in Acts xxi. 39, xxii. 3, and the contradictory tradition reported by Jerome, that he was born in the small town of Gischala, in Galilee, cannot appear credible, though it is not improbable that his parents once resided there,' which may have given rise to the report. As we do not know how long he remained under the paternal roof, it is impossible to determine what influence his education in the metropolis of Cilicia (which as a seat of literature vied with Athens and Alexandria)2 had on the formation of his character. Certainly, his early acquaintance with the language and national peculiarities of the Greeks was of some advantage in preparing him to be a teacher of Christianity among nations of Grecian origin. Yet the few passages from the Greek poets which we meet with in his discourse at Athens, and in his Epistles, do not prove that his education had made him familiar with Grecian literature: nor is it probable that such would be the

1 If we were justified in understanding with Paulus (in his work on the Apostle Paul's Epistles to the Galatians and Romans, p. 323) the word Bpatos, Phil. iii. 5, 2 Cor. xi. 22, as used in contradistinction to Enviors, it would serve to confirm this tradition, since it would imply that Paul could boast of a descent from a Palestinian-Jewish and not Hellenistic family. But since Paul calls himself éẞpaîos, though he was certainly by birth a Hellenist, it is evident that the word cannot be used in so restricted a sense; and in the second passage quoted above, where it is equivalent to an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, it plainly has a wider meaning; see Bleek's admirable Introduction to the Epistle to the Hebrews, p. 32. This tradition too, reported by Jerome, is, as Fritzsche justly remarks, very suspicious, not only on account of the gross anachronism, which makes the taking of Gischala by the Romans the cause of Paul's removal thence with his parents,— since this event happened much later in the Jewish war, but also because Jerome, in his Commentary on the Epistle to Philemon (verse 23), makes use of this tradition to explain why Paul, though a citizen of Tarsus, calls himself, 2 Cor. xi. 22, Philip. iii. 5, "Hebræus ex Hebræis, et cætera quæ illum Judæum magis indicant quam Tarsensem," which yet, as we have remarked above, proceeds only from a misunderstanding of the epithet which Paul applies to himself. Jerome must have, therefore, taken up this false account ("talem fabulam accepimus," are his own words), without proof, in a very thoughtless

manner.

2 Strabo, who wrote in the time of Augustus, places Tarsus in this respect above these two cities: τοσαύτη τοῖς ἐνθάδε ἀνθρώποις σπουδὴ πρός τε φιλοσοφίαν καὶ τὴν ἄλλην ἐγκύκλιον ἅπασαν παιδείαν γέγονεν, ὥσθ ̓ ὑπερβέβληνται καὶ ̓Αθήνας καὶ ̓Αλεξανδρείαν καὶ εἴ τινα ἄλλον τόπον δυνατὸν εἰπεῖν ἐν ᾧ σχολαὶ καὶ διατριβαὶ τῶν φιλοσόφων γεγόνασι. Geogr i. 14, c. 5.

case.

As his parents designed him to be a teacher of the law, or Jewish theologian, his studies must have been confined in his early years to the Old Testament, and about the age of twelve or thirteen, he must have entered the school of Gamaliel.' It is possible, though, considering Paul's pharisaic zeal, not probable, that the more liberal views of his tolerant-minded teacher Gamaliel might induce him to turn his attention to Grecian literature. A man of his mental energy, whose zeal overcame all difficulties in his career, and whose love prompted him to make himself familiar with all the mental habitudes of the men among whom he laboured, that he might sympathise more completely with their wants and infirmities, might be induced, while among people of Grecian culture, to acquire some knowledge of their principal writers. But in the style of his representations, the Jewish element evidently predominates. His peculiar mode of argumentation was not formed in the Grecian, but in the Jewish school. The name Saul, the desired one, the one prayed for, perhaps indicates, that he was the first-born of his parents,3 granted in answer to their earnest prayers: and hence it may be inferred, that he was devoted by his father, a Pharisee, to the service of religion, and sent in early youth to Jerusalem, that he might be trained to become a learned expounder of the law and of tradition; not to add, that it was usual for the youth of Tarsus to complete their education at some foreign school. Most advantageously for him, he acquired in the pharisaic schools at Jerusalem that systematic form of intellect, which afterwards rendered him such good service in developing the contents of the Christian doctrine; so that, like Luther, he became thoroughly conversant with the theological system, which afterwards, by the power of the gospel, he uprooted and destroyed. A youth so ardent and energetic as Paul, would throw his whole soul into whatever he undertook; his natural temperament would dispose him to an overflowing impetuous zeal, and for such a propensity Pharisaism supplied abundant

1 See Tholuck's admirable remarks in the Studien und Kritiken, 1835, 2d part, p. 366.

2 We cannot attach much importance to so uncertain an inference. 3 Like the names Theodorus, Theodoret, common among Christians in the first century.

• See Strabo.

aliment. We may also infer from his peculiar disposition, as well as from various hints he gives of himself, that in legal piety, according to the notions of the strictest Pharisaism, he strove to go beyond all his companions. But in proportion to the earnestness of his striving after holiness-the more he combated the refractory impulses of an ardent and powerful nature, which refused to be held in by the reins of the law— so much more ample were his opportunities for understanding from his own experience the woful discord in human nature which arises when the moral consciousness asserts its claims as a controlling law, while the man feels himself constantly carried away, in defiance of his better longing and willing, by the force of ungodly inclination. Paul could not have depicted this condition so strikingly and to the life, in the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, if he had not gained the knowledge of it from personal experience. It was advantageous for him that he passed over to Christianity from a position where, by various artificial restraints and prohibitions, he had attempted to guard against the incursions of unlawful desires and passions, and to compel himself to goodness;1 for thus he was enabled to testify from his own experience, (in which he appears as the representative of all men of deep moral feeling,) how deeply the sense of the need of redemption is grounded in the moral constitution of man; and thus likewise from personal experience, he could describe the relation of that inward freedom which results from faith in redemption, to the servitude of the legal standing-point. In his conflict with himself while a Pharisee, Paul's experiences resemble Luther's in the cloisters of Erfurt: though in the Pharisaic dialectics and exposition of the law, he was a zealous and faithful disciple of Gamaliel, we cannot from this conclude that he imbibed that spirit of moderation for which his master was so distinguished, and which he showed in his judgment of the new sect at the first, before it came into direct conflict with the theology of his party. For the scholar, especially a scholar of so energetic and marked a character, would imbibe the mental in

1 As, for example, from the standing-point of Pharisaism, it has been said, "Instead of leaving every thing to the free movements of the disposition, a man should force himself to do this or that good by a direct vow. Vows are the enclosures of holiness." . See Pirke Avoth. § 13.

VOL. I.

fluences of his teacher, only so far as they accorded with his own peculiarities. His unyielding disposition, the fire of his nature, and the fire of his youth, made him a vehement persecuting zealot against all who opposed the system that was sacred in his eyes. Accordingly, no sooner did the new doctrine in the hands of Stephen assume a hostile aspect1 against the Pharisaic theo

The question has been raised, whether Paul saw and heard Jesus during his earthly life? We have not the data for answering the question. In his Epistles, we find nothing conclusive either one way or the other. Olshausen thinks that it may be inferred from 2 Cor. v. 16, that Paul really knew Jesus during his earthly life, kaтà σágка. Рaul, in that passage, he understands as saying, " But if I knew Christ, as indeed I did know him, according to the flesh, in his bodily earthly appearance, yet now I know him so no more." Against this interpretation I will not object with Baur, in his Essay "On the Party of Christ in the Corinthian Church," in the Tubingen Zeitschrift für Theologie, 1831, part iv. p. 95, that he could not mean this, because it would have been undervaluing Christ in his state of humiliation, which would be in contradiction to those passages in which he attributes to that state the highest abiding importance, and says he is determined to know nothing save Christ and him crucified. For though the remembrance of Christ in the form of a servant could never vanish from his mind, though he never could forget what he owed to Christ the Crucified, yet now he knew him no longer as living in human weakness, and subject to death, but as having risen victoriously from death, the glorified one, now living in divine power and majesty; 2 Cor. xiii. 4. The relation in which it would have been possible to stand to Christ while he lived in the form of a servant on earth, could no longer exist. No one could now stand nearer to him, simply for being a Jew; no one could hold converse with him in an outward manner, as a being present to the senses: henceforth it was only possible to enter into union with Christ as the glorified one, as he presented himself to the religious consciousness in a spiritual, internal manner, by believing on him as crucified for the salvation of mankind. In this respect, Paul might well say that now there could no longer be for him such" a knowledge of Christ after the flesh." And we grant that he might have said hypothetically, If I had known Christ heretofore after the flesh, had I stood in any such outward communion with him as manifest in the flesh, yet now such a communion would have lost all its importance for me (such a value as those Judaizers attribute to it who make it the sign of genuine apostleship); but now I know Christ after the spirit, like all those who enjoy spiritual communion with him. But Paul could only say this in a purely hypothetical form, supposing something to be which really was not; for allowing that he had seen and heard Jesus with his bodily senses, his opponents would have been far from attaching any importance to such seeing and hearing, as it could have been affirmed with equal truth of many Jews, who stood in an indifferent or even hostile position towards Christ. The reference in this passage can be only to such a "knowing of Christ after the flesh," as belonged to the other ano

logy, than he became its most vehement persecutor. After the martyrdom of Stephen, when many adherents of the gospel sought for safety by flight, Paul felt himself called to counterwork them in the famed city of Damascus, where the new sect was gaining ground. And he hastened thither, after receiving full powers for committing all the Christians to prison from the Sanhedrim, who, as the highest ecclesiastical authority among the Jews, were allowed by the Romans to inflict all disciplinary punishment against the violators of the law.1

As for the great mental change which Paul experienced in the course of this journey, undertaken for the extinction of the Christian faith, it is quite possible that this event may strike us as sudden and marvellous, only because the history records the mere fact, without the various preparatory and connecting circumstances which led to it; but, by making use of the hints which the narrative furnishes to fill up the outline, we may attempt to gain the explanation of the whole, on purely natural principles.

Paul-(it would be said by a person adopting this view of the event) had received many impressions which disturl ed the repose of his truth-loving soul; he had heard the temperate counsels of his revered instructor Gamaliel; he had listened to the address of Stephen, to whom he was allied in natural temperament, and had witnessed his martyrdom. But he was still too deeply imbued with the spirit of Phari

stles, since only to this could any religious value be attached against which Paul might feel himself called to protest. For this reason I must agree with Baur, who understands xgords here, not of the person of Jesus, but of the Messiah, a Messiah known after the flesh, as from the early Jewish standing-point. I also believe with Baur, that if Paul had intended a personal reference, he would have said 'Inσoûv xgiтdv, and I cannot admit the force of the objection which Olshausen makes to this interpretation, that it would require the article before xgiorov, for it means not the Messiah definitively, but generally a Messiah.

1 If Damascus at that time still belonged to a Roman province, the Sanhedrim could exercise its authority there, in virtue of the right secured every where to the Jews to practise their worship in their own manner. If the city was brought under the government of the Arabian King Aretas, the Sanhedrim could still reckon on his support, in consequence of the connexion he had formed with the Jews; perhaps he himself had gone over to Judaism. The Jews in Damascus might also possess great influence by means of the women, who were almost all converts to Judaism. Josephus, De Bell. Jud. ii. 20, 2.