by Will Durant
Thereafter Judaic Christianity waned in number and power, and yielded the new religion to be transformed by the Greek mind. Galilee, where Christ had lived nearly all his life, and where the Magdalene and the other women who had been among the first to follow him were now lost in obscurity, turned a deaf ear to the preachers who proclaimed the Nazarene as the Son of God. The Jews, who thirsted for liberty, and reminded themselves daily that “the Lord is One,” were repelled by a Messiah who ignored their struggle for independence, and were scandalized by the announcement that a god had been born in a cave or stable in one of their villages. Judaic Christianity survived for five centuries in a little group of Syriac Christians called Ebionim (“the poor”), who practiced Christian poverty and the full Jewish Law. At the end of the second century the Church condemned them as heretics.
Meanwhile the apostles and disciples had spread the Good News, chiefly among the Jews of the Dispersion,14 from Damascus to Rome. Philip made converts in Samaria and Caesarea, John developed a strong church in Ephesus, and Peter preached in the cities of Syria. Like most of the apostles, Peter took a “sister” with him on his missions to serve as his wife and aide.15 He healed the sick so successfully that at Samaria a magician, Simon Magus, offered him money for a share in his mysterious powers. At Joppa he raised Tabitha from apparent death; at Caesarea he won a Roman centurion to Christianity. A vision, says the Book of Acts, convinced him that he should accept pagan as well as Jewish converts; and from this time forward, with some amiable vacillations, he contented himself with baptizing, rather than also circumcizing, non-Jewish proselytes. We feel some of the ardor of these early missionaries in the first epistle of Peter:
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those [Christian Jews] who are scattered as foreigners over Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia . . . God bless you and give you perfect peace. . . . My dearly beloved, I pray you as aliens and exiles, to live upright lives among the gentiles so that . . . they may, from observing the uprightness of your conduct, come to praise God. . . . Submit to all human authority for the Master’s sake. . . . Live like free men, but do not make your freedom an excuse for wrong doing. . . . Servants, be submissive to your masters, and perfectly respectful to them; not only to those who are kind and considerate, but also to those who are unreasonable. You married women, likewise, must be submissive to your husbands, so that any who refuse to believe . . . may be won over when they see how chaste and submissive you are. You must not adopt the external attractions of arranging your hair or wearing jewelry; you must be a quiet and gentle spirit. You married men also must be considerate to your wives; show deference to women as the weaker sex, sharing the gift of life with you. . . . Return not evil for evil. . . . Above all keep your love for one another strong, for love covers a multitude of sins.16
We do not know when and by what stages Peter made his way to Rome. Jerome (ca. 390) dates his first arrival there as early as 42. The tradition that he played a leading role in establishing the Christian community in the capital has survived all criticism.17 Lactantius speaks of Peter’s coming to Rome in Nero’s reign;18 probably the apostle visited the city on divers occasions. He free and Paul in prison labored as rivals to win converts there, until both of them suffered martyrdom, perhaps in the same year 64.19 Origen reports that Peter “was crucified head downward, for he had asked that he might suffer that way,”20 perhaps hoping that in that position death would come sooner, or (said the opinion of the faithful) holding himself unworthy to die in the same manner as Christ. Ancient texts testify that his wife was killed with him and that he had to see her led to execution.21 A later story named Nero’s Circus, on the Vatican field, as the place of his death. Over the site the Cathedral of St. Peter rose, and claimed to enshrine his bones.
His missions in Asia Minor and Rome must have helped to preserve many Judaic elements in Christianity. Through him and the other apostles it inherited Jewish monotheism, puritanism, and eschatology. Through them and Paul the Old Testament became the only Bible that first-century Christianity knew. Till 70 Christianity was preached chiefly in synagogues or among Jews. The form, ceremony, and vestments of Hebrew worship passed down into Christian ritual. The Paschal lamb of sacrifice was sublimated in the Agnus Dei—the expiatory Lamb of God—of the Catholic Mass. The appointment of elders (presbyteri, priests) to govern the churches was adopted from Jewish methods of administering the synagogue. Many Judaic festivals—e.g., Passover and Pentecost—were accepted into the Christian calendar, however altered in content and date. The Jewish Dispersion aided the rapid dissemination of Christianity; the frequent movement of Jews from city to city, and their connections throughout the Empire, co-operated with commerce, Roman roads, and the Roman peace, to open a path for the Christian faith. In Christ and Peter Christianity was Jewish; in Paul it became half Greek; in Catholicism it became half Roman. In Protestantism the Judaic element and emphasis were restored.
II. PAUL
1. The Persecutor
The founder of Christian theology was born at Tarsus, in Cilicia, about the tenth year of our era. His father was a Pharisee, and brought up the youth in the fervent principles of that sect; the Apostle of the Gentiles never ceased to consider himself a Pharisee, even after he had rejected the Judaic Law. The father was also a Roman citizen, and transmitted the precious franchise to his son. Probably the name Paul was the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Saul, so that both names belonged to the apostle from infancy.22 He did not receive a classical education, for no Pharisee would have permitted such outright Hellenism in his son, and no man with Greek training would have written the bad Greek of the Epistles. Nevertheless, he learned to speak the language with sufficient fluency to address an Athenian audience, and he occasionally referred to famous passages in Greek literature. We may believe that some Stoic theology and ethics passed from the university environment of Tarsus into the Christianity of Paul. So he uses the Stoic term pneuma (breath) for what his English translators call spirit. Like most Greek cities, Tarsus had followers of the Orphic or other mystery religions, who believed that the god they worshiped had died for them, had risen from the grave, and would, if appealed to by lively faith and proper ritual, save them from Hades, and share with them his gift of eternal and blessed life.23 The mystery religions prepared the Greeks for Paul, and Paul for the Greeks.
After the youth had learned the trade of tentmaking, and had received instruction in the local synagogue, his father sent him to Jerusalem, where, Paul tells us, he was “educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strict manner of the Law.”24 Gamaliel was reputedly the grandson of Hillel; he succeeded Hillel as president of the Sanhedrin, and carried on the tradition of interpreting the Law with a lenient regard for the frailty of mankind. Stricter Pharisees were shocked to find him gazing appreciatively even upon pagan women.25 He was so learned that the Jews, who keenly honor scholarship, called him “the beauty of the Law,” and gave to him first, as to only six men after him, the title of rabban, “our master.” From him and others Paul learned that shrewd and subtle, sometimes casuistic and sophistical, manner of Biblical interpretation which was to disport itself in the Talmud. Despite Paul’s initiation into Hellenism he remained to the end a Jew in mind and character, uttered no doubt of the Torah’s inspiration, and proudly maintained the divine election of the Jews as the medium of man’s salvation.
He describes himself as “insignificant in appearance,”26 and adds: “to keep me from being too much elated, a bitter physical affliction was sent me”;27 he does not further specify. Tradition pictured him at fifty as a bent and bald and bearded ascetic, with vast forehead, pale face, stern countenance, and piercing eyes; Dürer imagined him so in one of the greatest drawings of all time; but in truth these representations are literature and art, not history.
His mind was of a type frequent among Jews: penetrating and passionate rather than genial and urbane; emotional and imaginative rather than objective and impartial; he was powerful in action becaus
e he was narrow in thought. Even more than Spinoza he was a “God-intoxicated man,” consumed with religious enthusiasm in the literal sense of this word—holding “a god within.” He believed himself divinely inspired, and endowed with the ability to work miracles. He was also a practical soul, capable of laborious organization, impatiently patient in founding and preserving Christian communities. As in so many men, his faults and virtues were near allied and mutually indispensable. He was impetuous and courageous, dogmatic and decisive, domineering and energetic, fanatical and creative, proud before man and humble before God, violently wrathful and capable of the tenderest love. He advised his followers to “bless them that persecute you,” but he could hope that his enemies—“the party of circumcision”—“would get themselves emasculated.”28 He knew his failings, struggled against them, and begged his converts to “put up with a little folly from me.”29 The postscript to his first epistle to the Corinthians sums him up: “This farewell I, Paul, add in my own hand. A curse upon anyone who has no love for the Lord! Lord, come quickly! The blessing of the Lord Jesus be with you! My love be with you all.” He was what he had to be to do what he did.
He began by attacking Christianity in the name of Judaism, and ended by rejecting Judaism in the name of Christ; at every moment he was an apostle. Shocked by Stephen’s disrespect for the Law, he joined in killing him, and led the first persecution of Christians in Jerusalem. Hearing that the new faith had made converts in Damascus, he obtained authorization from the high priest to go there, arrest all “who belonged to the Way,” and bring them in chains to Jerusalem (A.D. 31?).30 It may be that the fervor of his persecution was due to secret doubts; he could be cruel, but not without remorse; possibly the vision of Stephen stoned to death, perhaps even some youthful glimpse of Golgotha, troubled his memory and his journey, and fevered his imagination. As his party neared Damascus, says the Acts,
a sudden light flashed upon him from heaven, and he fell to the ground. Then he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” “Who are you, sir?” he asked. “I am Jesus,”. . . said the voice. . . . Saul’s fellow-travelers stood speechless, for they heard the voice but could not see anyone. When he got up from the ground and opened his eyes he could see nothing. They had to take him by the hand and lead him into Damascus. For three days he could not see.31
No one can say what natural processes underlay this pivotal experience The fatigue of a long journey, the strength of the desert sun, perhaps a stroke of heat lightning in the sky, acting by accumulation upon a frail and possibly epileptic body, and a mind tortured by doubt and guilt, may have brought to culmination the half-conscious process by which the passionate denier became the ablest preacher of Stephen’s Christ. His Greek environment in Tarsus had spoken of a Soter or Saviour who redeemed mankind; his Jewish lore had told of a Messiah to come; how could he be sure that this mysterious and fascinating Jesus, for whom men were ready to die, was not the promised one? When, weak and still blind at the end of his journey, he felt upon his face the kindly, soothing hands of a converted Jew, “something like scales dropped from his eyes, and his sight was restored; he got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, regained his strength.”32 A few days later he entered the synagogues of Damascus, and told their congregations that Jesus was the Son of God.
2. The Missionary
The governor of Damascus, urged by the offended Jews, issued an order for Paul’s arrest; Paul’s new friends lowered him in a basket over the city walls. For three years, he tells us, he preached Christ in the hamlets of Arabia. Returning to Jerusalem, he won the forgiveness and friendship of Peter, and lived with him for a while. Most of the apostles distrusted him, but Barnabas, himself a recent convert, gave him a cordial hand, and persuaded the Jerusalem church to commission its persecutor as a bearer of the Good News that the Messiah had come and would soon establish the Kingdom. The Greek-speaking Jews to whom he brought the Gospel tried to kill him, and the apostles, perhaps fearing that his ardor would endanger them all, sent him to Tarsus.
For eight years he was lost to history in his native city; and perhaps again he felt the influence of the mystic salvation theology popular among the Greeks. Then Barnabas came and asked his aid in ministering to the church at Antioch. Working together (43-44?), they made so many converts that Antioch soon led all other cities in the number of its Christians. There for the first time the “Believers,” “Disciples,” “Brethren,” or “Saints,” as they had called themselves, received from the pagans, perhaps in scorn, the name Christianoi—followers of the Messiah or Anointed One. There too, for the first time, gentiles (i.e., people of the gentes or nations) were won to the new faith. Most of these were “God-fearers,” predominantly women, who had already accepted the monotheism, and in some part the ritual, of the Jews.
The Antioch converts were not as poor as those in Jerusalem; a considerable minority belonged to the merchant class. With the enthusiasm of a youthful and growing movement, they raised a fund to spread the Gospel. The elders of the church “laid their hands upon” Barnabas and Paul, and sent them out on what history, unduly belittling Barnabas, calls the “first missionary journey of Saint Paul” (45-47?). They sailed to Cyprus, and met with encouraging success among the many Jews of that island. From Paphos they took ship to Perga in Pamphylia, and traveled over dangerous mountain roads to Antioch in Pisidia. The synagogue gave them a courteous hearing; but when they began to preach to gentiles as well, the orthodox Jews persuaded the municipal officers to banish the missionaries. Similar difficulties developed at Iconium; and at Lystra Paul was stoned, dragged out of the town, and left for dead. Still “full of the joy of the Holy Spirit,” Paul and Barnabas carried the Gospel to Derbe. Then they returned by the same route to Perga, and sailed to Syrian Antioch. There they found themselves faced by the most crucial problem in the history of Christianity.
For some leading disciples of Jerusalem, hearing that the two preachers were accepting gentile converts without requiring circumcision, had come to Antioch “to teach the brethren that unless they were circumcized as Moses prescribed, they could not be saved.”33 To the Jew circumcision was not so much a ritual of health as a holy symbol of his people’s ancient covenant with God; and the Christian Jew was appalled at the thought of breaking that covenant. For their part Paul and Barnabas realized that if these emissaries had their way, Christianity would never be accepted by any significant number of gentiles; it would remain “a Jewish heresy” (as Heine was to call it), and would fade out in a century. They went down to Jerusalem (50?) and fought the matter out with the apostles, nearly all of whom were still faithful worshipers in the Temple. James was reluctant to consent; Peter defended the two missionaries; finally it was agreed that pagan proselytes should be required only to abstain from immorality and from the eating of sacrificial or strangled animals.34 Apparently Paul eased the way by promising financial support for the impoverished community at Jerusalem from the swelling funds of the Antioch church.35
The issue, however, was too vital to be so easily laid. A second group of orthodox Jewish Christians came from Jerusalem to Antioch, found Peter eating with gentiles, and persuaded him to separate himself, with the converted Jews, from the uncircumcized proselytes. We do not know Peter’s side of this episode; Paul tells us that “he withstood Peter to his face” at Antioch,36 and accused him of hypocrisy; perhaps Peter had merely wished, like Paul, to be “all things to all men.”
Probably in the year 50 Paul left on his second missionary journey. He had quarreled with Barnabas, who now disappeared from history in his native Cyprus. Revisiting his churches in Asia Minor, Paul attached to himself at Lystra a young disciple named Timothy, whom he came to love with a profound affection that had long been starved for an object. Together they went through Phrygia and Galatia as far north as Alexandria Troas. Here Paul made the acquaintance of Luke, an uncircumcized proselyte to Judaism, a man of good mind and heart, probably the author of the Third Gospel and the
Book of Acts—both designed to soften the conflicts that from the beginning marked the history of Christianity. From Troas Paul, Timothy, and another aide, Silas, sailed to Macedonia, for the first time touching European soil. At Philippi, where Antony had conquered Brutus, Paul and Silas were arrested as disturbers of the peace, were scourged and jailed, but were freed on the discovery that they were Roman citizens. Passing on to Thessalonica, Paul went to the synagogue, and for three Sabbaths preached to the Jews. A few were convinced, and organized a church; others roused the town against Paul on the ground that he was proclaiming a new king; and his friends had to spirit him away to Beraea during the night. There “the Jews received the message with great eagerness”; but the Thessalonians came to denounce Paul as an enemy of Judaism, and he took ship for Athens (51?), discouraged and alone.
Here, in the heart of pagan religion, science, and philosophy, he found himself quite friendless. There were few Jews to give him a hearing; he had to take his stand in the market place, like any modern haranguer of city crowds, and compete with a dozen rivals for passing ears. Some listeners argued with him; some laughed at him, and asked, “What is this ragpicker trying to make out?”37 Several were interested, and led him up to the Areopagus, or Hill of Mars, for a quieter hearing. He told them how he had noted, in Athens, an altar inscribed “To an Unknown God”; this dedication, which probably expressed the desire of the donors to thank, appease, or enlist the aid of a god of whose name they were not certain, Paul interpreted as a confession of ignorance concerning the nature of God. He proceeded with high eloquence:
Whom therefore ye worship though ye know him not, him I declare unto you. God, who made the world and all things therein . . . dwells not in temples made with hands. ... It is he that giveth life and breath unto all. . . . And he made of one blood all the nations of mankind . . . that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him, though he be not far from us; for in him we live and move and have our being, as certain also of your own poets have said.III . . . Forasmuch, then, as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by the art and device of man. Howbeit, those past times of ignorance God hath overlooked; but now he commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because he hath appointed a day wherein he will judge the world ... by that Man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all, in that he hath raised him from the dead.38