Post by PG4Him on Aug 26, 2020 16:05:08 GMT -5
Paul was a Christian apostle who lived in the time of Jesus and the disciples. He was very influential in the early church. Paul planted dozens of local churches, mostly in the Mediterranean, and wrote about half the letters in the New Testament. Paul was so instrumental that I would dare to say we cannot fully apprehend Christian theology until we’ve read his letters.
We learn in Acts 9 that he was born in Tarsus, a city in modern Turkey. It belonged to Rome at the time. He mentions in Acts 22 that he was born with Roman citizenship, which was a big deal. Roman citizens had certain rights not available to their occupied populations. This was an important detail because it played into Paul’s trial in Rome and the reason he was not crucified.
Judging by the facts that Paul’s parents lived in Tarsus, were Roman citizens, and eventually connected him to high society in Jerusalem, they must have been wealthy. There’s even some evidence to suggest he was cousins with the Herod family.
Most “Roman Jews” at this time had a Roman version of their name. His Hebrew name was Saul but in Latin and Greek it would have been Paul. When he wrote his New Testament letters in Greek, he wrote Paul, so that’s what everyone called him. You might recognize the name Saul from King Saul in the Old Testament. They were from the same tribe (Benjamin). It was common for the Jews to repeat familiar names within their tribe. Whether or not this means anything in regard to a new king of Israel, or if it’s just a coincidence, I’ll leave that for you to ponder.
Paul’s parents were devout believers; he calls himself a Pharisee born of Pharisees in Acts 23 and a Hebrew of Hebrews in Philippians 3. We get the impression that his career path was probably chosen for him.
Judaism at this time was fractured into hundreds of denominations, one of which (and perhaps the biggest) was the Pharisees. They were nationalists, very proud of Israel’s election, still held that Israel was special among the nations, and were thus keenly determined to conserve the ways of Moses. In the face of increasing secular culture from Rome, the Pharisees doubled down on living by the Torah, which led to what we see from them in the gospels.
Although Jesus had harsh words for them in the end, the Pharisees weren’t the worst people in Judea. At least they believed in resurrection (which was better than the Sadducees), they believed in supernatural miracles, and they still cared about honoring Moses. Jesus gave them the honor of “sitting in the seat of Moses” in Matthew 23 because they seemed to get closer than anyone else in teaching the Torah.
At the start of Jesus’ ministry, the Pharisees were actually interested in Him. Many prominent Pharisees such as Nicodemus were friends with Him. However it soon became clear that Jesus intended to rise above Moses, and the Pharisees were having none of that. In the gospels, it seems that His break with the Pharisees hurt more than the outright rejection from others. After supporting Him early, they callously decided to kill Him. Their devotion to Moses came before everything, including friends.
Paul says in Romans 10 that they had a genuine zeal for God but they didn’t know Him. Interestingly, the Sadducees, who never liked Jesus, later blamed the Pharisees for helping Him with all their “mumbo jumbo” about resurrections and visions of angels. There’s a funny episode in Acts 23 when Paul escapes trial by making them fight among themselves.
As a young Pharisee, probably around the time Jesus got started, Paul was in Jerusalem attending seminary. One of Judaism’s most talented rabbis of all time, a man named Gamaliel, was dean of the school. The Jews had their best and brightest on hand when Jesus came. He remarks in John 5 that they searched the Scriptures. Paul probably had the Old Testament memorized. However, they thought the Scriptures themselves were already all they needed, and that Moses wrote about nothing or nobody other than Moses. To tell them that Moses intended something else all along did not compute. Although Paul later did come to see Christ in Scripture, we see shades of this devotion in his letters when he repeatedly says the Scriptures make us wise for salvation. Paul never stopped teaching the Old Testament; he simply learned how to see Jesus in it.
Gamaliel’s school was for the high society of Jews. His students went on to work in city government. There was a lot of crossover between them and the temple. Paul tells us in Galatians 1 that he was moving up above his peers. He was on the fast track to be head of the Sanhedrin. It is impossible that he didn’t meet Jesus at the temple.
Yet despite all of this career success and theological brilliance, Paul admits in Romans that life under the Law was kind of miserable. It introduced him to a litany of sins he had to worry about with not much assistance on how to overcome them, culminating in a death bound for Sheol, all for what purpose no one knows. Be a good person and God will bless you, for a while until you die, and then you’re in Sheol. Meanwhile you have to fight your sinful flesh every day to keep up with all of these laws. Paul did it because he thought it was what God wanted. Later, in Philippians 3, he said his life in Jerusalem was worth as much as dung.
How angry it must have made him to see Jesus’ disciples trotting around breaking the Sabbath. Eating with dirty hands, having dinner with tax collectors, yet casting out devils like they owned the place. And there was Paul straining gnats from his water yet unable to do one miracle. It’s easy to see why the Pharisees concluded such nefarious thoughts about Jesus.
Then Jesus has the nerve to call them white-washed tombs! Suddenly those dirty-handed Sabbath breaking amateur deliverance ministers were more righteous than the Pharisees! And suddenly it’s the Pharisees’ fault that Jerusalem will crumble. Now He’s talking about tearing down the temple and seeing Jerusalem bulldozed and something about water coming from His stomach. Oh what a sad implosion (so they thought) of Jesus’ ministry. Oh how sad to see that Jesus has lost the plot.
The Pharisees were instrumental in getting Jesus crucified. By then, His remaining friends in the group had to be quiet about it. It’s not true that Paul was the only Pharisee Jesus converted. Nicodemus who I mentioned earlier stayed loyal to Him, as did Joseph of Aramathea. Paul even mentions in Romans 16 that at least two of his relatives followed Jesus before he did. After the resurrection, we’re told in Matthew 28 that the Sanhedrin bribed the Roman guards to lie about it. Many explosive Sanhedrin meetings occurred in Acts. We wonder how Paul must have felt when he saw his side start to lose the plot.
The only way to shut up the disciples was produce a body. If they could find where Jesus’ body had gone, the resurrection “hoax” would be exposed. Paul, a temple insider with career plans for the Sanhedrin, volunteered to work the case. Armed with arrest warrants, he persecuted the early church, hoping for someone to crack and admit it was a hoax. He mentions in Acts 26 that he was a juror in their trials and routinely voted to execute them.
He was going to Damascus to raid the synagogue around the year 35 AD. Jesus appeared to Him in a vision in the middle of the road. By the time he got to Damascus, he was a Christian. He ran into the synagogue several days later proclaiming Jesus. In Acts 9, we see him outsmarting the Jews at the synagogue to preach Jesus from the Old Testament. Now they were up against a Jewish theologian trained by Gamaliel. He quoted Scripture in circles around them.
Imagine that you think the “big guns” from the city are coming to clean house. Then the master theologian trots into the room and sides with the Christians out of nowhere. The Jews of Damascus were so put off that they turned against Paul and tried to kill him. He escaped through a window.
The hoax investigation fizzled out with the lead detective defecting to join them. Although Jerusalem continued persecuting Christians, Paul’s conversion was the end of any real investigation effort. We know from Acts 5 that Gamaliel was urging them to drop it lest they find themselves opposing God.
Paul went to Arabia to clear his head for a few years (probably at Mt Sinai) where he seems to have had private meetings with Jesus. He tells us in Galatians 1 that he didn’t receive any teaching from men but through direct revelation. He returned to Jerusalem with a plan to preach Christ. He had two separate meetings with Peter and the others to make sure his revelations were correct. After getting nowhere with Jews in local synagogues, Paul famously says in Acts 13 if the Jews didn’t want it he would give it to the Gentiles.
While it may seem strange that a Pharisee who memorized the Old Testament would have a heart for the Gentiles, we must remember that Paul was also a Roman citizen who spoke Greek and Latin. He had many business dealings with Gentiles. In Acts 17, we find him quoting Greek literature to appeal to their search for God, and later in Titus we see him quoting a Greek proverb to attack it.
Paul could spit Old Testament among rabbis and then go discuss virtue with Stoics. He was the best of both. No matter what audience you put him in front of, he could teach them. Indeed, he mentions in 1 Corinthians 9 that he is a chameleon who can be all things to all people.
Peter says in 2 Peter 3 that Paul’s letters are hard to read. As a graduate-level theologian, Paul tackled the hardest questions in his writings. You can hear his rabbinical training in the multi-layered “on the other hand” labyrinth of Romans. He didn’t intend for his letters to be read once and tossed aside. He was writing dissertations. A lot of Christian doctrine is pulled from his letters.
Paul was a lifelong bachelor who appreciated hard work and no drama. He often complained that other Christians weren’t putting in more effort. If you were not fully committed to the work, he didn’t need your friendship. He even yelled at Peter one time! A young convert named Timothy was his best friend.
He never lost the childlike zeal from his life in Jerusalem. Numerous times Paul tells us he’s working day and night to do what’s been assigned to him. He raised the dead, healed the sick, prophesied, planted churches, and transformed the ragtag Christian movement into a powerful theological force.
He was so effective that the Jews were determined to kill him. Paul writes in Romans 10 that he cried for his lost brethren, wishing they could have been saved instead of him. He promised the early church that Israel would one day turn to Jesus. After avoiding the Jews for years, Paul was arrested, and he appealed for a meeting with Caesar. He writes in 2 Timothy that he finished his race and was ready for his crown. He was martyred in Rome.
Paul’s exploits can be read in Acts – Philemon. He was witty, sarcastic, philosophical, bold, always on a mission, and zealous for Jehovah.
We learn in Acts 9 that he was born in Tarsus, a city in modern Turkey. It belonged to Rome at the time. He mentions in Acts 22 that he was born with Roman citizenship, which was a big deal. Roman citizens had certain rights not available to their occupied populations. This was an important detail because it played into Paul’s trial in Rome and the reason he was not crucified.
Judging by the facts that Paul’s parents lived in Tarsus, were Roman citizens, and eventually connected him to high society in Jerusalem, they must have been wealthy. There’s even some evidence to suggest he was cousins with the Herod family.
Most “Roman Jews” at this time had a Roman version of their name. His Hebrew name was Saul but in Latin and Greek it would have been Paul. When he wrote his New Testament letters in Greek, he wrote Paul, so that’s what everyone called him. You might recognize the name Saul from King Saul in the Old Testament. They were from the same tribe (Benjamin). It was common for the Jews to repeat familiar names within their tribe. Whether or not this means anything in regard to a new king of Israel, or if it’s just a coincidence, I’ll leave that for you to ponder.
Paul’s parents were devout believers; he calls himself a Pharisee born of Pharisees in Acts 23 and a Hebrew of Hebrews in Philippians 3. We get the impression that his career path was probably chosen for him.
Judaism at this time was fractured into hundreds of denominations, one of which (and perhaps the biggest) was the Pharisees. They were nationalists, very proud of Israel’s election, still held that Israel was special among the nations, and were thus keenly determined to conserve the ways of Moses. In the face of increasing secular culture from Rome, the Pharisees doubled down on living by the Torah, which led to what we see from them in the gospels.
Although Jesus had harsh words for them in the end, the Pharisees weren’t the worst people in Judea. At least they believed in resurrection (which was better than the Sadducees), they believed in supernatural miracles, and they still cared about honoring Moses. Jesus gave them the honor of “sitting in the seat of Moses” in Matthew 23 because they seemed to get closer than anyone else in teaching the Torah.
At the start of Jesus’ ministry, the Pharisees were actually interested in Him. Many prominent Pharisees such as Nicodemus were friends with Him. However it soon became clear that Jesus intended to rise above Moses, and the Pharisees were having none of that. In the gospels, it seems that His break with the Pharisees hurt more than the outright rejection from others. After supporting Him early, they callously decided to kill Him. Their devotion to Moses came before everything, including friends.
Paul says in Romans 10 that they had a genuine zeal for God but they didn’t know Him. Interestingly, the Sadducees, who never liked Jesus, later blamed the Pharisees for helping Him with all their “mumbo jumbo” about resurrections and visions of angels. There’s a funny episode in Acts 23 when Paul escapes trial by making them fight among themselves.
As a young Pharisee, probably around the time Jesus got started, Paul was in Jerusalem attending seminary. One of Judaism’s most talented rabbis of all time, a man named Gamaliel, was dean of the school. The Jews had their best and brightest on hand when Jesus came. He remarks in John 5 that they searched the Scriptures. Paul probably had the Old Testament memorized. However, they thought the Scriptures themselves were already all they needed, and that Moses wrote about nothing or nobody other than Moses. To tell them that Moses intended something else all along did not compute. Although Paul later did come to see Christ in Scripture, we see shades of this devotion in his letters when he repeatedly says the Scriptures make us wise for salvation. Paul never stopped teaching the Old Testament; he simply learned how to see Jesus in it.
Gamaliel’s school was for the high society of Jews. His students went on to work in city government. There was a lot of crossover between them and the temple. Paul tells us in Galatians 1 that he was moving up above his peers. He was on the fast track to be head of the Sanhedrin. It is impossible that he didn’t meet Jesus at the temple.
Yet despite all of this career success and theological brilliance, Paul admits in Romans that life under the Law was kind of miserable. It introduced him to a litany of sins he had to worry about with not much assistance on how to overcome them, culminating in a death bound for Sheol, all for what purpose no one knows. Be a good person and God will bless you, for a while until you die, and then you’re in Sheol. Meanwhile you have to fight your sinful flesh every day to keep up with all of these laws. Paul did it because he thought it was what God wanted. Later, in Philippians 3, he said his life in Jerusalem was worth as much as dung.
How angry it must have made him to see Jesus’ disciples trotting around breaking the Sabbath. Eating with dirty hands, having dinner with tax collectors, yet casting out devils like they owned the place. And there was Paul straining gnats from his water yet unable to do one miracle. It’s easy to see why the Pharisees concluded such nefarious thoughts about Jesus.
Then Jesus has the nerve to call them white-washed tombs! Suddenly those dirty-handed Sabbath breaking amateur deliverance ministers were more righteous than the Pharisees! And suddenly it’s the Pharisees’ fault that Jerusalem will crumble. Now He’s talking about tearing down the temple and seeing Jerusalem bulldozed and something about water coming from His stomach. Oh what a sad implosion (so they thought) of Jesus’ ministry. Oh how sad to see that Jesus has lost the plot.
The Pharisees were instrumental in getting Jesus crucified. By then, His remaining friends in the group had to be quiet about it. It’s not true that Paul was the only Pharisee Jesus converted. Nicodemus who I mentioned earlier stayed loyal to Him, as did Joseph of Aramathea. Paul even mentions in Romans 16 that at least two of his relatives followed Jesus before he did. After the resurrection, we’re told in Matthew 28 that the Sanhedrin bribed the Roman guards to lie about it. Many explosive Sanhedrin meetings occurred in Acts. We wonder how Paul must have felt when he saw his side start to lose the plot.
The only way to shut up the disciples was produce a body. If they could find where Jesus’ body had gone, the resurrection “hoax” would be exposed. Paul, a temple insider with career plans for the Sanhedrin, volunteered to work the case. Armed with arrest warrants, he persecuted the early church, hoping for someone to crack and admit it was a hoax. He mentions in Acts 26 that he was a juror in their trials and routinely voted to execute them.
He was going to Damascus to raid the synagogue around the year 35 AD. Jesus appeared to Him in a vision in the middle of the road. By the time he got to Damascus, he was a Christian. He ran into the synagogue several days later proclaiming Jesus. In Acts 9, we see him outsmarting the Jews at the synagogue to preach Jesus from the Old Testament. Now they were up against a Jewish theologian trained by Gamaliel. He quoted Scripture in circles around them.
Imagine that you think the “big guns” from the city are coming to clean house. Then the master theologian trots into the room and sides with the Christians out of nowhere. The Jews of Damascus were so put off that they turned against Paul and tried to kill him. He escaped through a window.
The hoax investigation fizzled out with the lead detective defecting to join them. Although Jerusalem continued persecuting Christians, Paul’s conversion was the end of any real investigation effort. We know from Acts 5 that Gamaliel was urging them to drop it lest they find themselves opposing God.
Paul went to Arabia to clear his head for a few years (probably at Mt Sinai) where he seems to have had private meetings with Jesus. He tells us in Galatians 1 that he didn’t receive any teaching from men but through direct revelation. He returned to Jerusalem with a plan to preach Christ. He had two separate meetings with Peter and the others to make sure his revelations were correct. After getting nowhere with Jews in local synagogues, Paul famously says in Acts 13 if the Jews didn’t want it he would give it to the Gentiles.
While it may seem strange that a Pharisee who memorized the Old Testament would have a heart for the Gentiles, we must remember that Paul was also a Roman citizen who spoke Greek and Latin. He had many business dealings with Gentiles. In Acts 17, we find him quoting Greek literature to appeal to their search for God, and later in Titus we see him quoting a Greek proverb to attack it.
Paul could spit Old Testament among rabbis and then go discuss virtue with Stoics. He was the best of both. No matter what audience you put him in front of, he could teach them. Indeed, he mentions in 1 Corinthians 9 that he is a chameleon who can be all things to all people.
Peter says in 2 Peter 3 that Paul’s letters are hard to read. As a graduate-level theologian, Paul tackled the hardest questions in his writings. You can hear his rabbinical training in the multi-layered “on the other hand” labyrinth of Romans. He didn’t intend for his letters to be read once and tossed aside. He was writing dissertations. A lot of Christian doctrine is pulled from his letters.
Paul was a lifelong bachelor who appreciated hard work and no drama. He often complained that other Christians weren’t putting in more effort. If you were not fully committed to the work, he didn’t need your friendship. He even yelled at Peter one time! A young convert named Timothy was his best friend.
He never lost the childlike zeal from his life in Jerusalem. Numerous times Paul tells us he’s working day and night to do what’s been assigned to him. He raised the dead, healed the sick, prophesied, planted churches, and transformed the ragtag Christian movement into a powerful theological force.
He was so effective that the Jews were determined to kill him. Paul writes in Romans 10 that he cried for his lost brethren, wishing they could have been saved instead of him. He promised the early church that Israel would one day turn to Jesus. After avoiding the Jews for years, Paul was arrested, and he appealed for a meeting with Caesar. He writes in 2 Timothy that he finished his race and was ready for his crown. He was martyred in Rome.
Paul’s exploits can be read in Acts – Philemon. He was witty, sarcastic, philosophical, bold, always on a mission, and zealous for Jehovah.