The life and work of St. Paul

OLA.IMIG QtJOTATlOWfi * ST.
eior. the man whose thoughts have been enlarged by travel and by intercourse with men
of other training and other race In the apparently vivid sympathy with which St. Paul
draws some of his favourite metaphors from the vigorous contests of the Grecian games. 1
Those games constituted the brightest, the most innocently attractive feature of Hellenio
life. During his long stay at Ephesus and at Corinth he had doubtless witnessed those
wrestling bouts, those highly-skilled encounters of pugilism, those swift races to win the
fading garlands of laurel or pine, which, for some of his heathen converts, and particularly
for the younger among them, could not at once have lost their charm. "We can well
imagine how some young Ephesian or Corinthian might have pressed St. Paul to come
with him and see the struggle and the race ; and how, for one whose sympathies were
BO vividly human, there would have been a thrilling interest in the spectacle of those
many myriads assembled in the vast stadium in the straining eyes and eager countenances
and beating hearts in the breathless hush with which they listened to the proclamations
of the herald in the wild-eyed charioteers bending over their steeds, with the hair blown
back from their glowing faces in the resounding acclamations with which they greeted
the youthful victor as he stepped forward with a blush to receive his prize. Would
these fair youths do so much, and suffer so much, to win a poor withering chaplet of
pine and parsley, whose greenness had faded before the sun had set, and would they use
no effort, make no struggle, to win a crown of amaranth, a crown of righteousness which
could not fade away ? And that, too, when here the victory of one was the shame and
disappointment of all the rest, while, in that other contest, each and all might equally
be victors, and the victory of each be a fresh glory to all who were striving for the same
high prize. 2 And as such thoughts passed through his mind there was no Judaic narrowness,
but a genial sympathy in his soul, and a readiness to admire whatever was
innocent and beautiful in human customs, when he wrote to his converts of Corinth
" Know ye not that they which run in a stadium run all, but one receiveth the prize ?
So run that ye may grasp.* Now every one that striveth is temperate in all things ;
they, however, that they may receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible.
I, then, so run, not as uncertainly ; so box I, as one who beateth not the air ; but I
bruise my body with blows and enslave it, lest perchance, after making proclamation to
others, I myself should prove to be a rejected combatant." 4
4. But it was not only with Greek customs that St. Paul became familiar during his
residence at Tarsus. It is clear that he must also have possessed some knowledge of
Roman law. His thoughts often have a juridical form. He speaks of the "earnestmoney
" of the Spirit ; of the laws of inheritance ; of legal minority ; of the rights of
wives and daughters. 6 The privileges and the prestige conferred upon him by his rights
of Civitas would have inevitably turned his thoughts in this direction. The Laws of the
Twelve Tables had defined the authority which might be exercised by fathers over sons
even after they have come of age (patria potcstas) in a manner which Gaius tells us was
peculiar to Roman jurisprudence, with the single exception that it also existed among
the Gfalatce. If this means the Galatians it would give peculiar significance to the
illustration in Gal. iv. 1, which in any case proves St. Paul's familiarity with Roman
institutions which had no existence among the Jc/ws. So, too, we are told by Sir H. Maine
that " a true power of testation " was nowhere provided for in the Jewish Code of Laws,
and that the Romans " invented the will." Yet to the rules of testamentary bequests,
and their irrevocability in certain cases, St. Paul seems to make an express allusion (Gal.
i 1 GOT. ix 24 ; PhiL iii. 14 ; 1 Tim. vL 12 ; 2 Tim. tv. 8 ; tt. 5 ; 1 Theaa it IS.
* See a close parallel in Sen. Ep. Ifor. Ixxviii. 16.
*
KaToXaftrfre. Cf. Phil. iii. 12 14, Kara ffxoirbv . . . iiri rb flpafielov.
* 1 Cor. ix. 2427. oJoxifiof, vocabulum agonislicwn, (Beng. ; Philo, de Cherub. 22). On the
temperate training of competitors, see Hor. A. P. 412 ; Bpict. EncMr. 35 ; Dissert, iii. 15 : Tert. ad
Mart. 3. ae'pa Stpeiv is to tight a oxia/aiaxta (i.e., make mere feints), (Eustuth, ail II. xx. 446 Athen.
;
154, A, 4e. ; Viig. &n. v. 376). Ki)pt perhaps "heralding the laws of the contest (JEsch.
EVM. 566). Gal. iii. 17, 18 ; iv, 1, 2 ; Bom. viL 2, tc.