The Life of Paul Part 1 – Paul’s Childhood

He was born in 12 AD. His ancestors had fled to Cilicia and to Tarsus just a little over a hundred years earlier, during the time of the Israeli war with Syria, which developed into the Maccabean revolt. The town of Tarsus is nestled at the bottom of the Taurus mountains, 12 miles inland from the Mediterranean in the farthest north and eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea. Nonetheless, it is a seaport town. It is 12 miles in from the sea, but there is a river called the Cednus River, CEDNUS, that flows from the city into the Mediterranean Sea and can hold the largest ships in all the world. Those can navigate right up to the very center and heart of the city.

It is one of the three intellectual cities of the world, coming in third behind Athens and Alexandria of Egypt. Some of the best-known and well-thought-of philosophers in all the world have taught in the city of Tarsus. The names of those teachers are august, but for a Jewish boy growing up in Tarsus, he would never darken the door of any Greek school. His education was totally and completely within the walls of his home and then the synagogue that was located there.

As a child, his earliest recollections were of stories his mother told him about the great people of the Jewish Hebrew race, such as Joshua and Saul, after whom he had been named, as well as people like Samson, Deborah, and Moses. These were the names that lived within his heart. But at the age of six, he was transferred to the synagogue there with other boys his age. He was taught the Torah in Hebrew. The education was very simple. The teacher would make a statement, the teacher being the rabbi, and the student would repeat. Statement, repeat, statement, repeat. This was his education until he reached the age of 13. At the same time, he was becoming trilingual, quadri-lingual. Hebrew in his home. Also, that strange language that had been spoken and was still spoken by Jesus, Aramaic. Out in the city, he had learned to speak Greek, and because his father did so much business in Latin and with Latin soldiers, he was obliged also to learn that language. So, he could move comfortably between Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic by the time he reached 13 years old.

As he wandered the streets, the dominant language was Greek, but many, many soldiers made their way to Tarsus of Cilicia for one reason only. Out of the 60 to 80,000 soldiers that were commanded by the Roman Empire, every one of them carried their own tent. But there was only one kind of tent in the world that was waterproof, and that was the one that was manufactured in the city of Tarsus, and it was to this clientele, this trade that Saul’s father was engaged in.

As he walked the streets of the city, he saw the gymnasium, the amphitheater, and the great circle racetrack, where many games were played and numerous horse races were held; it was called the Hippodrome. It was a city with the same makeup and composition, and its games and outlook were similar to those of Rome. The one thing that was looked upon as the best in a young man was how fast and how far he could run. And after that was jumping and wrestling. These are activities that Saul never once engaged in, nor did he ever walk into the hippodrome. He heard about the races; he knew them well. And then there were the baths of the city, all of them decorated with great legendary heroes of the past and of the present. Great athletes who had done daring things would find that their busts engraved in marble would often be found in the little alcoves of the baths. Again, none of this ever touched the young man, Saul.

At the age of 13, he engaged in a ritual, and that ritual was as old as the days of Moses. And it matters not where you might be, anywhere in the world. The word is always spoken the same way. Bar mitzvah. Bar meaning son, mitzvah of the law. There in that ceremony, so prized and looked forward to, so envied and so desired for any Hebrew child to become a son of the law, that until that day he had heard of the law, had been taught the law, that from that day forward he was to obey the law. And so, something was given to him to put on his arm. And the word was Tefillin: a little box strapped to his arm with a small scroll with a scripture on it. A man could not enter a Jewish synagogue without that small box attached to his arm. And Saul would have that Tefillin torn off his arm again and again and again and again. He found another to take its place. But to have it ripped from your arm was to say this man is not a son of the law.

It was still while he was early in his time, his age, that even as a small child, he knew what it was he would soon be doing and anticipated it. It all had to do with a proverbial saying that was lost somewhere there in antiquity. It goes like this: any Hebrew who does not teach his child a skill is raising a thief. For a man without a skill will eat the bread of other people rather than his own, thereby stealing food from the mouth of another.

There was another proverb, and it was, Let no rabbi use his place in society to shirk the responsibility of working with his own hands. So it was that an introduction to the skill he would be taught. Saul’s father took him high up into the mountains above Cilicia. The hills to the east and to the west were covered with a strange-looking creature, sheep that had the wiriest, thickest of all wool. So, for days with his father, he traveled almost hand over fist until he came to the top of the Taurus mountains. The Taurus mountains, reaching to the east of him, were about 40 miles, but toward the west, they reached all the way to Galatia and to Pamphylia; over 200 miles.

There on the top of the Tarsus mountains, he watched his father trade with the shepherds. These were friends of his father. They had been selling wool to his father throughout the lifetime not only of his father but also his grandfather, his great-grandfather, and his great-great-grandfather. And so, the wool was cut with a knife there in front of Saul’s own eyes, sack after sack after sack was purchased by his father, and then the shepherds would bring it all the way to Tarsus. Once it was there, it was Saul’s duty to learn how to pull that wool apart by hand until it was tiny, thin strips of wool, and then that wool was spun round and round as it was fed onto the spindle. After that was done, the somewhat threadlike wool was then put into a still spinning wheel, and there it was refined even more until finally there was a spool, an almost endless spool of thread made from the wool of the Cilician goat and the Cilician sheep.

It was the hair, the wool of the Cilician sheep, that was the most sought-after of all the wool within the Roman Empire. And so, the thread was attached north and south upon a loom, and then with a shuttle, in and out, in and out, from east to west horizontally. His shuttle went back and forth, then was brought down hard, the looms receiving a hard blow that pushed thread against thread, over and over, until it was so compressed. It would do something that no other wool in the world could do: it could repel water. It was for this that the Cilician wool was sought throughout the world, primarily by soldiers of the empire and for slaves’ garments, for it was worn for a long, long time and even for the sails of the ships that supplied the Mediterranean Sea. His grandfather would often say that there were other uses for this material. It could also be dyed into beautiful colors. And with the skill of the best of those who were weavers, great pieces of material could be placed together and then dyed in beautiful colors. The most revered and the most exclusive of all colors being that of purple, for it was to be used only for those of the royal families of the different nations of the world. And so it was that a young boy learned to pull the wool of sheep out of a sack, separate it, spin it, then put it on a wheel and spin it again until it had become refined into fine thread, thread which was made into wool.

Many a day, someone would come to the door of their home, inquiring and being escorted, but never touched, to the back of the building. And these tall, hardened, often scarred men, the legion of the Roman Empire, would haggle for the purchase of a tent. Saul also learned how to bring one piece of cloth to another and weave them into one. He also learned how to repair the cloth. He also learned how to attach copper pins together so that the tent can be wrapped around sticks of wood until they can hold up a tent the size of a man.