Not Paul, But Jesus

In other places and posterior times alone, could this supplemental vision, therefore, have been put into circulation: accordingly, not till a great many years after, was mention made of it by the author of the Acts: – mention made by him, either in his own person, or as having been related, or alluded to, by Paul himself. Even the author of the Acts, – though in this same chapter he has been relating the story of Ananias's vision, – yet, when he comes to speak, of the way, in which, according to him, Paul, by means of his protector and benefactor Barnabas, obtained an introduction to the Apostles, viz. all the Apostles, in which, however, he is so pointedly contradicted by Paul himself, – yet speaks not of Barnabas, as including, in the recommendatory account he gave them, of Paul – his vision, and his merits – any mention of this supplemental vision: – any mention of any Ananias. Acts 9:27.

At Damascus, howsoever it might be in regard to the Christians – neither to Jews, nor to Gentiles, could the production, of any such letters as those in question, have availed him anything. Such as had embraced Christianity excepted, neither over Gentiles nor over Jews did those letters give him any power: and, as to Jews, the character in which – after any declaration made of his conversion – he would have presented himself, would have been no better than that of an apostate, and betrayer of a highly important public trust. To men of both these descriptions, a plea of some sort or other, such as, if believed, would be capable of accounting for so extraordinary a step, as that he should change, from the condition of a most cruel and inveterate persecutor of the new religion, to that of a most zealous supporter and leader, – could not, therefore, but be altogether necessary. No sooner was he arrived at Damascus, than, if the author of the Acts is to be believed, he began pleading, with all his energy, the cause of that religion, which, almost to that moment, he had with so much cruelty opposed. As to the story of his vision, – what is certain is – that, sooner or later, for the purpose of rendering to men of all descriptions a reason for a change so preeminently extraordinary, he employed this story. But, forasmuch as of no other account of it, as given by him, is any trace to be found; – nor can any reason be found, why that which was certainly employed afterwards might not as well be employed at and from the first; – hence comes the probability, that from the first it accordingly was employed.

SECTION 3.

ON DAMASCUS JOURNEY – COMPANIONS NONE

In the preceding chapter, a question was started, but no determinate answer as yet found for it: this is – what became of the men, who – according to all the accounts given by Paul, or from him, of his conversion vision – were his companions in the journey? At Damascus, if any such men there were, they would in course arrive as well as he, and at the same time with him. This circumstance considered, if any such men there were, – and they were not in confederacy with him, – the imposition must have been put upon them: and, for that purpose, he must, in their presence, have uttered the sort of discourse, and exhibited the sort of deportment, mentioned in the above accounts.

To this difficulty, however, a very simple solution presents itself. He had no such companions. Neither by name, nor so much as by any the most general description, – either of the persons, or of the total number, – is any designation to be found anywhere: – not in the account given in the Acts; not in any account, given by himself, in any Epistle of his; or, as from himself, in any part of the Acts. In the company of divers others, a man was struck down, he says, or it is said of him, by a supernatural light: and, at the instant, and on the spot, has a conversation with somebody. Instead of saying who these other men are, the credit of the whole story is left to rest on the credit of this one man: – the credit, of a story, the natural improbability of which, stood so much need of collateral evidence, to render it credible.

Not till many years had elapsed, after this journey of his were these accounts, any one of them, made public: and, in relation to these pretended companions – supposing him interrogated at any time posterior to the publication of the account in the Acts, – after the lapse of such a number of years, he could, without much difficulty, especially his situation and personal character considered, hold himself at full liberty, to remember or to forget, as much or as little, as on each occasion he should find convenient.

SECTION 4.

FLIGHT FROM DAMASCUS: CAUSES – FALSE – TRUE

ACTS ix. 19-25

And when he had received meat he was strengthened. Then was Saul certain days with the disciples which were at Damascus. – And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God. – But all that heard him were amazed, and said: Is not this he that destroyeth them which called on his name in Jerusalem; and came hither for that intent, that he might bring them bound unto the chief priests? – But Saul increased the more in strength, and confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is very Christ. – And after that many days were fulfilled, the Jews took counsel to kill him. – But their laying await was known of Saul. And they watched the gates day and night to kill him. – Then the disciples took him by night, and let him down by the wall in a basket.

The conception, which it was the evident design of this passage to impress upon the mind of the reader, is – that, as soon almost as he was arrived at Damascus, Paul not only went about preaching Jesus, but preaching to that effect openly, and without reserve, in all the synagogues: and that it was for this preaching, and nothing else, that "the Jews," thus undiscriminating is the appellation, purposely it should seem, employed, "went about to kill him: " that thereupon it was, that he made his escape over the wall, and having so done, repaired immediately to Jerusalem.

In this conception, there seems to be evidently a mixture of truth and falsehood.

That he addressed himself, in a greater or less number, to the disciples, – must assuredly have been true: to the accomplishment of his designs, as above explained, intercourse with them could not but be altogether necessary.

That, when any probable hope of favourable attention and secrecy were pointed out to him – that, in here and there an instance, he ventured so far as to address himself to this or that individual, who was not as yet enlisted in the number of disciples, – may also have been true: and, for this purpose, he might have ventured perhaps to show himself in some comparatively obscure synagogue or synagogues.

But, as to his venturing himself so far as to preach in all synagogues without distinction, – or in any synagogue frequented by any of the constituted authorities, – this seems altogether incredible.

To engage them to seek his life; to lie in wait to kill him; in other words, to apprehend him for the purpose of trying him, and probably at the upshot killing him, – this is no more than, considering what, in their eyes, he had been guilty of, was a thing of course: a measure, called for – not, for preaching the religion of Jesus; not, for any boldness in any other way displayed; but, for the betraying of the trust, reposed in him by the constituted authorities at Jerusalem: thus protecting and cherishing those malefactors, for such they had been pronounced by authority, for the apprehending and punishing of whom, he had solicited the commission he thereupon betrayed. Independently of all other offence, given by preaching or anything else, – in this there was that, which, under any government whatever, would have amply sufficed – would even more than sufficed – to draw down, upon the head of the offender, a most exemplary punishment.

In this view, note well the description, given in the Acts, of the persons, by whose enmity he was driven out of Damascus; compare with it what, in relation to this same point, is declared – most explicitly declared – by Paul himself.

By the account in the Acts, they were the persons to whom he had been preaching Jesus; and who, by that preaching, had been confounded and provoked. Among those persons, a conspiracy was formed for murdering him; and it was to save him from this conspiracy that the disciples let him down the wall in a basket.

Such is the colour, put upon the matter by the author of the Acts. Now, what is the truth – the manifest and necessary truth, as related – explicitly related – by Paul himself? related, in the second of his letters to his Corinthians, on an occasion when the truth would be more to his purpose than the false gloss put upon it by his adherents as above? The peril, by which he was driven thus to make his escape, was – not a murderous conspiracy, formed against him by a set of individuals provoked by his preaching; – it was the intention, formed by the governor of the city. Intention? to do what? to put him to death against law? No; but to "apprehend" him. To apprehend him? for what? Evidently for the purpose of bringing him to justice in the regular way – whatsoever was the regular way – for the offence he had so recently committed: committed, by betraying his trust, and entering into a confederacy with the offenders, whom he had been commissioned, and had engaged, to occupy himself, in concert with the constituted authorities of the place, in bringing to justice.

"In Damascus," says he, 2 Cor. xi. 32, 33, "the governor under Aretas the king kept the city of the Damascenes with a garrison, desirous to apprehend me. And through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and escaped his hands."

And on what occasion is it, that this account of the matter is given by him? It is at the close of a declamation, which occupies ten verses – a declamation, the object of which is – to impress upon the minds of his adherents the idea of his merits: viz. those which consisted in labour, suffering, and perils: merits, on which he places his title to the preference he claims above the competitors to whom he alludes: – alludes, though without naming them: they being, as he acknowledges therein, ministers of Christ, and probably enough, if not any of them Apostles, persons commissioned by the Apostles. Greater, it is evident, must have been the danger from the ruling powers of the place, than from a set of individual intended murderers: – from the power of the rulers there could not be so much as a hope of salvation, except by escape: from the individuals there would be a naturally sufficient means of salvation; the power of the rulers presenting a means of salvation, and that naturally a sufficient one.

Note here, by the by, one of the many exemplifications, of that confusion which reigns throughout in Paul's discourses: the result, of that mixture, which, in unascertainable proportions, seems to have had place – that mixture of nature and artifice. It is at the end of a long list of labours, sufferings, and perils, that this anecdote presents itself. Was it accordingly at the end of them that the fact itself had taken place? – No: it was at the very commencement: or rather, so far as concerned preaching, before the commencement. Only in the way of allusion – allusion in general terms – in terms of merely general description, without mention of time or place, or persons concerned, – are any of the other sufferings or perils mentioned: in this instance alone, is any mention made under any one of those heads: and here we see it under two of them, viz. place and person: and moreover, by other circumstances, the time, viz. the relative time, is pretty effectually fixed.

Immediately afterwards, this same indisputably false colouring will be seen laid on, when the account comes to be given, of his departure for Jerusalem: always for preaching Jesus is he sought after, never for anything else.

According to this representation, here are two governments – two municipal governments – one of them, at the solicitation of a functionary of its own, giving him a commission to negotiate with another, for the purpose of obtaining, at his hands, an authority, for apprehending a set of men, who, in the eyes of both, were guilty of an offence against both. Instead of pursuing his commission, and using his endeavours to obtain the desired cooperation, he betrays the trust reposed in him: – he not only suffers the alleged malefactors to remain unapprehended and untouched, but enters into a confederacy with them. To both governments, this conduct of his is, according to him, matter of such entire indifference, that he might have presented himself everywhere, as if nothing had happened, had it not been for his preaching: – had it not been for his standing forth openly, to preach to all that would hear him, the very religion which he had been commissioned to extinguish.

In such a state of things, is there anything that can, by any supposition, be reconciled to the nature of man, in any situation, – or to any form of government?

Three years having been passed by him in that to him strange country, what, during all that time, were his means of subsistence? To this question an unquestionable answer will be afforded by the known nature of his situation. He was bred to a trade, indeed a handicraft trade – tent-making: an art, in which the operations of the architect and the upholsterer are combined. But, it was not to practise either that, or any other manual operation, that he paid his visit to that country. When he really did practise it, he took care that this condescension of his should not remain a secret: from that, as from everything else he ever did or suffered, or pretended to have done or suffered, he failed not to extract the matter of glory for himself, as well as edification for his readers. In Arabia, his means of subsistence were not then derived from his trade: if they had been, we should have known it: – from what source then were they derived?19 By the very nature of his situation, this question has been already answered: – from the purses of those, whom, having had it in his power, and even in his commission, to destroy, he had saved.

And now, as to all those things, which, from the relinquishment of his labours in the field of persecution to the first of his four recorded visits to Jerusalem, he is known to have done, answers have been furnished: – answers, to the several questions why and by what means, such as, upon the supposition that the supernatural mode of his conversion was but a fable, it will not, it is hoped, be easy to find cause for objecting to as insufficient.

SECTION 5.

ARABIA-VISIT – MENTIONED BY PAUL, NOT ACTS

Not altogether without special reason, seems the veil of obscurity to have been cast over this long interval. In design, rather than accident, or heedlessness, or want of information, – may be found, it should seem, the cause, of a silence so pregnant with misrepresentation. In addition to a length of time, more or less considerable, spent in Damascus, a city in close communication with Jerusalem, in giving proofs of his conversion, – three years spent in some part or other of the contiguous indeed, but wide-extending, country of Arabia – (spent, if Paul is to be believed, in preaching the religion of Jesus, and at any rate in a state of peace and innoxiousness with relation to it) – afforded such proof of a change of plan and sentiment, as, in the case of many a man, might, without miracle or wonder, have sufficed to form a basis for the projected alliance: – this proof, even of itself; much more, when corroborated, by the sort of certificate, given to the Church by its preeminent benefactor Barnabas, who, in introducing the new convert, to the leaders among the Apostles, for the special purpose of proposing the alliance, – took upon himself the personal responsibility, so inseparably involved in such a mark of confidence.

In this state of things then, which is expressly asserted by Paul to have been, and appears indubitably to have been, a real one, – considerations of an ordinary nature being sufficient – to produce – not only the effect actually produced – but, in the case of many a man, much more than the effect actually produced, – there was no demand, at that time, for a miracle: no demand for a miracle, for any such purpose, as that of working, upon the minds of the Apostles, to any such effect as that of their maintaining, towards the new convert, a conduct free from hostility, accompanied with a countenance of outward amity. But, for other purposes, and in the course of his intercourse with persons of other descriptions, it became necessary for him to have had these visions: it became necessary – not only for the purpose of proving connection on his part with the departed Jesus, to the satisfaction of all those by whom such proof would be looked for, – but, for the further purpose, of ascribing to Jesus, whatsoever doctrines the prosecution of his design might from time to time call upon him to promulgate; – those doctrines, in a word, which, (as will be seen), being his and not Jesus's – not reported by anyone else as being Jesus's – we shall find him, notwithstanding, preaching, and delivering, – so much at his ease, and with unhesitating assurance.

A miracle having therefore been deemed necessary (the miracle of the conversion-vision), and reported accordingly, – thus it is, that, by the appearance of suddenness, given to the sort and degree of confidence thereupon reported as having been bestowed upon him by the Apostles, a sort of confirmation is, in the Acts account, given to the report of the miracle: according to this account, it was not by the three or four years passed by him in the prosecution of their designs, or at least without obstruction given to them; – it was not by any such proof of amity, that the intercourse, such as it was, had been effected: – no: it was by the report of the vision – that report which, in the first instance, was made to them by their generous benefactor and powerful supporter, Barnabas; confirmed, as, to every candid eye it could not fail to be, by whatever accounts were, on the occasion of the personal intercourse, delivered from his own lips. "But Barnabas (says the author) took him and brought him to the Apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the Lord by the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus." Acts 9:27.

When in the year 57, Paul,20 to so many other boastings, was added the sufferings he would have us think were courted and endured by him, while preaching in the name of Jesus, that gospel, which he proclaims to have been his own, and not that of the Apostles, little assuredly did he think, that five years after, or thereabout, from the hand of one of his own attendants, a narrative was to appear, in which, of these same sufferings a so much shorter list would be given; or that, by an odd enough coincidence, more than seventeen centuries after, by a namesake of his honored patron, Doctor Gamaliel, the contradiction thus given to him, would be held up to view.

In the second of his epistles to his Corinthians, dated A.D. 57, – the following is the summary he gives of those same sufferings. Speaking of certain unnamed persons, styled by him false Apostles, but whom reasons are not wanting for believing to have been among the disciples of the real ones, – "Are they," says he, 2 Cor. xi. 23, "ministers of Christ? I speak as one beside himself, I am more: in labours more abundant: in stripes above measure: in prisons more frequent: in deaths, oft. – Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes, save one. – Thrice was I beaten with rods; once was I stoned: thrice I suffered shipwreck: a night and a day have I been in the deep." Thus far as per Paul.

Add from his former Epistle to the same in the same year, battle with beasts, one. "If, after the manner of men, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me," continues he, 1 Cor. XV. 32, "if the dead rise not, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die."

Let us now see how the account stands, as per Acts. On the part of this his panegyrist, whether any such habit had place as that of cutting down below their real amount, either the sufferings or the actings of his hero, the reader will have judged. Of both together, let it not be forgotten, the Acts' account comes some five years lower, than the date of the above tragical list: in it are included those sufferings and perils which we have seen, namely, those produced by the voyage to Rome, and which, at the time of Paul's list, had not taken their commencement. Now then for the Acts' list. Stripes, nine-and-thirty in a parcel, none: difference five. Beatings with rods, saving one possible one, of which presently, none; difference, three. Stoning, one21. Shipwreck, as yet none: the accident at Malta being three years subsequent. "Night and day in the deep," – according as it was on or in the deep – either nothing at all, or an adventure considerably too singular to have been passed over. Diving-bells are not commonly supposed to have been, at that time of day, in use; but whoever has a taste for predictions, may, if it be agreeable to him, see those same scientific instruments or the equivalent in this Gospel of Paul's predicted.

As to the parcels of stripes, the self-constituted Apostle takes credit for, they would have been, – supposing them administered, – administered, all of them, according to law, meaning always the law of Moses: for, it is in that law, (namely in Deuteronomy XXV. 3) that the clause, limiting to nine-and-thirty, the number to be given at a time, is to be found. Of these statements of Paul's, let it not pass unnoticed, the place is – a formal and studied Epistle, not an extempore speech: so that the falsehood in them, if any, was not less deliberate than the Temple perjury.

Of all these same boasted bodily sufferings, eight in the whole, when put together, – one was, at the outset, reserved for consideration: let us see what light, if any, is cast upon it by the Acts. One beating, the Acts informs us of: and it was a beating by order of magistrates: and accordingly, a beating according to law. But the law, according to which it was given, was not Jewish law: the magistrates, by whose order it was given, were not Jewish magistrates. The magistrates were heathens: and it was for being Jews, and preaching in the Jewish style, that Paul, and his companion Silas, were thus visited. It was at Philippi that the affair happened: it was immediately preceded by their adventure with the divineress, as per Acts 16:16; 34, Chap. 13: and brought about by the resentment of her masters, to whose established business, the innovation, introduced by these interlopers, had given disturbance: it was followed – immediately followed – by the earthquake, which was so dexterous in taking irons off. Whether therefore this beating was in Paul's account comprised in the eight stripings and beatings, seems not possible, humanly speaking, to know: not possible, unless so it be, that Paul, being the wandering Jew, we have sometimes heard of, is still alive, – still upon the look-out, for that aërial voyage, which, with or without the expectation of an aërostatic vehicle, we have seen him so confident in the assurance of.

Remains the battle with the beasts. What these same beasts were, how many there were of them, – how many legs they respectively had – for example, two or four – in what way he was introduced into their company, – whence his difference with them took its rise, – whether it was of his own seeking, or by invitation that he entered the lists with these his antagonists, – how it fared with them when the affair was over, – (for as to the hero himself, it does not appear that he was much the worse for it); – these, amongst other questions, might be worth answering, upon the supposition, that these antagonists of his were real beings and real beasts, and not of the same class as the arch-beast of his own begetting – Antichrist. But, the plain truth seems to be, that if ever he fought with beasts, it was in one of his visions: in which case, for proof of the occurrence, no visible mark of laceration could reasonably be demanded. Meantime, to prove the negative, as far as, in a case such as this, it is in the nature of a negative to be proved, – we may, without much fear of the result, venture to call his ever-devoted scribe. To this same Ephesus, – not more than a twelvemonth or thereabouts, before the date of the Epistle – he brings his patron, – finds appropriate employment for him, – and, off and on, keeps him there for no inconsiderable length of time. There it is, that we have seen, Chap. 13, §. 7., his handkerchiefs driving out devils as well as diseases: there it is, and for no other reason than that he is there – there it is, that we have seen so many thousand pounds worth of magical books burnt – and by their owners: there it is, that with a single handkerchief of his, – which so it were but used, was an overmatch for we know not how many devils, – we saw a single devil, with no other hands than those of the man he lodged in, wounding and stripping to the skin no fewer than seven men at the same time. If, then, with or without a whole skin at the conclusion of it, he had really had any such rencounter, with one knows not how many beasts, is it in the nature of the case, that this same historiographer of his, should have kept us ignorant of it? To be shut up with wild beasts, until torn to pieces by them, was indeed one of the punishments, for which men were indebted to the ingenuity of the Roman lawyers: but, if any such sentence was really executed upon our self-constituted Apostle, his surviving it was a miracle too brilliant not to have been placed at the head of all his other miracles: at any rate, too extraordinary to have been passed by altogether without notice. The biographer of Daniel was not thus negligent.