Paul, by N.T. Wright

Chapter 1

1. Saul drinks it all in. This is his story, the story he will make his own. It will happen again: a new, second Exodus, bringing full and final freedom. He will play his part in the long-running drama. The trouble was, of course, that God’s people seemed bent on wandering off in their own direction, again and again. That’s where the sex and the violence came in. It always seemed to go that way. They wanted to be like the goyim, the nations, instead of being distinct, as they had been summoned to be. And that is why some Jews, and he among them—one of the first solid things we know about young Saul—followed the ancient tradition of “zeal.” Violence would be necessary to root out wickedness from Israel.

- Where do you recall history repeating this cycle of violent zeal in the name of holy war?  Why does it appeal so strongly to Saul?

2. These stories would have resonated powerfully in Saul’s devout Jewish home. The Jewish communities in Turkey and in many other parts of the Roman Empire lived relatively peacefully alongside their goyischeneighbors. But they could never tell when the goyimwould try it again or what diabolical means they might find to undermine the covenant loyalty the Jews owed to the One God. They had to be ready. Saul came from a family who knew what that meant. It meant Ioudaïsmos: as we saw, not a “religion” called “Judaism” in the modern Western sense, a system of piety and morality, but the active propagation of the ancestral way of life, defending it against external attacks and internal corruption and urging the traditions of the Torah upon other Jews, especially when they seemed to be compromising.

- In what ways might you identify with the efforts of Saul’s family to preserve their way of life in the midst of corruptive secular influences?

3. I thought of the young Saul of Tarsus in November 1995, when the then prime minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated by a student called Yigal Amir. Rabin had taken part in the Oslo Accords, working out agreements toward peace with the Palestinian leadership. In 1994 he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with his political rival Shimon Peres and with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. He also signed a peace treaty with Jordan. All this was too much for hard-line Israelis, who saw his actions as hopelessly compromising national identity and security. The news media described the assassin as a “law student,” but in Europe and America that phrase carries a meaning different from the one it has in Israel today and the one it would have had in the days of Saul of Tarsus. Amir was not studying to be an attorney in a Western-style court. He was a zealous Torah student. His action on November 4, 1995, was, so he claimed at his trial, in accordance with Jewish law. He is still serving his life sentence and has never expressed regret for his actions. The late twentieth century is obviously very different from the early first century, but “zeal” has remained a constant.

- What do you remember of this tragic event?  

- Where have you since seen similar acts of violent zeal and what rationales were claimed?

4. As I watched the television broadcasts that November afternoon, my mind shuttled back and forth between modern Jerusalem and the Jerusalem of Saul’s day. In that earlier Jerusalem a young man called Stephen had been stoned to death—illegally, since under Roman rule only the Romans could carry out the death penalty. Saul of Tarsus, a zealous young Torah student, had been there, watching, taking it all in, looking after the coats of the men throwing rocks, who were ceremonially cleansing the city of the poison that Stephen had been uttering.

- As N.T. Wrights asks, “What was that poison?”

5. Saul approved. This was the kind of action the Torah required. This was what “zeal” was supposed to look like. From that moment, the young man saw what had to be done.Saul therefore set off as a new Phinehas, a new Elijah. The scriptural models were clear. Torah and Temple—the One God himself—were under attack from this new movement. With his Bible in his head, zeal in his heart, and official documents of authority from the chief priests in his bag, young Saul set off in the firm hope that he too would be recognized as a true covenant member. “It was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Phinehas then; Saul now.

- How does this description of Saul’s background provide a better appreciation and understanding of his extraordinary conversion and subsequent mission work in obedience to Jesus?