Sherman E. Johnson
[Sherman E. Johnson is Visiting Professor of New Testament at the Lexington Theological Seminary.]
WHEN PAUL WAS ACCUSED of bringing Gentiles into the Temple in Jerusalem, and arrested because of the ensuing riot, he explained to the tribune commanding the Roman cohort that he was a Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia, “no mean city.”
Perhaps it is only by accident that in Paul’s letters preserved to us he never mentions his native town. Our information comes from the Book of Acts. After Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus, a Christian named Ananias was told to go into the street called Straight and inquire for a man from Tarsus named Saul (9:11). Paul then was baptized and went to Jerusalem to meet the apostles, who brought him to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus (9:30). Some time later, Christianity came to Antioch in Syria, and because of such great success there Barnabas went to Tarsus to find Paul and brought him to Antioch (11:25–26). The great missionary journeys to Cyprus, Asia Minor and Greece begin after this.
There is one other reference to Tarsus. When the Roman tribune allowed Paul to speak to the mob, he told them of his conversion and began with the words, “I am a Jew, born at Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, educated
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according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God as you all are this day” (22:3). The three words, “born,” “brought up,” “educated,” are a regular formula known elsewhere in literature and suggest that Paul while still small was brought to Jerusalem by his parents, spent his childhood and youth there, and received something like an education under one of the most famous of rabbis.
Paul certainly claimed to be a Pharisee, a member of the tribe of Benjamin and a Hebrew born of Hebrews (Phil. 3:5); that is, both he and his parents spoke Aramaic. But there is a slight puzzle here. Although his letters show much acquaintance with Jewish tradition, his thinking and methods of argument are only partly Jewish, and he obviously had some Greek education. Should we take the statement of Acts quite literally and suppose that he spent all his younger years in Palestine? Perhaps the family returned to Tarsus from time to time.
I
“No insignificant city.” Present-day Tarsus is a minor provincial town in Turkey, not as important as Mersin to the west and Adana to the east. There is little to see there today that might remind one of its most famous citizen. To the southwest there is a mound which excavations show goes back as far as the Neolithic period. In the time of the Hittite empire (1400-1200 B.C.) it was already an important city. Much of the present town is twenty feet above the remains of Roman Tarsus, and occasional excavations for civic purposes bring up minor examples of these. The most important monument to be seen consists of the colossal foundations of a Roman temple, whose marble superstructure has been completely lost. “St. Paul’s gate,” shown to visitors, and the remnants of baths and an aqueduct, belong to the Byzantine and Arabic periods.
But in Paul’s time Tarsus was indeed an important Greek-speaking city. It is not known what Greeks first settled in Cilicia or when they came, and the Greek traditions vary, but archaeological finds indicate that Greek refugees came there in the Mycenaean period, and Homer speaks of Cilicians as having lived on the Aegean coast south of Troy. What is certain is that Shalmaneser III and Sennacherib captured the territory, but the latter had to deal with Ionian Greek invaders, and from the 7th century on Greek commerce and influence were on the increase.
Under the Persian empire, Tarsus was the capital of Cilicia. In
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The so-called “St. Paul’s Gate” in Tarsus.
the 4th century Baal Tars, the god of Tarsus, appears on silver coins in the guise of a Zeus with mingled Greek and Persian traits. The inscriptions are in Aramaic, which was the lingua franca of much of the Persian empire and probably the common speech of Cilicia, as it was of Syria and Palestine.
It was of course Alexander the Great who put an end to the Persian empire of the Achaemenids, who had ruled most of Asia Minor for centuries. In 333 B.C. he saved Tarsus from being burned by the Persians. His successors, the Seleucid monarchs of Syria, ruled this region until the dynasty finally collapsed and Rome took over the whole of the Near East.
Tarsus became capital of the Roman province of Cilicia in 67 B.C. About this time Pompey the Great cleared the pirates out of the eastern Mediterranean and allowed a few of them to settle at Soli, west of Mersin, which was renamed Pompeiopolis. A few years ago some of the columns of the forum were still standing.
From this time on, the fortunes of Tarsus were closely linked with political events in Rome. Cicero, as governor of the province, was admired for his benevolent rule. After Pompey’s death, Julius Caesar visited Tarsus in 47 and the city was renamed Juliopolis. Then came the murder of Caesar, and the Tarsians resisted the rule of Cassius, who thereupon punished them with a huge fine. Mark Antony rewarded the city for this resistance and in 41 exempted
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it from taxes. He and Cleopatra sailed up the Cydnus river to Tarsus, with the Egyptian queen wearing the ornaments of a second Aphrodite.
II
Cilicia consisted of two regions, the wild “rough Cilicia” to the west and the very fertile plain on the east, which is now a great producer of cotton. In ancient times linen was woven in Tarsus and tents were made there. Cilicia lies south of the Taurus mountains. The famous “Cilician gates,” a pass through the Taurus used by Xenophon’s Ten Thousand, Alexander the Great and other conquerors, comes out on a road between Adana and Tarsus.
Historians of culture say that Cilicia has always been an area of “varying affiliations,” sometimes linked to the Anatolian highland, as today and in the time of the Hittite empire, at other times related to Syria. The latter was the case in the Graeco-Roman period, and Syria and Cilicia are naturally mentioned together in Acts 15:23, 41; Gal. 1:21. Tarsus spoke Greek, while the old Anatolian languages were still current in the hinterland to the north (Acts 14:11).
I have spoken of Antony and Cleopatra sailing up to Tarsus. The town is quite landlocked now, but the geographer Strabo (1st century A.D.) could speak of the swift cold water of the Cydnus dividing the two parts of Tarsus and flowing past the gymnasium of the young men. The river debouched into a coastal lagoon called the Rhegma, where the naval arsenals were located. In the 6th century Justinian changed the course of the river to run it into a channel east of Tarsus, with minor branches going through the city, as they do today.
Tarsus was wealthy enough to support the higher forms of culture. Obviously it had fine public buildings, and it was also what we might call a university town, for it had both philosophical schools and schools of rhetoric. Strabo praises the Tarsians for their devotion to education and says that the city has surpassed Athens, Alexandria and any other place where there are schools of philosophy. At the same time he remarks that the students are all natives who complete their education abroad and seldom return home. The lure of Rome and Alexandria, and dislike of the hot humid climate of Cilicia, could partly account for this. Apollonius, the philosopher about whom Philostratus tells so many tales of his teaching and reputed miracles, came from Tyana on the other side of the Cilician gates to study in Tarsus. We seem to have the picture of a good provincial or colonial university.
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The Cilician Gates in the Taurus Mountains north of Tarsus.
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Strabo mentions the names of several noted philosophers and grammarians who came from Tarsus, and the tragic poet Dionysides, who made his name in Alexandria as one of its “Pleiad.” There were two philosophers named Athenodorus. One of them lived with Marcus Cato as a resident philosopher (as was customary). The other, Athenodorus of Kana, actually returned to Tarsus in his old age. He had been tutor to the emperor Augustus and greatly honored by him. On coming home he resolved to reform the corrupt government of the city, which was in the hands of Boethus, whom Antony had appointed. This is one of many examples of such intervention in politics on the part of philosophers; in fact the ancients regarded this as one of their proper functions. Athenodorus got the authority from Augustus to exile Boethus and his companions.
III
How does Saul or Paul, the Jewish and Christian apostle, fit into this picture of Tarsus? His two names suggest at once that he belonged to two cultures. Saul was an appropriate name for him, since the family claimed descent from the tribe of Benjamin. His letters show clearly that the content of his thought was essentially Jewish, based on a knowledge of Jesus’ life and death and on thorough acquaintance with the Old Testament and Jewish tradition. The name Paulus is obviously a Latin cognomen which means “little.”
We do not know how large a Jewish community existed in Tarsus. One conjecture is that a number of Jews moved there in the early part of the Seleucid empire. Antiochus III the Great (223–187) settled large colonies of Jews in Phrygia and Lydia, and Sir William Ramsey conjectured that a group of Jews had been brought to Tarsus by his son Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–163), the desecrator of the Temple in Jerusalem. There is actually very little known regarding the Jews of Tarsus, and all we can say is that Jews were to be found in all cities of the Mediterranean. We do know that on one occasion Epiphanes gave the cities of Tarsus and Mallus to his concubine Antiochis to provide her with a regular income. These cities naturally rose in revolt (II Macc. 4:30).
Another conjecture, that of Professor C. Bradford Welles of Yale, is that Paul’s grandfather received Roman citizenship when Julius Caesar visited Tarsus, and that Paul’s full Roman name might have been Gaius Julius Paulus.
Still another matter worth considering is the way in which Paul supported himself during his apostolic ministry. Acts 18:2–3 tells
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us that he, Priscilla and Aquila were all skenopoioi by trade. The English versions translate this as “tentmakers,” but the word usually means “leather-workers,” and tents were made of skins. A recent monograph by Professor Hock of the University of Southern California summarizes what is known of this craft and applies it to our knowledge of Paul. Hock suggests that Paul had learned the trade in his father’s workshop in Tarsus. When he became a Christian he lost such wealth as the family had, along with his Jewish privileges (Phil. 3:8), and had to work with his own hands (I Cor. 4:12).
From the 2nd century A.D. on, Jewish rabbis often combined a gainful occupation with their teaching of the Torah, but this was not a general rule and there is no evidence for it in Paul’s time. In any case, Paul’s social position as an apostle was not that of a rabbi; it was more like that of the Stoic and Cynic philosophers. Some of these, like the two Tarsians named Athenodorus, accepted the hospitality and support of powerful and wealthy men, and this was usually thought quite proper. Others, such as the typical Cynic Diogenes, disdained such support so that they might be completely independent in their teaching. There was another reason too. The Graeco-Roman world contained many religious charlatans who made a good thing out of their teaching, cults and reputed miracles. Lucian in the 3rd century gives vivid skatches of two of these in his Death of Peregrinus and Alexander the Oracle-Monger.
Paul tells us that he accepted support only from the church in Philippi (Phil. 4:15) and that he “robbed other churches” so as to serve the Corinthians, receiving help only from Christians of Macedonia (II Cor. 11:8–9).
The ancient world made no romantic idealization of “honest toil,” and manual work was generally regarded as degrading. Paul accepted a lower social status as the result of his decision, and his mention of hard work and sleepless nights can be taken literally. Why did he do this? Partly because the “false apostles” and “superlative apostles” whom he exposes in II Cor. 10–13 vaunted themselves on their superiority and their visions and revelations and were paid by the churches or at least by some individual Christians. “You put up with it,” he said, “if a man makes slaves of you, or preys upon you, or takes advantage of you, or puts on airs, or strikes you in the face” (II Cor. 11:20).
Another factor was the immaturity of the Corinthians themselves. They were so proud of their spiritual gifts and their new
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freedom in the gospel that they disregarded the poorer members of the church, even at the Lord’s Supper (I Cor. 11:21), and condoned sexual vices. There was plenty of prophecy and speaking in tongues but not enough of the love described in I Cor. 13.
The deepest reason, however, was that Paul’s apostleship, indeed his existence as a Christian, was based on identification with the crucified Christ. If Christ, who had been rich, made himself poor for our sakes (II Cor. 8:9), only such a life was fitting for an apostle.
IV
What Paul preached and taught was his own interpretation of Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection. It was based partly on the tradition accepted by all the churches (I Cor. 15:1–6), but he had pondered it over the years and his knowledge of the Old Testament, interpreted to some extent by Jewish tradition, helped him to see the meaning of the Christ-event as no other first century Christian was able to do. He was our first great theological thinker, not a systematic theologian but an apostolic herald of the gospel, essentially a preacher. Professor Robert Grant has said that in his use of materials Paul is Jewish but “his method is self-consciously Greek.” When we observe how Paul “did theology” and spoke and wrote, we are forced to conclude that his education could not all have been in Jerusalem. He must have learned much in Tarsus.
Certainly the Apostle was completely at home in the Greek language. That is not at all surprising, for many people in Jerusalem spoke Greek, and it was the medium of commerce and government in the eastern parts of the empire. The erotic poet Meleager came from Gadara, near the Sea of Galilee, and in the 2nd century A.D. the Christian philosopher Justin Martyr was a Samaritan from Neapolis (Shechem). Hellenistic culture had penetrated Pharisaism itself, and the Talmud contains many Greek loanwords. Paul, however, did not imitate Attic models or the florid Asianic style which had come into vogue; he had a powerful style all his own, and the great classical scholar Wilamowitz-Moellendorf said that “this Greek of his is related to no school and follows no model. .. and yet it is still just Greek, not a translated Aramaic. .. this makes him one of the classicists of Hellenism. At last, at long last, one speaks again in Greek of a new experience of life.”
But although Paul’s style is individual, recent studies prove beyond doubt that Paul knew and used the methods of the Greek
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orators of his time. Again and again the structure of his letters conforms to models set forth by Quintilian and other ancient rhetoricians. In dealings with his opponents in Second Corinthians he resorts to the types of arguments and emotional appeals that we find in Socrates and in the whole Socratic tradition. The apparent digressions that have puzzled commentators in such a letter as First Corinthians had a definite and recognized rhetorical function. In defending his policy not to accept financial support he argued like a Cynic philosopher. The content of his ethical teaching is Jewish, and the theological basis and motivation of it are Christian (the love and grace of God through Jesus Christ), but in persuading his hearers Paul often uses “commonplaces,” i.e. standard topics and examples to be found in Hellenistic philosophy, such as the athletic metaphors.
When he says in II Cor. 11 that he is playing the fool and speaking like a madman, we can illustrate this from the First and Second Tarsic Orations of the 2nd century orator Dio Chrysostom of Prusa. Dio has harsh words to say to the people of Tarsus. Like Paul, he includes remarks that please his hearers and are in fact true; in this case Dio speaks of the magnificence of the city and its past glories. He may, indeed, paint too idealistic a picture of the orderliness and sobriety of Tarsus in the time of Athenodorus. Then he castigates the city for its loose morals, party strife, quarrels with other towns in Cilicia, and its demagogic politicians. Women, he says, still wear veils and cover their entire bodies, as they did in Paul’s time (I Cor. 11:2-16), but “they have their souls uncovered and its doors thrown wide open.” Of course Cynic philosophers are often regarded as mad, and the Tarsians might think Dio just as insane; it is madness, he remarks, for him to address them as he does.
How could Paul have learned to argue as he does, if not in Tarsus? He may not have attended one of the fashionable schools of grammar and rhetoric, but if he lived in the city for some time he must have heard its best orators. The Greeks were inveterate talkers and politicians. Paul’s dual cultural upbringing and what can only be called native genius prepared him in a unique fashion to be the cosmopolitan apostle to the Gentiles when he was captured by the risen Christ.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
M. J. Mellink, “Tarsus,” Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, IV, 518f.
Strabo, Geography, xiv. 5. 8–15.
Dio Chrysostom, Discourses, xxxiii-xxxiv.
H.-D. Betz, Der Apostel Paulus und die sokratische Tradition (1972)
R. F. Hock, The Social Context of Paul’s Ministry (1980)
H.-D. Betz, “The Literary Composition and Function of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians,” New Testament Studies, XXI (1975), 353–379
Wilhelm Wuellner, “Paul’s Rhetoric and Argumentation in Romans,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, XXXVIII (1976), 330–351
Wilhelm Wuellner, “Greek Rhetoric and Pauline Argumentation,” in W. R. Schoedel and R. L. Wilken (eds.), Early Christian Literature and the Classical Intellectual Tradition (1979), pp. 171-188
(Reprinted by permission from the Vol. 15, No. 4, October 1980, issue of the Lexington Theological Quarterly.)
How excellent is thy loving-kindness, O God! Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings. They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shall make them drink of the river of thy pleasures. For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light.
Psalm 36: 7–9
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