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The Origin of Paul's Religion

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Title: The Origin of Paul's Religion

Author: J. Gresham Machen


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ORIGIN OF PAUL'S RELIGION ***

  THE ORIGIN OF
  PAUL'S RELIGION

  THE JAMES SPRUNT LECTURES
  DELIVERED AT UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
  IN VIRGINIA

  BY

  J. GRESHAM MACHEN, D.D.

  _Assistant Professor of New Testament Literature and
  Exegesis in Princeton Theological Seminary_

  New York
  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  1921

  _All rights reserved_




  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  Copyright, 1921,
  BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

  Set up and printed. Published October, 1921.

  Press of
  J. J. Little & Ives Company
  New York, U. S. A.




  TO
  WILLIAM PARK ARMSTRONG

  MY GUIDE
  IN THE STUDY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
  AND IN ALL GOOD THINGS




THE JAMES SPRUNT LECTURES


In 1911 Mr. James Sprunt of Wilmington, North Carolina, gave to
The Trustees of Union Theological Seminary in Virginia the sum
of thirty thousand dollars, since increased by his generosity to
fifty thousand dollars, for the purpose of establishing a perpetual
lectureship, which would enable the institution to secure from time
to time the services of distinguished ministers and authoritative
scholars, outside the regular Faculty, as special lecturers on
subjects connected with various departments of Christian thought
and Christian work. The lecturers are chosen by the Faculty of the
Seminary and a committee of the Board of Trustees, and the lectures
are published after their delivery in accordance with a contract
between the lecturer and these representatives of the institution.
The ninth series of lectures on this foundation is presented in this
volume.

W. W. MOORE, _President_.




TABLE OF CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                           PAGE

  I. INTRODUCTION                                      3

  II. THE EARLY YEARS                                 43

  III. THE TRIUMPH OF GENTILE FREEDOM                 71

  IV. PAUL AND JESUS                                 117

  V. THE JEWISH ENVIRONMENT                          173

  VI. THE RELIGION OF THE HELLENISTIC AGE            211

  VII. REDEMPTION IN PAGAN RELIGION AND IN PAUL      255

  VIII. THE LORDSHIP OF JESUS                        293

  INDEX                                              319




CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION




THE ORIGIN OF PAUL'S RELIGION




CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION


The following discussion is intended to deal, from one particular
point of view, with the problem of the origin of Christianity. That
problem is an important historical problem, and also an important
practical problem. It is an important historical problem not
only because of the large place which Christianity has occupied
in the medieval and modern world, but also because of certain
unique features which even the most unsympathetic and superficial
examination must detect in the beginnings of the Christian movement.
The problem of the origin of Christianity is also an important
practical problem. Rightly or wrongly, Christian experience has
ordinarily been connected with one particular view of the origin
of the Christian movement; where that view has been abandoned, the
experience has ceased.

This dependence of Christianity upon a particular conception of
its origin and of its Founder is now indeed being made the object
of vigorous attack. There are many who maintain that Christianity
is the same no matter what its origin was, and that therefore
the problem of origin should be kept entirely separate from the
present religious interests of the Church. Obviously, however, this
indifference to the question as to what the origin of Christianity
was depends upon a particular conception of what Christianity now
is; it depends upon the conception which makes of Christianity
simply a manner of life. That conception is indeed widespread,
but it is by no means universal; there are still hosts of earnest
Christians who regard Christianity, not simply as a manner of life,
but as a manner of life founded upon a message--upon a message with
regard to the Founder of the Christian movement. For such persons
the question of the origin of Christianity is rather to be called
the question of the truth of Christianity, and that question is to
them the most important practical question of their lives. Even if
these persons are wrong, the refutation of their supposed error
naturally proceeds, and has in recent years almost always proceeded,
primarily by means of that very discussion of the origin of the
Christian movement which is finally to be shorn of its practical
interest. The most important practical question for the modern
Church is still the question how Christianity came into being.

In recent years it has become customary to base discussions of
the origin of Christianity upon the apostle Paul. Jesus Himself,
the author of the Christian movement, wrote nothing--at least
no writings of His have been preserved. The record of His words
and deeds is the work of others, and the date and authorship and
historical value of the documents in which that record is contained
are the subject of persistent debate. With regard to the genuineness
of the principal epistles of Paul, on the other hand, and with
regard to the value of at least part of the outline of his life
which is contained in the Book of Acts, all serious historians
are agreed. The testimony of Paul, therefore, forms a fixed
starting-point in all controversy.

Obviously that testimony has an important bearing upon the question
of the origin of Christianity. Paul was a contemporary of Jesus. He
attached himself to Jesus' disciples only a very few years after
Jesus' death; according to his own words, in one of the universally
accepted epistles, he came into early contact with the leader among
Jesus' associates; throughout his life he was deeply interested (for
one reason or another) in the affairs of the primitive Jerusalem
Church; both before his conversion and after it he must have had
abundant opportunity for acquainting himself with the facts about
Jesus' life and death. His testimony is not, however, limited to
what he says in detail about the words and deeds of the Founder of
the Christian movement. More important still is the testimony of
his experience as a whole. The religion of Paul is a fact which
stands in the full light of history. How is it to be explained? What
were its presuppositions? Upon what sort of Jesus was it founded?
These questions lead into the very heart of the historical problem.
Explain the origin of the religion of Paul, and you have solved the
problem of the origin of Christianity.

That problem may thus be approached through the gateway of the
testimony of Paul. But that is not the only way to approach it.
Another way is offered by the Gospel picture of the person of
Jesus. Quite independent of questions of date and authorship and
literary relationships of the documents, the total picture which
the Gospels present bears unmistakable marks of being the picture
of a real historical person. Internal evidence here reaches the
point of certainty. If the Jesus who in the Gospels is represented
as rebuking the Pharisees and as speaking the parables is not a
real historical person living at a definite point in the world's
history, then there is no way of distinguishing history from
fiction. Even the evidence for the genuineness of the Pauline
Epistles is no stronger than this. But if the Jesus of the Gospels
is a real person, certain puzzling questions arise. The Jesus of the
Gospels is a supernatural person; He is represented as possessing
sovereign power over the forces of nature. What shall be done with
this supernatural element in the picture? It is certainly very
difficult to separate it from the rest. Moreover the Jesus of the
Gospels is represented as advancing some lofty claims. He regarded
Himself as being destined to come with the clouds of heaven and be
the instrument in judging the world. What shall be done with this
element in His consciousness? How does it agree with the indelible
impression of calmness and sanity which has always been made by His
character? These questions again lead into the heart of the problem.
Yet they cannot be ignored. They are presented inevitably by what
every serious historian admits.

The fundamental evidence with regard to the origin of Christianity
is therefore twofold. Two facts need to be explained--the Jesus
of the Gospels and the religion of Paul. The problem of early
Christianity may be approached in either of these two ways. It
should finally be approached in both ways. And if it is approached
in both ways the investigator will discover, to his amazement, that
the two ways lead to the same result. But the present discussion is
more limited in scope. It seeks to deal merely with one of the two
ways of approach to the problem of Christianity. What was the origin
of the religion of Paul?

In discussing the apostle Paul the historian is dealing with a
subject important for its own sake, even aside from the importance
of what it presupposes about Jesus. Unquestionably Paul was a
notable man, whose influence has been felt throughout all subsequent
history. The fact itself cannot be called in question. But since
there is wide difference of opinion about details, it may be well,
in a brief preliminary word, to define a little more closely the
nature and extent of the influence of Paul.

That influence has been exerted in two ways. It was exerted, in the
first place, during the lifetime of Paul; and it has been exerted,
in the second place, upon subsequent generations through the medium
of the Pauline Epistles.

With regard to the second kind of influence, general considerations
would make a high estimate natural. The Pauline Epistles form a
large proportion of the New Testament, which has been regarded as
fundamental and authoritative in all ages of the Church. The use of
the Pauline Epistles as normative for Christian thought and practice
can be traced back to very early times, and has been continuous
ever since. Yet certain considerations have been urged on the other
side as indicating that the influence of Paul has not been so great
as might have been expected. For example, the Christianity of the
Old Catholic Church at the close of the second century displays a
strange lack of understanding for the deeper elements in the Pauline
doctrine of salvation, and something of the same state of affairs
may be detected in the scanty remains of the so-called "Apostolic
Fathers" of the beginning of the century. The divergence from Paul
was not conscious; the writers of the close of the second century
all quote the Pauline Epistles with the utmost reverence. But the
fact of the divergence cannot altogether be denied.

Various explanations of this divergence have been proposed. Baur
explained the un-Pauline character of the Old Catholic Church as
due to a compromise with a legalistic Jewish Christianity; Ritschl
explained it as due to a natural process of degeneration on purely
Gentile Christian ground; Von Harnack explains it as due to the
intrusion, after the time of Paul, of Greek habits of thought.
The devout believer, on the other hand, might simply say that the
Pauline doctrine of grace was too wonderful and too divine to be
understood fully by the human mind and heart.[1]

  [1] Compare "Jesus and Paul," in _Biblical and Theological Studies_
  by Members of the Faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary, 1912,
  pp. 553 f.

Whatever the explanation, however, the fact, even after
exaggerations have been avoided, remains significant. It remains
true that the Church of the second century failed to understand
fully the Pauline doctrine of the way of salvation. The same lack
of understanding has been observable only too frequently throughout
subsequent generations. It was therefore with some plausibility that
Von Harnack advanced his dictum to the effect that Paulinism has
established itself as a ferment, but never as a foundation, in the
history of doctrine.[2]

  [2] Harnack, _Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte_, 4te Aufl., i, 1909, p.
  155. (English Translation, _History of Dogma_, i, 1895, p. 136.)

In the first place, however, it may be doubted whether the dictum
of Von Harnack is true; for in that line of development of theology
which runs from Augustine through the Reformation to the Reformed
Churches, Paulinism may fairly be regarded as a true foundation. But
in the second place, even if Von Harnack's dictum were true, the
importance of Paul's influence would not be destroyed. A ferment is
sometimes as important as a foundation. As Von Harnack himself says,
"the Pauline reactions mark the critical epochs of theology and of
the Church.... The history of doctrine could be written as a history
of the Pauline reactions in the Church."[3] As a matter of fact
the influence of Paul upon the entire life of the Church is simply
measureless. Who can measure the influence of the eighth chapter of
Romans?

  [3] Harnack, _loc. cit._

The influence of Paul was also exerted, however, in his own
lifetime, by his spoken words as well as by his letters. To estimate
the full extent of that influence one would have to write the entire
history of early Christianity. It may be well, however, to consider
briefly at least one outstanding aspect of that influence--an aspect
which must appeal even to the most unsympathetic observer. The
Christian movement began in the midst of a very peculiar people; in
35 A.D. it would have appeared to a superficial observer to be a
Jewish sect. Thirty years later it was plainly a world religion.
True, the number of its adherents was still small. But the really
important steps had been taken. The conquest of the world was now a
mere matter of time. This establishment of Christianity as a world
religion, to almost as great an extent as any great historical
movement can be ascribed to one man, was the work of Paul.

This assertion needs to be defended against various objections, and
at the same time freed from misinterpretations and exaggerations.

In the first place, it might be said, the Gentile mission of Paul
was really only a part of a mighty historical process--the march of
the oriental religions throughout the western world. Christianity
was not the only religion which was filling the void left by the
decay of the native religions of Greece and Rome. The Phrygian
religion of Cybele had been established officially at Rome since 204
B.C., and after leading a somewhat secluded and confined existence
for several centuries, was at the time of Paul beginning to make
its influence felt in the life of the capital. The Greco-Egyptian
religion of Isis was preparing for the triumphal march which it
began in earnest in the second century. The Persian religion of
Mithras was destined to share with Isis the possession of a large
part of the Greco-Roman world. Was not the Christianity of Paul
merely one division of a mighty army which would have conquered even
without his help?

With regard to this objection a number of things may be said. In
the first place, the apostle Paul, as over against the priests of
Isis and of Cybele, has perhaps at least the merit of priority; the
really serious attempt at world-conquest was made by those religions
(and still more clearly by the religion of Mithras) only after the
time of Paul. In the second place, the question may well be asked
whether it is at all justifiable to class the Christianity of Paul
along with those other cults under the head of Hellenized oriental
religion. This question will form the subject of a considerable
part of the discussion which follows, and it will be answered with
an emphatic negative. The Christianity of Paul will be found to
be totally different from the oriental religions. The threat of
conquest made by those religions, therefore, only places in sharper
relief the achievement of Paul, by showing the calamities from
which the world was saved by his energetic mission. If except for
the Pauline mission the world would have become devoted to Isis or
Mithras, then Paul was certainly one of the supreme benefactors of
the human race.

Even apart from any detailed investigation, however, one difference
between the religion of Paul and the oriental religions is perfectly
obvious. The oriental religions were tolerant of other faiths; the
religion of Paul, like the ancient religion of Israel, demanded an
absolutely exclusive devotion. A man could become initiated into the
mysteries of Isis or Mithras without at all giving up his former
beliefs; but if he were to be received into the Church, according
to the preaching of Paul, he must forsake all other Saviours for
the Lord Jesus Christ. The difference places the achievement of
Paul upon an entirely different plane from the successes of the
oriental mystery religions. It was one thing to offer a new faith
and a new cult as simply one additional way of obtaining contact
with the Divine, and it was another thing, and a far more difficult
thing (and in the ancient world outside of Israel an unheard-of
thing), to require a man to renounce all existing religious beliefs
and practices in order to place his whole reliance upon a single
Saviour. Amid the prevailing syncretism of the Greco-Roman world,
the religion of Paul, with the religion of Israel, stands absolutely
alone. The successes of the oriental religions, therefore, only
place in clearer light the uniqueness of the achievement of Paul.
They do indeed indicate the need and longing of the ancient world
for redemption; but that is only part of the preparation for the
coming of the gospel which has always been celebrated by devout
Christians as part of the divine economy, as one indication that
"the fullness of the time" was come. But the wide prevalence of the
need does not at all detract from the achievement of satisfying the
need. Paul's way of satisfying the need, as it is hoped the later
chapters will show, was unique; but what should now be noticed is
that the way of Paul, because of its exclusiveness, was at least far
more difficult than that of any of his rivals or successors. His
achievement was therefore immeasurably greater than theirs.

But if the successes of the oriental religions do not detract from
the achievement of Paul, what shall be said of the successes of
pre-Christian Judaism? It must always be remembered that Judaism,
in the first century, was an active missionary religion. Even
Palestinian Judaism was imbued with the missionary spirit; Jesus
said to the Pharisees that they compassed sea and land to make one
proselyte. The Judaism of the Dispersion was no doubt even more
zealous for winning adherents. The numberless synagogues scattered
throughout the cities of the Greco-Roman world were not attended,
as Jewish synagogues are attended to-day, only by Jews, but were
also filled with hosts of Gentiles, some of whom had accepted
circumcision and become full Jews, but others of whom, forming the
class called in the Book of Acts "God-fearers" or "God-worshipers,"
had accepted the monotheism of the Jews and the lofty morality of
the Old Testament without definitely uniting themselves with the
people of Israel. In addition to this propaganda in the synagogues,
an elaborate literary propaganda, of which important remnants have
been preserved, helped to carry on the missionary work. The question
therefore arises whether the preaching of Paul was anything more
than a continuation, though in any case a noteworthy continuation,
of this pre-Christian Jewish mission.

Here again, as in the case of the longing for redemption which is
attested by the successes of the oriental religions, an important
element in the preparation for the gospel must certainly be
detected. It is hard to exaggerate the service which was rendered
to the Pauline mission by the Jewish synagogue. One of the most
important problems for every missionary is the problem of gaining a
hearing. The problem may be solved in various ways. Sometimes the
missionary may hire a place of meeting and advertise; sometimes
he may talk on the street corners to passers-by. But for Paul
the problem was solved. All that he needed to do was to enter
the synagogue and exercise the privilege of speaking, which was
accorded with remarkable liberality to visiting teachers. In the
synagogue, moreover, Paul found an audience not only of Jews but
also of Gentiles; everywhere the "God-fearers" were to be found.
These Gentile attendants upon the synagogues formed not only an
audience but a picked audience; they were just the class of persons
who were most likely to be won by the gospel preaching. In their
case much of the preliminary work had been accomplished; they were
already acquainted with the doctrine of the one true God; they had
already, through the lofty ethical teaching of the Old Testament,
come to connect religion with morality in a way which is to us
matter-of-course but was very exceptional in the ancient world.
Where, as in the market-place at Athens, Paul had to begin at the
very beginning, without presupposing this previous instruction on
the part of his hearers, his task was rendered far more difficult.

Undoubtedly, in the case of many of his converts he did have to
begin in that way; the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, for
example, presupposes, perhaps, converts who turned directly from
idols to serve the living and true God. But even in such cases the
God-fearers formed a nucleus; their manifold social relationships
provided points of contact with the rest of the Gentile population.
The debt which the Christian Church owes to the Jewish synagogue is
simply measureless.

This acknowledgment, however, does not mean that the Pauline mission
was only a continuation of the pre-Christian missionary activity
of the Jews. On the contrary, the very earnestness of the effort
made by the Jews to convert their Gentile neighbors serves to
demonstrate all the more clearly the hopelessness of their task.
One thing that was fundamental in the religion of the Jews was its
exclusiveness. The people of Israel, according to the Old Testament,
was the chosen people of God; the notion of a covenant between
God and His chosen people was absolutely central in all ages of
the Jewish Church. The Old Testament did indeed clearly provide a
method by which strangers could be received into the covenant; they
could be received whenever, by becoming circumcised and undertaking
the observance of the Mosaic Law, they should relinquish their
own nationality and become part of the nation of Israel. But this
method seemed hopelessly burdensome. Even before the time of Paul
it had become evident that the Gentile world as a whole would never
submit to such terms. The terms were therefore sometimes relaxed.
Covenant privileges were offered by individual Jewish teachers to
individual Gentiles without requiring what was most offensive, like
circumcision; merit was sought by some of the Gentiles by observance
of only certain parts of the Law, such as the requirements about the
Sabbath or the provisions about food. Apparently widespread also
was the attitude of those persons who seem to have accepted what
may be called the spiritual, as distinguished from the ceremonial,
aspects of Judaism. But all such compromises were affected by a
deadly weakness. The strict requirements of the Law were set forth
plainly in the Old Testament. To cast them aside, in the interests
of missionary activity, meant a sacrifice of principle to practice;
it meant a sacrifice of the zeal and the good conscience of the
missionaries and of the true satisfaction of the converts. One of
the chief attractions of Judaism to the world of that day was the
possession of an ancient and authoritative Book; the world was
eagerly searching for authority in religion. Yet if the privileges
of the Old Testament were to be secured, the authority of the Book
had to be set aside. The character of a national religion was
therefore too indelibly stamped upon the religion of Israel; the
Gentile converts could at best only be admitted into an outer circle
around the true household of God. What pre-Christian Judaism had to
offer was therefore obviously insufficient. Perhaps the tide of the
Jewish mission had already begun to ebb before the time of Paul;
perhaps the process of the withdrawal of Judaism into its age-long
seclusion had already begun. Undoubtedly that process was hastened
by the rivalry of Christianity, which offered far more than Judaism
had offered and offered it on far more acceptable terms. But the
process sooner or later would inevitably have made itself felt.
Whether or not Renan was correct in supposing that had it not been
for Christianity the world would have been Mithraic, one thing is
certain--the world apart from Christianity would never have become
Jewish.

But was not the preaching of Paul itself one manifestation of that
liberalizing tendency among the Jews to which allusion has just been
made and of which the powerlessness has just been asserted? Was not
the attitude of Paul in remitting the requirement of circumcision,
while he retained the moral and spiritual part of the Old Testament
Law--especially if, as the Book of Acts asserts, he assented upon
occasion to the imposition of certain of the less burdensome
parts even of the ceremonial Law--very similar to the action of a
teacher like that Ananias who was willing to receive king Izates of
Adiabene without requiring him to be circumcised? These questions
in recent years have occasionally been answered in the affirmative,
especially by Kirsopp Lake.[4] But despite the plausibility of
Lake's representation he has thereby introduced a root error into
his reconstruction of the apostolic age. For whatever the teaching
of Paul was, it certainly was not "liberalism." The background of
Paul is not to be sought in liberal Judaism, but in the strictest
sect of the Pharisees. And Paul's remission of the requirement of
circumcision was similar only in form, at the most, to the action of
the Ananias who has just been mentioned. In motive and in principle
it was diametrically opposite. Gentile freedom according to Paul
was not something permitted; it was something absolutely required.
And it was required just by the strictest interpretation of the
Old Testament Law. If Paul had been a liberal Jew, he would never
have been the apostle to the Gentiles; for he would never have
developed his doctrine of the Cross. Gentile freedom, in other
words, was not, according to Paul, a relaxing of strict requirements
in the interests of practical missionary work; it was a matter of
principle. For the first time the religion of Israel could go forth
(or rather was compelled to go forth) with a really good conscience
to the spiritual conquest of the world.

  [4] _The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul_, 1911, pp. 16-28, especially
  p. 24. Compare Lake and Jackson, _The Beginnings of Christianity_,
  Part I, vol. i, 1920, p. 166.

Thus the Pauline mission was not merely one manifestation of the
progress of oriental religion, and it was not merely a continuation
of the pre-Christian mission of the Jews; it was something new. But
if it was new in comparison with what was outside of Christianity,
was it not anticipated within Christianity itself? Was it not
anticipated by the Founder of Christianity, by Jesus Himself?

At this point careful definition is necessary. If all that is meant
is that the Gentile mission of Paul was founded altogether upon
Jesus, then there ought to be no dispute. A different view, which
makes Paul rather than Jesus the true founder of Christianity, will
be combated in the following pages. Paul himself, at any rate, bases
his doctrine of Gentile freedom altogether upon Jesus. But he bases
it upon what Jesus had done, not upon what Jesus, at least during
His earthly life, had said. The true state of the case may therefore
be that Jesus by His redeeming work really made possible the Gentile
mission, but that the discovery of the true significance of that
work was left to Paul. The achievement of Paul, whether it be
regarded as a discovery made by him or a divine revelation made to
him, would thus remain intact. What did Jesus say or imply, during
His earthly ministry, about the universalism of the gospel? Did He
make superfluous the teaching of Paul?

The latter question must be answered in the negative; attempts at
finding, clearly expressed, in the words of Jesus the full doctrine
of Gentile freedom have failed. It is often said that Jesus, though
He addressed His teaching to Jews, addressed it to them not as Jews
but as men. But the discovery of that fact (whenever it was made)
was no mean achievement. Certainly it was not made by the modern
writers who lightly repeat the assertion, for they have the benefit
of the teaching of Paul and of nineteen centuries of Christian
experience based upon that teaching. Even if Jesus did address not
the Jew as a Jew, but the man in the Jew, the achievement of Paul
in the establishment of the Gentile Church was not thereby made a
matter of course. The plain man would be more likely to stick at
the fact that however Jesus addressed the Jew He did address the
Jew and not the Gentile, and He commanded His disciples to do the
same. Instances in which He extended His ministry to Gentiles are
expressly designated in the Gospels as exceptional.

But did He not definitely command His disciples to engage in the
Gentile work after His departure? Certainly He did not do so
according to the modern critical view of the Gospels. But even if
the great commission of Matt. xxviii. 19, 20 be accepted as an
utterance of Jesus, it is by no means clear that the question of
Gentile liberty was settled. In the great commission, the apostles
are commanded to make disciples of all the nations. But on what
terms were the new disciples to be received? There was nothing
startling, from the Jewish point of view, in winning Gentile
converts; the non-Christian Jews, as has just been observed, were
busily engaged in doing that. The only difficulty arose when the
terms of reception of the new converts were changed. Were the
new converts to be received as disciples of Jesus without being
circumcised and thus without becoming members of the covenant people
of God? The great commission does not answer that question. It does
indeed mention only baptism and not circumcision. But might that
not be because circumcision, for those who were to enter into God's
people, was a matter of course?

In a number of His utterances, it is true, Jesus did adopt
an attitude toward the ceremonial Law, at least toward the
interpretation of it by the scribes, very different from what was
customary in the Judaism of His day. "There is nothing from without
the man," He said, "that entering into him can defile him: but the
things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man"
(Mark vii. 15). No doubt these words were revolutionary in their
ultimate implications. But there is no evidence that they resulted
in revolutionary practice on the part of Jesus. On the contrary,
there is definite reason to suppose that He observed the ceremonial
Law as it was contained in the Old Testament, and definite
utterances of His in support of the authority of the Law have been
preserved in the Gospels.

The disciples, therefore, were not obviously unfaithful to the
teachings of Jesus if after He had been taken from them they
continued to minister only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
If He had told them to make disciples of all the nations, He had
not told them upon what terms the disciples were to be received or
at what moment of time the specifically Gentile work should begin.
Perhaps the divine economy required that Israel should first be
brought to an acknowledgment of her Lord, or at least her obduracy
established beyond peradventure, in accordance with the mysterious
prophecy of Jesus in the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen,[5] before
the Gentiles should be gathered in. At any rate, there is evidence
that whatever was revolutionary in the life and teaching of Jesus
was less evident among His disciples, in the early days of the
Jerusalem Church. Even the Pharisees, and at any rate the people
as a whole, could find nothing to object to in the attitude of the
apostles and their followers. The disciples continued to observe
the Jewish fasts and feasts. Outwardly they were simply loyal Jews.
Evidently Gentile freedom, and the abolition of special Jewish
privileges, had not been clearly established by the words of the
Master. There was therefore still need for the epoch-making work of
Paul.

  [5] Matt. xxi. 41, and parallels. This verse can perhaps hardly be
  held to refer exclusively to the rejection of Jesus by the rulers;
  it seems also to apply to a rejection by the people as a whole. But
  the full implications of so mysterious an utterance may well have
  been lost sight of in the early Jerusalem Church.

But if the achievement of Paul was not clearly anticipated in the
teaching of Jesus Himself, was it not anticipated or at any rate
shared by others in the Church? According to the Book of Acts,
a Gentile, Cornelius, and his household were baptized, without
requirement of circumcision, by Peter himself, the leader of the
original apostles; and a free attitude toward the Temple and the
Law was adopted by Stephen. The latter instance, at least, has
ordinarily been accepted as historical by modern criticism. Even
in founding the churches which are usually designated as Pauline,
moreover, Barnabas and Silas and others had an important part; and
in the founding of many churches Paul himself was not concerned.
It is an interesting fact that of the churches in the three most
important cities of the Roman Empire not one was founded by Paul.
The Church at Alexandria does not appear upon the pages of the New
Testament; the Church at Rome appears fully formed when Paul was
only preparing for his coming by the Epistle to the Romans; the
Church at Antioch, at least in its Gentile form, was founded by
certain unnamed Jews of Cyprus and Cyrene. Evidently, therefore,
Paul was not the only missionary who carried the gospel to the
Gentile world. If the Gentile work consisted merely in the
geographical extension of the frontiers of the Church, then Paul did
not by any means stand alone.

Even in the geographical sphere, however, his achievements must
not be underestimated; even in that sphere he labored far more
abundantly than any other one man. His desire to plant the gospel
in places where it had never been heard led him into an adventurous
life which may well excite the astonishment of the modern man. The
catalogue of hardships which Paul himself gives incidentally in the
Second Epistle to the Corinthians shows that the Book of Acts has
been very conservative in its account of the hardships and perils
which the apostle endured; evidently the half has not been told.
The results, moreover, were commensurate with the hardships that
they cost. Despite the labors of others, it was Paul who planted the
gospel in a real chain of the great cities; it was he who conceived
most clearly the thought of a mighty Church universal which should
embrace both Jew and Gentile, barbarian, Scythian, bond and free
in a common faith and a common life. When he addressed himself to
the Church at Rome, in a tone of authority, as the apostle to the
Gentiles who was ready to preach the gospel to those who were at
Rome also, his lofty claim was supported, despite the fact that
the Church at Rome had itself been founded by others, by the mere
extent of his labors.

The really distinctive achievement of Paul, however, does not
consist in the mere geographical extension of the frontiers of the
Church, important as that work was; it lies in a totally different
sphere--in the hidden realm of thought.[6] What was really standing
in the way of the Gentile mission was not the physical barriers
presented by sea and mountain, it was rather the great barrier of
religious principle. Particularism was written plain upon the pages
of the Old Testament; in emphatic language the Scriptures imposed
upon the true Israelite the duty of separateness from the Gentile
world. Gentiles might indeed be brought in, but only when they
acknowledged the prerogatives of Israel and united themselves with
the Jewish nation. If premonitions of a different doctrine were to
be found, they were couched in the mysterious language of prophecy;
what seemed to be fundamental for the present was the doctrine of
the special covenant between Jehovah and His chosen people.

  [6] For what follows, compare the article cited in _Biblical and
  Theological Studies_, pp. 555-557.

This particularism of the Old Testament might have been overcome
by practical considerations, especially by the consideration
that since as a matter of fact the Gentiles would never accept
circumcision and submit to the Law the only way to carry on the
broader work was quietly to keep the more burdensome requirements
of the Law in abeyance. This method would have been the method
of "liberalism." And it would have been utterly futile. It would
have meant an irreparable injury to the religious conscience; it
would have sacrificed the good conscience of the missionary and the
authoritativeness of his proclamation. Liberalism would never have
conquered the world.

Fortunately liberalism was not the method of Paul. Paul was not a
practical Christian who regarded life as superior to doctrine, and
practice as superior to principle. On the contrary, he overcame the
principle of Jewish particularism in the only way in which it could
be overcome; he overcame principle by principle. It was not Paul
the practical missionary, but Paul the theologian, who was the real
apostle to the Gentiles.

In his theology he avoided certain errors which lay near at
hand. He avoided the error of Marcion, who in the middle of the
second century combated Jewish particularism by representing the
whole of the Old Testament economy as evil and as the work of a
being hostile to the good God. That error would have deprived
the Church of the prestige which it derived from the possession
of an ancient and authoritative Book; as a merely new religion
Christianity never could have appealed to the Gentile world. Paul
avoided also the error of the so-called "Epistle of Barnabas,"
which, while it accepted the Old Testament, rejected the entire
Jewish interpretation of it; the Old Testament Law, according to
the Epistle of Barnabas, was never intended to require literal
sacrifices and circumcision, in the way in which it was interpreted
by the Jews. That error, also, would have been disastrous; it would
have introduced such boundless absurdity into the Christian use of
the Scriptures that all truth and soberness would have fled.

Avoiding all such errors, Paul was able with a perfectly good
conscience to accept the priceless support of the Old Testament
Scriptures in his missionary work while at the same time he rejected
for his Gentile converts the ceremonial requirements which the Old
Testament imposed. The solution of the problem is set forth clearly
in the Epistle to the Galatians. The Old Testament Law, according
to Paul, was truly authoritative and truly divine. But it was
temporary; it was authoritative only until the fulfillment of the
promise should come. It was a schoolmaster to bring the Jews to
Christ; and (such is the implication, according to the Epistle to
the Romans) it could also be a schoolmaster to bring every one to
Christ, since it was intended to produce the necessary consciousness
of sin.

This treatment of the Old Testament was the only practical solution
of the difficulty. But Paul did not adopt it because it was
practical; he adopted it because it was true. It never occurred to
him to hold principle in abeyance even for the welfare of the souls
of men. The deadening blight of pragmatism had never fallen upon his
soul.

The Pauline grounding of the Gentile mission is not to be limited,
however, to his specific answer to the question, "What then is the
law?" It extends rather to his entire unfolding of the significance
of the Cross of Christ. He exhibited the temporary character of the
Old Testament dispensation by showing that a new era had begun, by
exhibiting positively the epoch-making significance of the Cross.

At this point undoubtedly he had precursors. The significance of
the Cross of Christ was by no means entirely unknown to those who
had been disciples before him; he himself places the assertion that
Christ "died for our sins according to the Scriptures" as one of the
things that he had "received." But unless all indications fail Paul
did bring an unparalleled enrichment of the understanding of the
Cross. For the first time the death of Christ was viewed in its full
historical and logical relationships. And thereby Gentile freedom,
and the freedom of the entire Christian Church for all time, was
assured.

Inwardly, indeed, the early Jerusalem disciples were already free
from the Law; they were really trusting for their salvation not to
their observance of the Law but to what Christ had done for them.
But apparently they did not fully know that they were free; or
rather they did not know exactly why they were free. The case of
Cornelius, according to the Book of Acts, was exceptional; Cornelius
had been received into the Church without being circumcised, but
only by direct command of the Spirit. Similar direct and unexplained
guidance was apparently to be waited for if the case was to be
repeated. Even Stephen had not really advocated the immediate
abolition of the Temple or the abandonment of Jewish prerogatives in
the presence of Gentiles.

The freedom of the early Jerusalem Church, in other words, was
not fully grounded in a comprehensive view of the meaning of
Jesus' work. Such freedom could not be permanent. It was open to
argumentative attacks, and as a matter of fact such attacks were not
long absent. The very life of the Gentile mission at Antioch was
threatened by the Judaizers who came down from Jerusalem and said,
"Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be
saved." Practical considerations, considerations of church polity,
were quite powerless before such attacks; freedom was held by but a
precarious tenure until its underlying principles were established.
Christianity, in other words, could not live without theology. And
the first great Christian theologian was Paul.

It was Paul, then, who established the principles of the Gentile
mission. Others labored in detail, but it was he who was at the
heart of the movement. It was he, far more than any other one man,
who carried the gospel out from Judaism into the Gentile world.

The importance of the achievement must be apparent to every
historian, no matter how unsympathetic his attitude toward the
content of Christianity may be. The modern European world, what may
be called "western civilization," is descended from the civilization
of Greece and Rome. Our languages are either derived directly from
the Latin, or at any rate connected with the same great family. Our
literature and art are inspired by the great classical models. Our
law and government have never been independent of the principles
enunciated by the statesmen of Greece, and put into practice by
the statesmen of Rome. Our philosophies are obliged to return ever
anew to the questions which were put, if not answered, by Plato and
Aristotle.

Yet there has entered into this current of Indo-European
civilization an element from a very diverse and very unexpected
source. How comes it that a thoroughly Semitic book like the Bible
has been accorded a place in medieval and modern life to which the
glories of Greek literature can never by any possibility aspire? How
comes it that the words of that book have not only made political
history--moved armies and built empires--but also have entered into
the very fabric of men's souls? The intrinsic value of the Book
would not alone have been sufficient to break down the barriers
which opposed its acceptance by the Indo-European race. The race
from which the Bible came was despised in ancient times and it is
despised to-day. How comes it then that a product of that race
has been granted such boundless influence? How comes it that the
barriers which have always separated Jew from Gentile, Semite from
Aryan, have at one point been broken through, so that the current of
Semitic life has been allowed to flow unchecked over the rich fields
of our modern civilization?

The answer to these questions, to the large extent which the
preceding outline has attempted to define, must be sought in the
inner life of a Jew of Tarsus. In dealing with the apostle Paul we
are dealing with one of the moving factors of the world's history.

That conclusion might at first sight seem to affect unfavorably the
special use to which it is proposed, in the present discussion, to
put the examination of Paul. The more important Paul was as a man,
it might be said, the less important he becomes as a witness to the
origin of Christianity. If his mind had been a blank tablet prepared
to receive impressions, then the historian could be sure that what
is found in Paul's Epistles about Jesus is a true reflection of what
Jesus really was. But as a matter of fact Paul was a genius. It
is of the nature of genius to be creative. May not what Paul says
about Jesus and the origin of Christianity, therefore, be no mere
reflection of the facts, but the creation of his own mind?

The difficulty is not so serious as it seems. Genius is not
incompatible with honesty--certainly not the genius of Paul. When,
therefore, Paul sets himself to give information about certain
plain matters of fact that came under his observation, as in the
first two chapters of Galatians, there are not many historians
who are inclined to refuse him credence. But the witness of Paul
depends not so much upon details as upon the total fact of his
religious life. It is that fact which is to be explained. To say
merely that Paul was a genius and therefore unaccountable is no
explanation. Certainly it is not an explanation satisfactory to
modern historians. During the progress of modern criticism, students
of the origin of Christianity have accepted the challenge presented
by the fact of Paul's religious life; they have felt obliged to
account for the emergence of that fact at just the point when it
actually appeared. But the explanations which they have offered, as
the following discussion may show, are insufficient; and it is just
the greatness of Paul for which the explanations do not account. The
religion of Paul is too large a building to have been erected upon a
pin-point.

Moreover, the greater a man is, the wider is the area of his
contact with his environment, and the deeper is his penetration
into the spiritual realm. The "man in the street" is not so good an
observer as is sometimes supposed; he observes only what lies on
the surface. Paul, on the other hand, was able to sound the depths.
It is, on the whole, certainly no disadvantage to the student of
early Christianity that that particular member of the early Church
whose inner life stands clearest in the light of history was no mere
nonentity, but one of the commanding figures in the history of the
world.

But what, in essence, is the fact of which the historical
implications are here to be studied? What was the religion of Paul?
No attempt will now be made to answer the question in detail; no
attempt will be made to add to the long list of expositions of the
Pauline theology. But what is really essential is abundantly plain,
and may be put in a word--the religion of Paul was a religion of
redemption. It was founded not upon what had always been true, but
upon what had recently happened; not upon right ideas about God and
His relations to the world, but upon one thing that God had done;
not upon an eternal truth of the fatherhood of God, but upon the
fact that God had chosen to become the Father of those who should
accept the redemption offered by Christ. The religion of Paul was
rooted altogether in the redeeming work of Jesus Christ. Jesus for
Paul was primarily not a Revealer, but a Saviour.

The character of Paulinism as a redemptive religion involved a
certain conception of the Redeemer, which is perfectly plain on the
pages of the Pauline Epistles. Jesus Christ, Paul believed, was a
heavenly being; Paul placed Him clearly on the side of God and not
on the side of men. "Not by man but by Jesus Christ," he says at the
beginning of Galatians, and the same contrast is implied everywhere
in the Epistles. This heavenly Redeemer existed before His earthly
life; came then to earth, where He lived a true human life of
humiliation; suffered on the cross for the sins of those upon whom
the curse of the Law justly rested; then rose again from the dead by
a mighty act of God's power; and is present always with His Church
through His Spirit.

That representation has become familiar to the devout Christian, but
to the modern historian it seems very strange. For to the modern
historian, on the basis of the modern view of Jesus, the procedure
of Paul seems to be nothing else than the deification by Paul of a
man who had lived but a few years before and had died a shameful
death.[7] It is not necessary to argue the question whether in
Rom. ix. 5 Paul actually applies the term "God" to Jesus--certainly
he does so according to the only natural interpretation of his
words as they stand--what is really important is that everywhere
the relationship in which Paul stands toward Jesus is not the
mere relationship of disciple to master, but is a truly religious
relationship. Jesus is to Paul everywhere the object of religious
faith.

  [7] H. J. Holtzmann (in _Protestantische Monatshefte_, iv, 1900, pp.
  465f., and in _Christliche Welt_, xxiv, 1910, column 153) admitted
  that for the rapid apotheosis of Jesus as it is attested by the
  epistles of Paul he could cite no parallel in the religious history
  of the race.

That fact would not be quite so surprising if Paul had been of
polytheistic training, if he had grown up in a spiritual environment
where the distinction between divine and human was being broken
down. Even in such an environment, indeed, the religion of Paul
would have been quite without parallel. The deification of the
eastern rulers or of the emperors differs _in toto_ from the Pauline
attitude toward Jesus. It differs in seriousness and fervor; above
all it differs in its complete lack of exclusiveness. The lordship
of the ruler admitted freely, and was indeed always accompanied by,
the lordship of other gods; the lordship of Jesus, in the religion
of Paul, was absolutely exclusive. For Paul, there was one Lord and
one Lord only. When any parallel for such a religious relationship
of a notable man to one of his contemporaries with whose most
intimate friends he had come into close contact can be cited in the
religious annals of the race, then it will be time for the historian
to lose his wonder at the phenomenon of Paul.

But the wonder of the historian reaches its climax when he remembers
that Paul was not a polytheist or a pantheist, but a Jew, to whom
monotheism was the very breath of life.[8] The Judaism of Paul's day
was certainly nothing if not monotheistic. But in the intensity of
his monotheism Paul was not different from his countrymen. No one
can possibly show a deeper scorn for the many gods of the heathen
than can Paul. "For though there be that are called gods," he says,
"whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords
many,) But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all
things, and we unto him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are
all things, and we by him." (I Cor. viii. 5, 6.) Yet it was this
monotheist sprung of a race of monotheists, who stood in a full
religious relation to a man who had died but a few years before; it
was this monotheist who designated that man, as a matter of course,
by the supreme religious term "Lord," and did not hesitate to apply
to Him the passages in the Greek Old Testament where that term was
used to translate the most awful name of the God of Israel! The
religion of Paul is a phenomenon well worthy of the attention of the
historian.

  [8] Compare R. Seeberg, _Der Ursprung des Christusglaubens_, 1914,
  pp. 1f.

In recent years that phenomenon has been explained in four different
ways. The four ways have not always been clearly defined; they have
sometimes entered into combination with one another. But they are
logically distinct, and to a certain extent they may be treated
separately.

There is first of all the supernaturalistic explanation, which
simply accepts at its face value what Paul presupposes about Jesus.
According to this explanation, Jesus was really a heavenly being,
who in order to redeem sinful man came voluntarily to earth,
suffered for the sins of others on the cross, rose from the dead,
ascended to the right hand of God, from whence He shall come to
judge the quick and the dead. If this representation be correct,
then there is really nothing to explain; the religious attitude of
Paul toward Jesus was not an apotheosis of a man, but recognition as
divine of one who really was divine.

The other three explanations are alike in that they all reject
supernaturalism, they all deny the entrance into human history of
any creative act of God, unless indeed all the course of nature be
regarded as creative. They all agree, therefore, in explaining the
religion of Paul as a phenomenon which emerged in the course of
history under the operation of natural causes.

The most widespread of these naturalistic explanations of the
religion of Paul is what may be called the "liberal" view. The name
is highly unsatisfactory; it has been used and misused until it
has often come to mean almost nothing. But no other term is ready
to hand. "Ritschlian" might possibly describe the phenomenon that
is meant, but that term is perhaps too narrow, and would imply a
degree of logical connection with the Ritschlian theology which
would not fit all forms of the phenomenon. The best that can be
done, therefore, is to define the term "liberal" in a narrower way
than is sometimes customary and then use it in distinction not only
from traditional and supernaturalistic views, but also from various
"radical" views, which will demand separate consideration.

The numerous forms of the liberal view differ from other
naturalistic hypotheses in that they attribute supreme importance
in the formation of the religion of Paul to the influence of the
real historic person, Jesus of Nazareth, and to the experience which
Paul had near Damascus when he thought he saw that person risen
from the dead. Jesus of Nazareth, according to the liberal view,
was the greatest of the children of men. His greatness centered in
His consciousness of standing toward God in the relation of son to
Father. That consciousness of sonship, at least in its purity, Jesus
discovered, was not shared by others. Some category was therefore
needed to designate the uniqueness of His sonship. The category
which He adopted, though with reluctance, and probably toward the
end of His ministry, was the category of Messiahship. His Messianic
consciousness was thus not fundamental in His conception of His
mission; certainly it did not mean that He put His own person into
His gospel. He urged men, not to take Him as the object of their
faith, but only to take Him as an example for their faith; not to
have faith in Him, but to have faith in God like His faith. Such was
the impression of His personality, however, that after His death
the love and reverence of His disciples for Him not only induced
the hallucinations in which they thought they saw Him risen from
the dead but also led them to attribute to His person a kind of
religious importance which He had never claimed. They began to make
Him not only an example for faith but also the object of faith. The
Messianic element in His life began now to assume an importance
which He had never attributed to it; the disciples began to ascribe
to Him divine attributes. This process was somewhat hindered in the
case of His intimate friends by the fact that they had seen Him
under all the limitations of ordinary human life. But in the case of
the apostle Paul, who had never seen Him, the process of deification
could go on unchecked. What was fundamental, however, even for
Paul, was an impression of the real person of Jesus of Nazareth;
that impression was conveyed to Paul in various ways--especially by
the brave and pure lives of Jesus' disciples, which had impressed
him, against his will, even when he was still a persecutor. But
Paul was a child of his time. He was obliged, therefore, to express
that which he had received from Jesus in the categories that were
ready to hand. Those categories as applied to Jesus constitute the
Pauline theology. Thus Paul was really the truest disciple of Jesus
in the depths of his inner life, but his theology was the outer
and perishable shell for the precious kernel. His theology was the
product of his time, and may now be abandoned; his religion was
derived from Jesus of Nazareth and is a permanent possession of the
human race.

Such in bare outline is the liberal view of the origin of Paulinism
and of Christianity. It has been set forth in so many brilliant
treatises that no one may be singled out as clearly representative.
Perhaps Von Harnack's "What is Christianity?"[9], among the popular
expositions, may still serve as well as any other. The liberal
view of the origin of Christianity seemed at one time likely
to dominate the religious life of the modern world; it found
expression in countless sermons and books of devotion as well as
in scientific treatises. Now, however, there are some indications
that it is beginning to fall; it is being attacked by radicalism
of various kinds. With some of these attacks it will not now be
worth while to deal; it will not be worth while to deal with
those forms of radicalism which reject what have been designated
as the two starting-points for an investigation of the origin of
Christianity--the historicity of Jesus and the genuineness of
the major epistles of Paul. These hypotheses are some of them
interesting on the negative side, they are interesting for their
criticism of the dominant liberal view; but when it comes to their
own attempts at reconstruction they have never advanced beyond the
purest dilettantism. Attention will now be confined to the work
of historians who have really attempted seriously to grapple with
the historical problems, and specifically to those who have given
attention to the problem of Paul.

  [9] Harnack, _Das Wesen des Christentums_, 1900. (English
  Translation, _What is Christianity?_, 1901.)

Two lines of explanation have been followed in recent years by those
who reject, in the interest of more radical views, the liberal
account of the origin of Paulinism. But these two lines run to a
certain point together; they both reject the liberal emphasis upon
the historic person of Jesus as accounting for the origin of Paul's
religion. The criticism of the customary view was put sharply by W.
Wrede in 1904[10], when he declared that Paul was no disciple of
Jesus, but a second founder of Christianity. The religious life of
Paul, Wrede insisted, was not really derived from Jesus of Nazareth.
What was fundamental for Paul was not the example of Jesus, but
His redeeming work as embraced in the death and resurrection,
which were regarded as events of a cosmic significance. The
theology of Paul--his interpretation of the death and resurrection
of Jesus--cannot, therefore, be separated from his religion; on
the contrary, it is in connection with the theology, and not in
connection with any impression of the character of Jesus, that the
fervor of Paul's religious life runs full and free. Theology and
religion in Paul, therefore, must stand or fall together; if one
was derived from extra-Christian sources, probably the other must
be so derived also. And such, as a matter of fact, Wrede concludes
is the case. The religion of Paul is not based at all upon Jesus of
Nazareth.

  [10] Wrede, _Paulus_, 1904. (English Translation, _Paul_, 1907.)

Such, in true import, though not in word or in detail, was the
startling criticism which Wrede directed against the liberal account
of the origin of Paulinism. He had really only made explicit a type
of criticism which had gradually been becoming inevitable for some
time before. Hence the importance of his little book. The current
reconstruction of the origin of Christianity had produced a Jesus
and a Paul who really had little in common with each other. Wrede,
in his incomparably succinct and incisive way, had the courage to
say so.

But if Paulinism was not derived from Jesus of Nazareth, whence was
it derived? Here the two lines of radical opinion begin to diverge.
According to Wrede, who was supported by M. Brückner,[11] working
contemporaneously, the Pauline conception of Christ, which was
fundamental in Paul's religious thought and life, was derived from
the pre-Christian conception of the Messiah which Paul already had
before his conversion. The Messiah, in the thought of the Jews,
was not always conceived of merely as a king of David's line;
sometimes he was regarded rather as a mysterious, preëxistent,
heavenly being who was to come suddenly with the clouds of heaven
and be the judge of all the earth. This transcendent conception
which is attested by the Jewish apocalypses like the Ethiopic
Book of Enoch, was, Wrede maintained, the conception of the Jew,
Saul of Tarsus. When, therefore, Paul in his Epistles represents
Christ as preëxistent, and as standing close to the Supreme Being in
rulership and judgment, the phenomenon, though it may seem strange
to us, is not really unique; it is exactly what is found in the
apocalypses. What was new in Paul, as over against pre-Christian
Judaism, was the belief that the heavenly Messiah had already come
to earth and carried out a work of redemption. This belief was
not derived, Wrede maintained, from any impression of the exalted
moral character of Jesus; on the contrary, if Paul had really come
into any close contact with the historical Jesus, he might have
had difficulty in identifying Him so completely with the heavenly
Messiah; the impression of the truly human character of Jesus and
of His subjection to all the ordinary limits of earthly life would
have hindered the ascription to Him of the transcendent attributes.
Jesus, for Paul, merely provided the one fact that the Messiah had
already come to earth and died and risen again. Operating with that
fact, interpreting the coming of the Messiah as an act of redemption
undertaken out of love for men, Paul was able to develop all the
fervor of his Christ-religion.

  [11] _Die Entstehung der paulinischen Christologie_, 1903; "Zum
  Thema Jesus und Paulus," in _Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche
  Wissenschaft_, vii, 1906, pp. 112-119; "Der Apostel Paulus als
  Zeuge wider das Christusbild der Evangelien," in _Protestantische
  Monatshefte_, x, 1906, pp. 352-364.

In very recent years, another account of the origin of Paulinism is
becoming increasingly prevalent. This account agrees with Wrede in
rejecting the liberal derivation of the religion of Paul from an
impression of the historical person of Jesus. But it differs from
Wrede in its view of the source from which the religion of Paul
is actually to be derived. According to this latest hypothesis,
Paulinism was based not upon the pre-Christian Jewish conception of
the Messiah, but upon contemporary pagan religion.

This hypothesis represents the application to the problem of
Paulinism of the method of modern comparative religion. About twenty
years ago that method began to be extended resolutely into the New
Testament field, and it has been becoming increasingly prevalent
ever since. Despite the prevalence of the method, however, and the
variety of its application, one great comprehensive work may now
fairly lay claim to be taken as summing up the results. That work is
the book of W. Bousset, entitled "Kyrios Christos," which appeared
in 1913.[12] It is perhaps too early as yet to estimate the full
importance of Bousset's work. But unless all indications fail, the
work is really destined to mark an epoch in the history of New
Testament criticism. Since the days of F. C. Baur, in the former
half of the nineteenth century, there has been no such original,
comprehensive, and grandly conceived rewriting of early Christian
history as has now appeared in Bousset's "Kyrios Christos." The
only question is whether originality, in this historical sphere, is
always compatible with truth.

  [12] Compare also Bousset, _Jesus der Herr_, 1916.

According to Bousset, the historicity of Jesus is to be maintained;
Jesus was really a religious teacher of incomparable power. But
Bousset rejects much more of the Gospel account of Jesus' life than
is rejected in the ordinary "liberal" view; Bousset seems even to be
doubtful as to whether Jesus ever presented Himself to His disciples
as the Messiah, the Messianic element in the Gospels being regarded
for the most part as a mere reflection of the later convictions of
the disciples. After the crucifixion, the disciples in Jerusalem,
Bousset continues, were convinced that Jesus had risen from the
dead, and that He was truly the Messiah. They conceived of His
Messiahship chiefly under the category of the "Son of Man"; Jesus,
they believed, was the heavenly being who in their interpretation of
the Book of Daniel and in the apocalypses appears in the presence
of the supreme God as the one who is to judge the world. This
heavenly Son of Man was taken from them for a time, but they looked
with passionate eagerness for His speedy return. The piety of the
early Jerusalem Church was therefore distinctly eschatological; it
was founded not upon any conviction of a present vital relation to
Jesus, but on the hope of His future coming. In the Greek-speaking
Christian communities of such cities as Antioch and Tarsus, Bousset
continues, an important additional step was taken; Jesus there
began to be not only hoped for as the future judge but also adored
as the present Lord. He came to be regarded as present in the
meetings of the Church. The term "Lord," with the conception that
it represents, was never, according to Bousset, applied to Jesus in
the primitive Palestinian Church; it was first applied to Him in
Hellenistic Christian communities like the one at Antioch. And it
was there derived distinctly from the prevalent pagan religion. In
the type of religion familiar to the disciples at Antioch, the term
"Lord" was used to denote the cult-god, especially in the so-called
"mystery religions"; and the Antioch disciples naturally used the
same term to designate the object of their own adoration. But with
the term went the idea; Jesus was now considered to be present in
the meetings of the Church, just as the cult-gods of the pagan
religions were considered to be present in the worship practiced by
those religions. An important step had been taken beyond the purely
eschatological piety of the Jerusalem disciples.

But how about Paul? Here is to be found one of the boldest
elements in all the bold reconstruction of Bousset. Paul, Bousset
believes, was not connected in any intimate way with the primitive
Christianity in Palestine; what he "received" he received rather
from the Hellenistic Christianity, just described, of cities like
Antioch. He received, therefore, the Hellenistic conception of
Jesus as Lord. But he added to that conception by connecting the
"Lord" with the "Spirit." The "Lord" thus became present not only in
the meetings of the Church for worship but also in the individual
lives of the believers. Paulinism as it appears in the Epistles was
thus complete. But this distinctly Pauline contribution, like the
conception of the Lordship of Jesus to which it was added, was of
pagan origin; it was derived from the mystical piety of the time,
with its sharp dualism between a material and a spiritual realm
and its notion of the transformation of man by immediate contact
with the divine. Paulinism, therefore, according to Bousset, was a
religion of redemption. But as such it was derived not at all from
the historical Jesus (whose optimistic teaching contained no thought
of redemption) but from the pessimistic dualism of the pagan world.
The "liberal" distinction between Pauline religion and Pauline
theology, the attempt at saving Paul's religion by the sacrifice
of his theology, is here abandoned, and all that is most clearly
distinctive of Paulinism (though of course some account is taken of
the contribution of his Jewish inheritance and of his own genius) is
derived from pagan sources.

The hypothesis of Bousset, together with the rival reconstructions
which have just been outlined, will be examined in the following
discussion. But before they can be examined it will be necessary to
say a word about the sources of information with regard to the life
of Paul. No discussion of the literary questions can indeed here be
undertaken. Almost all that can be done is to set forth very briefly
the measure of agreement which has been attained in this field, and
the bearing of the points that are still disputed upon the subject
of the present investigation.

The sources of information about Paul are contained almost
exclusively in the New Testament. They are, first, the Pauline
Epistles, and, second, the Book of Acts.

Four of the Pauline Epistles--Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians,
and Romans--were accepted as certainly genuine by F. C. Baur,
the founder of the "Tübingen School" of criticism in the former
half of the nineteenth century. This favorable estimate of the
"major epistles" has never been abandoned by any number of
really serious historians, and three of the other epistles--1
Thessalonians, Philippians, and Philemon--have now been added to the
"homologoumena." Seven epistles, therefore, are accepted as genuine
to-day by all historians except a few extremists. Of the remaining
epistles, Colossians is accepted by the majority of investigators
of all shades of opinion, and even in the case of 2 Thessalonians
and Ephesians, the acceptance of the hypothesis of genuineness is
no longer regarded as a clear mark of "conservatism," these two
epistles being regarded as genuine letters of Paul by some even of
those who are not in general favorable to the traditional view of
the New Testament.

With regard to the Pastoral Epistles--1 and 2 Timothy and Titus--the
issue is more clearly drawn. These epistles, at least in their
entirety, are seldom regarded as genuine except by those who
adopt in general the traditional view of the New Testament and
the supernaturalistic conception of the origin of Christianity.
That does not mean that the case of the Pastoral Epistles is
desperate--certainly the present writer is firmly convinced that the
epistles are genuine and that a denial of their genuineness really
impoverishes in important respects our conception of the work of
Paul--but it does mean that with regard to these epistles the two
great contending views concerning the New Testament come into sharp
conflict; common ground, in other words, cannot here be found, as
in the case of the major epistles, between those who hold widely
divergent views as to the origin of Christianity.

It would be out of place in the present connection to discuss the
question of the genuineness of the Pastorals. That question is
indeed enormously important. It is important for the view which
is to be held concerning the New Testament canon; it is important
for any estimate of Christian tradition; it is important even for
a complete estimate of the work of Paul. But it is not directly
important for the question as to the origin of Paulinism; for all
the essential features of Paulinism, certainly all those features
which make Paulinism, upon naturalistic principles, most difficult
of explanation, appear plainly in the accepted epistles.

The question of the Book of Acts, on the other hand, is of vital
importance even for the present investigation. Even that question,
however, must here be dismissed with a word, though it is hoped that
light may be shed upon it by the whole of the following discussion.

Literary evidence of peculiar strength may be adduced in favor of
the view that the Book of Acts was really written, as tradition
affirms, by a companion of Paul. This evidence is based primarily
upon the presence in the book of certain sections where the
narrative is carried on in the first person instead of the third. It
is generally or even universally admitted that these "we-sections"
are the work of an eyewitness, an actual traveling companion of
Paul. But according to the common-sense view--according to the
first impression made upon every ordinary reader--the author of
the we-sections was also the author of the whole book, who when he
came in his narrative to those parts of the missionary journeys of
Paul where he had actually been present with the apostolic company
naturally dropped into the use of the first person instead of the
third. If this common-sense view be incorrect, then a later author
who produced the completed book has in the we-sections simply
made use of an eyewitness source. But this hypothesis is fraught
with the most serious difficulty. If the author of the completed
book, writing at a time long after the time of Paul, was in the
we-sections using the work of a companion of Paul, why did he not
either say that he was quoting or else change the "we" of the
source to "they." The first person plural, used without explanation
by a writer of, say, 100 A.D. in a narrative of the journeys of
Paul, would be preposterous. What could be the explanation of so
extraordinary a procedure?

Only two explanations are possible. In the first place, the author
may have retained the "we" with deceitful intent, with the intent
of producing the false impression that he himself was a companion
of Paul. This hypothesis is fraught with insuperable difficulty
and is generally rejected. In the second place, the author may
have retained the "we" because he was a mere compiler, copying
out his sources with mechanical accuracy, and so unable to make
the simple editorial change of "we" to "they." This hypothesis is
excluded by the striking similarity of language and style between
the we-sections and the rest of Luke-Acts, which shows that if
the author of the completed double work is in the we-sections
making use of a source written by some one else, he has revised
the source so as to make it conform to his own style. But if he
revised the source, he was no mere compiler, and therefore could not
have retained the first person plural which in the completed book
produced nonsense. The whole hypothesis therefore breaks down.

Such considerations have led a number of recent scholars--even of
those who are unable to accept the supernaturalistic account which
the Book of Acts gives of the origin of Christianity--to return to
the traditional view that the book was actually written by Luke the
physician, a companion of Paul. The argument for Lucan authorship
has been developed with great acumen especially by Von Harnack[13].
And on the basis of purely literary criticism the argument is
certainly irrefutable. It can be refuted, if at all, only through a
consideration of the historical contents of the book.

  [13] _Lukas der Arzt_, 1906 (English Translation, _Luke the
  Physician_, 1907); _Die Apostelgeschichte_, 1908 (English
  Translation, _The Acts of the Apostles_, 1909); _Neue Untersuchungen
  zur Apostelgeschichte und zur Abfassungszeit der synoptischen
  Evangelien_, 1911 (English Translation, _The Date of the Acts and of
  the Synoptic Gospels_, 1911).

Such attempts at refutation have not been lacking; the Lucan
authorship of Acts is still rejected by the great majority of those
who maintain the naturalistic view of the origin of Christianity.
The objections may be subsumed under two main heads. The Book of
Acts, it is said, is not the kind of book that could have been
written by a companion of Paul, in the first place because it
contains an account of miracles, and in the second place, because
it contradicts the Pauline Epistles, particularly in the account
which it gives of the relations between Paul and the Jerusalem
Church.

The former objection is entirely valid on the basis of any
naturalistic account of the origin of Christianity. Efforts have
indeed been made by Von Harnack, C. C. Torrey, and others, to
overcome the objection. Belief in miracles, it is said, was very
general in the ancient world; a miraculous interpretation could
therefore be placed upon happenings for which the modern man would
have no difficulty in discovering a natural cause. Luke was a child
of his time; even in the we-sections, Von Harnack insists, where the
work of an eyewitness is universally recognized, a supernaturalistic
interpretation is placed upon natural events--as, for example, when
Paul excites the wonder of his companions by shaking off into the
fire a viper that was no doubt perfectly harmless. Why, then, should
the presence of the supernatural in the rest of the book be used to
refute the hypothesis of the Lucan authorship, if it is not so used
in the we-sections?[14]

  [14] Harnack, _Die Apostelgeschichte_, 1908, pp. 111-130 (English
  Translation, _The Acts of the Apostles_, 1909, pp. 133-161).

This method of refuting the objection drawn from the presence of the
supernatural in Luke-Acts has sometimes led to a curious return to
the rationalizing method of interpretation which was prevalent one
hundred years ago. By that method of interpretation even the details
of the New Testament miracles were accepted as historical, but it
was thought that the writers were wrong in regarding those details
as miraculous. Great ingenuity was displayed by such rationalists
as Paulus and many others in exhibiting the true natural causes of
details which to the first observers seemed to be supernatural.
Such rationalizing has usually been thought to have received
its death-blow at the hands of Strauss, who showed that the New
Testament narratives were either to be accepted as a whole--miracles
and all--or else regarded as myths, that is, as the clothing of
religious ideas in historical forms. But now, under the impulsion of
literary criticism, which has led away from the position of Baur and
Strauss and back to the traditional view of the authorship and date
of the New Testament books, the expedients of the rationalizers have
in some cases been revived.

The entire effort of Von Harnack is, however, quite hopeless. The
objection to the Lucan authorship of Acts which is drawn from the
supernatural element in the narrative is irrefutable on the basis
of any naturalistic view of the origin of Christianity. The trouble
is that the supernatural element in Acts does not concern merely
details; it lies, rather, at the root of the whole representation.
The origin of the Church, according to the modern naturalistic
reconstruction, was due to the belief of the early disciples in the
resurrection of Jesus; that belief in turn was founded upon certain
hallucinations in which they thought they saw Jesus alive after
His passion. In such experiences, the optic nerve is affected not
by an external object but by the condition of the subject himself.
But there are limitations to what is possible in experiences of
that sort, especially where numbers of persons are affected and
at different times. It cannot be supposed, therefore, that the
disciples of Jesus thought they had any extended intercourse with
Him after His passion; momentary appearances, with possibly a few
spoken words, were all that they could have experienced. This view
of the origin of the Church is thought to be in accord with the
all-important testimony of Paul, especially in 1 Cor. xv. 3-8 where
he is reproducing a primitive tradition. Thus desperate efforts
are made to show that the reference by Paul to the burial of Jesus
does not by any means confirm the accounts given in the Gospels
of events connected with the empty tomb. Sometimes, indeed, in
recent criticism, the fact of the empty tomb is accepted, and then
explained in some naturalistic way. But at any rate, the cardinal
feature of the modern reconstruction is that the early Church,
including Paul, had a spiritual rather than a physical conception of
the risen body of Jesus; there was no extended intercourse, it is
supposed; Jesus appeared to His disciples momentarily, in heavenly
glory.

But this entire representation is diametrically opposed to the
representation in the Gospel of Luke and in the Book of Acts. If
there is any one writer who emphasizes the plain, physical character
of the contact between the disciples and their risen Lord, it
is the author of Luke-Acts. In proof, it is only necessary to
point to Acts x. 41, where it is said that the risen Jesus held
table-companionship with His disciples after He was risen from the
dead! But that is only one detail. The author of Acts is firmly
convinced that the contact of the risen Jesus with His disciples,
though not devoid of mysterious features, involved the absence of
the body of Jesus from the tomb and an intercourse (intermittent, it
is true, but including physical proofs of the most definite kind)
extending over a period of forty days. Nothing could possibly be
more directly contrary to what the current critical view regards as
the real account given in the primitive Jerusalem Church and by the
apostle Paul.

Yet on the basis of that modern critical view, Von Harnack and
others have maintained that the book in which so false an account is
given of the origin of the Church was actually the work of a man of
the apostolic age. It is no wonder that Von Harnack's conclusions
have evoked an emphatic protest from other naturalistic historians.
Luke was a close associate of Paul. Could he possibly have given an
account of things absolutely fundamental in Paul's gospel (1 Cor.
xv. 1-8) which was so diametrically opposed to what Paul taught?
He was in Jerusalem in 58 A.D. or earlier, and during years of
his life was in close touch with Palestinian disciples. Could he
possibly have given an account of the origin of the Jerusalem Church
so totally at variance with the account which that church itself
maintained? These questions constitute a complete refutation of Von
Harnack's view, when that view is taken as a whole. But they do not
at all constitute a refutation of the conclusions of Von Harnack
in the sphere of literary criticism. On the contrary, by showing
how inconsistent those conclusions are with other elements in the
thinking of the investigator, they make only the more impressive
the strength of the argument which has overcome such obstacles.
The objection points out the antinomy which exists between the
literary criticism of Von Harnack and his naturalistic account of
the origin of Christianity. What that antinomy means is merely that
the testimony of Acts to the supernatural origin of Christianity,
far from being removed by literary criticism, is strongly supported
by it. A companion of Paul could not have been egregiously mistaken
about the origin of the Church; but literary criticism establishes
Luke-Acts as the work of a companion of Paul. Hence there is some
reason for supposing that the account given in this book is
essentially correct, and that the naturalistic reconstruction of the
origin of Christianity must be abandoned.

The second objection to the Lucan authorship of Acts is based upon
the contradiction which is thought to exist between the Book of
Acts and the Epistles of Paul.[15] The way to test the value of a
historical work, it is said, is to compare it with some recognized
authority. With regard to most of the narrative in Acts, no such
comparison is possible, since there is no account parallel to
Acts by which it may be tested. But in certain places the Book
of Acts provides an account of events which are also narrated in
the isolated biographical parts of the Pauline Epistles--notably
in the first two chapters of Galatians. Here at last is found the
long-sought opportunity for comparison. And the comparison, it is
said, results unfavorably to the Book of Acts, which is found to
contradict the Epistle to the Galatians, not merely in details, but
in the whole account which it gives of the relation between Paul
and the Jerusalem Church. But if the Book of Acts fails to approve
itself in the one place where it can be tested by comparison with
a recognized authority, the presumption is that it may be wrong
elsewhere as well; in particular, it is quite impossible that a book
which so completely misrepresents what happened at a most important
crisis of Paul's life could have been written by a close friend of
the apostle.

  [15] For what follows, compare "Jesus and Paul," in _Biblical and
  Theological Studies_ by the Members of the Faculty of Princeton
  Theological Seminary, 1912, pp. 553f.; "Recent Criticism of the Book
  of Acts," in _Princeton Theological Review_, xvii, 1919, pp. 593-597.

This argument was developed particularly by Baur and Zeller and
their associates in the "Tübingen School." According to Baur, the
major epistles of Paul constitute the primary source of information
about the apostolic age; they should therefore be interpreted
without reference to any other source. When they are so interpreted,
they show that the fundamental fact of apostolic history was a
conflict between Paul on one side and the original apostles on the
other. The conflict, Baur maintained further, is particularly plain
in the Epistles to the Galatians and Corinthians, which emphasize
the complete independence of Paul with reference to the pillars
of the Jerusalem Church, and his continued opposition to the
efforts of Jewish Christians to bring the Gentiles into subjection
to the Jewish Law--efforts which must have been supported to some
extent by the attitude of the original apostles. This conflict,
Baur supposed further, continued up to the middle of the second
century; there was a Gentile Christian party appealing to Paul
and a Jewish Christian party appealing to Peter. Finally however,
Baur continued, a compromise was effected; the Pauline party gave
up what was really most distinctive in the Pauline doctrine of
justification, while the Petrine party relinquished the demand of
circumcision. The New Testament documents, according to Baur, are
to be dated in accordance with the position that they assume in
the conflict; those documents which take sides--which are strongly
anti-Pauline or strongly anti-Petrine--are to be placed early, while
those which display a tendency toward compromise are to be placed
late, at the time when the conflict was being settled. Such was the
"tendency-criticism" of Baur. By that criticism the Book of Acts
was dated well on in the second century, because it was thought to
display a tendency toward compromise--an "irenic tendency." This
tendency, Baur supposed, manifested itself in the Book of Acts in
a deliberate falsification of history; in order to bring about
peace between the Petrine and the Pauline parties in the Church,
the author of Acts attempted to show by a new account of the
apostolic age that Peter and Paul really were in perfect agreement.
To that end, in the Book of Acts, Paul is Petrinized, and Peter is
Paulinized; the sturdy independence of Paul, which actually kept
him long away from Jerusalem after his conversion, gives place,
in Acts, to a desire of contact with the Jerusalem Church, which
brought him early to Jerusalem and finally led him even to accept
for his Gentile converts, at the "Apostolic Council," a portion of
the ceremonial law. Peter, on the other hand, is represented in Acts
as giving expression at the Apostolic Council to Pauline sentiments
about the Law; and all through the book there is an elaborate and
unhistorical parallelism between Peter and Paul.

The theory of Baur did not long maintain itself in its entirety.
It received a searching criticism particularly from A. Ritschl.
The conflict of the apostolic age, Ritschl pointed out, was not a
conflict between Paul and the original apostles, but between all the
apostles (including both Paul and Peter) on the one side, and an
extreme Judaizing party on the other; that conflict did not continue
throughout the second century; on the contrary, specifically Jewish
Christianity soon ceased to be influential, and the legalistic
character of the Old Catholic Church of the end of the second
century, in which Christianity was conceived of as a new law, was
due not to any compromise with the legalism of the Judaizers but to
a natural process of degeneration from Paulinism on purely Gentile
Christian ground.

The Tübingen dating of the New Testament documents, moreover,
has been abandoned under a more thorough investigation of early
Christian literature. A study of patristics soon rendered it
impossible to string out the New Testament books anywhere throughout
the second century in the interest of a plausible theory of
development. External evidence has led to a much earlier dating
of most of the books than Baur's theory required. The Tübingen
estimate of the Book of Acts, in particular, has for the most
part been modified; the book is dated much earlier, and it is no
longer thought to be a party document written in the interests of a
deliberate falsification of history.

Nevertheless, the criticism of Baur and Zeller, though no longer
accepted as a whole, is still influential; the comparison of Acts
and Galatians, particularly in that which concerns the Apostolic
Council of Acts xv, is still often thought to result unfavorably
to the Book of Acts. Even at this point, however, a more favorable
estimate of Acts has been gaining ground. The cardinal principle
of Baur, to the effect that the major epistles of Paul should be
interpreted entirely without reference to the Book of Acts, is being
called in question. Such a method of interpretation, it may well be
urged, is likely to result in one-sidedness. If the Book of Acts
commends itself at all as containing trustworthy information, it
should be allowed to cast light upon the Epistles. The account which
Paul gives in Galatians is not so complete as to render superfluous
any assistance which may be derived from an independent narrative.
And as a matter of fact, no matter what principles of interpretation
are held, the Book of Acts simply must be used in interpreting
the Epistles; without the outline given in Acts the Epistles would
be unintelligible.[16] Perhaps it may turn out, therefore, that
Baur produced his imposing reconstruction of the apostolic age
by neglecting all sources except Galatians and the Corinthian
Epistles--and then by misinterpreting these.

  [16] J. Weiss, _Urchristentum_, 1914, p. 107: "It is simply
  impossible for us to erase it [the Book of Acts] so completely from
  our memory as to read the Epistle to the Galatians as though we had
  never known Acts; without the Book of Acts we should simply not be
  able to understand Galatians at all."

The comparison of Acts and the Pauline Epistles will be reserved
for the chapters that deal with the outline of Paul's life. It will
there be necessary to deal with the vexed question of the Apostolic
Council. The question is vital for the present discussion; for if it
can really be shown that Paul was in fundamental disagreement with
the intimate friends of Jesus of Nazareth, then the way is opened
for supposing that he was in disagreement with Jesus Himself. The
question raised by Baur with regard to the Book of Acts has a most
important bearing upon the question of the origin of Paulinism.

All that can now be done, however, is to point out that the tendency
at the present time is toward a higher and higher estimate of
the Book of Acts. A more careful study of the Pauline Epistles
themselves is exhibiting elements in Paul's thinking which justify
more and more clearly the account which the Book of Acts gives of
the relations of Paul to Judaism and to Jewish Christianity.




CHAPTER II

THE EARLY YEARS




CHAPTER II

THE EARLY YEARS


Before examining the various hypotheses which have been advanced to
account for the origin of Paulinism, the investigator must consider
first the outline of Paul's life, at least so far as the formative
years are concerned. Paulinism has been explained by the influence
upon Paul of various features of his environment. It is important,
therefore, to determine at what points Paul came into contact with
his environment. What, in view of the outline of his life, were his
probable opportunities for acquainting himself with the historical
Jesus and with the primitive Jerusalem Church? Whence did he
derive his Judaism? Where, if at all, could he naturally have been
influenced by contemporary paganism? Such questions, it is hoped,
may be answered by the two following chapters.

In these chapters, the outline of Paul's life will be considered not
for its own sake, but merely for the light that it may shed upon the
origin of his thought and experience. Many questions, therefore, may
be ignored. For example, it would here be entirely aside from the
point to discuss such intricate matters as the history of Paul's
journeys to Corinth attested by the Corinthian Epistles. The present
discussion is concerned only with those events in the life of Paul
which determined the nature of his contact with the surrounding
world, both Jewish and pagan, and particularly the nature of his
contact with Jesus and the earliest disciples of Jesus.

Paul was born at Tarsus, the chief city of Cilicia. This fact is
attested only by the Book of Acts, and formerly it did not escape
unchallenged. It was called in question, for example, in 1890 by
Krenkel, in an elaborate argument.[17] But Krenkel's argument is
now completely antiquated, not merely because of the rising credit
of the Book of Acts, but also because the birth of Paul in a Greek
city like Tarsus is in harmony with modern reconstructions. Krenkel
argued, for example, that the apostle shows little acquaintance
with Greek culture, and therefore could not have spent his youth
in a Greek university city. Such assertions appear very strange
to-day. Recent philological investigation of the Pauline Epistles
has proved that the author uses the Greek language in such masterly
fashion that he must have become familiar with it very early in
life; the language of the Epistles is certainly no Jewish-Greek
jargon. With regard to the origin of the ideas, also, the tendency
of recent criticism is directly contrary to Krenkel; Paulinism is
now often explained as being based either upon paganism or else upon
a Hellenized Judaism. To such reconstructions it is a highly welcome
piece of information when the Book of Acts makes Paul a native not
of Jerusalem but of Tarsus. The author of Acts, it is said, is here
preserving a bit of genuine tradition, which is the more trustworthy
because it runs counter to the tendency, thought to be otherwise
in evidence in Acts, which brings Paul into the closest possible
relation to Palestine. Thus, whether for good or for bad reasons,
the birth of Paul in Tarsus is now universally accepted, and does
not require defense.

  [17] Krenkel, _Beiträge zur Aufhellung der Geschichte und der Briefe
  des Apostels Paulus_, 1890, pp. 1-17.

A very interesting tradition preserved by Jerome does indeed make
Paul a native of Gischala in Galilee; but no one to-day would be
inclined to follow Krenkel in giving credence to Jerome rather
than to Acts. The Gischala tradition does not look like a pure
fiction, but it is evident that Jerome has at any rate exercised
his peculiar talent for bringing things into confusion. Zahn[18]
has suggested, with considerable plausibility, that the shorter
reference to Gischala in the treatise "De viris illustribus"[19] is
a confused abridgment of the longer reference in the "Commentary on
Philemon."[20] The latter passage asserts not that Paul himself but
only that the parents of Paul came from Gischala. That assertion may
possibly be correct. It would explain the Aramaic and Palestinian
tradition which undoubtedly was preserved in the boyhood home of
Paul.

  [18] _Einleitung in das Neue Testament_, 3te Aufl., i, 1906, pp.
  48-50 (English Translation, _Introduction to the New Testament_, 2nd
  ed., 1909, i, pp. 68-70).

  [19] _De vir. ill._ 5 (ed. Vall. ii, 836).

  [20] _Comm. in Philem._ 23 (ed. Vall. vii, 762).

Tarsus was an important city. Its commercial importance, though
of course inferior to that of places like Antioch or Corinth, was
considerable; and it was also well known as a center of intellectual
life. Although the dramatic possibilities of representing the
future Christian missionary growing up unknown under the shadow of
a Greek university may sometimes have led to an exaggeration of the
academic fame of Tarsus, still it remains true that Tarsus was a
real university city, and could boast of great names like that of
Athenodorus, the Stoic philosopher, and others. The life of Tarsus
has recently been made the subject of two elaborate monographs,
by Ramsay[21] and by Böhlig,[22] who have collected a mass of
information about the birthplace of Paul. The nature of the pagan
religious atmosphere which surrounded the future apostle is of
peculiar interest; but the amount of direct information which has
come down to us should not be exaggerated.

  [21] _The Cities of St. Paul_, 1908, pp. 85-244.

  [22] _Die Geisteskultur von Tarsos_, 1913.

The social position of Paul's family in Tarsus must not be regarded
as very humble; for according to the Book of Acts not only Paul
himself, but his father before him, possessed the Roman citizenship,
which in the provinces was still in the first century a highly
prized privilege from which the great masses of the people were
excluded. The Roman citizenship of Paul is not attested by the
Pauline Epistles, but the representation of Acts is at this point
universally, or almost universally, accepted. Only one objection
might be urged against it. If Paul was a Roman citizen, how could he
have been subjected three times to the Roman punishment of beating
with rods (2 Cor. xi. 25), from which citizens were exempted by
law? The difficulty is not insuperable. Paul may on some occasions
have been unwilling to appeal to a privilege which separated
him from his Jewish countrymen; or he may have wanted to avoid
the delay which an appeal to his privilege, with the subsequent
investigation and trial, might have caused. At any rate, the
difficulty, whether easily removable or not, is quite inadequate
to overthrow the abundant evidence for the fact of Paul's Roman
citizenship. That fact is absolutely necessary to account for the
entire representation which the Book of Acts gives of the journey
of Paul as a prisoner to Rome, which representation, it will be
remembered, is contained in the we-sections. The whole account of
the relation between Paul and Roman authorities, which is contained
in the Pauline Epistles, the Book of Acts, and trustworthy Christian
tradition, is explicable only if Paul possessed the rights of
citizenship.[23]

  [23] Compare Mommsen, "Die Rechtsverhältnisse des Apostels Paulus,"
  in _Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft_, ii, 1901,
  pp. 88-96.

Birth in a Greek university city and Roman citizenship constitute
the two facts which bring Paul into early connection with the larger
Gentile world of his day. Other facts, equally well-attested,
separate him just as clearly from the Gentile world and represent
him as being from childhood a strict Jew. These facts might have
been called in question, in view of the present tendency of
criticism, if they had been attested only by the Book of Acts. But
fortunately it is just these facts which are attested also by the
epistles of Paul.

In 2 Cor. xi. 22, Paul is declared to be a "Hebrew," and in Phil.
iii. 5 he appears as a "Hebrew of Hebrews." The word "Hebrew"
in these passages cannot indicate merely Israelitish descent or
general adherence to the Jews' religion. If it did so it would be a
meaningless repetition of the other terms used in the same passages.
Obviously it is used in some narrower sense. The key to its meaning
is found in Acts vi. 1, where, within Judaism, the "Hellenists"
are distinguished from the "Hebrews," the Hellenists being the
Jews of the Dispersion who spoke Greek, and the Hebrews the Jews
of Palestine who spoke Aramaic. In Phil. iii. 5, therefore, Paul
declares that he was an Aramaic-speaking Jew and descended from
Aramaic-speaking Jews; Aramaic was used in his boyhood home, and the
Palestinian tradition was preserved. This testimony is not contrary
to what was said above about Paul's use of the Greek language--not
improbably Paul used both Aramaic and Greek in childhood--but it
does contradict all those modern representations which make Paul
fundamentally a Jew of the Dispersion. Though he was born in Tarsus,
he was, in the essential character of his family tradition, a Jew of
Palestine.

Even more important is the assertion, found in the same verse
in Philippians, that Paul was "as touching the law a Pharisee."
Conceivably, indeed, it might be argued that his Pharisaism was not
derived from his boyhood home, but was acquired later. But surely
it requires no excessively favorable estimate of Acts to give
credence to the assertion in Acts xxiii. 6 that Paul was not only a
Pharisee but the "son of Pharisees"; and it is exceedingly unlikely
that this phrase refers, as Lightfoot[24] suggested, to teachers
rather than to ancestors. For when Paul says in Gal. i. 14 that he
advanced in the Jews' religion beyond many of his contemporaries,
being more exceedingly zealous for his paternal traditions, it
is surely natural, whatever interpretation may be given to the
word "paternal," to find a reference to the Pharisaic traditions
cultivated in his boyhood home.

  [24] On Phil. iii. 5.

There is not the slightest evidence, therefore, for supposing that
Paul spent his early years in an atmosphere of "liberal Judaism"--a
Judaism really though unconsciously hospitable to pagan notions and
predisposed to relax the strict requirements of the Law and break
down the barrier that separated Israel from the Gentile world.
Whether such a liberal Judaism even existed in Tarsus we do not
know. At any rate, if it did exist, the household of Paul's father
was not in sympathy with it. Surely the definite testimony of Paul
himself is here worth more than all modern conjectures. And Paul
himself declares that he was in language and in spirit a Jew of
Palestine rather than of the Dispersion, and as touching the Law a
Pharisee.

According to the Book of Acts, Paul went at an early age to
Jerusalem, received instruction there from Gamaliel, the famous
rabbi, and finally, just before his conversion, persecuted the
Jerusalem Church (Acts xxii. 3; vii. 58-viii. 1; ix. 1, etc.). In
recent years, this entire representation has been questioned. It has
been maintained by Mommsen,[25] Bousset[26], Heitmüller,[27] and
Loisy[28] that Paul never was in Jerusalem before his conversion.
That he persecuted the Church is, of course, attested unequivocally
by his own Epistles, but the persecution, it is said, really took
place only in such cities as Damascus, and not at all in Palestine.

  [25] _Op. cit._, pp. 85f.

  [26] _Kyrios Christos_, 1913, p. 92. Bousset's doubt with regard to
  the early Jerusalem residence of Paul extended, explicitly at least,
  only to the persecution in Jerusalem, and it was a doubt merely, not
  a positive denial. In his supplementary work he has admitted that
  his doubt was unjustified (_Jesus der Herr_, 1916, p. 31).

  [27] "Zum Problem Paulus und Jesus," in _Zeitschrift für die
  neutestamentliche Wissenschaft_, xiii, 1912, pp. 320-337.

  [28] _L'épitre aux Galates_, 1916, pp. 68-73; _Les mystères païens
  et le mystère chrétien_, 1919, pp. 317-320.

This elimination of the early residence of Paul in Jerusalem is no
mere by-product of a generally skeptical attitude toward the Book
of Acts, but is important for the entire reconstruction of early
Christian history which Bousset and Heitmüller and Loisy propose;
it is made to assist in explaining the origin of the Pauline
Christology. Paul regarded Jesus Christ as a supernatural person,
come to earth for the redemption of men; and toward this divine
Christ he assumed a distinctly religious attitude. How could he
have formed such a conception of a human being who had died but a
few years before? If he had been separated from Jesus by several
generations, so that the nimbus of distance and mystery would have
had time to form about the figure of the Galilean prophet, then his
lofty conception of Jesus might be explained. But as a matter of
fact he was actually a contemporary of the Jesus whose simple human
traits he obscured. How could the "smell of earth" have been so
completely removed from the figure of the Galilean teacher that He
could actually be regarded by one of His contemporaries as a divine
Redeemer? The question could perhaps be more easily answered if
Paul, before his lofty conception of Christ was fully formed, never
came into any connection with those who had seen Jesus subject to
the petty limitations of human life. Thus the elimination of the
early Jerusalem residence of Paul, by putting a geographical if
not a temporal gulf between Jesus and Paul, is thought to make the
formation of the Pauline Christology more comprehensible. Peter and
the original disciples, it is thought, never could have separated
Jesus so completely from the limitations of ordinary humanity; the
simple memory of Galilean days would in their case have been an
effective barrier against Christological speculation. But Paul was
subject to no such limitation; having lived far away from Palestine,
in the company, for the most part, of those who like himself had
never seen Jesus, he was free to transpose to the Galilean teacher
attributes which to those who had known the real Jesus would have
seemed excessive or absurd.

Before examining the grounds upon which this elimination of Paul's
early Jerusalem residence is based, it may first be observed that
even such heroic measures do not really bring about the desired
result; even this radical rewriting of the story of Paul's boyhood
and youth will not serve to explain on naturalistic principles the
origin of the Pauline Christology. Even if before his conversion
Paul got no nearer to Jerusalem than Damascus, it still remains
true that after his conversion he conferred with Peter and lived in
more or less extended intercourse with Palestinian disciples. The
total lack of any evidence of a conflict between the Christology of
Paul and the views of those who had walked and talked with Jesus of
Nazareth remains, for any naturalistic reconstruction, a puzzling
fact. Even without the early Jerusalem residence, Paul remains too
near to Jesus both temporally and geographically to have formed
a conception of Him entirely without reference to the historical
person. Even with their radical treatment of the Book of Acts,
therefore, Bousset and Heitmüller have not succeeded at all in
explaining how the Pauline Christology ever came to be attached to
the Galilean prophet.

But is the elimination of the early Jerusalem residence of Paul
historically justifiable? Mere congruity with a plausible theory
of development will not serve to justify it. For the Jerusalem
residence is strongly attested by the Book of Acts. The testimony
of Acts can no longer be ruled out except for very weighty reasons;
the history of recent criticism has on the whole exhibited the
rise of a more and more favorable estimate of the book. And in the
case of the early Jerusalem residence of Paul the testimony is so
insistent and so closely connected with lifelike details that the
discrediting of it involves an exceedingly radical skepticism. The
presence of Paul at the stoning of Stephen is narrated in the Book
of Acts in a concrete way which bears every mark of trustworthiness;
the connection of Paul with Gamaliel is what might have been
expected in view of the self-testimony of the apostle; the account
of Paul's vision in the Temple (Acts xxii. 17-21) is based, in a
manner which is psychologically very natural, upon the fact of
Paul's persecuting activity in Jerusalem; the presence of Paul's
sister's son in Jerusalem, attested in a part of the narrative of
which the essential historicity must be universally admitted (Acts
xxiii. 16-22), suggests that family connections may have facilitated
Paul's residence in the city. Finally, the geographical details of
the three narratives of the conversion, which place the event on a
journey of Paul from Jerusalem to Damascus, certainly look as though
they were founded upon genuine tradition. One of the details--the
place of the conversion itself--is confirmed in a purely incidental
way by the Epistle to the Galatians, and the reader has the
impression that if Paul had happened to introduce other details
in the Epistles the rest of the narrative in Acts would have been
similarly confirmed. Except for Paul's incidental reference to
Damascus in Gal. i. 17, the conversion might have been put by
Heitmüller and others in a place even more conveniently remote than
Damascus from the scene of Jesus' earthly labors. But the incidental
confirmation of Acts at this point raises a distinct presumption in
favor of the account as a whole. The main trend of modern criticism
has been favorable on the whole to the tradition embodied in the
accounts of the conversion; it is a very extreme form of skepticism
which rejects the whole framework of the tradition by eliminating
the journey from Jerusalem to Damascus.

Enough has been said to show that the early Jerusalem residence of
Paul stood absolutely firm in the tradition used by the author of
Acts; the author has taken it as a matter of course and woven it in
with his narrative at many points. Such a tradition certainly cannot
be lightly rejected; the burden of proof clearly rests upon those
who would deny its truthworthiness.

The only definite proof which is forthcoming is found in Gal. i.
22, where Paul says that after his departure for Syria and Cilicia,
three years after his conversion, he was "unknown by face to the
churches of Judæa which are in Christ." If he had engaged in active
persecution of those churches, it is argued, how could he have been
personally unknown to them?

By this argument a tremendous weight is hung upon one verse. And,
rightly interpreted, the verse will not bear the weight at all. In
Gal. i. 22, Paul is not speaking so much of what took place before
the departure for Syria and Cilicia, as of the condition which
prevailed at the time of that departure and during the immediately
ensuing period; he is simply drawing attention to the significance
for his argument of the departure from Jerusalem. Certainly he would
not have been able to speak as he does if before he left Jerusalem
he had had extended intercourse with the Judæan churches, but when
he says that the knowledge of the Judæan churches about him in the
period just succeeding his departure from Jerusalem was a hearsay
knowledge merely, it would have been pedantic for him to think about
the question whether some of the members of those churches had or
had not seen him years before as a persecutor.

Furthermore, it is by no means clear that the word "Judæa" in Gal.
i. 22 includes Jerusalem at all. In Mark iii. 7, 8, for example,
"Jerusalem" is clearly not included in "Judæa," but is distinguished
from it; "Judæa" means the country outside of the capital. It may
well be so also in Gal. i. 22; and if so, then the verse does not
exclude a personal acquaintance of Paul with the Jerusalem Church.
But even if "Judæa" is not used so as to exclude the capital,
still Paul's words would be natural enough. That the Jerusalem
Church formed an exception to the general assertion was suggested
by the account of the visit in Jerusalem immediately preceding,
and was probably well known to his Galatian readers. All that Paul
means is that he went away to Syria and Cilicia without becoming
acquainted generally with the churches of Judæa. It is indeed often
said that since the whole point of Paul's argument in Galatians
was to show his lack of contact with the pillars of the Jerusalem
Church, his acquaintance or lack of acquaintance with the churches
of Judæa outside of Jerusalem was unworthy of mention, so that he
must at least be including Jerusalem when he speaks of Judæa. But
this argument is not decisive. If, as is altogether probable, the
apostles except Peter were out of the city at the time of Paul's
visit, and were engaging in missionary work in Judæan churches, then
acquaintance with the Judæan churches would have meant intercourse
with the apostles, so that it was very much to the point for Paul
to deny that he had had such acquaintance. Of course, this whole
argument against the early Jerusalem residence of Paul, based on
Gal. i. 22, involves a rejection of the account which the Book of
Acts gives of the visit of Paul to Jerusalem three years after his
conversion. If Gal. i. 22 means that Paul was unknown by sight to
the Jerusalem Church, then he could not have gone in and out among
the disciples at Jerusalem as Acts ix. 28 represents, but must
have been in strict hiding when he was in the city. Such is the
account of the matter which is widely prevalent in recent years.
Not even so much correction of Acts is at all required by a correct
understanding of Gal. i. 22. But it is a still more unjustifiable
use of that verse when it is made to exclude even the persecuting
activity of Paul in Jerusalem.

If, however, the words of Galatians are really to be taken in the
strictest and most literal sense, what is to be done with Gal.
i. 23, where (immediately after the words which have just been
discussed) Paul says that the churches of Judæa were receiving
the report, "He that persecuted us formerly is now preaching as
a gospel the faith which formerly he laid waste"? What is meant
by the pronoun "us" in this verse? Conceivably it might be taken
in a broad sense, as referring to all disciples wherever found;
conceivably, therefore, the persecution referred to by the Judæan
disciples might be persecution of their brethren in the faith in
Tarsus or Damascus. But that is not the kind of interpretation
which has just been applied to the preceding verse, and upon which
such a vast structure has been reared. It may well be urged against
Heitmüller and those like him that if Paul's words are to be taken
so strictly in one verse they should be taken in the same way in the
other; if the "Judæa" and "unknown by face" of verse 22 are to be
taken so strictly, then the "us" of verse 23 should also be taken
strictly, and in that case Paul is made to contradict himself, which
of course is absurd. Verse 23 certainly does not fully confirm the
representation of Acts about the persecuting activity of Paul in
Judæa, but at any rate it tends to confirm that representation at
least as strongly as verse 22 tends to discredit it.[29]

  [29] Compare Wellhausen, _Kritische Analyse der Apostelgeschichte_,
  1914, p. 16.

Thus the early Jerusalem residence of Paul is strongly attested
by the Book of Acts, and is thoroughly in harmony with everything
that Paul says about his Pharisaic past. It is not surprising that
Bousset has now receded from his original position and admits
that Paul was in Jerusalem before his conversion and engaged in
persecution of the Jerusalem Church.

That admission does not necessarily carry with it an acceptance of
all that the Book of Acts says about the Jerusalem period in Paul's
life, particularly all that it says about his having been a disciple
of Gamaliel. But the decisive point has been gained. If the entire
account of the early Jerusalem residence of Paul is not ruled out
by the testimony of his own Epistles, then there is at least no
decisive objection against the testimony of Acts with regard to the
details. Certainly the common opinion to the effect that Paul went
to Jerusalem to receive rabbinical training is admirably in accord
with everything that he says in his Epistles about his zeal for the
Law. It is also in accord with his habits of thought and expression,
which were transformed and glorified, rather than destroyed, by
his Christian experience. The decision about every detail of
course depends ultimately upon the particular conclusion which the
investigator may have reached with regard to the Book of Acts. If
that book was written by a companion of Paul--an opinion which is
gaining ground even in circles which were formerly hostile--then
there is every reason to suppose that Paul was brought up in
Jerusalem at the feet of Gamaliel (Acts xxii. 3). Some important
questions indeed still remain unanswered, even with full acceptance
of the Lucan testimony. It can never be determined, for example, at
exactly what age Paul went to Jerusalem. The words, "brought up in
this city," in Acts xxii. 3 might seem to suggest that Paul went to
Jerusalem in early childhood, in which case his birthplace would
be of comparatively little importance in his preparation for his
lifework, and all the elaborate investigations of Tarsus, so far as
they are intended to shed light upon the environment of the apostle
in his formative years, would become valueless. But the Greek word
"brought up" or "nourished" might be used figuratively in a somewhat
flexible way; it remains, therefore, perfectly possible that Paul's
Jerusalem training began, not in childhood, but in early youth.
At any rate, an early residence in Jerusalem is not excluded by
the masterly way in which the apostle uses the Greek language. It
must always be remembered that Palestine in the first century was
a bilingual country;[30] the presence of hosts of Greek-speaking
Jews even in Jerusalem is amply attested, for example, by the early
chapters of Acts. Moreover, even after Paul's Jerusalem studies had
begun, his connection with Tarsus need not have been broken off. The
distance between the two cities was considerable (some four or five
hundred miles), but travel in those days was safe and easy. A period
of training in Jerusalem may have been followed by a long residence
at Tarsus.

  [30] See Zahn, _Einleitung in das Neue Testament_, 3te Aufl., i,
  1906, pp. 24-32, 39-47 (English Translation, _Introduction to the
  New Testament_, 2nd Ed., 1917, i, pp. 34-46, 57-66).

At this point, an interesting question arises, which, however, can
never be answered with any certainty. Did Paul ever see Jesus before
the crucifixion? In the light of what has just been established
about the outline of Paul's life, an affirmative answer might seem
to be natural. Paul was in Jerusalem both before and after the
public ministry of Jesus--before it when he was being "brought up"
in Jerusalem, and after it when he was engaged in persecution of the
Jerusalem Church. Where was he during the interval? Where was he on
those occasions when Jesus visited Jerusalem--especially at the time
of that last Passover? If he was in Jerusalem, it seems probable
that he would have seen the great prophet, whose coming caused such
a stir among the people. And that he was in the city at Passover
time would seem natural in view of his devotion to the Law. But the
matter is by no means certain. He may have returned to Tarsus, in
the manner which has just been suggested.

The question could only be decided on the basis of actual testimony
either in Acts or in the Epistles. One verse has often been thought
to provide such testimony. In 2 Cor. v. 16, Paul says, "Even if
we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know him so no
longer." Knowledge of Christ after the flesh can only mean, it is
said, knowledge of Him by the ordinary use of the senses, in the
manner in which one man in ordinary human intercourse knows another.
That kind of knowledge, Paul says, has ceased to have significance
for the Christian in his relation to other men; it has also ceased
to have significance for him in his relation to Christ. But it is
that kind of knowledge which Paul seems to predicate of himself,
as having existed in a previous period of his life. He does not
use the unreal form of condition; he does not say, "Even if we had
known Christ after the flesh (though as a matter of fact we never
knew Him so at all), yet now we should know Him so no longer."
Apparently, then, when he says "if" he means "although"; he means to
say, "Although we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know
Him so no longer." The knowledge of Christ after the flesh is thus
put as an actual fact in Paul's experience, and that can only mean
that he knew Him in the way in which His contemporaries knew Him
in Galilee and in Jerusalem, a way which in itself, Paul says, was
altogether without spiritual significance.

One objection to this interpretation of the passage is that it
proves too much. If it means anything, it means that Paul had
extended personal acquaintance with Jesus before the crucifixion;
for if Paul merely saw Him for a few moments--for example, when the
crowds were surging about Him at the time of the last Passover--he
could hardly be said to have "known" Him. But, for obvious reasons,
any extended intercourse between Paul and Jesus in Palestine is
exceedingly improbable. It is natural, therefore, to look for some
other interpretation.

Other interpretations undoubtedly are possible. Some of the
interpretations that have been proposed must indeed be eliminated.
For example, Paul cannot possibly be contrasting a former immature
stage of his Christian experience with the present mature stage;
he cannot possibly mean, "Even if in the first period after my
conversion I had a low view of Christ, which made of Him merely
the son of David and the Jewish Messiah, yet now I have come to a
higher conception of His divine nature." For the whole point of
the passage is found in the sharp break which comes in a man's
experience when he appropriates the death and resurrection of
Christ. Any consciousness of a subsequent revolution in the thinking
of the Christian is not only unsupported anywhere in the Pauline
Epistles, but is absolutely excluded by the present passage. Another
interpretation also must be eliminated. Paul cannot possibly be
contrasting his pre-Christian notions about the Messiah with the
higher knowledge which came to him with his conversion; he cannot
possibly mean, "Even if before I knew the fulfillment of the
Messianic promise I cherished carnal notions of what the Messiah
was to be, even if I thought of Him merely as an earthly ruler who
was to conquer the enemies of Israel, yet now I have come to have a
loftier, more spiritual conception of Him." For the word "Christ,"
especially without the article, can hardly here be anything
other than a proper name, and must refer not to the conception
of Messiahship but to the concrete person of Jesus. But another
interpretation remains. The key to it is found in the flexible use
of the first person plural in the Pauline Epistles. Undoubtedly, the
"we" of the whole passage in which 2 Cor. v. 16 is contained refers
primarily to Paul himself. But, especially in 2 Cor. v. 16, it may
include also all true ambassadors for Christ whose principles are
the same as Paul's. Among such true ambassadors there were no doubt
to be found some who had known Christ by way of ordinary intercourse
in Palestine. "But," says Paul, "even if some of us have known
Christ in that way, we know him so no longer." This interpretation
is linguistically more satisfactory, perhaps, than that which
explains the sentence as simply a more vivid way of presenting a
condition contrary to fact. "Granted," Paul would say according to
this interpretation, "even that we have known Christ according to
the flesh (which as a matter of fact we have not), yet now we know
him so no longer." But our interpretation really amounts to almost
the same thing so far as Paul is concerned. At any rate, the passage
is not so clear as to justify any certain conclusions about Paul's
life in Palestine; it does not clearly imply any acquaintance of
Paul with Jesus before the passion.

If such acquaintance is to be established, therefore, it must be
established on the basis of other evidence. J. Weiss[31] seeks to
establish it by the very fact of Paul's conversion. Paul, Weiss
believes, saw a vision of the risen Christ. How did he know that the
figure which appeared to him in the vision was Jesus? Why did he not
think, for example, merely that it was the Messiah, who according
to one strain of Jewish Messianic expectation was already existent
in heaven? Apparently he recognized the person who appeared to him
as Jesus of Nazareth. But how could he have recognized Him as Jesus
unless he had seen Jesus before?

  [31] _Paulus und Jesus_, 1909, pp. 22, 23. Compare Ramsay, _The
  Teaching of Paul in Terms of the Present Day_, 1914, pp. 21-30.

This argument depends, of course, altogether upon the naturalistic
conception of the conversion of Paul, which regards the experience
as an hallucination. In the account of the conversion given in the
Book of Acts, on the contrary, it is distinctly said that far from
recognizing the person who appeared to him, Paul was obliged to ask
the question, "Who art thou, Lord?" and then received the answer,
"I am Jesus." Such a conversation between Paul and the One who
appeared to him is perfectly possible if there was a real appearance
of the risen Christ, but it exceeds the ordinary limits of
hallucinations. Weiss has therefore merely pointed out an additional
psychological difficulty in explaining the experience of Paul as
an hallucination, a difficulty which, on naturalistic principles,
may have to be removed by the assumption that Paul had seen Jesus
before the passion. But if Jesus really appeared to Paul in such a
way as to be able to answer his questions, then it is not necessary
to suppose that Paul recognized Him. The failure of Paul to
recognize Jesus (according to the narrative in Acts) does not indeed
positively exclude such previous acquaintance; the two disciples on
the road to Emmaus, for example, also failed to recognize the Lord,
though they had been acquainted with Him before. But, at any rate,
if the supernaturalistic view of Paul's conversion be accepted,
the experience sheds no light whatever upon any previous personal
acquaintance with Jesus.

Thus there is no clear evidence for supposing that Paul saw Jesus
before the passion. At the same time there is no evidence to the
contrary, except the evidence that is to be found in the silence of
the Epistles.

The argument from silence, precarious as it is, must here be
allowed a certain amount of weight. If Paul had seen Jesus before
the crucifixion, would not so important a fact have been mentioned
somewhere in the Epistles? The matter is by no means absolutely
clear; a brief glimpse of Jesus in the days of His flesh would
perhaps not have seemed so important to Paul, in view of the richer
knowledge which came afterwards, as it would seem to us. The silence
of the Epistles does, however, render improbable any extended
contact between Paul and Jesus, particularly any active opposition
of the youthful Paul toward Jesus. Paul was deeply penitent for
having persecuted the Church; if he had committed the more terrible
sin of having helped bring the Lord Himself to the shameful cross,
the fact would naturally have appeared in his expressions of
penitence. Even if Paul did see Jesus in Palestine, then, it is
highly improbable that he was one of those who cried out to Pilate,
"Crucify him, crucify him!"

One thing, however, is certain. If Paul never saw Jesus in
Palestine, he certainly heard about Him. The ministry of Jesus
caused considerable stir both in Galilee and in Jerusalem. These
things were not done in a corner. The appearance of Jesus at the
last Passover aroused the passions of the multitude, and evidently
caused the deepest concern to the authorities. Even one who was
indifferent to the whole matter could hardly have helped learning
something of the content of Jesus' teaching, and the main outline
of the story of His death. But Paul, at least at a time only a very
few years after the crucifixion, was not indifferent; for he was an
active persecutor. If he was in Palestine at all during the previous
period, his interest probably began then. The outlines of Jesus'
life and death were known to friend and foe alike, and certainly
were not unknown to Paul before his conversion, at the time when he
was persecuting the Church. It is only a woeful lack of historical
imagination which can attribute to Paul, even before his conversion,
a total ignorance of the earthly life of Jesus.

The opposite error, however, is even more serious. If Paul before
his conversion was not totally ignorant of Jesus, on the other
hand his knowledge only increased his opposition to Jesus and
Jesus' followers. It is not true that before the conversion Paul
was gradually coming nearer to Christianity. Against any such
supposition stands the explicit testimony of the Epistles.

Despite that testimony, various attempts have been made to trace
a psychological development in Paul which could have led to the
conversion. Paul was converted through a vision of the risen
Christ. According to the supernaturalistic view that vision was a
"vision," not in any specialized meaning of the word, but in its
original etymological meaning; Paul actually "saw" the risen Lord.
According to the modern naturalistic view, which rejects any direct
creative interposition of God in the course of nature, different in
kind from His works of providence, the vision was produced by the
internal condition of the subject, accompanied perhaps by favorable
conditions without--the heat of the sun or a thunder storm or the
like. But was the condition of the subject, in the case of Paul,
really favorable to a vision of the risen Christ? If the vision
of Christ was an hallucination, as it is held to be by modern
naturalistic historians, how may the genesis of this pathological
experience be explained?

In the first place, a certain basis for the experience is sought in
the physical organism of the subject. According to the Epistles,
it is said, the apostle was subject to a recurrent malady; this
malady is spoken of in 2 Cor. xii. 1-8 in connection with visions
and revelations. In Gal. iv. 14, where it is said that the
Galatians did not "spit out" when the apostle was with them, an
allusion is sometimes discovered to the ancient custom of spitting
to avoid contagion. A combination of this passage with the one in
2 Corinthians is thought to establish a diagnosis of epilepsy, the
effort being made to show that "spitting out" was particularly
prevalent in the case of that disease. The visions then become an
additional symptom of the epileptic seizures.[32]

  [32] See Krenkel, _Beiträge zur Aufhellung der Geschichte und der
  Briefe des Apostels Paulus_, 1890, pp. 47-125.

But the diagnosis rests upon totally insufficient data. The visions
are not regarded in 2 Corinthians as part of the buffetings of
the angel of Satan; on the contrary, the two things are sharply
separated in Paul's mind; he rejoices in the visions, but prays
the Lord that the buffetings may cease. It is not even said that
the visions and the buffetings came close together; there is no
real basis for the view that the buffetings consisted in nervous
exhaustion following the visions. In Gal. iv. 14, the "spitting
out" is probably to be taken figuratively, and the object is "your
temptation in my flesh." The meaning then is simply, "You did
not reject me or spue me out"; and there is no allusion to the
custom of "spitting out" for the purpose of avoiding contagion. It
is unnecessary, therefore, to examine the elaborate argument of
Krenkel by which he sought to show that epilepsy was particularly
the disease against which spitting was practised as a prophylactic
measure.

There is therefore absolutely no evidence to show that Paul was an
epileptic, unless the very fact of his having visions be thought to
furnish such evidence. But such a use of the visions prejudges the
great question at issue, which concerns the objective validity of
Paul's religious convictions. Furthermore, the fact should always be
borne in mind that Paul distinguished the visions very sharply from
the experience which he had near Damascus, when he saw the Lord. The
visions are spoken of in 2 Corinthians apparently with reluctance,
as something which concerned the apostle alone; the Damascus
experience was part of the evidence for the resurrection of Christ,
and had a fundamental place in the apostle's missionary preaching.
All efforts to break down this distinction have failed. The apostle
regarded the Damascus experience as unique--not a mystery like
the experiences which are mentioned in 2 Corinthians, but a plain,
palpable fact capable of being understood by all.

But if the Damascus experience is to be regarded as an
hallucination, it is not sufficient to exhibit a basis for it in the
physical weakness of the apostle. Even if Paul was constitutionally
predisposed to hallucinations, the experience of this particular
hallucination must be shown to be possible. The challenge has often
been accepted by modern historians. It is maintained that the
elements of Paul's new conviction must have been forming gradually
in his mind; the Damascus experience, it is said, merely brought to
light what was really already present. In this way, the enormous
disparity between effect and cause is thought to be removed; the
untold benefits of Paulinism are no longer to be regarded as due to
the fortunate chance of an hallucination, induced by the weakness
of the apostle and the heat of the desert sun, but rather to a
spiritual development which the hallucination merely revealed.
Thus the modern view of Paul's conversion, it is thought, may face
bravely the scorn of Beyschlag, who exclaimed, when speaking of
the naturalistic explanation of Paul's vision, "Oh blessed drop of
blood ... which by pressing at the right moment upon the brain of
Paul, produced such a moral wonder."[33] The drop of blood, it is
said, or whatever may have been the physical basis of the Damascus
experience, did not produce the wonders of the Pauline gospel; it
merely brought into the sphere of consciousness a psychological
process which had really been going on before.

  [33] Beyschlag, "Die Bekehrung des Apostels Paulus," in
  _Theologische Studien und Kritiken_, xxxvii, 1864, p. 241.

The existence of such a psychological process, by which the apostle
was coming nearer to Christ, is sometimes thought to receive
documentary support in one verse of the New Testament. In Acts xxvi.
14, the risen Christ is represented as saying to Paul, "It is hard
for thee to kick against the goads." According to this verse, it
is said, Paul had been resisting a better conviction, gradually
forming in his mind, that the disciples might be right about Jesus
and he might be wrong; that, it is said, was the goad which was
really driving him. He had indeed been resisting vigorously; he
had been stifling his doubts by more and more feverish activity
in persecution. But the resistance had not really brought him
peace; the goad was really there. And at last, near Damascus, the
resistance was overcome; the subconscious conviction which had
brought tumult into his soul was at last allowed to come to the
surface and rule his conscious life.

At this point, the historian is in grave danger of becoming
untrue to his own critical principles. Attention to the Book of
Acts, it has been maintained, is not to be allowed to color the
interpretation of the Pauline Epistles, which are the primary
sources of information. But here the procedure is reversed. In the
interests of a verse in Acts, standing, moreover, in a context
which on naturalistic principles cannot be regarded as historical,
the clear testimony of the Epistles is neglected. For Paul was
certainly not conscious of any goad which before his conversion was
forcing him into the new faith; he knows nothing of doubts which
assailed him during the period of his activity in persecution. On
the contrary, the very point of the passage in Galatians, where
he alludes to his persecuting activity, is the suddenness of his
conversion. Far from gradually coming nearer to Christ he was in
the very midst of his zeal for the Law when Christ called him.
The purpose of the passage is to show that his gospel came to him
without human intermediation. Before the conversion, he says, there
was of course no human intermediation, since he was an active
persecutor. He could not have spoken in this way if before the
conversion he had already become half convinced that those whom he
was persecuting were right. Moreover, throughout the Epistles there
appears in the apostle not the slightest consciousness of his having
acted against better convictions when he persecuted the Church. In
1 Tim. i. 13 he distinctly says that he carried on the persecution
in ignorance; and even if Timothy be regarded as post-Pauline, the
silence of the other epistles at least points in the same direction.
Paul was deeply penitent for having persecuted the Church of God,
but apparently he did not lay to his charge the black sin of having
carried on the persecution in the face of better convictions. When
he laid the Church waste he thought he was doing God service. In the
very midst of his mad persecuting activity, he says, apart from any
teaching from men--apart, we may certainly infer, from any favorable
impressions formed in his mind--the Lord appeared to him and gave
him his gospel. Paul stakes everything upon the evidential value of
the appearance, which was able suddenly to overcome an altogether
hostile attitude. Such is the self-testimony of the apostle. It
rests as a serious weight upon all attempts at making the conversion
the result of a psychological process.

Certainly the passage in Acts will not help to bear the weight.
When the risen Christ says to Paul, "It is hard for thee to kick
against the goads," He need not mean at all that the presence of
the goad had been known to Paul before that hour. The meaning may
be simply that the will of Christ is resistless; all opposition
is in vain, the appointed hour of Christ has arrived. Conscious
opposition on the part of Paul to a better conviction is certainly
not at all implied. No doubt Paul was really miserable when he was
a persecutor; all activity contrary to the plan of Christ brings
misery. But that he had the slightest inkling of the source of his
misery or even of the fact of it need not be supposed. It is even
possible that the "hardness" of resistance to the goad is to be
found only in the very moment of the conversion. "All resistance,"
says the risen Christ, "all hesitation, is as hopeless as for the ox
to kick against the goad; instant obedience alone is in place."

The weight of the apostle's own testimony is therefore in no sense
removed by Acts xxvi. 14. That testimony is unequivocally opposed to
all attempts at exhibiting a psychological process culminating in
the conversion. These attempts, however, because of the importance
which has been attributed to them, must now be examined. In general,
they are becoming less and less elaborate; contemporary scholars
are usually content to dismiss the psychological problem of the
conversion with a few general observations about the secret of
personality, or, at the most, a brief word about the possible
condition of the apostle's mind. Since the direct interposition of
the risen Christ is rejected, it is held that there must have been
some psychological preparation for the Damascus experience, but
what that preparation was remains hidden, it is said, in the secret
places of the soul, which no psychological analysis can ever fully
reveal.

If, however, the problem is not thus to be dismissed as insoluble,
no unanimity has been achieved among those who attempt a solution.
Two principal lines of solution of the problem may perhaps be
distinguished--that which begins with the objective evidence as
it presented itself to the persecutor, and that which starts with
the seventh chapter of Romans and the persecutor's own sense of
need. The former line was followed by Holsten, whose monographs
still constitute the most elaborate exposition of the psychological
process supposed to lie back of the conversion.[34] According to
Holsten, the process centered in the consideration of the Cross
of Christ. That consideration of course resulted at first in an
attitude of hostility on the part of Paul. The Cross was a shameful
thing; the proclamation of a crucified Messiah appeared, therefore,
to the devout Pharisee as an outrageous blasphemy. But the disciples
represented the Cross as in accordance with the will of God, and
supported their contention by the evidence for the resurrection;
the resurrection was made to overcome the offense of the Cross. But
against the evidence for the resurrection, Holsten believes, Paul
was helpless, the possibility of resurrection being fully recognized
in his Pharisaic training. What then if the resurrection really
vindicated the claims of Jesus to be the Messiah? Paul was by no
means convinced, Holsten believes, that such was the case. But the
possibility was necessarily in his mind, if only for the purposes
of refutation. At this point Paul began to advance, according to
Holsten, beyond the earlier disciples. On the assumption that the
resurrection really did vindicate the claims of Jesus, the Cross
would have to be explained. But an explanation lay ready to hand,
and Paul applied this explanation with a thoroughness which the
earlier disciples had not attained. The earlier disciples removed
the offense of the Cross by representing the Cross as part of the
plan of God for the Messiah; Paul exhibited the meaning of that
plan much more clearly than they. He exhibited the meaning of the
Cross by applying to it the category of vicarious suffering, which
could be found, for example, in Isaiah liii. At this point the
pre-Christian development of Paul was over. The Pauline "gnosis of
the Cross" was already formed. Of course, before the conversion it
was to Paul entirely a matter of supposition. On the supposition,
still regarded as false, that the resurrection had really taken
place, the Cross, far from being an offense, would become a glorious
fact. All the essential elements of Paul's gospel of the Cross were
thus present in Paul's mind before the conversion; the validity
of them had been posited by him for the purposes of argument. The
only thing that was lacking to make Paul a disciple of Jesus was
conviction of the fact of the resurrection. That conviction was
supplied by the Damascus experience. The unstable equilibrium then
was over; the elements of the Pauline gospel, which were all present
before, fell at once into their proper places.

  [34] Holsten, _Zum Evangelium des Paulus und des Petrus_, 1868.
  Against Holsten, see Beyschlag, "Die Bekehrung des Apostels Paulus,
  mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Erklärungsversuche von Baur und
  Holsten," in _Theologische Studien und Kritiken_, xxxvii, 1864, pp.
  197-264; "Die Visionshypothese in ihrer neuesten Begründung. Eine
  Duplik gegen D. Holsten," _ibid._, xliii, 1870, pp. 7-50, 189-263.

The other way of explaining the conversion starts from the seventh
chapter of Romans and the dissatisfaction which Paul is thought to
have experienced under the Law. Paul, it is said, was a Pharisee; he
made every effort to keep the Law of God. But he was too earnest to
be satisfied with a merely external obedience; and real obedience he
had not attained. He was therefore tormented by a sense of sin. That
sense of sin no doubt led him into a more and more feverish effort
to keep the letter of the Law and particularly to show his zeal by
persecuting the disciples of Jesus. But all his efforts were vain;
his obedience remained insufficient; the curse of the Law still
rested upon him. What if the vain effort could be abandoned? What if
the disciples of Jesus were right? Of course, he believed, they were
not right, but what if they were? What if the Messiah had really
died for the sins of believers, in accordance with Isaiah liii? What
if salvation were attainable not by merit but by divine grace? These
questions, it is supposed, were in the mind of Paul. He answered
them still in the negative, but his misery kept them ever before his
mind. The Law was thus a schoolmaster to bring him to Christ. He was
ready for the vision.

In both of these lines of explanation importance is often attributed
to the impression produced upon Paul's mind by the character of
the disciples. Whence did they derive their bravery and their joy
in the midst of persecution? Whence came the fervor of their love,
whence the firmness of their faith? The persecutor, it is said, was
impressed against his will.

The fundamental objection to all these theories of psychological
development is that they describe only what might have been or what
ought to have been, and not what actually was. No doubt Paul ought
to have been coming nearer to Christianity; but as a matter of fact
he was rather getting further away, and he records the fact in no
uncertain terms in his Epistles. There are objections, moreover, to
the various theories of development in detail; and the advocates of
one theory are often the severest critics of another.

With regard to Holsten's exposition of the "gnosis of the
Cross," for example, there is not the slightest evidence that
the pre-Christian Jews interpreted Isaiah liii of the vicarious
sufferings of the Messiah, or had any notion of the Messiah's
vicarious death.[35] It is not true, moreover, as Beyschlag pointed
out against Holsten, that Paul was helpless in the face of the
evidence for the resurrection.[36] According to Paul's Pharisaic
training, the resurrection would come only at the end of the age; a
resurrection like the resurrection of Jesus, therefore, was by no
means a matter of course, and could be established only by positive
evidence of the most direct and unequivocal kind.

  [35] See Schürer, _Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes_, 4te Aufl., ii,
  1907, pp. 648-651 (English Translation, _A History of the Jewish
  People_, Division II, vol. ii, 1885, pp. 184-187).

  [36] Beyschlag, "Die Visionshypothese in ihrer neuesten Begründung,"
  in _Theologische Studien und Kritiken_, xliii, 1870, pp. 19-21.

With regard to the sense of sin as the goad which forced Paul to
accept the Saviour, there is no evidence that before his conversion
Paul was under real conviction of sin. It is very doubtful whether
Rom. vii. 7-25, with its account of the struggle between the
flesh and the higher nature of man, refers to the unregenerate
rather than to the regenerate life; and even if the former view is
correct, it is doubtful whether the description is taken from the
apostle's own experience. At any rate, the struggle, even if it be
a struggle in the unregenerate man, is described from the point of
view of the regenerate; it is not implied, therefore, that before
the entrance of the Spirit of God a man is fully conscious of his
own helplessness and of the desperateness of the struggle. The
passage therefore, does not afford any certain information about
the pre-Christian life of Paul. Undoubtedly before the conversion
the conscience of Paul was aroused; he was conscientious in his
devotion to the Law. Probably he was conscious of his failings. But
that such consciousness of failure amounted to anything like that
genuine conviction of sin which leads a man to accept the Saviour
remains very doubtful. Recognized failure to keep the Law perfectly
led in the case of Paul merely to greater zeal for the Law, a zeal
which was manifested especially in the persecution of a blasphemous
sect whose teaching was subversive of the authority of Moses.

Finally, it is highly improbable that Paul was favorably impressed
by the bravery of those whom he was persecuting. It may seem strange
at first sight that the same man who wrote the thirteenth chapter
of 1 Corinthians should have haled helpless men and women to prison
without a qualm, or listened without pity to the dying words of
Stephen, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." But it is very
dangerous to argue back from the Christian life of Paul to the life
of Paul the Pharisee. Paul himself was conscious of a complete moral
transformation as having taken place in him when he saw the Lord
near Damascus. What was impossible for him after that transformation
may well have been possible before. Moreover, if, despite such
considerations, we could argue back from Paul the disciple of Jesus
to Paul the Pharisee, there is one characteristic of the apostle
which would never have permitted him to persecute those by whom
he was favorably impressed--namely, his complete sincerity. The
picture of Saul the doubter, torn by conflicting emotions, impressed
by the calmness and bravery and magnanimity of those whom he was
persecuting, yet stifling such impressions by persecuting zeal, is
very romantic, but very un-Pauline.

But in attributing the conversion of Paul altogether to the
experience on the road to Damascus, are we not heaping up into one
moment what must of very necessity in conscious life be the work
of years? Is it conceivable that ideas should have been implanted
in the mind of a person not by processes of acquisition but
mechanically as though by a hypodermic syringe? Would not such an
experience, even if it were possible, be altogether destructive of
personality?

The objection serves to correct possible misunderstandings. The
view of the conversion which has just been set forth does not mean
that when Paul drew near to Damascus on that memorable day he was
ignorant of the facts about Jesus. If he had never heard of Jesus,
or if having heard of Him he knew absolutely nothing about Him, then
perhaps the conversion would have been not only supernatural but
inconceivable. But it is not the traditional view of the conversion
which is guilty of such exaggerations. They are the product rather
of that separation of Paul from the historical Jesus which appears
for example in Wrede and in Bousset. According to any reasonable
view of Paul's pre-Christian experience, Paul was well acquainted,
before the conversion, with many of the facts about Jesus' life
and death; what he received on the road to Damascus was a new
interpretation of the facts and a new attitude toward them. He had
known the facts before, but they had filled him with hatred; now his
hatred was changed into love.

Even after exaggerations have been removed, however, the change
wrought by the Damascus experience remains revolutionary enough. Is
that change conceivable? Could hatred have been changed into love
merely by an experience which convinced Paul of the fact of the
resurrection? The answer to this question depends altogether upon
the nature of the Damascus experience. If that experience was merely
an hallucination, the question must be answered in the negative; an
hallucination could never have produced the profound changes in the
personal life of Paul which have just been contemplated; and the
historian would be obliged to fall back, despite the unequivocal
testimony of the Epistles, upon some theory of psychological
development of which the hallucination would only be the climax.
But even those who maintain the supernaturalistic view of the
conversion have too often failed to do justice to the content of
the experience. One fundamental feature of the experience has too
often been forgotten--the appearance on the road to Damascus was the
appearance of a person. Sometimes the event has been regarded merely
as a supernatural interposition of God intended to produce belief
in the fact of the resurrection, as merely a sign. Undoubtedly it
was a sign. But it was far more; it was contact between persons.
But contact between persons, even under ordinary conditions, is
exceedingly mysterious; merely a look or the tone of the voice
sometimes produces astonishing results. Who has not experienced
the transition from mere hearsay knowledge of a person to actual
contact? One meeting is often sufficient to revolutionize the
entire impression; indifference or hostility gives place at once
to enthusiastic devotion. Those who speak of the transformation
wrought in Paul by the appearance of Jesus as magical or mechanical
or inconceivable have never reflected upon the mysteries of personal
intercourse.

Only, it must have been a real person whom Paul met on the road to
Damascus--not a vision, not a mere sign. If it was merely a vision
or a sign, all the objections remain in force. But if it was really
Jesus, the sight of His face and the words of love which He uttered
may have been amply sufficient, provided the heart of Paul was
renewed by the power of God's Spirit, to transform hatred into love.
To call such an experience magic is to blaspheme all that is highest
in human life. God was using no unworthy instrument when, by the
personal presence of the Saviour, He transformed the life of Paul.

There is, therefore, no moral or psychological objection in the way
of a simple acceptance of Paul's testimony about the conversion.
And that testimony is unequivocal. Paul was not converted by any
teaching which he received from men; he was not converted as
Christians are usually converted, by the preaching of the truth or
by that revelation of Christ which is contained in the lives of His
followers. Jesus Himself in the case of Paul did in visible presence
what He ordinarily does by the means which He has appointed. Upon
this immediateness of the conversion, Paul is willing to stake the
whole of his life; upon it he bases his apostolic authority.




CHAPTER III

THE TRIUMPH OF GENTILE FREEDOM




CHAPTER III

THE TRIUMPH OF GENTILE FREEDOM


After the conversion, according to the Book of Acts, Paul received
the ministrations of Ananias, and was baptized.[37] These details
are not excluded by the Epistle to the Galatians. In the Epistle,
Paul says that after God had revealed His son in him he did not
confer with flesh and blood;[38] but the conference with flesh
and blood which he was concerned to deny was a conference with
the original apostles at Jerusalem about the principles of the
gospel, not a conference with humble disciples at Damascus.
An over-interpretation of Galatians would here lead almost to
absurdity. Is it to be supposed that after the conversion Paul
refused to have anything whatever to do with those who were now his
brethren? In particular, is it to be supposed that he who afterwards
placed baptism as a matter of course at the beginning of the new
life for every Christian should himself not have been baptized? The
Epistle to the Galatians does not mention his baptism, but that
omission merely illustrates the incompleteness of the account. And
if the baptism of Paul, which certainly must have taken place, is
omitted from Galatians, other omissions must not be regarded as
any more significant. The first two chapters of Galatians are not
intended to furnish complete biography. Only those details are
mentioned which were important for Paul's argument or had been
misrepresented by his Judaizing opponents.

  [37] Acts ix. 10-19; xxii. 12-16.

  [38] Gal. i. 16.

After God had revealed His son in him, Paul says, he went away
into Arabia. Apparently this journey to Arabia is to be put very
soon after the revelation, though the construction of the word
"immediately" in Gal. i. 16 is not perfectly clear. If that word
goes merely with the negative part of the sentence, then nothing
is said about the time of the journey to Arabia; Paul would say
merely that in the period just after the revelation of God's Son he
did not go up to Jerusalem. There would then be no difficulty in
the assertion of Acts which seems to put a stay in Damascus with
preaching activity in the synagogues immediately after the baptism.
This interpretation is adopted by a number of modern commentators,
not only by B. Weiss and Zahn, who might be suspected of a bias in
favor of the Book of Acts, but also by Sieffert and Lipsius and
Bousset. Perhaps more naturally, however, the word "immediately" in
Galatians is to be taken grammatically with the positive part of
the sentence or with the whole sentence; the sentence would then
mean, "Immediately, instead of conferring with flesh and blood
or going up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, I
went away into Arabia and again I returned to Damascus." Even so,
however, there is no real contradiction with Acts. When Paul tells
what happened "immediately" after the revelation he is thinking in
terms not of days but of journeys. The very first journey after the
conversion--and it took place soon--was not to Jerusalem but to
Arabia. When taken in the context the sentence does not exclude a
brief preaching activity in Damascus before the journey to Arabia.
Grammatically the word "immediately" may go with the positive part
of the sentence, but in essential import it goes rather with the
negative part. What Paul is really concerned about is to deny that
he went up to Jerusalem soon after his conversion.

The Book of Acts does not mention the journey to Arabia and does
not make clear where it may be inserted. Sometimes it is placed in
the middle of Acts ix. 19, before the words, "And he was with the
disciples in Damascus some days." In that case the discussion about
the word "immediately" in Gal. i. 16 would be unnecessary; that
word could be taken strictly with the positive part of the sentence
without contradicting the Book of Acts; the journey to Arabia would
have preceded the preaching activity in Damascus. Or the journey
may be placed before Acts ix. 22; it would then be the cause of the
greater vigor of Paul's preaching. Finally, it may be placed simply
within the "many days" of Acts ix. 23. The phrase, "many days," in
Acts apparently is used to indicate fairly long periods of time. It
must be remembered that the author of Acts is not concerned here
about chronology; perhaps he did not trouble himself to investigate
the exact period of time that elapsed before the journey to
Jerusalem. He was content merely to record the fact that before Paul
went to Jerusalem he engaged for a considerable time in preaching
in the Damascus synagogues. Certainly he must here be acquitted of
any attempt at subserving the interests of harmony in the Church by
a falsification of history. It is generally recognized now, against
the Tübingen contentions, that if the author of Acts contradicts
Galatians, his contradiction is naïve rather than deliberate; the
contradiction or apparent contradiction at least shows the complete
independence of his account. He is not deliberately shortening up
the time before Paul's first conference with Peter in the interests
of a compromise between a Pauline and a Petrine party in the Church;
if he had had the "three years" of Paul before him as he wrote he
would have had no objection to using the detail in his history. But
investigation of the chronology did not here seem to be important.
The detail of the three years was vastly important for Paul's
argument in Galatians, where he is showing that for a considerable
period after the conversion he did not even meet those from whom
he was said to have received his gospel, but it was not at all
important in a general history of the progress of the Church.

The extent of the journey to Arabia, both geographically and
temporally, is entirely unknown. "Arabia" included not only very
remote regions but also a territory almost at the gates of Damascus;
and all that may be determined about the length of the Arabian
residence is that it was less than three years. Possibly Paul
remained only a few weeks in Arabia. In that case the omission of
the journey from the general narrative in Acts is very natural.
The importance of Arabia in Paul's argument is due simply to the
fact that Arabia was not Jerusalem; Paul mentions the journey to
Arabia simply in contrast with a journey to Jerusalem which he
is excluding in the interests of his argument. The only thing
that might seem to require a considerable stay in Arabia is the
narrative of Paul's first Jerusalem visit in Acts ix. 26-30; the
distrust of Paul displayed by the Jerusalem Christians is more
easily explicable if after his conversion he had been living for the
most part in a region more remote than Damascus from Jerusalem. A
similar consideration might possibly suggest that in Arabia Paul
was engaged in meditation rather than in missionary activity; he had
not yet become so well known as a preacher that the Christians of
Jerusalem could begin to glorify God in him, as they did a little
later. Possibly also there is an implied contrast in Gal. i. 16, 17
between conference with the original apostles and direct communion
with Christ; possibly Paul means to say, "Instead of conferring with
flesh and blood in Jerusalem, I communed with the Lord in Arabia."
Despite such considerations, the matter is by no means perfectly
clear; it is perfectly possible that Paul engaged in missionary work
in Arabia. But at any rate, even if that view be correct, he also
engaged in meditation. Paul was never a mere "practical Christian"
in the modern sense; labor in his case was always based upon
thought, and life upon doctrine.

The escape of Paul from Damascus just before his first visit to
Jerusalem is narrated in Acts ix. 23-25 and in 2 Cor. xi. 32, 33.
The mention of the ethnarch of Aretas the Nabatean king as having
authority at or near Damascus causes some difficulty, and might not
have passed unchallenged if it had been attested by Acts. But as a
matter of fact, it is just this detail which appears, not in Acts,
but in an epistle of Paul.

The first visit of Paul to Jerusalem after the conversion is
described in Acts ix. 26-30; xxii. 17-21; Gal. i. 18, 19. In itself,
the account in Acts bears every mark of trustworthiness. The only
detail which might seem surprising is that the Jerusalem Christians
would not at first believe that Paul was a disciple; must not a
notable event like the conversion of so prominent a persecutor have
become known at Jerusalem in the course of three years? But if Paul
had spent a large part of the three years in Arabia, whence news
of him could not be easily obtained, the report of his conversion
might have come to seem like a remote rumor; the very fact of his
withdrawal might, as has been suggested, have cast suspicion upon
the reality of his conversion. Emotion, moreover, often lags behind
cold reasoning; the heart is more difficult to convince than the
mind. The Jerusalem Christians had known Paul only as a cruel and
relentless persecutor; it was not so easy for them to receive him
at once as a brother. This one detail is therefore not at all
sufficient to reverse the favorable impression which is made by the
Lucan account of the visit as a whole.

The chief objection to the account is usually found in a comparison
with what Paul himself says in Galatians. In itself, the account is
natural; but does it agree with Paul's own testimony? One apparent
divergence may indeed soon be dismissed. In Acts ix. 27 it is said
that Paul was introduced to "the apostles," whereas in Gal. i. 19 it
is said that Paul saw only James, the brother of the Lord (who was
not among the Twelve), and Peter. But possibly the author of Acts is
using the term "apostle" in a sense broad enough to include James,
so that Paul actually saw two "apostles"--Peter and James--or else
the plural is used merely in a generic sense to indicate that Paul
was introduced to whatever representative or representatives of the
apostolic body may have happened to be present.

Much more weight is commonly attributed to an objection drawn from
the general representation of the visit. According to Acts, Paul
was associated publicly with the Jerusalem disciples and engaged
in an active mission among the Greek-speaking Jews; according to
Galatians, it is argued, he was in strict hiding, since he did not
become acquainted personally with the churches of Judæa (Gal. i.
22). But the objection, as has already been observed, depends upon
an over-interpretation of Gal. i. 22. Whether or no "Judæa" means
the country in sharp distinction from the capital, in either case
all that is necessarily meant is that Paul did not become acquainted
generally with the Judæan churches. The capital may well have formed
an exception. If Paul had meant in the preceding verses that he had
been in hiding in Jerusalem he would have expressed himself very
differently. Certainly the modern representation of the visit is
in itself improbable. The picture of Paul entering Jerusalem under
cover of darkness or under a disguise and being kept as a mysterious
stranger somewhere in a secret chamber of Peter's house is certainly
much less natural than the account which the Book of Acts gives of
the earnest attempt of Paul to repair the damage which he had done
to the Jerusalem Church. It is very doubtful whether concealment
of Paul in Jerusalem would have been possible even if Paul had
consented to it; he was too well-known in the city. Of course this
last argument would be answered if, as Heitmüller and Loisy suppose,
Paul had never been in Jerusalem at all, even as a persecutor. But
that hypothesis is faced by absolutely decisive objections, as has
already been observed.

The whole modern representation of the first visit, therefore, is
based solely upon a very doubtful interpretation of one verse, and
is in itself highly unnatural. Surely it is much more probable that
the real reason why Paul saw only Peter and James among the leaders
was that the others were out of the city, engaged in missionary work
in Judæa. Their presence in the churches of Judæa would explain the
mention of those churches in Gal. i. 22. Paul is indicating the
meagerness of his direct contact with the original apostles. The
churches of Judæa would become important in his argument if they
were the scene of the apostles' labors. Against a very doubtful
interpretation of the account in Galatians, which brings it into
contradiction with Acts, may therefore be placed an entirely
consistent interpretation which, when the account is combined with
Acts, produces a thoroughly natural representation of the course of
events.

Paul says nothing about what happened during his fifteen-day
intercourse with Peter. But it is highly improbable, as even Holsten
pointed out, that he spent the time gazing silently at Peter as
though Peter were one of the sights of the city.[39] Undoubtedly
there was conversation between the two men, and in the conversation
the subject of the life and death of Jesus could hardly be avoided.
In the Epistle to the Galatians Paul denies, indeed, that he
received his gospel from men. But the bare facts about Jesus did
not constitute a gospel. The facts were known to some extent to
friend and foe alike; Paul knew something about them even before his
conversion and then increased his knowledge through intercourse with
the disciples at Damascus. The fifteen days spent in company with
Peter could hardly have failed to bring a further enrichment of his
knowledge.

  [39] Holsten, _op. cit._, p. 118, Amn.: "Aber natürlich kann in dem
  ἱστορῆσαι Κηφᾶν nicht liegen, Paulus sei nach Jerusalem gegangen, um den
  Petrus fünfzehn tage lang stumm anzuschauen. Die beiden männer
  werden miteinander über das evangelium Christi geredet haben."

In 1 Cor. xv. 3-7, Paul gives a summary of what he had
"received"--the death, burial, resurrection, and appearances of
Jesus. The vast majority of modern investigators, of all shades of
opinion, find in these verses a summary of the Jerusalem tradition
which Paul received from Peter during the fifteen days. Undoubtedly
Paul knew some if not all of these facts before he went to
Jerusalem; the facts were probably common property of the disciples
in Damascus as well as in Jerusalem. But it is inconceivable that
he should not have tested and supplemented the tradition by what
Peter, whose name stands first (1 Cor. xv. 5) in the list of the
appearances, said in Jerusalem. Recently, indeed, an attempt has
been made by Heitmüller to represent the tradition as being derived
merely from the Christian communities in Damascus or Antioch, and
at best only indirectly from Jerusalem; these communities are thus
interposed as an additional link between Paul and the Jerusalem
Church.[40] But the very purpose of the passage in 1 Corinthians is
to emphasize the unity of teaching, not between Paul and certain
obscure Christians in Hellenistic communities, but between Paul
and the "apostles." "Whether therefore," Paul says, "it be I or
they, so we preach and so ye believed" (1 Cor. xv. 11). The attempt
at separating the factual basis of the Pauline gospel from the
primitive tradition shatters upon the rock of 1 Corinthians and
Galatians. In Galatians, Paul says he was in direct intercourse with
Peter, and in 1 Corinthians he emphasizes the unity of his teaching
with that of Peter and the other apostles.

  [40] Heitmüller, "Zum Problem Paulus und Jesus," in _Zeitschrift
  für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft_, xiii, 1912, pp. 320-337,
  especially p. 331.

After leaving Jerusalem Paul went into the regions of Syria and
of Cilicia; the Book of Acts, more specifically, mentions Tarsus
(Cilicia) and Antioch (Syria). The period which Paul spent in Tarsus
or in its vicinity is for us altogether obscure. In all probability
he engaged in missionary work and included Gentiles in his mission.
Certainly at the conclusion of the Cilician period Barnabas thought
him suitable for the specifically Gentile work at Antioch, and it
is probable that he had already demonstrated his suitability. His
apostolic consciousness, also, as attested both by the Book of Acts
and by Galatians, suggests that the beginning of his life-work as
apostle to the Gentiles was not too long deferred.

At Antioch, the disciples were first called "Christians" (Acts xi.
26). The objections, especially linguistic, formerly urged against
this assertion of Acts have now for the most part been silenced.
The assertion is important as showing that the Church was becoming
so clearly separate from the synagogue that a separate name had
to be coined by the Gentile population. Tremendous importance is
attributed to the Christian community at Antioch by Bousset and
Heitmüller, who believe that the religion of that community had
diverged in fundamental respects from the religion of the primitive
Jerusalem Church, and that this extra-Palestinian Christianity, and
not the Christianity of Jerusalem, is the basis of the religion
of Paul. According to this hypothesis, the independence of Paul
which is attested in Galatians is apparently to be regarded as
independence merely over against the intimate friends of Jesus;
apparently Paul had no objection against taking over the teaching of
the Greek-speaking Christians of Antioch. This representation is out
of accord with what has just been established about the relations
between Paul and the Jerusalem Church. It must be examined more in
detail, however, in a subsequent chapter.

After at least a year--probably more--Barnabas and Saul, according
to Acts xi. 30; xii. 25, were sent up to Jerusalem to bear the
gifts of the Antioch Church, which had been collected in view of
the famine prophesied by Agabus. This "famine visit" is the second
visit of Paul to Jerusalem which is mentioned in Acts. The second
visit which is mentioned in Galatians is the one described in Gal.
ii. 1-10, at which Paul came into conference with the pillars of the
Jerusalem Church. May the two be identified? Is Gal. ii. 1-10 an
account of the visit which is mentioned in Acts xi. 30; xii. 25?[41]

  [41] For what follows, compare "Recent Criticism of the Book of
  Acts," in _Princeton Theological Review_, xvii, 1919, pp. 597-608.

Chronology opposes no absolutely insuperable objection to the
identification. The apparent objection is as follows. The famine
visit of Acts xi. 30; xii. 25 took place at about the same time
as the events narrated in Acts xii, since the narrative of those
events is interposed between the mention of the coming of Barnabas
and Paul to Jerusalem (Acts xi. 30) and that of their return to
Antioch (Acts xii. 25). But the events of Acts xii include the
death of Herod Agrippa I, which certainly occurred in 44 A.D. The
famine visit, therefore, apparently occurred at about 44 A.D. But
the visit of Gal. ii. 1-10 took place fourteen years (Gal. ii. 1)
after the first visit, which in turn took place three years (Gal. i.
18) after the conversion. Therefore the visit of Gal. ii. 1-10 took
place seventeen (3 + 14) years after the conversion. But if that
visit be identified with the famine visit and the famine visit took
place in 44 A.D., the conversion must have taken place seventeen
years before 44 A.D. or in 27 A.D., which of course is impossible
since the crucifixion of Jesus did not occur till several years
after that time. At first sight, therefore, it looks as though
the identification of Gal. ii. 1-10 with the famine visit were
impossible.

Closer examination, however, shows that the chronological data all
allow a certain amount of leeway. In the first place, it is by no
means clear that the famine visit took place at exactly the time
of the death of Herod Agrippa I in 44 A.D. The author of Acts has
been carrying on two threads of narrative, one dealing with Antioch
and the other dealing with Jerusalem. In Acts xi. 19-30 he has
carried the Antioch narrative on to a point beyond that reached in
the Jerusalem narrative. Now, when the two narratives are brought
together by the visit of Barnabas and Paul to Jerusalem, the author
pauses in order to bring the Jerusalem narrative up to date; he
tells what has been happening at Jerusalem during the period in
which the reader's attention has been diverted to Antioch. The
events of Acts xii may therefore have taken place some time before
the famine visit of Acts xi. 30; xii. 25; the famine visit may have
taken place some time after 44 A.D. Information in Josephus with
regard to the famine,[42] combined with the order of the narrative
in Acts, permits the placing of the famine visit as late as 46 A.D.
In the second place, it is by no means certain that the visit of
Gal. ii. 1-10 took place seventeen years after the conversion. The
ancients sometimes used an inclusive method of reckoning time, in
accordance with which "three years" might mean only one full year
with parts of two other years; January, 1923, would thus be "three
years" after December, 1921. According to this method of reckoning,
the "fourteen years" of Gal. ii. 1 would become only thirteen; and
the "three years" of Gal. i. 18 would become only two years; the
visit of Gal. ii. 1-10 would thus be only fifteen (13 + 2) instead
of seventeen (14 + 3) years after the conversion. If, then, the
visit of Gal. ii. 1-10 be identified with the famine visit, and the
famine visit took place in 46 A.D., the conversion took place in
31 A.D. (46 - 15), which is a possible date. Moreover, it is not
certain that the "fourteen years" of Gal. ii. 1 is to be reckoned
from the first visit; it may be reckoned from the conversion, so
that the "three years" of Gal. i. 18 is to be included in it and
not added to it. In that case, the conversion took place only
fourteen (or, by the inclusive method of reckoning, thirteen) years
before the visit of Gal. ii. 1-10; or, if the visit of Gal. ii.
1-10 be identified with the famine visit, fourteen (or thirteen)
years before 46 A.D., that is, in 32 A.D. (or 33 A.D.), which is a
perfectly possible date.

  [42] Josephus, _Antiq._ XX. v. 2. See Schürer, _Geschichte des
  jüdischen Volkes_, 3te u. 4te Aufl., i, 1901, p. 567 (English
  Translation, _A History of the Jewish People_, Division I, vol. ii,
  1890, pp. 169f.).

But of course chronology does not decide in favor of the
identification of Gal. ii. 1-10 with Acts xi. 30; xii. 25; at
best it only permits that identification. Chronologically it is
even slightly more convenient to identify Gal. ii. 1-10 with a
visit subsequent to the famine visit. The only subsequent visit
which comes seriously in question is the visit at the time of the
"Apostolic Council" of Acts xv. 1-29. The advantages of identifying
Gal. ii. 1-10 with Acts xi. 30; xii. 25, therefore, must be compared
with those of identifying it with Acts xv. 1-29.

If the former identification be adopted, then Paul in Galatians has
not mentioned the Apostolic Council of Acts xv. 1-29. Since the
Apostolic Council dealt with the same question as that which was
under discussion in Galatians, and since it constituted an important
step in Paul's relations with the original apostles, it is a little
difficult to see how Paul could have omitted it from the Epistle.
This objection has often weighed against the identification of Gal.
ii. 1-10 with the famine visit. But in recent years the objection
has been removed by the hypothesis which places the writing of
Galatians actually before the Apostolic Council; obviously Paul
could not be expected to mention the Council if the Council had not
yet taken place. This early dating of Galatians has been advocated
by a German Roman Catholic scholar, Weber,[43] and recently it has
won the support of men of widely divergent points of view, such as
Emmet,[44] Kirsopp Lake,[45] Ramsay,[46] and Plooij.[47] Of course
this hypothesis depends absolutely upon the correctness of the
"South Galatian" theory of the address of the Epistle, which finds
"the Churches of Galatia" of Gal. i. 2 in Pisidian Antioch, Iconium,
Lystra and Derbe; for the churches in "North Galatia," if there were
any such, were not founded till after the Apostolic Council (Acts
xvi. 6).[48]

  [43] _Die Abfassung des Galaterbriefs vor dem Apostelkonzil_, 1900.

  [44] "Galatians the Earliest of the Pauline Epistles," in
  _Expositor_, 7th Series, vol. ix, 1910, pp. 242-254 (reprinted in
  _The Eschatological Question in the Gospels_, 1911, pp. 191-209);
  _St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians_, 1912, pp. xiv-xxii.

  [45] _The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul_, 1911, pp. 265-304. In a
  later book, Lake has modified his views about the relation between
  Galatians and Acts. The historicity of Acts xv. 1-29 is now
  abandoned. See _Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity_,
  1920, pp. 63-66.

  [46] Ramsay, "Suggestions on the History and Letters of St. Paul. I.
  The Date of the Galatian Letter," in _Expositor_, VIII, v, 1913, pp.
  127-145.

  [47] Plooij, _De chronologie van het leven van Paulus_, 1918, pp.
  111-140.

  [48] Maurice Jones ("The Date of the Epistle to the Galatians,"
  in _Expositor_, VIII, vi, 1913, pp. 193-208) has adduced from the
  Book of Acts various arguments against the early date of Galatians,
  which, though worthy of attention, are not quite decisive.

One objection to the early dating of Galatians is derived from
the close relation between that epistle and the Epistle to the
Romans. If Galatians was written before the Apostolic Council it
is the earliest of the extant epistles of Paul and is separated by
a period of some six or eight years from the epistles of the third
missionary journey with which it has ordinarily been grouped. Thus
the order of the Epistles would be Galatians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians,
1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans. This order seems to tear asunder
the epistles which naturally belong together. The objection was
partially overcome by a bold hypothesis of Lake, who suggested
that the Epistle to the Romans was first composed at an early time
as an encyclical letter, and that later, being modified by the
addition of a Roman address and other suitable details, it was sent
to the Church at Rome.[49] On this hypothesis Galatians and the
substance of Romans would be kept together because both would be
placed early. The hypothesis can appeal to the interesting textual
phenomenon in Rom. i. 7, where the words "in Rome" are omitted by
a few witnesses to the text. But the evidence is insufficient. And
even if Lake's hypothesis were correct, it would not altogether
overcome the difficulty; for both Galatians and Romans would be
removed from what has usually been regarded as their natural
position among the epistles of the third missionary journey.
In reply, it could be said that reconstructions of an author's
development, unless supported by plain documentary evidence, are
seldom absolutely certain; the simplicity of 1 and 2 Thessalonians,
as over against the great soteriological epistles, Galatians, 1
and 2 Corinthians, Romans, is no doubt due to the immaturity of
the Thessalonian Church rather than to any immaturity in Paul's
thinking. There is therefore no absolutely decisive objection
against putting the Epistle to the Galatians, with its developed
soteriology, before the Thessalonian Epistles.

  [49] Lake, _The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul_, 1911, pp. 361-370.

On the whole, it may be said that the identification of Gal. ii.
1-10 with Acts xi. 30; xii. 25 is perhaps most plausible when it is
connected with the early dating of Galatians, before the Apostolic
Council. But that identification, whether with or without the early
dating of the Epistle, must now be considered on its merits. Is Gal.
ii. 1-10 to be identified with the famine visit of Acts xi. 30; xii.
25, or with the Apostolic Council of Acts xv?

The former identification possesses one obvious advantage--by it the
second visit in Galatians is the same as the second visit in Acts;
whereas if Gal. ii. 1-10 is identified with Acts xv. 1-29 Paul has
passed over the famine visit without mention. The identification
with the famine visit may therefore conveniently be considered first.

According to this identification, Paul had two conferences with the
Jerusalem leaders, one at the time of the famine visit and one some
years afterwards at the time of the Apostolic Council. Could the
second conference conceivably have followed thus upon the former? If
the conference between Paul and the Jerusalem leaders described in
Gal. ii. 1-10 took place at the time of the famine visit, then would
not the Apostolic Council seem to be a mere meaningless repetition
of the former conference? If the matter of Gentile freedom had
already been settled (Gal. ii. 1-10) at the famine visit, how could
it come up again _de novo_ at the Apostolic Council?

This objection is by no means insuperable. The meeting described
in Gal. ii. 1-10 may have been merely a private meeting between
Paul and the original apostles. Although the presence of Titus, the
uncircumcised Gentile, was no doubt a matter of public knowledge,
it need not necessarily have given rise to any public discussion,
since it was not unprecedented, Cornelius also having been received
into the Church without circumcision. But if the famine visit
brought merely a private conference between Paul and the original
apostles, Gentile freedom was still open to attack, especially if,
after the famine visit, there was (as is in any case probable) an
influx of strict legalists into the Christian community. There
was no public pronouncement of the original apostles to which
the advocates of freedom could appeal. There was therefore still
urgent need of a public council such as the one described in Acts
xv. 1-29, especially since that council dealt not only with the
general question of Gentile freedom but also with the problem of
mixed communities where Jews and Gentiles were living together. The
Apostolic Council, therefore, may well have taken place in the way
described in Acts xv. 1-29 even if the conference of Gal. ii. 1-10
had been held some years before.

No absolutely decisive objection, therefore, has yet been found
against the identification of Gal. ii. 1-10 with Acts xi. 30; xii.
25. But the _prima facie_ evidence has usually been regarded as
favoring the alternative identification, since Gal. ii. 1-10 bears
much more resemblance to Acts xv. 1-29 than it does to Acts xi.
30; xii. 25. Resemblance to Acts xi. 30; xii. 25 is not, indeed,
altogether lacking. In both Galatians ii. 1-10 and Acts xi. 30; xii.
25, Barnabas is represented as going up with Paul to Jerusalem; in
both passages there is reference to gifts for the Jerusalem Church;
and the revelation referred to in Gal. ii. 2 as the occasion of the
journey may be discovered in the revelation of the famine made to
Agabus (Acts xi. 28). But the relief of the Jerusalem Church, which
is put as the sole purpose of the journey in Acts xi. 30; xii. 25,
is quite subordinate in Gal. ii. 1-10; Barnabas is with Paul in Acts
xv. 1-29 just as much as he is in Acts xi. 30; xii. 25; and it may
be questioned whether in Gal. ii. 2 it is not more natural to think
of a revelation coming to Paul rather than one coming through the
mouth of Agabus. The strongest argument, however, for identifying
Gal. ii. 1-10 with Acts XV. 1-29 is that the main purpose of
Paul's visit seems to be the same according to both passages;
according to both the matter of circumcision of Gentiles was under
discussion, and according to both the result was a triumph for
the cause of freedom. This identification must now be considered.
Various objections have been raised against it. These objections
lead, according to the point of view of the objector, either to an
acceptance of the alternative identification (with Acts xi. 30; xii.
25) or else to a rejection of the historicity of the Book of Acts.

The first objection is derived from the fact that if Gal. ii.
1-10 is to be identified with Acts XV. 1-29, Paul has passed over
the famine visit without mention. Could he have done so honestly,
if that visit had really occurred? In the first two chapters of
Galatians Paul is establishing the independence of his apostolic
authority; he had not, he says, as the Judaizers maintained,
received his authority through mediation of the original apostles.
At first, he says, he came into no effective contact with the
apostles; it was three years after his conversion before he saw
any of them; then he saw only Peter (and James) and that only for
fifteen days. Then he went away into the regions of Syria and of
Cilicia without ever becoming known by face to the Churches of
Judæa; then after fourteen years again he went up to Jerusalem (Gal.
ii. 1). Is it not the very point of the passage that after his
departure to Syria and Cilicia it was fourteen long years before
he again went up to Jerusalem? Would not his entire argument be
invalidated if there were an unmentioned visit to Jerusalem between
the first visit (Gal. i. 18, 19) and the visit of Gal. ii. 1-10?
If such a visit had taken place, would he not have had to mention
it in order to place it in the proper light as he had done in the
case of the first visit? By omitting to mention the visit in a
context where he is carefully tracing the history of his relations
with the Jerusalem leaders, would he not be exposing himself to
the charge of dishonest suppression of facts? Such considerations
have led a great number of investigators to reject the historicity
of the famine visit; there never could have been, they insist, a
visit between the first visit and the visit of Gal. ii. 1-10; for
if there had been, Paul would have been obliged to mention it, not
only by his own honesty, but also because of the impossibility
of deception. This is one of the points where the narrative in
Acts has been most insistently criticized. Here and there, indeed,
there have been discordant notes in the chorus of criticism; the
insufficiency of the objection has been admitted now and then even
by those who are far removed from any concern for the defense of
the Book of Acts. Baur himself, despite all his Tübingen severity
of criticism, was clear-sighted enough not to lay stress upon this
particular objection;[50] and in recent years J. Weiss has been
equally discerning.[51] In Galatians Paul is not giving a complete
enumeration of his visits to Jerusalem, but merely singling out
those details which had formed the basis of the Judaizers' attack,
or afforded peculiar support to his own contentions. Apparently the
Judaizers had misrepresented the first visit; that is the time,
they had said, when Paul came under the authority of the original
apostles. In answer to this attack Paul is obliged to deal carefully
with that first visit; it came three years after the conversion, he
says, and it lasted only fifteen days--surely not long enough to
make Paul a disciple of Peter. Then Paul went away into the regions
of Syria and Cilicia. Probably, for the first readers, who were
familiar with the outlines of Paul's life, this departure for Syria
and Cilicia clearly meant the entrance by Paul into his distinctive
Gentile work. He was well launched upon his Gentile work, fully
engaged in the proclamation of his gospel, before he had ever had
such contact with the original apostles as could possibly have given
him that gospel. At this point, as J. Weiss[52] well observes, there
is a transition in the argument. The argument based on lack of
contact with the original apostles has been finished, and now gives
place to an entirely different argument. In the first chapter of
Galatians Paul has been showing that at first he had no such contact
with the original apostles as could have made him a disciple of
theirs; now, in the second chapter he proceeds to show that when he
did come into conference with them, they themselves recognized that
he was no disciple of theirs but an independent apostle. Apparently
this conference, like the first visit, had been misrepresented
by the Judaizers, and hence needed to be singled out for special
treatment. It must be admitted that Paul is interested in the late
date at which it occurred--fourteen years after the first visit or
fourteen years after the conversion. Probably, therefore, it was the
first real conference which Paul held with the original apostles on
the subject of his Gentile work. If the famine visit had involved
such a conference, probably Paul would have mentioned that visit.
But if (as is not improbable on independent grounds) the apostles
were away from Jerusalem at the time of the famine visit, and if
that visit occurred long after Paul had been well launched upon his
distinctive work, and if it had given the Judaizers so little basis
for their contentions that they had not thought it worth while to
draw it into the discussion, then Paul was not obliged to mention
it. Paul is not constructing an argument which would hold against
all possible attacks, but rather is meeting the attacks which had
actually been launched. In the second chapter, having finished
proving that in the decisive early period before he was well engaged
in his distinctive work there was not even any extended contact with
the original apostles at all, he proceeds to the telling argument
that the very men who were appealed to by the Judaizers themselves
had admitted that he was entirely independent of them and that they
had nothing to add to him. If the famine visit had occurred in the
early period, or if, whenever it occurred, it had involved the
important event of a conference with the apostles about the Pauline
gospel, in either case Paul would probably have been obliged to
mention it. But, as it is, the visit, according to Acts xi. 30; xii.
25, did not occur until Paul had already been engaged in the Gentile
work, and there is no reason to suppose that it involved any contact
with the original apostles. The omission of the famine visit from
Galatians, therefore, as a visit distinct from Gal. ii. 1-10, does
not absolutely require either the identification of Gal. ii. 1-10
with that famine visit or the denial of the historicity of Acts.

  [50] Baur, _Paulus_, 2te Aufl., 1866, pp. 130-132 (English
  Translation, _Paul_ i, 1873, pp. 118-120). Baur does maintain that
  Gal. ii. 1 renders improbable a second visit of Paul to Jerusalem
  before the conference with the apostles which is narrated in Gal.
  ii. 1, but points out that in itself the verse is capable of a
  different interpretation.

  [51] J. Weiss, _Urchristentum_, 1914, p. 147, Anm. 2.

  [52] _Loc. cit._

Certain other difficulties emerge, however, when Gal. ii. 1-10 is
compared with Acts xv. 1-29 in detail.

In the first place, the leaders of the Jerusalem Church, it is said,
are represented in Acts xv. 1-29 as maintaining Pauline principles,
whereas in Gal. ii. 1-10 it appears that there was really a
fundamental difference between them and Paul. This difficulty
constitutes an objection not against the identification of Gal. ii.
1-10 with Acts XV. 1-29 but against the historicity of Acts, for if
at any time there was a really fundamental difference of principle
between Paul and the original apostles then the whole representation
in Acts is radically incorrect. But the objection disappears
altogether when Galatians is correctly interpreted. The Epistle to
the Galatians does not represent the conference between Paul and the
pillars of the Jerusalem Church as resulting in a cold agreement to
disagree; on the contrary it represents those leaders as giving to
Paul and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship. And Gal. ii. 11-21,
rightly interpreted, attests positively a real unity of principle as
existing between Paul and Peter.

The one objection that remains against the identification of Gal.
ii. 1-10 with Acts XV. 1-29 concerns the "Apostolic Decree" of Acts
XV. 28, 29 (compare Acts XV. 19, 20; xxi. 25). According to the
Epistle to the Galatians the apostles at the time of the conference
"added nothing" to Paul (Gal. ii. 6); according to the Book of Acts,
it is argued, they added something very important indeed--namely,
the requirements of the Apostolic Decree that the Gentile Christians
should "refrain from things offered to idols and from blood and from
things strangled and from fornication." Since these requirements are
partly at least ceremonial, they seem to constitute an exception to
the general principle of Gentile freedom, and therefore an addition
to Paul's gospel. If when Paul presented to the original apostles
the gospel which he was preaching among the Gentiles, involving the
free offer of salvation apart from the Law, the apostles emended
that gospel by requiring at least certain parts of the ceremonial
Law, were they not "adding" something to Paul?

But are the provisions of the decree really ceremonial? Apparently
they are in part ceremonial if the so-called "Neutral text" attested
by the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus be correct.
According to this text, which here lies at the basis of all forms of
our English Bible, "blood" can hardly refer to anything except meat
that has the blood left in it or else blood that might be prepared
separately for food; for "things strangled" certainly refers to a
closely related provision of the ceremonial Law about food. But at
this point an interesting textual question arises. The so-called
"Western text" of the Book of Acts, attested by the Codex Bezae and
the usual companion witnesses, omits the word translated "things
strangled" or "what is strangled" in Acts XV. 20, 29; xxi. 25, and
in the first two of these three passages adds the negative form of
the Golden Rule. Thus the Western text reads in Acts XV. 28, 29 as
follows: "For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to
lay no further burden upon you except these necessary things--that
you refrain from things offered to idols and from blood and from
fornication, and that you do not to another whatsoever things you
do not wish to be done to you." It is generally agreed that the
Golden Rule has here been added by a copyist; but the omission of
"things strangled" is thought by many modern scholars to preserve
the reading of the autograph. If this short text without "things
strangled" be correct, then the provisions of the Decree need not
be regarded as ceremonial at all, but may be taken as simply moral.
"Things offered to idols" may refer to idolatry in general; "blood"
may refer to murder; and "fornication" may be meant in the most
general sense. But if the provisions of the Decree were simply
moral, then plainly they did not constitute any "addition" to the
message of freedom which Paul proclaimed among the Gentiles. Paul
himself had of course enjoined upon his converts the necessity
of leading a true moral life. If when the original apostles were
urged by the Judaizers to impose upon the Gentile converts the
requirements of the ceremonial Law, they responded, "No; the only
requirements to be imposed upon the Gentiles are that they refrain
from deadly sins like idolatry, murder and fornication," that
decision constituted merely a most emphatic confirmation of Paul's
gospel of freedom.

The textual question cannot here be discussed in detail. In favor
of the Western text, with its omission of "things strangled," may
be urged not only the general principle of textual criticism that
the shorter reading is to be preferred to the longer, but also the
special consideration that in this particular passage the shorter
reading seems to account for the origin of the two additions; (1)
the word translated "things strangled," and (2) the Golden Rule. The
short text, supposing it to be the original, was ambiguous; it might
be taken either as ceremonial ("blood" meaning the eating of blood)
or as moral ("blood" meaning the shedding of blood or murder).
Those copyists who took it as ceremonial, it is maintained, fixed
the meaning by adding "things strangled" (because animals that were
strangled had the blood still in them, so that the eating of them
constituted a violation of the ceremonial Law); whereas those who
took the Decree as moral fixed the meaning by adding the Golden Rule
as the summation of the moral law.[53]

  [53] See Lake, _op. cit._, pp. 51-53.

On the other side may be urged the connection which seems to exist
between the omission of "things strangled" and the manifest gloss
constituted by the Golden Rule. Documentary attestation of a short
text, without the Golden Rule and without "things strangled," is
e

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