00.3. Preface
Preface No apology is offered for adding to the vast sum of books about Paul. Much of what is in modern times written and preached regarding Paul is expressed in terms of an old system of education and thought. The expression is usually quite right in its own way; but it requires an effort for the modern-trained mind to think after that fashion, and many have not made, and are not likely to make, the effort.
Growing up amid the life of the modern Universities in familiar relations with scientific and literary men, most of whom had no opinions about Paul or his philosophy, the present writer gradually formed his own conception of the teaching of Paul in terms of the education that surrounded him. These ideas have forced themselves into words, for which often the writer hardly feels himself responsible: they seemed rather to be a free translation from the Greek of the Epistles than the outcome of his own thoughts. These thoughts formed the subject of the Deems Lectures in New York University, November, 1910; but illness, which led to resignation from active University duty, protracted the labour of preparing them for publication. In the interval Professor Deissmann’s book, St. Paul: a Study in Social and Religious History, has appeared. He takes a sharply opposed view. To him Paul was an uneducated man, possessing no literary excellence and no learning, a mere writer of letters in the vulgar speech, having a certain quickness in picking up scraps of philosophy and poetry that circulated among the people, unknown to and unmarked by the world, sometimes presenting in his letters difficulties which Deissmann compares to the difficulties felt by us in reading the illiterate epistles of uneducated Egyptian peasants. To the distinguished Berlin Professor, Paul was a man unknown to and unmarked by the world, profoundly conscious of and humbly confessing his lack of skill in words and in thought, a great religious genius by nature, but a mere obscure Jew, except for that religious enthusiasm. The historian Luke regarded Paul as the centre of interest wherever he went, dominating all by his personality, heralded before he came, alike in Thessalonica and in Rome, the man that has “turned the world upside down,” the storm-centre of society, from whom originates revolution wherever he goes, educated in his thoughts and polished in his tone of courtesy, yet fiery and vehement in his temper, versatile and adaptable so that he moves at his ease in every class of society, the Socratic dialectician in the Athenian market-place, the philosophic rhetorician in the Court of Areopagus, the lecturer in the Ephesian School of Tyrannus, conversing in a tone of courteous respect with Kings and great Roman officials, “standing” before an Emperor, giving wise advice at a hasty council on a ship in the season of danger, cheering a dejected crew to make one more effort for life, reminding Roman soldiers of their duty and Roman colonial magistrates of their error in trampling on Roman law, making a great trade corporation anxious about the future of its business and a small firm of slave-owners despondent about its income, the friend of the leading men in the province of Asia, to whom a wealthy Roman procurator with a queen as his mistress looked expecting to receive bribes: where Paul is all eyes and many hearts are attracted, while the vulgar and the mob and the Jews, the magians and the soothsayers, hate and fear him. I follow Luke, and I find in Paul’s letters the work of a great master of language and of thought, who trampled on all artificiality and spoke freely in the voice of nature during an age when conventions and formality reigned supreme. The reader must judge for himself. The first part of this book, entitled Preparatory Questions, discusses topics which were intentionally taken in hand before Part II was sent to the printer. The third part, labelled Subsidiary Questions, takes up subjects which arose during the printing of Part II, or which seemed to call for a more detailed treatment than suited the scale of that part. There are, however, several Sections in Part II which might equally well be in Part I, and vice versa. One of the Sections (LI) treats an important point in the order of Paul’s letters, Section L an equally important legal point bearing on the case of Paul: the results of both are assumed in Part II.
I have intentionally avoided using the honorific prefix “St.,” which places Paul on a conventional pedestal, and obscures the man, the missionary, and the teacher. It has in English lost entirely its original force in Greek usage. In Greek we use
I have to thank the Editors of the Contemporary Review and the Expositor for permission to work up as chapters of this book articles that have appeared in the pages of those magazines. I regret that in several cases references to other books are either stated vaguely without exact page, or omitted entirely. Much of this volume was written far from books (except two or three specially selected for travel). I had hoped to introduce specific references in the proof-sheets, but, as it turned out, the proofs had to be revised in equally difficult situations, and some chapters are printed without revision by the writer. The exigencies of a wandering life enforced this; but there is not a paragraph that has not been pondered over for years, and composed word by word in hard labour, before it was put on paper.
Also I thank the Aberdeen University Press and its press-reader for the care with which they have produced the book amid the difficulties of the situation.
W. M. Ramsay Grove City, Pennsylvania, August, 1913