Introduction
The Apostle St Paul had been given the name Saul by his parents, after the first King of Israel, but he changed it to Paul in honour of his Roman patron Sergius Paulus, a Proconsul of Cyprus, whom Saul brought to Christianity. Saul’s own conversion, in about AD 33 to 36, had been altogether more dramatic.
SAUL was born in Tarsus in Cilicia,* a thoroughly Roman city with a famous library and academy.* He inherited Roman citizenship from his father,* yet he was also Jewish, and as a young man studied not Rhetoric in Tarsus but Law in Jerusalem, under Rabbi Gamaliel.
Gamaliel was a leading member of the Pharisees, a movement which saw the Roman Empire’s occupation as a grave threat to Jewish identity and to Israel’s destiny as God’s chosen nation. In Jerusalem, Saul became convinced that Israel must be cleansed of the Roman occupation and its corrupting culture, by violence if necessary; and Christians were particularly offensive, welcoming uncircumcised Gentiles, dispensing members from Jewish laws and interpreting Scripture in defiance of the authorities appointed by Moses.
Gamaliel urged Jerusalem’s ruling council, the Sanhedrin, to let Christians alone, but his fiery pupil assisted in the first execution of a Christian convert, Stephen;* and the High Priest, Joseph Caiaphas, subsequently empowered Saul to round up further Christians in Damascus for trial.
Tarsus was also the birthplace of Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury from 668 to 690.
The culture of the wider Roman Empire was ‘Hellenistic’, a word derived from ‘Hellas’, the proper word for Greece. After Alexander the Great of Macedon conquered much of the Mediterranean world in the early 4th century BC, he and his successors very deliberately spread Greek language and culture across the ancient world. The Roman Republic and Empire regarded Hellenism as the test of civilisation, and Greek rather than Latin was spoken everywhere as the Common Tongue. Hellenism can be compared to modern-day Anglo-Americanism in its pervasiveness, its advantages for trade and communication, its blend of baseness and nobility, and the extreme responses it can provoke.
Citizenship, which came in a variety of levels with differing rights, privileges and duties, was extended by successive Roman governments to the provinces as a means of fostering and rewarding loyalty. Those born outside Rome itself could acquire Roman citizenship in various ways, such as purchase, distinguished service in provincial government or the Army or, as Saul did, by inheritance.
Précis
Saul’s father was both Jewish and a Roman citizen, and young Saul chose his Jewish heritage over his Roman. A student of the more moderate Rabbi Gamaliel, Saul became a radical Pharisee, whose active campaign against Christians and role in the execution of Stephen, the first martyr, won him a commission from the High Priest to arrest Christians in Damascus. (60 / 60 words)
Saul’s father was both Jewish and a Roman citizen, and young Saul chose his Jewish heritage over his Roman. A student of the more moderate Rabbi Gamaliel, Saul became a radical Pharisee, whose active campaign against Christians and role in the execution of Stephen, the first martyr, won him a commission from the High Priest to arrest Christians in Damascus.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: because, besides, if, may, must, otherwise, whereas, who.
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