Protagonist in Persecution

After Stephen's death, Saul no longer figures as a mere accessory to persecution but as its champion. As such, he must have acquired a certain notoriety, since even after his conversion, when he made efforts to join himself to the disciples,  "they were all afraid of him, because they did not believe he was a disciple."  When it became clear that he really was a Christian, his conversion became a  cause for rejoicing and thanksgiving among the disciples, who heard, not that just any former opposer had undergone a change of heart, but rather that "the man formerly persecuted us is now declaring  the good news about faith which he formerly devastated." -Acts 9:26; Galatians 1:23, 24.

Damascus lay some 140 miles - a seven or eight-day walk - from Jerusalem.  Yet,  "breathing threat and murder against the disciples," Saul went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus.  Why?  So that Saul might bring bound to Jerusalem any whom he found  who belonged to "The Way."  With official approval, he  'began to deal outrageously with the congregation,invading one house after another, dragging out both men and women to turn them over to prison.'  Others he had 'flogged in the synagogues,' and he 'cast his vote' (literally, his "voting pebble")  in favor of their execution. -Acts 8:3; 9:1, 2, 14; 22:5, 19; 26:10.

Considering the schooling Saul received under Gamaliel and the powers he now wielded, some scholars believe that he had progressed from being a mere student to the Law to the point of exercising a measure of authority in Judaism.  One supposed , for example, that Saul may have become a teacher in a Jerusalem  synagogue.  However, what is meant  by Saul's 'casting his vote' - whether as a member of court or as one expressing his moral support for the executions of Christians -we cannot be certain."

Since at the outset all Christians were Jews or Jewish proselytes, Saul apparently understood Christianity to be an apostate movement within Judaism to set  its adherents straight.  "It is  not likely," says scholar Arland J. Hultgren, "that Paul the persecutor would have opposed Christianity because he saw it as a religion outside of Judaism, a competitor.  The Christian movement would have been seen by him and others as subject yet to Jewish authority."  His intention then was to force wayward Jews to recant and return  to orthodoxy, using all available means.  (Acts 26:11)  One method open to him was imprisonment.  Another was flogging in the synagogues, a common means of discipline that could be administered as a chastisement for disobedience against rabbinical authority in any local court of three judges.

Jesus' appearance to Saul on the road to Damascus, of course, put a stop to all of that;.  From being  a fierce enemy of Christianity, Saul suddenly became an ardent advocate of it, and soon enough the Jews in Damascus were seeking his death.  (Acts 9:21-23)  Paradoxically, as a Christian, Saul was to suffer many tings he himself had meted out as a persecutor, so that years later he could say: "By Jews I five times received forty strokes less one." -2 Corinthians 11:24.

Next time: Zeal Can Be Misdirected

The Watchtower, 1999