[81] 4. SAUL, OTHERWISE PAUL. The name Paul, here applied for the first time by the historian to the person whom he has hitherto called Saul, has given rise to much discussion and many theories. We shall not begin by theorising as to the names of this individual, but by inquiring what was the meaning of that very common formula, "Saul, otherwise Paul" ({Saulos ho Paulos}), in the society of the Eastern provinces; and shall then apply the results to this case.

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 rôle which he was playing for the time being, [82] 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 prænomen. His Greek name, taken alone, was a full legal designation in a Greek court.

This has an obvious bearing on the case of Saul, otherwise "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 [83] that are under the law as under the law (though not myself under the law); to them that are without the law as without 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 marvellous 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.

Coming forward in this character and name, Paul was taking a momentous step, the importance of which was fully marked in the narrative. In the first place, he was taking the leading place and guiding the tone of the interview instead of being, as heretofore, the subordinate following Barnabas. Hence in the narrative we find that Barnabas introduced Saul to the Apostles; Barnabas brought Saul to Antioch; Barnabas and Saul carried the Antiochian aims to Jerusalem; Barnabas and Saul brought back John Mark with them from Jerusalem; Barnabas was first and Saul last in the body of prophets and teachers of the Church at Antioch; Barnabas and Saul were selected by the Spirit; and Barnabas and Saul were [84] invited to the proconsul's presence. But now Paul took this new departure, and Paul and his company sailed away from Paphos to Pamphylia; Paul and Barnabas addressed the Gentiles in Antioch; Paul and Barnabas disputed with the Judaising party on their return to Syrian Antioch; and henceforth the regular order places Paul first. There are only two exceptions to this rule, and these serve to bring out its true character more clearly.

(1) In the Council at Jerusalem, and in the letter of the Apostles and Elders, XV 12, 25, the order is Barnabas and Paul; but there we are among Jews, who follow the order of seniority and Jewish precedence. The only surprising thing here is that they use the name Paul, not the Hebrew Saul. We can only infer from that that the Greek-speaking Jews generally used the name Paul (compare p. 169), and that the historian's use of the name Saul in the earlier part of this narrative was deliberately chosen to emphasise the contrast between Paul's earlier and his later manner.

(2) In the episode where the two Apostles were worshipped at Lystra, Barnabas is named first as Zeus the chief god, and Paul next as Hermes the messenger. But the same qualities which mark out Paul to us as the leader, marked him out to the populace of Lycaonia as the agent and subordinate. The Western mind regards the leader as the active and energetic partner; but the Oriental mind considers the leader to be the person who sits still and does nothing, while his subordinates speak and work for him. Hence in the truly Oriental religions the chief god sits apart from the world, communicating with it through his messenger and subordinate. The more statuesque figure of Barnabas was therefore taken by the Orientals as the chief god, and the active orator, Paul, as his [85] messenger, communicating his wishes to men. Incidentally, we may notice both the diametrical antithesis of this conception of the Divine nature to the Christian conception, and also the absolute negation of the Oriental conception in Christ's words to His Disciples, "whosoever would become great among you shall be your minister; and whosoever would be first among you shall be your servant"(Matt. XX 26).

How delicate is the art which by simple change in the order of a recurring pair of names, and by the slight touch at the critical moment, "Saul, otherwise Paul,"suggests and reveals this wide-reaching conception in Luke's mind of historical development!

In the second place, when Paul thus came forward under his new aspect and personality, he was inaugurating a new policy. He was appealing direct for the first time to the Græco-Roman world as himself a member of that world. This is put plainly in XIV 27 as the great innovation and the great fact of the journey: as soon as Paul and Barnabas returned to Syrian Antioch, they made a report to the assembled Church "of all things that God had done with them, and how He had opened a door of faith unto the Gentiles". The first Stage in the admission of the Gentiles to the Christian Church was taken long before this journey. But the full implication of the Apostolate to the Gentiles was not even by Paul himself realised for many years. The second stage was achieved on this journey, and the historian fixes the psychological moment precisely at the point where the Apostles faced the Magian in the presence of the proconsul of Cyprus. Amid the conflict of the two religions before the Roman governor, Paul stepped forward in his character of citizen of the Empire; and his act was [86] followed by that transport of power, which attested the grace that was given to the bold innovator, and the Divine approval and confirmation of his step. On former occasions the grace that was evident in Antioch confirmed the high character of the Antiochian Brotherhood in the eyes of Barnabas (Acts XI 23, and the grace that was given Paul had justified his apostolate in the eyes of James, Peter and John (Gal II 9).

Such is the situation in which we stand when we transport ourselves in thought to the time and the country where the events took place, and take the few brief words of Luke in the sense which they bore to the men of his time. But now let us turn from this picture to see what is made of the scene by the critic, who sits in his study and writes as if the men of this book were artificial figures and not real human beings. Weizsäcker, one of the most distinguished of modern German scholars, finds in this delicacy of language nothing but a sign of double authorship. The late author, he says, used two earlier authorities, one of whom employed the name Saul, while the other designated the Apostle as Paul, and by a mere conjecture he puts the change at this point. Weizsäcker emphasises this view that the point was selected by an arbitrary conjecture, and that any other point might have been chosen equally well. It might almost seem that, in a statement like this, the learned professor is taking his fun off us, and is experimenting to see how much the world will accept at the mouth of a deservedly famous scholar without rebelling.

Mr. Lewin states better than almost any other the force of this passage when he says: "The dropping of the Jewish, and the adoption of a Roman name, was in harmony with the great truth he was promulgating -- that henceforth the [87] partition between Jew and Gentile was broken down". Hethen asks, "Why is not the name of Paul introduced when he first left Antioch to commence his travels?" and after he has in a rather hesitating way suggested some quite unsuitable occasions as possible for the change, he rightly concludes, "It occurs more naturally immediately after-wards when Saul stands forth by himself and becomes the principal actor"The marvels described in Acts concern my present purpose only in so far as they bear upon the historical effect of the narrative. In themselves they do not add to, but detract from its verisimilitude as history. They are difficulties; but my hope is to show first that the narrative apart from them is stamped as authentic, second that they are an integral part of it. To study and explain them does not belong to me. Twenty years ago I found it easy to dispose of them; but now-a-days probably not even the youngest among us finds himself able to maintain that we have mastered the secrets of nature, and determined the limits which divide the unknown from the impossible. That Paul believed himself to be the recipient of direct revelations from God, to be guided and controlled in his plans by direct interposition of the Holy Spirit, to be enabled by the Divine power to move the forces of nature in a way that ordinary men cannot, is involved in this narrative. You must make up your own minds to accept or to reject it, but you cannot cut out the marvellous from the rest, nor can you believe that either Paul or this writer was a mere victim of hallucinations. To the men of that age only what was guaranteed by marvellous accompaniments was true; to us unusual accompaniments tend to disprove truth. The contrast between the ages is himmelweit.

[88] The marvellous is indissolubly interwoven-for good or for bad-with this narrative, and cannot be eliminated. Do the marvellous adjuncts discredit the rest of the narrative, or does the vividness and accuracy of the narrative require us to take the marvels with the rest and try to understand them? Every one must answer the question for himself.