Volume Iii Part 91 (1/2)
Translated from Le Correspondant
THE YOUTH OF SAINT PAUL.
By L'ABBE LOUIS BAUNARD.
At the time when Jesus Christ came into this world, the Jews were scattered over the whole surface of the earth. From the narrow valley in which their religious law had confined them for the designs of G.o.d, these people of little territory had overflowed into all the provinces of the Roman empire. Captivity had been the beginning of their dispersion. Numerous Israelitish colonists, who had formerly settled in the land of their exile, were still existing in Babylon, in Media, even in Persia; others had pushed their way further on to the extreme east, even as far as China. Finally, under the reign of Augustus, they are found everywhere. [Footnote 98]
[Footnote 98: V. Remond ”Histoire de la Propagation du Judaisme,”
Leipzig, 1789 Grost, ”De Migrationibus Hebr. extra patriam,” 1817.
Jost, ”Histoire des Israelites depuis les Machabees,” etc.]
It was the solemn hour in which, according to the parable of the gospel, the Father had gone forth to sow the seed. The field, ”that is the world,” was filled with it already, and the time was not far distant when the Lord, ”seeing the countries ripe for the harvest,”
would send out his journeymen to reap, and gather the wheat into his barns.
One of these families ”_of the dispersion_,” as they were styled, inhabited the city of Tarsus in Cilicia. Of this once famous city nothing now remains but a few ruins, and the modern Tarsous falls vastly short of that high rank which the ancient Tarsus held among the cities of the East. Even at present, however, it is called the capital city of Caramania. Situated on a small eminence covered over with laurels and myrtles, at a distance of about ten miles from the Mediterranean sea, it is washed by the rapid and cold waters of the Kara-sou, and its population during winter amounts to more than thirty thousand souls. In summer it is almost a desert. Chased away by the burning heats which prevail at this season from the sea-coast, men, women and children abandon their homes and emigrate to the surrounding heights, where they fix their camp under lofty cedars, which afford them shelter, shade, and coolness. [Footnote 99]
[Footnote 99: P. Belon, ”Voyages”--cite dans Malte-Brun.]
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It were difficult to draw, from what it is at present, an exact picture of the ancient Tarsus. Instead of the sad, disconsolate look of a Turkish city, there was then in it the movement, the ardor, the splendor of the Greek city, proud of her politeness and her recollections. According to Strabo, Tarsus was a colony of Argos. As a proof of the high state of its culture, the Greeks related that the companions of Triptolemus, perambulating the earth in search of Io, stopped at that place, charmed by its richness and beauty. Others traced its origin further back, to the old kings of a.s.syria. At one of the gates of Tarsus there had been seen for a long time the tomb of Sardanapalus with the following inscription under his statue: ”I, Sardanapalus, have built Tarsus in one day. Pa.s.senger, eat, drink, and give thyself a good time; the rest is nothing.” [Footnote 100]
History, however, has written there other remembrances. It was not far from Tarsus that the intrepid Alexander had nearly perished in the icy waters of the Cydnus. It was there upon the sea, at the entrance of the river, that the memorable interview and the fatal alliance of Antony and Cleopatra had just taken place in the midst of voluptuous feasts. The wise providence that provides reparations for all our pollutions, had chosen the city of a Sardanapalus and of an Antony to be the cradle of St. Paul.
[Footnote 100: Strabo, liv, xvi.]
For the rest, Tarsus was a city perfectly well built and of remarkable beauty. From the fertile hill on which she rested, she could contemplate the direction toward the north and west of an undulating line, which traced rather than hid the horizon. This was the outline of the first ascending grades, of the mountains of Cilicia. At a short distance from the city the waters of numerous living springs met together and formed a rapid river, deeply enchased, which soon reached and refreshed that portion of her which the historians call the Gymnasium, and we would name the ”Quarter of the schools.” Further on there was a harbor of peculiar and distinctly marked outline.
Philostratus has described in a striking and picturesque manner the different habitudes of the men of traffic and of the literary cla.s.s, representing ”the former as slaves to avarice, the latter to voluptuousness. All their talk,” says he, ”consisted in reviling, taunting, and railing at each other with sharp-biting words: whence one might have easily seen that it was only in their dress they pretended to imitate the Athenians, but not in prudence and praiseworthy habits. They did nothing else all day but walk up and down on the banks of the river Cydnus, which runs across this city, as if they were so many aquatic birds, pa.s.sing their time in frolicsome levities, inebriated, so to speak, with the pleasing delectation of those sweet-flowing waters.” [Footnote 101]
[Footnote 101: Philostrate, ”De la Vie d'Apollonius Thyanean traduction de Blaise de Vigenere,” liv. iv. ch. ix. p. 103,104.
Paris, 1611.]
Such, then, was the city in which a vast mult.i.tude of young men, elegant, voluptuous and witty, crowded and pressed each other like a swarm of bees, for Tarsus was the most brilliant intellectual focus of that time and country. The following is the description of it, given by Strabo: ”She carries to such a height the culture of arts and sciences, that she surpa.s.ses even Athens and Alexandria. The difference between Tarsus and these two cities is, that in the former the learned are almost all indigenous. Few strangers come hither; and even those who belong to the country do not sojourn here long. As soon as they have completed the course of their studies in the liberal arts, they emigrate to some other place, and very few of them return to Tarsus afterward.”
The best masters regarded it as an honor to teach in the schools of this city of arts. There were in it such grammarians as Artemidorus and Diodorus; such brilliant poets and professors {533} of eloquence as Plutiades and Diogenes; such philosophers of the sect of the stoics as the two Athenodori; of whom the first had been Cato's friend in life, and his companion in death, and the second had been the instructor of Augustus, who, in token of grat.i.tude, appointed him governor of Tarsus. For, it was the fate of this learned city to be under the administration of men of letters, and of philosophers. She had been ruled by the poet Boethus, the favorite of Antony. Nestor, the Platonic philosopher, had also governed her. It is easily seen, however, that such men are better prepared for speculations in science, than for the administration of public affairs, so that, in their hands, Tarsus felt more than once those intestine commotions, of which cities of schools have never ceased to be the theatre.
It was in this city, and under these circ.u.mstances, almost upon the frontiers of Europe and Asia, in the very heart of a great civilization, that St. Paul was born, about the twenty-eighth year of Augustus' reign, two years before the birth of Christ. [Footnote 102]
He himself informs us that he was a _Jew_ of the tribe of Juda, [Footnote 103] born in the _Greek_ city of Tarsus, and a _Roman_ citizen: so that by parentage, by education, and by privilege, he belonged to the three great nations who bore rule over the realm of thought and of action. The grave historian [Footnote 104] who exhausts the catalogue of the ill.u.s.trious men of Tarsus, never suspected what man--very differently ill.u.s.trious--had just appeared there, and of what a revolution he was to become the zealous defender as well as the martyr.
[Footnote 102: This would be so, if St. Paul lived to the age of sixty-eight years, as is stated in a Homily of St. John Chrysostom, vol. vi. of his complete works.]
[Footnote 103: Benjamin. See Rom. xi 1.--Ep. C. W.]
[Footnote 104: Strabo, liv. xiv]
The Jewish origin of the Doctor of Nations was, as is easily understood, of vast importance for fulfilment of the designs of G.o.d.
The religion of Jesus Christ proceeds from Judaism, continues and perfects it. It was, therefore, well worthy of the wisdom of G.o.d that his apostles should belong to the one as well as to the other covenant, and that he should thus extend his hand to all ages, as he was to extend it to all men.