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the character of God is the rule and ideal of life. To be like God, to obey His will, to fulfil His commands, even to the remotest detail is the whole duty of man. "What," says Micah, "doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God." Sin is disobedience of God, and all particular vices, impurity, drunkenness, oppression of the poor, extortion and deceit, are wrong because God has prohibited them. Jehovah is the Jewish lawgiver who orders and presides over the Hebrew people with sovereign authority.

It must be remembered, however, that it was not only the Old Testament, but especially the Rabbinical interpretation of it which influenced Paul. He read the Bible through the exegetical glosses of the Pharisaic School.1 Among the Pharisees there prevailed a strict theory of inspiration, according to which the Scriptures were not only regarded as the direct revelation of divine truth, but even in some real sense identical with God Himself. The immediate result of this was the adoption of an allegorizing method which became common among all Hebrew scholars, both of Palestine and Alexandria in the time of Paul. This Rabbinical use of Scripture may be frequently detected in the Pauline treatment of the Old Testament.2 The most striking examples are to be found in 1 Cor. ix. 9, and in Gal. iv. 21 ff. But there is scarcely an outstanding character or important incident in Jewish history which does not furnish a type or allegory of Gospel truth. Adam, Abraham, Joseph, Hagar, Esau, Jacob; the Exodus, the Passover, the Crossing of the Red Sea, the Giving of

1 See Pfleiderer, Urchristenthum, p. 178 ff.

2Cf. Immer, "Das Jüdische in der Lehre des Paulus," in his Theologie des N. T., pp. 247-257; also cp. Pfleiderer, Urchristenthum.

the Manna-these and many other figures and facts are interwoven with Paul's teaching and are spiritualized to illustrate and enforce his appeals. But, perhaps, when we consider his training, the wonder is not at the extent of Rabbinic interpretation, but that he should be so free from its extravagancies and so sparing in its use.

Paul's education and native bent were strongly Palestinian, but it is not improbable that he was also influenced by the broader Alexandrian theology which had spread among the Greek Diaspora. An elaborate attempt has been made by some scholars to prove that Alexandrian thought had an important influence upon the apostle's teaching. Parallels have been traced between his ideas and those of Philo, and coincidences of thought are pointed out between his epistles and certain apocryphal books.1 Many of these comparisons both in idea and expression are instructive, although the differences are also significant and may only suggest that both authors were independently subject to the same general influences. Pfleiderer is of opinion that Paul was not directly acquainted with Philo's writings, but that he was cognisant of an earlier work, the apocryphal Book of Wisdom to which Philo was also largely indebted.2 Pfleiderer also points out some coincidences between the epistles of Paul and the Book of Wisdom which, however, other scholars, especially those of the English School, do not regard as sufficient to establish the derivation of the one series from the other.*

There are two main lines of thought affecting Paul's 1 See Jowett's Essay in his Commentary on Galations, also Siegfried, Philo von Alexandria, p. 303.

2 Das Urchristenthum, p. 158.

*See Stevens, Pauline Theology, p. 57.

3P. 159 ff.

anthropological view of man and his ethical relation to God which may possibly be traced, on the one hand to the contemporary Hellenic literature of Alexandria, and on the other to the Rabbinical School of Palestine. These are the ideal forms of divine Wisdom and divine Law. Paul's teaching with regard to wisdom, its divine source and communication, man's capacity for receiving and appropriating it, his possession of a reasoning soul containing the potentiality of receiving truth, but not the actual ability either to discern or to fulfil the will of God till the Holy Spirit communicates it-these ideas, which we find in 1 Cor. ii. 6-16, offer a parallel to similar teaching in the Book of Wisdom. On the other hand, Paul's teaching with regard to the law, his high respect for it, his elaborate proof of man's inability to fulfil its requirements may be considered as a reflection of Palestinian theology. If the Alexandrian thinkers exalted wisdom or the Logos, the Palestinian Rabbis exalted law or the Thora. But both came to pretty much the same. direct emanation and expression of the What divine wisdom was to Philo, the Thora was to the Pharisees of Jerusalem-the summum bonum, the fountain of all blessing, "the light and bread of life." If the realization of wisdom was the aim of the Hellenists of Alexandria, devotion to the law was the essence of Rabbinical piety, a zeal which found its expression in its diligent study and the unabated desire to obey its behests. Whatever form the ideal assumed, whether expressed in terms of wisdom or of law-and both notions are present in the Pauline epistles-the practical question of Alexandrian thinkers and of Palestinian Rabbis was just the question which lay at the basis of Paul's own life and gave colour and direction to his entire ethical ideal: by what means can a man

Both were the mind of God.

overcome the weaknesses of the flesh and attain to the righteousness of God's holy law?

Whatever then be the immediate channel of Jewish influence upon Paul, no one can read his epistles without perceiving that the Hebrew conception of God and of man is the implicate of all his teaching. For Paul the law stands supreme as the expression of the divine will, good and holy in itself; and his very proof of its impotence as a means of justification with God and the hopelessness of Israel's attempt through its observance to win the Messianic salvation, is an evidence of the importance he attached to it. His conception of the supreme authority of the one true God; his idea of omnipotence and over-ruling providence, of predestination and elective grace; his view of two opposed powers, a divine and a satanic, the contrast of two worlds, a present earthly and a future heavenly; the notion of the universality of evil, of inherited sin through Adam's disobedience, and the consequent belief in the inherent weakness and inability of man: these are among the elements underlying his ethical teaching which the apostle Paul brought over from his Jewish upbringing and education.

II.

The second feature which must be taken into account in the shaping of Paul's thought was, undoubtedly, the Greco-Roman environment amid which he grew up. The apostle was something more than a converted Hebrew Rabbi. His Gentile mission presupposes a wider preparation than that which his Jewish origin and education supplied. "I am debtor," he says, "both to Greeks and Barbarians." In him, indeed, Jew, Greek and Roman met, and his ethical outlook was coloured by the complex

civilization of his day. The extent and force of Hellenic influence upon the character and teaching of Paul is a subject upon which considerable diversity of opinion exists.1

In

It is scarcely possible to imagine that the world-wide mission of the apostle could have emanated from the mind of a narrow Jew such as Renan and others conceive him to have been. Adaptability, curiosity, alertness, the love of investigation-peculiarly Greek traits-were among the most marked features of his character. the Greek city of Tarsus, the centre of life and commerce, the home of philosophy and culture, the meeting place of east and west-every opportunity was afforded for the stimulation and exercise of these qualities. It was not surely without its significance for his after life-work that he of whom his Lord said: "He is a chosen vessel, to bear my name among the Gentiles," should be first a Jewish boy in the streets of a Greek town, in whose complex life there would be much to stir in an impressionable child dreams of a larger world.2 Everywhere in the epistles of Paul we see evidences of his Greek environment. His mental imagery is not drawn, like that of Jesus, from the quieter aspects of nature, but from the scenes of human activity and the monuments of cultivated life. The language of the apostle is impregnated with the atmosphere of the city, and is alive with the bustle of the Roman world. The street, the market-place, the stadium, the arena, the temple, the traffic of a Greek seaport-these are the associations which have left their impress upon the

1 Hausrath, Renan, Harnack, Farrar, Bruce, Stevens, are disposed to minimize it. On the other hand, Joh. Weiss, Pfleiderer, Baur, Lightfoot, Jowett, Hicks, Ramsay, may be cited as favouring the view. 2 Art. "Paul," in Hastings, Dict. of the Bible.

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