Religious Studies 300 - Lesson 2 1 Seeking the Historical Paul As a Christian thinker, Paul never forgets his Jewishness. As a Christian Thinker, Paul never forgets his Jewishness. Although he fights to free Christianity from the “bondage” of Torah observance, Paul consistently stresses the unbroken continuity between Judaism and the new religion. For him as for Matthew, Christianity is revealed through Jesus’ ministry but shaped and largely defined by the Hebrew bible. Throughout his letters, Paul quotes selected parts of the Hebrew Scriptures to support the validity of his particular gospel. Despite Paul’s ambivalent attitude toward the Mosaic Torah, much of the Hebrew biblical tradition retains its teaching authority for him. Our most reliable source of Paul’s biography is his letters, in which he repeatedly, his Jewish heritage. Describing himself as a circumcised “Hebrew born and bred” from the Israelite tribe of Benjamin (Phil. 3:5-6), Paul states that as a practicing Jew” he outstripped his Jewish contemporaries in strict observance of the “traditions of his ancestors” (Gal. 1:13-14). A member of the Pharisee sect, he obeyed the Torah completely. “In legal rectitude”-keeping the Torah Commandments-Paul judges himself “faultless.” Before his call to follow Jesus, Paul demonstrated his loyalty to Pharisaic Judaism by persecuting those who believed that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. Whatever the nature of Paul’s supernatural encounter with the risen Christ, it radically changed his attitude towards Christianity without modifying his essential personality. According to Acts, and his own testimony, he displayed the same quality of religious zeal before Jesus appeared to him as he does afterward. Paul’s experience seems less a conversion from religion to another (he always stresses the connection between Judaism and the new faith) than a redirection of his abundant energies. Paul’s experience of the Risen Jesus In both Acts and Paul’s letters, Paul’s life can be divided into two contrasting parts. In his early career, he was a devout Pharisee who “savagely” persecuted the first Christians. In his later years, he was a Christian missionary who successfully implanted the new religion in non-Jewish territories and established the first churches of Europe. The event that changed Paul from a persecutor of Christians into an indomitable Christian evangelist was, in his words, “a revelation [apokalypsis] of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:12) Acts depicts the “revelation as a blinding vision of the risen Messiah on the road to Damascus. The author stresses the importance of the event by narrating it fully three times (Acts 9:1-9, 22:3-11, 26:12-19). Paul’s briefer allusions to the experience speak simply of being called by God’s Exclusive for San Pedro College only (Senior High School ) grace (Gal. 1:15) to an abnormal birth and of witnessing a post resurrection of Jesus (1Cor. 15:8-9). Paul does not state what form of apparition took, but he does imply that he maintained an ongoing communication with divine beings, experiencing a number of mystical visions (2 Cor. 12:1-10) Paul’s physical stamina- even today duplicating his travel itinerary would exhaust most people- is matched by the strength of his feelings. Paul’s letters reveal their author’s emotional intensity, ranging from paternal tenderness to biting sarcasm. In one letter, he insult’s his readers’ intelligence and suggest that some of their advisers castrate themselves (Gal. 3:1; 5:12). In other letters, he reacts to criticism with threats, wild boasting, and wounding anger (2 Cor. 10-13). In still others, he expresses profound affection and gentle tact. ( 1 Cor. 13; Phil. 1:3-9; 2:1-4; 4: 2-3) (Figure 12. 9) Paul’s conviction that Jesus had privately revealed to him the one true Gospel (Gal. 1-2) isolated the apostle from many fellow believers. Acts and the letters agree that Paul quarreled with many of his intimate companions (Acts 15:37-39; Gal. 2:11-14), as well as with entire groups ( Gal; 2 Cor. 10-13 ). This sense of a unique vision, one not shared by most other Christians, may have shaped Paul’s admitted preference for preaching in territories where no Christian had preceded him. The more distant his missionary field from competing evangelizers, the better it suited him. Paul’s desire to impress his individual gospel upon new converts may have influenced his ambition to work in areas as far removed from established churches as possible (Rom. 15:20-23)
