Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/445

PAUL 423 only fragment of approximately contemporary evidence is a vague and rhetorical passage in the letter of Clement of Rome (c. 5) : " Paul . . . having taught the whole world righteousness, and having come to the goal of the West (evrt TO repfj.a TT^S Svo-ews), and having borne witness (fJ-ap- Tt pijcras) before the rulers, so was released from the world and went to the Holy Place, having become the greatest example of patience." The two material points in this passage, (1) "the limit of the West," (2) "having borne witness," are fruitful sources of controversy. The one may mean either Eome or Spain, the other may mean either "having testified "or "having suffered martyrdom." It is not until towards the end of the 2d century, after many causes had operated both to create and to crush traditions, that mention is made of Paul as having suffered about the same time as Peter at Home ; but the credibility of the assertion is weakened by its connexion in the same sentence with the erroneous statement that Peter and Paul went to Italy together after having founded the church at Corinth (Dionysius of Corinth, quoted by Eusebius, //. E., ii. 25). A Roman presbyter named Gaius speaks, a few years later, of the martyr-tombs of the two apostles being visible at Rome (quoted by Eusebius, I. c.) ; but neither this testimony nor that of Tertullian (De prxscr. 36, Scorp. 15, Adv. Marc. iv. 5) is sufficient to establish more than the general probability that Paul suffered martyrdom. But there is no warrant for going beyond this, as almost all Paul s biographers have done, and finding an actual date for his martyrdom in the so-called Neronian persecu tion of 64 A.D. 1 The chronology of the rest of his life is as uncertain as the date of his death. We have no means of knowing when he was born, or how long he lived, or at what dates the several events of his life took place. The nearest approach to a fixed point from which the dates of some events may be calculated is that of the death of Festus, which may probably, though by no means certainly, be placed in 62 A.D. ; even if this date were certainly known, new evidence would be required to determine the length of time during which he held office ; all that can or could be said is that Paul was sent to Rome some time before the death of Festus in 62 A.D. How widely opinions differ as to the rest of the chronology may be seen by a reference to the chronological table which is given by Meyer in the introduction to his Commentary on the Acts, and after him by Farrar, St Paul, vol. ii. p. 624. 2 t per- Of his personality he himself tells us as much as need )lity. b e k nown when he quotes the adverse remarks of his opponents at Corinth : " his letters, they say, are weighty and strong ; but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account" (2 Cor. x. 10). The Christian romance- writer elaborated the picture, of which some traits may have come to him from tradition : "a man small in stature, bald-headed, bow-legged, stout, close-browed, with a slightly prominent nose, full of grace ; for at one time he seemed like a man, at another time he had the face of an angel " (" Acta Pauli et Theclae," c. 3, ap. Tischendorf, Ada Apos- tolorwm Apocrypha, p. 41) ; and the pagan caricaturist speaks of him in similar terms, as "bald in front, with a slightly prominent nose, who had taken an aerial journey 1 The Martyrium Pauli in Zacagni, Coll. mon. vet. eccl., Rome, 1698, p. 535, gives not only details but an exact date, viz., 29th June 66 A.D. ; the day has been adopted by the Latin Church as the common anniversary of St Peter and St Paul. All the early evidence which bears upon the point has been collected by Kunze, Prsecipua patrum ecclesmsticorum testimonia quse ad mortem Pauli apostoli spectant, Gottingen, 1848. 2 The literature of the subject is extensive ; the most convenient summary of the discussions, for English readers, will be found in the introduction to Meyer s Commentary, which is mentioned above, and of which there is an English translation. into the third heaven" (pseudo-Lucian, Philopatris, c. 12). Some early representations of him on gilded glasses and sarcophagi still remain ; accounts of them will be found in Smith and Cheetham, Diet. Chr. Ant., vol. ii. p. 1621 ; Schultze, Die Katakomben, Leipsic, 1882, p. 149. That he was sometimes stricken down by illness is clear from Gal. iv. 13 (some have thought also from 2 Cor. ii. 4); and at his moments of greatest exaltation "there was given to him a stake in the fiesh . . . that he should not be exalted overmuch" (2 Cor. xii. 7). The nature of this special weakness has given rise to many conjectures ; the most probable is that it was one of those obscure nervous disorders which are allied to epilepsy and sometimes mis taken for it. 3 Of the writings which are ascribed to him in the current lists of Pseudo- the canonical books of the New Testament, and also of the Epistle nymous to the Hebrews, accounts will be found in separate articles under writings, their respective titles. The writings which are ascribed to him outside the canon, and which are all unquestionably pseudonymous, are the following. (1) The Epistle to the Laodiceans. This is sup posed to be the letter mentioned in Col. iv. 16 ; it has been recog nized as apocryphal from early times (Jer., Catal. script, eccl., c. 5 ; Theodoret on Coloss. iv. 16, &c. ), but it is found in many Latin MSS. of the New Testament. The text, which is a cento from genuine Pauline epistles, will be found, e.g., in Anger, Ucber den Laodicener brief, Leipsic, 1843 ; Lightfoot, Colossians, p. 274, who also gives a convenient summary of the views which have been held respecting the letter which is actually mentioned. (2) A Third Epistle to the Corinthians, i.e., the letter mentioned in 1 Cor. v. 9. This is found in an Armenian version, together with an equally apo cryphal letter of the Corinthians to Paul ; it has been several times printed, the best edition of it being that of Aucher, Armenian and English Grammar, Venice, 1819, p. 183. An English translation will be found in Stanley, Epistles of St Paul to the Corinthians, p. 593. (3) Letters between Paul and Seneca. These are first mentioned by Jerome, Catal. script, cedes., c. 12, and Augustine, Epist. 54(153), ad Maccdonium, and have given rise to interesting discussions as to the possibility of personal relations having actually existed be tween the two men. The letters will be found in most editions of Seneca, e.g., ed. Hasse, vol. iii. 476 ; for the questions which have been raised concerning them reference may conveniently be made to Funk, "Der Briefwechsel des Paulus mit Seneca," in the Theol. Quartalschr., Tubingen, 1867, p. 602, and Lightfoot, Philippians, p. 327. Besides these apocryphal letters there are several apocry phal works which profess to add to our information respecting his life ; the most important of these are (1) The Acts of Peter and Paul, (2) The Acts of Paul and Thecla, (3) The Apocalypse of Paul ; the first two are printed in Tischendorf s Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha, pp. 1, 40, the third in his Apocalypses Mosis, Esrse, Pauli, p. 34 ; all three will be found in an English version in The Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, and Revelations, translated by A. Walker, Edinburgh, 1870 ; an elaborate and trustworthy account of them will appear in the not yet completed work of R. A. Lipsius, Die apokryphen Apostdgcsclrichtcn und Apostellcgenden. Pauline Theology. The consideration of Paul s theology is rendered difficult by Difficul- several circumstances. Some of these circumstances attach to the ties at- theology itself. (1) It has two elements, the logical and the mysti- taching cal, which are seldom altogether separable from each other ; it to his cannot be stated in a consecutive series of syllogisms, nor can any theology, adequate view of it leave out of sight elements which belong to another order of thought than that within which the modern world ordinarily moves. (2) He belonged to an age in which abstract conceptions had a greater power over men s minds than they have now ; the extreme tendency of that feature of his age is seen in Gnosticism, which not only gave abstract ideas an independent existence but endowed them with personality ; and, although he was not a Gnostic, yet he lived at a time at which Gnosticism was conceivable, and some of his own expressions are not out of har mony with it. (3) Since he was in some instances attaching new meanings to words which were already in use, and since in such a case it is difficult for even the most rigidly logical writer to keep the new meaning entirely distinct from the old, it is natural to find that a writer of Paul s temperament, especially when writing as he did under different circumstances and to different classes of people, should sometimes use the same word in different senses. Other circumstances arise from the manner in which his theology 3 See Krenkel, " Das korperliche Leiden des Paulus," in the Zeitschr. f. wissensch. Theol., 1873, p. 238 ; and for various views, Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 188 ; Farrar, St Paul, vol. L, Excurs. x. p. 652.