Peter Kirby wrote:DCHindley wrote:Peter,
I get an uneasy feeling when I hear the name Paul connected with the art of Rhetoric.
...
I do not think [Paul] was bi-polar, I just think things he did write were later used for reasons he never intended. ...
So, what was Paul, then?
IMHO, Paul was a retainer of the household of a Herodian prince, a household that spanned from Asia Minor to the lower areas of Syria. His job was to ensure that estates under the control of the household patron were properly provisioned and ready to accommodate any guests the prince may send their way.
Of the household staff of an estate, the housekeepers, cooks, overseers, and groundskeepers were probably almost all slaves. The farmers were more than likely tenant farmers, that is, peasants. Their status may be slave or free.
Someone like Paul, who was a business agent, could have been either a high status slave or a free retainer. Generally, these type of retainers would be Freedmen, that is slaves who had been manumitted and granted freedom. Freedmen, however, were expected to maintain their relationships with the patron's family, and continue to perform functions for that family. There are inscriptions that indicate that some of these manumitted slaves had at some point formally adopted the religion of their masters, Judaism, probably as a heartfelt token of respect to their master.
Of the most highly respected slaves of a Roman Citizen of higher rank, not run of the mill slaves, the ones who had most skillfully performed important functions within household system were destined to continue to do so, now with freedom and rank. He received the right of full Roman citizenship, which he could also bestow to his children. The children probably received a lower form of Roman citizenship, and would have to find their own way in the household system of positions and ranks.
The more common form of manumission bestowed the right to Roman citizenship to the freed slave only, but not to his children. This latter form of manumission is bestowed to slaves that had distinguished themselves in a lower level in the household hierarchy. "A toast," says the master as he raises his cup, "to the best damn cupbearer ever!" The staff responds with a hearty "HORRAHH!" "That son of a gun has done it!" muses one slave among the younger staff. "If he can do it, damn if I can't too."
How does this relate to the business agent Paul, a retainer within a Herodian prince's household? I think he is the son of a Freedman, one who had willfully adopted the Judean form of worship and social customs. This man managed to retire to a house in Jerusalem. Paul, I think, had entered the ranks of the household as a free retainer, and had risen to the level of a business agent. He also had developed some skills at canvas working, maybe from his earlier days in the lower levels of the household hierarchy, which he still performed as required.
Maybe he was just a damn good artisan canvas worker retainer, one who was sent to do this or that job. "Paul! I need you to install new canvas awnings at my estate near Damascus." "Paul! I need you to re-outfit the sails on some of my merchant ships over at the harbor by my estate in Tarsus, Cilicia." "Yes SIR!" replied Paul, as he prepares to do his job.
What I think, and I am just guessing, is that in his youth in Jerusalem he had zealously practiced his father's adopted religion. He became aware that some gentile god-fearers were asking for incorporation within the people of Israel without having to fully convert to Judeanism (circumcision, diet and adherence to tenets of Judean law). Lest just say that Paul was dead set against it at first, seeking to make a name for himself as a rabble rouser. But as he entered into the ranks of the household system of retainers of his patron, he changed his tune.
This is how he developed his idea that the faith of Abra'm in the promise God had made to him about having many sons, which had justified him before God even before he circumcised himself and his household, would be enough to justify any God-fearing gentile before God, without any requirement to adopt circumcision or the law of Moses, which was not even around in Abraham's time. He convinced himself that God had even selected him before he was born to spread around this good news. Everywhere he went in the performance of his duties for his patron, he talked about the idea, in the synagogues mainly.
Let's just also say that there were many Judeans, probably both naturally born and those who were proselytes or sons of proselytes, who were just as steadfastly against the idea, just as Paul had once felt. These sought to throw roadblocks in his path and harass those gentile God-fearers who were responding to Paul's good-news. However, Paul was a tough guy, and shrugged off their efforts, sometimes just barely escaping with his life. He eventually came up with the idea of collecting freewill offerings for the poor of Jerusalem as a bona-fide "apostle" (financial representative duly appointed by a priestly panel associated with the Temple hierarchy in Jerusalem). If he could just get these representatives to accept his friend's goodwill offerings as if they came from natural born Judeans, he would have finally achieved his life goal!
If Acts can be relied upon, when he finally got the funds back to Jerusalem where he was asked to use them to defray the costs of those who had traveled to Jerusalem to fulfill Nazirite vows, a riot developed when some of those who opposed his ideas found out he was there and what he was there to do. This got him arrested and he decided he'd trump the opposition and requested an audience with the emperor himself, where he would pitch the idea.
Maybe he was delusional, maybe not, but things apparently did not go well for him in Rome. He might have been assassinated or died of natural causes while awaiting his audience, or was ruled against by the emperor. If the latter, and he was lucky, he may have been exiled to far away Spain. Worse case would be execution as an example to others.
Anyways, back to the OP, and it is supposed that Paul was speaking only to the household slaves and other retainers (about 4% of the population of that age) of his patron (from the top 1% of that age), and not to the tenant farmers (about 95% of that age), he was directing his efforts to folks who were surely more educated than tenant farmers (near 100% illiterate) on the average, but not as educated as the top elite classes (near 100% literate). You don't need to be highly educated to perform business functions, or even manage a villa, beyond math and how to word contracts or simple reports to or highly stylized communications with superiors, yet the household favorites tended to receive formal education along with their masters' own children, so perhaps most were "functionally illiterate" (you can assume they can count and read Greek but probably not compose any prose or poetry) with a subset that was literate (read and understand Homer etc and compose at least passable classical Greek prose/poetry, but certainly be fluent in koine = common Greek).
However, I doubt that most of these could employ fancy schmancy rhetorical form, and even of those they would employ Greek style rhetoric, not Roman, which was much more complex and did not even have Greek equivalents. To make sense of the present form of the letters, critics have to assume that Paul was using extreme rhetorical tactics used by some Romans in law cases or deliberative discussions, in his Greek compositions. However, Paul was likely living in an environment with exposure primarily to Greek, and with little if any exposure to Latin, and I am not aware that anybody, through history, has ever so much as expressed the opinion that Paul was a rhetorical genius.
DCH
<as I eye the door and prepare to grab stakes and ... bound>
