Paul

VIEW:16 DATA:01-04-2020

small; little
(same as Paulus)
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary


(See ACTS.) The leading facts of his life which appear in that history, subsidiary to its design of sketching the great epochs in the commencement and development of Christ's kingdom, are: his conversion (Acts 9), his labours at Antioch (Acts 11), his first missionary journey (Acts 13; 14), the visit to Jerusalem at the council on circumcision (Acts 15), introduction of the gospel to Europe at Philippi (Acts 16),: visit to Athens (Acts 17), to Corinth (Acts 18), stay at Ephesus (Acts 19), parting address to the Ephesian elders at Miletus (Acts 20), apprehension at Jerusalem, imprisonment at Casesarea, and voyage to Rome (Acts 21-27). Though of purest Hebrew blood (Php_3:5), "circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, (bearing the name of the eminent man of that tribe, king Saul), an Hebrew of the Hebrew," yet his birthplace was the Gentile Tarsus. (Act_21:39, "I am a Jew of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city.") His father, as himself, was a Pharisee (Act_23:6). Tarsus was celebrated as a school of Greek literature (Strabo, Geogr. 1:14).
Here he acquired that knowledge of Greek authors and philosophy which qualified him for dealing with learned Gentiles and appealing to their own writers (Act_17:18-28. Aratus; 1Co_15:33, Menander; Tit_1:12, Epimenides). Here too he learned the Cilician trade of making tents of the goats' hair cloth called "cilicium" (Act_18:3); not that his father was in straitened circumstances, but Jewish custom required each child, however wealthy the parents might be, to learn a trade. He possessed the Roman citizenship from birth (Act_22:28), and hence, when he commenced ministering among Gentiles, he preferred to be known by his Roman name Paul rather than by his Hebrew name Saul. His main education (probably after passing his first 12 years at Tarsus, Act_26:4-5, "among his own nation." Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, Sinaiticus manuscripts read "and" before "at Jerusalem") was at Jerusalem "at the feet of Gamaliel, taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers" (Act_22:3). (See GAMALIEL.)
Thus the three elements of the world's culture met in him: Roman citizenship, Grecian culture, Hebrew religion. Gamaliel had counseled toleration (Act_5:34-39); but his teaching of strict pharisaic legalism produced in Saul's ardent spirit persecuting zeal against opponents, "concerning zeal persecuting the church" (Php_3:6). Among the synagogue disputants with Stephen were men "of Cilcia" (Act_6:9), probably including Saul; at all events it was at his feet, while be was yet "a young man," that the witnesses, stoning the martyr, laid down their clothes (Act_6:9; Act_7:58; Deu_17:7). "Saul was consenting unto his death" (Acts 6; 7); but we can hardly doubt that his better feelings must have had some misgiving in witnessing Stephen's countenance beaming as an angel's, and in hearing his loving prayer for his murderers. But stern bigotry stifled all such doubts by increased zeal; "he made havock of (elumaineto, 'ravaged as a wild beast') the church, entering into the houses (severally, or worship rooms), and haling men and women committed them to prison" (Act_8:3).
But God's grace arrested Paul in his career of blind fanaticism; "I obtained mercy upon, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief" (1Ti_1:12-16). His ignorance was culpable, for he might have known if he had sought aright; but it was less guilty than sinning against light and knowledge. There is a wide difference between mistaken zeal for the law and willful striving against God's Spirit. His ignorance gave him no claim on, but put him within the range of, God's mercy (Luk_23:34; Act_3:17; Rom_10:2). The positive ground of mercy is solely God's compassion (Tit_3:5). We have three accounts of his conversion, one by Luke (Acts 9), the others by himself (Acts 22; 26), mutually supplementing one another. Following the adherents of "the (Christian) way ... unto strange cities," and "breathing out threatenings and slaughter," he was on his journey to Damascus with authoritative letters from the high priest empowering him to arrest and bring to Jerusalem all such, trusting doubtless that the pagan governor would not interpose in their behalf.
At midday a light shone upon him and his company, exceeding the brightness of the sun; he and all with him fell to the earth (Act_26:14; in Act_9:7 "stood speechless," namely, they soon rose, and when he at length rose they were standing speechless with wonder), "hearing" the sound of a "voice," but not understanding (compare 1Co_14:2 margin) the articulate speech which Paul heard (Act_22:9, "they heard not the voice of Him that spoke") in Hebrew (Act_26:14), cf6 "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" (in the person of My brethren, Mat_25:40). "It is hard for thee to kick against the goads" (not in Act_9:5 the Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus manuscripts, but only in Act_26:14), which, as in the case of oxen being driven, only makes the goad pierce the deeper (Mat_21:44; Pro_8:36). Saul trembling (as the jailer afterward before him, Act_16:30-31) said, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" the usual question at first awakening (Luk_3:10), but here with the additional sense of unreserved surrender of himself to the Lord's guidance (Isa_6:1-8).
The Lord might act directly, but He chooses to employ ministerial instruments; such was Ananias whom He sent to Saul, after he had been three days without sight and neither eating nor drinking, in the house of Judas (probably a Christian to whose house he had himself led, rather than to his former co-religionists). Ananias, whom he would have seized for prison and death, is the instrument of giving him light and life. God had prepared Ananias for his visitor by announcing the one sure mark of his conversion, "behold he prayeth" (Rom_8:15). Ananias had heard of him as a notorious persecutor, but obeyed the Lord's direction. In Act_26:16-18 Paul condenses in one account, and connects with Christ's first appearing, subsequent revelations of Jesus to him as to the purpose of his call;" to make thee a minister and witness of these things ... delivering thee from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee." Like Jonah, the outcast runaway, when penitent, was made the messenger of repentance to guilty Nineveh.
The time of his call was just when the gospel was being opened to the Gentiles by Peter (Acts 10). An apostle, severed from legalism, and determined unbelief by an extraordinary revulsion, was better fitted for carrying forward the work among unbelieving Gentiles, which had been begun by the apostle of the circumcision. He who was the most learned and at the same time humblest (Eph_3:8; 1Co_15:9) of the apostles was the one whose pen was most used in the New Testament Scriptures. He"saw" the Lord in actual person (Act_9:17; Act_22:14; Act_23:11; Act_26:16; 1Co_15:8; 1Co_9:1), which was a necessary qualification for apostleship, so as to be witness of the resurrection. The light that flashed on his eyes was the sign of the spiritual light that broke in upon his soul; and Jesus' words to him (Act_26:18), "to open their eyes and to turn them from darkness to light" (which commission was symbolized in the opening of his own eyes through Ananias, Act_9:17-18), are by undesigned coincidence reproduced naturally in his epistles (Col_1:12-14; 2Co_4:4; Eph_1:18, contrast Eph_4:18; Eph_6:12).
He calls himself "the one untimely born" in the family of the apostles (1Co_15:8). Such a child, though born alive, is yet not of proper size and scarcely worthy of the name of man; so Paul calls himself" least of the apostles, not meet to be called an apostle" (compare 1Pe_1:3). He says, God's "choice" (Act_9:15; Act_22:14), "separating me (in contrast to his having been once a "Pharisee", from pharash, i.e. a separatist, but now 'separated' unto something infinitely higher) from my mother's womb (therefore without any merit of mine), and calling me by His grace (which carried into effect His 'good pleasure,' eudokia), revealed His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the pagan," independent of Mosaic ceremonialism (Gal_1:11-20). Ananias, being "a devout man according to the law, having a good report of all the Jews there," was the suitable instrument of giving him bodily and spiritual sight in his transition stage. His language accords, "the God of our fathers (compare Paul's own, 2Ti_1:3; Gal_1:14) hath chosen thee ... that thou shouldest see that Just (righteous, a legal term) One."
Saul directly, on his conversion "preached Christ in the synagogues that He is the Son of God," to the astonishment of his hearers (Act_9:20-21); then followed his retirement to Arabia for a considerable part of the whole "three years" between his conversion and his visit to Jerusalem. From Arabia he returned to Damascus, where with his increased spiritual "strength" he confounded the Jews. Then on their watching to kill him lie was "let down by the wall in a basket," under Aretas (2Co_11:32; Gal_1:15-18). (See ARETAS.) His three years of direction by the Lord alone answer to the about three years' intercourse of Jesus with His twelve apostles. This first visit to Jerusalem is that mentioned Act_9:26, at which occurred the vision (Act_22:17-18). His "increase in strength" (Act_9:22) was obtained in communion with the Lord in Arabia near the scene of giving the law, a fit scene for the revelation of gospel grace which supersedes it (Gal_4:25). Ananias his first instructor, esteemed for his legal piety, was not likely to have taught him the gospel's independence of the Mosaic law. Paul received it by special revelation (1Co_11:23; 1Co_15:3; 1Th_4:15).
The "many days" (Act_9:23) answer to "three years" (Gal_1:18), as in 1Ki_2:38-39. In Arabia he had that retirement after the first fervor of conversion which great characters need, preparatory to their life work for God, as Moses in Midian (Act_7:20; Act_7:22). His familiarity with Mount Sinai in Arabia, the scene of the giving of the law, appears in Gal_4:24-25; Heb_12:18; here he was completely severed from his former legalism. Thence He returned to Damascus; then he went to Jerusalem to see Peter. He saw only Peter and James, being introduced by Barnabas not to seek their sanction but to inform them of Jesus' independent revelation to him (Act_9:26-29; Gal_1:18-19). His Grecian education adapted him for successfully, like Stephen, disputing against the Grecians. He had a vision later than that of Act_22:17-18, namely, in 2Co_12:1, etc., six years after his conversion, A.D. 43. Thus Paul was an independent witness of the gospel.
When he compared his gospel with that of the apostles there was found perfect harmony (Gal_2:2-9). After staying only 15 days at Jerusalem, wherein there was not time for his deriving his gospel commission from Peter with whom he abode, having had a vision that he should depart to the Gentiles (Act_22:18-19), and being plotted against by Hellenistic Jews (Act_9:29), he withdrew to the seaport Caesarea (Act_9:30), thence by sea to Tarsus in Cilicia (Gal_1:21), and thence to Syria. His journey by sea, not land, accounts for his being "unknown by face unto the churches of Judaea" (Gal_1:22), so that he could not have derived his gospel from them. lie puts "Syria" before "Cilicia," as it was a geographical phrase, the more important being put first. Meantime at Antioch the gospel was preached to Gentile "Greeks" (Hellenas in the Alexandrinus manuscript, not "Grecians," Act_11:20) by men of Cyprus and Cyrene scattered abroad at the persecution of Stephen; Barnabas went down then from Jerusalem, and glad in seeing this special grace of God, "exhorted them that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord." (See CHRISTIANS.)
Desiring a helper he fetched Saul from Tarsus to Antioch, and for a whole year they laboured together, and in leaving for Jerusalem (Paul's second visit there, not mentioned in Galatians, being for a special object and for but "few days," Act_11:30; Act_12:25) brought with them a token of brotherly love, a contribution for the brethren in Judaea during the famine which was foretold by Agabus and came on under Claudius Caesar (Act_11:22-30; A.D. 44). Returning from Jerusalem to Antioch, after having fulfilled their ministry, they took with them John Mark as subordinate helper (Act_12:25). Here (Acts 13) while their minds were dwelling on the extraordinary accession of Gentile converts, "as they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, "Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them," namely, to labors among the Gentiles, such as was the specimen already given at Antioch, in which these two had taken such an efficient part. Very striking is the patient humility with which Paul waited for the Lord's time, as he had already received his call to be "a chosen vessel to bear His name before the Gentiles."
In going forth on his first missionary journey he was subordinate to Barnabas; but after preaching the word in Cyprus, where in the Lord's name he had smitten with blindness Elymas the sorcerer (even as he had tried to blind spiritually the governor), and when Sergius Paulus who had sent for Barnabas and Saul believed, he thenceforth under the name Paul takes the lead. Peter's smiting Simon Magus (Acts 8), who sought spiritual powers for gain, corresponds. The unity of God's dealings with His people is the true explanation of the parallelism between the histories of Paul and Peter, just as profound resemblances of form and typical structure exist between species and genera of both plants and animals which in many respects are widely divergent. Peter heals the man lame from birth at the temple gate, Paul the man impotent in feet from birth at Lystra; both fixed their eyes upon the men. As Peter at midnight was miraculously delivered from Herod's prison, so Paul at Philippi was loosed from his chains with an earthquake. As Peter raised Dorcas, so Paul Eutychus.
Peter's striking Ananias and Sapphira dead answers to Paul's striking Elymas blind. As Peter's shadow healed the sick, so Paul's handkerchiefs. As Peter confirmed with the laying on of hands the Samaritans, and the Holy Spirit came on them, so Paul the Ephesian disciples of John Baptist (Acts 19). Luke marks the transition point between Saul's past ministrations to Jews and his new ministry among Gentiles, which was henceforth to be his special work, by his Gentile designation, borne from infancy but now first regularly applied to him, Paul. At Perga in Pamphylia Mark forsook him and Barnabas. (See MARK.) In Antioch in Pisidia, as in Cyprus, they began their preaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath. In Paul's remarkable address we have a specimen of his mode of dealing with "the Jews ... men of Israel ... and religious proselytes ... ye that fear God."
He bases all on the covenant God made with "our fathers," brings out God's "raising up of David to be king, a man after His own heart," shows that it was "of his seed" that" God according to promise raised unto Israel a Savior Jesus," applies the message of salvation to them, proves that the rulers in condemning Him in spite of themselves fulfilled the prophecies read every Sabbath concerning Him; for instance the promise of the second psalm, "Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee," God fulfilled in raising Jesus. These are "the sure mercies" (the holy or gracious promises, osia Greek, chacid Hebrew) of the covenant made with David; hence (Psa_16:10) he anticipates "Thou wilt not suffer Thy Holy ("Gracious": chacid, "in God's favour": Joh_1:14; Joh_1:16, osion) One to see corruption," which cannot apply to David (for he saw corruption) and can only apply to Christ. He winds up with the characteristically Pauline doctrine of the epistles to Romans and Galatians: "by Him all that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses." On the other hand a work of wonder and destruction is foretold by the prophets against all "despisers."
After the congregation was broken up many Jews and proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas, and heard more of "the grace of God." But when almost the whole city came together the next Sabbath to hear the word of God, envy of the admission of Gentiles to gospel privileges without being first proselytized to Judaism incited the Jews to blaspheme and to contradict Paul. This caused Paul to wax bolder and say, It was necessary to speak the word first to you, but seeing ye judge yourselves unworthy (it is not God who counted them" unworthy": Mat_20:19; Mat_22:8) of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. This too accords with the prophets (Isa_42:6; Isa_49:6). The Gentiles rejoiced, and many believed; but the Jews influenced their proselyte women of the higher class, and chief men, to drive Paul and Barnabas away. The apostles proceeded to Iconium cheered by the joy with which the Holy Spirit filled the disciples. There "long time abode they speaking boldly in the Lord, which gave testimony unto the word of His grace and granted signs and wonders to be done by their hands" (Act_14:3). But persecution drove them thence, and they fled to Lystra and Derbe of Lycaonia. (See LYSTRA.)
Again as at Cyprus Paul's ministry resembles Peter's, the cure of' the impotent man in Lystra corresponding to Peter's cure of the same disease at the Beautiful gate of the temple (3); indeed the parallelism probably led three very old manuscripts, C, D, E, to insert from Act_3:8, in Act_14:10, "I say unto thee in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ," etc. His mode of address is happily suited to the heathen of Lystra in turning them from their purpose of sacrificing to him and Barnabas as Mercury (for Paul was the chief speaker) and Jupiter respectively. (See MERCURY.) Instead of appealing to the Scriptures, he appeals to what they knew, the witness of God in His gifts of "rain and fruitful seasons "; he urges them to "turn from these vanities ("dead idols") to serve the living God who made all things," in undesigned coincidence with Pauline language (1Th_1:9-10).
His address to the pagan Athenians corresponds (Act_17:24-29); there he says "God winked at the times of ignorance, but now commandeth all to repent," as here, "who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways," and Rom_3:25, "on account of the praetermission (passing by without judicial cognizance) of the past sins in the forbearance of God." With characteristic fickleness the mob stoned him whom just before they idolized. But he arose and went into the city, and next day to Derbe and to Lystra again, and to Iconium and Antioch, ordaining elders in every church, and confirming the disciples by telling them "that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God." From Pisidia they came to Perga and Attalia; thence to Antioch, where they reported at what may be called the first missionary meeting or covention "all that God had done with them, opening the door of faith unto the Gentiles"; and so ended Paul's first missionary tour. Next (Act_14:28; Acts 15), during Paul's stay at Antioch, men from Judaea came teaching that the Gentile converts must be circumcised. He and Barnabas strenuously opposed them, and were selected to go to Jerusalem and lay the question before the apostles and elders.
Paul had also a divine" revelation" (Gal_2:2) that he should go, besides his public commission. On their way they announced in Phenice and Samaria the conversion of the Gentiles, "causing great joy unto all the brethren." At Jerusalem "they declared all things that God had done with them," the facts and miracles of their mission among the Gentiles in general to the Christian multitude there; "but privately" to the apostles the details of his doctrine, in order to compare it with their teaching, to let them see that he was not "running in vain," in not requiring circumcision of Gentile converts. Certain Pharisees however rose up, insisting on it, but Paul would not yield "for an hour" (Galatians 2); the council followed, in which Peter silenced arguments by the logic of facts, God having given the Holy Spirit to the Gentiles, who believed through him, even as He did to the believing Jews. Why then should the burdensome legal yoke be imposed on them, which God had not made a necessary preliminary to their salvation?
Barnabas and Paul confirmed by their experience the fact: of God's work among the Gentiles. James wound up by showing that Amos' prophecy (Amo_9:11-12) of the call of the Gentiles, consequent on the building again of David's tabernacle, accords with the facts just stated. The decree followed, binding the Gentiles only to abstinence from idol pollutions, fornication, and, in deference to the Jews' feelings, from things strangled and blood. So Judas Barsabas and Silas, chosen men of their own company, were sent with Paul and Barnabas to carry the decree to Antioch, the apostles having previously "given Paul the right hand of fellowship" as a colleague in the apostleship, and having recognized that the apostleship of the uncircumcision was committed to Paul as that of the circumcision to Peter. The realization of the brotherly bond uniting the whole church (circumcision no longer separating the Jew from the Gentile) was further to be kept up by alms for the poor brethren (Galatians 2). The nonreference in Galatians to the decree is
(1) because Paul's design in that epistle was to show Paul's own independent apostolic authority, which did not rest upon their decision;
(2) he argues on principle not authority;
(3) the decree did not go the length of his position, it merely did not impose Mosaic ordinances, but, he here maintains the Mosaic institution itself is at an end;
(4) the Galatians Judaized, not because they thought it necessary to Christianity, but necessary to higher perfection (Gal_3:3; Gal_4:21).
The decree would not disprove their view. Paul confutes them more directly, "Christ is become of no effect unto you whosoever are justified by the law" (Gal_5:4; Gal_5:11). If Paul had proselytized Gentiles as the Jews always received proselytes, namely, with circumcision, persecution would have ceased. But the truth was at stake, and he must not yield (Gal_6:13). The Judaizers soon followed Paul to Antioch, where Peter had already come. Unable to deny that Gentiles are admissible to the Christian covenant without circumcision, they denied that they were so to social intercourse with Jews; pleading the authority of James, they induced Peter, in spite of his own avowed principles (Act_15:7-11) and his practice (Act_11:2-17), through fear of man (Pro_29:25), to separate himself from those Gentiles with whom he had heretofore eaten; this too at Antioch, the stronghold of universality and starting point of Paul's missions to Gentiles. He betrayed his old character, ever the first to recognize and the first to draw back from great truths (Mat_14:30).
The rest of the Jews there "dissembled" with Peter, and "Barnabas was carried away with their dissimulation"; then Paul "before them all withstood to the face" (compare 1Ti_5:20) and charged Peter, "seeing that thou a Jew habitually from conviction livest as a Gentile, eating of every food and with every one, how is it that now thou by example virtually compellest the Gentiles to Judaize?" In 2Pe_3:15 we see how thoroughly their misunderstanding was cleared up, Peter praising the epistles of Paul which condemned him. At his second missionary tour BARNABAS, desiring to take Mark against Paul's judgment, parted company with him. (See MARK.) Their "sharp contention" shows they were not always infallible or impeccable. Silas or Silvanus became Paul's companion through Syria and Cilicia where he confirmed the churches, his circumcising Timothy at Derbe (Act_16:1-3, "whom he would have to go forth with him"), on the ground of his mother being a Jewess, was that by becoming, when principle was not at stake, "to the Jews a Jew, he might gain the Jews."
Titus on the contrary, being a Greek, he would not circumcise "because of false brethren" (Gal_2:3-4) who, had he yielded, would have perverted the case into a proof that he deemed circumcision necessary. To insist on Jewish usages for Gentile converts would have been to make them essential to Christianity; to violate them abruptly, before that the destruction of the temple and Jewish polity made them to cease, would have been against Christian charity (1Co_9:22; Rom_14:1-7; Rom_14:13-33). Paul Silas, and Timothy went through Phrygia and Galatia. Bodily infirmity detained him in Galatia (Gal_4:13 translated "on account of an infirmity," the "thorn in the flesh" 2Co_12:7-10), and was overruled to his preaching the gospel there. The impulsive Galatians "received him as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus," at first, but with Celtic fickleness heeded other teachers who with Judaizing doctrine supplanted the apostle in their affections (2Co_12:12-29). "Where is your former felicitation of yourselves on having the blessing of my ministry?"
Ye once "would have plucked out your eyes and have given them to me" (Mat_5:29). Sensitiveness may have led him to overrate his bodily defect; at all events it did not prevent his enduring hardships which few could bear (2Co_10:10; 2Co_11:23-33). His "eyes" may have been permanently weakened by the blinding vision (Act_22:11), hence the "large letters" (Greek) he wrote (Gal_6:11). Paul intended to visit western Asia, but was "forbidden by the Holy Spirit." From the border of Mysia he essayed to go N.E. into Bithynia, "but the Spirit of Jesus (the Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and Alexandrinus manuscripts) suffered them not" (Act_16:6-7; Act_16:10). Passing by Mysia they came to Troas, and here the "man of Macedonia appeared, saying, Come over into Macedonia and help us." At this point Luke the historian intimates his presence by the "we"; "the beloved physician" probably ministered to Paul's "infirmity" in Galatia. The party from Troas sailed by Samothrace to Neapolis, then proceeded to Philippi.
The conversion of Lydia was the first in Europe, though she was an Asiatic. (See LYDIA.) Then followed Paul's casting out the spirit of divination from the damsel, and her master's violence to Paul because of their loss of gains, under the old plea against saints that they "trouble" the commonwealth (1Ki_18:17); his imprisonment after scourging (referred to 1Th_2:2); his feet fastened in the stocks; the midnight cheerful hymns (Eph_5:20; Job_35:10; Psa_42:8); the earthquake loosing their bonds (so Act_12:6-10; Act_5:19); the intended suicide; the jailer's trembling question, the answer, and his joy in believing, and his fruits of faith, love, washing Paul's stripes (Joh_13:14; Mat_25:36), and entertaining him. The apostle's self-respect appears in declining to allow the magistrates to thrust him out privily, after having beaten and imprisoned a Roman citizen uncondemned, for Cicero (in Verrem, 66) informs us it was counted "a daring misdemeanor to bind, a wicked crime to scourge, a Roman citizen."
Upon their beseeching re. quest he went out, and after a visit to the brethren in Lydia's house he left Philippi (Luke and perhaps Timothy staying behind for a time) for Thessalonica by way of Amphipolis and Apollonia. The fervent attachment of the Philippian church was evinced by their sending supplies for his temporal wants twice shortly after he left them, "in the beginning of the gospel," to Thessalonica (Php_4:15-16), and a third time by Epaphroditus shortly before writing the epistle (Php_4:10; Php_4:18; 2Co_11:9). Few Jews were at Philippi to excite distrust of Paul. There was no synagogue, but a mere oratory or "prayer place" (proseuchee) by the river side. Only there no opposition was offered by the Jews. His sufferings there strengthened the union between him and them, as they too suffered for the gospel's sake (1Th_2:2). At Thessalonica (Acts 17) for three Sabbaths Paul, "as his manner was," reasoned in the synagogue out of the Scriptures, showing that the Messiah to fulfill them must suffer and rise again, and that Jesus is that Messiah.
A multitude of Gentile proselytes and chief women, with some Jews, joined him. In consequence the unbelieving Jews incited the rabble ("fellows of the baser sort," literally, loungers in the market place, 'agoraious': Act_17:5, in harmony with 1Th_2:14) to assault the house of Jason, Paul's host. Failing to find Paul they dragged Jason and certain brethren before the rulers, crying "these that have turned the world upside down are come here also" (South quaintly remarks, "Considering how the world then stood, with idolatry at the head and truth under foot, turning it upside down was the only way perhaps to restore it to its right position"); "these do contrary to Caesar's decrees, saying that there is another King, one Jesus." It is an undesigned coincidence that Jesus' coming kingdom is the prominent thought in the epistles to the Thessalonians (1Th_2:12; 2Th_1:10). They perverted the doctrine of Christ's coming to reign with His saints into treason against Caesar; so in Jesus' case (Joh_18:33-37; Joh_19:12).
He writes to them as mostly Gentiles (1Th_1:9-10); he had worked night and day, not to be chargeable unto them (1Th_2:9-10; 2Th_3:8), and had guarded against the abuse of the doctrine of Christ's coming (1Th_4:11-12; 2Th_2:1-3; 2Th_3:5-13). The magistrates contented themselves with taking security of Jason, and the brethren sent away Paul and Silas to Berea by night. Here too they entered the Jews' synagogue. The Bereans are praised as "more noble" than the Thessalonians generally, for (1) their ready reception of the preached word, and (2) their searching the Scriptures daily whether it accorded with them. (See BEREANS.) Accordingly many believed, Jews as well as Greeks, men and honourable women. But the Thessalonian Jews followed him, and the brethren sent away Paul by sea, Silas and Timothy staying behind. Some brethren escorted Paul to Athens, then returned with a message from him to Silas and Timothy to join him "with all speed."
He had intended to defer preaching until he had them by his side, but "his spirit was stirred within him when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry," so he began at once disputing in the synagogue with the Jews and proselytes, and in the market daily with them that met him. Among the latter were Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. To the Epicureans, the ancient materialists, who denied a future life and made the supreme good consist in a calm enjoyment of the present, Paul offered "the peace which passeth understanding," through Him who through self denying agony and death secures life eternal to us. To the Stoics, the ancient pantheists and fatalists, who made man independent on any being but self, he preached self renunciation and reliance on the personal Jesus, and the resurrection through Him. Some said, "what will this babbler (Greek spermologos, 'seed picker,' as a bird; so market loungers, ready to pick up droppings from loads of ware; so one babbling what he has picked up from others) say?"
Others said, as was the charge against Socrates who similarly used to reason in the market with those he met, "he seemeth a setter forth of strange gods" (namely, God and Jesus, Act_17:24; Act_17:31) "because he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection." Curiosity and love of novelty were noted characteristics of Athenians. So they took him to Mars' hill, arranged with benches and steps of stone in the open air. They had charged him with setting forth strange gods: he begins by gently retorting, "I perceive in every point of view you are religious to a fault" (deisidaimonestorous, not such censure as "too superstitious" would convey). Taking their "altar to an unknown god" (for such altars were erected in times of plague, when the known gods failed to help) as his text, "what (the Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus manuscripts for whom) ye worship confessing your ignorance of, that (the divinity) I declare unto you." "Whom, ... Him," would contradict 1Co_10:20; Joh_4:22. God may be known.
He is the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of all things, has made all men of one blood, assigning them their times and habitations, that they should feel after Him (pseelfeeseian; as thoughtful pagan will do, but it is only groping in the dark until revelation comes; contrast 1Jn_1:1), though He is really near every one of us (Rom_10:8-9), having our being in Him, as your own poet sings, "we are His offspring." God has overlooked the times of ignorance (huperidon; looking on to Christ's sacrifice which vindicates God's righteousness in passing by the intermediate transgressions: Rom_3:25), but now commands all everywhere to repent, since He will judge all by that Man whom He hath ordained as the Savior and Judge, raising Him from the dead as the pledge of assurance. At the mention of the resurrection some mocked, others deferred (compare Act_24:25) the further hearing of the subject. A few believed, including the Areopagite Dionysius and Damaris, a woman.
Next, he came to Corinth, the commercial and stirring capital of Greece, and so more alive to his serious message than the dilettanti philosophers and quidnuncs of Athens. His tentmaking here brought him into close connection with Jews just expelled by Claudius from Rome, Aquila and Priscilla. When Silas and Timothy came from Macedon, Paul was earnestly occupied with the word (See the Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus manuscripts Act_18:5 for "the spirit"), the crisis of their acceptance or else rejection of his message having come. Timothy he bad sent from Athens to Thessalonica (1Th_3:1-2), Silas elsewhere. Their arrival at Corinth suggested his writing the first epistle to Thessalonians. It and 2 Thessalonians were the only epistles he wrote on this missionary journey, both from Corinth. The epistles to Galatians, Romans, and Corinthians belong to his next journey. The epistles to Philemon, Colossians, Ephesians, and Philippians belong to his first captivity at Rome.
His versatility appears in his being able to write 1 Thessalonians when earnestly occupied with the Corinthians; and in his writing 1 and 2 Corinthians between the kindred epistles to the Galatians and Romans; if Galatians was written at Ephesus on his first arrival, and not subsequently at Corinth. (See GALATIANS.) He attested all his genuine letters with his autograph at the close, to enable the churches to distinguish them from spurious ones (2Th_2:2; 2Th_3:17). When the Jews opposed and blasphemed Paul shook his raiment (Neh_5:13; Act_13:51), and said, "your blood be upon your own heads (Eze_33:4), henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles." So he withdrew to the house of a Gentile next the synagogue, Justus. Crispus the ruler of the synagogue believed, and was baptized by Paul himself (1Co_1:14); many Corinthians too were baptized. Paul's fear of the Jews' consequent wrath was dispelled by the Lord in a vision: "be not afraid, but speak and hold not thy peace, for I am with thee and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee, for I have much people in this city." He therefore continued at Corinth a year and a half, teaching.
The Jews with one accord set on and brought him before Gallio's judgment seat, saying, this fellow persuadeth men to worship God contrary to the law. (See GALLIO.) But Paul experienced God's faithfulness to His promise that none should beat him, for Gallio without waiting for Paul to plead drave his enemies from the judgment seat and winked at the beating the Greeks gave Sosthenes, the Jews' ringleader and ruler of the synagogue. Paul's compassion to his enemy in distress probably won Sosthenes, for we find him associated with Paul in 1Co_1:1. Paul left Corinth to keep the feast (probably Pentecost) at Jerusalem (Act_20:16). At Cenchreae he cut off his hair in fulfillment of a vow, made probably in some sickness (Gal_4:13) like the Nazarite vow, and ending with a sacrifice at Jerusalem to which he therefore hastened. Staying at Ephesus a very brief time, and going forward by Caesarea, he saluted the church at Jerusalem. Thence he went to Antioch, the place of his starting originally with Silas (Act_15:35; Act_15:40).
Third missionary tour. Act_18:23-21;Act_18:17. His aim at this period was to vindicate Christians' freedom from the law, yet unity through the higher bond of love. Hence he gives prominence to the collections of the Gentile churches for the relief of the poor brethren at Jerusalem (Gal_2:10). The epistles of this time, Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans, mainly discuss the relations of the believer to the Jewish law. From Antioch Paul went over all Galatia and Phrygia in order, strengthening all the disciples (Act_18:23) and ordering the collection (1Co_16:1). Then on reaching Ephesus he wrote epistle to Galatians, else later at Corinth. (See GALATIANS.) Ephesus Paul reached from the upper regions (Phrygia: Act_19:1). Being the metropolis of Asia and the meeting ground of oriental, Jew, Greek, and Roman, Paul stayed at Ephesus two or three years (Act_19:10; Act_20:31), so that he founded in it a mother church for the whole Asian region.
Here he met the 12 disciples who had been, like Apollos (Act_18:25-26), baptized only unto John's baptism. On his asking "did ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye became believers?" they answered, "we did not so much as hear whether the Holy Spirit is (given)." Paul taught them the further truths, baptism into the Lord Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit; and in laying hands on them after baptism the Holy Spirit came on them, just as upon the Samaritans when Peter and John laid hands on them (Act_8:15; Act_8:17). The first three months Paul spoke boldly in the synagogue at Ephesus; then, on many hardening themselves in unbelief, he separated the disciples from the synagogue and disputed daily in the school of Tyrannus (whether a "private synagogue," bet midrash, where he might assemble the believing Jews privately and receive inquiring Gentiles, or more probably the school of a Gentile sophist). This continued for two years, so that all both Jews and Greeks had the opportunity of hearing the word of the Lord Jesus.
God wrought special miracles by Paul, so that handkerchiefs and aprons from his body were used to heal the sick and cast out demons. So "the shadow of Peter" (Act_5:15), the hem of Christ's garment (Mat_9:20-21). So far from confirming the virtue of "relics," his case disproves them; they were "special" and extraordinary instances; all miracles having generally ceased, a fortiori, what even then were rarest must have now ceased also. Sorcery abounded at Ephesus; seven sons of Sceva, a Jew, exorcists, having presumed to call over the demon-possessed the name of the Lord Jesus preached by Paul, as a magic formula, two of them (Act_19:16, "prevailed against both" in the Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus manuscripts) were wounded and driven out of the house by the man, the demon saying, "Jesus I know and Paul I know, but who are ye?" (Mat_12:27.)
Such fear fell on those who, along with Christianity, secretly practiced magic arts that they confessed openly their sin and brought their costly books of incantations (the notorious Ephesia grammata) and burnt them publicly, at the sacrifice of their estimated value, 50,000 drachmas, 1,770 British pounds. "So mightily grew the word of God. During the first half of his stay at Ephesus he paid. a second short visit to Corinth, alluded to in 2Co_1:15-16; 2Co_2:1; 2Co_12:14; 2Co_12:21; 2Co_13:1-2. (See CORINTHIANS, FIRST EPlSTLE.) After this visit he wrote a letter alluded to in 1Co_5:9; 1Co_4:18. He purposed in spirit going through Macedon and Achaia (Corinth) to Jerusalem, then to Rome; meanwhile he sent Timothy and Erastus to Macedon, but stayed himself in Ephesus for a season.
His first epistle to the Corinthians was written while still at Ephesus (1Co_16:8), about the Passover time (1Co_16:7-8), shortly before the outbreak that drove him away at Pentecost time (Act_19:23-41), when he had already encountered beast-like "adversaries" (1Co_15:32), a premonitory symptom of the final tumult (1Co_16:9; 2Co_1:8; Rom_16:4); not after it, for immediately after it he left Ephesus for Macedon. How large his heart was, to be able to enter so warmly into the minute interests of the Corinthian churches in the midst of his engrossing ministry amidst threatening storms at Ephesus. In 1Co_4:9-13 he sketches the hardships of his apostolic life. His tact in dealing with the questions submitted to him by the Corinthians and those also omitted by them, but known otherwise, as well as his singleness of aim for Christ, shine conspicuously in this epistle. (See DEMETRIUS on the outbreak; also see EPHESUS; ASIARCHS; ALEXANDER; DIANA.)
Demetrius' hypocritical zeal for Diana while his "wealth" (euporia only here "easy means"; equivalent to the ominous 666 (See ANTICHRIST)); 1Ki_10:14; 2Ch_9:13; Rev_13:18) was his real concern, the wild and blind excitement of the mob, "the more part not knowing wherefore they were come together," the unreasoning religious party cry "great is Diana of the Ephesians," the tact and good sense of the secretary of state ("the town clerk") in calming the mob while incidentally testifying to Paul's temperance in assailing the idol of the town, vividly appear in the narrative. It can have been no light impression that Paul's preaching made, and no small danger he daily incurred. From Macedonia (probably Philippi) he wrote 2 Corinthians. (See 2 CORINTHIANS.) He had a door of preaching opened to him in Troas (2Co_2:12); but his anxiety to meet Titus, who had disappointed him in not coming to Troas, urged him forward to Macedon.
Having there met, and heard from him the tidings which he so eagerly longed for, namely, the good effect of his first epistle on the Corinthians, he wrote his second epistle, in which he glances at those Judaizing emissaries (especially one) who had tried to disparage his apostolic authority (2Co_12:11-12; 2Co_3:1; 2Co_11:4; 2Co_11:12-15) and malign his personal motives (2Co_1:12; 2Co_12:17-18); scoffing at his want of courage as evinced by his delay in coming, and at his threats as impotent (2Co_1:17; 2Co_1:23), and at his weak personal appearance and simple speech (2Co_10:10). His sensitive, affectionate tenderness appears in the anguish with which he wrote the first epistle, using the authority which some had denied, and threatening soon to enforce it in person (2Co_2:2-4; 2Co_2:13; 2Co_7:5; 2Co_7:8); also in his shrinking from going as soon as he had intended (rather he would wait to see the effect of his letter 2Co_1:15-16; 2Co_2:1), that his visit might be a happy instead of a sorrowful one; and in his triumphant joy at the news of their better state of mind (2Co_2:18; 2Co_2:14).
His list of hardships in 2Co_11:23-28 shows how much more he endured than the book of Acts records: "of the Jews five times I received 40 stripes save one; thrice was I beaten with rods(whereas elsewhere only one scourging is recorded, that at Philippi); once was I stoned (Act_14:19); thrice I suffered shipwreck; a night and a day I have been in the deep." Not one of these sea perils is recorded in Acts; that of Acts 27, was subsequent. The" perils of rivers" (Greek for" waters") would be in fording them in floods, bridges in mountain roads traversed by torrents being rare. The perils of robbers: the Pisidians (Act_13:14), Pamphylians, and Cilicians of the mountains separating the tableland of Asia from the coast were notorious for robbery (Strabo, xii. 6-7). The "thorn in the flesh (2Co_12:7), a messenger of Satan (compare Job_2:7; Luk_13:16) to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations," was probably some painful, tedious, bodily malady, which shamed him before those to whom he ministered (Gal_4:13-15); it followed the revelation wherein he was caught up to the third heaven (perhaps at his second visit to Jerusalem: Act_22:17). (See PARADISE.)
"Thorn" implies bodily pain; "buffet," shame (1Pe_2:20); after hearing and seeing the joys of holy angels, he is buffeted by an emissary of the evil one. But he was enabled to glory in infirmities, when his thrice offered prayer for the thorn's removal was answered by Christ's promise of His all sufficient grace and strength having its perfect manifestation in man's weakness. God needs our weakness as the arena for displaying His power, not our strength, which is His rival. Notwithstanding the continued infirmity, Paul was enabled to sustain manifold wearing hardships. Traveling through Macedon, probably as far as to Illyricum (Rom_15:19), he at least visited Greece and stayed three months (Act_20:2-3). From Corinth he wrote the epistle to the Romans. (See ROMANS.)
He had longed to see the church which already existed at Rome, and whose faith was celebrated throughout the world, also to impart some spiritual gift to them (Rom_1:8; Rom_1:11-13). Hereto he had been hindered coming to them; he intends to come, and go on from Rome to Spain (Rom_15:16; Rom_15:24; Rom_15:28), and so to preach to the Gentiles of the remote West to whom, as to Rome itself, he feels himself a debtor as to the gospel, being the apostle of the uncircumcision, a spiritual priest, offering up the Gentile converts as a sacrifice acceptable unto God (Rom 1:14-15-16). He must now first go to Jerusalem, to take the offerings of the Macedonian and Achaian Christians for the relief of the poor saints there. Meantime he writes, begging their prayers that he may be delivered from the unbelieving in Judaea (Rom_15:25-32). The awful unrighteousness of the world, whose capital was Rome, suggested his subject, the righteousness of God, condemning Jew and Gentile alike (Romans 1; 2), but capable of being appropriated by faith in Jesus whom God set forth as a propitiation through faith in His blood.
Before leaving Corinth Luke joined him, as the "us" implies (Act_20:1-5). He had intended to sail direct to Syria (Act_20:3; Act_19:2; 1Co_16:3-7), but to avoid a Jewish plot against him he went through Macedon. Several were appointed with him as the joint bearers of the churches' contributions for the poor brethren at Jerusalem. These went before by sea to Troas while he and Luke went through Macedonia. From Philippi, after the Passover, in five days Paul and Luke reached Troas, and stayed seven days. At the meeting there "to break bread" (i.e. to keep the lovefeast with which the eucharist was joined) on the first day of the week Paul preached earnestly until midnight, and the youth Eutychus in deep sleep fell from the third left, and was taken up dead, but was restored by Paul. (See EUTYCHUS.) Preachers ought to be considerate of their hearers, avoiding undue length and lateness! Hearers should avoid Carelessness, inattention, and drowsiness! Paul on returning proceeded to "break bread and eat" the love-feast meal (geusamenos, "having made a meal"), which closed the meeting.
Paul made the journey from Troas to Assos by land on foot alone, while the rest went before in ship. At Assos he went on board with them, and by Mitylene, Chios, Samos, and Trogyllium, came to Miletus. Instead of calling to see the chief church of Asia, at Ephesus, which might have made him too late for the Pentecost at Jerusalem, he invited their elders to him at Miletus and gave the striking address recorded in Act_20:18-35. He reminds them of his manner of ministry among them with many tears, and amidst temptations owing to the Jews' plots, his keeping back nothing profitable, but without reserve teaching both publicly and from house to house the gospel testimony, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus. "Now," says he, "I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there, save that the Holy Spirit witnesseth in every city that bonds and afflictions abide me; but none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God."
This accords with his epistles (2Co_4:1; 2Co_4:16; 2Ti_4:7; Php_2:17). His inspired knowledge (for the words "I know" can hardly be a mere surmise, as Alford thinks from the use of the word in Act_26:27; Rom_15:29; Php_1:19-20) that they all should not see his face again was what most affected them. He visited Miletus and no doubt Ephesus again (1Ti_1:3; 2Ti_1:18; 2Ti_4:20). His being "pure from the blood of all" he rests on his "not having shunned to declare all the counsel of God"; a warning to ministers against having an esoteric teaching for the few, not imparted to the multitude, and against one-sidedness in teaching. The safeguard lies in taking heed (1) to themselves, (2) to all the flock; none is to be neglected, for the Holy Spirit makes overseers for the purpose of feeding the church of God (the Vaticanus, Sinaiticus manuscripts, but Alexandrinus manuscript "of the Lord") bought with His own blood.
(1) The best manuscript evidence favors the reading "God";
(2) being the more difficult it is less likely to be an interpolation than the easier reading, "Lord";
(3) "the church of God" is a common expression in Paul's epistles, "church of the Lord" never.
His prophecy of "grievous wolves not sparing the flock," and of "men arising of their own selves speaking perverse things, drawing away disciples," is the germ expanded further in 1 Timothy 4; 2Ti_2:17-19; 2Ti_2:3; 2Ti_2:2 Thessalonians 2; the antichrist in 1Jn_2:22-23; 1Jn_4:1-3; Revelation 11-19. His warning for three years every one, night and day, with tears, accords with his character in the epistles (Php_3:18; 2Ti_1:3). So his appeal to their consciousness of his having coveted nothing of theirs, and of his setting them the example of manual labour to support others as well as himself, remembering "it is more blessed to give than to receive" (1Co_4:12; 1Co_9:12; 2Co_7:2; 2Co_11:9; 2Co_12:14; 2Co_12:17; 1Th_2:9; 2Th_3:8). It was an affecting parting, when after prayer together on bended knee they wept sore, and fell on Paul's neck and kissed him, and accompanied him to the ship. By Cos, Rhodes, Patara, and past Cyprus, Paul sailed to Tyre, where the ship unladed her cargo.
Finding disciples there, by a kind of freemasonry of Christianity, he stayed seven days, and was warned by them through the Spirit not to go to Jerusalem. The parting scene would form an exquisite picture. All with wives and children escorted them until they were out of the city; then he and they kneeled down on the shore and prayed. By Ptolemais Paul reached Caesarea, and there abode with Philip the evangelist, whose four prophesying daughters probably repeated the warning. Lastly Agabus from Judaea (compare Act_11:28), symbolically binding his hands and feet with Paul's girdle, foretold so should the Jews bind Paul and deliver him to the Gentiles. All then, both his fellow travelers and the Christians of the place, besought him not to go forward. His resolution was unshaken; "what mean ye to weep and break my heart? I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the Lord Jesus" (Php_1:21-23). So Jesus Himself (Luk_9:51; Luk_9:57; Luk_9:61-62; Isa_50:7).
At last all recognized it as of God's ordering, "the will of the Lord be done"; the way of realizing his desire to visit the church at Rome, not what man would have chosen but what proved ultimately best, being God's appointment (Php_1:12-13). After tarrying "many days" in Caesarea, not to be too long at Jerusalem before the feast, as a prudent precaution, Paul went to Jerusalem (his fifth and probably last visit), where Mnason lodged him. (See MNASON.) In compliance with the counsel of James and the elders, in order to silence the false charges against him of teaching the JEWS to forsake the law and not to circumcise their children, he next day put himself under the vow with four Nazarites, signifying to the temple priests their intention to fulfill the days of purification, he defraying the charge of their offerings, which was accounted a meritorious act. The process required seven days for completion; toward their close Jews of Asia stirred up the people against him in the temple, saying he had brought Greeks into it, meaning Trophimus, whom they had seen with Paul but not in the temple.
They dragged Paul out of the temple, and would have killed him with blows, but "the chief captain" commanding the garrison rescued him, and chained him to two soldiers. His speaking Greek undeceived Lysias, who had guessed him to be the notorious Egyptian insurrection leader of that time (Josephus, Ant. 20:8, section 6; B. J. 2:13, section 5). Being permitted to speak from the stair, Paul delivered his "defence" to the people with admirable tact in Hebrew, the language of their fathers, and selecting such points as vindicated his faithfulness to the God of their fathers: e.g. his rearing under Gamaliel; his Christian instructor Ananias' devoutness according to the law, and good report of all the Jews; his vision in the temple at Jerusalem, where his own desire was to stay, witnessing for Christ where he had most bitterly persecuted His followers, but the Lord said, "I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles" (Eph_3:7-8). The name was enough; the mob was infuriated at the wall of Jewish exclusive privileges being broken down. "Away with such a fellow from the earth," etc. (1Th_2:16.)
Lysias supposing Paul must have perpetrated some heinous crime would have scourged him, but Paul's Roman citizenship saved him. Lysias would not give up a Roman citizen to a Jewish court, yet in courtesy he convened their council the following day (Act_22:30; Act_22:23), to give them the opportunity of hearing and answering his defense, as he had given the same opportunity to the mob. Paul, fixing his eyes intently as was his wont (probably from having never recovered the blinding at his conversion: Act_13:9; Gal_4:13; Gal_4:15; Gal_2:11; 2Co_12:7; 2Co_12:9; which may account for his not recognizing the high priest), proceeded to say that he had lived a conscientious loyal life before God (pepoliteumai) as a Jew up to that day (2Ti_1:3). Ananias commanded the bystanders to smite him on the mouth. (See ANANIAS.)
Paul said, "God shall smite thee, thou whited sepulchre," etc. So Jesus, Mat_23:27; Luk_11:44; but His calm majesty when smitten contrasts with Paul's natural indignation at hypocrisy and injustice in the seat of judgment (Joh_18:22-23). Paul apologized for his strong language on the ground of his not knowing, from imperfect sight or otherwise, that it was the high priest who gave the order. Adroitly Paul enlisted on the side of the truth, against Sadduceanism, a large portion of his audience by saying, "I am a Pharisee ... of the hope of the resurrection I am called in question." Contrast Jesus' dealing with the Sadducees, "ye do err greatly, not knowing the Scriptures." The Lord in vision cheered him that night, as at Corinth (Act_18:9), promising he should testify for Him as at Jerusalem so at Rome. More than 40 Jews next day plotted not to eat or drink until they killed Paul, when the chief priests should induce Lysias to bring him again before the council. By his sister's son Paul heard and communicated the plot to Lysias.
The chief captain sent Paul under escort of 200 soldiers, 70 horsemen, and 200 bodyguard to Antipatris by night, thence with the 70 horsemen alone to Caesarea, with an explanatory letter to Felix the governor, in which, in fear of consequences, he suppresses his command to scourge Paul, and on the contrary represents his reason for rescuing him "having understood that he was a Roman," though he did not know that until afterward. Felix kept Paul in Herod's judgment hall until his accusers came; thus Providence overruled his Roman imprisonment to be his safeguard against Jewish plots. (See FELIX.)
After five days (Acts 24) Ananias the high priest came from Jerusalem, and through a hired orator accused Paul of being a mover of sedition and ringleader of the Nazarenes, who sought to profane the temple. Tertullus begun his address (which is Latin in its characteristics, according to the usage before Roman magistrates) with a studied exordium of gross flattery: "seeing that by thee we enjoy great quietness, and that very worthy deeds are done unto this nation by thy providence" (as if Felix were a god, "the providence of Caesar" is found on coins), the reverse being notoriously the case, Felix often receiving plunder from the bands of robbers that pillaged and plundered in Samaria, "exercising the authority of a king with the disposition of a slave in all cruelty and lust" (Tacitus, Annals xii. 54, Hist. 5:9). The only color for Tertullus' compliment was, Felix had put down some rebels and assassins (Josephus, Ant. 20:8, section 4), himself being worse than they. Paul replied with courtesy to Felix without sacrifice of truth: "forasmuch as I know that thou hast been of many years (seven) a judge unto this nation (so, well acquainted with Jewish usages), I do the more cheerfully answer for myself."
An alleged offense so recent as "twelve days" ago one so versed in Jewish affairs would easily adjudicate upon. Paul admitted he came to the temple, but it was "for to worship"; the Jews may call it "heresy," but it is "the God of his fathers he worships, believing the law and the prophets, and that there shall be a resurrection of just and unjust," and "exercising himself to have always a conscience void of offense toward God and men." So in his epistles: 1Co_4:4; 2Co_1:12; 2Co_4:2; Heb_13:18. His coming to Jerusalem to bring alms to his nation, and his purification in the temple, proved his loyalty to the faith of Israel. Felix, though "knowing accurately about the (Christian) way," put them off until Lysias should come; his real motive being hope of a bribe, which Paul's mention of his bringing "alms and offerings" suggested. Hence he gave Paul's acquaintances free access to him, as they might provide him with money for a bribe. Felix gave Paul another hearing before Drusilla his wife, a Jewess. (See DRUSILLA.)
But as Paul reasoned of "righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come" before one unrighteous, lustful, and who durst not face his own conscience (contrast Act_24:16) much less the judgment to come, Felix "trembled" and sent Paul away for the present. Tacitus (Annals xii. 54) says Felix thought he might do all crimes with impunity; so it was a sharp thrust that reached the conscience of such a reprobate. A "convenient season" Felix never sought for his soul; interviews with Paul to get a bribe he did seek, but Paul was proof against his temptations. So Felix left Paul a prisoner for two years at Caesarea. Porcius Festus, succeeding (A.D. 60), was solicited to bring him to Jerusalem, the Jews plotting to kill him in the way, but refused. (See FESTUS.)
At the hearing that followed in Caesarea, on Festus' proposing (in compliment to the Jews) that he should be tried at Jerusalem, Paul appealed to Caesar, a Roman citizen by the Valerian law having the right to appeal from a magistrate to the people or tribunes, and subsequently to the emperor. In order that Festus might have some definite report of the charges against Paul to send with him to Rome, he gave Paul a hearing before Herod Agrippa and Berenice, who came with characteristic pomp (Acts 25, translated Act_25:19 "questions of their own religious system," for Festus would not to Agrippa a Jew call his creed a "superstition," deisidaimonia; Acts 26). (See HEROD AGRIPPA; BERENICE.)
Paul a third time narrates his conversion, dwelling before Herod Agrippa, as one well versed in Jewish questions, on "the hope of the promise made of God unto the fathers" (Act_26:6-7), namely, Messiah, and on His resurrection, which Paul attested as an eye witness, not only not prejudiced in His favor but once bitterly hating Him. To the Herodian family, tinged with Sadduceeism, the resurrection seemed "incredible"; but why should it be so, seeing that God has actually raised Jesus? The doctrines in the epistles appear here in germ: "the inheritance to the sanctified" (Eph_1:11; Col_1:12); Christ "the first" who rose, a pledge of the saints' resurrection (1Co_15:20; Col_1:18); the "Light to the people (Israel) and to the Gentiles" (Luk_2:32, whose Gospel Paul in part suggested). With the charge of being "beside himself" with zeal compare 2Co_5:13; 2Co_11:16-17; 1Co_1:23; 1Co_2:14.
Festus attributed to Paul "much learning," judging from his acquaintance with Old Testament, and probably from his having had many parchments in prison; croup (?), subsequently 2Ti_4:13. How graceful a turn he gives to his wish that his hearers were "altogether such as he was, except these bonds," which bound him to the soldier in charge of him, and which he looked at, on his outstretched arms (Act_26:1-29). (On his voyage to Rome, see EUROCLYDON.) Julius a centurion was his kind and courteous escort. Luke accompanied him. The description of the voyage is proved by experienced Mediterranean seamen to be minutely accurate and true. Aristarchus also was with him. At Sidon Paul, with Julius' leave, visited his friends and refreshed himself. (See ARISTARCHUS.) At Myra in Lycia, where N. winds off Cilicia and Pamphylia would carry them, they went on board an Alexandrian ship bound for Italy, and slowly coasted against the wind until over against CNIDUS they ran S. under the lee of Crete, passing Salmone headland and so to FAIN HEAVENS. (See CRETE.) (See MELITA for the rest.)
After a three months' stay in Malta, Paul sailed in the Castor and Pollux, an Alexandrian ship, to Syracuse, where he stayed three days. Thence in a circuitous course to Rhegium, next day to Puteoli, where brethren entertained him seven days; and so to Rome, the brethren meeting him at Appii Forum (43 miles from Rome) and the Three Taverns (ten miles) on the way; so that Paul thanked God and took courage, cheered by the communion of saints. (See APPII FORUM.) Julius gave Paul up to the captain of the guard (proefectus praetorio, the Praetorian camp outside the Viminal gate), who allowed him to dwell by himself, chained to a soldier. His first care was to invite the Jews to a conference, where from morning until evening he expounded and testified the kingdom of God embodied in Jesus, out of the law and the prophets, declaring "for the hope of Israel I am bound with this chain."
Some believed, some disbelieved; whereupon Paul (at the close of New Testament history) quoted Isa_2:9-10 as the Holy Spirit's testimony against them, which Jesus at the beginning also quoted (Mat_13:14-15), and John (Joh_12:39-41) concerning Jesus (Isa_6:1; Isa_6:9). So that Father, Son, and Spirit spoke the words. The Jews not hearing of Paul before was because, before his appeal, the Judaean Jews did not anticipate his going to Rome, and after it there was no time to communicate concerning him before he arrived. Now he turns to the Gentiles who would more readily hear. For two wh
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
By Andrew Robert Fausset, co-Author of Jamieson, Fausset and Brown's 1888.

Paul. (small, little). Nearly all the original materials for the life St. Paul are contained, in the Acts of the Apostles, and in the Pauline Epistles. Paul was born in Tarsus, a city of Cilicia. (It is not improbable tha, t he was born between A.D. 0 and A.D. 5). Up to the time of his going forth as an avowed preacher of Christ to the Gentiles, the apostle was known by the name of Saul. This was the Jewish name, which he received from his Jewish parents. But, though a Hebrew of the Hebrews, he was born in a Gentile city. Of his parents, we know nothing, except that his father was of the tribe of Benjamin, Php_3:5, and a Pharisee, Act_23:6, that Paul had acquired, by some means, the Roman franchise, ("I was free born,"), Act_22:23, and that he was settled in Tarsus.
At Tarsus, he must have learned to use the Greek language, with freedom and mastery, in both speaking and writing. At Tarsus, also, he learned that trade of "tent-maker," Act_18:3, at which he, afterward, occasionally wrought with his own hands. There was a goat's-hair cloth called cilicium manufactured in Cilicia, and largely used for tents: Saul's trade was probably that of making tents of this hair cloth.
When St. Paul makes his defence before his countrymen at Jerusalem, Act_22:1, he tells them that, though born in Tarsus, he had been "brought up" in Jerusalem. He must therefore, have been yet a boy when was removed, in all probability, for the sake of his education, to the Holy City of his fathers. He learned, he says, "at the feet of Gamaliel." He who was to resist so stoutly the usurpations of the law had, for his teacher, one of the most eminent of all the doctors of the law.
Saul was yet "a young man," Act_7:58, when the Church experienced that sudden expansion, which was connected with the ordaining of the seven, appointed to serve tables, and with the special power and inspiration of Stephen. Among those who disputed with Stephen were some "of them of Cilicia." We naturally think of Saul as having been one of these, when we find him, afterward, keeping the clothes of those suborned witnesses who, according to the law, Deu_17:7, were the first to cast stones at Stephen. "Saul," says the sacred writer significantly, "was consenting unto his death."
Saul's conversion. A.D. 37. — The persecutor was to be converted. Having undertaken to follow up the believers, "unto strange cities," Saul naturally turned his thoughts to Damascus. What befell him as he journeyed thither, is related in detail three times in the Acts, first by the historian in his own person, then in the two addresses made by St. Paul at Jerusalem, and before Agrippa.
St. Luke's statement is to be read in Act_9:3-19, where, however, the words, "it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks," included in the English version, ought to be omitted, (as is done in the Revised Version). The sudden light from heaven; the voice of Jesus speaking with authority to his persecutor; Saul struck to the ground, blinded, overcome; the three-days suspense; the coming of Ananias as a messenger of the Lord and Saul's baptism, — these were the leading features at the great event, and in these, we must look for the chief significance of the conversion.
It was in Damascus that he was received into the church by Ananias, and here, to the astonishment of all his hearers, he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, declaring him to be the Son of God. The narrative in the Acts tells us simply that he was occupied in this work, with increasing vigor, for "many days," up to the time when imminent danger drove him from Damascus.
From the Epistle to the Galatians, Gal_1:17-18, we learn that the many days were at least a good part of "three years," A.D. 37-40, and that Saul, not thinking it necessary to procure authority to teach from the apostles that were before him, went, after his conversion, to Arabia, and returned from thence to us. We know nothing whatever of this visit to Arabia; but, upon his departure from Damascus, we are again on a historical ground, and have the double evidence of St. Luke in the Acts of the apostle, and in his Second Epistle the Corinthians.
According to the former, the Jews lay in wait for Saul, intending to kill him, and watched the gates of the city, that he might not escape from them. Knowing this, the disciples took him by night and let him down in a basket from the wall. Having escaped from Damascus, Saul betook himself to Jerusalem, (A.D. 40), and there "assayed to join himself to the disciples; but they were all afraid of him, and believed not he was a disciple."
Barnabas' introduction, removed the fears of the apostles, and Saul "was with them coming in and going out at Jerusalem." But it is not strange that the former persecutor was soon singled out from the other believers, as the object of a murderous hostility. He was, therefore, again urged to flee; and by way of Caesarea betook himself to his native city, Tarsus. Barnabas was sent on a special mission to Antioch.
As the work grew under his hands, he felt the need of help, went himself to Tarsus to seek Saul, and succeeded in bringing him to Antioch. There, they labored together unremittingly for a whole year." All this time, Saul was subordinate to Barnabas. Antioch was in constant communication with Cilicia, with Cyprus, with all the neighboring countries. The Church was pregnant with a great movement, and time of her delivery was at hand.
Something of direct expectation seems to be implied, in what is said of the leaders of the Church at Antioch, that they were "ministering to the Lord and fasting," when the Holy Ghost spoke to them: "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them." Everything was done with orderly gravity, in the sending forth of the two missionaries. Their brethren, after fasting and prayer, laid their hands on them, and so they departed.
The first missionary journey. A.D. 45-49. — As soon as Barnabas and Saul reached Cyprus, they began to "announce the word of God," but at first, they delivered their message in the synagogues of the Jews only. When they had gone through the island, from Salamis to Paphos, they were called upon to explain their doctrine to an eminent Gentile, Sergius Paulus, the proconsul, who was converted.
Saul's name was now changed to Paul, and he began to take precedence of Barnabas. From Paphos "Paul and his company" set sail for the mainland, and arrived at Perga in Pamphylia. Here the heart of their companion, John, failed him, and he returned to Jerusalem. From Perga, they travelled on to a place obscure in secular history, but most memorable in the history of the Kingdom of Christ — Antioch in Pisidia.
Rejected by the Jews, they became bold and outspoken, and turned from them to the Gentiles. At Antioch now, as in every city afterward, the unbelieving Jews used their influence, with their own adherents among the Gentiles, to persuade the authorities, or the populace to persecute the apostles, and to drive them from the place. Paul and Barnabas now travelled on to Iconium, where the occurrences at Antioch were repeated, and from thence, to the Lycaonian country, which contained the cities Lystra and Derbe. Here they had to deal with uncivilized heathen.
At Lystra, the healing of a cripple took place. Thereupon, these pagans took the apostles for gods, calling Barnabas, who was of the more imposing presence, Jupiter, and Paul, who was the chief speaker, Mercurius. Although the people of Lystra had been so ready to worship Paul and Barnabas, the repulse of their idolatrous instincts appears to have provoked them, and they allowed themselves to be persuaded into hostility by Jews, who came from Antioch and Iconium, so that they attacked Paul with stones, and thought they had killed him. He recovered, however, as the disciples were standing around him, and went again into the city.
The next day, he left it with Barnabas, and went to Derbe, and thence, they returned once more to Lystra, and so to Iconium and Antioch. In order to establish the churches after their departure, they solemnly appointed "elders" in every city. Then, they came down to the coast, and from Attalia, they sailed home to Antioch in Syria, where they related the successes which had been granted to them, and especially the opening of the door of faith to the Gentiles." And so the first missionary journey ended.
The council at Jerusalem. — Upon that missionary journey follows, most naturally, the next important scene which the historian sets before us — the council held at Jerusalem, to determine the relations of Gentile believers to the law of Moses. Act_15:1-29; Galatians 2.
Second missionary journey. A.D. 50-54. — The most resolute courage, indeed, was required for the work to which St. Paul was now publicly pledged. He would not associate with himself in that work, one who had already shown a want of constancy. This was the occasion of what must have been a most painful difference, between him and his comrade in the faith and in past perils, Barnabas. Act_15:35-40.
Silas, or Silvanus, becomes, now, a chief companion of the apostle. The two went together through Syria and Cilicia, visiting the churches, and so came to Derbe and Lystra. Here, they find Timotheus, who had become a disciple on the former visit of the apostle. Him, St. Paul took and cCircumcised. St. Luke now steps rapidly over a considerable space of the apostle's life and labors. "They went throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia." Luk_16:6.
At this time, St. Paul was founding "the churches of Galatia." Gal_1:2. He himself gives some hints of the circumstances of his preaching in that region, of the reception he met with, and of the ardent, though unstable, character of the people. Gal_4:13-15. Having gone through Phrygia and Galatia, he intended to visit, the western coast; but "they were forbidden by the Holy Ghost to preach the word" there.
Then, being on the borders of Mysia, they thought of going back to the northeast into Bithynia; but again the
Spirit of Jesus, "suffered them not," so they passed by Mysia and came down to Troas. St. Paul saw in a vision a man of Macedonia, who besought him, saying, "Come over into Macedonia and help us." The vision was at once accepted as a heavenly intimation; the help wanted by the Macedonians, was believed to be the preaching of the gospel.
It is at this point that the historian, speaking of St. Paul's company, substitutes "we" for "they." He says nothing of himself: we can only infer that St. Luke, to whatever country he belonged, became a companion of St. Paul at Troas. The party thus reinforced, immediately set sail from Troas, touched at Samothrace, then landed on the continent at Neapolis, and thence, journeyed to Philippi. The first convert in Macedonia was Lydia, an Asiatic woman, at Philippi. Act_18:13-14.
At Philippi, Paul and Silas were arrested, beaten and put in prison, having cast out the spirit of divination from a female slave, who had brought her masters much gain by her power. This cruel wrong was to be the occasion of a single appearance of the God of righteousness and deliverance.
The narrative tells of the earthquake, the jailer's terror, his conversion and baptism. Act_16:26-34. In the morning, the magistrates sent word to the prison that the men might be let go; but Paul denounced plainly their unlawful acts, informing them, moreover that those whom they had beaten, and imprisoned without trial were Roman citizens. The magistrates, in great alarm, saw the necessity of humbling themselves. They came and begged them to leave the city. Paul and Silas consented to do so, and, after paying a visit to "the brethren" in the house of Lydia, they departed.
Leaving St. Luke, and perhaps Timothy, for a short time at Philippi, Paul and Silas travelled through Amphipolis and Apollonia and stopped again at Thessalonica. Here again, as in Pisidian Antioch, the envy of the Jews was excited, and the mob assaulted the house of Jason, with whom Paul and Silas were staying as guests, and, not finding them, dragged Jason himself and some other brethren before the magistrates.
After these signs of danger, the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night. They next came to Berea. Here they found the Jews more noble than those at Thessalonica had been. Accordingly, they gained many converts, both Jews and Greeks; but the Jews of Thessalonica, hearing of it, sent emissaries to stir up the people, and it was thought best that Paul should himself leave the city, whilst Silas and Timothy remained behind.
Some of the brethren went with St. Paul as far as Athens, where they left him carrying back a request to Silas and Timothy that they would speedily join him. Here the apostle delivered that wonderful discourse reported in Act_17:22-31. He gained, but few converts at Athens, and soon took his departure and went to Corinth. He was testifying with unusual effort and anxiety, when Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia and joined him. Their arrival was the occasion of the writing of the First Epistle to the Thessalonians. The two Epistles to the Thessalonians — and these alone — belong to the present missionary journey. They were written from Corinth A.D. 52, 53.
When Silas and Timotheus came to Corinth, St. Paul was testifying to the Jews with great earnestness, but with little success. Corinth was the chief city of the province of Achaia, and the residence of the proconsul. During St. Paul's stay, the proconsular office was held by Gallio, a brother of the philosopher Seneca. Before him, the apostle was summoned by his Jewish enemies, who hoped to bring the Roman authority to bear upon him as an innovator in religion. But Gallio perceived at once, before Paul could "open his mouth" to defend himself, that the movement was due to Jewish prejudice, and refused to go into the question.
Then a singular scene occurred. The Corinthian spectators, either favoring Paul, or actuated only by anger against the Jews, seized on the principal person of those, who had brought the charge, and beat him before the judgment-seat. Gallio left these religious quarrels to settle themselves. The apostle, therefore, was not allowed to be "hurt," and remained some time longer at Corinth unmolested.
Having been the instrument of accomplishing this work, Paul departed for Jerusalem, wishing to attend a festival there. Before leaving Greece, he cut off his hair at Cenchreae, in fulfillment of a vow. Act_18:18. Paul paid a visit to the synagogue at Ephesus, but would not stay. Leaving Ephesus, he sailed to Caesarea, and from thence, went up to Jerusalem, spring, A.D. 54, and "saluted the church."
It is argued, from considerations founded on the suspension of navigation, during the winter months, that the festival was probably the Pentecost. From Jerusalem, the apostle went almost immediately down to Antioch, thus, returning to the same place from which he had started with Silas.
Third missionary journey, including the stay at Ephesus. A.D. 54-58. Act_18:23; Act_21:17. — The great Epistles which belong to this period, those to the Galatians, Corinthians and Romans, show how the "Judaizing" question exercised, at this time, the apostle's mind. St. Paul "spent some time" at Antioch, and during this stay as we are inclined to believe, his collision with St. Peter, Gal_2:11-14, took place.
When he left Antioch, he "went over all the country of Galatia and Phrygia in order, strengthening all the disciples," and giving orders concerning the collection for the saints. 1Co_18:1 . It is probable that the Epistle to the Galatians was written soon after this visit — A.D. 56-57. This letter was in all probability sent from Ephesus. This was the goal of the apostle's journeyings through Asia Minor.
He came down to Ephesus, from the upper districts of Phrygia. Here, he entered upon his usual work. He went into the synagogue, and, for three months, he spoke openly, disputing and persuading concerning "the kingdom of God." At the end of this time, the obstinacy and opposition of some of the Jews led him to give up frequenting the synagogue, and he established the believers as a separate society meeting, "in the school of Tyrannus." This continued for two years.
During this time, many things occurred of which the historian of the Acts chooses two examples, the triumph over magical arts, and the great disturbance raised by the silversmiths who made shrines Diana — among which we are to note further, the writing of the First Epistle to the Corinth — A.D. 57.
Before leaving Ephesus, Paul went into Macedonia, where he met Titus, who brought him news of the state of the Corinthian church. Thereupon, he wrote the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, A.D. 57, and sent it, by the hands of Titus and two other brethren, to Corinth. After writing this Epistle, St. Paul travelled throughout Macedonia, perhaps to the borders of Illyricum, Rom_15:19, and then went to Corinth. The narrative in the Acts tells us that "when he had gone over those parts (Macedonia), and had given them much exhortation, he came into Greece, and there abode three months." Act_20:2-3.
There is only one incident which we can connect, with this visit to Greece, but that is a very important one — the writing of his Epistle to the Romans, A.D. 58. That this was written, at this time from Corinth, appears from passages in the Epistle itself, and has never been doubted. The letter is a substitute for the personal visit which he had longed, "for many years," to pay. Before his departure from Corinth, St. Paul was joined again by St. Luke, as we infer from the change in the narrative, from the third to the first person. He was bent on making a journey to Jerusalem, for a special purpose, and within a limited time. With this view, he was intending to go by sea to Syria. But he was made aware of some plot of the Jews for his destruction, to be carried out through this voyage; and he determined to evade their malice, by changing his route.
Several brethren were associated with him in this expedition, the bearers no doubt, of the collections made in all the churches, for the poor at Jerusalem. These were sent on by sea, and probably, the money with them, to Troas, where they were to await Paul. He, accompanied by Luke, went northward through Macedonia. Whilst the vessel which conveyed the rest of the party sailed from Troas to Assos, Paul gained some time by making the journey by land.
At Assos, he went on board again. Coasting along by Mitylene, Chios, Samos and Trogyllium, they arrived at Miletus. At Miletus, however, there was time to send to Ephesus, and the elders of the church were invited to come down to him there. This meeting is made the occasion for recording another characteristic and representative address of St. Paul. Act_20:18-35. The course of the voyage from Miletas was by Coos and Rhodes to Patara, and from Patara, in another vessel, past Cyprus to Tyre.
Here Paul and his company spent seven days. From Tyre, they sailed to Ptolemais, where they spent one day, and from Ptolemais proceeded, apparently by land, to Caesarea. They now "tarried many days" at Caesarea. During this interval, the prophet Agabus, Act_11:28, came down from Jerusalem, and crowned the previous intimations of danger with a prediction expressively delivered. At this stage, a final effort was made to dissuade Paul from going up to Jerusalem, by the Christians of Caesarea , and by his travelling companions. After a while, they went up to Jerusalem, and were gladly received by the brethren. This is St. Paul's fifth an last visit to Jerusalem.
St. Paul's imprisonment: Jerusalem. Spring, A.D. 58. — He who was thus conducted into Jerusalem by a company of anxious friends had become, by this time, a man of considerable fame among his countrymen. He was widely known as one who had taught with pre-eminent boldness, that a way into God's favor was opened to the Gentiles, and that this way did not lie through the door of the Jewish law. He had, thus, roused against himself the bitter enmity of that unfathomable Jewish pride, which was almost as strong in some of those, who had professed the faith of
Jesus, as in their unconverted brethren.
He was now approaching a crisis in the long struggle, and the shadow of it has been made to rest upon his mind , throughout his journey to Jerusalem. He came "ready to die for the name of the Lord Jesus," but he came expressly to prove himself a faithful Jew, and this purpose is shown at every point of the history.
Certain Jews from "Asia," who had come up for the Pentecostal Feast, and who had a personal knowledge of Paul, saw him in the Temple. They set upon him at once, and stirred up the people against him. There was instantly a great commotion; Paul was dragged out of the Temple, the doors of which were immediately shut, and the people having him in their hands, were going to kill him.
Paul was rescued from the violence of the multitude by the Roman officer, who made him his own prisoner, causing him to be chained to two soldiers, and then proceeded to inquire who he was and what he had done. The inquiry only elicited confused outcries, and the "chief captain" seems to have imagined that the apostle might perhaps be a certain Egyptian pretender who recently stirred up a considerable rising of the people.
The account in Act_21:34-40 tells us, with graphic touches, how St. Paul obtained leave and opportunity to address the people in a discourse which is related at length. Until the hated word of a mission to the Gentiles had been spoken, the Jews had listened to the speaker. "Away with such a fellow from the earth," the multitude now shouted; "it is not fit that he should live."
The Roman commander seeing the tumult that arose might well conclude that St. Paul had committed some heinous offence; and carrying him off, he gave orders that he should be forced by scourging to confess his crime. Again the apostle took advantage of his Roman citizenship to protect himself from such an outrage. The chief captain set him free from bonds, but, on the next day, called together the chief priests and the Sanhedrin, and brought Paul as a prisoner before them.
On the next day , a conspiracy was formed, which the historian relates, with a singular fullness of detail. More than forty of the Jews bound themselves under a curse, neither to eat nor drink, until they had killed Paul. The plot was discovered, and St. Paul was hurried away from Jerusalem. The chief captain, Claudius Lysias, determined to send him to Caesarea to Felix, the governor or procurator of Judea. He, therefore, put him in charge of a strong guard of soldiers, who took him by night as far as Antipatris. From thence, a smaller detachment conveyed him to Caesarea, where they delivered up their prisoner , into the hands of the governor.
Imprisonment at Caesarea. A.D. 58-60. — St. Paul was, henceforth, to the end of the period embraced in the Acts, if not to the end of his life, in Roman custody. This custody was, in fact, a protection to him, without which, he would have fallen a victim to the animosity of the Jews. He seems to have been treated throughout, with humanity and consideration. The governor before whom he was now to be tried, according to Tacitus and Josephus, was a mean and dissolute tyrant.
After hearing St, Paul's accusers and the apostle's defence, Felix made an excuse for putting off the matter, and gave orders that the prisoner should be treated with indulgence, and that his friends should be allowed free access to him. After a while, he heard him again. St. Paul remained in custody, until Felix left the province. The unprincipled governor had good reason to seek to ingratiate himself with the Jews; and to please them, he handed over Paul, as an untried prisoner, to his successor, Festus.
Upon his arrival in the province, Festus went up without delay from Caesarea to Jerusalem, and the leading Jews seized the opportunity of asking that Paul might be brought up there for trial, intending to assassinate him by the way. But Festus would not comply with their request, He invited them to follow him on his speedy return to Caesarea, and a trial took place there, closely resembling that before Felix.
"They had certain questions against him," Festus says to Agrippa, "of their own superstition, (or religion), and of one Jesus, who was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive. And, being puzzled for my part, as to such inquiries, I asked him whether he would go to Jerusalem to be tried there."
This proposal, not a very likely one to be accepted, was the occasion of St. Paul's appeal to Caesar. The appeal having been allowed, Festus reflected that he must send with the prisoner, a report of "the crimes laid against him." He, therefore, took advantage of an opportunity, which offered itself in a few days to seek some help in the matter. The Jewish prince, Agrippa, arrived with his sister, Bernice, on a visit to the new governor. To him, Festus communicated his perplexity. Agrippa expressed a desire to hear Paul himself.
Accordingly, Paul conducted his defence before the king; and when it was concluded, Festus and Agrippa, and their companions, consulted together, and came to the conclusion that the accused was guilty of nothing that deserved death or imprisonment. Agrippa's final answer to the inquiry of Festus was, "This man might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed unto Caesar."
The voyage to Rome and shipwreck. Autumn, A.D. 60. — No formal trial of St. Paul had yet taken place. After a while, arrangements were made to carry "Paul and certain other prisoners," in the custody of a centurion named Julius, into Italy; and amongst the company, whether by favor or for any other reason, we find the historian of the Acts, who in chapters 27 and 28 gives a graphic description of the voyage to Rome and the shipwreck on the Island of Melita or Malta. After a three-months stay in Malta, the soldiers and their prisoners left in an Alexandria ship for Italy.
They touched at Syracuse, where they stayed three days, and at Rhegium, from which place, they were carried with a fair wind to Puteoli, where they left their ship and the sea. At Puteoli, they found "brethren," for it was an important place, and especially a chief port for the traffic, between Alexandria and Rome; and by these brethren, they were exhorted to stay a while with them. Permission seems to have been granted by the centurion; and whilst they were spending seven days at Puteoli, news of the apostle's arrival was sent to Rome. (Spring, A.D. 61).
First imprisonment of St. Paul at Rome. A.D. 61-63. — On their arrival at Rome, the centurion delivered up his prisoners into the proper custody: that of the praetorian prefect. Paul was at once treated with special consideration, and was allowed to dwell by himself, with the soldier who guarded him. He was now , therefore, free "to preach the gospel to them that were at Rome also;" and proceeded, without delay, to act upon his rule — "to the Jews first,"
But as of old, the reception of his message by the Jews was not favorable. He turned, therefore, again to the Gentiles, and for two years, he dwelt in his own hired house. These are the last words of the Acts. But St. Paul's career is not abruptly closed. Before he himself fades out of our sight, in the twilight of ecclesiastical tradition, we have letters written by himself which contribute some particulars to his biography.
Period of the later Epistles. — To that imprisonment to which St. Luke has introduced us — the imprisonment which lasted for such a tedious time, though tempered by much indulgence — belongs the noble group of letters to Philemon, to the Colossians, to the Ephesians and to the Philippians. The three former of these were written at one time, and sent by the same messengers. Whether that to the Philippians was written before or after these, we cannot determine; but the tone of it seems to imply that a crisis was approaching, and therefore, it is commonly regarded us the latest of the four.
In this Epistle, St. Paul twice expresses a confident hope that, before long, he may be able to visit the Philippians in person. Php_1:25; Php_2:24. Whether this hope was fulfilled or not, has been the occasion of much controversy. According to the general opinion, the apostle was liberated from imprisonment, at the end of two years, having been acquitted by Nero, A.D. 63, and left Rome soon after writing the letter to the Philippians. He spent some time in visits to Greece, Asia Minor and Spain, and during the latter part of this time, wrote the letters (first Epistles) to Timothy and Titus from Macedonia, A.D. 65. After these were written, he was apprehended again and sent to Rome.
Second imprisonment at Rome. A.D. 65-67. — The apostle appears now, to have been treated, not as an honorable state prisoner, but as a felon, 2Ti_2:9, but he was allowed to write the second letter to Timothy, A.D. 67. For what remains, we have the concurrent testimony of ecclesiastical antiquity, that he was beheaded at Rome, by Nero, in the great persecutions of the Christians, by that emperor, A.D. 67 or 68.
Smith's Bible Dictionary
By Dr. William Smith.Published in 1863

was born at Tarsus, the principal city of Cilicia, and was by birth both a Jew and a citizen of Rome, Act_21:39; Act_22:25. He was of the tribe of Benjamin, and of the sect of the Pharisees, Php_3:5. In his youth he appears to have been taught the art of tent making, Act_18:3; but we must remember that among the Jews of those days a liberal education was often, accompanied by instruction in some mechanical trade. It is probable that St. Paul laid the foundation of those literary attainments, for which he was so eminent in the future part of his life, at his native city of Tarsus; and he afterward studied the law of Moses, and the traditions of the elders, at Jerusalem, under Gamaliel, a celebrated rabbi, Act_22:4. St. Paul is not mentioned in the Gospels; nor is it known whether he ever heard our Saviour preach, or saw him perform any miracle. His name first occurs in the account given in the Acts of the martyrdom of St. Stephen, A.D. 34, to which he is said to have consented, Act_8:1 : he is upon that occasion called a young man; but we are no where informed what was then his precise age. The death of St. Stephen was followed by a severe persecution of the church at Jerusalem, and St. Paul became distinguished among its enemies by his activity and violence, Act_8:3. Not contented with displaying his hatred to the Gospel in Judea, he obtained authority from the high priest to go to Damascus, and to bring back with him bound any Christians whom he might find in that city. As he was upon his journey thither, A.D. 35, his miraculous conversion took place, the circumstances of which are recorded in Acts ix, and are frequently alluded to in his epistles, 1Co_15:9; Gal_1:13; 1Ti_1:12-13.
Soon after St. Paul was baptized at Damascus, he went into Arabia; but we are not informed how long he remained there. He returned to Damascus; and being supernaturally qualified to be a preacher of the Gospel, he immediately entered upon his ministry in that city. The boldness and success with which he enforced the truths of Christianity so irritated the unbelieving Jews, that they resolved to put him to death, Act_9:23; but, this design being known, the disciples conveyed him privately out of Damascus, and he went to Jerusalem, A.D. 38. The Christians of Jerusalem, remembering St. Paul's former hostility to the Gospel, and having no authentic account of any change in his sentiments or conduct, at first refused to receive him; but being assured by Barnabas of St. Paul's real conversion, and of his exertions at Damascus, they acknowledged him as a disciple, Act_9:27. He remained only fifteen days among them, Gal_1:18; and he saw none of the Apostles except St. Peter and St. James. It is probable that the other Apostles were at this time absent from Jerusalem, exercising their ministry at different places. The zeal with which St. Paul preached at Jerusalem had the same effect as at Damascus: he became so obnoxious to the Hellenistic Jews, that they began to consider how they might kill him, Act_9:29; which when the brethren knew, they thought it right that he should leave the city. They accompanied him to Caesarea, and thence he went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, where he preached the faith which once he destroyed, Gal_1:21; Gal_1:23.
Hitherto the preaching of St. Paul, as well as of the other Apostles and teachers, had been confined to the Jews; but the conversion of Cornelius, the first Gentile convert, A.D. 40, having convinced all the Apostles that “to the Gentiles, also, God had granted repentance unto life,” St. Paul was soon after conducted by Barnabas from Tarsus, which had probably been the principal place of his residence since he left Jerusalem, and they both began to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles at Antioch, A.D. 42, Act_11:25. Their preaching was attended with great success. The first Gentile church was now established at Antioch; and in that city, and at this time, the disciples were first called Christians, Act_11:26. When these two Apostles had been thus employed about a year, a prophet called Agabus predicted an approaching famine, which would affect the whole land of Judea. Upon the prospect of this calamity, the Christians of Antioch made a contribution for their brethren in Judea, and sent the money to the elders at Jerusalem by St. Paul and Barnabas, A.D. 44, Act_11:28, &c. This famine happened soon after in the fourth or fifth year of the Emperor Claudius. It is supposed that St. Paul had the vision, mentioned in Act_22:17, while he was now at Jerusalem this second time after his conversion.
St. Paul and Barnabas, having executed their commission, returned to Antioch; and soon after their arrival in that city they were separated, by the express direction of the Holy Ghost, from the other Christian teachers and prophets, for the purpose of carrying the glad tidings of the Gospel to the Gentiles of various countries, Act_13:1. Thus divinely appointed to this important office, they set out from Antioch, A.D. 45, and preached the Gospel successively at Salamis and Paphos, two cities of the isle of Cyprus, at Perga in Pamphylia, Antioch in Pisidia, and at Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe, three cities of Lycaonia. They returned to Antioch in Syria, A.D. 47, nearly by the same route. This first apostolical journey of St. Paul, in which he was accompanied and assisted by Barnabas, is supposed to have occupied about two years; and in the course of it many, both Jews and Gentiles, were converted to the Gospel.
Paul and Barnabas continued at Antioch a considerable time; and while they were there, a dispute arose between them and some Jewish Christians of Judea. These men asserted, that the Gentile converts could not obtain salvation through the Gospel, unless they were circumcised; Paul and Barnabas maintained the contrary opinion, Act_15:1-2. This dispute was carried on for some time with great earnestness; and it being a question in which not only the present but all future Gentile converts were concerned, it was thought right that St. Paul and Barnabas, with some others, should go up to Jerusalem to consult the Apostles and elders concerning it. They passed through Phenicia and Samaria, and upon their arrival at Jerusalem, A.D. 49, a council was assembled for the purpose of discussing this important point, Gal_2:1. St. Peter and St. James the less were present, and delivered their sentiments, which coincided with those of St. Paul and Barnabas; and after much deliberation it was agreed, that neither circumcision, nor conformity to any part of the ritual law of Moses, was necessary in Gentile converts; but that it should be recommended to them to abstain from certain specified things prohibited by that law, lest their indulgence in them should give offence to their brethren of the circumcision, who were still very zealous for the observance of the ceremonial part of their ancient religion. This decision, which was declared to have the sanction of the Holy Ghost, was communicated to the Gentile Christians of Syria and Cilicia, by a letter written in the name of the Apostles, elders, and whole church at Jerusalem, and conveyed by Judas and Silas, who accompanied St. Paul and Barnabas to Antioch for that purpose.
St. Paul, having preached a short time at Antioch, proposed to Barnabas that they should visit the churches which they had founded in different cities, Act_15:36. Barnabas readily consented; but while they were preparing for the journey, there arose a disagreement between them, which ended in their separation. In consequence of this dispute with Barnabas, St. Paul chose Silas for his companion, and they set out together from Antioch, A.D. 50. They travelled through Syria and Cilicia, confirming the churches, and then came to Derbe and Lystra, Acts 16. Thence they went through Phrygia and Galatia; and, being desirous of going into Asia Propria, or the Proconsular Asia, they were forbidden by the Holy Ghost. They therefore went into Mysia; and, not being permitted by the Holy Ghost to go into Bithynia as they had intended, they went to Troas. While St. Paul was there, a vision appeared to him in the night: “There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help up.” St. Paul knew this vision to be a command from Heaven, and in obedience to it immediately sailed from Troas to Samothracia, and the next day to Neapolis, a city of Thrace; and thence he went to Philippi, the principal city of that part of Macedonia. St. Paul remained some time at Philippi, preaching the Gospel; and several occurrences which took place in that city, are recorded in Acts 17. Thence he went through Amphipolis and Apollonia to Thessalonica, Acts xvii, where he preached in the synagogues of the Jews on three successive Sabbath days. Some of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles of both sexes, embraced the Gospel; but the unbelieving Jews, moved with envy and indignation at the success of St. Paul's preaching, excited a great disturbance in the city, and irritated the populace so much against him, that the brethren, anxious for his safety, thought it prudent to send him to Berea, where he met with a better reception than he had experienced at Thessalonica. The Bereans heard his instructions with attention and candour, and having compared his doctrines with the ancient Scriptures, and being satisfied that Jesus, whom he preached, was the promised Messiah, they embraced the Gospel; but his enemies at Thessalonica, being informed of his success at Berea, came thither, and, by their endeavours to stir up the people against him, compelled him to leave that city also. He went thence to Athens, where he delivered that discourse recorded in Acts 17. From Athens, Paul went to Corinth, Acts 18, A.D. 51, and lived in the house of Aquila and Priscilla, two Jews, who, being compelled to leave Rome in consequence of Claudius's edict against the Jews, had lately settled at Corinth. St. Paul was induced to take up his residence with them, because, like himself, they were tent makers. At first he preached to the Jews in their synagogue; but upon their violently opposing his doctrine, he declared that from that time he would preach to the Gentiles only; and, accordingly, he afterward delivered his instructions in the house of one Justus, who lived near the synagogue. Among the few Jews who embraced the Gospel, were Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, and his family; and many of the Gentile Corinthians “hearing believed, and were baptized.” St. Paul was encouraged in a vision, to persevere in his exertions to convert the inhabitants of Corinth; and although he met with great opposition and disturbance from the unbelieving Jews, and was accused by them before Gallio, the Roman governor of Achaia, he continued there a year and six months, “teaching the word of God.” During this time he supported himself by working at his trade of tent making, that he might not be burdensome to the disciples. From Corinth St. Paul sailed into Syria, and thence he went to Ephesus: thence to Caesarea; and is supposed to have arrived at Jerusalem just before the feast of pentecost. After the feast he went to Antioch, A.D. 53; and this was the conclusion of his second apostolical journey, in which he was accompanied by Silas; and in part of it, Luke and Timothy were also with him.
Having made a short stay at Antioch, St. Paul set out upon his third apostolical journey. He passed through Galatia, and Phrygia, A.D. 54, confirming the Christians of those countries; and thence, according to his promise, he went to Ephesus, Acts 19. He found there some disciples, who had only been baptized with John's baptism: he directed that they should be baptized in the name of Jesus, and then he communicated to them the Holy Ghost. He preached for the space of three months in the synagogue; but the Jews being hardened beyond conviction, and speaking reproachfully of the Christian religion before the multitude, he left them; and from that time he delivered his instructions in the school of a person called Tyrannus, who was probably a Gentile. St. Paul continued to preach in this place about two years, so that all the inhabitants of that part of Asia Minor “heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.” He also performed many miracles at Ephesus; and not only great numbers of people were converted to Christianity, but many also of those who in this superstitious city used incantations and magical arts, professed their belief in the Gospel, and renounced their former practices by publicly burning their books. Previous to the disturbance raised by Demetrius, Paul had intended to continue at Ephesus till Titus should return, whom he had sent to inquire into the state of the church at Corinth, 2Co_12:18. He now thought it prudent to go from Ephesus immediately, Acts 20, A.D. 56; and having taken an affectionate leave of the disciples, he set out for Troas, 2Co_2:12-13, where he expected to meet Titus. Titus, however, from some cause which is not known, did not come to Troas; and Paul was encouraged to pass over into Macedonia, with the hope of making converts. St. Paul, after preaching in Macedonia, receiving from the Christians of that country liberal contributions for their poor brethren in Judea, 2Co_8:1, went to Corinth, A.D. 57, and remained there about three months. The Christians also of Corinth, and of the rest of Achaia, contributed to the relief of their brethren in Judea. St. Paul's intention was to have sailed from Corinth into Syria; but being informed that some unbelieving Jews, who had discovered his intention, lay in wait for him, he changed his plan, passed through Macedonia, and sailed from Philippi to Troas in five days, A.D. 58. He stayed at Troas seven days, and preached to the Christians on the first day of the week, the day on which they were accustomed to meet for the purpose of religious worship. From Troas he went by land to Assos; and thence he sailed to Mitylene; and from Mitylene to Miletus. Being desirous of reaching Jerusalem before the feast of pentecost, he would not allow time to go to Ephesus, and therefore he sent for the elders of the Ephesian church to Miletus, and gave them instructions, and prayed with them. He told them that he should see them no more, which impressed them with the deepest sorrow. From Miletus he sailed by Cos, Rhodes, and Patara in Lycia, to Tyre, Acts 21. Finding some disciples at Tyre, he stayed with them several days, and then went to Ptolemais, and thence to Caesarea. While St. Paul was at Caesarea, the Prophet Agabus foretold by the Holy Ghost, that St. Paul, if he went to Jerusalem, would suffer much from the Jews. This prediction caused great uneasiness to St. Paul's friends, and they endeavoured to dissuade him from his intention of going thither. St. Paul, however, would not listen to their entreaties, but declared that he was ready to die at Jerusalem, if it were necessary, for the name of the Lord Jesus. Seeing him thus resolute, they desisted from their importunities, and accompanied him to Jerusalem, where he is supposed to have arrived just before the feast of pentecost, A.D. 58. This may be considered as the end of St. Paul's third apostolical journey.
St. Paul was received by the Apostles and other Christians at Jerusalem with great joy and affection; and his account of the success of his ministry, and of the collections which he had made among the Christians of Macedonia and Achaia, for the relief of their brethren in Judea, afforded them much satisfaction; but not long after his arrival at Jerusalem, some Jews of Asia, who had probably in their own country witnessed St. Paul's zeal in spreading Christianity among the Gentiles, seeing him one day in the temple, endeavoured to excite a tumult, by crying out that he was the man who was aiming to destroy all distinction between Jew and Gentile; who taught things contrary to the law of Moses; and who had polluted the holy temple, by bringing into it uncircumcised Heathens. This representation did not fail to enrage the multitude against St. Paul; they seized him, dragged him out of the temple, beat him, and were upon the point of putting him to death, when he was rescued out of their hands by Lysias, a Roman tribune, and the principal military officer then at Jerusalem. What followed,—his defence before Felix and Agrippa,—his long detention at Caesarea, and his appeal to the emperor, which occasioned his voyage to Rome, are all circumstantially stated in the latter chapters of the Acts. Upon his arrival at Rome, St. Paul was committed to the care of the captain of the guard, A.D. 61. The Scriptures do not inform us whether he was ever tried before Nero, who was at this time emperor of Rome; and the learned are much divided in their opinion upon that point. St. Luke only says, “Paul was suffered to dwell by himself with a soldier that kept him. And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him.” During his confinement he converted some Jews resident at Rome, and many Gentiles, and, among the rest, several persons belonging to the emperor's household, Php_4:22.
The Scripture history ends with the release of St. Paul from his two years' imprisonment at Rome, A.D. 63; and no ancient author has left us any particulars of the remaining part of this Apostle's life. It seems probable, that, immediately after he recovered his liberty, he went to Jerusalem; and that afterward he travelled through Asia Minor, Crete, Macedonia, and Greece, confirming his converts, and regulating the affairs of the different churches which he had planted in those countries. Whether at this time he also preached the Gospel in Spain, as some have imagined, is very uncertain. It was the unanimous tradition of the church, that St. Paul returned to Rome, that he underwent a second imprisonment there, and at last was put to death by the Emperor Nero. Tacitus and Suetonius have mentioned a dreadful fire which happened at Rome in the time of Nero. It was believed, though probably without any reason, that the emperor himself was the author of that fire; but to remove the odium from himself, he chose to attribute it to the Christians; and, to give some colour to that unjust imputation, he persecuted them with the utmost cruelty. In this persecution St. Peter and Paul suffered martyrdom, probably, A.D. 65; and if we may credit Sulpitius Severus, a writer of the fifth century, the former was crucified, and the latter beheaded.
St. Paul was a person of great natural abilities, of quick apprehension, strong feelings, firm resolution, and irreproachable life. He was conversant with Grecian and Jewish literature; and gave early proofs of an active and zealous disposition. If we may be allowed to consider his character independent of his supernatural endowments, we may pronounce that he was well qualified to have risen to distinction and eminence, and that he was by nature peculiarly adapted to the high office to which it pleased God to call him. As a minister of the Gospel, he displayed the most unwearied perseverance and undaunted courage. He was deterred by no difficulty or danger, and endured a great variety of persecutions with patience and cheerfulness. He gloried in being thought worthy of suffering for the name of Jesus, and continued with unabated zeal to maintain the truth of Christianity against its bitterest and most powerful enemies. He was the principal instrument under Providence of spreading the Gospel among the Gentiles; and we have seen that his labours lasted through many years, and reached over a considerable extent of country. Though emphatically styled the great Apostle of the Gentiles, he began his ministry, in almost every city, by preaching in the synagogue of the Jews, and though he owed by far the greater part of his persecutions to the opposition and malice of that proud and obstinate people, whose resentment he particularly incurred by maintaining that the Gentiles were to be admitted to an indiscriminate participation of the benefits of the new dispensation, yet it rarely happened in any place, that some of the Jews did not yield to his arguments, and embrace the Gospel. He watched with paternal care over the churches which he had founded; and was always ready to strengthen the faith, and regulate the conduct of his converts, by such directions and advice as their circumstances might require.
The exertions of St. Paul in the cause of Christianity were not confined to personal instruction: he also wrote fourteen epistles to individuals or churches which are now extant, and form a part of our canon. These letters furnish evidence of the soundness and sobriety of his judgment. His caution in distinguishing between the occasional suggestions of inspiration, and the ordinary exertions of his natural understanding, is without example in the history of enthusiasm. His morality is every where calm, pure, and rational; adapted to the condition, the activity, and the business of social life, and of its various relations; free from the overscrupulousness and austerities of superstition, and from, what was more perhaps to be apprehended, the abstractions of quietism, and the soarings or extravagancies of fanaticism. His judgment concerning a hesitating conscience, his opinion of the moral indifferency of many actions, yet of the prudence and even the duty of compliance, where non-compliance would produce evil effects upon the minds of the persons who observed it, are all in proof of the calm and discriminating character of his mind; and the universal applicability of his precepts affords strong presumption of his inspiration. What Lord Lyttleton has remarked of the preference ascribed by St. Paul to rectitude of principle above every other religious accomplishment, is weighty: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal,” &c, 1Co_13:1-3. Did ever enthusiast prefer that universal benevolence, meant by charity here, (which, we may add, is attainable by every man,) to faith, and to miracles, to those religious opinions which he had embraced, and to those supernatural graces and gifts which he imagined he had acquired, nay, even to the merit of martyrdom? Is it not the genius of enthusiasm to set moral virtues infinitely below the merit of faith; and of all moral virtues to value that least which is most particularly enforced by St. Paul, a spirit of candour, moderation, and peace? Certainly, neither the temper nor the opinions of a man subject to fanatic delusions are to be found in this passage. His letters, indeed, every where discover great zeal and earnestness in the cause in which he was engaged; that is to say, he was convinced of the truth of what he taught; he was deeply impressed, but not more so than the occasion merited, with a sense of its importance. This produces a corresponding animation and solicitude in the exercise of his ministry. But would not these considerations, supposing them to have been well founded, have holden the same place, and produced the same effect, in a mind the strongest and the most sedate? Here, then, we have a man of liberal attainments, and in other respects of sound judgment, who had addicted his life to the service of the Gospel. We see him in the prosecution of his purpose, travelling from country to country, enduring every species of hardship, encountering every extremity of danger, assaulted by the populace, punished by the magistrates, scourged, beaten, stoned, left for dead; expecting, wherever he came, a renewal of the same treatment, and the same dangers; yet, when driven from one city, preaching in the next; spending his whole time in the employment; sacrificing to it his pleasures, his ease, his safety; persisting in this course to old age, unaltered by the experience of perverseness, ingratitude, prejudice, desertion; unsubdued by anxiety, want, labour, persecutions; unwearied by long confinement; undismayed by the prospect of death. Such was St. Paul; and such were “the proofs of Apostleship found in him.”
The following remarks of Hug on the character of this Apostle are equally just and eloquent: This most violent man, having such terrible propensities, whose turbulent impulses rendered him of a most enterprising character, would have become nothing better than a John of Gishala, a blood- intoxicated zealot, εμπνεων απειλης και φονου, breathing out threatenings and slaughter, Act_9:1, had not his whole soul been changed. The harsh tone of his mind inclined him to the principles of Pharisaism, which had all the appearance of severity, and was the predominant party among the Jews. Nature had not withholden from him the external endowments of eloquence, although he afterward spoke very modestly of them. At Lystra he was deemed the tutelar god of eloquence. This character, qualified for great things, but, not master of himself from excess of internal power, was an extreme of human dispositions, and, according to the natural course, was prone to absolute extremities. His religion was a destructive zeal, his anger was fierceness, his fury required victims. A ferocity so boisterous did not psychologically qualify him for a Christian nor a philanthropist; but, least of all, for a quietly enduring man. He, nevertheless, became all this on his conversion to Christianity and each bursting emotion of his mind subsided directly into a well regulated and noble character. Formerly hasty and irritable, now only spirited and resolved; formerly violent, now full of energy and enterprising: once ungovernably refractory against every thing which obstructed him, now only persevering; once fanatical and morose, now only serious; once cruel, now only firm; once a harsh zealot, now fearing God; formerly unrelenting, deaf to sympathy and commiseration, now himself acquainted with tears, which he had seen without effect in others. Formerly the friend of none, now the brother of mankind, benevolent, compassionate, sympathizing; yet never weak, always great; in the midst of sadness and sorrow manly and noble; so he showed himself at his deeply moving departure from Miletus, Acts 20 : it is like the departure of Moses, like the resignation of Samuel, sincere and heart-felt, full of self-recollection, and in the midst of pain full of dignity. His writings are a true expression of this character, with regard to the tone predominant in them. Severity, manly seriousness, and sentiments which ennoble the heart, are interchanged with mildness, affability, and sympathy: and their transitions are such as nature begets in the heart of a man penetrated by his subject, noble and discerning. He exhorts, reproaches, and consoles again; he attacks with energy, urges with impetuosity, then again he speaks kindly to the soul; he displays his finer feelings for the welfare of others, his forbearance and his fear of afflicting any body: all as the subject, time, opposite dispositions, and circumstances require. There prevails throughout in them an importuning language, an earnest and lively communication. Rom_1:26-32, is a comprehensive and vigorous description of morals. His antitheses, Rom_2:21-24; 2Co_4:8-12; 2Co_6:9-11; 2 Corinthians 9:29-30; his enumerations, 1Co_13:4-10; 2Co_6:4-7; 2Ti_3:1-5; Eph_4:4-7; Eph_5:3-6; his gradations, Rom_8:29-30; Tit_3:3-4; the interrogations, exclamations, and comparisons, sometimes animate his language even so as to give a visible existence to it. That, however, which we principally perceive in Paul, and from which his whole actions and operations become intelligible, is the peculiar impression which the idea of a universal religion has wrought upon his mind. This idea of establishing a religion for the world had not so profoundly engrossed any soul, no where kindled so much vigour, and projected it into such a constant energy. In this he was no man's scholar; this he had immediately received from the Spirit of his Master; it was a spark of the divine light which enkindled him. It was this which never allowed him to remain in Palestine and in Syria, which so powerfully impelled him to foreign parts.
The portion of some others was Judea and its environs: but his mission was directed to the nations, and his allotment was the whole of the Heathen world. Thus he began his career among the different nations of Asia Minor, and when this limit became also too confined for him, he went with equal confidence to Europe, among other nations, ordinances, sciences, and customs; and here likewise he finally with the same indefatigable spirit circulated his plans, even to the pillars of Hercules. In this manner Paul prepared the overthrow of two religions, that of his ancestors, and that of the Heathens.
Biblical and Theological Dictionary by Richard Watson
PRINTER 1849.

Through his evangelistic activity, church leadership, theological insights and extensive writings, Paul had an immeasurable influence on the development of Christianity. He spread the gospel and planted churches regardless of national or racial barriers, and in so doing he changed the traditional views of God-fearing people. He interpreted Christ’s life and developed Christ’s teachings in a way that provided a firm theological framework for Christian faith and practice.
Background and conversion
Paul’s original name was Saul. He was a full-blooded Jew, born in Tarsus in south-east Asia Minor (Act_9:11; Act_22:3; Php_3:5). He inherited from birth the privilege of Roman citizenship (Act_16:37; Act_22:26-28; see ROME), and he grew up to speak, read and write Greek and Hebrew fluently (Act_21:37; Act_21:40). The Greek influence in his education gave him the ability to think clearly and systematically, and the Hebrew influence helped to create in him a character of moral uprightness (Php_3:6).
As a religiously zealous young man, Paul moved to Jerusalem, where he received instruction in the Jewish law according to the strict traditions of the Pharisees. His teacher was the prominent rabbi, Gamaliel (Act_22:3; Act_23:6; Act_26:5). Like all Jewish young men he learnt a trade, in his case, tent-making (Act_18:3).
Zeal for the Jewish law stirred up Paul against the Christians. He considered that Stephen was a rebel against the law and that therefore he deserved execution (Act_6:13; Act_7:58; Act_8:1; Php_3:6). With the support of the Jewish Council (the Sanhedrin), Paul then led the persecution against the Christians, imprisoning men and women alike (Act_8:3; Act_9:1-2; Act_26:10-11; Gal_1:13; 1Ti_1:13).
Paul considered the Christians to be guilty of blasphemy in believing in a Messiah who died on a cross; for a person who died on a cross was under God’s curse (Act_26:11; Gal_3:13). But while on the way to Damascus to capture Christians, Paul had a dramatic experience that changed him completely. Jesus’ personal revelation to Paul convinced him that Jesus was alive (Act_9:3-5; Act_22:14; Act_26:8; Act_26:15; 1Co_9:1). This meant that Jesus was no longer under God’s curse. He had died, not because he was a lawbreaker, but because he willingly bore the curse on behalf of those who were. Jesus’ resurrection was now the unmistakable evidence of God’s approval of him (Rom_1:4; Gal_3:13; Gal_6:14).
Linked with Paul’s conversion was the Lord’s revelation that he intended to use Paul as his messenger to the Gentiles (Act_9:15; Act_26:15-18; Gal_1:11-16). From that time on, Paul never ceased to wonder at the work of God in saving the opponent of Christianity and turning him into an ambassador for Christianity. It gave Paul an appreciation of the grace of God that affected every aspect of his life (1Co_15:8-10; Eph_3:8; 1Ti_1:12-17). (The date of Paul’s conversion was about AD 32.)
Preparation for future ministry
After his conversion, Paul remained for a while in Damascus, trying to convince the Jews that Jesus was Lord and Messiah. Part of the next three years Paul spent in Arabia, after which he returned to Damascus. When violent opposition from the Jews threatened his life, he escaped to Jerusalem (Act_9:22-26; Gal_1:17-18). Most of the Christians in Jerusalem doubted whether Paul’s conversion was genuine. Not so Barnabas. After he introduced Paul to Peter and James the Lord’s brother, the tension eased (Act_9:26-28; Gal_1:19-20). But attempts by the Jews on his life again forced him to flee. He sailed from Caesarea to northern Syria, from where he went overland through Cilicia to Tarsus (Act_9:29-30; Act_22:17-21; Gal_1:21).
Paul’s next visit to Jerusalem was eleven years later (cf. Gal_1:18; Gal_2:1). Little is known of those eleven years, though they must have been important years of preparation for Paul’s future work. Paul spent the final year of this preparation period at Antioch in Syria. In response to an invitation from Barnabas, he had come from Tarsus to help the newly formed Antioch church (Act_11:25-26). At the end of the year, Paul and Barnabas took a gift of money from Antioch to Jerusalem to help the poor Christians there (Act_11:29-30; Gal_2:1).
Peter, John and James the Lord’s brother, as representatives of the Jerusalem church, received the gift from the Antioch church and expressed their complete fellowship with the mission of Paul and Barnabas to the Gentiles (Gal_2:9-10). Paul and Barnabas then returned to Antioch, taking with them the young man John Mark (Act_12:25).
Breaking into new territory
Having a desire to spread the gospel into the unevangelized areas to the west, the Antioch church sent off Paul and Barnabas as its missionaries (Act_13:1-2; about AD 46). Accompanied by John Mark (who had gone with them as their assistant), Paul and Barnabas went first to Cyprus, where they proclaimed the message from one end of the island to the other (Act_13:4-6).

From there the group went to Perga in Asia Minor. At this point John Mark left the other two and returned to Jerusalem (Act_13:13). Paul and Barnabas then moved inland, planting churches in the Galatian towns of Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe (Act_13:14; Act_14:1; Act_14:8; Act_14:20). To strengthen the new churches, they returned to Perga by the same route as they had come, and then sailed back to their home church in Syria (Act_14:21-28).
This trip, commonly referred to as Paul’s first missionary journey, showed how Paul thought carefully about his missionary work. He established some basic patterns, which he followed on later trips as his field of missionary activity expanded.
For example, Paul set himself certain guidelines concerning how and where he preached. He felt an obligation to preach to the Jews first, since their entire national history had prepared them to receive the Christian gospel (Act_13:14; Act_13:46; Rom_1:16).
On entering a town, Paul usually preached first in the synagogue, where God-fearing Gentiles, as well as Jews, provided him with a well prepared audience (Act_13:14; Act_13:43-44; Act_13:48; Act_14:1; Act_17:1-4; Act_17:10). His preaching in the synagogue was usually based on the Old Testament (Act_13:15-41). His preaching in other places, where people knew nothing of the Old Testament, was usually based on the more general revelation of God in the natural creation and the human conscience (Act_14:12-18; Act_17:17-31; Rom_1:19-20; Rom_2:14-16).
Paul’s aim was not merely to preach the gospel or make converts, but to bring people into a relationship with Jesus Christ that would change their lives. The life of Christ was to be reproduced in the lives of Christ’s people (2Co_5:17; Eph_4:17-24; Col_2:6-7; Col_3:1-4). However, Paul did not leave these people to live in isolation. In each locality he built them into a church, or body, where the lives of all would be enriched as they contributed to, and shared in, the life of the body (1Co_12:12-14; see CHURCH). From the Christians within each church, Paul appointed suitable people as elders, in order to give leadership to the church (Act_14:23; Act_20:28; see ELDER).
As independent units, each of them answerable to Christ as head (Eph_1:22-23; Eph_4:15-16), churches then had the responsibility to evangelize the areas round about. For this reason Paul usually chose important towns along the main highways and trade routes as centres in which to plant churches. Once strong churches were established in these centres, the gospel would spread quickly to the surrounding regions (Act_13:49; Act_16:11-12; Act_19:10; Rom_15:19-20; 1Th_1:8).
Trouble from Judaisers
There had always been some Jews in the Jerusalem church who believed that Christians had to follow the regulations of the Jewish law. Some of these people, known as Judaisers, came to Antioch in Syria and taught so persuasively that even Peter and Barnabas were influenced by them (Act_15:1; Gal_2:11-14). Paul quickly dealt with the problem in Antioch, but soon he heard news that the Judaisers had spread their teaching to the new churches of Galatia. Without delay he wrote and sent off the letter that we know as Galatians (Gal_1:6-8; Gal_3:1-3; see GALATIANS, LETTER TO THE).
For the rest of his life Paul opposed unceasingly any attempt to place Christians under the law of Moses. A prominent theme of his teaching was that Christ’s death and resurrection has freed Christians from all forms of bondage, and given them a power to produce a quality of character that no law-code could ever produce (Rom_6:15-18; Rom_7:4; Rom_8:1-4; Gal_5:1; Gal_5:14; Col_2:13-14; 1Ti_4:1-4). He was uncompromising in insisting that, through the grace of God, people are justified and sanctified by faith, regardless of lawkeeping (Rom_3:28; Rom_6:19).
Paul’s careful exposition of the meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection (namely, that it is the basis of the salvation God has provided) was one of his most influential contributions to the development of Christian doctrine (Rom_3:24-25; Rom_5:1-2; Rom_5:6-11; Rom_6:3-11; 1Co_1:21-24; 2Co_5:19-21; Gal_2:20-21; Eph_1:7; Php_3:8-9; Col_1:20; 1Ti_2:5-6; see JUSTIFICATION; SANCTIFICATION).
With these truths clear in mind Paul went to Jerusalem, along with others from Antioch, to deal with the problem that the Judaisers had created (Act_15:1-5). The Jerusalem leaders supported Paul and expressed their disapproval of the Judaisers (Act_15:11; Act_15:19; Act_15:24). They also sent a letter to the troubled churches to reassure them in what they had believed (Act_15:23-33; Act_16:4).
Into Europe
In view of the recent troubles, Paul decided to revisit the churches of Galatia. When he and Barnabas split because of a quarrel concerning whether to take Mark with them, Paul chose Silas as his partner. Soon he added Timothy as a young assistant (Act_15:36-41; Act_16:1-3; about AD 49). This marked the beginning of what is commonly referred to as Paul’s second missionary journey.
Although Paul planned his movements, he was also responsive when God redirected him. As a result he moved from the churches of Galatia up to Troas, from where he sailed to Macedonia in northern Greece (Act_16:6-11). He established churches in Philippi (Act_16:12-40), Thessalonica (Act_17:1-9) and Berea (Act_17:10-14), after which he moved to the southern part of Greece known as Achaia. He preached with only moderate success in Athens (Act_17:15-34), and then moved across to Corinth, where he stayed eighteen months (Act_18:1-11).
During this time in Corinth, Paul wrote the two letters that we know as 1 and 2 Thessalonians (cf. Act_18:5; 1Th_3:1-6; 1Th_5:1; 2Th_1:1; 2Th_2:14; see THESSALONIANS, LETTERS TO THE). Some of the matters Paul dealt with in these letters concerned the return of Jesus Christ. Throughout his writings Paul showed Christ’s return to be the great hope, the assured expectation, the joyous climax towards which Christians move (Rom_8:18; Rom_8:23-24; 1Co_15:20; 1Co_15:51-57; Php_3:20-21; 1Th_1:10; 1Th_3:12-13; 1Th_4:13-18; see HOPE). It is also a sober reminder to Christians that, in view of their future meeting with Christ, they should be careful how they live now (1Co_4:5; 2Co_5:10; 1Th_5:1-11; see SECOND COMING).
From Corinth Paul sailed for Ephesus. After a short stay there, he sailed for Palestine, where he visited the church in Jerusalem before returning to Antioch in Syria (Act_18:18-22).
Developing churches
After a time with the church in Antioch, Paul set out on what is known as his third missionary journey (about AD 53). Once more he visited the churches of Galatia, after which he moved to Ephesus on the west coast of Asia Minor (Act_18:23; Act_19:1). He stayed there three years (Act_20:31), during which time his disciples evangelized much of Asia Minor (Act_19:9-10). His work in Ephesus brought extraordinary results among a wide variety of people (Act_19:9; Act_19:18-20; Act_19:24-26).
The entire record of Paul in Acts is only an outline of his travels and experiences. He suffered many beatings, imprisonments and other hardships not mentioned in Acts (2Co_11:23-28), and met particularly violent opposition in Ephesus (1Co_15:32). During his three years in Ephesus he also had to deal with many problems that had arisen in the Corinthian church. He wrote the church a number of letters, and on one occasion made an urgent trip to Corinth to deal with the more serious matters. (For details of these travels and writings, not mentioned in Acts, see CORINTHIANS, LETTERS TO THE.)
Although Paul based his missionary plan on the establishment of churches in the key cities of a region, the plan would work only if those churches were strong and healthy. For this reason Paul gave repeated instruction to congregations and leaders on the quality of life required within the church. He emphasized the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in people’s lives (2Co_3:17-18; Gal_5:18-24; Eph_5:15-20), the loving consideration that Christians should have for each other (Rom_14:13; Rom_14:19; 1Co_10:24; Gal_6:1-2; Php_2:4), the importance of right teaching in the church (2Co_4:1-2; 1Ti_1:3-5; 1Ti_3:15; 2Ti_2:15; 2Ti_2:24), and the need for the public life of the church to be orderly, God-honouring, and spiritually helpful to all (1Co_11:17-22; 1Co_14:12; 1Co_14:26; 1Co_14:40; 1Ti_5:16-17; Tit_1:5; see CHURCH; GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT; HOLY SPIRIT).
Ephesus and Corinth were the two churches that gave Paul the most concern on these matters. They were also the two places where he stayed longest. After his three years in Ephesus he moved north to Macedonia (Act_20:1), from where he travelled further through the region, possibly as far as Illyricum (Act_20:2; Rom_15:19). He then travelled south to Corinth, where he spent a further three months (Act_20:3).
For some time Paul had been collecting money from Gentile churches to help the poor Christians in the Jerusalem church. He hoped that when he and representatives from the Gentile churches took this money to Jerusalem, it would help towards healing the ill-feeling that many Jerusalemites had towards their Gentile brothers (Rom_15:25-27; 1Co_16:1-4; 2 Corinthians 8; 2 Corinthians 9). Upon completing this mission in Jerusalem, Paul hoped to visit Rome (Act_19:21; Rom_15:28-29).
In preparation for this visit to Rome, Paul wrote (from Corinth) a lengthy letter to the Roman church, setting out in systematic fashion the basics of the Christian faith. If Rome, the centre of the Empire, was to be a centre from which the gospel could spread, the church there had to have a clear understanding of the gospel (Rom_1:10-13; Rom_15:14-16; see ROMANS, LETTER TO THE). Just as Paul had wanted to make sure that the church in Corinth was strong before he moved west to Rome (2Co_10:15-16), so he wanted to be sure that the church in Rome was strong before he moved farther west to Spain (Rom_15:23-24).
With these plans in mind, Paul and his party moved from Corinth back to Macedonia, across to Troas and down to Miletus (Act_20:4-6; Act_20:15). There he met the leaders of the Ephesian church, warning them of troubles that lay ahead for their church (Act_20:17; Act_20:28-30). After visiting Christians in a number of other ports, Paul reached Jerusalem (Act_21:15; about AD 57).
Final break with Jerusalem
The Jerusalem Jews, some Christians among them, had always been suspicious of Paul, mainly because of his refusal to acknowledge the Jewish law as either a way of salvation or a rule of life. Yet Paul was always prepared to adjust to Jewish practices voluntarily, if he thought such action would gain him acceptance with the Jews and give him the opportunity to win them to Christ (1Co_9:19-23). He tried such an approach when he arrived in Jerusalem, but the Jews misunderstood. A riot resulted and Paul ended up in prison (Act_21:17-40; Acts 22). The Roman commander then sent Paul to stand trial before the Jewish Council, but that also finished in a riot (Act_23:1-10). He therefore sent Paul to the provincial governor, Felix, in Caesarea (Act_22:31-33).
Paul’s accusers were unable to convince Felix that Paul was guilty, but Felix left Paul in prison to prevent any further trouble with the Jews (Act_24:22-27). When, after two years, Festus replaced Felix as governor, he continued the injustice. As a result Paul claimed his right as a Roman citizen and appealed to the Emperor for justice (Act_25:10-12). Before Paul left for Rome, a visiting expert on Jewish affairs, Herod Agrippa II, confirmed that Paul was innocent (Act_26:32).
Through one crisis after another, Paul had shown himself to be a person of great physical courage and mental alertness. Earlier, when saved at the last moment from being beaten to death by the rioting Jews in Jerusalem, he had insisted on speaking to those who wanted to murder him, and he even brought them to silence (Act_21:35-40). More than once he surprised the Roman military commander by his quick thinking (Act_21:37-40; Act_22:25-29). Before the Jewish Council his speedy assessment of the situation enabled him to change proceedings to suit himself (Act_23:6). With calm reasoning he convinced Felix of his innocence (Act_24:10-23), and his alertness before Festus enabled him to seize the opportunity to get to Rome at last (Act_25:9-12). He was now sent off to Rome by sea, under a Roman guard (Act_27:1-2).
Although a prisoner, Paul did not hesitate to give advice to the ship’s officers, warning them against sailing further in dangerous weather. They ignored his advice and the ship was soon in trouble (Act_27:10-11; Act_27:14; Act_27:20). When, after two weeks of terror, the ship was about to sink, Paul’s leadership prevented panic and ensured that all on board got to land safely (Act_27:29-38; Act_27:42-44).
The place they landed was the island Malta (Act_28:1). Some months later they arrived in Rome, where Paul was kept under guard while awaiting the hearing of his case (Act_28:11; Act_28:16; about AD 60). He was allowed visitors and could speak openly in making known the Christian gospel (Act_28:17; Act_28:30-31).
Two years in Rome
Among those who came to Rome to see Paul was a Christian from Colossae named Epaphras (Col_1:7-8; Col_4:12). There had been false teaching in the Colossian church, and Epaphras sought advice from Paul concerning how to deal with it (Col_2:16-23). Although Paul had not personally founded the church in Colossae (Col_2:1), he gladly sent off a letter to help the church through its difficulties (see COLOSSIANS, LETTER TO THE).
Another arrival from Colossae was a runaway slave named Onesimus, whose master Philemon owned the house in which the Colossian church met (Philem 1-2). Onesimus had heard the gospel from Paul, become a Christian, and now thought he should return to his master. Paul therefore wrote to Philemon, urging him to welcome Onesimus back (Philem 10-13,16; cf. Col_4:9; see PHILEMON).
Since Paul’s friend Tychicus was to take these letters to Colossae (Col_4:7-9), Paul decided to send additional letters with Tychicus to other churches in the area, such as those at Ephesus and Laodicea (Eph_6:21-22; Col_4:16). False teaching similar to that in Colossae had created difficulties in churches of neighbouring towns. (For details see EPHESIANS, LETTER TO THE.)
Paul possibly wrote his letter to the church in Philippi during this imprisonment in Rome (though he may have written the letter elsewhere, during a previous imprisonment). Paul still had freedom to welcome visitors and speak openly of the kingdom of God (Php_1:12-13; Php_2:19; Php_2:25). He had just received a gift that the Philippian church had sent to him with Epaphroditus, and he wrote to thank them for it (Php_4:18; see PHILIPPIANS, LETTER TO THE).
In these letters from prison, Paul gave some of his richest teaching concerning the person of Jesus Christ. False ideas about Christ had forced Paul to set out clearly some of the important truths that people were forgetting or distorting (Eph_1:17-23; Eph_3:4; Eph_3:14-19; Php_2:5-11; Php_3:8-10; Col_1:15-20; Col_2:8; Col_3:1-4; see JESUS CHRIST).
False ideas had also grown up concerning Christian behaviour and the nature of the church. Paul therefore wrote of the eternal purposes that God was bringing to fulfilment through the church collectively (Eph_1:11-14; Eph_2:11-22; Eph_3:3-12; Eph_4:1-16; Eph_5:27; Php_2:12-16; Col_1:24-28) and through the lives of his people individually (Eph_1:3-10; Eph_5:1-2; Eph_5:21; Eph_6:10-18; Php_1:9-11; Php_2:5; Php_2:12-13; Php_3:12-16; Php_4:8-9; Col_1:9-14; Col_3:12-17).
The final triumph
Throughout his imprisonment Paul had remained hopeful that he would be released and so be able to visit various churches again (Php_1:25; Php_1:27; Php_2:24; Philem 22). It seems certain that he was released and that with Timothy, Titus and others he visited a number of places. One of those places was Crete, where Titus remained for a while to help correct difficulties in the churches (Tit_1:5). Paul also visited Ephesus, where he left Timothy, again to help strengthen the churches after a period of instability (1Ti_1:3; 1Ti_1:19-20; 1Ti_3:12-16; 1Ti_5:20-22; cf. Act_20:29-30).
Paul then moved north to Macedonia (1Ti_1:3; cf. Php_2:24). It was possibly about this time that he received news of affairs in Crete and Ephesus that prompted him to write letters to his two fellow workers (see TITUS, LETTER TO; TIMOTHY, LETTERS TO). Among other places he visited were Corinth, Miletus and Troas (2Ti_4:13; 2Ti_4:20). About this time Paul must have been arrested again, for the next mention of him is as a prisoner in Rome once more. This time he expected not release, but execution (2Ti_2:9; 2Ti_4:6-8).
From prison Paul wrote his last letter, known to us as Second Timothy (see TIMOTHY, LETTERS TO). It seems that Timothy was still in Ephesus and that Mark was in nearby Colossae (cf. Col_4:10). These two men, who had started out with Paul many years earlier as his young assistants, were the two he most wanted with him in his final days (2Ti_4:9; 2Ti_4:11).
With Christianity facing increasing dangers, many of the Christians had deserted Paul, leaving only Luke to support him in his imprisonment (2Ti_1:15; 2Ti_4:10-11; 2Ti_4:16). Paul wanted Timothy and Mark to come as quickly as possible and to bring with them Paul’s books, parchments and warm clothing; for winter was approaching (2Ti_4:13; 2Ti_4:21). It is not known whether they reached Rome in time. According to tradition Paul was executed in Rome about AD 65.
Bridgeway Bible Dictionary by Don Fleming
PRINTER 1990.

Paul, originally Saul, was a native of Tarsus, a city of Cilicia (Act_22:3, etc.), and was of Jewish descent, of the tribe of Benjamin (Php_3:5). From his father he inherited the rights of Roman citizenship, which had probably been earned by some of his ancestry through services rendered to the Roman state. The supposition that he enjoyed them in virtue of being a native of Tarsus is not well founded.
At that time Tarsus was the rival of Athens and Alexandria as a place of learning and philosophical research; but to what extent the future 'Apostle of the Gentiles' enjoyed the advantage of its schools we have no means of accurately determining. It must be allowed, however, that the mere circumstance of having spent his early years in such a city as Tarsus could not but exert a very powerful influence on the mind of such a man as Paul, in the way of sharpening his faculties, refining his tastes, and enlarging the circle of his sympathies and affections.
But whatever uncertainty may hang over the early studies of the Apostle in the department of Greek learning, there can be no doubt that, being the son of a Pharisee, and destined, in all probability, from his infancy to the pursuits of a doctor of Jewish law, he would be carefully instructed from his earliest years in the elements of Rabbinical lore. It is probable also that at this time he acquired his skill in that handicraft trade by which in later years he frequently supported himself (Act_18:3; 1Co_4:12, etc.); for it was a maxim among the Jews, that 'he who does not teach his son a trade, teaches him to steal.'
At the proper age (supposed to be after he was fourteen years old), the Apostle proceeded to Jerusalem, to prosecute his studies in the learning of the Jews. Here he became a student under Gamaliel, a distinguished teacher of the law, and who is supposed to be the person of that name who is celebrated in the writings of the Talmudists as one of the seven teachers to whom the title 'Rabban' was given. Besides acquaintance with the Jewish law, and a sincere conviction of the supreme excellence of Judaism, Gamaliel appears to have possessed a singularly calm and judicious mind, and to have exercised a freedom of thought as well as pursued a range of study very unlike what was common among the party to which he belonged (Act_5:34-39). It cannot be doubted that the instructions and example of such a teacher must have exercised a powerful influence on the mind of the future Apostle.
We now approach the period in Paul's history when he becomes a prominent figure on the page of the sacred historian, and when, consequently, the facts of his life can be more confidently narrated. He is introduced to our notice by the sacred historian for the first time in connection with the martyrdom of Stephen, in which transaction he was, if not an assistant, something more than a mere spectator. Immediately after this event he is represented as sharing the counsels of the chief priests, and as entrusted by them with the entire responsibility of executing their designs against the followers of Jesus (Act_26:10; Act_26:12). For such a task he showed a painful aptitude, and discharged it with a zeal which spared neither age nor sex (Act_8:1-3; Act_26:10-11). But while thus, in his ignorance and unbelief, he was seeking to be 'injurious' to the cause of Christ, the great Author of Christianity was about to make him a distinguished trophy of its power, and one of the most devoted and successful of its advocates. While journeying to Damascus, with a commission from the high priest, to arrest and bring back as prisoners to Jerusalem the Christians who had escaped thither from the fury of their persecutors, and when he had almost completed his journey, he was suddenly arrested by a miraculous vision of Christ, who addressing him from heaven, demanded the reason of his furious zeal, in the remarkable words, 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?' Struck to the ground by the suddenness and overwhelming splendor of the vision, and only able to ask by whom it was he was thus addressed, he received for answer, 'I am Jesus of Nazareth whom thou persecutest; but arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what to do.' This command the confounded and now humble zealot immediately rose to obey, but as the brilliancy of the light which had shone around him had dazzled him to blindness, he had to be led into the city by his attendants. Here he remained for three days and nights in a state of deep mental conflict and dejection, tasting neither meat nor drink, until a person of the name of Ananias appeared at the command of Christ to relieve his distress, and to admit him into the Christian fraternity by baptizing him into the name of the Lord (Act_9:1-18).
Immediately on his conversion to Christianity Saul seems to have gone into Arabia, where he remained three years (Gal_1:11-17); and where he, in all probability, was chiefly occupied by meditation and study, in preparing himself for the great work to which he had been called. Here also we may venture to suppose he received that Gospel which afterwards he preached 'by revelation' from Christ (Gal_1:12).
Returning from Arabia to Damascus the Apostle commenced his public efforts in the service of Christ, by boldly advocating in the synagogues of the Jews the claims of Jesus to be venerated as the Son of God. At first astonished, the Jews were afterwards furiously incensed at this change in the opinions and conduct of Saul, and in consequence of their attempts upon his liberty and life, he was obliged to make his escape from Damascus. This he effected with difficulty by the aid of the Christians, some of whom let him down in a basket from the window of a dwelling erected upon the outer wall of the city (Act_9:21, etc.; 2Co_11:32). After this he went up to Jerusalem (for the first time after his conversion), where, on the testimony of Barnabas, he was acknowledged as a Christian brother, and admitted by the Apostles to that place in their fraternity which had been assigned to him by Christ. From Jerusalem he was soon driven by the hostility of the Jews; when, after visiting C?sarea, he went to his native town Tarsus, where he abode several years (Act_9:26-30). From this retreat he was summoned by Barnabas, who, having been appointed by the Apostles at Jerusalem to visit the church at Antioch, where accessions had been made to the number of the followers of Jesus from among the Gentiles as well as the Jews, and finding the need of counsel and cooperation in his work, went to Tarsus to procure the assistance of Saul (Act_11:22-25). After residing and laboring for a year in Antioch, these two distinguished servants of Christ were sent up to Jerusalem with certain contributions which had been made among the Christians at Antioch, on behalf of their brethren in Judea, who were suffering from the effects of a dearth (Act_11:27-30). This, as commonly received, was the Apostle's second visit to Jerusalem after his conversion.
Having discharged this commission, they returned to Antioch, accompanied by John Mark, the nephew of Barnabas, and were shortly afterwards dispatched by that church, in obedience to an injunction from heaven, on a general missionary tour. In the course of this tour, during the earlier part only of which they were accompanied by Mark, in consequence of his shrinking from the toils and dangers of the journey and returning to Jerusalem, they visited Seleucia, Cyprus, Perga in Pamphylia, Antioch in Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia (in the former of which the fickle populace, though at first they had with difficulty been prevented from offering them Divine honors, were almost immediately afterwards, at the instigation of the Jews, led to stone the Apostle until he was left for dead); and then they returned by way of Attalia, a city of Pamphylia, by sea to Antioch, where they rehearsed to the church all that God had done by them (Acts 13-14). This formed the Apostle's first great missionary tour.
In the narrative of this journey, given by Luke, the historian, without assigning any reason for so doing, drops the name Saul, and adopts that of Paul, in designating the Apostle. It is probable from this, that it was during this journey that the Apostle's change of name actually took place. What led to that change we can only conjecture; and of conjectures on this point there has been no lack. The most probable opinion is, that as the Romans and Greeks were in the habit of softening the Hebrew names in pronunciation, and accommodating their form to that of the Latin or Greek, they substituted Paul for Saul, and the Apostle henceforward adopted the substituted name as his usual designation.
Not long after Paul and Barnabas had returned to Antioch, they were deputed by the church there again to visit Jerusalem, to consult the Apostles and elders upon the question, which certain members of the church at Jerusalem had raised in that at Antioch, whether converts from heathenism required to be circumcised, and so become Jews before they could be saved? The Apostle on this occasion visited Jerusalem for the third time after his conversion; and after the question had been settled by the parties in that city with whom the power to do so lay, he and his companion returned to Antioch. After restoring peace to the church there, Paul proposed to Barnabas to undertake another missionary tour, to which the latter cordially assented; but, unhappily, on the very eve of their departure a contention arose between them, in consequence of Barnabas being determined to take with them his nephew John Mark; and Paul being equally determined that one, who had on a former occasion ingloriously deserted them, should not again be employed in the work. Unable to come to an agreement on this point, they separated; and Paul, accompanied by Silas, commenced his second missionary journey, in the course of which, after passing through Syria and Cilicia, he revisited Lystra and Derbe. At the former of these places he found Timothy, whom he associated with Silas, as the companion of his further travels, after he had been ordained by the Apostle and the presbytery of the church of which he was a member (1Ti_4:14). Paul then passed through the regions of Phrygia and Galatia, and avoiding Asia, strictly so called, and Bithynia, he came with his companions by way of Mysia to Troas, on the borders of the Hellespont. Hence they crossed to Samothracia, and thence to Neapolis, and so to Philippi, whither he had been summoned in a vision by a man of Macedonia saying, 'Come over and help us.' After some time spent in this city, they passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, cities of Macedonia, and came to Thessalonica, where, though they abode only a short time, they preached the Gospel with no small success. Driven from that city by the malice of the Jews, they came by night to Berea, another city of Macedonia, where at first they were favorably received by the Jews, until a party from Thessalonica, which had followed them incited the Bereans against them. Paul, as especially obnoxious to the Jews, deemed it prudent to leave the place, and accordingly retired to Athens, where he determined to await the arrival of Silas and Timothy. While residing in this city, and observing the manners and religious customs of its inhabitants, his spirit was stirred within him, when he saw how entirely they were immersed in idolatry; and, unable to refrain, he commenced in the synagogues of the Jews and in the market-place to hold discussions with all whom he encountered. This led to his being taken to the Areopagus, where, surrounded by perhaps the shrewdest, most polished, most acute, most witty, and most scornful assemblage that ever surrounded a preacher of Christianity, he, with exquisite tact and ability, exposed the folly of their superstitions, and unfolded the character and claims of the living and true God. For the purpose of more effectually arresting the attention of his audience, he commenced by referring to an altar in their city, on which he had read the inscription, to an unknown God; and, applying this to Jehovah, he proposed to declare to them that Deity whom thus, without knowing him, they were worshipping.
On being rejoined by Timothy (1Th_3:1), and perhaps also by Silas, the Apostle sent them both back to Macedonia, and went alone to visit Corinth, whither they soon after followed him (Act_18:5). Here he abode for a year and a half preaching the Gospel, and supporting himself by his trade as a tent-maker, in which he was joined by a converted Jew of the name of Aquila, who, with his wife Priscilla, had been expelled from Rome by an edict of the emperor, forbidding Jews to remain in that city. Driven from Corinth by the enmity of the Jews, he, along with Aquila and Priscilla, betook himself to Ephesus, whence, after a residence of only a few days, he went up to Jerusalem, being commanded by God to visit that city, at the time of the approaching Passover. His visit on this occasion?the fourth since his conversion?was very brief; and at the close of it he went down to Antioch, thereby completing his second great apostolic tour.
At Antioch he abode for some time, and then, accompanied, as is supposed, by Titus, he commenced another extensive tour, in the course of which, after passing through Phrygia and Galatia, he visited Ephesus. The importance of this city, in relation to the region of Hither Asia, determined him to remain in it for a considerable time; and he accordingly continued preaching the Gospel there for three years, with occasional brief periods of absence, for the purpose of visiting places in the vicinity. With such success were his efforts crowned, that the gains of those who were interested in supporting the worship of Diana, the tutelar goddess of the city, began to be seriously affected; and at the instigation of one of these, by name Demetrius, a silversmith, who had enjoyed a lucrative traffic by the manufacture of what appear to have been miniature representations of the famous temple of Diana, a popular tumult was excited against the Apostle, from the fury of which he was with difficulty rescued by the sagacity and tact of the town-clerk, aided by others of the chief men of the place, who appear to have been friendly towards Paul. By this occurrence the Apostle's removal from Ephesus, on which, however, he had already determined (Act_19:21), was in all probability expedited; and, accordingly, he very soon after the tumult went by way of Troas to Philippi, where he appears to have resided some time, and from which, as his head-quarters, he made extensive excursions into the surrounding districts, penetrating even to Illyricum, on the eastern shore of the Adriatic (Rom_15:19). From Philippi he went to Corinth, where he resided three months, and then returned to Philippi, having been frustrated in his design of proceeding through Syria to Jerusalem by the malice of the Jews. Sailing from Philippi, he came to Troas, where he abode seven days; thence he journeyed on foot to Assos; thence he proceeded by sea to Miletus, where he had an affecting interview with the elders of the church at Ephesus (Act_20:17, sq.); thence he sailed for Syria, and, after visiting several intermediate ports, landed at Tyre; and thence, after a residence of seven days, he traveled by way of Ptolemais and Cesarea to Jerusalem. This constituted his fifth visit to that city after his conversion.
On his arrival at Jerusalem he had the mortification to find that, while the malice of his enemies the Jews was unabated, the minds of many of his brother Christians were alienated from him on account of what they deemed his too lax and liberal notions of the obligations of the Mosaic ritual. To obviate these feelings on their part, he, at the suggestion of the Apostle James, joined himself to four persons who had taken on them the vows of a Nazarite, and engaged to pay the cost of the sacrifices by which the Mosaic ritual required that such should be absolved from their vows. But this somewhat questionable act of the Apostle had no effect whatever in securing for him any mitigation of the hatred with which he was regarded by the unconverted Jews; on the contrary, his appearance in the temple so much exasperated them, that, before his vow was accomplished, they seized him, and would have put him to death had not Lysias, the commander of the Roman cohort in the adjoining citadel, brought soldiers to his rescue. Under the protection of Lysias, the Apostle addressed the angry mob, setting forth the main circumstances of his life, and especially his conversion to Christianity, and his appointment to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles. Up to this point they heard him patiently; but no sooner had he insinuated that the Gentiles were viewed by him as placed on a par with the Jews, than all their feelings of national bigotry burst forth in a tempest of execration and fury against the Apostle. Lysias, ignorant of what Paul had been saying, from his having addressed the people in Hebrew, and suspecting from these vehement demonstrations of the detestation in which he was held by the Jews that something flagrantly vicious must have been committed by him, gave orders that he should be examined, and forced by scourging to confess his crime. From this indignity Paul delivered himself by asserting his privileges as a Roman citizen, whom it was not lawful to bind or scourge. Next day, in the presence of the Sanhedrim, he entered into a defense of his conduct, in the course of which, having avowed himself a believer in the doctrine of a bodily resurrection, he awakened so fierce a controversy on this point between the Pharisees and the Sadducees in the council, that Lysias, fearing he might be torn to pieces among them, gave orders to remove him into the fort. From a conspiracy into which above forty of the Jews had entered to assassinate him he was delivered by the timely interposition of his nephew, who, having acquired intelligence of the plot, intimated it first to Paul, and then to Lysias. Alarmed at the serious appearance which the matter was assuming, Lysias determined to send Paul to Cesarea, where Felix the procurator was residing, and to leave the affair to his decision. At Cesarea Paul and his accusers were heard by Felix; but though the Apostle's defense was unanswerable, the procurator, fearful of giving the Jews offence, declined pronouncing any decision, and still retained Paul in bonds. Sometime after he was again summoned to appear before Felix, who, along with his wife Drusilla, expressed a desire to hear him 'concerning the faith in Christ;' and on this occasion the faithful and fearless Apostle discoursed so pointedly on certain branches of good morals, in which the parties he was addressing were notoriously deficient, that Felix trembled, and hastily sent him from his presence. Shortly after this Felix was succeeded in his government by Porcius Festus, before whom the Jews again brought their charges against Paul; and who, when the cause came to be heard, showed so much of a disposition to favor the Jews, that the Apostle felt himself constrained to appeal to Caesar. To gratify King Agrippa and his wife Bernice, who had come to Cesarea to visit Festus, and whose curiosity was excited by what they had heard of Paul, he was again called before the governor, and 'permitted to speak for himself.' On this occasion he recapitulated the leading points of his history, and gave such an account of his views and designs, that a deep impression was made on the mind of Agrippa favorable to Christianity and to the Apostle; so much so that, but for his having appealed to Caesar, it is probable he would have been set at liberty. His cause, however, having by that appeal been placed in the hands of the emperor, it was necessary that he should go to Rome, and thither accordingly Festus sent him. His voyage was long and disastrous. Leaving Cesarea when the season was already considerably advanced, they coasted along Syria as far as Sidon, and then crossed to Myra, a port of Lycia; thence they sailed slowly to Cnidus; and thence, in consequence of unfavorable winds, they struck across to Crete, and with difficulty reached a port on the southern part of that island called 'The Fair Haven,' near the town of Lasea. There Paul urged the centurion, under whose charge he and his fellow-prisoners had been placed, to winter; but the place not being very suitable for this purpose, and the weather promising favorably, this advice was not followed, and they again set sail, intending to reach Ph?nice, a port in the same island, and there to winter. Scarcely had they set sail, however, when a tempest arose, at the mercy of which they were driven for fourteen days in a westerly direction, until they were cast upon the coast of Malta, where they suffered shipwreck, but without any loss of life. Hospitably received by the natives, they abode there three months, during which time Paul had a favorable opportunity of preaching the Gospel, and of showing the power with which he was endued for the authentication of his message by performing many miracles for the advantage of the people. On the approach of spring they availed themselves of a ship of Alexandria which had wintered in the island, and set sail for Syracuse, where they remained three days; thence they crossed to Rhegium, in Italy; and thence to Puteoli, from which place Paul and his companions journeyed to Rome. Here he was delivered by the centurion to the captain of the guard, who permitted him to dwell in his own hired house under the surveillance of a soldier. And thus he continued for two years, 'receiving all that came to him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him' (Act_21:17; Act_28:31).
At this point the evangelist abruptly closes his narrative, leaving us to glean our information regarding the subsequent history of the Apostle from less certain sources. Tradition stedfastly affirms that he suffered martyrdom at Rome, and that the manner of his death was by beheading; but whether this took place at the close of the imprisonment mentioned by Luke, or after a second imprisonment incurred subsequent to an intervening period of freedom and active exertion in the cause of Christianity, has been much discussed by modern writers.
If, on the evidence furnished by the allusions in the Second Epistle to Timothy, we adopt the latter hypothesis, it will follow that Paul, during the interval between his first and second imprisonments, undertook an extensive apostolic tour, in the course of which he visited his former scenes of labor in Asia and Greece, and perhaps also fulfilled his purpose of going into Spain (Rom_15:24-28). He probably also visited Crete and Dalmatia.




The Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
by John Kitto.

Paul
(Παῦλος, the Greek form of the common Latin name Paulus), originally (see below) Saul (q.v.), the specially appointed “Apostle to the Gentiles.” (In the following treatment of this important character, we endeavor to weave in the Scripture narrative whatever illustration may be gathered from modern researches and speculations.
I. Preliminary Inquiries. —
1. Original Authorities. Nearly all the authentic materials for the life of the apostle Paul are contained in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Pauline Epistles. Out of a comparison of these authorities the biographer has to construct his account of the really important period of the apostle's life. The early traditions of the Church appear to have left almost untouched the space of time for which we possess those sacred and abundant sources of knowledge; and they aim only at supplying a few particulars in the biography beyond the points at which the narrative of the Acts begins and terminates.
The inspired history and the Epistles lie side by side, and are to all appearance quite independent of one another. It was not the purpose of the historian to write a life of Paul, even as much as the received name of his book would seem to imply. The book called the Acts of the Apostles is an account of the beginnings of the kingdom of Christ on the earth. The large space which the apostle occupies in it is due to the important part which he bore in spreading that kingdom. As to the Epistles, nothing can be plainer than that they were written without reference to the history; and there is no attempt in the canon to combine them with it so as to form what we should call in modern phrase the apostle's “Life and Letters.” What amount of agreement and what amount of discrepancy may be observed between these independent authorities is a question of the greatest interest and importance, and one upon which various opinions are entertained. The most adverse and extreme criticism is ably represented by Dr. Baur of Tubingen (Paulus der Apostel Jesu Christi [Stuttg. 1845]), who finds so much opposition between what he holds to be the few authentic Pauline Epistles and the Acts of the Apostles that he pronounces the history to be an interested fiction. But his criticism is the very caricature of captiousness. We have but to imagine it applied to any history and letters of acknowledged authenticity, and we feel irresistibly how arbitrary and unhistorical it is. Putting aside this extreme view, it is not to be denied that difficulties are to be met with in reconciling completely the Acts and the received Epistles of Paul. What the solutions of such difficulties may be, whether there are any direct contradictions, how far the apparent differences may be due to the purpose of the respective writers, by what arrangement all the facts presented to us may best be dovetailed together — these are the various questions which have given' so much occupation to the critics and expositors of Paul, and upon some of which it seems to be yet impossible to arrive at a decisive conclusion. We shall assume the Acts of the Apostles to be a genuine and authentic work of Luke. the companion of Paul, and shall speak of the Epistles at the places which we believe them to occupy in the history.
2. Name. — There can be no doubt that the apostle's name, as a Jew, was Saul; but when or how he received the Roman name Paul, which he bears in the Acts of the Apostles from Act_13:9, which he uses in his Epistles, and by which he is called by Peter (2Pe_3:15), is unknown. It is quite probable that he had borne the name of Paul as a Roman citizen; and it is no objection to this view that then this name would have appeared first, and that of Saul later (Witsius, Meletem. Leid. p. 47). If it is not merely accidental that Luke first calls him Paul in the passage mentioned, the reason may be that the apostle then first commenced his public and separate ministry; and Paul, a Gentile name, was that which the apostle of the Gentiles always on in Church history (Baur, Paul. p. 93). Even if the Jews still used the old Jewish name, there was afterwards no occasion for Luke to mention it. The account of Jerome that Paul assumed this name upon the conversion by him of Sergius Paulus (Act_13:7; comp. August. Confess. 8:4; Bengel and Olshausen, on Act_13:9) is perhaps not a tradition, but a mere suggestion of that father himself, on the ground that the name Paul first appears in the passage following that account. Indeed, Baur (p. 93) would have us believe that this was the view of Luke himself, and that the whole account of the conversion of Sergius Paulus was built up to illustrate this change of name! But if there had been any connection between the two events, it would have been natural for the writer to indicate it (see Neander, p. 108). It is easy to suppose simply that, in becoming a Christian. according to the Eastern custom, SEE NAME, he assumed the name Paul, as one common among Greeks and Romans, and quite similar in sound to Saul (comp. Chrysost. and Theophyl. in Suicer, Thesaur. 2:648), perhaps with some reference to the etymological signification of the name (comp. 1Co_15:9; Paulus, Lat. small, little; comp. Gr. Παῦρος). Yet we should then expect that Luke would employ the name Paul from Act_9:19 onward. (For another view, see Kuinol, Comment. ad loc.) SEE SERGIUS PAULUS.
II. Personal History. — We purpose under this head to gather together all the information given either directly or incidentally in the Acts and Epistles concerning the apostle's life, relegating to a subsequent head the various disputes that have been raised on some of them.
1. Youth and Early Career. — Paul was a native of Tarsus, a city of Cilicia (Act_22:3, etc.), and was of Jewish descent, of the tribe of Benjamin (Php_3:5). From his father he inherited the rights of Roman citizenship, which had probably been earned by some of his ancestry through services rendered to the Roman state (Lardner, Works, 1:228, ed. 1788, 8vo; Grotius, ad Acta 22:28). The supposition that he enjoyed them in virtue of being a native of Tarsus is not well founded; for though that city had been created by Augustus an urbs libera (Dion. Chrysost. 2:36, ed. Reiske; Pliny, Hist. Nat. v. 27), it does not follow from this that all its natives enjoyed the privilege of Roman citizenship; and besides, from Act_21:39 compared with Act_22:24; Act_22:27, it may be inferred that, as the chief captain knew Paul to be a native of Tarsus, and yet was not aware of his Roman citizenship, the latter of these was not necessarily associated with the former. From his receiving the name Saul it has been supposed that he was the first-born son of his parents, and that they had long desired and often asked for such a favor from God; that he was not their only child, however, appears from the mention made (Act_23:16) of his “sister's son.” Whether Andronicus, Junia, and Herodion, whom he terms, in the Epistle to the Romans (Rom_16:7; Rom_16:11), συγγενεῖς μου, were of the number of his blood relations, or only belonged to the same tribe with him, is a question on which learned men have taken different sides (comp. Lardner, Works, 6:235; Estius, Commn. ad loc.). (See below.)
At that time Tarsus was the rival of Athens and Alexandria as a place of learning and philosophical research (Strabo, 14:5); but to what extent the future “Apostle of the Gentiles” enjoyed the advantage of its schools we have no means of accurately determining. Attempts have been made to show from his writings that he was familiar with Greek literature. and Dr. Bentley has not hesitated to affirm that “as Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, so it is manifest from this chapter alone (Acts xxvii), if nothing else had been now extant, that Paul was a great master in all the learning of the Greeks” (Boyle Lectures, serm. 3, sub init.). An authority like that of Bentley in a question of Greek literature is not to be lightly set aside; yet on referring to the evidence in support of this opinion it will not be found to justify it. It must be allowed, however, that the mere circumstance of his having spent his early years in such a city as Tarsus could not but exert a very powerful influence on the mind of such a man as Paul, in the way of sharpening his faculties, refining his tastes, and enlarging the circle of his sympathies and affections. “If even to the meanest citizen,” as Eichhorn remarks, “such a circumstance affords — unless he be by nature utterly unobservant — much information which otherwise he could not have obtained, and in consequence of this a certain activity of mind, how much greater may not its effect be supposed to have been on a great mind like that of Paul? To his birth and early residence in Tarsus may be traced the urbanity which the apostle at no time laid aside, and of which he was frequently a perfect model, many insinuating turns which he gives to his epistles, and a more skillful use of the Greek tongue than a Jew born and educated in Palestine could well have attained” (Einleit. ins N.T. 3:5). (See below.)
But whatever uncertainty may hang over the early studies of the apostle in the department of Greek learning, there can be no doubt that, being the son of a Pharisee, and destined, in all probability, from his infancy to the pursuits of a doctor of Jewish law, he would be carefully instructed from his earliest years in the elements of Rabbinical lore. It is probable also that at this time he acquired his skill in that handicraft trade by which in later years he frequently supported himself (Act_17:3; 1Co_4:12, etc.). This trade is described by Luke as that of a σκηνοποιός, a word regarding the meaning of which there has been no small difference of opinion. (See below.) It does not follow that the family were in the necessitous condition which such manual labor commonly implies; for it was a wholesome custom among the Jews to teach every child some trade, though there might be little prospect of his depending upon it for his living. SEE HANDICRAFT.
When Paul made his defense before his countrymen at Jerusalem (Acts 22), he told them that, though born in Tarsus, he had been “brought up” (ἀνατεθραμμένος) in Jerusalem. He must, therefore, have been yet a boy when he was removed, in all probability for the sake of his education, to the Holy City of his fathers. We may imagine him arriving there perhaps at some age between ten and fifteen, already a Hellenist, speaking Greek and familiar with the Greek version of the Scriptures, possessing, besides the knowledge of his trade, the elements of Gentile learning — to be taught at Jerusalem “according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers.” He learned, he says, “at the feet of Gamaliel.” He who was to resist so stoutly the usurpations of the law had for his teacher one of the most eminent of all the doctors of the law. Gamaliel is supposed to be the person of that name who is celebrated in the writings of the Talmudists as one of the seven teachers to whom the title “Rabban” was given (Lightfoot, Horace Hebr. in Act. v. 34; Neander, Apostol. Zeitalter, p. 62; Otho, Lex. Rabbinico-Philippians s.v. Rabbi). Besides acquaintance with the Jewish law, and a sincere conviction of the supreme excellence of Judaism, Gamaliel appears to have possessed a singularly calm and judicious mind, and to have exercised a freedom of thought as well as pursued a range of study very unlike what was common among the party to which he belonged (Act_5:34-39; comp. Neander, l.c.). How much the instructions and the example of such a teacher may have influenced the mind of Paul favorably we may imagine, but cannot affirm. SEE GAMALIEL.
It is singular that on the occasion of his well-known intervention in the apostolical history the master's counsels of toleration are in marked contrast to the persecuting zeal so soon displayed by the pupil. The temper of Gamaliel himself was moderate and candid, and he was personally free from bigotry; but his teaching was that of the strictest of the Pharisees, and bore its natural fruit when lodged in the ardent and thoroughgoing nature of Saul. Other fruits, besides that of a zeal which persecuted the Church, may no doubt be referred to the time when Saul sat at the feet of Gamaliel. A thorough training in the Scriptures and in the traditions of the elders under an acute and accomplished master must have done much to exercise the mind of Saul, and to make him feel at home in the subjects in which he was afterwards to be so intensely interested. Nor are we at all bound to suppose that, because his zeal for the law was strong enough to set him upon persecuting the believers in Jesus, he had therefore experienced none of the doubts and struggles which, according to his subsequent testimony, it was the nature of the law to produce (see Romans 7). On the contrary, we can scarcely imagine these as absent from the spiritual life of Saul as he passed from boyhood to manhood. Earnest persecutors are, oftener than not, men who have been tormented by inward struggles and perplexities. The pupil of Gamaliel may have been crushing a multitude of conflicts in his own mind when he threw himself into the holy work of extirpating the new heresy. SEE MORAL SENSE.
Paul is introduced to our notice by the sacred historian for the first time in connection with the martyrdom of Stephen, in which transaction he was, if not an assistant, something more than a mere spectator. A.D. 29. He is described at this time (Act_7:58) as “a young man” (νεανίας); but this term was employed with so much latitude by the Greeks that it is impossible from the mere use of it to determine whether the party to whom it was applied was under thirty, or between that and forty. The probability is that Paul must have reached the age of thirty at least; for otherwise it is not likely that he would have shared the counsels of the chief priests, or been intrusted by them with the entire responsibility of executing their designs against the followers of Jesus, as we know was the case (Act_26:10; Act_26:12). For such a task he showed a painful aptitude, and discharged it with a zeal which spared neither age nor sex (Act_26:10-11). At that time the Church experienced the sudden expansion which was connected with the ordaining of the Seven appointed to serve tables, and with the special power and inspiration of Stephen. Among those who disputed with Stephen were some “of them of Cilicia.” We naturally think of Saul as having been one of these, when we find him afterwards keeping the clothes of those suborned witnesses who, according to the law (Deu_17:7), were the first to cast stones at Stephenm “Saul,” says the sacred writer, significantly, “was consenting unto his death.” The angelic glory that shone from Stephen's face, and the divine truth of his words, failing to subdue the spirit of religious hatred now burning in Saul's breast, must have embittered and aggravated its rage. Saul was passing through a terrible crisis for a man of his nature. But he was not one to be moved from his stern purpose by the native refinement and tenderness which he must have been stifling within him. He was the most unwearied and unrelenting of persecutors. As for Saul, he made havoc of the Church, entering into every house (κατὰ τοὺς οἴκους, house by house), and haling men and women, committed them to prison” (Act_8:3).
2. Conversion. — But while thus, in his ignorance and unbelief, he was seeking to be “injurious” to the cause of Christ, the great Author of Christianity was about to make him a distinguished trophy of its power, and one of the most devoted and successful of its advocates. The persecutor was to be converted. A.D. 30. What the nature of that conversion was we are now to observe. Having undertaken to follow up the believers “unto strange cities,” Saul naturally turned his thoughts to Damascus, expecting to find among the numerous Jewish residents of that populous city some adherents of “the way” (τῆς ὁδοῦ), and trusting, we must presume, to be allowed by the connivance of the governor to apprehend them. What befell him as he journeyed thither is related in detail three times in the Acts, first by the historian in his own person, then in the two addresses made by Paul at Jerusalem and before Agrippa. These three narratives are not repetitions of one another: there are differences between them which some critics choose to regard as irreconcilable. Considering that the same author is responsible for all the accounts, we gain nothing, of course, for the authenticity of their statements by bringing them into agreement; but it seems quite clear that the author himself could not have been conscious of any contradictions in the narratives. He can scarcely have had any motive for placing side by side inconsistent reports of Paul's conversion; and that he should have admitted inconsistencies on such a matter through mere carelessness is hardly credible. Of the three narratives, that of the historian himself must claim to be the most purely historical: Paul's subsequent accounts were likely to be affected by the purpose for which he introduced them. Luke's statement is to be read in Act_9:3-19, where, however, the words, “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks,” included in the Vulgate and English version, ought to be omitted. The sudden light from heaven; the voice of Jesus speaking with authority to his persecutor; Saul struck to the ground, blinded, overcome; the three days' suspense; the coming of Ananias as a messenger of the Lord; and Saul's baptism — these were the leading features, in the eyes of the historian, of the great event, and in these we must look for the chief significance of the conversion.
Let us now compare the historical relation with those which we have in Paul's speeches (Acts 22, 26). The reader will do well to consider each in its place. But we have here to deal with the bare fact of agreement or difference. With regard to the light, the speeches add to what Luke tells us that the phenomenon occurred at mid-day, and that the light shone round, and was visible to Saul's companions as well as to himself. The second speech says that at the shining of this light the whole company (“we all”) fell to the ground. This is not contradicted by what is said (Act_9:7), “The men which journeyed with him stood speechless,” for there is no emphasis on “stood,” nor is the standing antithetical to Saul's falling down. We have but to suppose the others rising before Saul, or standing still afterwards in greater perplexity, through not seeing or hearing what Saul saw and heard, to reconcile the narratives without forcing either. After the question, Why persecutest thou me?” the second speech adds, “It is hard for thee to kick against the goads.” Then both the speeches supply a question and answer — “I answered, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus (of Nazareth), whom thou persecutest.” In the direction to go into Damascus and await orders there, the first speech agrees with Acts 9. But whereas according to that chapter the men with Saul “heard the voice,” in the first speech it is said “they heard not the voice of him that spake to me.” It seems reasonable to conclude from the two passages that the men actually heard sounds, but not, like Saul, an articulate voice.
With regard to the visit of Ananias, there is no collision between the ninth chapter and the first speech, the latter only attributing additional words to Ananias. The second speech ceases to give details of the conversion after the words, “I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest. But rise, and stand on thy feet.” Paul adds, from the mouth of Jesus, an exposition of the purpose for which he had appeared to him. It is easy to say that in ascribing these words to Jesus, Paul or his professed reporter is violating the order and sequence of the earlier accounts. But, if we bear in mind the nature and purpose of Paul's address before Agrippa, we shall surely not suppose that he is violating the strict truth, when he adds to the words which Jesus spoke to him at the moment of the light and the sound, without interposing any reference to a later occasion, that fuller exposition of the meaning of the crisis through which he was passing, which he was not to receive till afterwards. What Saul actually heard from Jesus on the way as he journeyed was afterwards interpreted, to the mind of Saul, into those definite expressions. For we must not forget that, whatever we hold as to the external nature of the phenomena we are considering, the whole transaction was essentially, in any case, a spiritual communication. That the Lord Jesus manifested himself as a living person to the man Saul, and spoke to him so that his very words could be understood, is the substantial fact declared to us.
The purport of the three narratives is that an actual conversation took place between Saul and the Lord Jesus. It is remarkable that in none of them is Saul said to have seen Jesus. The grounds for believing that he did so are the two expressions of Ananias (Act_9:17), “‘The Lord Jesus, who appeared unto thee in the way,” and (Act_22:14) ‘ That thou shouldest see the Just One,” and the statement of Paul (1Co_15:8), “Last of all he was seen of me also.” Comparing these passages with the narratives, we conclude either that Saul had an instantaneous vision of Jesus as the flash of light blinded him, or that the “seeing” was that apprehension of his presence which would go with a real conversation. How it was that Saul “saw” and “heard,” we are quite unable to determine. That the light, and the sound or voice, were both different from any ordinary phenomena with which Saul and his companions were familiar, is unquestionably implied in the narrative. It is also implied that they were specially significant to Saul, and not to those with him. We gather therefore that there were real outward phenomena, through which Saul was made inwardly sensible of a presence revealed to him alone. (See below.) Externally, there was a flash of light. Spiritually, “the light of the Gospel of the glory of the Christ, who is the image of God,” shone upon Saul, and convicted the darkness of the heart which had shut out love and knew not the glory of the cross. Externally, Saul fell to the ground. Spiritually, he was prostrated by shame, when he knew whom he had been persecuting. Externally, sounds issued out of heaven. Spiritually, the Crucified said to Saul, with tender remonstrance, “I am Jesus. why persecutest thou me?” Whether audibly to his companions, or audibly to the Lord Jesus only, Saul confessed himself in the spirit the servant of him whose name he had hated. He gave himself up, without being able to see his way, to the disposal of him whom he now knew to have vindicated his claim over him by the very sacrifice which formerly he had despised. The Pharisee was converted, once for all, into a disciple of Jesus the Crucified.
The only mention in the Epistles of Paul of the outward phenomena attending his conversion is that in 1Co_15:8,” Last of all he was seen of me also.” But there is one important passage in which he speaks distinctly of his conversion itself. Dr. Baur (Paul. p. 64), with his readiness to find out discrepancies, insists that this passage represents quite a different process from that recorded in the Acts. It is manifestly not a repetition of what we have been reading and considering, but it in the most perfect harmony with it. In the Epistle to the Galatians (Gal_1:15-16) Paul has these words, “When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen” ... (ἀποκαλύψαι τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ ἐν ἐμοί). What words could express more exactly than these the spiritual experience which occurred to Saul on the way to Damascus? The manifestation of Jesus as the Son of God is clearly the main point in the narrative. This manifestation was brought about through a removal of the veils of prejudice and ignorance which blinded the eyes of Saul to a crucified Deliverer conquering through sacrifice. Whatever part the senses may have played in the transaction, the essence of it in any case must have been Saul's inward vision of a spiritual Lord close to his spirit, from whom he could not escape, whose every command he was henceforth to obey in the spirit.
It would be groundless to assume that the new convictions of that mid-day immediately cleared and settled themselves in Saul's mind. It is sufficient to say that he was then converted, or turned round. For a while. no doubt, his inward state was one of awe and expectation. He was “led by the hand” spiritually by his Master, as well as bodily by his companions. Thus entering Damascus as a servant of the Lord Jesus, he sought the house of one whom he had, perhaps, intended to persecute. Judas may have been known to his guest as a disciple of the Lord. Certainly the fame of Saul's coming had preceded him; and Ananias, “a devout man according to the law,” but a believer in Jesus, when directed by the Lord to visit him, wonders at what he is told concerning the notorious persecutor. He obeys, however; and going to Saul in the name of the Lord Jesus, who had appeared to him in the way,” he puts his hands on him that he may receive his sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost. Thereupon Saul's eyes are immediately purged, and his sight is restored. “The same hour,” says Paul (Act_22:13), “I looked up upon him. And he said, The God of our fathers hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest know his will, and see the Just One, and shouldest hear the voice of his mouth. For thou shalt be his witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard.” Every word in this address strikes some chord which we hear sounded again and again in Paul's Epistles. The new convert is not, as it is so common to say, converted from Judaism to Christianity of the God of the Jewish fathers chooses him. He is chosen to know God's will. That will is manifested in the Righteous One. Him Saul sees and hears, in order that he may be a witness of him to all men. The eternal will of the God of Abraham; that will revealed in a righteous Son of God; the testimony concerning him, a Gospel to mankind-these are the essentially Pauline principles which are declared in all the teaching of the apostle, and illustrated in all his actions.
3. Sojourn in Damascus and Arabia. — After the recovery of his sight, Saul received the external symbol of the washing away of his sins in baptism. He then broke his three days' fast, and was strengthened — an image, again, of the strengthening of his faint and hungering spirit through a participation in the divine life of the Church at Damascus. He was at once received into the fellowship of the disciples, and began without delay the work to which Ananias had designated him; and to the astonishment of all his hearers he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, declaring him to be the Son of God. This was the natural sequel to his conversion: he was to proclaim Jesus the Crucified, first to the Jews as their own Christ, afterwards to the world as the Son of the living God.
The narrative in the Acts tells us simply that he was occupied in this work, with increasing vigor, for “many days,” up to the time when imminent danger drove him from Damascus. From the Epistle to the Galatians (Gal_1:17-18) we learn that the many days were at least a good part of “three years,” and that Saul, not thinking it necessary to procure authority to preach from the apostles that were before him, went after his conversion into Arabia, and returned from thence to Damascus. We know nothing whatever of this visit to Arabia — to what district Saul went, how long he stayed, or for what purpose he went there. (Stanley suggests, Sin. and Pal. p. 50, that he may even have visited Mount Sinai.) From the antithetical way in which it is opposed to a visit to the apostles at Jerusalem, we infer that it took place before he deliberately committed himself to the task of proclaiming Jesus as the Christ; and also, with some probability, that he was seeking seclusion, in order that, by conferring “not with flesh and blood,” but with the Lord in the Spirit, he might receive more deeply into his mind the commission given him at his conversion. That Saul did not spend the greater portion of the “three years” at Damascus seems probable, for these two reasons:
(1) that the anger of the Jews was not likely to have borne with two or three years of such a life as Saul's now was without coming to a crisis; and
(2) that the disciples at Jerusalem would not have been likely to mistrust Saul as they did if they had heard of him as preaching Jesus at Damascus for the same considerable period. We can hardly resist the conviction that the time was spent in private preparation, perhaps in receiving those remarkable disclosures which he afterwards called “my gospel” (2Ti_2:8), analogous to the corresponding period of the other apostles personal intercourse with the Lord. Thus we may venture to suppose he received that Gospel which afterwards he preached “by revelation” from Christ (Gal_1:12). Neander (l.c. sec. 121) and Anger (De Tempp. in Actis App. Ratione. p. 123) have endeavored to show that Paul went into Arabia to preach the Gospel; but the reasons they adduce have little weight (comp. Olshausen, on Act_9:20-25).
Now that we have arrived at Saul's departure from Damascus, we are again upon historical ground (A.D. 33), and have the double evidence of Luke in the Acts (Act_9:21 sq.) and of the apostle in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians (2Co_11:32). According to the former, the Jews lay in wait for Saul, intending to kill him, and watched the gates of the city that he might not escape from them. Knowing this, the disciples took him by night and let him down in a basket from the wall. According to Paul (2Co_11:32), it was the ethnarch under Aretas the king who watched for him, desiring to apprehend him. There is no difficulty in reconciling the two statements. We might similarly say that our Lord was put to death either by the Jews or by the Roman governor. There is more difficulty in ascertaining how an officer of king Aretas should be governing in Damascus, and why he should lend himself to the designs of the Jews. But we learn from secular history that the affairs of Damascus were, at the time, in such an unsettled state as to make the narrative not improbable. SEE ARETAS.
Having escaped from Damascus, Saul betook himself to Jerusalem, and there “assayed to join himself to the disciples; but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple.” In this natural but trying difficulty Saul was befriended by one whose name was henceforth closely associated with his. Barnabas became his sponsor to the apostles and Church at Jerusalem. assuring them-from some personal knowledge, we must presume-of the facts of Saul's conversion and subsequent behavior at Damascus. It is noticeable that the seeing and hearing are still the leading features in the conversion, and the name of Jesus in the preaching. Barnabas declared how “Saul had seen the Lord in the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how that he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus.” Barnabas's introduction removed the fears of the apostles, and Paul “was with them coming in and going out at Jerusalem.” His Hellenistical education made him. like Stephen, a successful disputant against the “Grecians;” and it is not strange that the former persecutor was singled out from the other believers as the object of a murderous hostility. He was therefore again urged to flee; and by way of Caesarea took himself to his native city, Tarsus (Act_9:26-30. In Gal_1:20, the order of the localities is not strictly observed).
In the Epistle to the Galatians (Gal_1:17-23) Paul adds certain particulars, in which only a perverse and captious criticism could see anything contradictory to the facts just related. He tells us that his motive for going up to Jerusalem rather than anywhere else was that he might see Peter; that he abode with him fifteen days; that the only apostles he saw were Peter and James the Lord's brother; and that afterwards he came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, remaining unknown by face, though well known for his conversion, to the churches in Judaea which were in Christ. Paul's object in referring to this connection of his with those who were apostles before him was to show that he had never accepted his apostleship as a commission from them. On this point the narrative in the Acts entirely agrees with Paul's own earnest asseverations in his Epistles. He received his commission from the Lord Jesus, and also mediately through Ananias. This commission included a special designation to preach Christ to the Gentiles. Upon the latter designation he did not act until circumstances opened the way for it. But he at once began to proclaim Jesus as the Christ to his own countrymen. Barnabas introduced him to the apostles, not as seeking their sanction, but as having seen and heard the Lord Jesus, and as having boldly spoken already in his name.
4. Ministry at Antioch. — During this stay of Paul at Tarsus, which lasted several years, occupied doubtless with those elsewhere unrecorded labors to some of which he occasionally alludes (2Co_11:24-25), a movement was going on at Antioch which raised that city to an importance second only to that of Jerusalem itself in the early history of the Church. In the life of the apostle of the Gentiles Antioch claims a most conspicuous place. It was there that the preaching of the Gospel to the Gentiles first took root, and from thence that it was afterwards propagated. Its geographical position, its political and commercial importance, and the presence of a large and powerful Jewish element in its population, were the more obvious characteristics which adapted it for such a use. There came to Antioch, when the persecution which arose about Stephen scattered upon their different routes the disciples who had been assembled at Jerusalem, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, eager to tell all who would hear them the good news concerning the Lord Jesus. Until Antioch was reached, the word was spoken “to none but unto Jews only” (Act_11:19). ‘But here the Gentiles also (οἱ ῞Ελληνες) — not, as in the A.V., “the Grecians” — were among the hearers of the word.
A great number believed; and when this was reported at Jerusalem, Barnabas was sent on a special mission to Antioch. As the work grew under his hands, and “much people was added unto the Lord,” Barnabas felt the need of help, and went himself to Tarsus to seek Saul. Possibly at Damascus, certainly at Jerusalem, he had been a witness of Saul's energy and devotedness, and skill in disputation. He had been drawn to him by the bond of a most brotherly affection. He therefore longed for him as a helper, and succeeded in bringing him to Antioch. There they labored together unremittingly for “a whole year,” mixing with the constant assemblies of the believers, and “teaching much people.” All this time, as Luke would give us to understand, Saul was subordinate to Barnabas. Until “Saul” became “Paul,” we read of Barnabas and Saul” (Act_11:30; Act_12:25; Act_13:2; Act_13:7). Afterwards the order changes to “Paul and Barnabas.” It seems reasonable to conclude that there was no marked peculiarity in the teaching of Saul during the Antioch period. He held and taught, in common with the other Jewish believers, the simple faith in Jesus the Christ, crucified and raised from the dead. Nor did he ever afterwards depart from the simplicity of this faith. But new circumstances stirred up new questions; and then it was to Saul of Tarsus that it was given to see, more clearly than any others saw, those new applications of the old truth, those deep and world-wide relations of it, with which his work was to be permanently associated. In the mean time, according to the usual method of the divine government, facts were silently growing, which were to suggest and occasion the future developments of faith and practice, and of these facts the most conspicuous was the unprecedented accession of Gentile proselytes at Antioch.
An opportunity soon occurred, of which Barnabas and Saul joyfully availed themselves, for proving the affection of these new disciples towards their brethren at Jerusalem, and for knitting the two communities together in the bonds of practical fellowship. A manifest impulse from the Holy Spirit began this work. There came “prophets” from Jerusalem to Antioch: “and there stood up one of them, named Agabus, and signified by the Spirit that there should be great dearth throughout all the world.” The “prophets” who now arrived may have been the Simeon and Lucius and Manaen mentioned in 13:1, besides Agabus and others. The prediction of the dearth need not have been purposeless; it would naturally have a direct reference to the needs of the poorer brethren and the duty of the richer. It is obvious that the fulfillment followed closely upon the intimation of the coming famine. For the disciples at Antioch determined to send contributions immediately to Jerusalem; and the gift was conveyed to the elders of that Church by the hands of Barnabas and Saul. The time of this dearth is vaguely designated in the Acts as the reign of Claudius. It is ascertained from Josephus's history that a severe famine did actually prevail in Judaea, and especially at Jerusalem, at the very time fixed by the event recorded in Acts 12, the death of Herod Agrippa. This was in A.D. 44. SEE AGABUS.
It could not have been necessary for the mere safe conduct of the contribution that Barnabas and Saul should go in person to Jerusalem. We are bound to see in the relations between the Mother-Church and that of Antioch, of which this visit is illustrative, examples of the deep feeling of the necessity of union which dwelt in the heart of the early Church. The apostles did not go forth to teach a system, but to enlarge a body. The spirit which directed and furthered their labors was essentially the spirit of fellowship. By this spirit Saul of Tarsus was practically trained in strict cooperation with his elders in the Church. The habits which he learned now were to aid in guarding him at a later time from supposing that the independence which he was bound to claim should involve the slightest breach or loosening of the bonds of the universal brotherhood.
Having discharged their errand, Barnabas and Saul returned to Antioch, bringing with them another helper, John surnamed Mark, sister's son to Barnabas. The work of prophesying and teaching was resumed. Several of the oldest and most honored of the believers in Jesus were expounding the way of God and organizing the Church in that busy metropolis. Travelers were incessantly passing to and fro. Antioch was in constant communication with Cilicia, with Cyprus, with all the neighboring countries. The question must have forced itself upon hundreds of the “Christians” at Antioch, “What is the meaning of this faith of ours, of this baptism, of this incorporation, of this kingdom of the Son of God, for the world? The Gospel is not for Judaea alone: here are we called by it at Antioch. Is it meant to stop here?” The Church was pregnant with a great movement, and the time of her delivery was at hand. We forget the whole method of the divine work in the nurture of the Church if we ascribe to the impulses of the Holy Ghost any theatrical suddenness, and disconnect them from the thoughts which were brooding in the minds of the disciples. At every point we find both circumstances and inward reasonings preparing the crisis. Something of direct expectation seems to be implied in what is said of the leaders of the Church at Antioch, that they were “ministering to the Lord, and fasting,” when the Holy Ghost spoke to them. Without doubt they knew it for a seal set upon previous surmises, when the voice came clearly to the general mind, “Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.” That “work” was partially known already to the Christians of Antioch: who could be so fit for it as the two brothers in the faith and in mutual affection, the son of exhortation, and the highly accomplished and undaunted convert who had from the first been called “a chosen vessel, to bear the name of the Lord before the Gentiles, and kings, and the people of Israel?”
When we look back, from the higher ground of Paul's apostolic activity, to the years that passed between his conversion and the first missionary journey, we cannot observe without reverence the patient humility with which Saul waited for his Master's time. He did not say for once only, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” Obedience to Christ was thenceforth his ruling principle. Submitting, as he believed, to his Lord's direction, he was content to work for a long time as the subordinate colleague of his seniors in the faith. He was thus the better prepared, when the call came, to act with the authority which that call conferred upon him. He left Antioch, however, still the second to Barnabas. Everything was done with orderly gravity in the sending forth of the two missionaries. Their brethren, after fasting and prayer, laid their hands on them, and so they departed. A.D. 44.
5. First Missionary Journey. — Much must have been hidden from Barnabas and Saul as to the issues of the journey on which they embarked. But one thing was clear to them, that they were sent forth to speak the Word of God. They did not go in their own name or for their own purposes; they were instruments for uttering what the Eternal God himself was saying to men. We shall find in the history a perfectly definite representation of what Paul announced and taught as he journeyed from city to city. But the first characteristic feature of his teaching was the absolute conviction that he was only the bearer of a heavenly message. It is idle to discuss Paul's character or views without recognising this fact. We are compelled to think of him as of a man who was capable of cherishing such a conviction with perfect assurance. We are bound to bear in mind the unspeakable influence which that conviction must have exerted upon his nature. The writer of the Acts proceeds upon the same assumption. He tells us that as soon as Barnabas and Saul reached Cyprus, they began to “announce the Word of God.”
The second fact to be observed is, that for the present they delivered their message in the synagogues of the Jews only. They trod the old path till they should be drawn out of it. But when they had gone through the island, from Salamis to Paphos, they were called upon to explain their doctrine to an eminent Gentile. Sergius Paulus, the proconsul. This Roman officer, like so many of his countrymen, had already come under the influence of Jewish teaching; but it was in the corrupt form of magical pretensions, which throve so luxuriantly upon the godless credulity of that age. A Jew, named Barjesus, or Elymas, a magus and false prophet, had attached himself to the governor, and had no doubt interested his mind, for he was an intelligent man, with what he had told him of the history and hopes of the Jews. SEE ELYMAS.
Accordingly, when Sergius Paulus heard of the strange teachers who were announcing to the Jews the advent of their true Messiah, he wished to see them, and sent for them. The impostor, instinctively hating the apostles, and seeing his influence over the proconsul in danger of perishing, did what he could to withstand them. Then Saul, “who is also called Paul,” denouncing Elymas in remarkable terms, declared against him God's sentence of temporary blindness. The blindness immediately fell upon him; and the proconsul, moved by the scene and persuaded by the teaching of the apostle, became a believer.
There is a singular parallelism in several points between the history of Paul and that of Peter in the Acts. Baur presents it in a highly effective form (Paul. p. 91 etc.), to support his theory of the composition of this book; and this is one of the services which he has incidentally rendered to the full understanding of the early history of the Church. Thus Paul's discomfiture of Elymas reminds us of Peter's denunciation of Simon Magus. The two incidents bring strongly before us one of the great adverse elements with which the Gospel had to contend in that age. Everywhere there were counterfeits of the spiritual powers which the apostles claimed and put forth. It was necessary for the preachers of Christ, not so much to prove themselves stronger than the magicians and soothsayers, as to guard against being confounded with them. One distinguishing mark of the true servants of the Spirit would be that of not trading upon their spiritual powers (Act_8:20). Another would be that of shunning every sort of concealment and artifice, and courting the daylight of open truth. Paul's language to Elymas is studiously directed to the reproof of the tricks of the religious impostor. The apostle, full of the Holy Ghost, looked steadily on the deceiver, spoke in the name of a God of light and righteousness and straightforward ways, and put forth the power of that God for the vindication of truth against delusion. The punishment of Elymas was itself symbolical, and conveyed “teaching of the Lord.” He had chosen to create a spiritual darkness around him; and now there fell upon him a mist and a darkness, and he went about seeking some one to lead him by the hand. If on reading this account we refer to Peter's reproof of Simon Magus, we shall be struck by the differences as well as the resemblance which we shall observe. But we shall undoubtedly gain a stronger impression of this part of the apostolic work, viz. the conflict to be waged between the Spirit of Christ and of the Church and the evil spirits of a dark superstition to which men were surrendering themselves as slaves. We shall feel the worth and power of that candid and open temper in which alone Paul would commend his cause; and in the conversion of Sergius Paulus we shall see an exemplary type of many victories to be won by truth over falsehood.
This point is made a special crisis in the history of the apostle by the writer of the Acts. Saul now becomes Paul, and begins to take precedence of Barnabas. Nothing is said to explain the change of name. No reader could resist the temptation of supposing that there must be some connection between Saul's new name and that of his distinguished Roman convert. But on reflection it does not seem probable that Paul would either have wished, or have consented, to change his own name for that of a distinguished convert. If we. put Sergius Paulus aside, we know that it was exceedingly common for Jews to bear, besides their own Jewish name, another borrowed from the country with which they had become connected (see Conybeare and Howson, 1:163, for full illustrations). Thus we have Simeon also named Niger, Barnabas also named Justus, John also named Marcus. There is no reason therefore why Saul should not have borne from infancy the other name of Paul. In that case he would be Saul among his own countrymen, Paulus among the Gentiles. We must understand Luke as wishing to mark strongly the transition point between Saul's activity among his own countrymen and his new labors as the apostle of the Gentiles, by calling him Saul only during the first, and Paul only afterwards. (See above.)
The conversion of Sergius Paulus may be said, perhaps, to mark the beginning of the work among the Gentiles; otherwise, it was not in Cyprus that any change took place in the method hitherto followed by Barnabas and Saul in preaching the Gospel. Their public addresses were as yet confined to the synagogues; but it was soon to be otherwise. From Paphos “Paul and his company” set sail for the mainland, and arrived at Perga in Pamphylia. Here the heart of their companion John failed him, and he returned to Jerusalem, From Perga they traveled on to a place, obscure in secular history, but most memorable in the history of the kingdom of Christ — Antioch in Pisidia (q.v.). Here “they went into the synagogue on the Sabbath-day, and sat down.” Small as the place was, it contained its colony of Jews, and with them proselytes who worshipped the God of the Jews. The degree to which the Jews had spread and settled themselves over the world, and the influence they had gained over the more respectable of their Gentile neighbors, and especially over the women of the better class, are facts difficult to appreciate justly, but are proved by undoubted evidence, and are very important for us to bear in mind. This Pisidian Antioch may have been more Jewish than most similar towns, but it was not more so than many of much greater size and importance. What took place here in the synagogue and in the city is interesting to us not only on account of its bearing on the history, but also because it represents more or less exactly what afterwards occurred in many other places. It cannot be without design that we have single but detailed examples given us in the Acts of the various kinds of addresses which Paul used to deliver in appealing to his different audiences. He had to address himself, in the course of his missionary labors, to Jews, knowing and receiving the Scriptures; to ignorant barbarians; to cultivated Greeks; to mobs enraged against him personally; to magistrates and kings. It is an inestimable help in studying the apostle and his work that we have specimens of the tone and the arguments he was accustomed to use in all these situations. These will be noticed in their places. In what he said at the synagogue in Antioch we recognize the type of the addresses in which he would introduce his message to his Jewish fellow-countrymen.
The apostles sat silent with the rest of the assembly, while the Law and the Prophets were read. They and their audience were united in reverence for the sacred books. Then the rulers of the synagogue sent to invite them, as strangers but brethren, to speak any word of exhortation which might be in them to the people. Paul stood up, and beckoning with his hand, he spoke. (The speech is given in Act_13:16-41.) The characteristics we observe in it are these: The speaker begins by acknowledging “the God of this people Israel.” He ascribes to him the calling out of the nation and the conduct of its subsequent history. He touches on the chief points of that history up to the reign of David, whom he brings out into prominence. He then names JESUS as the promised Son of David. To convey some knowledge of Jesus to the minds of his hearers, he recounts the chief facts of the Gospel history; the preparatory preaching and baptism of John (of which the rumor had spread perhaps to Antioch); the condemnation of Jesus by the rulers “who knew neither him nor the prophets,” and his resurrection. That Resurrection is declared to be the fulfillment of all God's promises of life, given to the fathers. Through Jesus, therefore, is now proclaimed by God himself the forgiveness of sins and full justification. The apostle concludes by drawing from the prophets a warning against unbelief. If this is an authentic example of Paul's preaching, it was impossible for Peter or John to start more exclusively from the Jewish covenant and promises than did the apostle of the Gentiles.
How entirely this discourse resembles those of Peter and of Stephen in the earlier chapters of the Acts! There is only one specially Pauline touch in the whole-the words in Act_13:39, “By Him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.” “Evidently foisted in,” says Baur (p. 103), who thinks we are dealing with a mere fiction, to prevent the speech from appearing too Petrine, and to give it a slightly Pauline air.” Certainly, it sounds like an echo of the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians. But is there therefore the slightest incongruity between this and the other parts of the address? Does not that “forgiveness of sins” which Peter and Paul proclaimed with the most perfect agreement connect itself naturally, in the thoughts of one exercised by the law as Saul of Tarsus had been, with justification not by the law but by grace? If we suppose that Saul had accepted just the faith which the older apostles held in Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah of the Jews, crucified and raised from the dead according to the teaching of the prophets, and in the remission of sins through him confirmed by the gift of the Holy (host; and that he had also had those experiences, not known to the older apostles, of which we see the working in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians, this speech, in all its parts, is precisely what we might expect: this is the very teaching which the apostle of the Gentiles must have everywhere and always set forth, when he was speaking “God's Word” for the first time to an assembly of his fellow- countrymen.
The discourse thus epitomized produced a strong impression; and the hearers (not “the Gentiles,” which the best MSS. omit) requested the apostles to repeat their message on the next Sabbath. During the week so much interest was excited by the teaching of the apostles that on the Sabbath-day “almost the whole city came together to hear the Word of God.” It was this concern of the Gentiles which appears to have first alienated the minds of the Jews from what they had heard. They were filled with envy. They probably felt that there was a difference between those efforts to gain Gentile proselytes in which they had themselves been so successful and this new preaching of a Messiah in whom a justification which the law could not give was offered to men. The eagerness of the Gentiles to hear may have confirmed their instinctive apprehensions. The Jewish envy once roused became a power of deadly hostility to the Gospel; and these Jews at Antioch set themselves to oppose bitterly the words which Paul spoke. We have here, therefore, a new phase in the history of the Gospel. In these foreign countries it is not the cross or Nazareth which is most immediately repulsive to the Jews in the proclaiming of Jesus. It is the wound given to Jewish importance in the association of Gentiles with Jews as the receivers of the good tidings. If the Gentiles had been asked to become Jews, no offense would have been taken. But the proclamation of the Christ could not be thus governed and restrained. It overleaped, by its own force, these narrowing methods. It was felt to be addressed not to one nation only, but to mankind.
The new opposition brought out new action on the part of the apostles. Rejected by the Jews, they became bold and outspoken, and turned from them to the Gentiles. They remembered and declared what the prophets had foretold of the enlightening and deliverance of the whole world. In speaking to the Gentiles, therefore, they were simply fulfilling the promise of the Covenant. The gift, we observe, of which the Jews were depriving themselves, and which the Gentiles who believed were accepting, is described as “eternal life” (ἡ αἰώνιος ζωή). It was the life of which the risen Jesus was the fountain, which Peter and John had declared at Jerusalem, and of which all acts of healing were set forth as signs. This was now poured out largely upon the Gentiles. The Word of the Lord was published widely, and had much fruit. Henceforth Paul and Barnabas knew it to be their commission, not the less to present their message to Jews first, but in the absence of an adequate Jewish medium to deal directly with the Gentiles. But this expansion of the Gospel work brought with it new difficulties and dangers. At Antioch now, as in every city afterwards, the unbelieving Jews used their influence with their own adherents among the Gentiles, and especially the women of the higher class, to persuade the authorities or the populace to persecute the apostles, and to drive them from the place.
With their own spirits raised, and amid much enthusiasm of their disciples, Paul and Barnabas now traveled on to Iconium, where the occurrences at Antioch were repeated, and from thence to the Lycaonian country, which contained the cities Lystra and Derbe. Here they had to deal with uncivilized heathens. At Lystra the healing of a cripple took place, the narrative of which runs very parallel to the account of the similar act done by Peter and John at the gate of the Temple. The agreement becomes closer, if we insert here, with Lachmann, before “Stand upright on thy feet,” the words, “I say unto thee in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.” The parallel leads us to observe more distinctly that every messenger of Jesus Christ was a herald of life. The spiritual life-the ζωὴ αἰώνιος— which was of faith, is illustrated and expounded by the invigoration of impotent limbs. The same truth was to be conveyed to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the heathens of Lycaonia. The act was received naturally by these pagans. They took the apostles for gods, calling Barnabas, who was of the more imposing presence, Zeus (Jupiter), and Paul, who was the chief speaker, Hermes (Mercurius). This mistake, followed up by the attempt to offer sacrifices to them, gives occasion to the recording of an address in which we see a type of what the apostles would say to an ignorant pagan audience. Appeals to the Scriptures, references to the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, would have been out of place.
The apostles name the living God, who made heaven and earth and the sea, and all things therein: the God of the whole world, and all the nations in it. They declare themselves to be his messengers. They expatiate upon the tokens of himself which the Father of men had not withheld, in that he did them good, sending rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, the supporters of life and joy. They protest that in restoring the cripple they had only acted as instruments of the living God. They themselves' were not gods, but human beings of like passions with the Lycacinians. The living God was now manifesting himself more clearly to men, desiring that henceforth the nations should not walk in their own ways, but his. They therefore call upon the people to give up the vanities of idol worship, and to turn to the living God (comp. 1Th_1:9-10). In this address the name of Jesus does not occur. It is easy to understand that the apostles preached him as the Son of that living God to whom they bore witness, telling the people of his death and resurrection, and announcing his coming again. Although the people of Lystra had been so ready to worship Paul and Barnabas, the repulse of their idolatrous instincts appears to have provoked them, and they allowed themselves to be persuaded into hostility by Jews who came from Antioch and Iconium, so that they attacked Paul with stones, and thought they had killed him. He recovered, however, as the disciples were standing round him, and went again into the city. The next day he left it with Barnabas, and went to Derbe, and thence they returned once more to Lystra, and so to Iconium and Antioch, renewing their exhortations to the disciples, bidding them not to think their trials strange, but to recognize them as the appointed door through which the kingdom of heaven, into which they were called, was to be entered. In order to establish the churches after their departure, they solemnly appointed “elders” in every city. Then they came down to the coast, and from Attalia they sailed home to Antioch in Syria, where they related the successes which had been granted to them, and especially the “opening of the door of faith to the Gentiles.” Thus the First Missionary Journey ended.
6. Apostolic Council at Jerusalem (Acts 15; Galatians 2). — Upon that missionary journey follows most naturally the next important scene which the historian sets before us-the council held at Jerusalem to determine the relations of Gentile believers to the law of Moses. A.D. 47. In following this portion of the history, we encounter. two of the greater questions which the biographer of Paul has to consider. One of these is historical. What were the relations between the apostle Paul and the twelve? The other is critical. How is Galatians 2 to be connected with the narrative of the Acts?
The relations of Paul and the twelve will best be set forth in the narrative. But we must explain here why we accept Paul's statements in the Galatian epistle as additional to the history in Acts 15. The first impression of any reader would be a supposition that the two writers might be referring to the same event. The one would at least bring the other to his mind. In both he reads of Paul and Barnabas going up to Jerusalem, reporting the Gospel preached to the uncircumcised, and discussing with the older apostles the terms to be imposed upon Gentile believers. In both the conclusion is announced that these believers should be entirely free from the necessity of circumcision. These are main points which the narratives have in common. On looking more closely into both, the second impression upon the reader's mind may possibly be that of a certain incompatibility between the two. Many joints and members of the transaction as given by Luke do not appear in the account of Paul. Others in one or two cases are substituted. Further, the visit to Jerusalem is the third mentioned in the Acts, after Saul's conversion; in Galatians, it is apparently mentioned as the second. Supposing this sense of incompatibility to remain, the reader will go on to inquire whether the visit to Jerusalem mentioned in Galatians coincides better with any other mentioned in the Acts as the second (11:30) or the fourth (18:22). He will, in all probability, conclude without hesitation that it does not. Another view will remain, that Paul refers to a visit not recorded in the Acts at all. This is a possible hypothesis; and it is recommended by the vigorous sense of Paley. But where are we to place the visit? The only possible place for it is some short time before the visit of ch. 15. But it can scarcely be denied that the language of ch. 15 decidedly implies that the visit there recorded was the first paid by Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem after their great success in preaching the Gospel among the Gentiles. We suppose the reader, therefore, to recur to his first impression. He will then have to ask himself, “Granting the considerable differences, are there after all any plain contradictions between the two narratives, taken to refer to the same occurrences?” The answer must be, “There are no plain contradictions.” This, he will perceive, is a very weighty fact. When it is recognized, the resemblance first observed will return with renewed force to the mind. (The chronological question will be considered below.)
We proceed then to combine the two narratives. While Paul and Barnabas were staying at Antioch, “certain men from Judaea” came there and taught the brethren that it was necessary for the Gentile converts to be circumcised. This doctrine was vigorously opposed by the two apostles, and it was determined that the question should be referred to the apostles and elders at Jerusalem. Paul and Barnabas themselves, and certain others, were selected for this mission. In Gal_2:2 Paul says that he went up “by revelation” (κατ᾿ ἀποκάλυψιν), so that we are to understand him as receiving a private intimation from the Divine Spirit, as well as a public commission from the Church at Antioch. On their way to Jerusalem, they announced to the brethren in Phoenicia and Samaria the conversion of the Gentiles; and the news was received with great joy. “When they were come to Jerusalem, they were received by the Church, and by the apostles and elders, and they declared all things that God had done with them” (Act_15:4). Paul adds that he communicated his views “privately to them which were of reputation,” through anxiety as to the success of his work (Gal_2:2). The apostles and the Church in general, it appears, would have raised no difficulties; but certain believers who had been Pharisees thought fit to maintain the same doctrine which had caused the disturbance at Antioch. In either place, Paul would not give way to such teaching for a single hour (Gal_2:5). It became necessary, therefore, that a formal decision should be reached
CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.

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