PAUL THE APOSTLE

necessary, because in our present state we cannot see God ; for this seems to be the meaning of the saying that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God (1 Co 15'", cf. also Ph 32'). In this discussion St. Paul does not speak of the resurrection of the wicked; but elsewhere he re-echoes the teaching of Dn 12^ that the righteous and the evil rise together for judgment (Ac 24", Ro 2^-Um-n 2 Co 5'"). It is therefore not probable that in 1 Co 152"- a resurrection first of the righteous, and then, after an interval, of the wicked, is intended; the righteous alone are here considered, and they rise at Christ's coming, and 'then' (at Christ's coming) is the end. Those who see in this passage a millennium, and an interval between the rising of the good and of the wicked, are influenced greatly by Rev 20*-'; but the ' thousand years ' there seems to be a symbolical phrase for the interval between the first Advent and the last conflict, in which the baptized share in Christ's res-urrection (cf. Col 31, a paradox of obvious meaning). See Swete's Apocalypse of St. John, p. 260 Cf. — (c) In yet another passage, 2 Co 4'»-S"', the Apostle looks only at the state of the departed immediately after death. Here the metaphor of sleep is dropped, and the nearness to Christ of the faithful dead is dwelt on; they are 'with Christ,' whereas in 1 Th 4 'we that are left' shall meet the Lord only at the sound of the trump at the Last Day, and the ' dead in Christ ' will meet Him at the same time. An excessive literalism has suggested to some that St. Paul changed his mind about the resurrection of the body and gave up the belief in it in favour of a belief in the immortality of the soul only, perhaps under the influence of Alexandrian theology (Wis 9" is cited as showing that the latter had no doctrine of the resurrection of the body.) But this supposition, which is very unlikely in itself when we consider the short interval between the two Corinthian Epistles, is decisively negatived by Ph 3". In 2 Ti 4', written in daily expectation of imminent death, he yet looks beyond the intermediate state to the Day of Judgment, 'that day,' 'the day of the Lord,' when he shall receive the crown of righteousness.

ll.Marriageandvirgimty.— St. Paul writes no treatise on marriage, but he often alludes to it. Both Jews and Gentiles had been accustomed to divorce being easily obtained. But St. Paul says that a Christian woman is to be bound to her husband for life, though a widow may marry again (Ro 71''). Marriage is not to be forbidden (1 Ti 4»; cf. 1 Co 9=). In 1 Co 7, according to the usual interpretation, the Corinthians having asked whether among Christians marriage should be discouraged, St. Paul answers that marriage is permissible for all, though the unmarried state is the better one because of the present (or imminent) distress (.v.^); the thought is of the nearness of Christ's coming, and of the persecutions which would precede it. But Ramsay thinks that such a question is not to be expected from either Jews or Gentiles of that time, seeing that the Jews for many ages had looked on marriage as a universal duty, and that the Roman law greatly encouraged it; he supposes, therefore, that the Corinthians had asked whether marriage ought to be made obligatory for Christians, and that St. Paul pleaded for a permissible celibacy. — In Eph 5^^- the Apostle emphatically treats marriage as holy, symbolizing the union between Christ and His Church.

In 1 Ti 32- '2, Tit 1« a bishop (presbyter) or deacon must be 'the husband of one wife.' This need not necessarily imply compulsory marriage for the clergy. It has, however, been variously interpreted as forbidding (a) bigamy — but that was forbidden to all Christians; or (&) digamy, i.e. marrying again after the death of the first wife, as In a later ecclesiastical discipline; or (c) divorce: i.e. the bishop must be one who, in his pre-Christian days, had not divorced his wife and taken another. [The last two explanations are not exclusive.]

PAUL THE APOSTLE

So in 1 Ti 5' a 'widow' on the roll must have been 'the wife of one man.'

iv. Predecessors and Teachers. — In the Apostle of the Gentiles all will recognize one of the most original of thinkers; but originality does not necessarily mean having no predecessors in one's line of thought. It lies rather in new organization and arrangement, in the employment of old terminology in a higher and wider sense, or in the re-construction of old material so as to make a nobler whole. Again, the fact that the Christian Church believes that St. Paul was an inspired Apostle does not preclude the idea of human preparation for his life-work. And he undoubtedly gleaned from many fields.

1. Jewish of&cial teachers. — St. Paul had been a pupil of Gamaliel in Jerusalem (Ac 22=). This Rabbi, whom we may take to be the famous grandson of Hillel (Ac 5™), was of that liberal school of the Pharisees which encouraged the study of Greek literature. It has been objected by Baur that the statement in Ac 22' cannot be historical, because Paul before his conversion was such a zealot, so blindly bigoted, so unlike Gamaliel. But pupils do not always follow their masters, and we cannot doubt that in God's prov-idence Gamaliel's moderation had its influence on the Apostle in the end, and eventually contributed much to his well-balanced character.

2 . Influence of popular Jewish writings . — The Jewish apocalypses have greatly influenced St. Paul (for examples see § iii.); the Alexandrian writings not so much. But the Book of Wisdom is clearly used in the descriptions of heathen corruption in Ro 118-32, and of the power of the Creator jn Ro Q'"-. The influence of contemporary Jewish thought is also seen in St. Paul's method of treating the OT. His running commentaries (Ro lO'*-, Gal i'^-, Eph 4™), the making of a cento of OT passages to prove a point, thought to be due to the use of a Jewish anthology (Ro 3""-, 2 Co 6^i'), his mystical interpretations of OT such as those of 1 Ti 5'*, 1 Co 9"- ('for our sake it was written'; cf. Ro 15*, 2 Ti 3>=, 2 P !«».), 1 Co 10i«- (the passage of the Red Sea a 'Baptism,' the manna and the water from the rock an 'Eucharist'), Gal i^^<'- (Hagar, note v.2<), are all thoroughly Jewish; and so is the adoption by the Apostle, for purposes of illustration, of some legendary stories added by the Jews to the OT, such as the references to the Rock which was said to have followed the Israelites in the wilderness (1 Co 10*), the persecution of Isaac by Ishmael (Gal 4''), and Jannes and Jambres (2 Ti 3"). For these and some other possible instances of the use of legends see Thackeray, op. cit. pp. 180, 204, 50, 159 ff.

3. Greek philosophy. — This influence, to be expected in a pupil of Gamaliel, is certainly noticeable in St. Paul's speeches and writings. Stoicism especially seems to have left a mark on them. Here we may remark on the undoubted connexion which exists between St. Paul and the Stoic philosopher Seneca (see Lightfoot's essay in his Philippians, p. 270 ff.). Seneca's writings have very numerous coincidences with the Pauline Epistles, with the Gospels, and even with the other books of NT. He and the Apostle were contemporaries. Ck)uld either have influenced the other? There are difficulties in the way of supposing that Seneca was influenced by NT. Chronology forbids us to think that he knew the Johannine writings or Hebrews, as he died in Nero's reign; yet he has many coincidences with these books also. Again, Seneca quotes many of the phrases common to him and NT from older writers; these, then, are not due to NT. Further, the coincidences are often verbal rather than real; the sense is often quite dissimilar, the Stoic pantheism and materialism and the absence in that philosophy of any real consciousness of sin making an absolute separation from Christianity. Yet many striking coincidences remain, — more between NT and Seneca than between NT and Epictetus or any other

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