The life and work of St. Paul

116 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL.
plunged into the work of "
teaching. He was with the disciples in Damascus
certain days," says St. Luke "
and ; immediately in the synagogues he began
to preach Jesus, that He is the Son of God j" 1 and he proceeds to narrate the
amazement of the Jews, the growing power of Saul's demonstrations, and,
after an indefinite period had elapsed, the plot of the Jews against him, and
his escape from Damascus.
But St. Luke never gives, nor professes to give, a complete biography.
During the time that he was the companion of the Apostle his details, indeed,
are numerous and exact ; but if even in this later part of his career he never
mentions Titus, or once alludes to the fact that St. Paul wrote a single epistle,
we cannot be surprised that his notices of the Apostle's earlier career are fragmentary,
either because he knew no more, or because, in his brief space, he
suppresses all circumstances that did not bear on his immediate purpose.
Accordingly, if we turn to the biographic retrospect hi the Epistle to the
Galatians, in which St. Paul refers to this period to prove the independence of
his apostolate, we find that in the Acts the events of three years have been
compressed into as many verses, and that, instead of immediately beginning to
preach at Damascus, he immediately retired into Arabia. 2 For "when," he
says, " He who separated me from my mother's womb, and called mo by His
grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among
the Gentiles, immediately I did not communicate with flesh and blood, nor
went I up to Jerusalem to those who were Apostles before me, but I went
away into Arabia, and again I returned to Damascus."
No one, I think, who reads this passage attentively can deny that it gives
the impression of an intentional retirement from human intercourse. A multi-
tude of writers have assumed that St. Paul first preached at Damascus, then
retired to Arabia, and then returned, with increased zeal and power, to preach
in Damascus once more. Not only is St. Paul's own language unfavourable
to such a view, but it seems to exclude it. What would all psychological
1 Acts ix. 19, 20.
2 I understand the evOetn of Gal. i. 16 as immediately succeeding St. Paul's conversion;
the evfle'ws of Acts ix. 20 as immediately succeeding his return to Damascus. The retirement
into Arabia must be interpreted as a lacuna either at the middle of Acts ix. 19,
or at the end of that verse, or after verse 21. The reasons why I unhesitatingly
assume the first of these alternatives are given in the text. There is nothing to be said
for supposing with Kuinoel and Olshausen that it was subsequent to the escape from
Damascus, which seems directly to contradict, or at any rate to render superfluous, the
waAif of Gal i. 17. We may be quite sure that St. Paul did not talk promiscuously about
this period of his life. No man, even with familiar friends, will make the most solemn
crises of his life a subject of common conversation and Paul was ; by no means a man te
wear his heart upon his sleeve. How many hundreds who read this passage will by a
moment's thought become aware that apart from written memoranda, and possibly even
with their aid, there is no one living who could write his own biography with any approach
to accuracy ? What reason is there for supposing that it would have been otherwise
with St. Paul? What reason is there for the supposition that he entrusted St. Luke with
all the important facts which had occurred to him, when we see that what St. Luke was
able to record about him neither portrayed one-fourth of his character nor preserved a
memorial of one tithe of his sufferings ? And it is to be observed that in Acts xxii. 16, 17,
where it had no bearing on his immediate subject, St. Paul himself omits all reference Vo
this retirement into Arabia.