03 - Disputation

Thus Paul was granted the privilege of living in private quarters, under the watchful eye of a soldier, until his trial. These quarters would have to be near the barracks on the Palatine hill, since his guard was changed daily, so his friends rented rooms for him in a lodging house on the Aventine hill, on the other side of the Circus Maximus, not far from the home of Priscilla and Aquila, who took on the responsibility of the apostle’s care.

The first thing Paul did was to contact the heads of the Jewish community of Rome. He was concerned that rumors that he intended to lodge a complaint with Caesar against the Jews may have spread. So he sent Aristarchus and Timothy to bring the elders of the synagogue to him since he was confined under guard in his house.

The elders had indeed heard of his arrival, but most of them didn’t know who he was. They only knew that a Jew was a Roman prisoner, and any time such a Jew was brought to Rome, they considered it especially meritorious to rescue him whenever possible. So a number of elders accepted the invitation and came to find out exactly what the charges were against him and how they could be of service.


Paul had aged greatly during his imprisonment. For more than two years he’d been deprived of his liberty, and for a man of such a restless spirit this was even more exhausting than the wild journeys he’d taken. He was used to traveling long distances and attracting people like a magnet. Now he was reduced to conducting his enterprise as best he could from within the four walls of a prison, chained to a single individual and passing countless days under the careful watch of a guard, who accompanied him wherever he went. He was tired and his nerves were frazzled.

Some of Paul’s guards were like Julius had been, sensitive enough to respond to his message and the warmth of his personality. The wall of suspicion between Jew and Gentile broke down, hostility turned to friendship, and with some, Christ became the common bond between prisoner and keeper. But there were others whose dull, hardened souls allowed no response to Paul’s faith and magnetism. Sometimes Paul’s prayers and meditations awoke only anger or derision in the creature he was chained to.

The latter caused Paul to cling more closely to the one who was the reason for his bondage. For Christ was not just the source of his life and the center of his being. He was both his tormenter and his liberator. In Christ, he had sinned, and in Christ he’d been redeemed. Though he’d sunk to the level of a murderer, he’d been raised to the level of spreader of the gospel to all men. Jesus was no longer just the intermediary between man and God, the “holy servant” who was to bring all mankind under the authority of God. Paul now went a step further.

“Every knee in heaven and on earth and under the earth shall bend to the name of Jesus.” Every tongue should acknowledge that “Jesus Christ is lord to the glory of God the Father.”

Thus he gave to Christ the place that his Jewish tradition had reserved for the One Whose Name may not be uttered, the God of Israel. Only in the double nature of Jesus could man unite with God and become part of Him through his human aspect and nature. God was close, intimate.

“You can love Him with your human nature. You can quench your thirst in him. You can become filled with the love of God, and through your faith in Christ you become part of him who is himself divine.”

These meditations on man’s relationship to Christ were the sources from which Paul derived strength in his loneliness. Love for Christ consumed him like a burning fever. But his body was worn down to its skeleton, and his bones protruded through the withered skin on which the poisonous air of his prisons had cast a yellow sheen. His throat became stringy. The pear shape of his face became more accentuated, his hair thinner, his cheekbones more prominent. His thin, bony hands were restless. They seemed forever to vibrate, like stringed instruments plucked by a passing finger.


The head of the Jewish delegation that came to visit Paul was Zadoc, the rabbi of the Synagogue of the Hebrews. He had the official title of interpreter of the law. As such he was the spiritual leader of the Jews in Rome. He was born in Jerusalem and had been a disciple of John Zachai, the head of the Pharisees. Not being a Christian, he didn’t know much about the prisoner or his dispute with the Jews. He saw only a Jew in bondage, chained by his right hand to the left hand of a Roman soldier. He listened to this “captive child amid the Gentiles.”

“Men and brothers, I have nothing against the customs of our fathers. God forbid that I would have anything to accuse my people of. I was delivered a prisoner into the hands of the Romans. They heard my case and would have set me free, for they found nothing in me worthy of death. But when the messengers of the High Priest brought charges against me, I was compelled to appeal to Caesar. Therefore I’ve sent for you, that I might talk with you, because it is for the sake of the hope of the Jews that I’ve been bound with this chain.”

The eyes of Zadoc became moist as he listened to “the captive child.” Like Paul, his beard was pointy and gray, and his earlocks trembled when he spoke.

“We received no letter from Judea about you, and none of our brothers recently arrived have given any evil report about you.”

A member of the delegation threw in a word, “Indeed, we’d like to hear from you about this sect against which so much is being said.”

“That’s true, but they also speak against all Israel everywhere, not just this sect,” interjected another.

“Yes, the house of Jacob is shamed and humiliated,” sighed the rabbi.

“But it’s precisely this sect that is spoken against everywhere that I want to talk to you about,” said Paul.

“Then we will schedule a day and meet again, and you will talk then.”

So a day was set. And as the rabbi was about to rise, he added, “If you have need of anything, we will help you.”

“No, thank God,” answered Paul. “God has graciously sent a pious couple to me, who are of the sect, and who live not far from here. Their names are Aquila and Priscilla. She prepares kosher food for me and brings it here. And my faithful companion” – he pointed to Aristarchus, who was sitting modestly in a corner – “attends to my needs, as do the other companions who came with me. As for any other needs, I trust in the Lord.”


On the appointed day the rabbi of the Synagogue of the Hebrews came to Paul’s lodgings with the sages of the community of Rome. Representatives of other synagogues came as well. For a whole day Paul sat in discussion with them, declaring his doctrine of Christ, which Christians accepted and which he preached to Gentiles as well as to Jews, for Christ, he said, had come to throw down the wall between Jew and Greek, and to make them as one.

Now the sages knew that the Torah is divided into two parts, the first being rules and regulations, and the second being applications, that is principles and edification. As long as Paul talked about the first part, even though it digressed from traditional teaching in some respects, it was founded on the Ten Commandments, so the listeners found little to dispute in it. It derived from the Jewish body of law Paul had studied under Gamaliel.

He taught on women obeying their husbands, husbands loving their wives and not dealing harshly with them. He taught on children honoring their parents and on parental compassion toward their children. He even enjoined servants to be obedient to their masters and masters to deal justly with their servants, “for all of us have one and the same Lord in heaven.” He warned them against idolatry and fornication, for “the children of God must be without stain.”

The doctrine Paul preached to the Gentiles made a favorable impression on the listeners. Indeed, they saw the hand of God in his preaching of a messenger sent to save the Gentiles from the depths of uncleanness or, as Paul said, “to put off the old man, who is corrupt by lust, and to put on the new man, who is created in the image of the God of righteousness and in true sanctity.”

But when Paul reached the second part of his discourse and spoke of the principles of the faith behind the regulations, when he placed at the center of the doctrine not the God of Israel, but Christ, they took offense. And how could it be otherwise? What new authority had come to replace the authority of Moses?

So a passionate dispute broke out between Paul and his listeners, the kind of dispute that Jews, and only Jews, who had poured out their blood for the faith, could have conducted. The air became hot and charged and the ceiling seemed ready to take fire. Bodies trembled and fingers were thrust out, as if to point at invisible texts. They quoted the Pentateuch, they called on the prophets, and they fought over the interpretations of texts. They no longer listened to Paul, even going so far as to stick their fingers in their ears and shake their heads violently.

But Paul was not a man to be put off. The hotter the debate, the more insistent he was that they hear him out. And in the end, he forced them to listen to his conclusions.

“Until Christ came,” cried Paul, “there was no one to come in direct contact with God, not even Moses, who talked with God through a veil. God was God, man was man. God appeared only in a likeness, and men spoke to him through a cloud. Only with the advent of Christ, who in his nature is both deity and a being of flesh and blood, did man and God become united. Thus we are drawn into intimate union with God directly, and not through a veil. The man who believes in Christ is no longer guided by laws and commandments; he’s guided by a higher power, by the spirit of God, which is in him through his faith in Christ. Faith becomes man’s guide. It’s his law and commandments. It makes him a son of Abraham, circumcised or not. Jew or Gentile, man or woman, freedman or slave – all are lifted up to divinity through faith in Christ.”

What Jew could listen to such things from the mouth of another Jew? The assembled scholars were astounded, even as others had been.

“The God of Israel is single and alone!” cried one. “No one, and I mean no one, can approach Him, not the fathers, not Moses, not anyone!”

“Not the fathers and not Moses,” agreed Paul, “but Christ can, for he is part of deity.”

Up to this point, Zadoc had been as fiercely active in the debate as anyone. But when he heard Paul repeat these words, the strength went out of him. His eyes flooded and his face took on an expression of deep sorrow. When he spoke, his voice trembled.

“’What is man, that You are mindful of him,’” he began. “We are dust and ashes. Who can be lifted up to God? Only Gentiles believe that a king can become a god, and that they can sacrifice to him. We Jews know only one God. He who appeared to Moses and said, ‘I am that I am.’ All the rest is emptiness. It is for this faith that we’ve endured torture and death. We are mocked in the theaters and circuses, and treated like dust in the streets. Everywhere the flood threatens to carry us away.

“We have only one to hold onto, God. We have only one word from Him, the Torah. With king David we say, ‘I trust in God and will not fear the deeds of man.’

“If you take the Torah to the Gentiles and teach them the Ten Commandments, if you plant the fear of God in them and the love of good deeds, we say, ‘Blessed be the work of your hands.’ We will pray that God crown your labor with success. But if you say that we must relinquish the Torah of God for another authority, then you’ve said too much. Continue your work with the Gentiles. Leave the Jews to the law of Moses!”

Though trembling with impatience while the rabbi spoke, Paul kept himself in check. But finally he could listen no more.

“Oh, how just were the words of Isaiah when he spoke these words to our fathers, ‘They will hear, but not understand. They will see, but they will not know!’

“Now be it known to you, that the salvation of God is sent to the Gentiles, and they will hear!”

“Let the Gentiles accept your salvation, for they have no other. But we have the salvation given to our fathers and preached by the prophets. Let the Gentiles accept your salvation as we accept ours. Then it will be said of them also, ‘O stiff-necked people! They hear but do not understand, they see but do not know!’ And when that happens, you will know that their salvation is a true one, and will endure, even as ours is true and endures. If the salvation you preach is a true one, then God will bring us together with them. There is no true salvation without God.”

And with these words most of the delegation left. But a few remained behind with Paul.