[00:00:00] Hello listeners, welcome to my podcast. We will continue from yesterday, Acts, a commentary by E.M Blaiklock, M.A.Z. The Damascus Road Acts 9, 1-31 A. The Man, 9i, 2, Paul, or Saul, to use his Jewish name, was born at Tarsus in Cilicia, a fact which he himself notes with civic pride.
[00:00:30] 21-39 Tarsus was an ancient city, the seat of a provincial governor when Persia ruled, and, in the days of the Greek Syrian kings, the centre of a lumbering and linen industry. During the first century before Christ, the city was the home of a philosophical school, a university town, in a word where the intellectual atmosphere would be coloured by Greek thought.
[00:00:56] 21-39 Tarsus stood, like Alexandria, at a confluence of East and West. 22-39 Continuing on page 84, Acts 9, 1 22-39 The wisdom of the Greeks and the world order of Rome, mingled with the good and ill of Oriental mysticism, were deep in its consciousness. 22-39 A keen-minded Jew, born and bred at Tarsus, would draw the best from more than one world. 23-39
[00:01:25] He would catch the flavour of Western thought, and learn to appreciate the Greco-Roman outlook. 24-39 He was also in touch with the strong bases of his own tradition. 25-39 For such a man, the synagogue would be no place of refuge from an alien society. 25-39 There is evidence enough of a missionary zeal among such Jews, which prepared the way for Christianity. 26-39
[00:01:49] The Greek translation of the Old Testament stands as a monument to their enthusiasm in Alexandria, and we have already observed the fresh and vigorous minds which Stephen and Philip brought to Christian evangelism. 26-39 The signs of a Greek education are visible in Paul. 27-39 Ramsey points to a subtle irony in his work, for example in 1 Corinthians 1-4, which is not Jewish. 28-39
[00:02:16] To anyone with an ear for Greek undertones, the source is obvious. 29-39 There is a logic in his mode of argument which was not built in a day, and which was not the fruit of Hebrew mysticism. 29-40 Paul have the training of a Greek, as well as the stern and formal education of the Hebrew at Gamaliel's feet, among the best of Jerusalem's Pharisees. 29-39 Nor must the Roman influence be forgotten. 30-39
[00:02:43] The Jews had been in Tarsus since Antiochus Epiphanes' re-foundation in 171 BC, and Paul belonged to that minority which held the Roman citizenship. 31-39 He was not much in a name, writes Ramsey, and it is peculiarly unfortunate that no one ever thinks of Paul by his Roman name. 31-39 But it is as certain that he had a Roman name and spoke the Latin language as it is that he was a Roman citizen. 32-39
[00:03:11] It was his appreciation of the Roman concept of empire, as Ramsey shows in the same admirable essay, which led Paul to his master plan of evangelism. 33-39 He was, in fact, offering the great empire that cement which it mistakenly sought in the worship of the emperor, and which it accepted only when it was too late to save great portions of the imperial structure from disintegration. 34-39
[00:03:37] Paul was a Pharisee, and something has already been said about this famous order. 35-40 The rigid upholders of tradition formalists, a close-knit body with vested interests in the maintenance of Judaism, opponents of enthusiasm, innovation and unorthodoxy, and in one scathing speech of Christ himself, hypocrites who made a show of high sanctity and denied in life and
[00:04:03] conduct the realities of religion, the Pharisees haunt the background of the New Testament. 35-40 Men like Nicodemus and Gamaliel show a better side of the picture, and give some notion of what Pharisees could be, or what perhaps they once predominantly were. 36-40 The part that they had once played in purging and preserving Judaism was salutary and noble. 37-40
[00:04:28] But, as so often happens in the institution of men, sincerity gave place to formalism, and zeal for the law degenerated into a passion for negality. 38-40 Rigidity breeds pride, and pride destroys sincerity. 39-40 Learning goes sour when it loses contact with life, and religion itself, losing its spirit, becomes a closed preserve, the exclusive province of the privileged, jealously fenced. 40-40
[00:04:57] Hence the monumental elaborations of the law, and the casuistry which made the law a peril to religion. 41-40 Paul should be ranked with his teacher, rather with the casuists. It was from Gamaliel that he drew his knowledge of the law. 41-40 The less reputable Pharisaism wing which drew near to the Sadducees made Paul the persecutor. 42-40 Thanks for listening. We will continue tomorrow. 42-40