old, then he would have imbibed a good deal of Greek culture: philosophy, theatre, poetry, history and oratory. This system of training – mostly unreflective ingestion of high culture – was very widespread in Paul’s day, and would have influenced Jewish teachers, even if they did not accept many of the ideas conveyed. Reading books was quite an art: it involved learning to separate out words which were all joined together, and to make use of