Paul His Story by Jerome Murphy O'Connor

Notes on St. Paul’s life, excerpts from the book

Galilee/Tarsus

His parents lived in Gischala (modern Jish). Varus, the governor of Syria, twice brought his legions into Palestine. On his second expedition he destroyed Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee. Paul’s parents were sold as the slaves in Tarsus then probably got free (how we do not know) and earned Roman citizenship.

Jerusalem

Only in Jerusalem could Paul have encountered Pharisees so he headed for the Holy City when he was around 20 and spent there 15 years.

Was he married? No data. If yes J.M. O’Connor personally suspects that his wife and children perished in an accident so traumatic that he sealed off their memory for ever. It was too painful to be revisited, and too sacred to be disclosed to others. In any case, Paul never remarried (1 Cor. 7: 8).

Did he meet Jesus in Jerusalem? Probably no.

The chaos was such on the Day of Preparation that no one who was not obliged in one way or another went out into the streets. The little procession of Roman soldiers escorting a criminal on his way to execution was not something to be followed in anticipation of excitement.

Pharisees on Law and Messiah in Jerusalem in Paul’s time: This phase of salvation history was characterized by meticulous obedience to the commandments of the Law. It had no place for the Messiah. He was a figure of the future.

Encounter with the Risen Lord

Once Paul had accepted Jesus as Lord, he had to acknowledge that he was ‘Christ’ (the Annointed One). Jesus was not just any ‘Lord’ but the Jewish Messiah for whom Paul had hoped. If Jesus was the Messiah, then the time of the Law was over.

Arabia

Paul’s first decision after his conversion was to go into ‘Arabia’ (Gal. 1: 17). It is also probable that Paul did not stay very long. Once he had opened his mouth, he would have been suspect. I would give him a week at the most. His silence as to the duration of his visit confirms that it was very short, since he lists his two weeks in Jerusalem and three years in Damascus (Gal. 1: 18). The sole importance of his imprudent venture is that it indicates that from the beginning he was convinced that his mission was to Gentiles.

Three years in Damascus and learning a trade

Tent-maker (Acts 18: 3) - The skill involved was minimal, so was quickly learned. New tents were always needed to replace old ones, and ongoing maintenance was imperative.

Two weeks in Jerusalem

Paul hoped that his readers would understand it in the sense of ‘to get acquainted with Cephas’, but he really intended the meaning as ‘to get information from Cephas’ (Gal. 1: 18). What did he need to talk to him about? It is absurd to imagine that Paul spent his two weeks with Peter discussing the weather, the health of the latter’s mother-in-law, or his nostalgia for fishing on the Sea of Galilee. Only one basic question burned in Paul’s mind: what was Jesus really like?

Antioch

Paul’s first missionary journey under the auspices of Antioch is narrated only by Luke (Acts 13–14), who presents Paul and Barnabas going first to Cyprus, and thence into the southern part of central Asia Minor.

The most important road in Asia Minor was the trade route between

the Aegean coast and the Euphrates River. Roman geographer Strabo a hundred years later, he called the route the ‘Common Highway’ (Geography 14. 2. 29) because everyone used it. Luke narrates Paul’s second missionary expedition in Acts 16–18.

An Unexpected Visit to the Celts

The Galatians had not been Hellenized, and the Romans had imposed their administrative system directly on Celtic tribal structures. Celtic was still being spoken in that region in the fifth century AD.

Partnership at Philippi

No synagogue in this city. Euodia and Syntyche, as having ‘striven side by side with me in the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of myco-workers, whose names are in the book of life’ (Phil. 4: 3).

Not surprisingly, therefore, Euodia and Syntyche became heads of house-churches. This is why Paul, contrary to his normal practice, draws public attention to the need for reconciliation between these two ladies (Phil. 4: 2).

Labour in Thessalonica

Things were very different in Thessalonica. Paul twice reminds his converts there how long and hard he had to work: ‘we worked night and day that we might not burden any of you’ (1 Thess. 2: 9); ‘we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying, but with labour and toil we worked night and day that we might not burden any of you’ (2 Thess. 3: 8). The normal artisan laboured only from sunrise to sunset.

Corinth the Crossroads

It must have been an extraordinary moment when Prisca and Aquilla first heard him preaching, and realized that it was the same message to which they had responded in Rome.

Archeology: The inscription of the name Erastus that he erected to himself near the theatre does not include his father’s name. This means that Erastus had once been a slave. The paradox of a crucified saviour resonated in the lives of prominent Corinthians and gave them meaning.

The central message of the gospel, that the saviour of the world died under torture, spoke to the contradictions of the lives of such people. Though classed as weak, they knew their own power, and thus could understand without difficulty the idea, revealed in the life of Christ, as in that of Paul, that ‘power is made perfect in weakness’ (2 Cor. 12: 9).

A Law-free Mission - Jerusalem and Antioch

Members of the mother church in Jerusalem had arrived in Antioch, and were insisting that all Gentile converts had to become Jews before they could be accepted as Christians (Acts 15: 1). Pagans must be circumcised and observe the dietary laws in order to become followers of Jesus.

Paul was furious (Gal. 2: 4–5). These trouble-makers were ‘false brethren’ who were ‘secretly smuggled in’ in order to ‘spy’ and then

to ‘enslave’ the Antiocheans.

If Paul had expected Cephas to be in the same unrivalled position of authority as on his first visit, he was disappointed. To his consternation, he and Barnabas were confronted by a committee composed of James the brother of Jesus, Cephas and John (Gal. 2: 9).

In contrast to the cosmopolitan Paul, who had travelled widely, James was a parochial Galilean who had moved no further than Jerusalem. He had always lived as part of a Jewish majority, and thus, without questioning, he continued unchanged his Jewish lifestyle, even after accepting Jesus as the Messiah. Baptism and Eucharist, as ritual and meal, were familiar additions, not radical substitutions.

But James finally agreed with Paul, why?

To circumcise Gentile converts was to accept them publicly as Jews, even though they had no attachment to Judaism; they were followers of Christ, not of Moses. So what loyalty to the Jewish people could be expected of such individuals when hostile pressures began to take their toll? In a crisis, could any nationalistic Jew really trust them? Would such nominal Jews be prepared to sacrifice their lives for the Temple and the Law? Questions such as these must have occurred to the more farsighted members of the Jerusalem church. What seemed to be right in the present could be seen to be a dangerous threat in the not-too distant future. James, I suggest, was one of these. As the leader of the Jerusalem church, he was swayed, not by theological reasons, but by practical considerations. Those who demanded the circumcision of Gentile converts might be correct in theory, but it was not the moment to insist on principle.

Farewell to Antioch

No reason is given for the arrival of Cephas in Antioch (Gal. 2: 11). I suspect that it was sheer curiosity. At the meeting in Jerusalem he had been intrigued by Paul’s vivid description of the community at Antioch, and perhaps at Corinth, where Jewish and Gentile converts lived together in harmony. Cephas had never lived in a mixed community.

Eventually Cephas cracked, and the contagion of his example swept all away. Paul records with burning indignation, ‘Before certain

people came from James, he ate with Gentiles, but when they  came he gradually withdrew and separated himself, fearing those from the circumcision. And with him the rest of the Jews acted insincerely, so that even Barnabas was carried away by their play-acting’ (Gal. 2: 12–13).

This is the negative side of Paul’s single-minded commitment to

Christ. To him the truth was so clear and unambiguous that he could not imagine Cephas or Barnabas agonizing over their decisions. Paul failed to appreciate that Cephas was in a situation where he had to take sides. Neutrality was not an option. Intellectually, he may have agreed with Paul, but his heart made him line up with those who needed him most. The strength of the Gentile church was evident in Antioch, and it had dynamic leaders. The Jewish church, on the contrary, was struggling, and would be shattered by the defection of one of its most revered figures.

Paul no longer wished to be part of the church of Antioch, and he could not in conscience continue to represent it. This was the most decisive moment in his life, after his conversion. It was the catalyst that forced him to rethink his position on two fundamental issues: his role as a missionary and the place of the Law in Christian communities. He came to decisions that determined the rest of his missionary career.

A Return Visit to Pessinus (Galatia) and then Ephesus

Paul’s first winter in Ephesus (AD 52–3) was marked by an event that brought him back to the very beginnings of the Jesus movement. Somehow he came into contact with a small group that considered themselves followers of Jesus of Nazareth, but who had never heard of the Passion, Resurrection or descent of the Holy Spirit. They knew only the baptism of John (Acts 19: 1–7). These were Ephesian Jews who, while on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, had received a baptism of repentance for their sins at the hands of Jesus.5 They knew him only as the senior assistant of John the Baptist. When John and Jesus moved their prophetic mission to reform Judaism to the more densely populated west bank of the Jordan, the former as the leader took the more difficult task of preaching to the Samaritans, while Jesus went to the Judaeans (John 3: 22–4). Both believed that the time was short, and that maximum exposure was imperative. Thus John baptized at the springs on the eastern slope of Mount Gerizim (as near as he could get to the ruined Samaritan Temple on the summit), and Jesus went to the heart of Jewish life, the Temple in Jerusalem. There, to grab attention, he overturned the tables of the money-changers (John 2: 13–16). It was

during this ministry that Jesus encountered the visiting Ephesian Jews and won their repentance.

Antioch decided to send a reforming delegation to follow Paul’s route through Galatia into Macedonia and down to Achaia. No matter how subtle the delegation was, it would not have taken the Galatians very long to recognize that a very different vision of Christianity was being proposed to them. They took refuge in passive resistance, and sought to win time by insisting that Paul be consulted. It is easy to imagine the shock experienced by Paul by the news that people from Antioch were bent on taking over his foundation in Galatia, and that some of his converts there were proving receptive to a Law-observant gospel. The sense of bewilderment (Gal. 5: 7), even of despair (Gal. 4: 11), comes through very clearly in his response, but the dominant emotion is restrained anger.

The delegation had made a bad tactical mistake by insisting on Paul’s dependence on Jerusalem, which, they claimed, was the source of the authentic gospel. But Paul responded that the gospel preached by me is not worked out by man; for I did not receive it from anyone nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ’ (Gal. 1: 11). Here it would be easy to charge Paul with being somewhat less than honest, because he had learnt much from the Christian communities of Damascus, Jerusalem and Antioch in which he had lived. He was thinking, however, of the core of his Law-free gospel, which, as we have seen, flowed directly from the rearrangement of his ideas caused by his encounter with the Risen Lord. What he absorbed from believers in Damascus, Jerusalem and Antioch was so thoroughly sifted through his mental filters that it became merely the confirmation and elaboration of his intensely personal fundamental insight.

Here is the place for the letter to the Colossians. The church there was founded by a native son, Epaphras (Col. 4:12). His first convert was Philemon, who was followed into the faith by his wife, Apphia, and by Archippus, whose relationship to the first two is unknown (Philem. 1). They actively participated with Epaphras in the evangelization of Colossae. Philemon was just the sort of person that Paul himself would have targeted in a new city. He had at least one slave, Onesimus, and a dwelling large enough to contain a guest-room (Philem. 22). His home became a house-church (Philem. 2), and he probably had space to receive the whole church when the occasion demanded. So the letter to the Colossians is related to two other letters (Ephesians, Philemon)

Correcting Colossae

Christians at Colossae were exhibiting an unhealthy curiosity in a Jewish mystical-ascetic movement, which happened to be in vogue in the Lycus valley, because it seemed to offer something at once more elevated and concrete than the unadorned teaching of Epaphras. Jesus was given cosmic significance at the price of his terrestrial reality. He was elevated to the point where he could no longer be imitated. Believers, in consequence, were no longer challenged by exposure to the agonizing suffering of a crucified Saviour. Instead, they were invited to relax into serene contemplation of the worshipping angels in heaven. Those believers at Colossae who were influenced by the mysticalascetic Jewish approach took from this Christology only those aspects that were compatible with their cosmic speculation. Didactic hymns were part of the liturgy at Colossae (Col. 3: 16), so one of them in an inspired moment crystallized what they thought of Christ into a two-strophe hymn (Col. 1: 15–20), which Epaphras and the delegation brought to Paul in Ephesus:

He who is the image of the invisible God

First-born of all creation

For in him were created all things

All things through him and to him were created.

Paul’s response:  Paul’s insistence that Christ is present in him, and in all members of the church, draws the cosmic dimension of the Christological reflection of the Colossians down into ecclesiology.

The Report of Chloe’s Employees   (from Corinth)

The report brought back by Chloe’s people stunned Paul (1 Cor.

1: 11–12). Paul treats first the divisions in the community (chs 1–5) and concludes with a defence of the Resurrection (ch. 15). A divided community is no different from society, and without the Resurrection, Christ is meaningless. If we look closely at 1 Corinthians 1–4, where Paul is most explicitly concerned with divisions in the community, a group emerges whose members believed that their possession of ‘wisdom’ made them ‘perfect’ (2: 6). As possessors of ‘the Spirit which is from God’ (2: 12), they were ‘spirit people’ (2: 15). They thought of themselves as ‘filled (with divine blessings)’, ‘wealthy’, ‘kings’ (4: 8), ‘wise’, ‘strong’, ‘honoured’ (4: 10). They looked down on others in the community who had not attained their exalted spiritual status as ‘children’ capable of imbibing only ‘milk’ (3: 1), and as ‘fools’ who were ‘weak’ and ‘dishonoured’ (4: 10). For convenience I call them the Spirit People.

Paul chose to play on the dark side of the majority by turning the Spirit People into figures of fun. Cruel laughter was the weapon he selected for his campaign. For the Spirit People it went much deeper. Profoundly wounded by the humiliation of public ridicule, they were completely alienated, and became Paul’s implacable enemies. Since they could not attack him directly, they channelled their pain and anger into frustrating his ambitions for the community. It was the Spirit People who offered hospitality when the Judaizers from Antioch-on-the-Orontes, who had troubled the churches of Galatia, arrived in Corinth in the middle of the summer of AD 54, thereby showing that some Corinthians at least were prepared to listen to an alternative vision of Christianity.

A Letter Written in Tears

‘I wrote you out of much distress and anguish of heart and with many tears’ (2 Cor. 2: 4). Unfortunately this letter has not survived, but Paul gives us enough hints to work out his approach. His strategy was to win their sympathy by revealing their treachery through the description of his hurt. The letter was designed to tug at the heart-strings, while at the same time administering a severe shock. The missive had to be strong enough to shake the Corinthians, but not so brutal as to alienate them. Effective reproof had to be blended with the assurance of his affection. Thedelicacy of the decisions made the writing an agonizing business. Even after it had been despatched, Paul fretted about the impact of the letter. It might do more harm than good. It might have stood a better chance of achieving his goal, had he said this rather than that.The uncertainty weighed upon him terribly.

2Cor (1-9) A Carefully Drafted Letter

Paul’s principal objective in writing 2 Corinthians 1–9 was to drive a wedge between the Spirit People and the Judaizing delegation from Antioch. Almost equal in importance was the need to convince the Spirit People that suffering and weakness, not dignified bearing and eloquence, were the distinctive signs of a genuinely Christian leader.  The way Christ died was, for Paul, the demonstration of Christ’slove for humanity. Thus, even though the preaching tradition of the early church spoke only of the death of Jesus, Paul consistently insisted that Jesus died in a particularly horrible way, although he recognized that a crucified Christ was ‘a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles’ (1 Cor. 1: 23). The Spirit People preferred to avert their thoughts from this dimension; it cannot be integrated into any philosophical approach to religion. No doubt the Judaizers co-operated. They could assert, with perfect justification, that Paul’s stress on the manner of Christ’s death was exceptional. Moreover, their adaptation to what the Spirit People expected of religious leaders meant a life-style more compatible with that of the Lord of Glory than with that of a tortured criminal.

Not good received (2Cor10,10) For someone will say, “His letters are severe and forceful, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible. so….

Furious response

In a mood of desperate anxiety for the future of the Corinthian community, he dashed off his final letter to his most troublesome community (2 Cor. 10–13). The reasonable tone and subtle arguments of 2 Cor. 1–9 are replaced by a wild outburst, in which Paul gives free rein to his capacity for sarcasm and irony.

A Letter to Rome

The theme of the letter is set forth with admirable brevity: ‘the gospel

is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the

Jew first and also to the Greek’ (Rom. 1: 16). In terms of the political purpose of the letter, chapters 1–14 could be considered a prolonged captio benevolentiae, a ploy designed to win the favour of the readers. Only at the very end of the letter does Paul finally return to the question of his forthcoming visit, which he had introduced at the beginning (1: 10–15). He explains why he has not visited them earlier. He was on God’s business elsewhere, ‘from Jerusalem and as far round as Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ’ (15: 19). The all-important point that motivated the letter is finally stated: ‘Now with no further scope for me in these regions, I desire, as I have for many years, to come to you when I go to Spain. For I do hope to see you on my journey, and to be sent on by you once I have enjoyed your company for a little while’ (15: 23–4). Clearly Paul feels that he has done everything he can in the eastern Mediterranean. He does not ask straight out to be commissioned as an apostle by Rome. That would be premature, but the request is delicately hinted at in his use of the verb ‘to send on’. The ground is being carefully prepared for his visit.

Journey to Jerusalem and imprisonment

A Mission to Spain

The Roman church did not give Paul the welcome that he had worked to ensure. This was not due to any particular ill will. Simply too much time had elapsed. He still wanted Rome to adopt him as its missionary to Spain. The Roman believers did not agree, and could produce a series of perfectly good reasons to justify their position. First, Spain belonged to their sphere of influence. Thus, it was their responsibility to preach the word of God there, and they would choose whom they willed to represent them. It was not for an upstart from the provinces to thrust himself upon them. Second, they were the only ones equipped to communicate with the Latin-speaking colonies in Spain. Paul, on the contrary, would have been severely linguistically challenged. Third, they were the best judges of the most opportune moment to launch a missionary expedition. Finally, Paul’s inevitable failure would make it difficult for them to mount their own campaign. Paul did in fact go to Spain. Under the circumstances it would have been totally out of character for him to have done anything else. The sea journey was an easy one. He could have reached the coast of Catalonia in four days, or Gades (modern Cadiz) in seven days on a ship sailing out of Ostia, the port of Rome. Once he landed, he was in trouble and, as the Romans had foretold, he achieved nothing. It was as ignominious a flop as his abortive attempt to convert the Nabataeans immediately after his conversion. While inspired by great enthusiasm, both ventures were ill-conceived and ill-prepared. It cannot have taken Paul more than a summer to admit that, since Greek was hardly spoken on the Iberian Peninsula, he was not going to get anywhere in the foreseeable future in Spain.