Editor’s note: Learn to read the Bible as literature and fall in love with the Word of God. Dr. Bill Creasy’s new book Reading the Bible will help you understand the Bible better and appreciate its various literary forms. Enjoy this excerpt about the book of Romans.
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Paul’s epistle to the church at Rome — or Romans — is the most important of all Paul’s epistles and letters, and for many Christians it is arguably the most important book in the entire Bible.1
We know from the Gospels and from church teaching that Jesus is the virgin-born, sinless Son of God who went to the cross on our behalf, who died, who was buried, and who, on the third day, arose from the dead, enabling our salvation. That is who He is and what He did.
- But how do you and I appropriate who Christ is and what He did? How do we reach out and take hold of it? That is the issue Paul addresses in Romans.
It is said that John Chrysostom (AD 347–407) had Romans read to him twice each week, and the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) called it the most profound writing that exists. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, one of the great twentieth-century Bible teachers, conducted a word-by-word, systematic study of Romans at his Friday evening Westminster Chapel Bible study in October 1955, completing it in March 1968 — and he said he had only scratched the surface! So, just who is the man who wrote this extraordinary epistle?
When Paul was arrested in Jerusalem in AD 57, charged with inciting a riot, and mistakenly identified as an Egyptian terrorist, he replied indignantly, “I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no ordinary city” (Acts 21:39). Later, when he was about to be flogged, Paul asserted his Roman citizenship again in no uncertain terms, prompting an exchange with the Roman commander: “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?” the commander asked. “Yes, I am,” Paul answered. Then the commander said, “I had to pay a lot of money for my citizenship.” “But I was born a citizen,” Paul replied (Acts 22:27–28). These two scenes speak volumes about Paul, and they tempt us to explore Paul’s background in more depth. What do we really know about Paul, and what informed assumptions might we make about Paul’s early, formative years?
In Paul’s day, Tarsus was the leading city on the fertile plain of East Cilicia, located about ten miles from the mouth of the Cydnus River and about thirty miles south of the Cilician Gates in southeastern Turkey of today. Tarsus came under Roman rule as a result of Pompey’s victories, becoming the capital of Cilicia and retaining its autonomy as a free city (67 BC). Cicero resided in Tarsus while serving as proconsul of Cilicia (51–50 BC), and Julius Caesar visited the city in 47 BC. After Caesar’s assassination in 44 BC, Tarsus enjoyed the favor of Antony, and it was in Tarsus in 41 BC that the celebrated meeting between Antony and Cleopatra took place. Shakespeare describes the meeting best in his play Antony and Cleopatra, as Cleopatra’s barge glides up the Cyndus River:
The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,
Burnt on the water. The poop was beaten gold,
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar’d all description: she did lie
In her pavilion — cloth of gold, of tissue —
O’er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature. On each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-color’d fans, whose wind did seem to [glow]
The delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did. (act 2, sc. 2, lines 191–204)
During the reign of Caesar Augustus (27 BC–AD 14), Tarsus enjoyed enormous privileges, including exemption from imperial taxation. An extremely prosperous city, Tarsus derived its wealth from the fertile plain on which it is located. Strabo, the Greek historian, geographer, and philosopher wrote in his Geography (14.5.12ff.) that Tarsus was a leading cultural and educational center, surpassing even Athens and Alexandria. Its people, he said, were avid in their pursuit of culture, applying themselves to the study of philosophy, literature, music, and the whole round of liberal arts. When Paul claimed to be “a citizen of no ordinary city,” he was certainly justified in doing so.
As one “born a citizen,” Paul necessarily came from a well-to-do family. Roman citizenship was originally confined to freeborn natives of Rome, but as the empire expanded, citizenship was extended to other people in the provinces. Presumably, Paul’s father, grandfather, or perhaps great-grandfather had acquired Roman citizenship, either by making a significant contribution to the Roman Empire (militarily, or more likely, economically) or by purchasing Roman citizenship through political connections and cash. In addition, Dio Chrysostom (c. AD 40–115), in his Oration (34.23), said that enrolling as a Roman citizen in Tarsus required owning property in excess of five hundred drachmae — not an easy threshold to meet. Paul’s family clearly had both money and status.
Although nothing suggests that Paul’s family were assimilated Jews (quite the contrary, Paul claimed to be “a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee,” Philippians 3:5), Paul was deeply exposed to Greco-Roman culture and Roman education. Paul’s letters evidence considerable training in classical rhetoric, and when he spoke ad hoc at the Areopagus in Athens, he supported his argument by deftly quoting from memory the sixth- century BC Cretan poet Epimenides, a favorite of the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers to whom he was speaking (Acts 17:28). Paul most certainly knew his classical literature!
In Paul’s day, children of well-to-do families were taught by private tutors or at private schools. Primary education focused on the basics of reading and writing, using Roman literary works, especially poetry, as models. Between nine and twelve years old, students from affluent families would leave their primary education and continue the advanced study of Greek to hone their speaking and writing skills. At fourteen or fifteen years old, the most promising students then focused on the study of deliberative or judicial rhetoric. Such boys were from exclusive, wealthy families, and they were being groomed for the highest levels of public office and commerce. One can only speculate on what level Paul reached, although clearly he was highly skilled in Greek rhetoric, easily adapting his speech and writing to his audience, suggesting that he had reached a very high educational level.
At some point in Paul’s education, his family sent him to Jerusalem (accompanied perhaps by his sister — see Acts 23:16) for advanced religious study. Like all upper-class Jewish young men, Paul had been well schooled in Scripture and oral law at the local synagogue, but once in Jerusalem Paul became a student of the greatest rabbi of his century, Gamaliel (Acts 22:3). The grandson of the great Hillel, Gamaliel was a leader in the Sanhedrin and possibly its president. Only the brightest and most promising students could possibly secure a position under such a man. Paul traveling from Tarsus to Jerusalem to study under Gamaliel is like Beethoven traveling from Bonn to Vienna to study under Joseph Haydn, or like a newly minted Cal Tech PhD in physics traveling from Pasadena to Cambridge for a postdoctoral fellowship under Stephen Hawking.
Paul had an extraordinary education, available only to the brilliant son of a wealthy and influential family. Born into privilege as a Jew and a Roman citizen, Paul was steeped in both secular and religious education; he was fluent in multiple languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek; he was being groomed for leadership in the Sanhedrin; and he was absolutely committed to his beliefs. So, what caused his intense hatred of Jesus and the church? As he himself said to King Agrippa,
I was so obsessed with persecuting them that I even hunted them down in foreign cities. — Acts 26:11
The Greek phrase περισσως τε ἐμμαινόμενος (per-is-sos te em′-mah-nom′-enos) translated here as “obsessed,” means “furiously enraged,” an intense and visceral emotion.
Saul of Tarsus hated the emerging Christian movement, and he made it his personal mission to persecute it and end it. When Stephen is accused of speaking “blasphemous words against Moses and against God,” he is arrested and interrogated before the Sanhedrin in Acts 6:11; 7:1–53. His defense is so incendiary that the Sanhedrin members “rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him” (7:58a). We then read that “the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul” (7:58b). Make no mistake, Saul is not an idle bystander; Saul supervises the stoning of Stephen, for when the stoning ends with Stephen’s death,
Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison. — Acts 8:3
Breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples, [Saul] went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. — Acts 9:1–2
We all know how the story ends.
On the road to Damascus, a blinding light from heaven flashes around Saul, knocks him to the ground, and a voice from Heaven says,
Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me. — Acts 9:3–4
‘Who are You, Lord?’ Saul asked. ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ he replied. ‘Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do’. — Acts 9:5–6
Saul’s dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus leads him from being the “worst of sinners” (1 Timothy 1:16) to the greatest of saints.
1. For the sake of clarity, an epistle (ἐπιστολή, e-pe-sto-lay') is a formal correspondence addressed to an audience and meant to be read aloud; whereas, a letter (γράφω, graf-o) is a personal correspondence from one person to another and meant to be read privately.
Excerpted with permission from Reading the Bible by Dr. Bill Creasy, copyright William C. Creasy.
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Your Turn
Saul/Paul’s story tells us many beautiful truths, but the most prominent is that anyone can be used by God for His glory, anyone can be radically saved! Let’s keep praying for our loved ones and friends who don’t yet know Jesus as Savior. He is going after them to rescue and redeem them just as He is for us! ~ Devotionals Daily