Putting Paul in Some Context

Paul was not just some guy that sat in a room a wrote letters to people that didn't exist; he was a real person in real history. Consider the following ideas based on Acts 17 and 19. And give yourself some time to think on it, this isn't a quick read.

Although Paul was not born in the geographic Israel, what is very apparent by all accounts is that he was an expert in Mosaic Law, both in the Torah and Talmud. Being a descendent of the tribe of Benjamin (Romans 11) and being trained under the famed rabbi Gamaliel (Acts 22:3), he was qualified to be a Pharisee (Acts 23:6) and was therefore highly regarded as a Jew. In fact, Paul was so closely involved with the Temple Jews that he was for a time responsible for the persecution of the followers of Jesus (Acts 8:1), a group that he would eventually join as a result of the Messiah revealing Himself to him on the Damascus road (Acts 9). In such a way, Paul established his authority to relate to and reason with Jews and preach to them how Jesus is the Messiah from their perspective and context.

            While Paul’s qualification as an expert in the Law was an important factor, he also clearly states that he is the apostle to the Greeks or gentiles (Romans 1) (these are taken to be interchangeable in context). In the book of Acts, there are two instances where Paul operates explicitly in the context of dealing with traditional Greek and Roman beliefs about deities. In both cases, Paul is actually dealing with Greek religious beliefs, but Roman and Greek traditions can be considered as interchangeable, at least in an operational sense. This is for two reasons: 1) the Greek and Roman belief systems involve a nearly identical set of deities, but with different names and 2) the Roman Empire encompassed every geographic location that Paul is known to have traversed. Outside of the context of talking specifically about religious belief, the fact that Paul was a Roman citizen by birth also plays into his interaction with Greco-Roman culture.

            In Acts 17, Paul was in Athens after being separated from Silas and Timothy. Being distressed by the overt worship of idols that he saw, he began to seek out the Jews and Greeks that feared God and then reasoned with them concerning Jesus and His resurrection. Soon after, he was overheard by Epicurean and Stoic philosophers who subsequently brought him to the Areopagus so that they could debate him. The Epicureans believed that everything was material and that there was no creator God, but Stoics believed that nature is God and fate is sealed for all of time, thusly leading them to brag about their own righteousness and about how they would become a piece of God in the scheme of eternity. Paul, advocating for the existence of Elohim, opposed each of these on the grounds that God both created and rules over everything that exists. Upon his arrival at the Areopagus, Paul preached that the Athenians were ignorant of God, but still knew He existed on the basis of their having a temple to ‘An Unknown God.’ Paul then went on to argue that God made everything and He is supreme over everything, using quotations from Scripture and even from a Greek poet. It is interesting to note that Paul is familiar with such a poem. Being trained in the Law, Paul would be skilled in debate and argument; however, it is unclear whether he researched the society of Athens whilst in the city or whether he was just familiar with such poems or the culture from his upbringing in Tarsus. It seems more likely that Paul made an effort to learn about Greek society while in Athens so that he might have a common ground with which he could reason with the Athenians. This seems more likely because Paul would have spent nearly all of his years in Jerusalem training to be a rabbi. It is, however, not ruled out that Greek culture was present in Jerusalem and he attained said knowledge there from.

            Another place in Acts that Luke recorded Paul’s mission clashing with Greeks is in chapter 19. Although Paul was not directly involved in the confrontation (his disciples did not allow him to enter the place that housed the discussion even though he so desired), his disciples and his teaching were involved directly. Demetrius, a silversmith that made a living of making statues and shrines of Artemis, accused Paul and his followers of taking business from local craftsmen by teaching that Artemis and other gods that were ‘made by human hands’ were false. Demetrius went on to say that Paul had convinced many in Ephesus and ‘nearly all of Asia’ that Artemis was not to be worshipped. When people heard this charge, they began to chant saying, “great is Artemis of the Ephesians” and grabbed up Paul’s traveling companions, gathering a large crowd in a theater. Confusion and discord ensued for a time and then they were convinced by the town clerk that Paul did not blaspheme Artemis, presumably to quiet the crowd and avoid an all out riot. After assuring them that they could complain through the courts if they so desired, the crowd dissipated. What can be gathered from this situation is that Paul’s message had spread far and wide across the Roman Empire and the news of Jesus was well known enough to affect the business of those that were craftsmen of idols. While this doesn’t show much concerning Paul’s ideological training and background, it does show that he made disciples and had a large network of influence, an idea supported by his epistles to churches that compose the New Testament. Furthermore, the response of the craftsmen to Paul’s teaching reflects the response of much of the Roman Empire at large. In this case, Paul’s message of Christ undermined the power of Artemis, an idea that seemed absurd to the Ephesians. Similarly, Paul was often accused of undermining the Roman government and the Jewish authorities with his teaching. As a note, however, Paul did in fact endorse submission to government (Romans 13).

            Throughout Acts, Paul was involved with government- often being imprisoned for preaching about Jesus. What can be determined from all of these interactions is that Paul was quite familiar with his rights as a Roman citizen and knew the laws that he was to obey, a notion that can be supported by his remarks in his letter to the church at Rome. The last several chapters of Acts show an interesting idea, which is that Paul probably planned to go to Rome all along (also chapter 19) and his appeal to Caesar was likely the means by which he planned to do it, based on his knowledge of what the judges were and were not going to convict him of. That is, Paul, knowing that charges brought by the Jews would not be enough to convict him, used the opportunity to reason with the council (that is, the Sadducees and Pharisees) and also to go to Rome.