Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/439

PAUL 417 gives a clear account : "I conferred not with flesh and blood, neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me ; but I went away into Arabia " (Gal. i. 16, 17). The reason of his retirement, whether it was to the HaurAn (Renan) or to the Sinaitic peninsula (Holsten), is not far to seek. A great mental no less than a great bodily convulsion naturally calls for a period of rest ; and the consequences of his new position had to be drawn out and realized before he could properly enter upon the mission -work which lay before him. From cto Arabia he returned to Damascus (Gal. i. 17), and there s - began not only his preaching of the gospel but also the long series of "perils from his own countrymen," which constitute so large a part of the circumstances of his sub sequent history (Acts ix. 23-25 ; 2 Cor. xi. 32, 33). .u- It was not until "after three years," though it is un certain whether the reckoning begins from his conversion or from his return to Damascus, that he went up to Jeru salem ; his purpose in going was to become acquainted with Peter, and he stayed with him fifteen days (Gal. i. 18). Of his life at Jerusalem on this occasion there appear to have been erroneous accounts current even in his own lifetime, for he adds the emphatic attestation, as of a witness on his oath, that the account which he gives is true (Gal. i. 20). The point on which he seems to lay emphasis is that, in pursuance of his policy not to " confer with flesh and blood," he saw none of the apostles except Peter and James, and that even some years afterwards he was still unknown by face to the churches of Judaea which were in Christ. 1 ia, From Jerusalem he went "into the regions of Syria and Cilicia," preaching the gospel (Gal. i. 21, 23). How much that brief expression covers is uncertain ; it may refer only to the first few months after his departure from Jerusa lem, or it may be a summary of many travels, of which that which is commonly known as his "first missionary journey " is a type. The form of expression in Gal. ii. 1 makes it probable that he purposely leaves an interval between the events which immediately succeeded his conversion and the conference at Jerusalem. For this interval, assuming it to exist, or in any case for the detail of its history, we have to depend on the accounts in Acts xi. 20-30, xii. 25 to xiv. 28. These accounts possibly cover only a small part of the whole period, and they are so limited to Paul s relations with Barnabas as to make it probable that they were derived from a lost "Acts of Barnabas." This sup position would probably account for the fact that in them the conversion of the Gentiles is to a great extent in the background. The chief features of these accounts are the formation of a new centre of Christian life at Antioch, and a journey which Paul, Barnabas, and for part of the way John Mark took through Cyprus and Asia Minor. The first of these facts has a significance which has sometimes been overlooked for the history not only of Paul himself but of Christianity in general. It is that the mingling together, in that splendid capital of the civilized East, of Jews and Syrians on the one hand with Greeks and Romans on the other furnished the conditions which made a Gentile Christianity possible. The religion of Jesus Christ emerged from its obscurity into the full glare of contemporary life. Its adherents attracted enough attention to receive in the common talk and intercourse of men a distinctive name. They were treated, not as a Jewish sect, but as a political party. To the Greek equiva lent for the Hebrew " Messiah," which was probably con sidered to be not a title but a proper name, was added the ^ A different account of this visit to Jerusalem is given in Acts ix. 26-30, xxvi. 20 ; the account of the trance in the temple, Acts xxii. 17-21, is in entire harmony with Paul s own words. termination which had been employed for the followers of Sulla, of Pompey, and of Caesar. It is improbable that this would have been the case unless the Christian com munity at Antioch had had a large Gentile element ; and it is an even more certain and more important fact that in this first great mixed community the first and greatest of all the problems of early Christian communities had been solved, and that Jews and Gentiles lived a common life (Gal. ii. 12). What place Paul himself had in the forma tion of this community can only be conjectured. In the Acts he is less prominent than Barnabas ; and, although it must be gathered from the Epistle to the Galatians that he took a leading part in the controversies which arose, still it is to be noted that he never elsewhere mentions Antioch in his epistles, and that he never visited it except casually in his travels. It may be supposed that from an early period he sought and found a wider field for his activity. The spirit of the Pharisees who "compassed sea and land to make one proselyte " was still strong within him. The zeal for God which had made him a persecutor had changed its direction but not its force. His conversion was but an overpowering call to a new sphere of work. It is consequently difficult to believe that he was content to take his place as merely one of a band of teachers elected by the community or appointed by the Twelve. The sense of a special mission never passed away from him. "Necessity was laid upon him" (1 Cor. ix. 16). Inferior to the Twelve in regard to the fact that he had once "persecuted the church of God," he was "not a whit behind the very chief est apostles" (2 Cor. xi. 5) in regard both to the reality and the privileges of his commission, and to the truth of what he preached (1 Cor. ix. 3-6; 2 Cor. iii. 1-6; Gal. i. 12). It is also difficult to believe that he went out with Barnabas simply as the delegate of the Antiochean community ; whatever significance the laying on of hands may have had for him (Acts xiii. 3), it would be contrary to the tenor of all his writings to suppose that he regarded it as giving him his commission to preach the gospel. The narrative of the incidents of the single journey Journey which is recorded in detail, and which possibly did not through occupy more than one summer, has given rise to much C - V P S . controversy. Its general credibility is supported by the jii nor . probability that in the first instance Paul would follow an ordinary commercial route, on which Jewish missionaries as well as Jewish merchants had been his pioneers. For his letters to his Gentile converts all presuppose their acquaintance with the elements of Judaism. They do not prove monotheism, but assume it. According to the narrative, Paul and his companions went first to Cyprus, the native country of Barnabas, and travelled through the island from its eastern port, Salamis, to its capital, Paphos. At Paphos a Jewish sorcerer, Bar Jesus, was struck with blindness, and the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, was converted. From Cyprus, still following a common route of trade, they went into the south-east districts of Asia Minor, through Pamphylia to Antioch in Pisidia. At Antioch, on two successive Sabbaths, Paul spoke in the synagogue ; the genuineness of the addresses which are recorded in the Acts has been disputed, chiefly because the second of them seems to imply that he " turned to the Gentiles," not as a primary and unconditional obli gation, but owing to the rejection of the gospel by the Jews. Expelled from Antioch, they went on to Iconium (where the apocryphal "Acts of Paul and Thekla" place the scene of that improbable but not ungraceful romance), and thence to Lystra, where the healing of a cripple caused the simple and superstitious Lycaonians to take them for gods. Their farthest point was the neighbouring town of Derbe, from whence they returned by the route XVIII. 53