CYCLOPEDIA of BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL and ECCLESIASTICAL LITERATURE Paul - Pensaben, Marco by James Strong & John Mcclintock
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
THE AGES DIGITAL LIBRARY REFERENCE CYCLOPEDIA of BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL and ECCLESIASTICAL LITERATURE Paul - Pensaben, Marco by James Strong & John McClintock To the Students of the Words, Works and Ways of God: Welcome to the AGES Digital Library. We trust your experience with this and other volumes in the Library fulfills our motto and vision which is our commitment to you: MAKING THE WORDS OF THE WISE AVAILABLE TO ALL — INEXPENSIVELY. AGES Software Rio, WI USA Version 1.0 © 2000 2 Paul (Pau~lov, 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 3 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 Acts13:9, which he uses in his Epistles, and by which he is called by Peter (<610315>2 Peter 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 (<441307>Acts 13:7; comp. August. Confess. 8:4; Bengel and Olshausen, on <441309>Acts 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 4 signification of the name (comp. <461509>1 Corinthians 15:9; Paulus, Lat. small, little; comp. Gr. Pau~rov). Yet we should then expect that Luke would employ the name Paul from <440919>Acts 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 (<442203>Acts 22:3, etc.), and was of Jewish descent, of the tribe of Benjamin (<500305>Philippians 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 <442139>Acts 21:39 compared with <442224>Acts 22:24, 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 (<442316>Acts 23:16) of his “sister’s son.” Whether Andronicus, Junia, and Herodion, whom he terms, in the Epistle to the Romans (<451607>Romans 16:7, 11), suggenei~v mou, 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 5 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.