He was named Saul (Σαῦλος in Acts where spoken of, Σαούλ where spoken to), presumably after the hero-king of his tribe (Ac 9 ete., 13! ete.; cf. 13%). But his Hebrew name (Σαῦλος has, moreover, in Greek, the ridiculous sense of ‘ waddling’) is dis- placed in Acts by the Roman cognomen Paul (Παῦλος, Paulus, ‘ little’) from the time the apostle enters on his wider career and meets Roman society. With the Heb.-Rom. Saul-Paul compare Tae Woek (Ac 15%), Jesus-Justus (Col 4"), also Flavius-Josephus. The change of name occurs in Luke’s narrative on the occasion of the conversion of Sergius Paulus, proconsul of Cyprus—a coinci- dence suggesting to many, after Origen (Comment. ad Rom., prafat.), Jerome (ad Philem. 1: ‘a primo ecclesiw spolio, proconsule Sergio Paulo, victorie su trophea retulit erexitque vexillum’), Augustine (Confess. viii. 4), that St. Paul took his apostolic name from this conquest—a proceeding in bad taste, and on other accounts improbable. If Paulus was a personal name, it might have been
ment ot
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due to the bearer’s littleness; Saulos perhaps suggested it by resemblance of sound (Renan): so Jesus-Jason, Jose A- Hegest pus, etc. (but these combinations are Heb.-Greek, not Latin). Others explain it as an epithet, self-assumed in humil- ity (cf. 1 Co 15°), or conferred by way of con- trast with Elymas (Ac 1359) overcome by the apostle as Goliath by /ittle David (Lange); or as derived from a Hebrew root—sc. ‘»yp=‘ wrought (by God),’ or the like. But these conjectures are needless. With his Roman citizenship Paul in- herited a Latin name; and Paulus was a cognomen not uncommon in Roman families, borne, ¢.g., Ὁ
the great A2milian gens. What his Roman genti/e name (or nomen proper) and presnomen were, never appears. The low stature which, ren, be good tradition (Acta Pauli et Thecle, 3; see msay’s Ch. in the Rom. Emp.® p. 32; cf. 2Co 10'*%), distinguished Paul, may have been a family trait suggesting the sobriquet, as in other instances. The apostle was ‘Paulus’ to Romans, Παῦλος amongst Greeks, while he was ‘Saul’ to his fellow Jews and at Jerusalem. As ‘Saul, Saul,’ in his mother-speech, the voice of Jesus addressed him (Ac 26%). See, further, Ramsay, St. Paul, ete. p. 81 ff.; and Deissmann, Bibelstudien, p. 184 ff.
In this apostle, Jew, Greek, and Roman met. The Jew in him was the foundation of everything that Paul became. He was ‘Jew’ (Judean in nationality and education), ‘Israelite’ (in descent and creed), ‘Hebrew’ (in language and tradition). The current Hebrew (i.e. Aramaic) of Palestine was spoken in his father’s house; and his student days gave him the mastery of it which enabled him to address the multitude of Jerusalem in their vernacular (Ac 22*) and to make himself everywhere ‘to the JewsasaJew’(1Co9”). His OT quotations, though based on the LXX, occasionally indicate the knowledge of the ancient Hebrew which the pupil of Gamaliel must have possessed. No man more highly prized the privileges of Israel, or more fervently believed in its Divine election (Ro 31? 9*° 11. 15°, Ph 37); no man more passionatel loved his Jewish kin (Ro 9! 11"*) ; none had drun more deeply at the springs of OT revelation. As a Christian and a Gentile apostle Paul claimed to be the truer Israelite, for he was carrying out ‘the promise of God to the fathers’ (Ac 1353. 8 244, Gal 3714 616) 2Co 11%, Ro 41°17 96 104 15°12); im- prisoned in pursuance of his calling, he was ‘ wear- ang ths chain for the hope of Israel’ (Ac 26*-7 28), _ Bearing in his Pharisaic youth all the weight of its yoke, Saul had proved the impotence of the law as 8. means of justification before God, and the hopelessness of Israel’s attempts to win through its observance the Messianic salvation (Ac 13%: ®, Ro 4115 75-25 853 951_104, Ga] 215-16 310-25 52.3] Co 15% ete.). This was the chief gain of Paul’s apprentice- ship to Mosaism: ‘through law I died to law’; the law acted as a relentless spur on Saul’s sensi- tive conscience; it was his παιδαγωγὸς els Χριστόν, driving him from itself to the gospel of Jesus even while, in its fancied interests, he was His perse- eutor (Ac 26"), Thus Paul's legalistic rearing was an essential negative preparation for his conversion and apostleship. But it contributed thereto in a positive sense. At Rabban Gamaliel’s feet (see art. GAMALIEL) he learnt much that never left him. Paul’s theological method and style, and use of Scripture, are Rabbinical of the purest age. The most fruitful recent expositions of his teach- ing (such as Sanday-Headlam’s Romans, Pfleiderer’s Paulinismus,? and Kabisch’s Eschatologie) draw their best illustrations from Jewish theology. In several of his doctrines, notably that of original sin and of the resurrection (Ac δὲ 2414. 16 968), Paul continued a Pharisee. As against the sceptical, minimizing Sadducees, his sympathies were always
PAUL THE APOSTLE
with his early comrades (Ro 1055. He had an intimate knowledge, both practical and theoretical, of the ground of the legalistic controversy, on which he was to play a decisive part. He brought with him to the bhestian camp the resources of a trained Jewish jurist, a skilled Rabbinical scholar and disputant. He was the one man qualified to effect the transition in doctrine and institutions from the old faith to the new, to transplant Christianity, without destroying any of its roots, from the ancient soil of Judaism into the wide and rich field ready for it in the Gentile world. This transition wd been virtually effected in his own conversion to Christ. Hausrath questions the account in Acts of his studentship under Gamaliel at Jerusalem (Der Ap. Paulus, i. 3), on the ground of Gamaliel’s mildness and Paul’s severity of temper; but Paul was a zealot, Gamaliel a moder- ate, by temperament.