Chapter Twenty SAUL/PAUL THE APOSTLE (II). Having seen a great light, and heard a heavenly voice, Acts reports, Saul arose from the ground in a state of blindness. Those who were with him had to lead him by the hand. So they brought him to Damascus. There, he was visited by a Nazarene named Ananias, whom chapter 22 of Acts (in a speech by Saul) describes as "a devout man according to the law, having a good report of all the Jews which dwelt there." This Ananias spent much time with Saul, persuading him to become a Nazarene. After a while, "the scales fell from Saul's eyes", and he was able to see the "truth" of the "gospel" of Jesus. His blindness also left him. Having become a "convert" to the Assembly of the Faithfull, Saul began to preach the faith of the Nazarenes among the Jews of Damascus with the same zeal in which he had preached hatred of them. He now became the recipient of the mistrust of the Nazarenes and the antagonism of the Damascene authorities. Acts, chapter 9, says that the Jews of Damascus were antipathetic to Saul and tried to have him arrested. Yet Saul himself, in chapter 11 of his seceond epistle to the Corinthians, says that Aretas, king of the Nabateans was the one who wanted to have him arrested. Saul, finding his position untennable, left Damascus and travelled to "Arabia" where he spent about three years meditating on, and developing his own understanding of the Nazarene message. We remember that he himself reported that he did not go to Jerusalem to confer with Peter and James immediately upon his change of heart and subsequent acceptance of Jesus as the messiah of Israel. He did not even meet them until AFTER his self imposed exile of three years. By then, he was already on the way to having internalized his own interpretation of the life and death of Jesus, and of his own role of importance in the future destiny of the movement, and of the teaching of his interpreatation of it. Acts' statement that the Jews of Damascus became Saul's enemies because he became a Nazarene is completely unintelligible if Saul him- self said that Ananias, his Nazarene tutor, was a Torah observant Jew who was well respected by the Jewish community of Damascus. Luke, the author of Acts, constantly displays his anti-Jewish bias in his de- sciptions of the so-called Jewish persecutions of Saul. If indeed Saul WAS persecuted by Jews at times, it was NOT due to his being a Naza- rene but to his antagonistic theology and personality, and to his con- stant self-identification with gentiles rather than with Jews. Saul himself reports that Aretas, not the Damascene Jewish com- munity, tried to have him arrested. Damascus, at this time, was under the control of the Nabateans, an Arabic people whose kingdom encompassed present-day Jordan and part of present-day Syria. Undoubtedly Aretas had received complaints about Saul as a disturber of the peace, a political agitator, and a persecutor of the Nazarenes to whom he, Aretas, has extended political asylum. Reports that Saul had himself become a Nazarene meant nothing to Aretas since the Nazarenes themselves said that they did not trust him. If the Jews of Damascus had resentment against Saul, an additional reason may have been that they did not like Sadducean stooges who betrayed other Jews, Nazarene or otherwise, to the Romans. As to Saul's journey to "Arabia", this does not mean the Arabian penninsula now occupied by the Saudis, but rather the Trans-jordanian dessert. There Saul remained for three years as stated, upon which time he returned to Damascus to rejoin the Nazarene community. His decision to return to Damascus meant that, as far as he was concerned, the poli- tical atmosphere there had once again become safe for him. As it turned out, Saul was unable to remain in Damascus this second time as well. He had succeeded in convincing the Nazarenes that he was indeed loyal to their cause. However, he had once been a tool of the Sadducean quislings, and had therefore aroused the ire of the Zealots who now took a vow to kill him. When it became known that he was a marked man, the Nazarenes helped him escape from the city. It was then, and only then, that he decided to go up to Jerusalem and meet with the apostles. Upon his arrival in Jerusalem, Saul received a rather cold welcome from the apostles. They still remembered his former persecution of Nazarenes, and still distrusted him even after the three years he had spent as a member of their sect. In effect, they initially refused to see him or to have anything to do with him. However, soon afterward, he succeeded in making friends with one Barnabas, a Levite of Cyprus, of whom Luke says "he was a good man, and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith; and (through him) much people was added unto the lord" (11:24). Acts says that Barnabas was able to secure an audience for Saul with the apostles, vouching for his reliability and zealousness for the movement. We are told that he met "the apostles" but we recall that Saul, in his own letter to the Galatians, claims that he only met with James and Peter, and spent 15 days with them. At this time, he was probably able to learn more details about the earthly life of Jesus, to which he later on was able to give his own interpretation, for we must remember that he himself said, in that same epistle to the Galatians, that the traditions ("gospel") that he recieved were not of man but directly from heaven. At a later point, we shall have occaision to examine one such tradition, namely, the sharing of the bread and wine at the Last Supper, or as it is known in Christianity, the Eucharist. During his two week stay in Jerusalem, he again displayed his uncanny knack for making himself personna non grata. He disputed with the "Grecians" about some religio-political matter (Luke covers up the gist of the conversations). He managed to raise the ire of some of the Greek-speaking Jews in the Holy City, and they attempted to kill him. Once again, he had to be saved by his fellow Nazarenes who spirited him away to Caesaria, and from there put him on a ship bound for his native city of Tarsus where he was to remain for a decade. His activities in Tarsus during those ten years are unrecorded but it is safe to speculate that he spent them as an active Nazarene, preaching the good news of the man he believed to be the resurrected messiah, as well as continuing to develop his own unique understanding of the significance of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. His meeting with Peter and James had enabled him to expand his knowledge of details about Jesus which previously he had only had a general idea. As far as the apostles of Jerusalem were concerned, Saul's de- parture from the Holy Land was merely part of the general exodus of the Greek-speaking Nazarenes, an exodus which caused the authorities to leave the "Palestinian" body of believers in peace. As a matter of fact, Luke immediately follows his description of Saul's departure with the following statement: "Then had the churches rest throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria, and were edified; and walking in the fear of the L--d, and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, were multiplied." Acts 9:31 That is to say, once the Assembly of the Faithfull were disen- cumbered of the Hellenic activist messianists, they were allowed to continue their proselytizing activities throughout the Land, and were somewhat sucessfull in adding to their numbers. By the mention of "Samaria" in verse 31, the author of Acts merely wished to say that ALL the Land of Israel became open to the Nazarene activity. With the arrival of this new freedom from government harrassment, the apostle Peter went travelling through the cities of the Mediteranean coast, on a personal "crusade" of proselytization. It was in the city of Caesarea that Peter came into contact with the Roman centurion Cornelius. "There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian band, A devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway." Acts 10:1-2 Here we are reminded of the centurion at Capernaum (see part 8) who approached Jesus to have his child healed. We recall a similarity of description: "for he loveth our nation, and he hath built us a synagogue" (Luke 7:4-5). Like the centurion at Capernaum, Cornelius is not just any ordinary gentile, but a "G-d Fearer", one sympathetic to Jews and Judaism, yet who had not converted to Judaism. Cornelius is "a devout man" and he gives "much alms to the people". Just as in the case of the Capernaum centurion, Cornelius sends men before him to ask Peter to come to him. Just as in Capernaum, the Jews in Caesarea have to vouch for Cornelius' special friendliness to Israel. "Then Peter went down to the men which were sent unto him from Cornelius; and said, Behold, I am he whom ye seek: what is the cause wherefore ye are come? And they said, Cornelius the centurion, a just man, and one that feareth God, and of good report among all the nation of the Jews ... " Acts 10:21-22 Peter is informed by the centurion that he, Cornelius, has had a vision from G-d who commanded him to seek Peter out and hear learning from him. Apparently this Roman was so pro-Jewish that he too waited for the coming of the Kingdom of G-d. He had heard that the Nazarenes were preaching that the messiah was to come immanently and he came to inquire about Jesus. "Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him." Acts 10:34-35 Peter was obviously so impressed by this Roman's sincerity, that in spite of Jesus' teaching that the disciples were NOT to go to the gentiles, (Mark 7:26-30; Matthew 10:5-6; Matthew 15:21-28), he decided to speak to Cornelius of the Nazarene hope. Since the Italian Band, o of whihch Cornelius was the centurion, was not dispatched to Judea until around 43 CE or 44 CE, this incident had to have taken place after that time. Thus, about a decade and as half after the death of Jesus, a Nazarene felt safe discussing a man who had been EXECUTED AS A REBEL AGAINST ROME TO A ROMAN ARMY OFFICER! Peter was, of course, aware that the Pharisees had taught Jews to draw people near to the Torah (Mishnah Pirke Avot 1:12). Peter was aware that Jesus intended his mission to be for Israel only, so he took a bold step. He was the first of the Nazarenes to actualy do such a thing. He had Cornelius baptized! (Acts 10:47).One has to understand the amazing implications of this. Having this gentile baptized implied that Peter had Cornelius immerse himself in a MIKVEH, the ritualarium of conversion, and although Luke does not specify, also probably had the centurion circumsised. Thus Peter established that the Nazarenes could proselytize gentiles just as the Pharisees were doing. Thus, on that day, Cornelius became the first person to be converted to Judaism and Nazarenism on the very same day. When word of the conversion of Cornelius, at the hands of Peter, reached the Nazarenes at Jerusalem there was some consternation among them. It was not so much that Peter had preached to a gentile that bothered them (since after all, he was a G-d fearer friendly to Jews) as much as the fact that he had entered the man's house and eaten there BEFORE the conversion took place. Peter must have defended himself by saying something to the effect that he felt Heaven had given him the authority to enter the centurion's home to effect the conversion, and that he had not eaten any forbidden foods there. Luke has interjected a story here in which Peter sees a vision from heaven in which a voice tells him not to call unclean that which G-d has cleansed. The story is symbolized by a vision of a sheet descending from heaven containing all the animals of the world. The later Christian overlay has interpreted this story as the symbol of the abolition of the dietary laws but the original tradition presumably used the animals as symbols of the 70 nations of the world, an imagery which we have seen already in the Book of Daniel. One fact that mitigates against this vision symbolizing the end of KASHRUT laws is that James, and the other Nazarene brethren continued to keep those laws. Acts informs us that even the Hellenic Nazarenes scattered abroad in the Nazarene communities in Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Syrian Antioch would only preach to the Jews living there, not to Gentiles. However the story of Peter's conversion of Cornelius must have soon reached Antioch, which had a very large Nazarene community, because certain Cypriot and Cyrenean Nazarenes began to preach to non-Jews, and this despite the fact that Peter, having been sufficiently chastized by his Jerusalem brethren, had decided to back off from prosely- tizing non-Jews and from eating with them. (Saul was to later criticize him for this in one of his epistles - Galatians 2:12-13). We remember that Barnabas, the friend of Saul, was a Cypriot, and he was possibly one of those that began to preach to Gentiles, and although he also required circumcision and conversion of them, nevertheless, James and the other Jerusalem brethren were not happy about this. They probably were still concerned about Jesus' own reluctance to have his disciples speak to non-Jews (Matthew 19:5-6). ----------------------------------------------------------------------- On the other hand, there is something else to be considered; namely, whether or not the incident of the centurion of the Roman Band is historically valid or not. It is essential to remember that Acts of the Apostles is the only fully developed document that the world posseses, purporting to detail the development of Christianity from the time of the resurrection of Jesus to the time of the arrest of Saul and of his detention at Rome. What Acts REALLY is, is Luke's literary attempt to gloss over and harmonize the differences and ANTAGONISMS between the original Nazarenism of the Jerusalem Church, presided over by Peter, James, and John, and the later Christianity of Saul. It is also clear that Saul/Paul is the HERO of Acts which was written long after the Jerusalem Church disappeared (Luke wrote near the end of the first century CE). In order to justify Saul/Paul as the bearer of the "Orthodox" tradition about Jesus, it behooved Luke to "Christianize" the original disciples, making it appear that they always supported Saul in his Christological view of Jesus. This harmonizing methodology was picked up by later New Testament writers as well. However, as shall be seen, Paul's own letters to his various churches show the true state of affairs that existed between him, and Peter and James, - a state of extreme tension and antagonism, that remain unresolved till the day he died. Luke may have well been interested in presenting the "harmony" between Saul and Jesus' disciples first by showing that those original disciples were themselves PARADIGMS of outreach to the gentiles, and so he may have woven a story about the "Rock of the Church", - Peter, venturing out to declare the gentiles "kosher" for conversion to the "faith" of Jesus. Luke had to have been aware of the displeasure of the Jerusalem community and its leaders at the prospect of converting the uncircumcized, and he alludes to it but makes it seem to have been a mild displeasure that was quickly overcome by agreements between Saul and Jesus' own brother, James. (This is actually uncomplementary to James since it makes him appear to have accepted Paul's idea of gathering gentiles in for the reason of AMBITION; that is, what originally started out as messianic leader and his group devoted to bringing about the Jewish Kingdom of G-d on earth, was now blossoming into a great international messianic movement which might be bearing within it the seeds of the overthrow of Rome, a possible divinely directed prelude to the return of Jesus; and the Jerusalem Church would be at the head and heart of this universal movement; truly as Jesus had said, they would share with him in the judgment of the nations.) So Luke may have used the story of the conversion of Cornelius in the same way that he used the story of Philip's conversion of the Samaritans, to prepare the way for his hero, Paul, to address the gentiles about his own view of Jesus (By the way, there has never been any proof that any sort of a Samaritan church ever existed.) Interestingly enough, the anonymous author of the First Epistle of Peter also pushes the figure of the chief apostle Peter into a Pauline mold. Can we indeed ever imagine that the man who followed Jesus and first proclaimed him messiah might ever ad- monish his converts to do homage to the Roman Emperor??? (I Peter 2:13- 17). But Paul who himself was a Roman citizen had no difficulty in expressing these very sentiments of loyalty and acquiescence to Rome and its king. One more piece of evidence relevent to the "harmony" be- tween Peter and Paul can be found in the Second Epistle of Peter whose author remains unknown. "And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be under- stood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction." II Peter 3:15-16 Peter is made to explain that Paul has written things that are "hard to be understood", nevertheles, they are "scripture"!!!!!!!!!!! If Peter then has been made to CANONIZE Paul by one New Testament writer, why would Luke then not do something far less radical; merely use Peter to be a FORE-RUNNER of Paul as John was made to be a fore-runner of Jesus? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Barnabas, at this time, was in Jerusalem, and the apostles decided to send him throughout Syria, as far as Antioch, to oversee the reception of G-d fearing gentiles into the covenant of Abraham and the Assembly of the Faithfull. But Barnabas decided to exceed his authority and did a most fatefull thing. Leaving Antioch, he set forth to Tarsus to seek out his oild friend Saul, and bring him back with him to Antioch to help him in the Nazarene work going on there. It is highly probabal that these two men had been in ocrrespondence over the decade that Saul spent in his native city. Apparently, on their first meeting, Barnabas had been most impressed with Saul's zeal. Barnabas no doubt liked Saul PERSONALLY aside from any regard for his religiosity. But more - Saul was not a man to sit around for ten years engaged in nothing more than speculation. He must have also been very successful in bringing many people to the Nazarene faith in Tarsus, and the news of his success must have reached Barnabas, who felt Saul would be of great assistance to the Nazarene work in the diaspora at large. Saul was happy to be contacted again by his Nazarene friend, whom he chose to believe was an emissary from the Jerusalem apostles, sent to bring him abck into active work. He gladly returned to Barnabas. For a year these two Nazarene friends worked together, preaching and adding new converts, Jews and gentiles, to the Nazarene community in Antioch, which was quickly becoming a major diaspora Nazarene center. Barnabas and Saul were both Greek-speaking Jews who addressed themsleves to other Greek speakers. They therefore, as the other Greek- speaking apostles, had to present their message in the language and the style that their audience would understand. Because the Hebrew word, MESHIACH, literally means "anointed", these apostles translated it for the Greek speakers whom they addressed, as CHRISTOS, the Greek word for "anointed". The early originally non-Jewish converts knew precisely what the term implied because they had been G-d fearers, people who had congregated at synagogues, and had learned about the Jewish faith and expectations of a messiah. However, those gentiles which were not conversant either with Judaism or messianism, thought that it was quite comical that these Nazarenes hailed a resurrected leader known as the "Oily one", and they ridiculed the believers by calling them CHRISTIANOUS,"Oily People" (Acts 11:26). This name was soon picked up by the Greek speaking Nazarenes just as many names of derision and derroga- tion are picked up by those who are the objects of the derrogation, and used with a sense of pride. Since the name Nazarene had little meaning for Greek-speakers, the name Christian began to spread among them as the preferred synonymic choice of self-identification. At this time, the Roman world was hit by a severe economic depres sion which caused the community at Antioch to be concerned about the welfare of the community at Jerusalem. They therefore collected alms among themselves to be sent to the brethren in the Holy City, choosing to send the collection by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.
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