St Paul Book

St. Paul By ARTHUR DARBY NOCK Frothtngham Professor of the History of Religion in Harvard University, Corresponding Member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, Foreign Member of the Royal Society of Letters of Lund SWANDER LECTURES, 1938 HARPER BROTHERS PUBLISHERS New York and London To WlLLARD AND MURIEL SPERRY CONTENTS CHAP PAGE FOREWORD ...... 9 I INTRODUCTION . . . . . ri II TARSUS AND JERUSALEM . . . .21 III DAMASCUS ..... 35 IV PAULS EARLIER CHRISTIAN PERIOD . 82 V PAULS LATER CHRISTIAN PERIOD . .118 VI THE TRAVEL LETTERS I. THESSALONIANS AND GALATIANS ..... 145 VII THE TRAVEL LETTERS II. CORINTHIANS. 171 VIII THE TRAVEL LETTERS III. ROMANS . 207 IX LETTERS OF THE CAPTIVITY . 221 X THE STYLE AND THOUGHT OF PAUL . . 233 BIBLIOGRAPHY. . ... 249 INDEX ....... 253 FOREWORD THE life work of St. Paul has exercised a pro found influence on more than eighteen centuries, and his writings and thought have been subjected to the closest scrutiny by many generations of serious workers. No individual can do justice to the complexity of issues which are involved. If this small book makes it easier for any readers to see St. Paul as a man and as a writer in the con text of his times, I shall be more than content. My best thanks are due to the Theological Seminary of the Reformed Church in the United States at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where the sub stance of this work was delivered on the Swander lectureship, to its President, Dr. George W. Richards, and further to Canon J. M. Creed, Professor C. H. Dodd, and Mr. M. P. Charlesworth for their friendly aid, ARTHUR DARBY NOCK. HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS. December 9, 1937. CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION A STUDENT who wishes to know about St. Paul may at the beginning think that he is in a very fortunate position. We possess from St. Pauls hand a number of writings of undoubted authen ticity the two Epistles to the Thessalonians the two Epistles to the Corinthians the Epistle to the Galatians the Epistle to the Romans the Epistles to the Philippians, the Colossians, and Philemon. The letter which is called the Epistle to the Ephesians must be omitted, as probably of the next generation, although the thoughts it expresses may fairly be regarded as derived from Paul and not inconsistent with his own thinking the so-called Pastoral Epistles that is to say the two letters to Timothy and the letter to Titus belonging as they must do to a subsequent period, contain nevertheless information which may be genuine, if not fragments which may be authentic. These letters we possess in a text which is of remarkable trustworthiness-Naturally we have reason to suspect occasional interpolations and the present shape of the Second Epistle to the it ST. PAUL Corinthians is almost certainly due to the editorial putting together of material which is all Pauline but which was written on different occasions. Attempts have been made to show that the text has been freely rehandled in the interest of later presuppositions and it is easy to point to incon sistencies but Paul does not seem to have sought consistency. For most scholars the coherence and individuality, both of style and of ideas, and in particular of ideas which in later times became largely unintelligible because their setting was lost and the battle had for Christians shifted to other fields, will be decisive against any such supposi tions. Probability is the guide of life. We have not only this body of writings by Paul himself we have also in the Acts of the Apostles a record which, if not, as tradition asserts, written entirely by one who shared many of his travels, does at least, almost beyond doubt, include material taken from the diary of that fellow-traveller. This account shows at every point a remarkable sense for concrete situations and a notable accuracy in certain details of contemporary life which can be verified from the documentary and archaeological remains of the ancient world...Read More