Paul and the Philosopher
There were a dozen of us in the class and the others were already seated in the room when we entered. Athenodorus greeted us with a satisfied grunt.
"There you are. I was beginning to think that one day's holiday was not enough for you and you were going to play truant. Now, let's get down to work. Our subject for today is light, so let's see how your research has gone. Aristotle tells us that our sight organs receive the form, but not the substance, of the sight object. What does this mean, Lord Arxes?"
I rose to my feet. "The sight object is that at which we are looking, sir. The sight organ is the eye, which receives the form of the sight object."
"How is that?"
"Just as the sense organ receives the external form of that which is felt, but detracts nothing from the substance, so the sight organ also receives the form alone."
"Does the sight organ receive the form directly?"
"Er - yes, sir."
"Wrong." Athenodorus turned to Lucias. "Lord Lucias?"
Lucias stood as I sat down. "The sight organ receives the form through a medium, sir."
"And if air is the medium for sound, what is the medium for sight?"
"The transparent, sir."
"What is light?"
"Light is the presence of something like fire in the transparent, sir."
"Define the transparent, Lord Alexander."
It was Lucias' turn to sit. Alexander rose to his feet, looking pleased.
"Sir, the transparent is that which is made visible by the colour of something else. Light is the activity of the transparent."
"Very good, Lord Alexander. Empedocles says that light travels and takes time to move between the earth and its surround. How would you refute this?"
"It is contrary to appearances, sir. If you climbed a high mountain you could look from east to west and see both instantly, whereas if light travelled like sound does, you would notice a delay157 ."
"Excellent. Lord Petroclus, what is colour?"
Once Athenodorus had finished quizzing us it was our turn to ask questions of him, probing what he had taught us or what we had learned through reading books in the library or talking to those who had read them. After an hour or so of science we turned to rhetoric and we took turns to declaim our speeches on the subjects Athenodorus had set us.
It was nearly mid-day when at last I saw my opportunity and raised my hand.
"Yes, Lord Arxes?"
"Sir, Lucias and I met a very interesting philosopher yesterday, out on the Lecheae road."
Athenodorus looked stiff and disapproving, as he always does when someone mentions a possible rival.
"He's a Jew, sir."
"A Jewish philosopher?" Athenodorus adopted the pose of a comic actor registering disbelief and a gale of laughter greeted his sally.
"Really, sir. He comes from Tarsus in Cilicia and he speaks Greek as well as I do - as well as you do, sir."
"And what is his philosophy?"
"Well," I hesitated and Lucias cut in on me.
"It's not so much a philosophy, sir, as a story. He says that he met a man who came back from the dead after three days and that many Romans believe in him."
"What, this dead man returned as a prophetic spirit?"
"No, sir. The dead man returned to bodily life."
"A body?" Athenodorus chuckled and grinned broadly. "And you called him a philosopher, Lord Arxes! He ought to meet a real philosopher."
"Would you be willing to meet him, sir? I tried arguing with him and couldn't get anywhere."
Athenodorus stood for a moment, considering the idea. "Why not? A Jewish philosopher who believes in the resurrection of the body." He chuckled again. "Go on with your speeches, then we'll do a bit of ethics and go and visit this charlatan after lunch."
We found Paul hard at work under the awning with his fellow tent-makers. Priscilla rose courteously to greet us and offered Athenodorus the stool on which she had been sitting, then, seeing how many young men we were, she retreated to the small hut that I had noticed on our previous visit and carried on her spinning there.
Aquila continued his weaving, though I would judge that his ears missed nothing of what was said, but Paul untied the threads from around his waist and, once Athenodorus was seated, perched himself on the rock that Lucias had occupied the day before.
"So," Athenodorus said when I had introduced the two men, "a Jewish philosopher."
Paul smiled and shook his head. "I can hardly claim so distinguished a title when I have barely touched the fringes of learning. That must go to true lovers of learning like yourself."
"Yet the Jews are not devoid of wisdom," Athenodorus remarked, looking pleased at Paul's compliment. "As you know, 'those who worship images as gods are as foolish as men who talk to the walls158 .'"
We all grinned, recognising the quotation and realising that our teacher was testing the stranger.
"Heracleitus said many wise things," Paul returned. "As the poet says, 'we are his offspring159,' meaning, I take it, that God is not made of gold or silver or any other material, but is an ensouled being, similar to ourselves."
"Aratus." Athenodorus looked pleased and then declaimed dramatically, "But what is soul? Is it made out of the four natural elements160 : 'For earth we see by Earth, Water by Water, by Air the holy Air, pernicious Fire by Fire161.'"
"Empedocles was deceived," Paul smiled as he replied. "As he himself said, 'Human wisdom grows by what is present162 ,' so he judged the soul by what he himself could perceive and understand. Rather, the soul partakes of the Divine, for the poet says, 'in thee we live and move and have our being163 .'"
"Ah yes, dear old Epimenides." Athenodorus sat back on his stool and smiled. "I perceive that you are indeed a philosopher, sir. I will not quiz you on the sciences; doubtless you are as well acquainted with them as you are with the poets."
"The Academy at Tarsus is not as famous as that of Athens, but it gives a good education." Paul said.
"Then, sir, may we know the meaning of this tale of a resurrected man?"
"Certainly." Paul clasped his hands around his knees and took a deep breath. "Jesus of Nazareth was a man sent from God, every detail of whose life was in accordance with the prophecies contained in our sacred writings. Indeed, his followers - of whom I am the least - believe that the Divine essence dwelt in him and that he was, in fact, God made manifest in the flesh."
Athenodorus nodded. Gods often manifested themselves in human form, though usually only for a short time and a definite purpose. This happened often enough for dramatists to use such events in their plays, though it was unusual for a god to live a whole human life, from infancy to adulthood, but who can understand the will of the Immortals?
"About twenty years ago," Paul continued, "the leaders of my nation, overcome with envy against this Jesus, conspired to hand him over to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governer, on a charge of treason. Pilate condemned him and he was crucified."
Having heard the story once, I was expecting the gasp that greeted these words. To hang a man up, naked and helpless for passers-by to stare at and mock, was so degrading a death that it was reserved for bandits, slaves and murderers. For a prophet - let alone a god - to suffer such a death was almost incredible.
"And he died?" Athenodorus asked.
Paul nodded. "Yes, after only six hours on the cross he died, and one of the soldiers stabbed him through the heart with his spear to make sure that he was dead and not just shamming."
"And this is the man you claim was raised to life?"
"That's right." Paul smiled at all of us. "There is no doubt about his death. It happened at Passover time when Jerusalem was crowded for our great festival, so thousands of people from all over the world witnessed his death. Yet, on the third day after his death, Jesus came back to life and walked out of his tomb."
"An unquiet spirit demanding vengeance on those who killed him?" suggested Athenodorus164.
"No!" Paul's voice sounded like a trumpet. "Jesus came back to bodily life and walked the earth in exactly the same form as before he died."
"But my dear sir, that is totally impossible." Athenodorus was shaking his head vigorously. "Not even the gods can bring back someone who has gone down into the Underworld. Look at Persephone165 ."
I grinned. The famous shrine of Eleusis, where the descent of Persephone into the Underworld was enacted during the great initiation ceremonies, was only a few miles away, so it was not surprising that Athenodorus, an initiate himself, should pick this example. I wondered whether Paul, a stranger and a Jew, realised the significance of the allusion.
Paul smiled gently. "I know, I know. Yet the fact is that Jesus was seen alive by many people. He appeared to Peter, one of his disciples, then to all twelve of them at once. He was seen by a crowd of five hundred men at one time, most of whom are still living - I've spoken to some of them. Don't try and claim that this was some sort of hallucination brought about by wishful thinking166. He appeared to his brother James, who didn't even believe in him at the time. Last of all, he appeared to me - and I was actually persecuting his followers at the time. We can't all be wrong."
Athenodorus shook his head. "And this belief in a resurrection is central to your philosophy?"
"It is," Paul nodded vigorously. "If there is no resurrection then, of course, Jesus wasn't raised from the dead and all my teaching and preaching is a waste of time. In fact, you could even say that I was a liar, a false witness, because I affirm, beyond any shadow of doubt, that Jesus did rise from the dead."
"All right." Athenodorus raised his hand. "Let us suppose that Jesus did come back to life again. What meaning or significance do you see in this event?"
"According to our Scriptures, sin and death came into this world, not through the opening of Pandora's box, but through the sin of the first man, Adam167. It is only just and right, therefore, that God should appoint one man to defeat sin and death. Because of Adam we all die, even though we had no part in that original sin. Because of Jesus we all may live, even though we had no part in what he did."
Athenodorus nodded. "That sounds reasonable, but," he hesitated, "no, I can't believe in a bodily resurrection. It is contrary to nature."
"All right," Paul leaned forward and looked earnestly at the old philosopher. "Just down the road here is Eleusis168 and those who take part in the mysteries there . . ."
"Careful!" Athenodorus spoke sharply. "We may not speak of such things."
"Oh, I've no intention of speaking of forbidden things," Paul spoke with due solemnity. "But I think it is common knowledge that in at least some of the mysteries people undergo a ceremony of purification on behalf of the dead. They are baptised for their dead friends and relatives. Now, why are people baptised for the dead if the dead are not raised, if they just continue on as shades in the Underworld?" Paul paused for a moment. "You see, logically even you Greeks have to believe in a bodily resurrection, otherwise your sacred ceremonies are a waste of time. You might just as well 'Eat and drink, for tomorrow we die,' as the poet says169 ."
Athenodorus nodded slowly. "Well, that is true. I've never thought of it like that - and I've been initiated into all the great mysteries in Greece and Asia." He sat silent for a moment, thinking. "No, no, how can it be? What sort of a soul would have any use for a rotting, decaying body? It's impossible!170"
Paul smiled, his teeth gleaming in the shadow under the awning. "Take the example of seed. When the farmer sows his crop he casts the seed into the field and buries it beneath the earth. What happens to it then?" Paul paused, looked round at all of us and then answered his own question. "It dies; it rots; but in its place comes up a new seed, just as good as the original. It's the same with the body: it is buried as a mortal body but it is raised an immortal, glorious, imperishable body."
I gasped and several of us - Athenodorus included - touched our mouths and then behind our right ear lobes to placate Nemesis171 , for either Paul was speaking under a sort of divine inspiration or else he knew rather more about our mysteries at Eleusis than one would expect from a Jew.
"This man is no Pyrro172, that's for sure!" Lucius whispered in my ear.
"What sort of a body?" Athenodorus demanded. "What sort of a body can return to its original nature or become the same as it was before?173 "
"I don't need to tell a philosopher that there are many different kinds of body," Paul replied. "Men have one sort of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. Then, of course, there are the stars, which have bodies suitable for ascending into the heavens and which must, necessarily, be different from our earthly bodies. In addition, earthly bodies and heavenly bodies have different degrees of splendour."
"So are you saying that the body which is raised up is not the same as the body which died?"
"That's right. A natural body is put into the ground, but a spiritual body comes up from the ground. It has to be like that: we are now natural bodies, like our progenitor Adam; then we shall have spiritual bodies - perfect bodies, bodies free from any taint of corruption - just like our Lord, Jesus."
He leaned forward. "I am willing to initiate you into a mystery if you are willing to hear it. We will not all die, but we will all be changed - in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable and we, who are alive, will be changed as well. The perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable and the mortal with immortality."
I stared at Paul. His eyes were shining and his voice had the ring of absolute conviction. I shivered and glanced about me. Here, in broad daylight, by the side of the open road, this strange philosopher was proclaiming to us a mystery. Elsewhere - such as at Eleusis, just thirty-five miles away - you would have to pay a substantial fee and take part in secret rites at the dead of night to obtain such knowledge. Even then you would be forbidden to speak about such things to those who were not initiated.
I raised my hand and Paul looked at me and said, "Yes, young man?" but I waited until Athenodorus, my master, gave me permission to speak.
"Please sir, may I speak of these mysteries to others, or must they remain a secret between us?"
Paul laughed loudly. "What I have told you is a mystery, but unlike the mysteries of other places, this is a joyful mystery. It is to be proclaimed to all the world, so that all men might live in hope174 . Tell it to everyone."
"But," Lucias interrupted, "if everything is so simple, why have men always feared death?"
"Men fear death because they know that they are not worthy of any reward in the afterlife," Paul told him. "The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the Divine Law which we have all transgressed, but thanks be to God! He gives us the victory over both Law and death through our Lord Jesus the Christos, the messiah."
157 These definitions and arguments are taken from Aristotle's De Anima II.vii. 'Substance' of course, is the material of which an object is made. 'Form' is the shape, colour and so on of the object and which may or may not be intrinsic to the substance. Return
158 Celsus quotes this remark of Heracleitus' in his On the True Doctrine (p. 53) in order to show that the Christian detestation of idols was not original. Only fragments of Heracleitus' writings have come down to us, preserved in the writings of others. Return
159 The quotation is from the Cicilian poet Aratus, whose poem Phaenomena begins with an invocation to Zeus.
"From Zeus let us begin; him do we mortals never leave
unnamed; full of Zeus are all the streets and
all the market-places of men; full is the sea and the
heavens thereof; always we all have need of Zeus
for we are also his offspring."
160 Which are, of course, earth, air, fire and water. Return
161 Quoted in Aristotle's De Anima I.ii. Return
162 Also quoted by Aristotle in De Anima III.iii in this context: "Indeed, the earlier thinkers assert the identity of understanding and perceiving. Empedocles, for instance, said . . ." Return
163 According to Ishodad, a commentator on the book of Acts, this is a quotation from the Cretan poet Epimenides, whose works are now lost.
"They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one,
The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies!
But thou art not dead; thou livest and abidest for ever,
For in thee we live and move and have our being."
164 A number of the stories in The Golden Ass of Apuleius carry the idea that the spirit of murdered individuals returns - usually in a dream - to demand vengeance on the murderer. For example, in the story of Charite and Tlepolemus: "Meanwhile the ghost of the murdered man visited her lonely bed as she slept and displayed its ghastly, blood-stained face. . . . The ghost then explained in detail what had happened." (p. 188) In one or two cases the dead person is brought back to life temporarily by a sorcerer or necromancer in order to reveal the truth about his death. Return
165 According to Greek legend, Persephone, daughter of Zeus and the goddess Demeter (or Ceres), was kidnapped by Pluto (or Hades), the god of the Underworld. Her mother was distraught and spent so long searching for her daughter that she neglected to make the crops grow. Eventually Zeus forced Pluto to release Persephone but unfortunately she had swallowed a single pomegranate seed while in the Underworld and so she was only freed for eight months of the year. The remainder of the year had to be spent with her husband. Return
166 This is one of Celsus' arguments in his On the True Doctrine. "But who really saw this? A hysterical woman, as you admit and perhaps one other person - both deluded by his sorcery or else so wrenched with grief at his failure that they hallucinated him risen from the dead by a sort of wishful thinking. This mistaking a fantasy for reality is not at all uncommon; indeed, it has happened to thousands." (p. 67) Return
167 Several times in his play Alcestis Euripides has characters remark: "We are all death's debtors". Pausanias, in his Guide to Greece III.v remarks concerning a certain historical character, "His sons were Akrotatos and Kleonymos, but Akrotatos paid the debt of our nature even before his father." The concept that our deaths are, in some way, deserved, a debt that we must pay, would not be strange to Greek ears. In the same play Alcestis dies for her husband Admetus, so Paul's hearers would be familiar with the idea that one person's death could take the place of another's. Return
168 The secret ceremonies conducted at Eleusis and the other sites of sacred mysteries are - not to put too fine a point on it - mysterious. Nevertheless we are able to gain certain clues from ancient writers. For example, in the story of Cupid and Psyche, contained in The Golden Ass, Apuleius has Psyche speak to the goddess Ceres: "I beseech you, Goddess, . . . by the secret contents of the wicker baskets carried in your procession, by the winged dragons of your chariot, by the furrows of Sicily from which a cruel god once ravished your daughter Proserpine (Latin version of Persephone), by the wheels of his chariot, by the earth that closed upon her, by her dark descent and gloomy wedding, by her happy torch-lit return to earth and by the other mysteries which Eleusis, your Attic sanctuary, silently conceals." (p. 143)
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica (art. Mystery Religions) it would seem that one of the rituals conducted at Eleusis was a ceremonial sowing of grain. By its burial in the ground and eventual rebirth to new life, grain was a fitting symbol of Persephone's descent into the Underworld and her reappearance. There may be a link with the "bed of Osiris", a shallow dish shaped like the Egyptian god, filled with earth and sown with seed, which was placed in many Egyptian tombs. The seeds sprouted in the darkness as a symbol of the after-life.
In a note to his translation of Pausanias' Guide to Greece Peter Levi remarks: "As late as 1801 Demeter was still worshipped at Eleusis; when her last cult-image, a two ton kistophoros from the inner porch, was stolen by Professor E. D. Clarke of Cambridge, the villagers were terrified. An ox ran up, butted the statue repeatedly and fled bellowing. The people prophesied the shipwreck of Clarke's ship: it occurred off Beachy Head, but the statue is now in Cambridge." (p. 108) Return
169 This was a common attitude. In the Satyricon Petronius describes a feast given by Trimalchio. "In the middle of this a slave brought in a silver skeleton, put together in such a way that its joints and backbone could be pulled out and twisted in all directions. After he had flung it about on the table once or twice, its flexible joints falling into various postures, Trimalchio recited:
'Man's life, alas, is but a span,
So let us live it while we can,
We'll be like this when we are dead.'"
(p. 50) Possibly this is the origin of the saying about "a skeleton at the feast." Return
170 This argument is used by the philosopher Celsus in his On the True Doctrine, (p. 85) He added, "The very fact that some Jews and even some Christians reject this teaching about rising corpses shows just how utterly repulsive it is: it is nothing less than nauseating and impossible." Return
171 Pliny, in his Natural History XI.ciii tells us: "The memory is seated in the lobe of the ear, the place that we touch in calling a person to witness; similarly behind the right ear is the seat of Nemesis (a goddess that even on the Capitol has not found a Latin name) and to it we apply the third finger after touching our mouths, the mouth being the place where we locate pardon from the gods for our utterances." Return
172 In his Guide to Greece VI.xxiv Pausanias describes the sights in the city of Elis. "In the market facing part of this colonnade stands a portrait of Pyrro, son of Pistokrates, a professional intellectual and a man who never definietly came down on the side of any proposition whatever." Return
173 Taken directly from On the True Doctrine (p. 85). The argument that Paul uses to answer this objection is, of course, based upon the science of his time. We have to realise that, just as Jesus, in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, used a false idea, current in His time, in order to teach a truth, so Paul here uses what we know to be false science in order to teach truth. Return
174 In Euripides' play Alcestis, the heroine, bewailing her approaching death, cries out: "O what a journey I am going on! How it appals me!" (p. 16) Death was regarded as the end of all life by philosophers, or as a fearful journey to the dark realm of Hades by the common people. There was no hope at the end. Return
