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////先把相關歷史拷貝於下--節選自《Caesar and Christ 》 by Will Durant /////////
II. PAUL
1. The Persecutor
The founder of Christian theology was born at Tarsus, in Cilicia, about the tenth year of our era. His father was a Pharisee, and brought up the youth in the fervent principles of that sect; the Apostle of the Gentiles never ceased to consider himself a Pharisee, even after he had rejected the Judaic Law. The father was also a Roman citizen, and transmitted the precious franchise to his son. Probably the name Paul was the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Saul, so that both names belonged to the apostle from infancy.22 ...We may believe that some Stoic theology and ethics passed from the university environment of Tarsus into the Christianity of Paul. ...The mystery religions prepared the Greeks for Paul, and Paul for the Greeks.
...Stricter Pharisees were shocked to find him gazing appreciatively even upon pagan women.25 ...Despite Paul』s initiation into Hellenism he remained to the end a Jew in mind and character, uttered no doubt of the Torah』s inspiration, and proudly maintained the divine election of the Jews as the medium of man』s salvation.
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He began by attacking Christianity in the name of Judaism, and ended by rejecting Judaism in the name of Christ; at every moment he was an apostle. Shocked by Stephen』s disrespect for the Law, he joined in killing him, and led the first persecution of Christians in Jerusalem. Hearing that the new faith had made converts in Damascus, he obtained authorization from the high priest to go there, arrest all 「who belonged to the Way,」 and bring them in chains to Jerusalem (A.D. 31?).30 It may be that the fervor of his persecution was due to secret doubts; he could be cruel, but not without remorse; possibly the vision of Stephen stoned to death, perhaps even some youthful glimpse of Golgotha, troubled his memory and his journey, and fevered his imagination. As his party neared Damascus, says the Acts,
a sudden light flashed upon him from heaven, and he fell to the ground. Then he heard a voice saying to him, 「Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?」 「Who are you, sir?」 he asked. 「I am Jesus,」. . . said the voice. . . . Saul』s fellow-travelers stood speechless, for they heard the voice but could not see anyone. When he got up from the ground and opened his eyes he could see nothing. They had to take him by the hand and lead him into Damascus. For three days he could not see.31
No one can say what natural processes underlay this pivotal experience The fatigue of a long journey, the strength of the desert sun, perhaps a stroke of heat lightning in the sky, acting by accumulation upon a frail and possibly epileptic body, and a mind tortured by doubt and guilt, may have brought to culmination the half-conscious process by which the passionate denier became the ablest preacher of Stephen』s Christ... A few days later he entered the synagogues of Damascus, and told their congregations that Jesus was the Son of God.
2. The Missionary
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Then Barnabas came and asked his aid in ministering to the church at Antioch. Working together (43-44?), they made so many converts that Antioch soon led all other cities in the number of its Christians. There for the first time ... the name Christianoi—followers of the Messiah or Anointed One. There too, for the first time, gentiles (i.e., people of the gentes or nations) were won to the new faith. Most of these were 「God-fearers,」 predominantly women, who had already accepted the monotheism, and in some part the ritual, of the Jews.
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...To the Jew circumcision was not so much a ritual of health as a holy symbol of his people』s ancient covenant with God; and the Christian Jew was appalled at the thought of breaking that covenant. For their part Paul and Barnabas realized that if these emissaries had their way, Christianity would never be accepted by any significant number of gentiles; it would remain 「a Jewish heresy」 (as Heine was to call it), and would fade out in a century. They went down to Jerusalem (50?) and fought the matter out with the apostles, nearly all of whom were still faithful worshipers in the Temple. James was reluctant to consent; Peter defended the two missionaries; finally it was agreed that pagan proselytes should be required only to abstain from immorality and from the eating of sacrificial or strangled animals.34 Apparently Paul eased the way by promising financial support for the impoverished community at Jerusalem from the swelling funds of the Antioch church.35
The issue, however, was too vital to be so easily laid. A second group of orthodox Jewish Christians came from Jerusalem to Antioch, found Peter eating with gentiles, and persuaded him to separate himself, with the converted Jews, from the uncircumcized proselytes. We do not know Peter』s side of this episode; Paul tells us that 「he withstood Peter to his face」 at Antioch,36 and accused him of hypocrisy; perhaps Peter had merely wished, like Paul, to be 「all things to all men.」
...Revisiting his churches in Asia Minor, Paul attached to himself at Lystra a young disciple named Timothy, whom he came to love with a profound affection that had long been starved for an object. Together they went through Phrygia and Galatia as far north as Alexandria Troas. Here Paul made the acquaintance of Luke, an uncircumcized proselyte to Judaism, a man of good mind and heart, probably the author of the Third Gospel and the Book of Acts—both designed to soften the conflicts that from the beginning marked the history of Christianity...
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It was a brave effort to reconcile Christianity with Greek philosophy.† ...Paul offered his gospel to the gentiles of Corinth, and made many converts among them. Christianity may have seemed to them an acceptable variation of the mystery faiths that had so often told them of resurrected saviors; possibly in accepting it they assimilated it to these beliefs, and influenced Paul to interpret Christianity in terms familiar to the Hellenistic mind.
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He spent some happy months with the little congregations he had founded in Philippi, Thessalonica, and Beraea. ... They had accused him of profiting materially from his preaching, laughed at his visions, and renewed the demand that all Christians should obey the Jewish Law. Paul reminded the turbulent community that he had everywhere earned his living with the work of his hands; and as to material profit, what had he not suffered from his missions?—eight floggings, one stoning, three shipwrecks, and a thousand dangers from robbers, patriots, and streams.40 Amid this turmoil word was brought him that the 「party of the circumcision,」 apparently violating the Jerusalem agreement, had gone into Galatia and demanded of all converts the full acceptance of the Jewish Law. He wrote to the Galatians a wrathful epistle in which he broke completely with the Judaizing Christians... Then, not knowing what sharper tribulations awaited him there, he left for Jerusalem, eager to defend himself before the Apostles...
3. The Theologian
The leaders of the mother church gave him 「a hearty welcome」 (57?); but privately they admonished him:
You see, brother, how many thousand believers there are among the Jews, all of them zealous upholders of the Law. They have been told that you teach all Jews who live among the heathen to turn away from Moses, that you tell them not to circumcize their children, nor to observe the old customs. . . . They will be sure to hear that you have come. So do what we tell you. We have four men here who are under a vow. Join them, undergo the rites of purification with them, and pay their expenses. . . . Then everybody will understand that there is no truth in the stories told about you, but that you yourself observe the Law.41
Paul took the advice in good spirit, and went through the rites of purification. But when some Jews saw him in the Temple they raised an outcry against him as 「the man who teaches everybody everywhere against our people and the Law.」 A mob seized him, dragged him from the Temple, and 「were trying to kill him」 when a squad of Roman soldiers rescued him by arrest. Paul turned to speak to the crowd, and affirmed both his Judaism and his Christianity. They shouted for his death. The Roman officer ordered him to be flogged, but desisted when he learned of Paul』s Roman citizenship. The next day he brought the prisoner before the Sanhedrin. Paul addressed it, proclaimed himself a Pharisee, and won some support; but his excited opponents again sought to do him violence, and the officer withdrew him into the barracks. That night a nephew of Paul came to warn him that forty Jews had vowed not to eat or drink until they had killed him. The officer, fearing a disturbance that would compromise him, sent Paul in the night to the procurator Felix at Caesarea.
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When Festus succeeded Felix he suggested that Paul should stand trial before him at Jerusalem. Fearing that hostile environment, Paul exercised his rights as a Roman citzen, and demanded trial before the emperor. King Agrippa, passing through Caesarea, gave him another hearing, and judged him 「mad with great learning,」 but otherwise innocent; 「he might be let go,」 said Agrippa, 「if he had not appealed to the emperor.」 Paul was put on a trading vessel, which sailed so leisurely that it encountered a winter storm before it could reach Italy. Through fourteen days of tempest, we are told, he gave crew and passengers an encouraging example of a man superior to death and confident of rescue. The ship broke to pieces on Malta』s rocks, but all on board swam safely to shore. Three months later Paul arrived in Rome (61?).
The Roman authorities treated him leniently, awaiting his accusers from Palestine, and Nero』s leisure to hear the case. He was allowed to live in a house of his choosing, with a soldier to guard him; he could not move about freely, but he could receive whomever he wished. He invited the leading Jews of Rome to come to him; they heard him patiently, but when they perceived that in his judgment the observance of the Jewish Law was not necessary to salvation, they turned away; the Law seemed to them the indispensable prop and solace of Jewish life. 「Understand, then,」 said Paul, 「that this message of God』s salvation has been sent to the heathen. They will listen to it!」42 His attitude offended also the Christian community that he found in Rome. These converts, chiefly Jews, preferred the Christianity that had been brought to them from Jerusalem; they practiced circumcision, and were hardly distinguished by Rome from the orthodox Jews; they welcomed Peter, but were cold to Paul. He made some converts among the gentiles, even in high place; but a bitter sense of frustration darkened the loneliness of his imprisonment.
.....influenced perhaps by Platonist and Stoic denunciations of matter and the body as evil; recalling, it may be, Jewish and pagan customs of sacrificing a 「scapegoat」 for the sins of the people, Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ: that every man born of woman inherits the guilt of Adam, and can be saved from eternal damnation only by the atoning death of the Son of God.* 50 Such a conception was more agreeable to the pagans than to the Jews. Egypt, Asia Minor, and Hellas had long since believed in gods—Osiris, Attis, Dionysus—who had died to redeem mankind; such titles as Soter (Savior) and Eleutherios (Deliverer) had been applied to these deities; and the word Kyrios (Lord), used by Paul of Christ, was the term given in Syrian-Greek cults to the dying and redeeming Dionysus.52 The gentiles of Antioch and other Greek cities, never having known Jesus in the flesh, could only accept him after the manner of their savior gods. 「Behold,」 said Paul, 「I show you a mystery.」53
Paul added to this popular and consoling theology certain mystic conceptions already made current by the Book of Wisdom and the philosophy of Philo. Christ, said Paul, is 「the wisdom of God,」54 the first-born Son of God; 「he is before all things, in him all things exist . . . through him all things have been created.」55 He is not the Jewish Messiah who will deliver Israel from bondage; he is the Logos whose death will deliver all men. Through these interpretations Paul could neglect the actual life and sayings of Jesus, which he had not directly known, and could stand on an equality with the immediate apostles, who were no match for him in metaphysical speculation; he could give to the life of Christ, and to the life of man, high roles in a magnificent drama that embraced all souls and all eternity. Moreover, he could answer the troublesome questions of those who asked why Christ, if very god, had allowed himself to be put to death: Christ had died to redeem a world lost to Satan by Adam』s sin; he had to die to break the bonds of death and open the gates of heaven to all who should be touched by the grace of God.
Two factors, said Paul, determine who shall be saved by Christ』s death: divine election and humble faith. God chooses from all eternity those whom he will bless with his grace, and those whom he will damn.56 Nevertheless, Paul bestirred himself to awaken faith as a rod to catch God』s grace; only through such 「assurance of things longed for,」 such 「confidence in things unseen,」57 can the soul experience that profound change which makes a new man, unites the believer with Christ, and allows him to share in the fruits of Christ』s death. Good works and the performance of all the 613 precepts of the Jewish Law will not suffice, said Paul; they cannot remake the inner man, or wash the soul of sin. The death of Christ had ended the epoch of the Law; now there should no more be Jew and Greek, slave and freeman, male and female, for 「in union with Christ Jesus you are all one.」58 ...
4. The Martyr
...But from the defeated Paul came the theological structure of Christianity, as from Paul and Peter the astonishing organization of the Church. Paul had found a dream of Jewish eschatology, confined in Judaic Law; he had freed and broadened it into a faith that could move the world. With the patience of a statesman he had interwoven the ethics of the Jews with the metaphysics of the Greeks, and had transformed the Jesus of the Gospels into the Christ of theology. He had created a new mystery, a new form of the resurrection drama, which would absorb and survive all the rest. He had replaced conduct with creed as the test of virtue, and in that sense had begun the Middle Ages. It was a tragic change, but perhaps humanity had willed it so; only a few saints could achieve the imitation of Christ, but many souls could rise to faith and courage in the hope of eternal life.
The influence of Paul was not immediately felt. The communities that he had established were tiny isles in a pagan sea. The church at Rome was Peter』s, and remained faithful to his memory. For a century after Paul』s death he was almost forgotten. But when the first generations of Christianity had passed away, and the oral tradition of the apostles began to fade, and a hundred heresies disordered the Christian mind, the epistles of Paul provided the framework for a stabilizing system of belief that united the scattered congregations into a powerful Church.
Even so, the man who had detached Christianity from Judaism was still so essentially Jewish in intensity of character and sternness of morality that the Middle Ages, adopting paganism into a colorful Catholicism, saw no kindred spirit in him, built few churches to him, seldom sculptured his figure or used his name. Fifteen centuries went by before Luther made Paul the Apostle of the Reformation, and Calvin found in him the somber texts of the predestinarian creed. Protestantism was the triumph of Paul over Peter; Fundamentalism is the triumph of Paul over Christ.
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