The Life of Paul Part 5 – First Encounters with Christians and the Damascus Road

Saul went around to the back of the temple, and there was an enormous crowd of people listening to men tell stories. There were those who came throughout the day and left throughout the day into the nighttime. Then they broke off into groups and in hundreds of homes all over the city. They ate together, and the next day were out looking for work. He could not be impressed. Nonetheless, Paul listened to the stories. Peter was speaking about some of his first impressions of John the Baptist, his impressions of Jesus, quoting things that John said that brought the entire congregation of people to laughter, things that were funny to them that he did not understand, songs with words in it that he could not grasp and stories of the covenant with Israel, Abraham, Moses that he had never heard before. And some of it caused him a certain amount of uneasiness. Between that and watching them go through the streets singing, laughing, far too much fun, joy, exuberance than for those who really cared and carried the burden of obeying the law every day. They were a people simply too free. It would certainly lead to sin, but this was only the beginning.

There was a synagogue in Jerusalem. His father had helped pay for it, along with other Greeks who were of the diaspora, that is, Hellenic Jews, those whose native tongue was Greek, and there his father had sent money, along with others, to the building of one synagogue in the city of Jerusalem, where the Greek-speaking people could come and have a gathering. That was on Saturday. But for the rest of the week, there were pilgrims coming in; the synagogue was being used for all sorts of things. And then over the years, it had turned into a place, when the synagogue was in no use whatsoever for any other purpose, to debate. This was not Greek debating; this was Hebrew debating. This was question and answer, that was all. But the questions could grow quite long, and the answers could grow quite long also.

And it was at this time that Paul became very disturbed with the use of the synagogue and many other things. Those people behind the temple, he did not consider to be devout Hebrews. They were chasing some false apostle, and yet the property of the temple grounds was being used by them. And here, a synagogue, in which these followers of the way would come in and give their testimony of what had happened to them. They would be asked questions. They were all being treated with a certain amount of reference or deference. And there was going to be something else that happened one day, also.

He heard news. The year now is the year 36, exactly 10 years since John had been speaking in the wilderness, and he heard that the emperor was very ill. This is always disturbing to Jewish people, for they, after all, live in cities from Babylon, perhaps as far over as India, and then westward. There are perhaps even some of them, living among the Franks and their Germanic neighbors. There’s even a rumor that one or two of them live among the peaks in the land of Britannica. But most of them scattered around any and every place where goods are bought and sold, for it was mostly the Jews and some Greeks who were the merchants, the buyers, and the sellers, because they were the only people in the entire empire who could truly be trusted, despite the fact that they were always suspected of something terrible. And here was an emperor who was dying who had been more or less neutral toward the Jewish people, except exactly three years ago in the year 33, when he had ordered out all Jews from Jerusalem. But it had been of little effect after the first initial decree was obeyed. And by A.D. 36, the Jews were back in the city. And now with an emperor dying, they felt safe. But who would take his place? No one knew for certain, but it seemed to have been the son of Germanicus, who had been the son of Augustus Caesar, an adopted son.

Germanicus had been very popular among all the people of the empire, but he died mysteriously out on the frontier and not without great suspicion as to the peculiarities of his death, as well as the fact that just three days before he died, with all evidence being some kind of poison, an envoy from Tiberius himself had made a great journey out there to the frontier. A few days later, Germanicus had mysteriously died, and only recently, of his two sons’ brothers, one of them had died. The only person in the bloodline of Augustus Caesar with the largest claim to the throne was a 24-year-old boy of whom no one knew anything. The only thing that was known about him was that he was peculiar and that he had been in Capri for years, being raised there by no one in particular, and had watched so many of his own family tree banished, one deliberately starving themselves to death, another banished, another one mysteriously dying, and another one put in a room and never allowed to sleep and to never leave the bed they were on in some way managed to commit suicide. All this and the reign of Tiberius, who was ill.

Somewhere in the next two years, he would probably die, and it was those two years before his death that a growing hatred grew up in the life of Paul of Tarsus toward these people who were called the followers of the way. And Paul had learned the names of some of the so-called apostles and some men there who were those who served food to the thousands and growing thousands who all put their food, their income, their property and everything together in order to take care of not only those who are local but the thousands who had come there for the Passover, the Pentecost, and who had decided to be baptized and to stay in the city of Jerusalem.

All these were stories common to Paul. He had heard of the arrest of John and Peter. He had heard how they had been beaten and released, and went back preaching again. He was disgusted with them, as all 12 of the men had been arrested, and his teacher, whom he had so sacredly believed in, had actually intervened on behalf of these people. He recalled illustrations of other false messiahs who had come and gone, scattered, and their followers had disappeared.

Paul was angry at Gamaliel, but nothing so incensed him as was the man who came into the synagogue to speak and to debate. He was an ordinary man who wore ordinary street clothes, hardly identifying himself as Jewish, and was very much a foreigner who could speak broken Hebrew, couldn’t understand Aramaic, but spoke in perfect Greek. And soon it was that men were debating him because he was the one that no one could win a debate with. And Paul made trips there again and again and again, and anytime he heard that there might be a Stephen who would come there, he came even more regularly in hopes that Stephen would be there. He watched. He heard the arguments. He became familiar with them and the words that Stephen would say.

And one day, Paul challenged him to a debate. He was ready. He was more brilliant than the others, more zealous for the truth than the others, pulling all the resources that he had had from his youth, from his training in the synagogue in Tarsus, and now all that he had learned from Gamaliel and all that was in his own mind. He challenged Stephen to a debate, believing he knew enough of what Stephen had to say that he would certainly trounce him.

And so, Saul took particular care in choosing his words and topics to discuss, which he believed would be unfamiliar to Stephen, and Stephen returned with more than Paul could have ever believed one man could know. It was not that he knew the scriptures so much as there was something else going for him. It was illumination within him of a deeper understanding than any had ever seen or known in reading the scripture. It even crossed his mind. “Maybe I should invite Gamaliel to come in here and debate with Stephen.” But no, Gamaliel did not debate anyone; he simply taught the Torah.

Over and again, over and over again, until almost every Jew in that city who could speak Greek had come there to watch the debates and had had a growing sense of hatred toward him, until finally someone said, “Let’s kill him. And it all immediately flashed on me. We had killed so many prophets. We had killed so many men whom we feared and yet were the heroes of our faith today.” Saul was reluctant. He did not like the discussions. Little by little, he was drawn into it. But this question came again and again. We have no legal right to kill this man. We certainly have no right to kill him without a hearing or a trial. He is Jewish. We break every law in the Torah, only it was met with such penetrating logic. But a man who denies the Torah, should he not die?