The Life and Prayers of Saint Paul the Apostle (3 page)

These earliest attempts of Paul to preach his understanding of the Gospel appears to have incited hatred among Jews and Pagans alike, so much so that they plotted to kill him, according to Acts 9. Paul's own version of the story, which he presents in 2 Corinthians 11, tells us that it was on behalf of King Aretas that he had to flee.

King Aretas was the Nabatean king who, only three years after Paul's Damascus experience, seized Damascus from Herod Antipas, the Roman client king of Galilee and Perea. Anyone siding with Herod Antipas might very well have been executed, and it is possible that this played into why Paul could not stay in Damascus. The end result was the same. Paul's supporters went with him to the city gates in the dead of night and lowered him down outside of the city in a basket, or took him down to the harbor and sent him off, depending on the version.

It was then that Paul decided to go to Jerusalem in order to meet the original apostles, and to learn more about the earthly life of his Savior.

It may strike us as curious that Paul waited several years to visit Jerusalem. If he had indeed been called by Jesus to become an Apostle in every right, why would he put off seeing for himself the leaders of the community, who knew Jesus in his life, and who like Paul had seen him after the resurrection?

Why would he begin spreading his Gospel, before speaking to the primary authorities? Paul was, after all, not adverse to the long travel to Jerusalem or to present before religious authority, he had done both several times.

The answer might lie, at least in part, in Paul's personal history with the Jesus movement. The letters of Paul and Acts would indicate that Paul was well known in the still fairly small Jesus community for his persecution among the early followers of Jesus.

Another reason for Paul's delay may be his awareness of the controversial nature of his claims to an apostolic calling. Although Paul recognized the special rank of the Twelve within the early Christian community, he considered himself an Apostle in the same strict sense. He had been chosen by God's grace to be a messenger of the Gospel, and Jesus had appeared to him to pick him for this task. That the original Apostles had been chosen by Jesus during his life and mission mattered little to Paul.

These claims were viewed as terribly disrespectful by many in Paul's time, and dishonest by many others. Throughout his life, Paul would come to deal with the accusations that he was an Apostle only by the grace of Satan. He must have had some inkling as to how his claims would be received in Jerusalem.

In the end, however, we cannot know the thoughts that went through Paul's head in those early days of proselytizing. But, three years after being taken hold of by Christ he arrived in Jerusalem.

Once Paul arrived in Jerusalem, he tried to join the community of disciples there, but they would not meet with him. His reputation as a persecutor of Christians preceded him and they did not feel that he could be trusted. It was not until a Levite from Cyprus, known most often by the name of Barnabas, took him under his wing, and introduced him to the Apostles that Paul gained some initial acceptance in the community in Jerusalem.

Barnabas spoke well of Paul, and of “how in Damascus he had spoken out boldly in the name of Jesus.” In Jerusalem, Paul continued to speak out boldly in the name of Jesus, which may be why he was finally allowed to meet some of the original Apostles.

It is not certain that Paul met with
all
of the Apostles while he visited Jerusalem, but it is clear that he met with Peter, and stayed for fifteen days with him at his home. He also met with James.

So, was Paul's visit to Jerusalem a fruitful one, and did the Twelve accept his apostolic claim? Scholars are very divided on the question. One school of thought, to which the Pope belongs, feel that there was much accord between Paul and the Twelve, even though they would later sometimes disagree on the details of their Gospel.

Another school of thought feels that there was intense tension between Paul and the Twelve. They point, amongst other things, to the shortness of Paul's visit, and the animosity with which they sometimes opposed each other. Although Paul and Peter would often clash, they say, it was Paul's animosity with James that was the greatest.

Paul did not stay long in Jerusalem. When he had met with Peter and James, he seems to have returned to Tarsus, for what may be the first extended time since he left at thirteen to study in Jerusalem. His stay there was not long, however, because Barnabas, the Levite who had vouched for Paul in Jerusalem, was heading to Antioch on the Orontes to preach the Gospel there. On his way there, he stopped in Tarsus and invited Paul to join him. And so Paul came to Antioch, an increasingly important center for Jesus followers with a sizable community. It was there at Antioch that the followers of this fledging young religion were first called Christians.

It is difficult to say whether Paul indeed learned much about Jesus and the message of the Messiah from the Twelve and the community in Jerusalem. His knowledge of Jesus and of Christian life may just as well have come from his friends at Damascus and at Antioch. What is clear is that, even in these early years before the writings of the Evangelists, Paul was aware of many stories circulating about the life of Jesus and his words.

Paul invokes several times in his writings the words of Jesus. Sometimes he quotes the teachings of Christ directly, at other times he uses the words of Christ in very subtle ways. For example, he portrays the ideal Christian relationship to God using the word “Abba,” a somewhat childish Aramaic word that means “Daddy,” that Jesus reportedly cried out to God on the eve of his crucifixion. Paul's audience did not generally speak Aramaic, so his use of the word can only have been meant to evoke Christ's relationship to God. Outside of Paul's writings, this word appears only in the Gospel of Mark, which did not yet exist.

Paul's Missionary Work

The community of Christians that Paul and Barnabas found at Antioch was probably a typical one. These communities consisted of Jews, who lived according to the covenant and the law of Moses, who went to synagogue in order to worship, to study the Torah, and to communicate with other Jews, and to spread the word about Jesus, the Messiah.

There may have been Gentiles there, people who were not ethnic Israelites, who feared the Lord and wished to worship Him. Some of them might have converted fully to Judaism, been circumcised and followed the laws governing matters such as marriage, food, and ritual purity. Many of them were no doubt uncircumcised polytheists, who worshiped other deities but were increasingly becoming involved with the God of the Hebrews.

When they partook in purely Christian meetings, they would leave the synagogue and gather instead in the home of one of the congregationalists, where they could pray together, learn together, and share in the earliest truly Christian ritual: the Holy Communion, which in those days was celebrated through the sharing of a ritual meal.

When Paul and Barnabas had been proselytizing in Antioch for only a year, a great famine struck in Judea. The Christian community at Antioch decided to send financial relief, and so they did in the care of Barnabas and Paul.

After finishing their relief mission, Acts 12 tells us, Paul and Barnabas carried on to Jerusalem, taking with them Mark the Evangelist, a cousin of Barnabas. Unfortunately, Acts does not tell us of the nature of their visit to Jerusalem, and the opening of the next chapter places Paul and Barnabas back in Antioch. There, during worship, of which kind it is uncertain, although fasting was certainly involved, the Holy Spirit came to the prophets and teachers at Antioch and told them: “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”

So began Paul's life as a traveling missionary, at the age of 40-45. It is clear from all the writings about Paul that from around 47-48 AD, until his death, Paul spent his time supporting and developing the budding Christian communities around the eastern Mediterranean. In some communities he stayed a few weeks, in others he stayed for years.

Painting a picture of Paul's travels, however, and especially a chronology, comes with great difficulties. The traditional view, derived from Acts, is that Paul went on three grand and carefully planned missionary tours, which can be found in Acts 13-14, 15-18, and 18-21.

The image that comes out of Paul's letters, many of which were composed during his travels, is rather different. Not only is it impossible to detect these three grand tours, but the Paul of his letters do not appear to have taken the same routes as the Paul of Acts.
Whatever the source, it seems Paul's travels were clearly not carefully planned.

The Paul of the epistles makes and breaks promises, he changes his mind, he stays longer, and he cuts his visits short. He even loses his co-travelers, because he changes his mind and forgets where he sent them.

What is clear, from both Acts and from Paul's own writings, is that in the early years of his missionary work Paul always traveled with Barnabas.

Whether or not it was the case in those earliest days, or if it was a pattern that developed later, Paul had many disciples who worked with him and traveled with him. We know them by the names of Titus, Timothy, Silvanus, Sosthenes, Phoebe, Junia, Apollos, Priscia, and Aquila.

Often, he would send one or a few of them ahead to whatever city, for Paul traveled exclusively to Roman cities, he was going next, with a letter introducing Paul and his mission. These disciples would spend their time, awaiting Paul's arrival, getting to know the local Christians who could be expected to give Paul and his companions somewhere to stay, and finding Paul work in one of the city's workshops.

These were not quite factories, but rather small places of production where raw materials or partially finished products were worked by several skilled artisans into a final product. Many workshops worked on commissions, so there would be a mix of people coming through, from slaves to wealthy customers.

When Paul finally arrived, this meant that he had somewhere to go, and some way to support himself, while preaching in the evenings, and even in the days to his coworkers and the customers visiting the workshop.

After having planted a small cell of a Christian community in a city, Paul often moved on, and kept in touch with his new church through letters, delivered by one of his trusted disciples.

The oldest such letter that still exists is the
First Epistle to the Thessalonians
, which Paul wrote less than a year after establishing the community there. The traditional view of three apostolic tours would place this visit during Paul's second journey.

According to Acts 17, Paul converted many Gentiles in Thessaloniki, including some very prominent Greek women, but his preaching at the synagogue left him very unpopular with the Jews. The angry Jewish mob forced Paul to flee for his life. His failure to convert the Jews of Thessaloniki becomes evident as we read Paul's letter. He greets the Thessalonians as former idol worshipers, which identifies them as a group consisting entirely of Gentiles.

We also learn from Acts that by the time that this journey to Thessaloniki was undertaken, Paul and Barnabas had gone their separate ways. It started with an argument, before Paul left Antioch. The pair had previously taken Mark the Evangelist, the cousin of Barnabas, with them on their travels, but Mark had left them on the road to go back to Jerusalem. Paul did not want to travel with Mark again, but Barnabas would not travel without him.

Paul is often known as the Apostle to the Gentiles. Although he did proselytize among the Jews, he seems to have seen it as his particular calling to spread the word of God among the nations, so as to fulfill the ancient Jewish apocalyptic prophecy that in the end days, all the nations would seek God through Israel.

Perhaps this was because the Gentiles were more predisposed to accepting Paul's Gospel. The Jews were guarded against those foreign idolaters whom Paul was so willing to include, and were expecting a Messiah who would literally become their king and lead the tribes of Israel to glory. Paul's message of salvation after death was much closer to the popular Pagan mystery cults of the day. In the
Acts of the Apostles
, we see Paul several times washing his hands off the fate of the Jews, and turning to the less hostile Gentiles.

Paul's Controversies

While Paul was busy spreading the Gospel among the Gentiles of the eastern Mediterranean, a debate was growing in Jerusalem.

It was fourteen years after Paul's experience on the road to Damascus, approximately in the year 49 or 50 AD, that he returned to Jerusalem to speak to the original Apostles. Paul tells us, in Galatians 2, that he went with Barnabas, whom he had not yet split from, and his disciple Titus.

In Jerusalem they met with Peter, James, and John and presented to them the Gospel they had been spreading among the Gentiles during their travels. The three approved, and it was agreed that Paul and Barnabas would continue to act specifically as disciples to the Gentiles.

It was these Gentiles that were the cause of so much controversy and debate in Jerusalem, and in Christian communities around the Mediterranean, at the time.

While Gentiles had originally been allowed to enter into the Christian community without a full conversion to Judaism, that is to say: without going through circumcision, and without following the strict Mosaic laws of purity, there were an increasing number of Jewish Christians who were discontented by this arrangement. Acts 15 tells us that the visit of Paul and Barnabas in Jerusalem around 49-50 AD was in fact as official ambassadors to speak on behalf of the Gentiles on a council to decide, once and for all, the early church's official stance on circumcision and the law of Moses.