Chapter Two. The Persecutor Saul and the Christian Paul

Intentions of Saul of Tarsus

At the beginning of the tenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, Paul (remember, he addresses his fellow tribesmen) breaks through a phrase in which one can undoubtedly hear an autobiographical note: "For I testify to them that they have zeal for God, but not for reasoning" (Romans 10:2). It is even more pronounced in Phil 3:6, where Paul calls himself "a persecutor of the church out of zeal." And in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians we find the same confession, but more extensive:

You have heard of my former way of life in Judaism, that I persecuted the Church of God cruelly, and devastated it, and prospered in Judaism more than many of my contemporaries in my generation, being an immoderate zealot for the traditions of my fathers

(Galatians 1:13-14).

Jealousy, then, is a key characteristic of the mentality of the type of Jews to which Saul of Tarsus belonged.10 But what were these mindsets? And what had to happen to Saul in order for him to become a preacher from a persecutor?

In our reflections on Saul of Tarsus, we will, of course, start from the autobiographical confessions just quoted and similar texts like 1 Corinthians 15:9. It is inconceivable (although some, such as Chaim Maccoby, mentioned in chapter 1, succeed) that Paul would invent his biography from beginning to end. But it is much more likely that the early Christian church knew him quite well as a persecutor, and this fame followed him on his heels. If we want to understand the nature of Paul's conversion, as well as the changes in his way of thinking, we need to look back at his past.

Pharisee, but what is it?

Saul's participation in the persecution of the Church, as well as the term "zealous" by which he describes his actions, clearly indicate that he belonged to a very specific trend in Judaism in the first century C.E. Both give us many reasons to assume what ideas led the young Tarsus to persecute Christians not only in the Holy Land but also abroad. Both allow us to see in him not just a Jew, but a Pharisee; not just a Pharisee, but a disciple of Rabbi Shammai; finally, not just a disciple of Rabbi Shammai, but the most orthodox of the faithful.

Who were the Shammaites? Thirty years before the appearance of Saul of Tarsus on the historical scene, a split occurred in the Pharisaic movement. During the reign of Herod the Great (36-4 B.C.), two rabbinic schools arose within the then very influential movement. They were led by two of the most revered teachers of that time, Hillel and Shammai. They are known mainly from numerous discussions in the Mishnah (codification of Jewish law around 200 C.E.), in which Hillel is almost always "lenient" and Shammai is "stern."

By the time of the Mishnah's origins, that is, about the end of the second century C.E., Hillel's adherents, as is evident from most of its texts, had prevailed. However, in the interval between the era of Hillel and Shammai, that is, the end of the first century and the very beginning of the second century, when the famous Rabbi Akiva became the ruler of minds, there was practically no cessation of discussions between the "Hillelites" and the "Shammaites". Saul grew up in an atmosphere of fierce disputes and struggles between supporters of the two parties. He was not just a Jew forced to accept the authority of the Gentiles, a goyim, not just a Pharisee living in a world in which (from the Pharisaic point of view) many Jews had stained themselves with paganism, but a disciple of Shammai, a hardliner, or, as we would say now, a militant "extreme right."

But why was Hillel lenient and, on the contrary, stern? When one reads the Mishnah and other later rabbinic texts, it would seem that the debate was mainly about the Torah. However, in Paul's world, everything was much more complicated. The disputes between the "lenient" and the "strict" were not limited to the observance of religious precepts. It was not a question of personal or public piety. The main problem around which spears were broken was as "theological" as it was "political." At stake was the fate of Israel – its people, its land, its Temple.