The custom which was thus expressed seems to have
originated in the bilingual governments and countries
of the later centuries B.C. (or, at least, to have become
common and familiar then). At that time Greece had
gone forth to conquer the East ; and a varnish of Greek
culture was spread over many non-Greek races, affecting
the richer and the educated classes of the natives, but
hardly reaching the mass of the people. Then it was the
fashion for every Syrian, or Cilician, or Cappadocian, who
prided himself on his Greek education and his knowledge
of the Greek language, to bear a Greek name ; but at the
same time he had his other name in the native language,
by which he was known among his countrymen in general.
His two names were the alternative, not the complement,
of each other ; and the situation and surroundings of the
moment, the rdle which he was playing for the time being,
6
82 Journey of Barnabas and Saul. Chap. IV.
determined which name he was called by. In a Greek house he played the Greek, and bore the Greek name : in a company of natives, he was the native, and bore the native name. He did not require both to complete his legal designation, as a Roman required both nomen and pranomen. His Greek name, taken alone, was a full legal designation in a Greek court.
This has an obvious bearing on the case of " Saul, other- wise Paul ". In the earlier part of this book he has been a Jew among Jews ; and we have seen only his Hebrew name. Nothing has hitherto transpired to show that he was anything but " Hebrew sprung from Hebrews ". In Cyprus he went through the country city by city, synagogue by synagogue : and he was the Jew in all. But here he is in different surroundings : he stands in the hall of the proconsul, and he answers the questions of the Roman official. The interview, doubtless, began, as all interviews between strangers in the country still begin, with the round of questions : What is your name ? (or who are you ?) Whence come you ? What is your business ? The type is seen in the question of the Cyclops to Ulysses {Odyssey IX 252) : " Strangers, who are ye ? Whence sail ye over the wet ways ? On some trading enterprise, or at adventure do ye rove ? "
To these questions how would Saul answer ? After his years of recent life as a Jew, filled with the thought of a religion that originated among Jews, and was in his conception the perfected form of Jewish religion, did he reply : " My name is Saul, and I am a Jew from Tarsus " ? First, let us see what he himself says as to his method of addressing an audience (I Cor. IX 20 f.), "to the Jews I made myself as a Jew that I might gain Jews ; to them
Sec. 4. Saul, otherwise Paul. 83
that are under the law as under the law (though not myself under the law) ; to them that are without the law as with- out the law ; I am become all things to all men ; and I do all for the Gospel's sake ". We cannot doubt that the man who wrote so to the Corinthians replied to the questions of Sergius Paulus, by designating himself as a Roman, born at Tarsus, and named Paul. By a marveHous stroke of historic brevity, the author sets before us the past and the present in the simple words : " Then Saul, otherwise Paul, fixed his eyes on him and said ".
The double character, the mixed personality, the Oriental teacher who turns out to be a freeborn Roman, would have struck and arrested the attention of any governor, any person possessed of insight into character, any one who had even an average share of curiosity. But to a man with the tastes of Sergius Paulus, the Roman Jew must have been doubly interesting ; and the orator or the preacher knows how much is gained by arousing such an interest at the outset.