© 2011 Michel Hubaut
© 2011 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
I am Jewish, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of a city that is not without renown… This apparent pride of Paul in relation to his native city is quite legitimate. Indeed, located in the south-east of Asia Minor (today in Turkey), in Cilicia, on a low plain, not far from the Taurus mountain range which peaks at 3,585 m, Tarsus is, at this time, a commercial and cultural crossroads between the East and the West.
The City is nestled just at the exit of the Calycadnos gorge, called the “Cilician Gates”. This deep gorge, laboriously dug by the Cydnus River through the steep Taurus massifs, is the only place of passage between the coastal plain and the Anatolian plateau.
On the foothills of the Taurus, flocks of sheep and especially goats are raised, the hair of which is used to make a strong and rough cloth which has kept the name “cilice” to this day. If the plain of Cilicia has the reputation of being humid and unhealthy, it is also very fertile. Wheat, vines, olive trees and also flax are cultivated there. Alongside the trade in perfumes, aromatics and wine, a craft of wool and linen fabrics is particularly renowned and flourishing there.
Furthermore, Tarsus is located about fifteen kilometers from the Mediterranean Sea, on the right bank of the Cydnus River. Its waters feed a small lagoon converted into a port.
Certain boats, loaded with wheat and flax from Egypt, among other things, could therefore go up the Cydnus, which was converted and made navigable right up to the ramparts of the city of Tarsus. This opening onto the Mediterranean Sea and, through the Cilician Gates, onto the plateaus of Cappadocia and present-day Anatolia, make Tarsus a crossroads of roads and civilizations.
At the time of Paul, part of Cilicia was still subject to a local king, while the city of Tarsus and its immediate territory were governed by an intellectual, a Stoic philosopher, Athenodorus, originally from Tarsus, former tutor of the emperor Octavian Augustus. Its population is very heterogeneous… If in this cosmopolitan city, the Greeks are the most numerous, the Jewish colony, grouped around the synagogue, as in all the large cities of the Mediterranean basin, is very important, powerful and prosperous.
When Paul was born there, around the year 6, Tarsus had the privilege of having a university, as renowned as that of Athens or Alexandria, where renowned masters taught. And in fact, almost all the great figures of the moral philosophy movement called “stoicism” came from Tarsus.
It is also a city where religion holds a preponderant place, because this Greco-Roman world, called pagan, is in fact very religious. In the official religion, various divinities coexist. Sandon is especially venerated there, a local divinity, originally from Anatolia, an ancient agrarian god, identified successively with Heracles, Zeus, then Jupiter.
During his childhood, Paul necessarily heard about and probably even witnessed the public excesses of the different initiatory, esoteric religions - hence their name “mystery religions” - such as the cult of Mithra, in great vogue throughout the Orient. This craze for such practices is explained by the fact that the official, formal and stereotyped cult no longer fulfills the deep aspirations of a population in search of answers on the salvation of man and life in the afterlife.
Not only does Paul state without complex: I am myself an Israelite, of the descendants of Abraham, but he calls himself even more explicitly “Hebrew” and “son of a Hebrew”. This suggests that he is of Palestinian origin and that his parents still speak the Hebrew or Aramaic language in the family. Moreover, they gave him a Hebrew first name “Shaoul”. “Paulus” will be his Roman name (Paulos in Greekized Latin). The custom of the double name, Hebrew and Roman, is a widespread use at the time among the Jews.
It is very likely that his parents were textile merchants. In fact, Paul, during his travels, spontaneously came into contact with textile artisans and merchants: Lyddie, a purple merchant, in Phillippes, weavers, in Corinth, dyers or wool merchants in Ephesus.
And when, later, he undertook the evangelization of Lycaonia, he spontaneously followed the commercial route that the artisans and merchants of Tarsus usually took to go and buy the famous wool from goats raised on the slopes of the Taurus.
Finally, Paul, during his long stopovers, will ensure his subsistence by “making tents”. This is probably the trade that he learned within the family framework. And he will always express his highest esteem for the manual work that he carried out as a salaried worker. He will want to earn his living so as not to be a burden on the communities.
Paul’s family is therefore part of these notable Jewish immigrants, enriched through import-export, some of whose members, established throughout the Mediterranean basin, in ports and major commercial crossroads, have become transporters or run trading posts.
This operating system - called “kinship” - allows a family clan to develop its business on an international scale, in the form of a company with multiple branches, administered by “parents”.
And it seems that Paul - as certain details indicate throughout his letters - had scattered family, both in Cilicia and in Macedonia, in Jerusalem or in Rome, with whom he would easily come into contact during his travels. A Jew of the Diaspora, Paul would therefore benefit, through his origins, from a real network of exchanges and international solidarity which would be very useful to him in his apostolic itinerancy.
His missionary vocation is also not foreign to this family background, because some of these Jewish merchants of the Diaspora are not only great travelers, but also on occasion - especially if they are Pharisees - zealous propagators of their religion.
Paul is not an only child. We know that he has at least one sister.
Paul also strongly insists on his Pharisaic origins. In a speech before the Sanhedrin, he will still affirm himself as a Pharisee and the son of Pharisees. He therefore belongs to an observant and literate family.
Paul is also a “Roman citizen”. If he makes no allusion to it in his letters, according to the Acts of the Apostles, he will not hesitate in certain circumstances to take advantage of this “birthright”. He proudly claims it in front of the centurion on duty when, in the year 58, after having been arrested on the esplanade of the Temple and taken by force to the Antonia fortress, the soldiers prepare to flog him.
If Paul is a “Roman citizen” by birth, this means that one of his ancestors has earned this honorable distinction. There are two ways for a Jew of the Diaspora to obtain Roman citizenship. Be taken to Rome as a slave, then once freed, become a Roman citizen and return to the East. Or obtain this favor as a reward for important services rendered to the State.
In this case, the new citizen takes the name of the magistrate or Emperor who grants him this privilege. The names and qualities of the new citizens are recorded in the archives of the central power of Rome. This is probably how Saul’s grandfather became a Roman citizen.
By this “privilege”, you become a full Roman citizen both in Rome and in the city where you live. You have the right to wear the white toga, active and passive voice in elections, you are exempt from dishonorable corporal punishment, such as flagellation, you have “right of appeal”, that is to say that in a serious case, you can claim to be judged only by the imperial court. And in the case of a death sentence, the infamous torture of crucifixion is replaced by decapitation.
This privilege also includes duties: the obligation to pay taxes, military service, worship the divinities of the Empire… But in the cities, the Jews benefit from numerous exemptions obtained for their people.
The Pharisees were convinced of the universalism of salvation announced by the prophets. They had a great subtlety of mind and had constituted a casuistic tradition, an oral law which ended up governing consciences with as much force as the written Torah of Moses. Few in number (around 6000), they were nevertheless the most active and influential element of Jewish society.
Saul certainly had a long education. Having grown up and received his first education in his family in Tarsus, his childhood, like that of any Jewish child, was marked by the study of the Hebrew Bible in which he learned to read.
Biblical education being the first concern of every Jewish father, Paul knows the Pentateuch, the Psalms and the Prophets almost by heart. His writings testify that he is steeped in the Bible. Born “Hebrew and son of Hebrews”, he belongs to a family where Hebrew is still commonly spoken, as opposed to the Hellenist Jews who only use Greek. Having a perfect command of this sacred and liturgical language, he is therefore able to read directly, in the synagogue, the parchment scrolls of the Word of God.
In several circumstances, Paul shows that he is also capable of speaking Aramaic, which is still maintained in Palestine as a spoken and literary language. It is also in his family or in Jerusalem that he learned to read it and even to write it, in order to be able to use the “targoums” (collections of interpretations of sacred books in the vernacular).
Paul also speaks Greek, the common international language, called “koiné” and used throughout the Empire. In Tarsus, as everywhere in most Hellenized regions, even under Roman jurisdiction, the children of the Jewish Diaspora receive a bilingual or even trilingual education. According to the common custom of the time in wealthy families, his parents probably had to call upon the services of a slave of good origin.
Paul’s Greek is that of the cultured people of his time, who of course no longer use the language of Demosthenes, but that of business people. It is also the lingua franca of intellectual circles in Palestine. Because if, at that time, the popular classes still speak Aramaic, the cultured population has a good knowledge of common spoken Greek. Paul will use this language to come into contact with both the Jews of the Diaspora and the Hellenist Jews settled in Jerusalem. He masters Greek quite well because, apparently, he will never be accused, even in Athens, of a language error. And even, towards the end of his life, doubtless honed during his many travels and in contact with Hellenistic communities, his Greek sometimes manages to be eloquent.
Furthermore, the quotes from the Old Testament that he uses in his letters show that he often uses the Bible in his Greek translation.
Paul will borrow many other concepts such as “conscience”, “self-control”, “freedom”, “church” (ecclesia) and even sometimes vocabulary borrowed from religions, from mysteries to which he will give a new meaning and which will serve him to develop the first Christian theological reflection.
It is also not surprising that Paul was able to quote verses from Greek poets, since all Jewish preachers had some basic knowledge of Greek literature and the main currents of Greek philosophy, found in popular textbooks, such as Stoicism or Platonism.
But, all those who have tried to demonstrate that Paul, by intellectual diversion, watered down the freshness of the evangelical message and was the true founder of dogmatic Christianity, have failed. Because, as we will see, the starting point of Pauline reflection was never a specific doctrine, Jewish or Hellenic, but an Event which overturned it: the “revelation” of the resurrected Christ who saves humanity from evil and death.
But it is obvious that this Hellenistic culture happily complemented that of the young Jew and prepared the future apostle of the pagans for more openness and universalism.
The cultural influence of Greek is also evident in some of its frequent references to the theme of athletics: the effort, the race, the crown won by the winner, the prize of the fight.
Did Paul frequent stadiums, in his youth in Tarsus, and later during the Olympic Games in Corinth? We know that Jews avoid participating in these competitions where athletes run and compete naked. But what is certain is that Paul is perfectly aware of this important dimension of the lives of his fellow citizens.
As was also very common in immigrant families, from the age of 12 or 14, Saul’s father had to send him fairly quickly to continue his studies in Jerusalem. He would have entrusted him to the most Hellenized and liberal of the masters of that time, Gamaliel… In fact, Paul would always recognize two homelands: Tarsus, his hometown, and Jerusalem, the city of his university studies. Paul also received solid training as a lawyer. He would appear, in the eyes of his compatriots, as a formidable debater and a quasi-professional litigator, to whom it was better to oppose a professional man. He also acquired some rudiments of medicine, since he showed himself capable, during the stopover in Malta, of helping to care for the sick. Gifted with a lively intelligence and great sensitivity, he would make the most of an encyclopedic education and his linguistic knowledge. He would be spontaneously curious about any multicultural, interreligious contribution. That said, Paul will always remain profoundly Jewish. His conception of man, for example, will remain perfectly Semitic.
Did Paul get married? It’s not impossible. The rabbis, yesterday as today, have never appreciated celibacy!
But in general marriage is considered a duty. Was Paul a widower? Was his wife Jewish when he became a Christian? We know nothing about this.
On the other hand, around the years 53-54, when he wrote the first letter to the Corinthians, he was clearly without a wife, because he made a brief apology for celibacy and advised the unmarried and widowed to remain like him (1 Cor 7,7-8), without making him a “model” that would be imposed on everyone. He even considered his celibacy as a “gift from the Lord” that he found perfectly in tune with his life as an itinerant apostle (1 Cor 7).
In any case, someone who is capable, like Paul, of swimming without interruption for a day and a night after a shipwreck, must not be the puny type! As for the famous “thorn in his flesh” to which he himself alludes, all the hypotheses have been considered, from migraines or malaria to epilepsy! In fact, we don’t know. What is certain is that he must have a rather robust temperament to withstand all the voyages he will undertake and especially the conditions in which he will make them! Not to mention the mistreatment he will have to endure!
A small man, with a bald head, bowed legs, vigorous, with joined eyebrows, a slightly hooked nose, full of charm. Because sometimes he seemed a man, sometimes he had the face of an angel.
Everything about his family background, his childhood and his education, gives an idea of how this man is particularly prepared for the mission that God will entrust to him.
Paul, although about ten years younger, is a contemporary of Christ, whom he never met before the dazzling Damascus, as he himself indicates. Which will not prevent him from devoting an ardent passion to him. Yet how many things separate them!
Paul is a city dweller, Jesus is a rural man! Nazareth is only a Jewish village, almost unknown, in the hills of Galilee. Paul is a citizen of a prestigious and large city of the Empire and a student in Jerusalem. Paul, a child of the city, will have the determined appearance, the taste for organization, the sometimes sarcastic verve.
Jesus, for his part, is a villager. He constantly refers to images of nature: the breath of the wind, the fields and the vineyards, the plowman and the shepherd with his flocks. His parables are the echo of the hills, the sky and the Lake of Galilee. Paul is the man of the city, of law, of stadium games and of military discipline. He will also keep this anxiety of the man of the hectic city. He will be a brewer of ideas and crowds.
Creative, he could have a brilliant career as a lawyer. He knows how to put himself within reach of his audience and embrace their concerns. He has the art of formulas, sometimes obscure.
According to “In the footsteps of Saint Paul”, Historical and spiritual guide c/ º Desclée De Brouwer
Michel Hubaut