The life and work of St. Paul

PAT/1, AT EPHESUS. 3f3
an anxious hour, many a bitter struggle, many an exciting debate, before tho
Jews finally adopted a tone not only of decided rejection, but even of so
fierce an opposition, that St. Paul was forced once more, as at Corinth, openly
to secede from their communion. We do not sufficiently estimate the paiu
which such circumstances must have caused to him. His life was so beset with
trials, that each trial, however heavy in itself, is passed over amid a multitude
that were still more grievous. But we must remember that St. Paul, though a
Chn?*ian, still regarded himself as a true Israelite, and ho must hav* felt, at
least as severely as a Luther or a Whiteficld, this involuntary alienation from
the religious communion of his childhood. We must conjecture, too, that it
was amid these early struggles that he once more voluntarily submitted to the
recognised authority of synagogues, and endured some of those five beatings
by the Jews, any one of which would have been regarded as a terrible episode
in an ordinary life.
As long as opposition confined itself to legitimate methods, St. Paul was
glad to be a' worshipper in the synagogue, and to deliver the customary
Midrash ; but when the Jews not only rejected and reviled him, but even
endeavoured to thwart all chance of his usefulness amid their Gentile neigh-
l
bours, he saw that it was time to withdraw his disciples from among them ;
and, as their number was now considerable, he hired the school of Tyraimus
some heathen sophist of that not very uncommon name.* It was one of
those schools of rhetoric and philosophy wliich were common in a city like
Ephesus, where there were many who prided themselves on intellectual pursuits.
This new pkco of worship gave him the advantage of being able to meet the
brethren daily, whereas in the synagogue this was only possible three times a
week. His labours and his preaching were not unblessed. For tvr? full
years longer he continued to make Ephesus the centre of his missionary
activity, and, as tho fame of his Gospel began to spread, there can be little
doubt that he himself took short journeys to various neighbouring places,
trntil, in the strong expression of St. Luke, " all they that dwelt in Asia heard
the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks." 3 In Ephesus itself
his reputation reached an extraordinary height, in consequence of the unusual
works of power which God wrought by his hands. 4 On this subject he is
himself silent even by way of allusion, and though ho speaks to the Ephesiaii
elders 6 of his tears, and trials, and dangers, he does not say a word as
1
Epametus (Rom. xvi. 5, leg. Aaias) was his first convert in Asia.
3 Jos. B. J. i. 26, 3 ; 2 Mace. iv. 40. It is very unlikely that this was a Beth
Midrash (Meyer), as it was St. Paul's object to withdraw from the Jews. There was a
Sophist Tyrannus mentioned by Suidas. The m/o* is spurious (n, A, B), which shows
that this Tyrannus was known in Ephesus (see Helusen, Paul us, 218).
3 Hence forty years later, inBithynia, Pliny (Ep. 96) writes, "Neque enim civitates
tan turn, sed vicos etiam atque agros superstitionis istius contagio pervay:ita est."
4 Acts xix. 11, Jvva/if i? ou TO? Tv\ovsaf.
s The
"
Epistle to the Ephesians," being a circular letter, naturally contains but few
ipccifio allusions which, if intelligible to one Christian community, would not have
been so to another. We should have expected such allusions in his speech ; but
"ouiittit Doctor gentium narrare miracula, narrat labores, narrat aerumna*, narrat