and throws a flood of light on obscure passages.^347 He was quite familiar with the typical and
allegorical methods of interpretation; and he occasionally and incidentally uses Scriptural arguments,
or illustrations rather, which strike a sober scholar as far-fetched and fanciful, though they were
quite conclusive to a Jewish reader.^348 But he never bases a truth on such an illustration without an
independent argument; he never indulges in the exegetical impositions and frivolities of those
"letter-worshipping Rabbis who prided themselves on suspending dogmatic mountains by textual
hairs." Through the revelation of Christ, the Old Testament, instead of losing itself in the desert of
the Talmud or the labyrinth of the Kabbala, became to him a book of life, full of types and promises
of the great facts and truths of the gospel salvation. In Abraham he saw the father of the faithful,
in Habakkuk a preacher of justification by faith, in the paschal lamb a type of Christ slain for the
sins of the world, in the passage of Israel through the Red Sea a prefigurement of Christian baptism,
and in the manna of the wilderness a type of the bread of life in the Lord’s Supper.
The Hellenic culture of Paul is a matter of dispute, denied by some, unduly exalted by
others. He no doubt acquired in the home of his boyhood and early manhood^349 a knowledge of the
Greek language, for Tarsus was at that time the seat of one of the three universities of the Roman
empire, surpassing in some respects even Athens and Alexandria, and furnished tutors to the imperial
family. His teacher, Gamaliel, was comparatively free from the rabbinical abhorrence and contempt
of heathen literature. After his conversion he devoted his life to the salvation of the heathen, and
lived for years at Tarsus, Ephesus, Corinth, and other cities of Greece, and became a Greek to the
Greeks in order to save them. It is scarcely conceivable that a man of universal human sympathies,
and so wide awake to the deepest problems of thought, as he, should have under such circumstances
taken no notice of the vast treasures of Greek philosophy, poetry, and history. He would certainly
do what we expect every missionary to China or India to do from love to the race which he is to
benefit, and from a desire to extend his usefulness. Paul very aptly, though only incidentally, quotes
three times from Greek poets, not only a proverbial maxim from Menander,^350 and a hexameter
from Epimenides,^351 which may have passed into common use, but also a half-hexameter with a
connecting particle, which he must have read in the tedious astronomical poem of his countryman,
Aratus (about b.c. 270), or in the sublime hymn of Cleanthes to Jupiter, in both of which the passage
occurs.^352 He borrows some of his favorite metaphors from the Grecian games; he disputed with(^347) Scripture references and allusions abound in the Galatians, Romans, and Corinthians, but are wanting in the Thessalonians,
Colossians, and Philemon, and in his address to the heathen hearers at Athens, whom he referred to their own poets rather than
to Moses and the prophets.
(^348) As the reasoning from the singular or rather collective σπέρμα(zera)in Gal. 3:16, the allegorical interpretation of Hagar and
Sarah, 4:22 sqq., and the rock in the wilderness, 1 Cor. 10:1-4. See the commentaries.
(^349) Comp. Gal. 1:21; Acts 9:30; 11:25.
(^350) 1 Cor. 15:33. φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρηστὰ ὁμιλίαι κακαί.
"Evil associations corrupt good manners."
(^351) Tit. 1:12. Κρῆτες ἀεὶ ψεῦσται, κακὰ θηρία, γαστέρες ἀργαί.
"Cretans are liars alway, bad beasts, and indolent gluttons."
As Epimenides was himself a Cretan, this contemptuous depreciation of his countrymen gave rise to the syllogistic
puzzle: "Epimenides calls the Cretans liars; Epimenides was a Cretan: therefore Epimenides was a liar: therefore the Cretans
were not liars: therefore Epimenides was not a liar," etc.
(^352) Acts 17:28. Τοῦ [poetic for τούτου] γὰρ καὶ γένος ἐσμέν.
"For we are also His (God’s) offspring."
The passage occurs literally in the Phoenomena of Aratus, v. 5, in the following connection:
...." We all greatly need Zeus,
For we are his offspring; full of grace, he grants men
A.D. 1-100.