The Literature and History of New Testament Times

by J. Gresham Machen

However, the importance of Paul's Greek environment, if it must not be exaggerated, must on the other hand not be ignored. In the first place, Paul is a consummate master of the Greek language. He must have acquired it in childhood, and indeed in Tarsus could hardly have failed to do so. In the second place, he was acquainted with the religious beliefs and practices of the Greco-Roman world. The speech at Athens, Acts 17:22-31, shows how he made use of such knowledge for his preaching. In all probability the first impressions were made upon him at Tarsus. Finally, from his home in Tarsus Paul derived that intimate knowledge of the political and social relationships of the men of his day which, coupled with a native delicacy of perception and fineness of feeling, resulted in the exquisite tact which he exhibited in his missionary and pastoral labors. The Tarsian Jew of the dispersion was a gentleman of the Roman Empire.

That Aramaic, as well as Greek, was spoken by the family of Paul is made probable by Phil. 3:5 and II Cor. 11:22. The word "Hebrew" in these passages probably refers especially to the use of the Aramaic ("Hebrew") language, as in Acts 6:1, where the "Hebrews" in the Jerusalem church are contrasted with the "Grecian Jews." "A Hebrew of Hebrews," therefore, probably means "an Aramaic-speaking Jew and descended from Aramaic-speaking Jews." In Acts 21:40; 22:2 it is expressly recorded that Paul made a speech in Aramaic ("Hebrew"), and in Acts 26:14 it is said that Christ spoke to him in the same language. Conceivably, of course, he might have learned that language during his student days in Jerusalem. But the passages just referred to make it probable that it was rather the language of his earliest home. From childhood Paul knew both Aramaic and Greek.

2. THE INNER LIFE OF PAUL THE RABBI

The most interesting question about Paul's life at Jerusalem concerns the condition of his inner life before the conversion. Paul the Pharisee is an interesting study. What were this man's thoughts and feelings and desires before the grace of Christ made him the greatest of Christian missionaries?

The best way to answer this question would be to ask Paul himself. One passage in the Pauline epistles has been regarded as an answer to the question. That passage is Rom. 7:14-25. There Paul describes the struggle of the man who knows the law of God and desires to accomplish it, but finds the flesh too strong for him. If Paul is there referring to his pre-Christian life, then the passage gives a vivid picture of his fruitless struggle as a Pharisee to fulfill the law. Many interpreters, however, refer the passage not to the pre-Christian life but to the Christian life. Even in the Christian life the struggle goes on against sin. And even if Paul is referring to the pre-Christian life, he is perhaps depicting it rather as it really was than as he then thought it was. The passage probably does not mean that before he became a Christian Paul was fully conscious of the fruitlessness of his endeavor to attain righteousness by the law. Afterwards he saw that his endeavor was fruitless, but it is doubtful how clearly he saw it at the time.

It would, indeed, be a mistake to suppose that Paul as a Pharisee was perfectly happy. No man is happy who is trying to earn salvation by his works. In his heart of hearts Paul must have known that his fulfillment of the law was woefully defective. But such discontentment would naturally lead him only farther on in the same old path. If his obedience was defective, let it be mended by increasing zeal! The more earnest Paul was about his law righteousness, the more discontented he became with his attainments, so much the more zealous did he become as a persecutor.

Some have supposed that Paul was gradually getting nearer to Christianity before Christ appeared to him—that the Damascus experience only completed a process that had already begun. There were various things, it is said, which might lead the earnest Pharisee to consider Christianity favorably. In the first place, there was the manifest impossibility of law righteousness. Paul had tried to keep the law and had failed. What if the Christians were right about salvation by faith? In the second place, there were the Old Testament prophecies about a suffering servant of Jehovah. Isa., ch. 53. If they referred to the Messiah, then the cross might be explained, as the Christians explained it, as a sacrifice for others. The stumblingblock of a crucified Messiah would thus be removed. In the third place, there was the noble life and death of the Christian martyrs.

These arguments are not so weighty as they seem. Paul's dissatisfaction with his fulfillment of the law, as has already been observed, might lead to a more zealous effort to fulfill the law as well as to a relinquishment of the law. There seems to be no clear evidence that the pre-Christian Jews ever contemplated a death of the Messiah like the death of Jesus. On the contrary the current expectation of the Messiah was diametrically opposed to any such thing. And admiration of the Christian martyrs is perhaps too modern and too Christian to be attributed to the Pharisee. The fundamental trouble with this whole argument is that it proves merely that the Pharisee Paul ought to have been favorably impressed with Christianity. So he ought, but as a matter of fact he was not so impressed, and we have the strongest kind of evidence to prove that he was not. The book of The Acts says so, and Paul says so just as clearly in his letters. The very fact that when he was converted he was on a persecuting expedition, more ambitious than any that had been attempted before, shows that he was certainly not thinking favorably of Christianity. Was he considering the possibility that Christianity might be true? Was he trying to stifle his own inward uncertainty by the very madness of his zeal? Then, in persecuting the Church, he was going against his conscience. But in I Tim. 1:13 he distinctly says that his persecuting was done ignorantly in unbelief, and his attitude is the same in his other epistles. If in persecuting the Church he was acting contrary to better conviction, then that fact would have constituted the chief element in his guilt; yet in the passages where he speaks with the deepest contrition of his persecution, that particularly heinous sin is never mentioned. Evidently, whatever was his guilt, at least he did not have to reproach himself with the black sin of persecuting Christ's followers in the face of even a half conviction.

Accordingly, the words of Christ to Paul at the time of the conversion, "It is hard for thee to kick against the goad," Acts 26:14, do not mean that Paul had been resisting an inward voice of conscience in not accepting Christ before, but rather that Christ's will for Paul was really resistless even though Paul had not known it at all. Christ's loving plan would be carried out in the end. Paul was destined to be the apostle to the Gentiles. For him to try to be anything else was as useless and as painful as it is for the ox to kick against the goad. Christ will have his way.

Thus before his conversion Paul was moving away from Christianity rather than toward it. Of course, in emphasizing the suddenness of the conversion, exaggerations must be avoided. It is absurd, for example, to suppose that Paul knew nothing at all about Jesus before the Damascus event. Of course he knew about him. Even if he had been indifferent, he could hardly have failed to hear the story of the Galilean prophet; and as a matter of fact he was not indifferent but intensely interested, though by way of opposition. These things were not done in a corner. Paul was in Jerusalem before and after the crucifixion, if not at the very time itself. The main facts in the life of Jesus were known to friend and foe alike. Thus when in the first chapter of Galatians Paul declares that he received his gospel not through any human agency but directly from Christ, he cannot mean that the risen Christ imparted to him the facts in the earthly life of Jesus. It never occurred to Paul to regard the bare facts as a "gospel." He had the facts by ordinary word of mouth from the eyewitnesses. What he received from the risen Christ was a new interpretation of the facts. He had known the facts before. But they had filled him with hatred. He had known about Jesus. But the more he had known about him, the more he had hated him. And then Christ himself appeared to him! It might naturally have been an appearance in wrath, a thunderstroke of the just vengeance of the Messiah. Probably that was Paul's first thought when he heard the words, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest." But such was not the Lord's will. The purpose of the Damascus wonder was not destruction but divine fellowship and world-wide service.