The Thorn in the Flesh BY CHARLES C. SMITH, JR., MD Presented January 10, 1989 to The Innominate Society for The Study of Medical History Pendennis Club Louisville, KY The Thorn in the Flesh “Wheresoever I open St. Paul’s Epistles, I meet not words but thunder, and universal thunder, thunder that passes through all the world.” J. Doone “It is frankly disappointing to see how Paul hardly ever allows the real Jesus of the Nazareth to get a word in.” C.G. Jung “In the autumn of the year of the city 815 (which would be 62 A.D., in our way of counting time) Aesculapius Cultellus, a Roman physician, wrote to his nephew who was with the army in Syria as follows: My dear Nephew, A few days ago I was called in to prescribe for a sick man named Paul. He appeared to be a Roman citizen of Jewish parentage, well educated and of agreeable manners. I had been told that he was here in connection with a law-suit, an appeal from one of our provincial courts, Caesarea or some such place in the eastern Mediterranean. He had been described to me as a “wild and violent” fellow who had been making speeches against the People and against the law. I found him very intelligent and of great honesty. A friend of mine who used to be with the army in Asia Minor tells me that he heard something about him in Ephesus where he was preaching sermons about a strange new God. I asked my patient if this were true and whether he had told the people to rebel against the will of our beloved Emperor. Paul answered me that the Kingdom of which he had spoken was not of the world and he added many strange utterances which I did not understand, but which were probably due to his fever. His personality made a great impression upon me and I was sorry to hear that he was killed on the Ostian Road a few days ago. Therefore I am writing this letter to you. When next you visit Jerusalem, I want you to find out something about my friend Paul and the strange Jewish prophet, who seems to have been his teacher. Our slaves are getting much excited about this so-called Messiah, and a few of them, openly talked of the new kingdom (whatever that means) have been crucified. I would like to know the truth about all these rumours and I am Your devoted Uncle, Aesculpius Cultellus.” The Reply: “That is what Joseph told me, with tears running down his old cheeks. I gave him a gold piece when I left him, but he refused it and asked me to hand it to one poorer than himself. I also asked him a few questions about your friend Paul. He had known him slightly. He seems to have been a tent maker who gave up his profession that he might preach the words of a loving and forgiving God, who was so very different from that Jehovah of whom the Jewish priests are telling us all the time. Afterwards, Paul appears to have traveled much in Asia Minor and Greece, telling the slaves that they were all children of one loving Father and that happiness awaits all, both rich and poor, who have tried to live honest lives and done good to those who were suffering and miserable. I hope that I have answered your questions to your satisfaction. The whole story seems very harmless to me as far as the safety of the state is concerned. But then, we Romans never have been able to understand the people of this province. I am sorry that they have killed your friend Paul. I wish that I were at home again, and I am, as ever, Your dutiful nephew, Gladius Ensa.” From The Story of MANKIND, Hendrik Willem van Loon (1) “I am a Man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city.’ Thus Paul, who was by trade a tentmaker (Acts 18:3), describes himself in Acts 21:39. Tarsus, a little town of 20,000 in-habitants lying at the foot of the Tarsus Mountains in the south of Turkey, has preserved none of its former glory. Paul had every reason to laud his native city to the skies. An inscription calls Tarsus “The great and wondrous metropolis on Cilicia,” and the Greek geographer Strabo mentions that Tarsus had a university to match those of Athens and Alexandria. The famous teacher of the Emperor Augustus, Athenodorus the philosopher, was one of its sons.” From The Bible as History by Werner Keller. (2) The inhabitants of Tarsus had long ago carved the Cilician gates out of sheer rock to ensure passage of trade. The city of Tarsus was a city, in today’s parlance which would definitely have had “parallel runways”. Paul was born to a family in Tarsus which had done well socially and economically. Paul’s family had Roman citizenship, but he was “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews, as to the law a Pharisee.” (Phillipians 3:5). This establishes Paul’s racial descent and point out that he was not a descendant of some northern tribe. Judah and Benjamin were the two southern tribes composing the kingdom of the Davidic monarchy. Tarsus as a city was capital of the Roman province of Cilicia whose governor had been Cicero just 30 years prior to Paul’s birth. Its location with the Mediterranean in front, the Tarsus Mountains behind and the main road connecting Asia to Syria right through it made it a crossroads. The Old Testament often mentions “the ships of Tarshish.” During Paul’s life it became a “free city” of the Roman Empire with a population of little over one million. (3) The historical Paul then was born in a crossroads city of the world of a lineage present in the area for generations. Little is known of his personal appearance except as in the Apocryphal New Testament quoted by Malcolm Muggeridge: “Paul, a man of small stature, with his eyebrows meeting and a rather large nose, somewhat baldheaded, bandylegged, strongly built, of gracious presence, for sometimes he looked like a man and sometimes he had the face of an angel.” (4) Tonight’s topic has its origin in 2 Corinthians 12:7: “And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.” In the exposition of the Greek used to describe the noun in the object of the above sentence 3 probabilities exist: (1) Crucifixion on the cross but such usage arose 200 years after Paul’s death. (2) Stake as used for impalement. The word Padisades derives from rows of stakes used to slow and impale enemy attackers. (3) Thorn is well attested to in the Septuagint and other classical sources of Greek anthology even Aesop’s Fables, a word meant to imply a wound that is not fatal. (5) Throughout history most scholars, historians, and popular novelists have seized on this reference and elaborated it into astounding proportions so that almost without exception it has been assumed to represent physical debility. So firmly is this held that Goodspeed in an American translation of the New Testament says “a bitter physical affliction.” Phillip’s translates it in 1950 as “a physical handicap.” (6) Popular theory on Paul’s affliction has three main types of interpretation. First, the Roman Catholic expositors, especially those with monkish leanings, have thought Paul referred to carnal desire and solicitations of the flesh. The Latin Vulgate translation is “stimulus carnis.” Second, commentators of the Eastern Church and Erasmus have suggested a personal enemy who sought to slander him. The third explanation is some physical or nervous element. They have included weak eyesight, malaria, or neurologic and/or psychiatric medical problems. (7) To dissect these theories a bit, there is no Scripture to suggest Paul was particularly subject to bodily temptation. There is the famous “It is better to marry than to burn” (I Corinthians 7:9) and the critique of his attitude toward women generally. The matter of personal enemies in the church is dismissed by his referral to the malady being “a messenger of Satan.” The eyesight theory stems from two sources. In his letter to the Galatians he says “For I bear you record that if had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me.” (Galatians 4:15). He states that he writes with large letters (RSV) (Galatians 6:11). Then there is the famous blinding on the Damascus road followed by three days without sight. (Acts 9:3—9; Acts 22:6—13; Acts 26:13-16) In the neurologic sphere epilepsy has been a favorite diagnosis. Thombroso (1891) and Bryant (1953) believed Paul’s Conversion was epileptic rather than mystical. William James (1902) believed it might be a “physiological nerve storm or discharging lesion like that of epilepsy.” When I began this paper temporal lobe epilepsy was my favorite. I had first proposed this in my wife’s Sunday school class in 1958 without approbation. In 1970 this article in the British Journal of Psychiatry appeared. Case 3 fits our study here tonight. “Personal history: The patient was born in 1920 to middle class Jewish parents.