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  • From: "Liz Fried" <lizfried AT umich.edu>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: Paul the Persecutor
  • Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1999 21:32:06 -0400






> -----Original Message-----
> From: miser17 AT epix.net [mailto:miser17 AT epix.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 1999 10:04 PM
> To: Corpus-paul
> Subject: RE: Paul the Persecutor
>
>
>
> > I would like to know what activities were included in this
> term. What did
> > Paul *do* exactly when he "persecuted" Christians???
> > Liz
>
> As always our knowledge depends on the trust we have in our
> sources. If we trust Acts 22:4-5 then Paul persecuted to the death
> (which probably speaks of capital punishment, less likely, of Paul's
> level of intensity) and arrested both men and women and threw them
> into prison. Also went to Damascus to deport prisoners to Jerusalem
> for punishment (26:11). Word in Acts 22:4 and 26:11 is the same as Paul
> uses of his own activities in Gal 1:13 and 1 Cor 15:9 and so Acts
> tells us more than just what Luke thought Paul did, it also tells us
> what Luke thought that word means. When Paul says he tried to destroy
> the church of god through persecution, we can reasonably think he was
> at the minimum doing more than fussing about it and arguing publicly
> against various of its tenets. His appeal to his zealousness for the
> traditions of Judaism indicates that his persecution was not some
> idiosyncratic whim of his own, but an activity in accord with
> Judaism as he then understood it. So, all in all, it seems Paul acted
> as an agent of Jewish legal authority to arrest and imprison
> Christians.

I don't understand what mechanism there would be for Paul to *arrest*
people. Did he travel alone, or with others? Were these police? Jewish
police or Roman? Was there a temple authority that could arrest people? Or
was the only legal authority Rome? Did the temple have police, or was it
just a Roman cohort? Did these temple police, if Jewish, have power in
Damascus??? Were there Jewish courts, or only Roman courts? Josephus
speaks of magicians and of people leading huge numbers of people as false
messiahs. But it isn't Jews these people come in conflict with, it is the
Romans. Josephus records a skirmish between Jews and Greeks in Caesaria.
Many died, because they waited for Roman police to come in, and they didn't
come. If there had been Jewish police, it seems they would have been called,
or been on duty. Does Josephus mention Jewish police? Does this police have
power outside the temple, if it exists at all?


I looked up the Hebrew word that the LXX translates into "persecute." It is
rodef, "pursue." This may be where Luke got his idea from that Paul
"pursued" people from somewhere to somewhere. I think, tho, that it means
harass.

Liz

>
> Steve Davies
> College Misericordia

Lisbeth S. Fried
Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies
New York University
51 Washington Sq. S.
New York, NY 10012
lqf9256 AT is3.nyu.edu
lizfried AT umich.edu
>





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