You may be aware that Paul wrote a huge chunk of the New Testament,
but how familiar are you with his days persecuting Christians?
Or his impact on the English language? Keep watching for the whole story.
Some of the Christian gospels are structured deliberately to make the Pharisees foils for
Jesus — that is to say, the bad guys. They're the ones who are always trying to trap Jesus in
paradoxes, and, of course, they're the ones Jesus routinely makes to look like fools.
With that in mind, it may surprise modern readers to learn that some
of the heroes of the New Testament are described as being Pharisees as well.
The Pharisees were one of four major Jewish political, and religious,
parties prominent in Judea at the time. And the party included both "good guys" and "bad
guys," just like modern political parties include idealists, opportunists, and everyone in between.
It's not all that remarkable then, that some of the heroes of the New Testament are Pharisees,
including Nicodemus. He's the rabbi who receives the Bible's most famous verse, John 3:16.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,
that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
So it makes sense that Paul, whose zeal for his Jewish and
Pharisee roots led him to persecute Christians, could also be a Pharisee.
After conversion to the Christian faith, Paul doesn't stop being a Pharisee, either.
In Acts 23, he announces, quote, "I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee," and in his letter to the
Philippians, he calls himself a Pharisee again. This guy stayed true to his roots.
Appreciation for his Jewish roots, though, didn't lead Paul to conclusions you might
expect as he spread the Gospel to the Gentiles. The early Christian
church was gripped by what some have called the "Judaizing controversy."
This was basically a big disagreement over whether Gentile converts to Christianity
should be expected to follow the law of the Torah — up to and including circumcision.
Acts 15 describes the "Council of Jerusalem," at which the Apostles, including Paul,
argued back and forth about exactly which parts of the Old Testament applied to Christians.
Paul was firmly on the side of leniency. The council lands on laying off of Moses's law
with the Gentile Christian. Instead, they encourage them to abstain only from, quote,
"[...] the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from
what has been strangled, and from blood." You might think that that would have been
the end of it, but Paul devoted considerable energy to arguing against circumcision of
Gentile Christians, even after the council. His entire Epistle to the Galatians, for instance,
which most scholars agree is one of Paul's earliest letters, is written to counter the
arguments of the "Judaizers." The climax in Paul's letter, in the King James Version, is
"I would they were even cut off which trouble you."
Which, yes, that's a double entendre.
Most modern translations make it even clearer, rendering it as,
"I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!"
"Ooh, that's gotta hurt."
It's hard to estimate just how influential the King James Bible has been on the modern
English language. Together with Shakespeare, it helped establish English on the global stage.
It also helped create many of the idioms we still
use today -- really common phrases like "scapegoat" and "the skin of my teeth."
Among those, you can credit at least one to the Apostle Paul. In 1 Corinthians 9:22, he writes,
"I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some."
So, yeah, each time you describe something as "all things to all people," you owe St. Paul royalties.
Interestingly, though, Paul means almost the opposite of what modern users of the phrase
tend to mean. In the modern world, that phrase usually means someone is trying too hard to
please everyone and probably isn't very good as a result. In context, though, what Paul's
talking about is making himself and his habits palatable to Jews, Gentiles, and everyone else,
with the hopes of converting as many as possible. In other words, he thinks it's a good thing. And,
well, considering how much of the world Paul converted, it's hard to argue with the results.
Paul is best remembered as an evangelist, which makes sense since evangelism was
sort of what he did. St. Luke's book, The Acts of the Apostles, which illustrates the
early history of Christianity, occasionally depicts Paul as preaching in town squares to
anyone who will listen. Despite this, though, evangelism was never a full-time gig for Paul.
Paul actually made his living making tents, and often, in his letters, draws attention to the
fact that he never asks anyone to pay him for his evangelism. That's because he's famous enough for
his tents. Still to this day, certain corners of modern Christianity use the word "tentmaker" to
describe pastors who support themselves through jobs outside of their Christian ministry.
In fact, Paul's tentmaking gig might have been more important to his ministry than you might have
guessed. Paul admits in his second letter to the Corinthians that he isn't a particularly eloquent
speaker, so the dramatic sermons depicted in Acts are likely more the exception than the rule.
Instead, Paul likely chatted with passersby while he was working on his tents. Tentmaking
was mostly leatherwork, which is fairly quiet, giving Paul ample opportunity to talk theology.
When Paul comes up in modern contexts, it's often because of a handful of
passages attributed to him that read as pretty misogynistic to the modern eye.
These include 1 [first] Corinthians' 14:35 passage,
"For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church."
However, Paul does have his share of defenders on this stuff, even among modern feminists.
They point out, for instance, Paul actually assumes that women are going to be "prophesying"
in church. So, taking the Corinthians verse as normative for all time would
be a little excessive. But obviously, the only person who could tell us exactly what
he meant when he wrote those verses is Paul himself, and he isn't answering our emails.
Given his popular perception as something of a male chauvinist, then, it might surprise some
people how vocally Paul supported the women who have aided in his ministry.
In Romans 16, Paul lists no fewer than eight women among those he wishes to greet,
including Junia, whom he describes as, quote, "prominent among the Apostles."
Other mentions include Phoebe, an early deaconess, and Priscilla,
who gets star billing in the book of Acts. You can obviously draw your own conclusions here,
but it's clear that Paul, like any other historical figure, had a complicated legacy.
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