The Life of Paul Part 4 – The Making of Saul of Tarsus and the Turmoil of A.D. 27–34

Let’s tell stories. You will use The Story of My Life as Told by Jesus Christ for the years 26, 27, 28, 29, and 30. We’re now in the year 27. It is Saul of Tarsus; he has heard of John the Baptist. Even in his synagogue in Tarsus, there is laughter. There is interest in this raven-headed man who is insulting not only the Pharisees but the Sadducees. He listens because he hears of the coming of the Messiah, and in his mind, he sees an Alexander the Great storming through the nations of the world, conquering them in the name of the living God.

In the year 27, he does not hear anything about the man who has befriended and become, and is rumored to be a kin of John the Baptist. The matter of messiahs is so common. Every man, it seems, who has something new to consider, eventually calls himself the Messiah. But the prophet, a man in camel hair and eating locusts and honey and only preaching in the wilderness: that captivated the mind of everyone. The only thing he knows that happened in the years 26 and 27 is that the emperor left Campania, one of the hills of Rome, and came to Capri, taking up his rule from there, while a man named Sejanus ruled in his stead.

Now, at this very time, there is a 15-year-old boy who will one day be emperor. Fate alone will decide that because there is too much intrigue to guess who might be the survivors, but this we can know, that in 27 there was one thing going on that would continue on until the death of the emperor Tiberius, and that is intrigue. Intrigue, plots, banishment, and death. There is a woman named Agrippina. She is actually the third Agrippina, named after a friend of Julius Caesar and a friend of Augustus Caesar, and there is no better way to get in good with the emperor than to name one of your children after one of the friends of the emperor. What is happening now is that this particular Agrippina will soon be banished. She will be one of many who, in these next few years, 10 of them, one after another, will be dying mysteriously, sent away to places even till this day no one recognizes.

The year 27 is without note. Then comes the year 28, when John the Baptist is making a great deal of enemies all over Israel. They had stoned prophets previously to this, and one day very soon they will say if we lived in those ages, we would not have stoned any of those prophets. The year 27 comes. The year 28 comes. 27, 28… then 29 becomes remarkable in the Roman Empire, and everyone hears about it. Out of the intrigue of the palace and the intrigue going on in Capri, and the growing number of people who disappear there, and those who are seen being thrown off a thousand-foot cliff on Capri, and the sailors beneath, bashing their heads in while they drowned.

There’s something else going on, and that is Sejanus, little by little, taking control of the centurion guards, gathering all of the guards, not scattered throughout the city of Rome, but all into one place, so that his commands can be carried out immediately. He is courting any woman who might turn out to be his privileged door to the emperor and to the reign. What he does not know is that plots have counterplots, and in the year 29, Tiberius announces mysteriously that he will be coming back to Rome and to the Senate. The rumor is that this man, who has already risen to be something very high in the ranks of the Roman …he is the prefect, and rumor has it that he might even be adopted by Tiberius, which would put him number one to the throne upon the death of Tiberius.

Sejanus walks into the Senate. Tiberius is there. He begins with a few words of praise. Everyone is smiling. Sejanus feels very comfortable and very anticipatory. And then the words turn, and little by little, Tiberius lays one charge after another against Sejanus and then pronounces this man an enemy of the Roman Empire.

By nightfall, the year 29, there are children playing in the streets of Rome. They have a ball there, kicking around the streets. It will eventually be thrown into the river Tigris. The ball is a human head. It was once the head of Sejanus. Immediately, someone takes his place. His name is Macro, and Macro will serve two emperors and will, in turn, have the privilege of being known as the man who put two emperors to death.

There’s something else that happens in A.D. 29. The man who rules over Galilee is one of the sons of Herod. His name is Herod Antipas. Every year, he must go to Rome to report to the emperor. So must all of the 104 people who head the 104 provinces of the empire. When he is there, he meets his niece, his half-sister as a child, a grown woman who herself has a daughter, and this is evil meeting of evil. And so entranced by so singular a mind as he would have, one that matches his own, he divorces his wife, an act he will later regret, for she is the daughter of Aretas IV, a man not to be trifled with, the man who rules over the area, including the land of Petra.

She comes home. Is this his bride? It is the year 29, and the raven-headed John the Baptist begins to denounce Herod in a way that only John the Baptist could, accusing him of incest, for a man is not supposed to marry his niece. Of all the sins upon which some royalty might be forgiven, the one thing that is loathsome even to the worst of the Romans is incest. But in this case, it’s a niece. Not quite as bad as a sister or a brother, but the heart of Herodias…Herodias wants John the Baptist dead.

In the meantime, the young man in Tarsus is applying his trade as a tentmaker. He’s now approximately 18 years old. He has a young sister, by the way, who will play a high role in the drama of the man Paul of Tarsus. Paul has his mind set on but one thing, and that is to go to live in Jerusalem and sit at the feet of Gamaliel. And Gamaliel is at this very moment making headway toward becoming the chief rabbi of all the Roman Empire and, in fact, of all the people of Israel.

John the Baptist is taken to a fortress out in the wilderness. Herod the Great built it along with one or two other fortresses where he could flee in case of an invasion. And this particular one is pronounced Machaerus. And that’s where John is put in prison, and he waits for the judgment of Herod. One day at the banquet, Herod, and this will be talked about in every marketplace in the Roman Empire, Herod asked the young and beautiful Salome, daughter of Herodias, to dance, and she danced so beautifully, and he turned to the young girl and made an offer to her. Salome, who is offered anything up to half his kingdom, says, “the head of John the Baptist.”