Early Life of St. Paul.
By Conybeare; Howson
Of the exact period of his birth we possess no authentic information. From a passage in a sermon attributed to Chrysostom it has been inferred that he was born in the year 2 of our era. The date is not improbable, but the genuineness of the sermon is suspected; and if it was the undoubted work of the eloquent Father, we have no reason to believe that he possessed any certain means of ascertaining the fact. Nor need we be anxious to possess the information. We have a better chronology than that which reckons by years and months. We know that he was a young man at the time of Stephen's martyrdom (Acts 7: 58), and therefore we know what were the features of the period and what the circumstances of the world at the beginning of his eventful life. He must have been born in the later years of Herod or the earlier of his son Archelaus. It was the strongest and most flourishing time of the reign of Augustus. The world was peace, the pirates of the Levant were dispersed, and Cilicia was lying at rest or in stupor, with other provinces, under the wide shadow of the Roman power. Many governors had ruled there since the days of Cicero. Athenodorus, the emperor's tutor, had been one of them. It was about the time when Horace and Mæcenas died, with others whose names will never be forgotten; and it was about the time when Caligula was born, with others who were destined to make the world miserable. Thus is the epoch fixed in the manner in which the imagination most easily apprehends it. During this pause in the world's history Paul was born. It was a pause, too, in the history of the sufferings of the Jews. That lenient treatment which had been begun by Julius Cæsar was continued by Augustus, and the days of severity were not yet come, when Tiberius and Claudius drove them into banishment and Caligula oppressed them with every mark of contumely and scorn. We have good reason to believe that at the period of the apostle's birth the Jews were unmolested at Tarsus, where his father lived and enjoyed the rights of a Roman citizen. It is a mistake to suppose that this citizenship was a privilege which belonged to the members of the family as being natives of this city. Tarsus was not a municipium, nor was it a colonia, like Philippi in Macedonia (Acts 16: 12) or Antioch in Pisidia, but it was a "free city" (urbs libera), like the Syrian Antioch and its neighbor city, Seleucia on the sea. Such a city had the privilege of being governed by its own magistrates, and was exempted from the occupation of a Roman garrison, but its citizens did not necessarily possess the civitas of Rome. Tarsus had received great benefits both from Julius Cæsar and Augustus, but the father of Paul was not on that account a Roman citizen. This privilege had been granted to him or had descended to him as an individual right; he might have purchased it for a "large sum" of money; but it is more probable that it came to him as the reward of services rendered during the civil wars to some influential Roman. That Jews were not unfrequently Roman citizens we learn from Josephus, who mentions in the Antiquities some even of the equestrian order who were illegally scourged and crucified by Florus at Jerusalem, and (what is more to our present point) enumerates certain of his countrymen who possessed the Roman franchise at Ephesus in that important series of decrees relating to the Jews which were issued in the time of Julius Cæsar and are preserved in the second book of the Jewish War. The family of Paul were in the same position at Tarsus as those who were Jews of Asia Minor and yet citizens of Rome at Ephesus; and thus it came to pass that while many of his contemporaries were willing to expend "a large sum" in the purchase of "this freedom" the apostle himself was "free-born." The question of the double name of "Saul" and "Paul" will require our attention hereafter, when we come in the course of our narrative to that interview with Sergius Paulus in Cyprus coincidently with which the appellation in the Acts of the Apostles is suddenly changed. Many opinions have been held on this subject, both by ancient and modern theologians. At present it will be enough to say that we cannot overlook the coincidence, or believe it accidental, yet it is most probable that both names were borne by him in his childhood—that "Saul" was the name of his Hebrew home, and "Paul" that by which he was known among the Gentiles. It will be observed that Paulus, the name by which he is always mentioned after his departure from Cyprus, and by which he always designates himself in his epistles, is a Roman not a Greek word. And it will be remembered that among those whom he calls his "kinsmen" in the epistle to the Romans, two of the number, Junia and Lucius, have Roman names, while the others are Greek (Rom. 16: 7, 11, 21). All this may point to a strong Roman connection. These names may have something to do with that honorable citizenship which was an heirloom in the household; and the appellation "Paulus" may be due to some such feelings as those which induced the historian Josephus to call himself "Flavius," in honor of Vespasian and the Flavian family. If we turn now to consider the social position of the apostle's father and family, we cannot on the one hand confidently argue, from the possession of the citizenship, that they were in the enjoyment of affluence and outward distinction. The civitas of Rome, though at that time it could not be purchased without heavy expense, did not depend upon any conditions of wealth where it was bestowed by authority. On the other hand, it is certain that the manual trade which we know that Paul exercised cannot be adduced as an argument to prove that his circumstances were narrow and mean; still less, as some have imagined, that he lived in absolute poverty. It was a custom among the Jews that all boys should learn a trade. "What is commanded of a father towards his son?" asks a Talmudic writer. "To circumcise him, to teach him the law, to teach him a trade." Rabbi Judah saith, "He that teacheth not his son a trade does the same as if he taught him to be a thief;" and Rabban Gamaliel saith, "He that hath a trade in his hand, to what is he like? he is like a vineyard that is fenced." And if in compliance with this good and useful custom of the Jews, the father of the young Cilician sought to make choice of a trade which might fortify his son against idleness or against adversity, none would occur to him more naturally than the profitable occupation of the making of tents, the material of which was hair-cloth, supplied by the goats of his native province and sold in the markets of the Levant by the well-known name of cilicium. The most reasonable conjecture is that his father's business was concerned with these markets, and that, like many of his dispersed countrymen, he was actively occupied in the traffic of the Mediterranean Coasts; and the remote dispersion of those relations whom he mentions in his letter from Corinth to Rome is favorable to this opinion. But whatever might be the station and employment of his father or his kinsmen, whether they were elevated by wealth above, or depressed by poverty below, the average of the Jews of Asia Minor and Italy, we are disposed to believe that this family were possessed of that highest respectability which is worthy of deliberate esteem. The strict piety of Paul's ancestors has already been remarked; some of his kinsmen embraced Christianity before the apostle himself, and the excellent discretion of his nephew will be the subject of our admiration when we come to consider the dangerous circumstances which led to the nocturnal journey from Jerusalem to Cæsarea (Acts 23). —Conybeare & Howson, Life and Epistles of St. Paul.