Τί λέγεις; καὶ Παῦλος ἐφοβεῖτο κινδύνους; Ἐφοβεῖτο καὶ σφόδρα ἐδεδοίκει. Εἰ γὰρ καὶ Παῦλος ἦν ἀλλʼ ἄνθρωπος ἦν … Εἰ γὰρ οὐκ ἐφοβεῖτο ποία καρτερία τὸ τοὺς κινδύνους φέρειν; Ἐγὼ γὰρ καὶ διὰ τοῦτο αὐτὸν θαυμάζω ὅτι φοβούμενος καὶ οὐχ ἀπλῶς φοβούμενος ἀλλὰ καὶ τρέμων τοὺς κινδύνους διὰ παντὸς ἔδραμε στεφανούμενος καὶ πανταχοῦ τὸ κήρυγμα σπείρων.—CHRYSOST. Opp. x. 44, ed. Montfaucon.
“The travelled ambassador of Christ, who snatched Christianity from the hands of a local faction, and turned it to a universal faith, whose powerful word shook all the gods from Cyprus to Gibraltar, who turned the tide of history and thought, giving us the organisation of Christendom for the legions of Rome, and for Zeno and Epicurus, Augustine, Eckhart, and Luther.”—MARTINEAU, HoursofThought, p. 88.
“SENT forth by the Holy Spirit”—more conscious instruments, perhaps, of God’s will than has ever been the case before or since, and starting on a journey more memorable in its issues than any which had ever been undertaken by man—Saul and Barnabas, accompanied by their more youthful attendant, John Mark, started on their way. What thoughts were in their minds as they turned their backs on the street Singôn, where they had preached with such acceptance and success? There were myriads of heathen and thousands of Jews in that gay voluptuous city who had not accepted Christianity; but the two Apostles were summoned to other work. They passed between the theatre and the amphitheatre,1 crossed the main thoroughfare of the city with its trees and statues and colonnades, passed the Roman sentries who guarded the residence of the Legate of Syria in the old palace of the Seleucidæ, crossed the bridge over the Orontes, and leaving the grove of Daphne on their right upon the further bank of the river, made their way, through the oleanders and other flowering shrubs which form a gorgeous border to its purple rocks, along the sixteen miles which separated them from the port of Seleucia. History has contemptuously obliterated from her annals the names of countless kings who have set forth from their capitals for the scourge or conquest of nations at the head of armies, and with all the pomp and circumstance of glorious war; but centuries after those conquerors are in their turn forgotten whom she still deigns to commemorate, she will preserve in the grateful memory of mankind the names of these two poor Jews, who started on foot, staff in hand, with little, perhaps, or nothing in their scrip but the few dates that suffice to satisfy the hunger of the Eastern traveller.
From Antioch they might have made their way to Tarsus. But Paul had in all probability preached already in his native Cilicia,2 and as Barnabas was by birth a Cypriote, they bent their voyage thitherward. It was towards the west, towards Chittim and the Isles of the Gentiles, that the course of missions naturally tended. All land routes were more or less dangerous and difficult. Roads were, with few exceptions, bad; vehicles were cumbrous and expensive; robbers were numerous and insolent. But the total suppression of piracy by Pompey had rendered the Mediterranean safe, and in the growth of navigation it had become “the marriage–ring of nations.”3 Along the eastern coast of Asia Minor the Jews had long been scattered in numbers far exceeding those to be found there at the present day; and while the extension of the Greek language furnished an easy means of communication, the power of Roman law, which dominated over the remotest provinces of the Empire, afforded the missionaries a free scope and a fair protection. Accordingly they descended the rocky stairs which led down to the port of Seleucia,4 and from one of its two piers embarked on a vessel which was bound for Cyprus. And thus began “the great Christian Odyssey.”5 The Apostolic barque has spread her sails; the wind breathes low, and only aspires to bear upon its wings the words of Jesus. If Rome has but too good reason to complain of the dregs of moral contamination which the Syrian Orontes poured forth to mingle with her yellow Tiber, on this occasion, at any rate, the Syrian river made ample amends by speeding on their way with its seaward current these messengers of peace and love.
As they sail south–westward over the hundred miles of that blue sea which one of them was destined so many times to traverse—the sea which four times wrecked him with its unregardful storms, and tossed him for a night and a day on its restless billows; as they sit at the prow and cast their wistful gaze towards the hills which overshadow the scene of their future labours,—or, resting at the stern, not without a glance of disgust at its heathen images, look back on the rocky cone of Mount Casius, “on which three centuries later smoked the last pagan sacrifice,”6 they must have felt a deep emotion at the thought that now for the first time the Faith, on which depended the hopes of the world, was starting for fresh regions from its native Syria. Little did St. Paul know how trying in its apparent failures, how terrible in its real hardships, was the future which lay before him! That future—the fire of the furnace in which the fine gold of his heroic spirit was to be purged from every speck of dross—was mercifully hidden from him, though in its broad outlines he must have been but too well able to conjecture something of its trials. But had he foreseen all that was before him—had he foreseen the scourgings, the flagellations, the stoning, the shipwrecks,7 the incessant toilings on foot along intolerable and dangerous roads, the dangers from swollen rivers and rushing watercourses, the dangers from mountain brigands, the dangers from Jews, from Gentiles, from false Christians in city and wilderness and sea,—the frantic crowds that nearly tore him to pieces, the weary nights, the chill, naked, thirsty, famine–stricken days, the incessant wearing responsibility, the chronic disease and weakness,—all the outrages, all the insults, all the agitating bursts of indignation against those who put stumbling–blocks in the paths of the weak,8 the severe imprisonments, the incessant death, and all ended by desertion, failure, loneliness, chains, condemnation, the chilly dungeon,9 the nameless martyrdom—had he foreseen all this, could he have borne it? His human spirit might indeed have shrunk at all the efforts and the agonies which lay before him—greater probably than have ever fallen to the lot of man; yet even at this early phase of his missionary career I doubt not that the hero’s heart would have boldly uttered, “I hold not my life dear unto myself,” and the faith of the Christian would have enabled him to say, “I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me.”
Yet to all human judgment how ill qualified, physically, was the Apostle for the vast and perilous work which lay before him. The strongest athlete might well have quailed as he thought of the toil, the sleeplessness, the manual labour, the mental anxiety. The most imposing orator might have trembled at the thought of facing so many hostile potentates and raging crowds. The finest moral courage might have entreated to be spared the combined opposition alike of false friends and furious enemies. But Paul was no Milo, no Demosthenes, no Scipio Africanus; he was physically infirm, constitutionally nervous, painfully sensitive. His bodily presence was weak, his speech despised, his mind often overwhelmed with fear. But over the feeble body and shrinking soul dominated a spirit so dauntless that he was ready all his life long to brave torture, to confront mobs, to harangue tribunals, to quail as little before frowning tyrants as before stormy seas. He might have addressed his ailing body in the words of the great hero as he rode into the thick of battle, “Aha, you tremble! but you would tremble far more if you knew whither I meant to take you to–day.”10
The concurrent testimony of tradition, and the oldest attempts at representation, enable us to summon up before us the aspect of the man. A modern writer, who cannot conceal the bitter dislike which mingles with his unwilling admiration, is probably not far wrong in characterising him as a small and ugly Jew.11 You looked on a man who was buffeted by an angel of Satan. And yet when you spoke to him; when the prejudice inspired by his look and manner had been overcome; when, at moments of inspiring passion or yearning tenderness, the soul beamed out of that pale, distressful countenance; when with kindling enthusiasm the man forgot his appearance and his infirmity, and revealed himself in all the grandeur of his heroic force; when triumphing over weakness he scathed his enemies with terrible invective, or rose as it were upon the wings of prophecy to inspire with consolation the souls of those he loved—then, indeed, you saw what manner of man he was. It was Paul seated, as it were, on sunlit heights, and pouring forth the glorious paean in honour of Christian love; it was Paul withstanding Peter to the face because he was condemned; it was Paul delivering to Satan the insolent offender of Corinth; it was Paul exposing with sharp yet polished irony the inflated pretensions of a would–be wisdom; it was Paul rolling over the subterranean plots of Judaisers the thunders of his moral indignation; it was Paul blinding Elymas with the terror of his passionate reproof; it was Paul taking command, as it were, of the two hundred and seventy souls in the driven dismantled hulk, and by the simple authority of natural pre–eminence laying his injunctions on the centurion and the Roman soldiers whose captive he was; it was Paul swaying the mob with the motion of his hand on the steps of Antonia; it was Paul making even a Felix tremble; it was Paul exchanging high courtesies in tones of equality with governors and kings; it was Paul “fighting with wild beasts” at Ephesus, and facing “the lion” alone at Rome. When you saw him and heard him, then you forgot that the treasure was hid in an earthen vessel; out of the shattered pitcher there blazed upon the darkness a hidden lamp which flashed terror upon his enemies, and shone like a guiding star to friends.
So that, if ugliness, and fear and trembling, and illhealth,12 and the knowledge that he belonged to a hated sect, and was preaching a despised foolishness—if these were terrible drawbacks, they were yet more than counterbalanced by the possession of unequalled gifts. Among his slighter outward advantages were a thorough training in the culture of his own nation, a good mastery of Greek, the knowledge of a trade by which he could support himself, and familiarity with the habits of men of every class and nation, derived from long residence both in Jewish and Gentile cities. As widower and childless, he was unencumbered by any domestic ties, and could only suffer an individual anguish without risking those who depended on him. Lastly, the possession of the Roman citizenship, though inadequate to protect him against provincial tumults, and though he probably waived the appeal to it among his own countrymen, yet stood him in good stead in more than one dangerous crisis. But these would have been less than nothing without the possession of other and far higher gifts. Such were the astonishing endurance which no trials could exhaust, and which enabled the most physically weak of the Apostles13 to become the most ceaselessly active; the high conviction that God had called him to a special Apostolate “to make the Gentiles obedient by word and deed;”14 the “enthusiasm of humanity,” which made him ready to associate, for their souls’ sakes, whether with men who had once been thieves and drunkards, or with sweet, innocent, and gentle women;15 the courtesy which made him equally at home among slaves and among kings; the power of style which rose or fell with the occasion, sometimes condescending to the humblest colloquialism, sometimes rising to the most impassioned eloquence; the clearness of insight which always kept one end in view, and sacrificed all minor points to attain it;16 the total emancipation from that slavery to trifles which is the characteristic of small minds, and is ever petrifying religion into formulæ, or frittering it away into ceremonial; the spirit of concession; the tact of management; the willingness to bear and forbear, descend and condescend; the tolerance of men’s prejudices; the contented acceptance of less than was his due.—And there were in the soul of Paul qualities more precious for his life’s work than even these. There was the tenderness for his converts which makes his words ever sound as though he were ready to break into sobs as he thinks on the one hand of their affection, on the other of their ingratitude;17 there was the conviction which makes him anticipate the very fiat of the throne of judgment,18 and vehemently to exclaim that if an angel were to preach a different gospel it would be false;19 there was the missionary restlessness so often found in the great pioneers of salvation, which drives him from city to city and continent to continent in the cause of God; there was the ardent and imaginative impulse which made it the very poetry of his life to found churches among the Gentiles as the first messenger of the Gospel of peace;20 and last, but perhaps most important of all, there was the perfect faith, the absolute self–sacrifice, self–obliteration, self–annihilation, which rendered him willing, nay glad, to pour out his whole life as a libation—to be led in triumph from city to city as a slave and a captive at the chariot–wheels of Christ.
The immense personal ascendency of St. Paul has almost effaced the recollection of the fellow–workers to whose co–operation he owed so much; but we must not forget that throughout the perilous initiatives of this great work, he had Barnabas ever at his side, to guide him by his calm wisdom, and support him by his steady dignity. Barnabas, the friend of his youth, perhaps the school–fellow of his studies,—who had taken him by the hand; who hud drawn him from his obscure retirement; who had laboured with him at Antioch; who had been his fellow–almoner at Jerusalem—was still sharing his difficulties, and never envied or murmured when he saw himself being gradually subjugated by the powerful individuality of a younger convert. To us Barnabas must always be a less memorable figure than Paul, but let us not forget that up to this time he had held a higher rank, and wielded a more authoritative influence. As a Levite, as a prophet, as one who for the needs of the community had cheerfully sacrificed his earthly goods, as one who enjoyed to a very high degree the confidence of the Apostles, Barnabas, in these early days, was enabled to lend to St. Paul’s conceptions a weight which they could hardly otherwise have won. It is only when the work has actually begun that Barnabas seems naturally to sink to a subordinate position. No sooner have they left Salamis than the very order of the names is altered. Sergius Paulus sends for “Barnabas and Saul,” but it is Saul who instantly comes to the front to meet the opposition of Elymas; it is “Paul and his company” who sail from Paphos to Perga; it is Paul who answers the appeal to speak at Antioch in Pisidia; it is Paul who is stoned at Lystra; and thenceforth it is “Paul and Barnabas” throughout the rest of the history, except in the circular missive from James and the Church at Jerusalem.21
Nor must we altogether lose sight of the younger of the three voyagers—John, whose surname was Mark, who went with them in the capacity of their minister, corresponding, perhaps, in part to our notion of a deacon.22 The presence of an active attendant, who could make all arrangements and inquiries, would be almost necessary to a sufferer like Paul. If Barnabas shared with Paul the reluctance to administer in person the rite of baptism,23 we may suppose that this was one of the functions in which Mark would help them. Nor was it an unimportant circumstance to both of them that Mark, as the avowed friend and protégé of Peter, would have been unlikely to share in any mission which did not command the entire approval of his illustrious leader. In this and many other ways, now as at the close of his life, Paul doubtless felt that Mark was, or could be, “profitable to him for ministry.” His nature imperiously demanded the solace of companionship; without this he found his work intolerable, and himself the victim of paralysing depression.24 The principles which he adopted, his determination that under no circumstances would he be oppressive to his converts, the missionary boldness which constantly led him into such scenes of danger as none but a man could face, deprived him of that resource of female society—a sister, a wife— which other Apostles enjoyed, and which has been found so conducive to the usefulness of even such devoted missionaries as Adoniram Judson or Charles Mackenzie. But Paul was a missionary of the type which has been reproduced in Francis Xavier or Coleridge Patteson; and whatever he may have been in the past, he was now, at any rate, a lonely man.
Such were the three humble Christian emissaries whose barque, bending its prow to the south–west, sailed towards the mountains of Cyprus, and, leaving the long promontory of Dinaretum on the right, sailed into the bay of Salamis. The scene must have been very familiar to Barnabas. Before them lay the flourishing commercial town, conspicuous for its temple of the Salaminian Jupiter, which tradition assigned to Teucer, son of Telamon. Beyond the temple there stretched away to the circle of enclosing hills a rich plain, watered by the abundant streams of the Pediaeus. The site of the town, which our recent acquisition of the island has rendered so familiar, is now marked by a few ruins about four miles to the north of the modern Famagosta. The ancient town never entirely recovered the frightful injuries which it underwent, first from an insurrection of the Jews in the reign of Trajan, and afterwards from an earthquake. But when the Apostles stepped ashore, upon one of the ancient piers of which the ruins are still visible, it was a busy and important place, and we cannot doubt that Barnabas would find many to greet him in his old home. Doubtless, too, there would be some to whom their visit was peculiarly welcome, because, ever since the persecution of Stephen, Cyprus had been connected with the spread of Christianity.25
That Barnabas had had a considerable voice in thus repaying to his native island the service which it had rendered to Antioch,26 may be conjectured from the fact that subsequently, when he had parted from Paul, he and Mark once more chose it as the scene of their missionary labours. After this first visit, Paul, often as he passed in sight of it, seems never to have landed there, disliking, perhaps, to build on other men’s foundations; nor does he allude to Cyprus or to other Cypriotes in any of his Epistles. Whether there be any truth or not in the legend which says that Barnabas was martyred in the reign of Nero, and buried near Salamis, it is quite fitting that the church and grotto near it should be dedicated to him.
But apart from any facilities which may have been derived from his connexion with the island, it was without doubt an excellent place to form a startingpoint for the evangelisation of the world. One of the largest islands in the Mediterranean, possessed of a fertile soil, varied in physical formation, and within easy reach of the three great continents, it had been marked out by nature as a convenient centre for extensive traffic. The trade in natural products—chiefly metals and wine—together with the fact that Augustus had farmed the copper–mines to Herod the Great, had attracted a large Jewish population. So vast, indeed, were their numbers, that in the reign of Trajan (A.D. 116) they rose upon the native inhabitants, under a certain Artemio, and slew 240,000 of them in one terrible massacre. The revolt was suppressed by Hadrian with awful severity, and after that time no Jew might set foot upon the shore of Cyprus on pain of death.27
Of their work at Salamis we are told nothing, except that “they continued preaching the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews.”28 It appears from this that Salamis was one of the towns where the Jews’ quarter was sufficiently populous to maintain several synagogues; and if the Apostles came in contact with the heathen at all, it would only be with proselytes. But the notices of this part of their journey are scant, nor is any indication given of the length of their stay in Cyprus. Any work among the Gentiles was doubtless hindered by the apotheosis of sensuality for which the island was noted. The contact of Greeks with Phœnicians had caused a fusion between the subtle voluptuousness of tho Hellenic race and the more burning passion of the Phœnicians and other Orientals; and the maritime population who touched at the island from every civilised country were ready learners in the school of degradation. Venus was the presiding goddess; and as she received from this fact her name of Cypris, so she was most commonly alluded to in the poets as the Paphian, Amathusian, or Idalian, from her temples in various parts of the island. She was
“Idalian Aphrodite, beautiful,
Fresh as the foam, new bathed in Paphian wells.”
It was hitherward that she came as Aphrodite Anadyomene, when
“From the sea
She rose and floated in her pearly shell,
A laughing girl.”
It was by these “purple island sides” that she first
“Fleeted a double light in air and wave.” Yet in the Paphian temple, where no blood was offered, where her immemorial shrine, famous even in the days of Homer,29 breathed from a hundred altars the odour of perpetual incense,30 and where kings and emperors turned aside to do her homage, the image which was enshrined in her adytum was no exquisite female figure sculptured by the hand of a Pheidias or a Scopas, but a coarse truncated cone of white marble31—a sort of Asherah—such as might naturally serve as the phallic symbol of the Assyrian and Sidonian deity from whom this form of nature–worship was derived.32 And as her temples had the right of asylum—a right which was certain to crowd their vicinity with criminals of every variety—we might have conjectured, apart from direct testimony, that the worship was to the last degree debasing; that the Paphian divinity was no Aphrodite Ourania,33 but the lowest kind of Aphro–dito Pandemos; that her worship was simply the prostitution of religion to the excuse of lust. Nor is it strange that under such circumstances there should be deadly opposition between the Jews and the Greek or Phœnician inhabitants, such as existed of old between the Jews and Canaanites. The mutual hatred thus engendered culminated in the internecine war which so soon broke out between the rival populations; it may have been one of the reasons why in Cyprus we read of no preaching to the heathen.
After their residence in Salamis the three missionaries traversed the whole island.34 It is about a hundred miles in length from Salamis to New Paphos; and they probably followed a main road along the coast, diverging to places like Citium, the birthplace of Zeno the Stoic; Amathus, one of the shrines of Venus; and any towns where they would find the little Ghettos, whose conversion to the faith was their prime object. But not one incident of their journey is preserved for us until they reached the town of Paphos. By this name is intended, as the narrative shows, not the old and famous Paphos, the modern Kuklia, to which wanton pilgrimages were yearly made in honour of the old shrine so “famous–infamous” for many ages, but Nea– Paphos,35 the modern Baffa, now a decayed and mouldering village, but then a bustling haven, and the residence of the Roman Proconsul Sergius Paulus.36
It does not in any way impugn the claim of Sergius Paulus to be regarded as a person of intelligence that he had with him, apparently residing in his house, a Jewish impostor named Bar–Jesus, who had arrogated to himself the complimentary title of Elymas, the Ulemah, or Wizard.37 A notorious infidel like Philippe Égalité, though in other respects a man of ability, could yet try to presage his fate by the sort of cup–augury involved in examining the grounds of coffee (Κυλικομάντεια; cf. Gen. 44:5). A belief in some personal Power, the arbiter of man’s destiny, above and beyond himself, is a primary necessity of the human mind. Mankind can never dispense with this belief, however superfluous, in certain cases, and for a time, it may seem to be to the individual. The noble Romans who had lost all firm hold on the national religion felt themselves driven by a kind of instinctive necessity to get such a connexion with the unseen world as could be furnished them by the mysticism of Oriental quacks. A Marius had resorted to the prognostications of the Jewess Martha. At this particular epoch augurs, haruspices, Babylonians, mathematici, astrologers, magians, soothsayers, casters of horoscopes, fortune–tellers, ventriloquists, dream–interpreters,38 flocked to Rome in such multitudes, and acquired such vogue, as to attract the indignant notice of both satirists and historians. A few of them—like Apollonius of Tyana, and at a later period, Alexander of Abonoteichos, and the cynic Peregrinus— attracted universal attention. There was scarcely a Roman family that did not keep or consult its own foreteller of the future; and Juvenal describes the Emperor Tiberius as seated “with a herd of Chaldæans” on his rock at Capri.39 Nothing would be more natural than that an intelligent and inquiring Roman, in the ennuiof the smallest of the provinces, and finding himself amid a mixed population, half of Phœnician origin, and devoted to strange forms of religion, should have amused his leisure by inquiries into the bizarre superstitions by which he was surrounded.40 The prevalence of earthquakes in Cyprus would be likely to give to the minds of the residents that gloomy and credulous tinge which is often found in countries liable to such terrible inflictions; and New Paphos had been devastated by an earthquake sufficiently recent41 to have left a deep impression. Perhaps from this, perhaps from other causes, Bar–Jesus had acquired unusual influence; but it is an additional confirmation of the accuracy of St. Luke—one of those remote and incidental, and therefore unsuspected, confirmations which so often occur to establish the veracity of the sacred writers—that we find Cyprus to have been specially famous for its schools of religious imposture, of which one was professedly Jewish. Simon Magus was in all probability an inhabitant of Citium.42 There is a most singular passage of Pliny, which, when we combine it with his reference to a Sergius Paulus, may be regarded as a confused echo in the mind of the Roman littérateur of these very events, heard from the very Proconsul about whom we are at present reading. He tells us that there were at Paphos two schools of soothsayers, one of which professed connexion with Moses, Jamnes, and Jotapes, who were Jews, and a much more recent Cyprian one.43 To this school Bar–Jesus must have belonged, and Pliny’s allusion throws once more a singular light on the fidelity of the careful Evangelist.44
The same feelings which had induced Sergius Paulus to domicile the Jewish sorcerer in the proconsular residence would naturally induce him to send for the new teachers, whose mission had evidently attracted attention by that loving earnestness which differed so widely from the contemptuous neutrality of the synagogue. But the position of soothsayer to a Roman Proconsul—even though it could only last a year45—was too distinguished and too lucrative to abandon without a struggle. Elymas met the Apostles in open controversy, and spared neither argument nor insult in his endeavour to persuade Sergius of the absurdity of the new faith. Instantly Saul—and this is the moment seized by the historian to tell us that he was also called by the name of Paul, which henceforth he exclusively uses—came to the front to bear the full force of the sorcerer’s opposition. A less convinced or a less courageous man might well have shrunk from individual collision with a personage who evidently occupied a position of high consideration in the immediate household of the noble Roman. But to a spirit like St. Paul’s, while there could be infinite compassion for ignorance, infinite sympathy with infirmity, infinite tenderness towards penitence, there could, on the other hand, be no compromise with imposture, no tolerance for cupidity, no truce with Canaan. He stood up, as it were, in a flame of fire, his soul burning with inspired indignation, against a man whose cowardice, greed, and worthlessness he saw and wished to expose. Fixing on the false prophet and sorcerer that earnest gaze which was perhaps rendered more conspicuous by his imperfect sight,46 he exclaimed, “O full of all guile and all villainy, thou son of the devil,47 thou foe of all righteousness, cease, wilt thou, thy perversion of the Lord’s straight paths.” And then, perceiving the terror produced on the mind of the unmasked hypocrite by this bold and blighting invective, he suddenly added, “And now, see, the Lord’s hand is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a time.”48 The denunciation instantly took effect; the sorcerer felt in a moment that his impostures were annihilated, that he stood in the presence of an avenging justice. A mist swam before his eyes, followed by total darkness, and groping with outstretched hands he began to seek for some one to lead and guide him.
Nor was it strange that a display of spiritual power so startling and so irresistible should produce a strong conviction on the mind of the Proconsul.49 How far his consequent belief was deep–seated or otherwise we have no evidence which would enable us to judge. But the silence of St. Luke would seem to indicate that he was not baptised, and we can hardly look on him as a deep and lifelong convert, since otherwise we should, in the rarity of great men in the Christian community, have as certainly heard of him in their records as we hear of the very few who at this period—like Flavius Clemens or Flavia Domitilla—joined the Church from the ranks of the noble or the mighty.
The question has been often asked why it is at this point in the narrative that the name Saul is finally replaced by the name Paul.50 The old answer supplied by St. Jerome, that he took the name as a trophy of his conversion of Sergius Paulus, has long and deservedly been abandoned; there would have been in it an element of vulgarity impossible to St. Paul. Nor is there anything to urge in favour of the fancy that he took the name as a token of his humility, to signify that he was “the least of the Apostles.”51 It is much more probable that he had either possessed from the first an alternative name for facility of intercourse among the heathen, or that this Roman designation may point to his possession of the Roman franchise, and perhaps to some bond of association between his father or grandfather and the Æmilian family, who bore the cognomen of Paulus. If he adopted the name on the present occasion it may have been because it was to a slight extent alliterative with his Hebrew name Shaûl, which would, in its Grecised form, be represented by Saulos;but that was a form which he could not use in intercourse with the Greeks, owing to the fact that the word in Greek would be a sort of slang term for “uppish,” or wanton. The mere changing of his name was so little unusual that it had been from the earliest ages a custom among his countrymen. Joseph had been known to the Egyptians as Zaphnath Paaneah; Daniel to the Assyrians as Belteshazzar; Hadassah to the Persians as Esther; Jesus, Hillel, Onias, Joseph, Tarpho to the Greeks as Jason, Pollio, Menelas, Hegesippus, and Trypho. When not assonant the name was sometimes a translation, as Peter is of Cephas, and Didymus of Thomas. Sometimes, however, this name for use among the Gentiles was due to accidental relations, as when Josephus took the prænomen of Flavius in honour of Vespasian. Of this we have other instances, in the Acts of the Apostles, in the persons of John and Joses, who were known by the Latin designations of Marcus and Justus. In Paul’s case, however, as ancient Christian writers have pointed out, the change of name marks also a total change in all the conditions of his life. “Paul suffers what Saul had inflicted; Saul stoned, and Paul was stoned; Saul inflicted scourgings on Christians, and Paul five times received forty stripes save one; Saul hunted the Church of God, Paul was let down in a basket; Saul bound, Paul was bound.”52