Paul was converted when Christ appeared to him. What should you know about St. Paul and his conversion?
This Friday, the Church celebrates the conversion of St. Paul.
Here are eight things you need to know about him–and his conversion.
1. Where was St. Paul from?
In Acts 21:39, St. Paul states:
“I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city.”
Tarsus was the capital city of the Roman province of Cilicia. This is on the southeast coast of modern Turkey, so St. Paul was not from the holy land. He was actually a Jew born in what is now Turkey.
It was a port city and a noted commercial center. For these reasons, and because it was the capital, he can describe it as “no mean city” (that is, no common, ordinary city). It was famous.
One of the things it was famous for was being the place where Mark Anthony first met Cleopatra, after which they embarked on their doomed alliance.
Tarsus survives today as the city of Mersin, Turkey.
In Jerusalem. In Acts 22:3, Paul gives a bit more information about his background:
“I am a Jew, born at Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city [Jerusalem] at the feet of Gamaliel, educated according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God as you all are this day.”
Gamaliel was a famous Jewish teacher. So famous, in fact, that we know about him today from Jewish sources.
Gamaliel is also mentioned in Acts, where he takes an open-minded view of Christianity, urging that it not be persecuted (Acts 5:34-42). Paul did not agree with him at this time, because this was before Paul’s great persecution of the Church, as well as before his conversion.
In a previous post, we looked at a common answer to the problem of evil–that God allows sin and the suffering it causes to exist because the only way to eliminate them would be to eliminate free will.
Without free will, according to this view, something important would be lost.
If we didn’t freely choose good–to freely love God and love our fellow human beings–then these actions would lose something very important.
It would be like being “loved” by a robot–a being programmed to do nothing else.
The Love of the Saints
What about the saints in heaven? They don’t sin. Does that make their love less valuable?
At the wedding at Cana, Jesus told Mary: "Woman, how does your concern affect me?" Was he showing disrespect to her?
At the wedding at Cana, Jesus turns to Mary and says, “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.”
Sounds disrespectful, doesn’t it?
Or at least you could take it that way.
But Jesus wasn’t being disrespectful at all.
Here’s the story . . .
Pronoun Trouble
First, the translation “How does your concern affect me?” (John 2:4 in the NAB:RE) is not a literal rendering of what Jesus says in Greek.
Word-for-word, what he says is “What to me and to you?”
In context, Mary has just come up to him and informed Jesus that the people running the wedding have no wine, so you might literally translate his response as “What [is that] to me and to you?” In other words: “What does that have to do with us?”
He’s not dissing her. He’s putting the two of them–both of them–in a special category together and questioning the relevance of the fact that people outside this category don’t have wine. He’s saying that it’s not the responsibility of the two of them to make sure they have wine.
But that’s lost if you take the Greek pronoun that means “to you” (soi) and obliterate it in translation.
“Woman”
Part of what makes it sound like Jesus might be dissing his mother is the fact that he refers to her as “woman.”
We don’t talk to women like that today–not if we respect them, and certainly not our own mothers.
But the connotations–of respect, disrespect, or other things–that a word has in a given language are quite subtle, and we can’t impose the connotations that a word has in our own language on another.
Consider: Suppose, in English, we replaced “woman” with a term that means basically the same thing but with better connotations.
For example, the word “lady” or “ma’am.”
Suddenly what Jesus says sounds a lot more respectful.
In British circles, “lady” has distinctly noble overtones (it’s the female counterpart to the noble honorific “lord”).
And even in demotic America, a son can say, “Yes, ma’am” to his mother and mean it entirely respectfully.
So what can we learn about the connotations of “woman” as a form of address in Jesus’ time?
Why does God allow evil to exist? Why is there sin and suffering in the world? And, what's love got to do with it?
The most perplexing problem in apologetics is the problem of evil: Why would an all-good, all-powerful God allow evil to exist?
There is a real mystery here, and we can only give partial answers.
Here are some of mine . . .
Two Kinds of Evil
We need to recognize that there is more than one kind of evil.
When we use the word “evil,” we often mean moral evil (sin), but historically it was frequently used for other things, such as suffering.
These two forms of evil are linked: It is a sin to cause needless suffering, for example.
This brings us to an important question . . .
Could God Stop These Evils?
Yes. God is omnipotent. He is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe.
Without his action, the universe would never have come into existence, and without his continued action, it would cease to exist or go “to nothing” (Latin, ad nihilum–where we get “annihilate”).
God could have prevented all sin and suffering by not creating the universe.
And he could end all sin and suffering simply by allowing the universe to cease to exist.
Here is a picture of some frankincense and myrrh that I just received.
(The frankincense is on the left; the myrrh is on the right.)
I’d never seen these substances with my own eyes before, but I got them for an upcoming video I’m planning on making on . . . you guessed it . . . what gold, frankincense, and myrrh are.
But I was excited enough that I wanted to share an early photo.
Jephthah made a tragic vow, and to fulfill it, he would have to kill his daughter. What are we to make of this?
The book of Hebrews has a whole chapter about Old Testament men (and women) who achieved great things by faith.
One of them had his daughter killed–as a human sacrifice.
What are we to make of this?
Hebrews on Jephthah
Hebrews 11 celebrates various Old Testament figures who had faith in God and did amazing things. Toward the end of the chapter, we read:
And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets–who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, received promises, stopped the mouths of lions . . . [Heb. 11:32-33].
It continues in the same vein.
The point is: These men, together with some notable women the chapter also mentions, did amazing things as a result of their faith.
One of the people mentioned in this passage is Jephthah.
Who was he?
The Stage Is Set
The stage for Jephthah’s first appearance is set in Judges 10, where we read about how the Israelites have been worshipping foreign gods and, as a result, they have become oppressed by a group of foreigners: the Ammonites.
The Israelites repent, and God is moved to have mercy on them.
So God will make sure that they are delivered from the persecution, but what historical form will this deliverance take?
The leaders of Gilead (part of the territory of Israel) start consulting about how they can free themselves from the Ammonite oppression.
Specifically, they decide that if they can find a man to lead the fight against the Ammonites, they’re willing to let him be the leader of Gilead.
Meet Jephthah
Turning the corner into chapter 11, we meet Jephthah:
[1] Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior, but he was the son of a harlot. Gilead was the father of Jephthah.
[2] And Gilead’s wife also bore him sons; and when his wife’s sons grew up, they thrust Jephthah out, and said to him, “You shall not inherit in our father’s house; for you are the son of another woman.”
[3] Then Jephthah fled from his brothers, and dwelt in the land of Tob; and worthless fellows collected round Jephthah, and went raiding with him.
So already, Jephthah has had a hard life. Think about his family situation!
He’s the son of a prostitute, but his father took him (as a boy) to dwell in his own house anyway, with the sons of his wife.
Ouch! Think about how painful that must have been for everyone involved!
Then when his half-brothers are grown up, the legitimate sons drive Jephthah out so that he can’t inherit anything (meaning: he leaves penniless or close to it).
Jephthah then descends into a life of banditry.
So: Hard life. Social and familial outcast. Enters a life of crime.
This version of The Weekly Benedict covers material released in the last week from 16 January 2012 – 25 January 2013 (subscribe here; get as an eBook version for your Kindle, iPod, iPad, Nook, or other eBook reader):
