later that Paul's proofs from Scripture are often very forced and arbitrary, and had very little of generally illuminative or demonstrative power; and indeed we see that it was precisely the Jews, who were the most familiar with the Old Testament Scriptures, who were least convinced by Paul's argument. Nevertheless it is certain that this practical, dogmatic character of Paul's thought contributed greatly to advance the cause of Christianity as a universal religion. By its means Christianity was equipped with a system of doctrine which on the one hand offered to the Gentile world a comprehensive view of life, in which that desire for theoretic truth which always plays a part in religion could find satisfaction, and which, on the other hand, had an advantage over the systems of the Philosophic Schools in that it was not a mere subjective scheme of thought, but was based on the positive ground of objective and long recognised authority upon the venerable records of ancient revelations of God, to which the new revelation in Christ attached itself as the last link in a divine world-plan which embraced millenniums of human history.

THE APOSTLE PAUL

CHAPTER III

EDUCATION: GREEK INFLUENCE

PAUL, or, to give him his Jewish name,1 Saul, was born of Jewish parents in the Greek city of Tarsus in Cilicia. The Jewish home and the Greek city gave him his Jewish-Greek education, which fitted him to be an Apostle of the Gospel in the Grecian world. He who could say that he had become a Greek to the Greeks and a Jew to the Jews in order to win all for the Gospel must have from the first known Greeks as well as Jews. And Tarsus was an excellent place to learn to know them, as regards not only their outward conduct, but their deepest thoughts and feelings. For Tarsus was not only a flourishing commercial city, but also an important seat of Greek Philosophy, especially of the Stoic School. Several famous teachers of that school came from Tarsus, among others the teacher of Augustus, Athenodorus, who had also been of some service to Cicero when

1 The combination of a Greek with a Hebrew name was frequent among Hellenistic Jews, and it is probable that in the case of Paul-Saul it does not date only from the incident recorded in Acts xiii. 7 ff., but from his home in Tarsus, the twofold designation corresponding to the dual character of his interests and education.

1

writing the De Officiis, and who is frequently mentioned by Seneca. This Athenodorus exercised, after his return from Rome to his home in Tarsus, a considerable influence in a political direction. He obtained from the Emperor a remission of taxes in the interests of his fellow-citizens, and for this was elevated by the grateful populace to the position of a hero, and celebrated in a yearly memorial festival.2 Of such a celebrity of his own city the young Saul-Paul would be sure to hear, and would no doubt learn something of his life and teaching. Moreover, he would not need to visit the lecture-rooms of the Stoic teachers in order to become acquainted with the Stoic philosophy of life. This, in the practical popular form in which we know it from Seneca and Epictetus, was daily set forth in the streets and markets of the town by the popular orators, who called themselves Philosophers (Cynics), Soul-doctors, Messengers of Truth. The Stoic philosophy was at that time the religion of the thoughtful, of the seekers, of the progressive elements in Græco-Roman society. How could it remain unknown to a keen-minded Jewish boy or youth in Tarsus, however narrowly Jewish and strictly Pharisaic the spirit of his parents' house might be? That it did not remain unknown to him is proved by the Epistles of the Apostle Paul, which contain such remarkable parallels with thoughts and phrases in the writings of Seneca, that it has been sometimes proposed to find in Paul a pupil of Seneca, and sometimes in Seneca a pupil of Paul.

1 He supplied Cicero with a précis of the views of Posidonius on conflicting motives. See Ad. Att. xvi. 11 and 14.

2 Susemihl, Griechische Literaturgeschichte, ii. 249 f.

Though the one is as impossible as the other, yet the fact that these parallels exist points to a common source. This we can find only in the Greek culture of the time, which was deeply imbued with Stoic conceptions, and by which, moreover, the Hellenistic Jews had not remained unmoved. That the dominant Stoic philosophy, if not as a scientific theory of the Schools, yet certainly as a popular ethico-religious view of life, belonged to those elements of education which nourished the youthful mind of the future Apostle of the Gentiles, can hardly be called in question by an unprejudiced student of history. As the best means of enabling the reader to form an opinion upon this point for himself, I have thought it useful to put together a short anthology of sayings from the writings of Seneca.

We begin with those in which the weariness of life, the desire to flee from the world, and the serious ascetic spirit of the time, of which Stoicism was not the sole but the most important representative, finds expression. "If thou wilt believe those who have looked deeply into Truth, then all life is torment (supplicium). Cast forth into this deep and unquiet ocean, we find nowhere any solid ground, we swing and toss and collide with one another, suffer shipwreck, and are ever in alarm; to the shipmen on this stormy sea there beckons but one harbour of safety, namely, death" (ad Polyb., ix. 6). Nought is so deceitful and full of snares as human life. Truly no one would have accepted it, had it not been given him without his knowledge" (ad Marciam, xxii.). "Why weep for a particular sorrow, the whole of life is matter for weeping! What is man? A frail

66

vessel lying at the mercy of every blow, a weak body, naked, maimed, needing the help of others, a butt for every scurvy trick of Fate! Of all the outward good that shows so fair around us, children, honour, wealth, a beautiful wife, and whatsoever else lies in the power of fickle Fortune, none is truly our own, it is only lent to us to dress the stage of life withal, but sooner or later the owner demands it back again! We enjoy only the usufruct of that which is lent us for a limited time, and must at all times be prepared to render it back without complaint. Therefore we should love our families, friends, and goods, only as a temporary possession. Make haste to enjoy the love of your children and to let them enjoy your love and to drain every drop of joy, for you have need of haste; death is at hand!" (ad Marc., x. 11; cf. 1 Cor. vii. 29 ff.). "It was the complaint of our forefathers, and will be the complaint of those who come after us, that morals are corrupt, that evil reigns, that human life grows worse and worse, and all that is sacred is at the point to fall. But this (evil) remains ever the same, only that it tends now in this direction and now in that. In general, we must be prepared to hear the same judgment passed upon us, that we are bad, that we have been bad-alas, I must add--that bad we shall remain" (de Benefic., i. 10; cf. Rom. iii. 9 ff.). Why do we deceive ourselves? Evil is not without us, it has its seat within us, in our inward part! And therefore is it that we come so hardly to healing, because we know not that we are sick. Now indeed we seek a physician, but he had had an easier task if we had called him to our aid at the right time" (Ep. l. 4). ‹

66