The Pre-Christian Paul

 Twenty-first Saturday after Pentecost

Thanks to Frances for her supportive comment.

Today we return to Acts Bible Study. Please read Acts 8:1-3. The title of this post is the title a book by the great German NT scholar Martin Hengel. Hengel amazed me with how much we could know or reasonably speculate on a period in Paul's life for which we have very little direct information. 

First, let me clear up a very common misconception about Paul. I had Sunday School teachers who taught me that God changed Paul's name from Saul to Paul when Paul became a Christian in his encounter with the risen Christ on the Damascus Road (Acts 9). That is simply untrue. In fact, he is called Saul in Acts all the way through the early part of Acts 13. There is no reference in Acts or anywhere else to his name being changed. Saul was the Hebrew/Aramaic version of his name. Paul is the Greek version. It's like Juan is the Spanish version of the name that in English is John. In Mexico, for example, there is a Juan Wesley College. In Acts 13 Paul moves from Aramaic speaking territory to Greek speaking territory. There Luke begins to call him by his Greek name Paul.

That Paul was a persecutor of the nascent Christian movement is attested both in our Acts text today and in several places in Paul's letters. For example, in 1 Corinthians 15:9 Paul writes, "I am the least of the Apostles, unfit to be called an Apostle, because I persecuted the church of God." 

Paul's personality might be described as one of extremes. Whatever Paul did, he did to the nth degree. Before he knew Christ, he was the most extreme persecutor of Christian. After, he was the most extreme advocate for Christ. For Paul there was no middle ground. He was either all in or all out. 

But why did Paul persecute Christians?  Luke and Paul himself tell us that he did persecute Christians but don't tell us why. Paul was a Pharisee. He was a staunch follower of the Pharisaic belief in and following of the Torah, the laws attributed to Moses in the first five books of the Bible. Jesus' major opponents were the Pharisees. Jesus' own interpretation of the Torah was not the literalistic interpretation of the majority of Pharisees. Paul's was. But perhaps more importantly Paul got hung up (excuse the pun) on one statement of the Torah, Deuteronomy 21:22-23, "When someone is convicted of a crime punishable by death and is executed, and you hang him on a tree, you shall bury him that same day, for anyone hung on a tree is under God's curse." In the Pharisaic understanding execution by crucifixion, death by hanging on a wooden cross, was execution by hanging on a tree. Therefore, by the Torah's own definition, Jesus was accursed by God. Paul talks about this in Galatians 3. There he comes to the conclusion that, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us." Then then quotes Deut. 21:23.

While Saul/Paul's Torah problem led to his violent opposition to the earliest Christians, it was not his solution to the problem that led to his turnaround. Rather, it was his direct encounter with Christ on the Road to Damascus that changed him. His struggling with this and numerous other Torah problems who come only with time. 

Acts7:58 and 8:1 tells us that Paul was an approving witness of the stoning of Stephen. Perhaps it was the last verse of Stephen's defense that riled Paul most, "You [the men of the Jewish priestly court] are the ones that received the law as ordained by angels, and yet you have not kept it. (Acts 7:53). In Paul's mind it was exactly opposite. He had kept the law; Jesus had not. Jesus' followers were worshipping a man accursed by God. Such a heresy Saul/Paul felt compelled to stamp out.

Luke implies that this young Paul was physically very strong, "ravaging the church entering house after house, dragging off both men and women, he committed them to prison." (Acts 8:3). But as Paul would find out, "God's weakness is stronger than human strength." (1 Corinthians 1:25).

Faithfully,

Christian