The Catholic World
Chapter 349 : Translated from Le Correspondant THE YOUTH OF SAINT PAUL.By L'ABBE LOUIS BAUNARD.

Translated from Le Correspondant

THE YOUTH OF SAINT PAUL.

By L'ABBE LOUIS BAUNARD.

At the time when Jesus Christ came into this world, the Jews were scattered over the whole surface of the earth. From the narrow valley in which their religious law had confined them for the designs of G.o.d, these people of little territory had overflowed into all the provinces of the Roman empire. Captivity had been the beginning of their dispersion. Numerous Israelitish colonists, who had formerly settled in the land of their exile, were still existing in Babylon, in Media, even in Persia; others had pushed their way further on to the extreme east, even as far as China. Finally, under the reign of Augustus, they are found everywhere. [Footnote 98]

[Footnote 98: V. Remond "Histoire de la Propagation du Judaisme,"

Leipzig, 1789 Grost, "De Migrationibus Hebr. extra patriam," 1817.

Jost, "Histoire des Israelites depuis les Machabees," etc.]

It was the solemn hour in which, according to the parable of the gospel, the Father had gone forth to sow the seed. The field, "that is the world," was filled with it already, and the time was not far distant when the Lord, "seeing the countries ripe for the harvest,"

would send out his journeymen to reap, and gather the wheat into his barns.

One of these families "_of the dispersion_," as they were styled, inhabited the city of Tarsus in Cilicia. Of this once famous city nothing now remains but a few ruins, and the modern Tarsous falls vastly short of that high rank which the ancient Tarsus held among the cities of the East. Even at present, however, it is called the capital city of Caramania. Situated on a small eminence covered over with laurels and myrtles, at a distance of about ten miles from the Mediterranean sea, it is washed by the rapid and cold waters of the Kara-sou, and its population during winter amounts to more than thirty thousand souls. In summer it is almost a desert. Chased away by the burning heats which prevail at this season from the sea-coast, men, women and children abandon their homes and emigrate to the surrounding heights, where they fix their camp under lofty cedars, which afford them shelter, shade, and coolness. [Footnote 99]

[Footnote 99: P. Belon, "Voyages"--cite dans Malte-Brun.]

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It were difficult to draw, from what it is at present, an exact picture of the ancient Tarsus. Instead of the sad, disconsolate look of a Turkish city, there was then in it the movement, the ardor, the splendor of the Greek city, proud of her politeness and her recollections. According to Strabo, Tarsus was a colony of Argos. As a proof of the high state of its culture, the Greeks related that the companions of Triptolemus, perambulating the earth in search of Io, stopped at that place, charmed by its richness and beauty. Others traced its origin further back, to the old kings of a.s.syria. At one of the gates of Tarsus there had been seen for a long time the tomb of Sardanapalus with the following inscription under his statue: "I, Sardanapalus, have built Tarsus in one day. Pa.s.senger, eat, drink, and give thyself a good time; the rest is nothing." [Footnote 100]

History, however, has written there other remembrances. It was not far from Tarsus that the intrepid Alexander had nearly perished in the icy waters of the Cydnus. It was there upon the sea, at the entrance of the river, that the memorable interview and the fatal alliance of Antony and Cleopatra had just taken place in the midst of voluptuous feasts. The wise providence that provides reparations for all our pollutions, had chosen the city of a Sardanapalus and of an Antony to be the cradle of St. Paul.

[Footnote 100: Strabo, liv, xvi.]

For the rest, Tarsus was a city perfectly well built and of remarkable beauty. From the fertile hill on which she rested, she could contemplate the direction toward the north and west of an undulating line, which traced rather than hid the horizon. This was the outline of the first ascending grades, of the mountains of Cilicia. At a short distance from the city the waters of numerous living springs met together and formed a rapid river, deeply enchased, which soon reached and refreshed that portion of her which the historians call the Gymnasium, and we would name the "Quarter of the schools." Further on there was a harbor of peculiar and distinctly marked outline.

Philostratus has described in a striking and picturesque manner the different habitudes of the men of traffic and of the literary cla.s.s, representing "the former as slaves to avarice, the latter to voluptuousness. All their talk," says he, "consisted in reviling, taunting, and railing at each other with sharp-biting words: whence one might have easily seen that it was only in their dress they pretended to imitate the Athenians, but not in prudence and praiseworthy habits. They did nothing else all day but walk up and down on the banks of the river Cydnus, which runs across this city, as if they were so many aquatic birds, pa.s.sing their time in frolicsome levities, inebriated, so to speak, with the pleasing delectation of those sweet-flowing waters." [Footnote 101]

[Footnote 101: Philostrate, "De la Vie d'Apollonius Thyanean traduction de Blaise de Vigenere," liv. iv. ch. ix. p. 103,104.

Paris, 1611.]

Such, then, was the city in which a vast mult.i.tude of young men, elegant, voluptuous and witty, crowded and pressed each other like a swarm of bees, for Tarsus was the most brilliant intellectual focus of that time and country. The following is the description of it, given by Strabo: "She carries to such a height the culture of arts and sciences, that she surpa.s.ses even Athens and Alexandria. The difference between Tarsus and these two cities is, that in the former the learned are almost all indigenous. Few strangers come hither; and even those who belong to the country do not sojourn here long. As soon as they have completed the course of their studies in the liberal arts, they emigrate to some other place, and very few of them return to Tarsus afterward."

The best masters regarded it as an honor to teach in the schools of this city of arts. There were in it such grammarians as Artemidorus and Diodorus; such brilliant poets and professors {533} of eloquence as Plutiades and Diogenes; such philosophers of the sect of the stoics as the two Athenodori; of whom the first had been Cato's friend in life, and his companion in death, and the second had been the instructor of Augustus, who, in token of grat.i.tude, appointed him governor of Tarsus. For, it was the fate of this learned city to be under the administration of men of letters, and of philosophers. She had been ruled by the poet Boethus, the favorite of Antony. Nestor, the Platonic philosopher, had also governed her. It is easily seen, however, that such men are better prepared for speculations in science, than for the administration of public affairs, so that, in their hands, Tarsus felt more than once those intestine commotions, of which cities of schools have never ceased to be the theatre.

It was in this city, and under these circ.u.mstances, almost upon the frontiers of Europe and Asia, in the very heart of a great civilization, that St. Paul was born, about the twenty-eighth year of Augustus' reign, two years before the birth of Christ. [Footnote 102]

He himself informs us that he was a _Jew_ of the tribe of Juda, [Footnote 103] born in the _Greek_ city of Tarsus, and a _Roman_ citizen: so that by parentage, by education, and by privilege, he belonged to the three great nations who bore rule over the realm of thought and of action. The grave historian [Footnote 104] who exhausts the catalogue of the ill.u.s.trious men of Tarsus, never suspected what man--very differently ill.u.s.trious--had just appeared there, and of what a revolution he was to become the zealous defender as well as the martyr.

[Footnote 102: This would be so, if St. Paul lived to the age of sixty-eight years, as is stated in a Homily of St. John Chrysostom, vol. vi. of his complete works.]

[Footnote 103: Benjamin. See Rom. xi 1.--Ep. C. W.]

[Footnote 104: Strabo, liv. xiv]

The Jewish origin of the Doctor of Nations was, as is easily understood, of vast importance for fulfilment of the designs of G.o.d.

The religion of Jesus Christ proceeds from Judaism, continues and perfects it. It was, therefore, well worthy of the wisdom of G.o.d that his apostles should belong to the one as well as to the other covenant, and that he should thus extend his hand to all ages, as he was to extend it to all men.

This purity of origin was so considerable a privilege, that it is by it one may account to one's self for the rage and fury with which the Ebionite Jews in the first age of our era labored to deprive him of it. Adhering to the last rubbish of the law of Moses, and, for this reason, irreconcilable enemies to the great apostle of the Gentiles, these sectarians maliciously invented the following fable, according to the relation of St. Epiphanius. [Footnote 105] "They say that he was a Greek, that his father was a Greek as well as his mother. Having come to Jerusalem in his youth, he had sojourned there for a certain time. Having there known the daughter of the high priest, he had desired to have her for his wife; and to this end he had become a Jewish proselyte. As he could not, however, obtain the young maiden even at that price, he had conceived a burning resentment, and commenced to write against the circ.u.mcision, the sabbath, and the law." It seems to me that St. Epiphanius confers too great an honor upon this romance, by merely exposing and refuting it.

[Footnote 105: "Adv. Haeret" liv. ii. t. i. p. 140, No. xvi.]

I know on what foundation St. Jerome affirms, on the contrary, that St. Paul was a Jew not only by descent, but also by the place of his birth. According to him, St. Paul's parents dwelt in the small town of Girchala in Juda, when the Roman invasion compelled them to seek for themselves a home somewhere else. Therefore they took their son, yet an infant, with them, and fled to Tarsus, where they remained, waiting for better days. [Footnote 106]

[Footnote 106: "De Viris Ill.u.s.trib. Catalog. Script. Eccles." t. i.

p.849]

The declaration of St. Paul himself, however, allows no doubt to be {534} entertained as to his origin. Born in Tarsus, he was circ.u.mcised there on the eighth day after his birth, and received the name of Saul, which he exchanged afterward for that of Paul, probably at the time when Sergius Paulus had been converted by him to the Christian faith.

His parents failed not to instruct him in the law; for, how distant soever from their mother country might have been the place in which they lived, the Jews did not cease to render to the G.o.d of their fathers wors.h.i.+p, more or less pure, but faithful. Like all other great cities of the Roman empire, Tarsus had her synagogue where the Law was read, and where the religious interests of the Israelitic people were discussed. It was there that prayers were solemnly made with the face turned toward the holy city: for there was no temple anywhere but in Jerusalem, whither numerous and pious caravans from all the countries of Asia went every year to celebrate in Sion the great festivals of the Pa.s.sover and Pentecost, to pay there the double devotion, and present their victims. The bond of union was thus fastened more firmly than ever between the colonies and the metropolis, in which great things were soon expected to take place. Jerusalem was not only the country of memorials, but to Jewish hearts she was also the land of hope, and every eye was turned toward the mountain whence salvation was to come.

Saul grew up in Tarsus. We must not seek in the youth of Saul for those signs which reveal in advance a great man. In individuals of this sort, devoted to the work of G.o.d, all greatness is from him, the instrument disappearing in the hand of the divine artificer. Whatever illusion iconography may have impressed us with upon the point, Saul did not carry, either in stature of body or in beauty of features, the reflection of his great soul, and at first sight the world saw in him only an insignificant person, as he himself testifies, "_aspectus corporis infirmus_," Beside, he was a man of low condition, exercising a trade, and earning his daily bread by the sweat of his face. The rabbinical maxims said that, "not to teach one's son to work, was the same thing as to teach him to steal." Saul was, therefore, a workman, and everything leads us to believe that he, who was to carry light to nations, pa.s.sed, like his master, the whole of his obscure youth in hard work. He made tents for the military camps and for travellers.

This was an extensive industry in the East; and a great trade in these textures was carried on in Tarsus with the caravans starting from the ports of Cilicia and journeying though Armenia, Persia, the whole of Asia Major, and beyond. [Footnote 107]

[Footnote 107: These conjectures and regard to St. Paul's birth and parentage are not founded on any solid basis, but on the contrary appear to be quite improbable. The author's citation from the Rabbinical maxims overturns the argument which he derives from the fact that St. Paul practised a handicraft. All Jews, whatever their birth or wealth, learned a trade. St. Paul's knowledge of the tent-maker's trade, therefore, does not prove that he was of low birth, or belonged to the cla.s.s of artisans. On the contrary, his possession of the privileges of Roman citizens.h.i.+p, which he must have inherited, and which could only have been conferred on account of some great service rendered to the state by one of his ancestors, together with his thorough education, go to show that he belonged to one of the most eminent Jewish families of Tarsus.--Ed. C.W.]

Manual occupation, however, did not absorb the whole time, nor the whole soul of the young Israelite; since the tradition of the fathers points to him as frequenting the schools of Tarsus, and joining that studious swarm of young civilians who crowded there to attend the lectures delivered by the professors of science and literature.

[Footnote 108] His Epistles retain some traces of these his first studies. In these he quotes now and then words of the ancient poets, Menander, Aratus, Epimenides. He expressed himself with equal facility in the three great languages of the civilized world, the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Latin; and it is manifest that he knew the secrets of the art of eloquence, for which he {535} retained in later times only a magnanimous contempt. He was also initiated in philosophy, under the teachers whom I have named already. Besides Stoicism, whose patrons and success in Tarsus I have mentioned, Platonism flourished there under the protection of Nestor, a man of great distinction, who had been the preceptor of that ill.u.s.trious youth Marullus, who was sung by Virgil, and bewailed by Augustus. Is it not, at this period, that a young man of Tyana, himself destined to acquire a strange celebrity, came to Tarsus in his fourteenth year, and pa.s.sionately embraced there the precepts of Pythagorean doctrine? The uncertainties of the history, which was written by Philostratus afterward, do not permit us to say anything definite upon this point; but one cannot help thinking that it is from the same place, and at the same time, that those two extremes of the power of good and of the power of evil have set out--Apollonius of Tyana, and Saint Paul.

[Footnote 108: Sancte Hieronymi, t. vi. 322.--"Comm. Epist. ad Galat."]

Finally, not far from there the oriental doctrines drove to their several beliefs respectively the mult.i.tudes of Asia, and invaded also the Greek cities of Asia Minor and the Islands. Thus Parsism on the one hand, and h.e.l.lenism on the other, met in Tarsus with Judaism. By its position, as well as by its commerce, the birthplace of St. Paul was the point of confluence of the two currents of ideas, which shared the world between themselves. From this centre the future apostle was able to embrace in one view all those different sorts of minds which he was to embrace in his zeal afterwards.

Such were his beginnings. In them Saul plays an insignificant part; but G.o.d a great one; G.o.d does not act openly as yet; he prepares. But what preparation! What a concurrence of circ.u.mstances manifestly providential! What greatness even in this obscurity! The seal of predestination is visibly impressed upon that soul appointed to regenerate the world by the faith. The place, the time, the means, everything seems disposed, consecrated in advance, as it were, for a great scene. G.o.d incarnate was to fill it, but he had chosen Saul of Tarsus to be in it the actor most worthy of him.

II.

The second education of Saul took place in Jerusalem. He was yet young when his parents, yielding to that instinct which recalled the Jews to their native country, sent him, or, perhaps, went and took him with themselves, to the holy city, in order to fix their residence there.

There occur in history some solemn epochs; but that in which Saul arrived at Jerusalem possesses a consecration which cannot belong to any but to itself alone: it was what St. Paul called, afterward, "the fulness of the times." The seventy weeks determined by Daniel, entered then into the last phasis of their accomplishment. The sceptre had been taken away from Judah, and, at a few steps from the temple, a centurion, with the vine-stock in his hand, quietly walked around the residence of a Roman proconsul. People were waiting to see from what point the star of Jacob was to appear. It had risen already, and the young workman of Tarsus, while going to Jerusalem, might have met on his way with a workman like himself, who, sitting at the foot of some unknown hill, preached in parables to the people of his own country and of his condition. This was in fact taking place under the second Herod. Saul was then twenty-nine years old, and the Word made flesh dwelt among us full of grace and truth.

Did Saul have the happiness to see his divine Master during his mortal life? Grave historians formally affirm it, [Footnote 109] and some pa.s.sages in the Epistles allow us to believe it. Others think {536} that what they refer to is only the vision on the road to Damascus.

[Footnote 109: Alzog, "Histoire Universelle de l'Eglise," t. i. p. 157.]

But, whatever may be the difference of opinions upon this point, it appears impossible that the fame of Jesus' teaching and miracles did not reach the ears of Saul, while living in Judea: it is even probable that Saul might have endeavored to see him. "We have known the Christ according to the flesh," he himself wrote to the Corinthians.

[Footnote 110] This last testimony leaves yet some doubt as to the interpretation; but, when one reflects on the repeated utterance of these expressions, as well as upon the coincidence of dates and names, one cannot help starting at the thought, that on some unknown hour the G.o.d and the apostle must have met, and that Jesus, piercing into the future, bestowed on the youth that deep and tender look which he gave the young man spoken of in the Gospel; and that the Pharisee, who was to become a vessel of election, then condemned himself to the regret of having that day neglected and mistaken the blessed G.o.d, of whom he was afterward to say in that language invented by love, "_Mihi vivere Christus est_," "For me to live, is Christ."

[Footnote 110: 1 Cor. ix. 1 and 2 Cor. v. 16]

When Saul entered Jerusalem for the first time, the pious Israelite must doubtless have been astonished and saddened at the same time.

Herod the Ascalonite had rendered her, according to Pliny's testimony, the most magnificent city of the East; but by the profane character of her embellishments, she had lost much of her holy originality. The prince courtier had erected near by a circus and a theatre, where festivals in honor of Augustus were celebrated every fifth year. He had repaired and transformed the temple, but also profaned it; and over the princ.i.p.al gate of the holy place one saw the glitter of the golden eagle of Rome and of Jupiter, a double insult to religion and liberty. Jerusalem was likely to become a Roman city; her part was on the point of being played out; her priesthood was expiring, she began to cast off its insignia, and one saw the line gradually disappear which separated her from the cities of paganism.

Beside, Saul found her torn in pieces by religious sects which had in these latter times fastened to the body of Judaism, as parasitical plants stick to the trunk of an old tree. Religious opinion was divided between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. I speak not of the Herodians, for in the order of ideas flatteries are not taken into account, for this reason--because to flatter is not to dogmatize.

Sadduceeism, a sort of Jewish Protestantism, rejected all tradition; would admit of nothing but the text of the Pentateuch; denied an after-life because it was not found formally enough inculcated by Moses, and consequently endeavored to make this present one as comfortable as possible. It was Epicureanism under the mask of religion. Pharisaism, on the contrary, was the double reaction both in religion and nationality. In order to enhance the law, it multiplied practices and rites; in order to save the dogma, it burdened it with an oral tradition, to serve as a commentary, an interpreter, and a supplement to the law. Under the name of Mishna, this tradition proceeded, according to her account, from secret instructions of Moses himself, and composed a kind of sacred science, of which the doctors only possessed the key.