1 00:00:00,890 --> 00:00:03,343 - [Narrator] "The Bible": a book whose origins lie 2 00:00:03,343 --> 00:00:05,953 thousands of years ago in the Middle East, 3 00:00:05,953 --> 00:00:08,300 yet still inspires billions today. 4 00:00:08,300 --> 00:00:11,473 - "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." 5 00:00:11,473 --> 00:00:13,593 - [Narrator] Seven figures from different walks of life 6 00:00:13,593 --> 00:00:15,173 offer their personal perspective 7 00:00:15,173 --> 00:00:17,233 on the best-selling book of all time 8 00:00:17,233 --> 00:00:18,673 and what it means to them. 9 00:00:20,073 --> 00:00:22,263 - Even if you've never read a word of the Bible, 10 00:00:22,263 --> 00:00:26,407 your life will have been shaped by it. 11 00:00:26,407 --> 00:00:27,283 (inspirational music) - In this program, 12 00:00:27,283 --> 00:00:30,966 historian Tom Holland goes in search of St. Paul. 13 00:00:38,180 --> 00:00:41,013 (dramatic music) 14 00:00:42,833 --> 00:00:45,443 - [Tom] Alongside all its many other glories, 15 00:00:45,443 --> 00:00:49,660 The Bible contains the most famous letters ever written. 16 00:00:49,660 --> 00:00:52,223 - [Speaker] "Oh death. Where is thy sting? 17 00:00:52,223 --> 00:00:55,233 Oh grave. Where is thy victory? 18 00:00:55,233 --> 00:00:57,696 Now we see through a glass darkly, 19 00:00:58,643 --> 00:01:01,913 but then, face to face." 20 00:01:01,913 --> 00:01:03,563 - The man who wrote them, 21 00:01:03,563 --> 00:01:06,353 a Jew from an obscure corner of the Roman Empire 22 00:01:06,353 --> 00:01:08,173 by the name of Paul, 23 00:01:08,173 --> 00:01:11,283 did more to transform the moral and ethical presumptions 24 00:01:11,283 --> 00:01:14,383 of the ancient world than anyone else. 25 00:01:14,383 --> 00:01:16,843 The notions he advocated could hardly have been 26 00:01:16,843 --> 00:01:19,873 more unsettling to a Greek or a Roman 27 00:01:19,873 --> 00:01:22,553 that equality might be a positive, 28 00:01:22,553 --> 00:01:25,203 that change might be a good. 29 00:01:25,203 --> 00:01:27,673 Look to make the world fairer today 30 00:01:27,673 --> 00:01:30,176 and you owe a debt of gratitude to Paul. 31 00:01:31,093 --> 00:01:33,963 His teachings are the pivot on which classical antiquity 32 00:01:33,963 --> 00:01:35,423 and therefore the whole subsequent 33 00:01:35,423 --> 00:01:38,013 course of Western history turns. 34 00:01:38,013 --> 00:01:41,323 So profoundly did Paul shape the way that we in the West 35 00:01:41,323 --> 00:01:45,013 have ordered our sexuality, our society, 36 00:01:45,013 --> 00:01:47,406 our very sense of what it is to be human, 37 00:01:48,423 --> 00:01:51,903 that even now, two millennia on, 38 00:01:51,903 --> 00:01:55,036 Paul's influence is akin to the air we breathe. 39 00:02:01,650 --> 00:02:03,733 (upbeat music) 40 00:02:03,733 --> 00:02:05,443 Paul, this figure from the earliest years 41 00:02:05,443 --> 00:02:08,433 of the spread of Jesus's message, 42 00:02:08,433 --> 00:02:12,043 is often seen now as being hopelessly out of step. 43 00:02:12,043 --> 00:02:14,683 Worse than that, the charge laid against him 44 00:02:14,683 --> 00:02:19,073 is that he twisted and corrupted Jesus' teachings. 45 00:02:19,073 --> 00:02:23,006 You have Jesus, a mellow, bead-wearing hippie, 46 00:02:23,953 --> 00:02:28,006 and then you have Paul, the square who ruins it all. 47 00:02:30,654 --> 00:02:32,613 (gentle music) His letters, 13 in all, 48 00:02:32,613 --> 00:02:34,213 account for no less than a quarter 49 00:02:34,213 --> 00:02:35,786 of the entire New Testament. 50 00:02:37,113 --> 00:02:39,673 And he ranked second only to Jesus himself 51 00:02:39,673 --> 00:02:41,516 as the founder of Christianity. 52 00:02:43,323 --> 00:02:46,353 But today Paul's words are quoted against him 53 00:02:46,353 --> 00:02:50,250 to write him off for being authoritarian, 54 00:02:50,250 --> 00:02:53,693 - [Speaker] "The powers that be are ordained of God". 55 00:02:53,693 --> 00:02:55,540 - [Tom] For being sexist. 56 00:02:55,540 --> 00:02:58,713 - [Speaker] "The head of the woman is the man". 57 00:02:58,713 --> 00:03:01,930 - [Tom] For an uptight homophobe. 58 00:03:01,930 --> 00:03:04,413 - [Speaker] "The men leaving the natural use of the woman 59 00:03:04,413 --> 00:03:07,093 burned in their lust, one toward another. 60 00:03:07,093 --> 00:03:09,870 Men with men working that which is unseemly". 61 00:03:12,136 --> 00:03:13,473 (crows call) 62 00:03:13,473 --> 00:03:14,753 - And yet here's the thing, 63 00:03:14,753 --> 00:03:19,093 the St. Paul who condemns fornicators is also the author 64 00:03:19,093 --> 00:03:21,956 of the greatest description of love ever written. 65 00:03:24,173 --> 00:03:25,873 This is the church where I got married, 66 00:03:25,873 --> 00:03:27,723 and I can remember before the wedding 67 00:03:27,723 --> 00:03:28,953 thumbing through the Bible 68 00:03:28,953 --> 00:03:31,633 trying to find a suitable passage for a reading, 69 00:03:31,633 --> 00:03:34,673 and to be frank, much of it seemed grotesquely unsuitable. 70 00:03:34,673 --> 00:03:37,413 Lots of smiting's, lots of "thou shalt not's". 71 00:03:37,413 --> 00:03:40,713 Now it's true that there was the one love poem, 72 00:03:40,713 --> 00:03:42,020 the "Song of Solomon". 73 00:03:42,880 --> 00:03:44,873 - [Speaker] "Thy two breasts are like 74 00:03:44,873 --> 00:03:47,763 two young rows that are twins." 75 00:03:47,763 --> 00:03:50,463 - But, mmm, didn't really want that read out 76 00:03:50,463 --> 00:03:51,643 in front of my mother. 77 00:03:51,643 --> 00:03:53,973 So in the end, like so many other couples, 78 00:03:53,973 --> 00:03:57,003 we went for the obvious, the cliched, 79 00:03:57,003 --> 00:03:59,123 the transcendent option, 80 00:03:59,123 --> 00:04:02,453 the first epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, 81 00:04:02,453 --> 00:04:03,566 chapter 13. 82 00:04:05,745 --> 00:04:08,940 (soft music) 83 00:04:08,940 --> 00:04:10,693 - [Speaker] "If I speak in the tongues of men 84 00:04:10,693 --> 00:04:13,933 and of angels but have not love, 85 00:04:13,933 --> 00:04:16,636 I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. 86 00:04:17,803 --> 00:04:19,973 And if I have prophetic powers and understand 87 00:04:19,973 --> 00:04:21,683 all mysteries and all knowledge, 88 00:04:21,683 --> 00:04:25,163 and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, 89 00:04:25,163 --> 00:04:28,096 but have not love, I am nothing. 90 00:04:30,143 --> 00:04:33,953 So faith, hope, love, abide, these three. 91 00:04:33,953 --> 00:04:37,108 But the greatest of these is love." 92 00:04:37,108 --> 00:04:39,525 (bells toll) 93 00:04:42,933 --> 00:04:46,533 - Yeah. "And so what?", many may be tempted to shrug. 94 00:04:46,533 --> 00:04:48,903 But as the theory of evolution teaches us, 95 00:04:48,903 --> 00:04:52,023 we're all of us the product of our origins. 96 00:04:52,023 --> 00:04:54,303 I'm a historian of antiquity. 97 00:04:54,303 --> 00:04:57,603 It obsesses me partly because of the inherent fascination 98 00:04:57,603 --> 00:05:01,283 of Greek and Roman civilization, but also because, 99 00:05:01,283 --> 00:05:04,666 in a sense, it helped to make me what I am. 100 00:05:05,543 --> 00:05:09,896 And the same, but even more so, is true of Paul's letters. 101 00:05:10,733 --> 00:05:12,783 Just because they're in the Bible 102 00:05:12,783 --> 00:05:15,963 doesn't mean that we should ever forget that they too, 103 00:05:15,963 --> 00:05:20,703 like democracy, or tragedy, or philosophy, 104 00:05:20,703 --> 00:05:23,746 are rooted in the world of our beginnings. 105 00:05:25,263 --> 00:05:28,243 Like Jesus, his contemporary whom he never knew, 106 00:05:28,243 --> 00:05:32,536 Paul, or Saul as he was originally called, was a Jew. 107 00:05:33,783 --> 00:05:35,323 But unlike Jesus, 108 00:05:35,323 --> 00:05:38,106 he'd been born well beyond the limits of the Holy Land. 109 00:05:41,165 --> 00:05:43,183 (gentle music) Saul was a native of Tarsus, 110 00:05:43,183 --> 00:05:45,466 no mean city, as he described it. 111 00:05:47,633 --> 00:05:50,793 It lay in what is now the Southeastern corner of Turkey. 112 00:05:50,793 --> 00:05:53,486 Back then it was a region called Cilicia. 113 00:05:56,483 --> 00:05:58,793 Tarsus itself had always had close links 114 00:05:58,793 --> 00:06:00,643 with the world of Greece, 115 00:06:00,643 --> 00:06:02,393 and these had been immeasurably strengthened 116 00:06:02,393 --> 00:06:04,603 when Alexander the Great conquered the city 117 00:06:04,603 --> 00:06:06,086 in the 4th century BC. 118 00:06:07,543 --> 00:06:10,643 It's this that explains why Saul's native language 119 00:06:10,643 --> 00:06:13,043 wasn't Hebrew but Greek, 120 00:06:13,043 --> 00:06:15,676 the lingua franca of the Eastern Mediterranean. 121 00:06:16,583 --> 00:06:18,053 But there was a further dimension 122 00:06:18,053 --> 00:06:21,496 to Saul's multifaceted cultural identity. 123 00:06:22,493 --> 00:06:24,393 300 years on from Alexander 124 00:06:24,393 --> 00:06:28,073 and Tarsus had come under the rule of a new superpower. 125 00:06:28,073 --> 00:06:31,193 Saul's father it seems, we don't know how or why, 126 00:06:31,193 --> 00:06:34,333 had managed to get on the right side of the conquerors. 127 00:06:34,333 --> 00:06:35,963 So much so in fact, 128 00:06:35,963 --> 00:06:39,943 that he had ended up being awarded a grant of citizenship. 129 00:06:39,943 --> 00:06:44,493 This was why Saul, a Jew, a speaker of Greek, 130 00:06:44,493 --> 00:06:47,746 was also a citizen of Rome. 131 00:06:49,473 --> 00:06:51,263 But what were the relations 132 00:06:51,263 --> 00:06:54,203 between Jews and the pagan world? 133 00:06:54,203 --> 00:06:55,823 Was there a difference between 134 00:06:55,823 --> 00:06:57,793 the Jews who live in Palestine 135 00:06:57,793 --> 00:06:59,313 and the Jews who lived beyond the limits 136 00:06:59,313 --> 00:07:02,343 of the Holy Land in the broader Roman world? 137 00:07:02,343 --> 00:07:03,176 - Yes and no. 138 00:07:03,176 --> 00:07:05,683 I mean, of course, both Jew and Gentile, 139 00:07:05,683 --> 00:07:08,923 Gentile of course being non-Jew in Jewish terms, 140 00:07:08,923 --> 00:07:12,073 were all part of the broader Roman world anyway 141 00:07:12,073 --> 00:07:14,603 but there were certain differences. 142 00:07:14,603 --> 00:07:16,123 In the land of Israel, in Palestine, 143 00:07:16,123 --> 00:07:19,043 you have the temple and you have certain laws that apply 144 00:07:19,043 --> 00:07:21,943 to Jews in the land of Israel. 145 00:07:21,943 --> 00:07:23,053 In the diaspora, 146 00:07:23,053 --> 00:07:26,953 the diaspora being Jews outside the land of Israel, 147 00:07:26,953 --> 00:07:30,573 across the Roman Empire, you have different social contexts. 148 00:07:30,573 --> 00:07:34,113 You have Jews living in largely pagan cities. 149 00:07:34,113 --> 00:07:36,133 And so there are two different worlds 150 00:07:36,133 --> 00:07:37,473 in that sense, but of course, 151 00:07:37,473 --> 00:07:41,963 both are having to deal with the Roman Empire at large. 152 00:07:41,963 --> 00:07:44,233 Now Paul is a product of both of these. 153 00:07:44,233 --> 00:07:47,963 He comes from a cosmopolitan context, from Tarsus, 154 00:07:47,963 --> 00:07:50,960 but he also gets trained as a Pharisee. 155 00:07:50,960 --> 00:07:55,273 (horns blowing) (drums beating) 156 00:07:55,273 --> 00:07:57,653 - [Tom] Which meant that Saul was every inch 157 00:07:57,653 --> 00:07:59,896 a stickler for Jewish tradition. 158 00:08:01,753 --> 00:08:04,473 To be a Pharisee was to be devoted to the study 159 00:08:04,473 --> 00:08:07,733 of the Jews' most precious inheritance. 160 00:08:07,733 --> 00:08:11,013 Way back God had appeared to the prophet Moses 161 00:08:11,013 --> 00:08:14,003 and given him an immense body of instructions. 162 00:08:14,003 --> 00:08:17,610 Ritual, practical, moral. 163 00:08:17,610 --> 00:08:20,250 "Follow these," God had declared, 164 00:08:20,250 --> 00:08:21,760 "And you will have my favor." 165 00:08:22,943 --> 00:08:26,696 Such had been the origins of the Torah, the law. 166 00:08:28,041 --> 00:08:31,041 (soft ethnic music) 167 00:08:36,533 --> 00:08:39,003 When the followers of an executed criminal 168 00:08:39,003 --> 00:08:41,033 named Jesus started preaching 169 00:08:41,033 --> 00:08:43,983 not only that their leader had risen from the dead, 170 00:08:43,983 --> 00:08:46,036 but that he was actually the Son of God, 171 00:08:46,903 --> 00:08:48,623 the fervent young Jew from Tarsus 172 00:08:48,623 --> 00:08:50,416 was outraged by the blasphemy. 173 00:08:51,933 --> 00:08:54,206 This new sect had to be crushed. 174 00:08:56,603 --> 00:08:57,863 Saul was there watching 175 00:08:57,863 --> 00:09:00,193 when the first follower of Jesus to be martyred 176 00:09:00,193 --> 00:09:01,276 was stoned to death. 177 00:09:03,593 --> 00:09:06,803 And when others fled Jerusalem for Damascus in Syria, 178 00:09:06,803 --> 00:09:08,436 Saul was close behind. 179 00:09:09,470 --> 00:09:11,593 - [Speaker] "Breathing out threatenings and slaughter 180 00:09:11,593 --> 00:09:13,500 against the disciples of the Lord." 181 00:09:14,873 --> 00:09:18,393 - Something would happen to him on the road to Damascus, 182 00:09:18,393 --> 00:09:21,643 something that would transform not only Saul's life, 183 00:09:21,643 --> 00:09:23,876 but the very course of global history. 184 00:09:26,522 --> 00:09:29,272 (car purrs past) 185 00:09:30,723 --> 00:09:34,093 In around the year AD 33, Saul, 186 00:09:34,093 --> 00:09:36,163 a young Jew exceedingly zealous 187 00:09:36,163 --> 00:09:38,333 for the traditions of his forefathers 188 00:09:38,333 --> 00:09:41,623 and a wholehearted persecutor of the followers of Jesus, 189 00:09:41,623 --> 00:09:42,696 was on a road trip. 190 00:09:43,786 --> 00:09:46,369 (gentle music) 191 00:09:50,404 --> 00:09:51,803 (door slams) 192 00:09:51,803 --> 00:09:53,653 According to the "Acts of the Apostles", 193 00:09:53,653 --> 00:09:55,293 the book of the Bible which narrates 194 00:09:55,293 --> 00:09:57,023 the first spread of the Christian mission 195 00:09:57,023 --> 00:09:59,893 out into the world, Saul had a vision, 196 00:09:59,893 --> 00:10:03,076 right here on the road to Damascus. 197 00:10:05,973 --> 00:10:08,073 (suspenseful music) He fell to the earth. 198 00:10:08,913 --> 00:10:10,400 Jesus spoke to him. 199 00:10:11,638 --> 00:10:16,638 - [Speaker] "'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?' 200 00:10:16,783 --> 00:10:19,103 And he said, 'Who art thou Lord?' 201 00:10:19,103 --> 00:10:22,783 And the Lord said, 'I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest.'" 202 00:10:24,633 --> 00:10:26,636 - [Tom] Saul was struck blind. 203 00:10:28,003 --> 00:10:29,486 He was led into the city. 204 00:10:31,290 --> 00:10:34,073 - [Speaker] "And he was three days without sight. 205 00:10:34,073 --> 00:10:36,410 And neither did eat nor drink." 206 00:10:38,043 --> 00:10:40,103 - And the stunned and bewildered Saul 207 00:10:40,103 --> 00:10:42,393 was visited by a man named Ananias, 208 00:10:42,393 --> 00:10:45,413 a disciple who once, according to tradition, 209 00:10:45,413 --> 00:10:47,313 lived in this very house. 210 00:10:47,313 --> 00:10:51,418 And Ananias laid his hands on Saul. 211 00:10:51,418 --> 00:10:54,251 (haunting music) 212 00:10:59,890 --> 00:11:02,003 - [Speaker] "And immediately there fell from his eyes 213 00:11:02,003 --> 00:11:03,913 as it had been scales, 214 00:11:03,913 --> 00:11:05,843 and he received sight forthwith, 215 00:11:05,843 --> 00:11:08,490 and arose and was baptized." 216 00:11:10,803 --> 00:11:13,723 - [Tom] It's a strange and haunting story, 217 00:11:13,723 --> 00:11:15,376 and a mysterious one too. 218 00:11:16,293 --> 00:11:18,853 We'll never know what really happened at Damascus 219 00:11:18,853 --> 00:11:22,773 but what we can know is what Saul thought had happened. 220 00:11:22,773 --> 00:11:25,116 He had seen the risen Christ. 221 00:11:27,273 --> 00:11:29,623 But he hadn't been converted. 222 00:11:29,623 --> 00:11:32,773 There was as yet no religion that we would recognize 223 00:11:32,773 --> 00:11:36,133 as Christianity for him to be converted to. 224 00:11:36,133 --> 00:11:38,846 Saul remained what he had always been, a Jew. 225 00:11:40,863 --> 00:11:44,853 And yet it is telling that from this point on, in Acts, 226 00:11:44,853 --> 00:11:48,046 it's the Greek form of his name which is used. 227 00:11:49,723 --> 00:11:52,876 A really profound transformation is being suggested here. 228 00:11:55,100 --> 00:11:57,116 - [Speaker] "Old things are passed away. 229 00:11:58,113 --> 00:12:00,663 Behold, all things have become new." 230 00:12:01,853 --> 00:12:05,174 (fluttering of wings) 231 00:12:05,174 --> 00:12:06,603 - But what did this mean for a man 232 00:12:06,603 --> 00:12:09,443 such as Paul had previously been? 233 00:12:09,443 --> 00:12:11,393 A Jew zealous in his belief 234 00:12:11,393 --> 00:12:14,646 that God had chosen Israel for his especial favor. 235 00:12:15,853 --> 00:12:18,153 If it was now the knowledge of Christ 236 00:12:18,153 --> 00:12:21,173 which promised salvation, then what role, if any, 237 00:12:21,173 --> 00:12:22,893 did this leave for the law? 238 00:12:22,893 --> 00:12:25,093 The framework for living that had been given 239 00:12:25,093 --> 00:12:27,913 to the Jews by God himself 240 00:12:27,913 --> 00:12:31,983 and which governed every aspect of Jewish life? 241 00:12:31,983 --> 00:12:34,303 (gentle music) 242 00:12:34,303 --> 00:12:37,033 Now Paul, had a particular reason why he believed 243 00:12:37,033 --> 00:12:38,496 the law no longer mattered. 244 00:12:39,703 --> 00:12:43,556 His vision of the future was a startlingly radical one. 245 00:12:45,743 --> 00:12:47,723 He believed he'd been called to preach 246 00:12:47,723 --> 00:12:50,423 the good news of Christ to the Gentiles, 247 00:12:50,423 --> 00:12:52,593 to the Greeks and Romans, 248 00:12:52,593 --> 00:12:55,236 to all those who did not observe the Jewish law. 249 00:12:57,063 --> 00:12:59,053 Now it takes a bit of mental gear shifting 250 00:12:59,053 --> 00:13:02,673 to appreciate just how startling and original a notion 251 00:13:02,673 --> 00:13:04,856 this actually was. 252 00:13:04,856 --> 00:13:06,743 (camel grunts) 253 00:13:06,743 --> 00:13:09,313 We're so used to the idea of Christian missionaries 254 00:13:09,313 --> 00:13:10,733 that we tend to assume, I think, 255 00:13:10,733 --> 00:13:12,053 that preaching the word to the heathen 256 00:13:12,053 --> 00:13:14,446 is just the kind of thing that Christians do. 257 00:13:16,053 --> 00:13:18,263 But not in the time of Paul. 258 00:13:18,263 --> 00:13:22,103 He was aiming at something bizarre, heroic, 259 00:13:22,103 --> 00:13:24,556 unprecedented in the scope of its ambition. 260 00:13:25,423 --> 00:13:28,436 Nothing less than the conversion of the world. 261 00:13:29,273 --> 00:13:31,563 And it's the measure of his achievement 262 00:13:31,563 --> 00:13:33,593 that the ultimate consequence of this 263 00:13:33,593 --> 00:13:36,143 would be the emergence of Christianity, 264 00:13:36,143 --> 00:13:39,693 nowadays, the largest religion on the face of the planet 265 00:13:39,693 --> 00:13:43,100 with over 2 billion adherents. 266 00:13:43,100 --> 00:13:46,767 (dramatic orchestral music) 267 00:13:47,773 --> 00:13:49,983 Province by Roman province, 268 00:13:49,983 --> 00:13:53,393 Paul aimed to spread the news of Jesus to the world, 269 00:13:53,393 --> 00:13:54,296 and fast. 270 00:13:56,223 --> 00:13:59,023 The end days, he believed, were at hand. 271 00:13:59,023 --> 00:14:03,003 Christ would soon return. Time was running out. 272 00:14:03,003 --> 00:14:07,079 The world was about to end, so off he went. 273 00:14:07,079 --> 00:14:11,495 (lightning fizzes) (thunder rumbles) 274 00:14:11,495 --> 00:14:14,523 (motorbike putters along) 275 00:14:14,523 --> 00:14:17,836 Now, travel in the ancient world was always dangerous. 276 00:14:21,330 --> 00:14:23,593 - [Speaker] "Thrice I suffered shipwreck," 277 00:14:23,593 --> 00:14:25,660 - [Tom] Paul would boast. 278 00:14:25,660 --> 00:14:28,503 - [Speaker] "A night and a day I have been in the deep. 279 00:14:28,503 --> 00:14:31,033 In journeyings often in perils of waters, 280 00:14:31,033 --> 00:14:32,963 in perils of robbers." 281 00:14:32,963 --> 00:14:35,933 - But all that granted, getting around the Mediterranean 282 00:14:35,933 --> 00:14:37,993 was probably easier in Paul's lifetime 283 00:14:37,993 --> 00:14:39,666 than it had ever been in history. 284 00:14:40,613 --> 00:14:43,093 Roman power had shrunk the world 285 00:14:43,093 --> 00:14:45,286 and Paul took full advantage. 286 00:14:48,643 --> 00:14:51,473 But he was entering a crowded market. 287 00:14:51,473 --> 00:14:55,293 By traveling from Mediterranean city to Mediterranean city, 288 00:14:55,293 --> 00:14:58,303 preaching his understanding of the truth to the Gentiles, 289 00:14:58,303 --> 00:15:00,483 to those who weren't Jewish, 290 00:15:00,483 --> 00:15:03,153 Paul was going head-to-head with the classical world's 291 00:15:03,153 --> 00:15:05,076 dominant intellectual tradition. 292 00:15:06,073 --> 00:15:11,073 The Greeks could read Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus. 293 00:15:11,533 --> 00:15:13,353 Why should they listen to Paul's claim 294 00:15:13,353 --> 00:15:16,663 that God was a crucified criminal? 295 00:15:16,663 --> 00:15:19,333 No surprise then that the place where he had 296 00:15:19,333 --> 00:15:22,193 his most demoralizing experience of all, 297 00:15:22,193 --> 00:15:25,103 where he realized just what he was up against 298 00:15:25,103 --> 00:15:27,173 should have been Athens, 299 00:15:27,173 --> 00:15:30,223 the powerhouse of philosophy. (gentle music) 300 00:15:30,223 --> 00:15:33,223 (people chattering) 301 00:15:39,053 --> 00:15:41,306 This is Speaker's Corner in London. 302 00:15:42,343 --> 00:15:44,743 It's a place where anyone with a case to make 303 00:15:44,743 --> 00:15:46,186 is free to come and make it. 304 00:15:49,153 --> 00:15:52,483 And it's probably the closest we have to the Areopagus, 305 00:15:52,483 --> 00:15:54,803 the hill in Athens where Paul went 306 00:15:54,803 --> 00:15:57,453 to preach the resurrection of Christ. 307 00:15:57,453 --> 00:16:00,740 (speakers preaching) (men calling) 308 00:16:00,740 --> 00:16:02,013 - [Speaker] "For all the Athenians 309 00:16:02,013 --> 00:16:03,313 and strangers which were there 310 00:16:03,313 --> 00:16:05,253 spent their time in nothing else, 311 00:16:05,253 --> 00:16:09,008 but either to tell or to hear some new thing." 312 00:16:09,008 --> 00:16:11,243 - You just don't read anywhere in the New Testament 313 00:16:11,243 --> 00:16:12,421 where it says that. 314 00:16:12,421 --> 00:16:14,313 In talaq, talaq, talaq. 315 00:16:14,313 --> 00:16:15,833 I divorce you, I divorce you. 316 00:16:15,833 --> 00:16:17,713 Speakers Corner is unique in the world. 317 00:16:17,713 --> 00:16:19,113 There's no other place like it. 318 00:16:19,113 --> 00:16:20,473 There's no other place where we can get up 319 00:16:20,473 --> 00:16:22,533 and actually say the things we say, 320 00:16:22,533 --> 00:16:23,693 ask the questions we ask, 321 00:16:23,693 --> 00:16:26,423 and get the response that we get on a weekly basis. 322 00:16:26,423 --> 00:16:28,783 It's free, and it's right in the middle of London. 323 00:16:28,783 --> 00:16:30,723 I like Speaker's Corner specifically because 324 00:16:30,723 --> 00:16:32,753 it's so much like the environment that Paul came from. 325 00:16:32,753 --> 00:16:36,103 Your God's up in Heaven, totally distant, 326 00:16:36,103 --> 00:16:37,523 he cannot hear you. - Excuse me! 327 00:16:37,523 --> 00:16:40,203 - Paul's the best man for confrontation. 328 00:16:40,203 --> 00:16:41,673 Everywhere he went he confronted, 329 00:16:41,673 --> 00:16:44,093 every people he met, he confronted. 330 00:16:44,093 --> 00:16:46,573 He was a very well known, and certainly well-respected man, 331 00:16:46,573 --> 00:16:48,053 because of his intellect. 332 00:16:48,053 --> 00:16:50,273 Fortunately, because of the fact that he was able to 333 00:16:50,273 --> 00:16:53,878 take people on their own terms, almost on any subject. 334 00:16:53,878 --> 00:16:59,517 Jesus! (people respond) 335 00:16:59,517 --> 00:17:02,490 (solemn music) 336 00:17:02,490 --> 00:17:03,373 - [Speaker] "And when they heard 337 00:17:03,373 --> 00:17:05,453 of the resurrection of the dead, 338 00:17:05,453 --> 00:17:08,463 some mocked and others said, 339 00:17:08,463 --> 00:17:10,613 'We will hear thee again, on this matter.'" 340 00:17:11,503 --> 00:17:14,273 - Hardly the most ringing of endorsements. 341 00:17:14,273 --> 00:17:15,713 And really you can get a sense here 342 00:17:15,713 --> 00:17:17,713 the sheer playground feel of it, 343 00:17:17,713 --> 00:17:20,093 the clamor of different opinions, 344 00:17:20,093 --> 00:17:22,783 of the kind of problems that faced Paul. 345 00:17:22,783 --> 00:17:24,683 How was he to stop people from just 346 00:17:24,683 --> 00:17:26,736 shrugging his message aside? 347 00:17:27,623 --> 00:17:29,283 An awkward question, 348 00:17:29,283 --> 00:17:33,358 but one to which Paul very urgently needed an answer. 349 00:17:33,358 --> 00:17:38,358 (man preaches loudly) (suspenseful music) 350 00:17:39,703 --> 00:17:42,163 Fail to convert the Gentiles 351 00:17:42,163 --> 00:17:45,013 and Paul's ambition to establish faith in Christ 352 00:17:45,013 --> 00:17:48,583 as something universal would fail as well. 353 00:17:48,583 --> 00:17:50,423 Much was stake. 354 00:17:50,423 --> 00:17:53,263 The future of the world, so Paul believed, 355 00:17:53,263 --> 00:17:54,636 was hanging in the balance. 356 00:18:03,083 --> 00:18:07,166 Paul's first Gentile convert was a genuinely big catch. 357 00:18:08,423 --> 00:18:11,243 Sergius Paulus was the Roman governor of Cyprus, 358 00:18:11,243 --> 00:18:14,836 the kind of toga-clad high flyer we see memorialized here. 359 00:18:16,113 --> 00:18:19,036 And Sergius was prepared to give Paul his full backing. 360 00:18:21,963 --> 00:18:23,653 When the apostle and his companion 361 00:18:23,653 --> 00:18:25,513 set off to what is now Turkey, 362 00:18:25,513 --> 00:18:27,413 but was then called Asia Minor, 363 00:18:27,413 --> 00:18:30,343 they headed straight for a region called Galatia, 364 00:18:30,343 --> 00:18:32,216 where Sergius Paulus had lands. 365 00:18:34,553 --> 00:18:36,183 This was clearly how Paul liked 366 00:18:36,183 --> 00:18:38,133 to conduct his missionary work, 367 00:18:38,133 --> 00:18:40,846 by fixing on an influential local supporter. 368 00:18:42,263 --> 00:18:45,303 But how on earth had Paul managed to pull it off? 369 00:18:45,303 --> 00:18:47,063 Well, he was clearly a man 370 00:18:47,063 --> 00:18:49,313 of great vision and self-confidence, 371 00:18:49,313 --> 00:18:52,483 of wit, and fire and passion. 372 00:18:52,483 --> 00:18:54,453 Even a Roman aristocrat might be swayed 373 00:18:54,453 --> 00:18:56,166 by qualities such as these, 374 00:18:57,243 --> 00:18:59,403 but there was an additional reason perhaps, 375 00:18:59,403 --> 00:19:01,723 why Gentiles such as Sergius Paulus 376 00:19:01,723 --> 00:19:03,403 might've been willing to give Paul 377 00:19:03,403 --> 00:19:04,603 the kind of hearing that they would 378 00:19:04,603 --> 00:19:06,666 never normally have granted a Jew. 379 00:19:08,283 --> 00:19:09,633 To put it plainly, 380 00:19:09,633 --> 00:19:12,853 Paul was telling his non-Jewish followers like Paulus 381 00:19:12,853 --> 00:19:13,973 that there was no need for them 382 00:19:13,973 --> 00:19:16,376 to put their privates under the knife. 383 00:19:17,653 --> 00:19:20,073 - Being circumcised does not make you a Jew, 384 00:19:20,073 --> 00:19:23,063 nor does being uncircumcised make you not a Jew, 385 00:19:23,063 --> 00:19:26,293 but the circumcision is the strongest sign of commitment 386 00:19:26,293 --> 00:19:29,573 and of the covenant between God, and Abraham the first Jew. 387 00:19:29,573 --> 00:19:31,193 - So would it be fair to say that circumcision 388 00:19:31,193 --> 00:19:34,573 has an emotional as well as a ritual significance 389 00:19:34,573 --> 00:19:35,853 for most Jews? 390 00:19:35,853 --> 00:19:37,943 - Yes. I think that is true. 391 00:19:37,943 --> 00:19:40,683 The circumcision gives this sense of participation, 392 00:19:40,683 --> 00:19:42,493 emotional connection. 393 00:19:42,493 --> 00:19:45,053 In communities where Jews have been persecuted 394 00:19:45,053 --> 00:19:46,893 circumcision has sometimes been banned, 395 00:19:46,893 --> 00:19:48,693 which is a matter of tremendous heartache 396 00:19:48,693 --> 00:19:49,923 to Jewish communities. 397 00:19:49,923 --> 00:19:51,633 And Jews have always put themselves out 398 00:19:51,633 --> 00:19:53,660 to ensure that their sons are circumcised. 399 00:19:53,660 --> 00:19:55,533 (light music) 400 00:19:55,533 --> 00:19:58,263 - But Paul, preaching to Sergius Paulus 401 00:19:58,263 --> 00:20:00,163 and then to the Galatians, 402 00:20:00,163 --> 00:20:02,826 tells them this ritual is no longer necessary. 403 00:20:03,913 --> 00:20:05,903 It is not that he was hostile 404 00:20:05,903 --> 00:20:08,513 to circumcision for Jewish baby boys, 405 00:20:08,513 --> 00:20:12,503 merely that he felt the whole issue for his Gentile converts 406 00:20:12,503 --> 00:20:14,036 was a glaring irrelevance. 407 00:20:16,233 --> 00:20:19,993 Once, before his vision of Christ on the road to Damascus, 408 00:20:19,993 --> 00:20:22,103 Paul had believed that it was the differences 409 00:20:22,103 --> 00:20:25,403 between Jew and Greek that really counted. 410 00:20:25,403 --> 00:20:27,463 But now he told his followers, 411 00:20:27,463 --> 00:20:31,016 difference itself had become a matter of indifference. 412 00:20:34,340 --> 00:20:36,653 - [Speaker] "There is neither Jew nor Greek. 413 00:20:36,653 --> 00:20:38,833 There is neither bond nor free. 414 00:20:38,833 --> 00:20:40,816 There is neither male nor female. 415 00:20:42,443 --> 00:20:45,190 For ye are all one in Christ Jesus." 416 00:20:47,833 --> 00:20:50,043 - But Paul's line on circumcision 417 00:20:50,043 --> 00:20:51,653 was destined to bring him into conflict 418 00:20:51,653 --> 00:20:54,066 with other proclaimers of Christ's message. 419 00:20:56,773 --> 00:20:59,832 Several years after his first visit to Galatia, 420 00:20:59,832 --> 00:21:02,283 Paul wrote the churches there a letter. 421 00:21:02,283 --> 00:21:03,403 And this, 422 00:21:03,403 --> 00:21:06,383 preserved in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, 423 00:21:06,383 --> 00:21:10,813 is the oldest known copy, from the end of the 2nd century. 424 00:21:10,813 --> 00:21:13,333 I mean, it sends a shiver down the spine to look at this 425 00:21:13,333 --> 00:21:15,423 and feel that you are that close to Paul, 426 00:21:15,423 --> 00:21:17,183 but also the sort of measure of frustration 427 00:21:17,183 --> 00:21:20,793 that you have this gap and you can't quite get back there. 428 00:21:20,793 --> 00:21:23,003 How close do you think this brings us to Paul? 429 00:21:23,003 --> 00:21:25,933 - My own feeling is that it brings us very close to Paul. 430 00:21:25,933 --> 00:21:28,333 It may not look a very impressive object, 431 00:21:28,333 --> 00:21:29,583 but we're looking at one of the 432 00:21:29,583 --> 00:21:32,376 earliest Christian artifacts of any kind, 433 00:21:33,363 --> 00:21:34,623 written by the hand of one of these 434 00:21:34,623 --> 00:21:36,363 very, very early Christians. 435 00:21:36,363 --> 00:21:39,933 We're looking at communication between an elite. 436 00:21:39,933 --> 00:21:44,073 They will then read out these letters to the community. 437 00:21:44,073 --> 00:21:45,633 And the vast majority of Christians 438 00:21:45,633 --> 00:21:47,643 would have heard the letters being read. 439 00:21:47,643 --> 00:21:51,253 And that's how they came into contact with Paul's writings. 440 00:21:51,253 --> 00:21:53,573 Every Christian community who wants to know 441 00:21:53,573 --> 00:21:57,293 anything about Paul had to have a copy of those letters. 442 00:21:57,293 --> 00:22:00,853 So, they generated other copies as they were distributed 443 00:22:00,853 --> 00:22:02,853 through the early Christian communities. 444 00:22:05,863 --> 00:22:08,233 - The letter to the Galatians is Paul's most 445 00:22:08,233 --> 00:22:12,013 combative, personal and emotional piece of writing. 446 00:22:12,013 --> 00:22:14,263 Not a formal statement of doctrine, 447 00:22:14,263 --> 00:22:16,653 but rather the biblical equivalent of an email, 448 00:22:16,653 --> 00:22:19,307 fired off in the heat of the moment. 449 00:22:19,307 --> 00:22:21,974 (gentle music) 450 00:22:23,013 --> 00:22:24,733 So what had prompted it? 451 00:22:24,733 --> 00:22:28,083 Well, what seems to have happened is that the Galatians, 452 00:22:28,083 --> 00:22:30,113 having been converted by Paul, 453 00:22:30,113 --> 00:22:33,223 now wanted as it were, to go the whole hog. 454 00:22:33,223 --> 00:22:35,483 They wanted to become properly Jewish. 455 00:22:35,483 --> 00:22:38,003 They wanted to be circumcised. 456 00:22:38,003 --> 00:22:40,073 Paul is furious. 457 00:22:40,073 --> 00:22:41,583 And what makes him all the more livid 458 00:22:41,583 --> 00:22:43,993 is the fact that rival Christian missionaries 459 00:22:43,993 --> 00:22:46,043 are treading on his patch. 460 00:22:46,043 --> 00:22:47,830 Missionaries who are telling the Galatians that, 461 00:22:47,830 --> 00:22:50,930 "Yes, you do need to be circumcised." 462 00:22:52,543 --> 00:22:54,970 He wrote angrily of these missionaries. 463 00:22:54,970 --> 00:22:56,663 - [Speaker] "I would they were even cut off 464 00:22:56,663 --> 00:22:58,003 which trouble you." 465 00:22:58,003 --> 00:23:02,013 - As the King James version has it, which updated, 466 00:23:02,013 --> 00:23:05,046 roughly translates as, cut off their goolies. 467 00:23:08,973 --> 00:23:11,530 Elsewhere, Paul's tone is more poignant. 468 00:23:11,530 --> 00:23:15,023 "I stand in doubt of you," he tells the Galatians. 469 00:23:15,023 --> 00:23:18,050 You could feel his pain, his despair. 470 00:23:18,050 --> 00:23:20,410 "Take the leap of faith," he is begging, 471 00:23:20,410 --> 00:23:22,963 "believe that we're all of us Christ's, 472 00:23:22,963 --> 00:23:26,463 circumcised and uncircumcised alike." 473 00:23:26,463 --> 00:23:27,780 In his words, 474 00:23:27,780 --> 00:23:29,073 - [Speaker] "Christ hath redeemed us 475 00:23:29,073 --> 00:23:30,640 from the curse of the law." 476 00:23:31,853 --> 00:23:33,943 - When Paul tells his followers that they no longer 477 00:23:33,943 --> 00:23:35,253 need to follow the Jewish law, 478 00:23:35,253 --> 00:23:38,203 that all they require is the spirit of Christ, 479 00:23:38,203 --> 00:23:40,343 do you feel that that is a valid pitch? 480 00:23:40,343 --> 00:23:42,693 - It's very attractive to offer people 481 00:23:42,693 --> 00:23:46,953 the sublime end that Jewish law and tradition 482 00:23:46,953 --> 00:23:49,073 promises the adherent, 483 00:23:49,073 --> 00:23:51,073 but without making any of the demands of commitment. 484 00:23:51,073 --> 00:23:52,673 After all, Jewish law is very demanding. 485 00:23:52,673 --> 00:23:53,763 It's very rigorous. 486 00:23:53,763 --> 00:23:58,763 It evades and penetrates every aspect of one's life 487 00:23:59,153 --> 00:24:01,123 from birth to death, from morning to night, 488 00:24:01,123 --> 00:24:04,093 and selling that to a people as a desirable lifestyle 489 00:24:04,093 --> 00:24:05,753 is quite a hard sell. 490 00:24:05,753 --> 00:24:07,093 Telling people on the other hand, 491 00:24:07,093 --> 00:24:08,193 that they'll get all the outcome 492 00:24:08,193 --> 00:24:09,763 without having to observe the laws, 493 00:24:09,763 --> 00:24:11,363 that's quite an attractive sell. 494 00:24:12,693 --> 00:24:15,733 - Paul felt that Jewish law was no longer needed. 495 00:24:15,733 --> 00:24:18,333 Faith in Christ was all that mattered. 496 00:24:18,333 --> 00:24:20,113 But this threatened a dilemma, 497 00:24:20,113 --> 00:24:22,883 one which we have still not resolved today. 498 00:24:22,883 --> 00:24:24,593 In a world without rules, 499 00:24:24,593 --> 00:24:27,283 what's to stop us doing whatever we like? 500 00:24:27,283 --> 00:24:30,526 Now Paul doesn't want to think that this is a problem. 501 00:24:31,443 --> 00:24:32,923 Paul wants to think that 502 00:24:32,923 --> 00:24:36,713 if you have the knowledge of Christ, then, whoosh, 503 00:24:36,713 --> 00:24:40,273 you also automatically have the fruits of that knowledge. 504 00:24:40,273 --> 00:24:44,373 Joy, love, peace. 505 00:24:44,373 --> 00:24:46,836 Paul is hippy, if you like. 506 00:24:48,153 --> 00:24:51,683 But what if that whole Woodstock spirit 507 00:24:51,683 --> 00:24:53,656 is then taken too far? 508 00:24:54,623 --> 00:24:58,206 Paul has been telling people, no, you don't need the law, 509 00:24:59,113 --> 00:25:02,033 but now news reaches him of a Christian 510 00:25:02,033 --> 00:25:03,533 in the Greek city of Corinth 511 00:25:03,533 --> 00:25:08,123 who, scandalously, has been going around telling people 512 00:25:08,123 --> 00:25:10,983 that he has a license from God 513 00:25:10,983 --> 00:25:14,200 to sleep with his father's wife. 514 00:25:14,200 --> 00:25:16,783 (smooth music) 515 00:25:18,750 --> 00:25:21,540 "Such fornication," Paul writes, 516 00:25:21,540 --> 00:25:24,450 "as is not so much as named among the Gentiles." 517 00:25:25,773 --> 00:25:27,433 Which is really saying something 518 00:25:27,433 --> 00:25:29,543 because Corinth traditionally had always had 519 00:25:29,543 --> 00:25:32,223 a really sleazy reputation, 520 00:25:32,223 --> 00:25:35,063 so much so in fact, that the very word Corinthiatsain, 521 00:25:35,063 --> 00:25:38,366 to play the Corinthian, meant in Greek, to fornicate. 522 00:25:42,173 --> 00:25:43,683 Even though the heyday of the city, 523 00:25:43,683 --> 00:25:46,853 as a destination for sex tourists was a long gone, 524 00:25:46,853 --> 00:25:49,093 Paul, writing to the Corinthians 525 00:25:49,093 --> 00:25:50,926 must surely have had it in his mind. 526 00:25:54,453 --> 00:25:57,373 And so he's forced to acknowledge that perhaps, 527 00:25:57,373 --> 00:26:01,343 just perhaps, the spirit of Christ on its own 528 00:26:01,343 --> 00:26:03,553 is not actually enough, 529 00:26:03,553 --> 00:26:05,053 and that even if you have accepted 530 00:26:05,053 --> 00:26:07,533 the spirit of Christ into your life, 531 00:26:07,533 --> 00:26:09,423 you might still need laws 532 00:26:09,423 --> 00:26:11,816 telling you how to behave after all. 533 00:26:16,633 --> 00:26:19,063 - Paul is the conduit for what's called 534 00:26:19,063 --> 00:26:20,883 the code of holiness of Leviticus. 535 00:26:20,883 --> 00:26:23,613 This is the one which says that 536 00:26:23,613 --> 00:26:25,903 men who sleep with men like women 537 00:26:25,903 --> 00:26:28,453 should be put to death, basically. 538 00:26:28,453 --> 00:26:30,683 So, St. Paul is the link between the 539 00:26:30,683 --> 00:26:32,403 strictures of the Old Testament 540 00:26:32,403 --> 00:26:34,683 and the modern Christian world. 541 00:26:34,683 --> 00:26:37,773 So he gets rid of an awful lot of the old Jewish law. 542 00:26:37,773 --> 00:26:40,093 He gets rid of the dietary requirements. 543 00:26:40,093 --> 00:26:42,533 He gets rid of the need to be circumcised, 544 00:26:42,533 --> 00:26:46,043 but he likes keep in some of these other prescriptions 545 00:26:46,043 --> 00:26:49,383 against homosexuality, against fornication. 546 00:26:49,383 --> 00:26:51,953 He is the authority for bringing those back into the church. 547 00:26:51,953 --> 00:26:54,353 So he picks and chooses. 548 00:26:54,353 --> 00:26:58,363 - So here is the fundamental tension in Paul's thought. 549 00:26:58,363 --> 00:27:02,053 On the one hand he's preaching a revolutionary new order. 550 00:27:02,053 --> 00:27:04,173 The relationship between God and his people 551 00:27:04,173 --> 00:27:06,163 is no longer defined by the law, 552 00:27:06,163 --> 00:27:07,956 but by the spirit of Christ. 553 00:27:08,843 --> 00:27:10,193 On the other hand, (gentle music) 554 00:27:10,193 --> 00:27:11,803 he doesn't want to say to the churches 555 00:27:11,803 --> 00:27:13,853 that they can just do anything they like. 556 00:27:16,893 --> 00:27:19,073 When it comes to issues of morality, 557 00:27:19,073 --> 00:27:22,343 Paul is absolutely a product of his Jewish upbringing. 558 00:27:22,343 --> 00:27:24,313 He's simply not prepared to compromise 559 00:27:24,313 --> 00:27:26,536 with the moral presumptions of pagans. 560 00:27:27,553 --> 00:27:30,413 Women should cover their hair. 561 00:27:30,413 --> 00:27:33,896 The only natural union is that of husband and wife. 562 00:27:35,903 --> 00:27:39,053 For people of the same sex to sleep with one another 563 00:27:39,053 --> 00:27:39,886 is wrong. 564 00:27:41,057 --> 00:27:44,003 (fast techno music) 565 00:27:44,003 --> 00:27:46,843 Paul May have proclaimed the irrelevance of the Jewish law 566 00:27:46,843 --> 00:27:49,043 but on the question of gay rights 567 00:27:49,043 --> 00:27:51,326 he was quite as disapproving as Moses. 568 00:27:53,343 --> 00:27:54,803 It's a Sunday night, 569 00:27:54,803 --> 00:27:56,893 but it's a fair bet that not many people here 570 00:27:56,893 --> 00:27:58,206 have come from evensong. 571 00:28:00,613 --> 00:28:04,536 It's very much not a St. Paul kind of a place. 572 00:28:05,693 --> 00:28:08,233 And yet there is a sense in which even here, 573 00:28:08,233 --> 00:28:10,076 Paul's influence can be felt. 574 00:28:11,893 --> 00:28:14,713 The willingness of our society to condone, 575 00:28:14,713 --> 00:28:16,213 as well as to condemn love 576 00:28:16,213 --> 00:28:18,013 between people of the same sex 577 00:28:18,013 --> 00:28:20,196 does indeed draw on his legacy. 578 00:28:22,493 --> 00:28:25,283 Because if our own social and moral attitudes 579 00:28:25,283 --> 00:28:27,703 are complex and contradictory, 580 00:28:27,703 --> 00:28:29,506 that's because Paul's were as well. 581 00:28:30,803 --> 00:28:33,593 Like anyone, he had his prejudices. 582 00:28:33,593 --> 00:28:36,963 And these indisputably have been part of the West's 583 00:28:36,963 --> 00:28:38,013 inheritance from him. 584 00:28:39,643 --> 00:28:42,133 But he was also a revolutionary, 585 00:28:42,133 --> 00:28:44,223 and part of what he aimed at overthrowing 586 00:28:44,223 --> 00:28:46,773 were the cultural presumptions inside his own head. 587 00:28:48,103 --> 00:28:52,046 He laid down laws, but he also ripped them up. 588 00:28:53,783 --> 00:28:57,006 In other words, he's the very opposite of inflexible. 589 00:28:58,133 --> 00:28:59,803 His aim is always to push 590 00:28:59,803 --> 00:29:02,293 against the limits of preconceptions 591 00:29:02,293 --> 00:29:04,446 in the name of equality and love. 592 00:29:05,873 --> 00:29:08,503 But it's not a slushy message. 593 00:29:08,503 --> 00:29:10,176 Paul is tough minded. 594 00:29:11,889 --> 00:29:13,713 (soulful clarinet plays) 595 00:29:13,713 --> 00:29:15,913 Indeed, on sexual matters 596 00:29:15,913 --> 00:29:18,746 he makes the Jewish law look positively soft. 597 00:29:20,120 --> 00:29:23,043 - [Speaker] "It is better to marry than to burn", 598 00:29:23,043 --> 00:29:26,893 - [Tom] He writes, but it is better to avoid sex altogether 599 00:29:26,893 --> 00:29:28,434 than to marry. 600 00:29:28,434 --> 00:29:30,884 - [Speaker] "For to be carnally minded is death." 601 00:29:32,533 --> 00:29:35,283 - Life in Christ is about self-mastery. 602 00:29:35,283 --> 00:29:37,813 It is about pushing yourself to the limits. 603 00:29:37,813 --> 00:29:40,723 It is about keeping your body under control 604 00:29:40,723 --> 00:29:44,044 and winning the prize of eternal life. 605 00:29:44,044 --> 00:29:46,723 (dramatic music) And here to his pagan converts 606 00:29:46,723 --> 00:29:48,573 is something that does speak to them. 607 00:29:51,243 --> 00:29:52,943 Writing to the Corinthians, 608 00:29:52,943 --> 00:29:54,843 Paul compares his own self-discipline 609 00:29:54,843 --> 00:29:56,116 to that of an athlete. 610 00:29:57,372 --> 00:29:58,720 (starter pistol fires) "Run", he says, 611 00:29:58,720 --> 00:30:00,823 "that ye may obtain". 612 00:30:00,823 --> 00:30:03,696 Nothing more Greek, less Jewish, than athletics. 613 00:30:04,553 --> 00:30:07,223 Yet here is Paul's genius. 614 00:30:07,223 --> 00:30:09,643 Somehow against all the odds, 615 00:30:09,643 --> 00:30:12,026 he finds a way of fusing the two. 616 00:30:13,270 --> 00:30:15,863 - [Speaker] "And every man that striveth for the mastery 617 00:30:15,863 --> 00:30:18,043 is temperate in all things. 618 00:30:18,043 --> 00:30:21,203 Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, 619 00:30:21,203 --> 00:30:23,410 but we, an incorruptible." 620 00:30:24,973 --> 00:30:28,853 - This to Paul is what it is to follow Christ. 621 00:30:28,853 --> 00:30:31,553 It is to compete as an athlete of God. 622 00:30:31,553 --> 00:30:34,843 a vision of striving and spiritual struggling 623 00:30:34,843 --> 00:30:36,063 that would end up superseding 624 00:30:36,063 --> 00:30:38,186 that of the classical world altogether. 625 00:30:46,853 --> 00:30:49,343 It's important to appreciate just how radical 626 00:30:49,343 --> 00:30:51,563 was his overturning of the traditional values 627 00:30:51,563 --> 00:30:53,860 of the world he inhabited. (tense music) 628 00:30:53,860 --> 00:30:57,510 "Always fight bravely", Greek and Roman boys had been told, 629 00:30:57,510 --> 00:30:59,520 "and be superior to others." 630 00:31:02,153 --> 00:31:05,103 But Paul's advice to his converts among the Galatians 631 00:31:05,103 --> 00:31:07,843 could hardly have been more opposite. 632 00:31:07,843 --> 00:31:11,843 Peace, long suffering, gentleness, 633 00:31:11,843 --> 00:31:15,946 goodness, faith, meekness. 634 00:31:17,053 --> 00:31:20,163 These, so the apostle declares, 635 00:31:20,163 --> 00:31:22,296 are the fruits of the spirit. 636 00:31:24,223 --> 00:31:27,303 And as Paul preached, so he lived. 637 00:31:27,303 --> 00:31:31,993 Willingly, he called himself a doulos, a slave of Christ, 638 00:31:31,993 --> 00:31:33,353 and submitted to being beaten, 639 00:31:33,353 --> 00:31:36,853 according to his own testimony, three times by rods, 640 00:31:36,853 --> 00:31:40,553 the punishment, almost by definition, of a slave. 641 00:31:40,553 --> 00:31:45,423 - Good morning, Tom. Welcome. (gravel crunches) 642 00:31:45,423 --> 00:31:46,256 Hi, come in. 643 00:31:46,256 --> 00:31:48,933 It is amazing for us at the beginning of the 21st century 644 00:31:48,933 --> 00:31:53,933 when we realized the power that a master had over his slave. 645 00:31:54,293 --> 00:31:57,233 That he could do anything, even decree death. 646 00:31:57,233 --> 00:32:01,083 When Paul then uses this term 647 00:32:01,083 --> 00:32:03,823 to describe his relationship with Jesus, 648 00:32:03,823 --> 00:32:07,663 namely Jesus becomes Lord, He becomes his master, 649 00:32:07,663 --> 00:32:11,093 Paul looks at himself as a slave. 650 00:32:11,093 --> 00:32:13,093 Very, very strong language, 651 00:32:13,093 --> 00:32:15,493 which is somewhat shocking to us. 652 00:32:15,493 --> 00:32:17,493 Even so much in our translations 653 00:32:17,493 --> 00:32:19,523 we sometimes prefer to use, 654 00:32:19,523 --> 00:32:22,933 talk about a servant as opposed to slave, 655 00:32:22,933 --> 00:32:26,093 but basically what it conveys, what Paul is using here, 656 00:32:26,093 --> 00:32:28,843 it becomes a metaphor to describe 657 00:32:28,843 --> 00:32:33,843 his complete dedication to Jesus and the cause of Jesus. 658 00:32:35,293 --> 00:32:39,813 That he's willing to do anything to follow Jesus 659 00:32:39,813 --> 00:32:44,373 and to announce Jesus to Jews and non-Jews 660 00:32:44,373 --> 00:32:46,120 in the Roman Empire. 661 00:32:46,120 --> 00:32:49,273 (rhythmic ethnic music) 662 00:32:49,273 --> 00:32:51,893 - It also suggests scorn for presumption 663 00:32:51,893 --> 00:32:53,636 deep-rooted in antiquity, 664 00:32:54,533 --> 00:32:57,656 that relationships were determined above all by power. 665 00:32:58,843 --> 00:33:01,783 Paul had abandoned the comforts of his background 666 00:33:01,783 --> 00:33:05,590 and willingly become, in effect, a wandering beggar. 667 00:33:05,590 --> 00:33:09,590 "Powerlessness," Paul was saying "had become the new power." 668 00:33:10,503 --> 00:33:13,333 And certainly, his life was a hard one, 669 00:33:13,333 --> 00:33:15,673 traveling between the new Christian churches 670 00:33:15,673 --> 00:33:17,386 encouraging and guiding them. 671 00:33:18,863 --> 00:33:21,223 Now we have plenty of evidence, fragmentary, perhaps, 672 00:33:21,223 --> 00:33:22,443 but enough to be confident 673 00:33:22,443 --> 00:33:24,433 that Paul's missionary journeys did indeed take him 674 00:33:24,433 --> 00:33:27,363 across the entire span of the Roman world. 675 00:33:27,363 --> 00:33:29,513 But when we come to the years before his death, 676 00:33:29,513 --> 00:33:32,596 Paul just vanishes from the historical record. 677 00:33:34,747 --> 00:33:35,580 (gentle music) The author of the 678 00:33:35,580 --> 00:33:38,053 Acts of the Apostles tells us that he ended up 679 00:33:38,053 --> 00:33:40,653 involved in a crowd disturbance in Jerusalem 680 00:33:40,653 --> 00:33:42,836 and was arrested by the Roman authorities. 681 00:33:45,763 --> 00:33:49,273 Paul appealed to Caesar, his right as a Roman citizen, 682 00:33:49,273 --> 00:33:50,626 and was sent here to Rome. 683 00:33:52,013 --> 00:33:54,493 He stayed under house arrest until, it's thought, 684 00:33:54,493 --> 00:33:57,086 at least two years later, he was put to death. 685 00:33:59,243 --> 00:34:01,313 The most popular theory is that Paul died 686 00:34:01,313 --> 00:34:04,743 in the first wave of persecutions against the Christians. 687 00:34:04,743 --> 00:34:08,183 In AD 64 there was a devastating fire in Rome. 688 00:34:08,183 --> 00:34:09,813 It began just over there 689 00:34:09,813 --> 00:34:12,183 in shops above the Circus Maximus, 690 00:34:12,183 --> 00:34:15,243 the place where the Romans raced their chariots. 691 00:34:15,243 --> 00:34:17,153 By the time it was finally extinguished, 692 00:34:17,153 --> 00:34:19,683 whole swathes of the city had been left as nothing 693 00:34:19,683 --> 00:34:22,523 but blackened, smoking rubble. 694 00:34:22,523 --> 00:34:26,473 Obviously, the Imperial authorities needed a scapegoat 695 00:34:26,473 --> 00:34:28,053 and so they fixed on the followers 696 00:34:28,053 --> 00:34:32,116 of the mysterious and deeply subversive sounding, Christ. 697 00:34:33,022 --> 00:34:36,493 (bell tolls) (dog barks) 698 00:34:36,493 --> 00:34:39,263 Legend says that Paul was executed here 699 00:34:39,263 --> 00:34:41,876 where the Abbey of the Three Fountains now stands. 700 00:34:43,134 --> 00:34:45,884 (haunting music) 701 00:34:50,925 --> 00:34:52,233 (blade swishes) 702 00:34:52,233 --> 00:34:54,543 His head was cut from his neck. 703 00:34:54,543 --> 00:34:56,793 It bounced three times, 704 00:34:56,793 --> 00:34:59,626 and with each bounce a fountain sprung up. 705 00:35:02,123 --> 00:35:04,603 A fantastical story perhaps, 706 00:35:04,603 --> 00:35:06,703 but one thing is clear enough. 707 00:35:06,703 --> 00:35:08,156 Paul died willingly. 708 00:35:10,333 --> 00:35:12,793 By submitting to an earthly king 709 00:35:12,793 --> 00:35:15,536 he had won for himself a heavenly crown. 710 00:35:17,050 --> 00:35:18,740 - [Speaker] "We suffer with him." 711 00:35:20,973 --> 00:35:25,446 - [Tom] Death however, was hardly the end of Paul's story. 712 00:35:28,443 --> 00:35:32,143 Paul died as he'd lived, a revolutionary. 713 00:35:32,143 --> 00:35:34,283 Everything had to change. 714 00:35:34,283 --> 00:35:36,483 This in the context of the age 715 00:35:36,483 --> 00:35:39,473 was a profoundly subversive message. 716 00:35:39,473 --> 00:35:42,553 His end had come, however, not on the barricades, 717 00:35:42,553 --> 00:35:45,766 but submissively, on the executioners block. 718 00:35:46,833 --> 00:35:49,903 So what did this willingness to bow his neck before Caesar 719 00:35:49,903 --> 00:35:53,126 say about his attitude to the Imperial State? 720 00:35:55,813 --> 00:35:57,963 Certainly, when Paul wrote his last 721 00:35:57,963 --> 00:35:59,993 great epistle to the Romans, 722 00:35:59,993 --> 00:36:02,223 he advised the Christians of the capital 723 00:36:02,223 --> 00:36:05,306 to acknowledge the authority of the higher powers. 724 00:36:06,770 --> 00:36:07,853 - [Speaker] "Let every soul 725 00:36:07,853 --> 00:36:10,006 be subject unto the higher powers, 726 00:36:10,963 --> 00:36:13,006 for there is no power but of God. 727 00:36:14,203 --> 00:36:16,890 The powers that be are ordained of God." 728 00:36:17,963 --> 00:36:19,753 - Many brutal regimes since, 729 00:36:19,753 --> 00:36:22,883 from the Nazis to the Apartheid State in South Africa, 730 00:36:22,883 --> 00:36:24,933 have made use of this passage, 731 00:36:24,933 --> 00:36:26,813 making it one of the most notorious 732 00:36:26,813 --> 00:36:28,613 in the whole of the Bible. 733 00:36:28,613 --> 00:36:32,063 Was that a justifiable use of the Bible verse? 734 00:36:32,063 --> 00:36:32,896 - Absolutely not. 735 00:36:32,896 --> 00:36:36,343 It would have been a terror, it's a terrible misuse of that. 736 00:36:36,343 --> 00:36:38,783 Ultimately, I think what Paul is doing is, 737 00:36:38,783 --> 00:36:41,143 Paul is the absolute realist. 738 00:36:41,143 --> 00:36:43,213 He's accepting the world as it is. 739 00:36:43,213 --> 00:36:46,813 He realizes he's a citizen in the Roman Empire 740 00:36:46,813 --> 00:36:48,833 and realizing nevertheless, 741 00:36:48,833 --> 00:36:51,873 and I think he's thinking as a very good Jew here, 742 00:36:51,873 --> 00:36:55,823 realizing that God in his providential way 743 00:36:55,823 --> 00:36:59,183 is overseeing the affairs of man. 744 00:36:59,183 --> 00:37:02,213 And as a result of that, realizing that, 745 00:37:02,213 --> 00:37:04,843 even these authorities are legitimate 746 00:37:04,843 --> 00:37:09,106 and that God can work through them to accomplish his will. 747 00:37:11,223 --> 00:37:13,663 - Though he advised submission to Rome 748 00:37:13,663 --> 00:37:16,496 Paul was no enthusiast for worldly power. 749 00:37:17,693 --> 00:37:19,853 We have to remember always, 750 00:37:19,853 --> 00:37:22,096 that for Paul the end was near. 751 00:37:23,063 --> 00:37:27,726 Christ's return in a blaze of glory was hourly expected. 752 00:37:28,563 --> 00:37:30,333 There was for his followers 753 00:37:30,333 --> 00:37:34,400 quite simply no time to reorder the world. 754 00:37:34,400 --> 00:37:36,110 (light music) 755 00:37:36,110 --> 00:37:39,890 - [Speaker] "The night is fast spent. The day is at hand." 756 00:37:40,993 --> 00:37:44,693 - Except that it didn't turn out that way. 757 00:37:44,693 --> 00:37:47,563 Time did not come to an end. 758 00:37:47,563 --> 00:37:51,016 Paul had not lived to see the return of Christ. 759 00:37:52,583 --> 00:37:54,050 The years slip by, 760 00:37:54,050 --> 00:37:56,013 and new generations found themselves 761 00:37:56,013 --> 00:37:57,613 wrestling with the very same issues 762 00:37:57,613 --> 00:38:00,196 that had so troubled Paul in his own lifetime. 763 00:38:01,593 --> 00:38:04,053 And always at their heart, 764 00:38:04,053 --> 00:38:05,896 the most sensitive issue of all. 765 00:38:06,933 --> 00:38:09,453 In a world redeemed by Christ, 766 00:38:09,453 --> 00:38:12,326 what, of their Jewish heritage, should be preserved? 767 00:38:13,243 --> 00:38:15,513 Attempts to answer that question would lead some Christians 768 00:38:15,513 --> 00:38:17,873 in an increasingly radical direction 769 00:38:17,873 --> 00:38:20,553 with consequences that would have an incalculable impact 770 00:38:20,553 --> 00:38:22,603 on what would become the Christian Bible. 771 00:38:23,663 --> 00:38:28,663 In AD 66, the Jews rose in revolt against the Roman Empire. 772 00:38:28,833 --> 00:38:30,306 It was a reckless action. 773 00:38:31,423 --> 00:38:34,603 Four years later, Jerusalem was captured 774 00:38:34,603 --> 00:38:36,726 and its treasures carted off to Rome. 775 00:38:37,703 --> 00:38:39,883 Christians frantic to distance themselves 776 00:38:39,883 --> 00:38:42,393 from the defeated and mistrusted Jews, 777 00:38:42,393 --> 00:38:45,623 increasingly turned their backs on the mother religion. 778 00:38:45,623 --> 00:38:47,373 The kind of Christian who would provoke Paul 779 00:38:47,373 --> 00:38:49,623 into writing his letter to the Galatians, 780 00:38:49,623 --> 00:38:53,563 the kind who favored circumcision or the law of Moses 781 00:38:53,563 --> 00:38:54,746 faded from the scene. 782 00:38:56,455 --> 00:38:57,843 (gentle music) By the 2nd century AD 783 00:38:57,843 --> 00:39:00,203 there were some Christians, like Marcion, 784 00:39:00,203 --> 00:39:03,913 a radically innovative theologian from Sinope in Asia Minor, 785 00:39:03,913 --> 00:39:05,153 who wanted to make the divorce 786 00:39:05,153 --> 00:39:08,266 between their faith in Christ and Judaism terminal. 787 00:39:10,373 --> 00:39:13,303 Marcion hoped to mark out the boundaries of Christian belief 788 00:39:13,303 --> 00:39:15,263 by drawing up a canon, 789 00:39:15,263 --> 00:39:17,553 an authoritative list of texts 790 00:39:17,553 --> 00:39:19,933 which would define Christian thought. 791 00:39:19,933 --> 00:39:23,793 Paul's letters were destined to play a key role. 792 00:39:23,793 --> 00:39:26,313 - Marcion is the first one we think 793 00:39:26,313 --> 00:39:30,026 to actually formulate a distinctively Christian canon. 794 00:39:31,063 --> 00:39:35,083 And in his case, it comprised solely of one gospel, 795 00:39:35,083 --> 00:39:36,763 the gospel of Luke, 796 00:39:36,763 --> 00:39:40,553 and a collection of 10 letters of the apostle Paul. 797 00:39:40,553 --> 00:39:43,483 And that's it, no old Testament or anything like that. 798 00:39:43,483 --> 00:39:45,863 And no other early Christian writing. 799 00:39:45,863 --> 00:39:47,963 He recognized only one true apostle 800 00:39:47,963 --> 00:39:49,743 and for him that was Paul. 801 00:39:49,743 --> 00:39:53,323 And he could accommodate only one gospel rendition 802 00:39:53,323 --> 00:39:54,997 of Jesus' message. 803 00:39:54,997 --> 00:39:56,193 - I mean, that's really startling to think 804 00:39:56,193 --> 00:39:59,723 that he left out the whole of the Old Testament (chuckles). 805 00:39:59,723 --> 00:40:01,053 Why did he do that? 806 00:40:01,053 --> 00:40:02,653 - He found all kinds of things 807 00:40:02,653 --> 00:40:04,013 problematic in the Old Testament. 808 00:40:04,013 --> 00:40:04,846 It's interesting. 809 00:40:04,846 --> 00:40:08,063 He didn't challenge the reality of the Old Testament God. 810 00:40:08,063 --> 00:40:10,873 Said, "Oh yeah, the God of the Jews is, there's a real God. 811 00:40:10,873 --> 00:40:13,223 And he's the God of the Jews, got nothing to do with us." 812 00:40:13,223 --> 00:40:15,823 And therefore these scriptures are scriptures of the Jews. 813 00:40:15,823 --> 00:40:17,603 They can have them, they can do what they want to with them, 814 00:40:17,603 --> 00:40:19,623 but they have nothing to do with us. 815 00:40:19,623 --> 00:40:21,323 And which just sounded incompatible 816 00:40:21,323 --> 00:40:22,453 with what he understood to be 817 00:40:22,453 --> 00:40:24,383 the teaching of Paul in particular. 818 00:40:24,383 --> 00:40:28,153 - So in a sense, the response of his enemies, 819 00:40:28,153 --> 00:40:30,573 the attempt to combat that resulted in 820 00:40:30,573 --> 00:40:32,593 the Christian Bible as we know it today? 821 00:40:32,593 --> 00:40:33,673 - He does appear to be, 822 00:40:33,673 --> 00:40:34,863 to get the jump on the church 823 00:40:34,863 --> 00:40:37,673 as far as canon forming is concerned. 824 00:40:37,673 --> 00:40:40,643 And in that sense, he probably helps accelerate 825 00:40:40,643 --> 00:40:44,163 and helps intensify the question, 826 00:40:44,163 --> 00:40:46,363 well, okay, if Marcion's canon 827 00:40:46,363 --> 00:40:49,116 isn't adequate and isn't right, what the heck is? 828 00:40:50,413 --> 00:40:52,473 - Now, all of this can seem rather 829 00:40:52,473 --> 00:40:55,343 lacking relevance to the here and now, 830 00:40:55,343 --> 00:40:57,703 but, just think, for example, 831 00:40:57,703 --> 00:40:59,653 about the anti-Semitic uses 832 00:40:59,653 --> 00:41:01,723 to which Paul's letters have been put 833 00:41:01,723 --> 00:41:05,293 and of which Marcion's heresy was only the first example. 834 00:41:05,293 --> 00:41:07,803 Biblical scholarship is not exclusively 835 00:41:07,803 --> 00:41:09,473 about ancient texts. 836 00:41:09,473 --> 00:41:13,283 It impacts directly on the here and now. 837 00:41:13,283 --> 00:41:15,893 And if that is obviously the case with a relationship 838 00:41:15,893 --> 00:41:18,693 as sensitive and significant as that 839 00:41:18,693 --> 00:41:20,703 between Christians and Jews, 840 00:41:20,703 --> 00:41:22,413 then so also is it true 841 00:41:22,413 --> 00:41:25,233 of an even more fundamental relationship, 842 00:41:25,233 --> 00:41:27,556 that between men and women. 843 00:41:29,010 --> 00:41:31,073 - [Speaker] "Let the woman learn in silence 844 00:41:31,073 --> 00:41:32,466 with all subjection. 845 00:41:33,853 --> 00:41:35,653 But I suffer not a woman to teach 846 00:41:35,653 --> 00:41:40,490 nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence." 847 00:41:42,343 --> 00:41:44,463 - These assertions from the first of Paul's 848 00:41:44,463 --> 00:41:46,353 supposed letters to Timothy, 849 00:41:46,353 --> 00:41:48,503 have had a fundamental impact on the way 850 00:41:48,503 --> 00:41:50,783 that the two genders have related to one another 851 00:41:50,783 --> 00:41:53,036 over the entire course of Western history. 852 00:41:55,043 --> 00:41:57,023 To this day it is used 853 00:41:57,023 --> 00:41:59,483 as a justification by many Christians 854 00:41:59,483 --> 00:42:02,603 to deny the validity of women priests. 855 00:42:02,603 --> 00:42:06,513 Simultaneously, it is Exhibit A in the case that 856 00:42:06,513 --> 00:42:09,776 Paul was a snorting chauvinist pig. 857 00:42:10,953 --> 00:42:12,743 but here is where biblical scholarship 858 00:42:12,743 --> 00:42:14,643 comes into its own again. 859 00:42:14,643 --> 00:42:18,796 Did Paul actually write the first letter to Timothy? 860 00:42:19,643 --> 00:42:23,200 In Paul's first letter to Timothy, we read, 861 00:42:23,200 --> 00:42:24,873 "I suffer not a woman to teach 862 00:42:24,873 --> 00:42:27,063 nor to usurp authority over the man 863 00:42:27,063 --> 00:42:28,820 but to be in silence." 864 00:42:30,033 --> 00:42:31,483 In the opinion of most scholars 865 00:42:31,483 --> 00:42:34,813 are these the actual words of Paul himself? 866 00:42:34,813 --> 00:42:38,403 - No, the message that you get in Timothy there 867 00:42:38,403 --> 00:42:40,233 does seem to be so strikingly different 868 00:42:40,233 --> 00:42:41,953 from other bits of Paul's writings, 869 00:42:41,953 --> 00:42:43,433 that many scholars would say 870 00:42:43,433 --> 00:42:45,383 that they aren't actually written by Paul 871 00:42:45,383 --> 00:42:47,193 but were written by a Pauline community 872 00:42:47,193 --> 00:42:48,623 some years after Paul's death. 873 00:42:48,623 --> 00:42:50,073 - And why are they doing that? 874 00:42:50,073 --> 00:42:51,873 - The reason why the Pauline community, 875 00:42:51,873 --> 00:42:54,493 it seemed to want to write words like that, 876 00:42:54,493 --> 00:42:57,333 might have been in order to be able to rein back 877 00:42:57,333 --> 00:43:00,093 some of the radical message of Paul's theology 878 00:43:00,093 --> 00:43:02,253 which seemed to be immensely inclusive. 879 00:43:02,253 --> 00:43:04,693 - So, of the letters in the Bible 880 00:43:04,693 --> 00:43:05,863 that are attributed to Paul, 881 00:43:05,863 --> 00:43:10,543 how many do scholars think were actually by Paul himself? 882 00:43:10,543 --> 00:43:13,063 - There are seven undisputed Pauline letters, 883 00:43:13,063 --> 00:43:15,823 and there are a number of others which are disputed 884 00:43:15,823 --> 00:43:17,543 more or less by scholars. 885 00:43:17,543 --> 00:43:20,503 Some think that there are more than seven, others think, 886 00:43:20,503 --> 00:43:23,073 others say were just the seven are written by Paul. 887 00:43:23,073 --> 00:43:24,773 - So if as many scholars suggest, 888 00:43:24,773 --> 00:43:28,003 many of these letters post date Paul himself, 889 00:43:28,003 --> 00:43:32,103 what does their existence tell us about the attitudes 890 00:43:32,103 --> 00:43:36,223 of subsequent generations to Paul's initial radicalism? 891 00:43:36,223 --> 00:43:37,833 - Well, many scholars would say 892 00:43:37,833 --> 00:43:39,993 that what happens in the writing of Timothy 893 00:43:39,993 --> 00:43:43,013 is an attempt to readjust Paul's theology 894 00:43:43,013 --> 00:43:45,003 in the light of their current context. 895 00:43:45,003 --> 00:43:47,003 So if they are written after Paul's death 896 00:43:47,003 --> 00:43:49,553 they began to realize that some of Paul's radicalism 897 00:43:49,553 --> 00:43:51,903 sits uncomfortably with the kind of Christianity 898 00:43:51,903 --> 00:43:53,193 that they now follow. 899 00:43:53,193 --> 00:43:55,033 And therefore they rewrote the texts 900 00:43:55,033 --> 00:43:57,273 in order to be able to represent a Christianity 901 00:43:57,273 --> 00:43:59,533 that they were more comfortable with. 902 00:43:59,533 --> 00:44:03,533 - So what is it about Paul's message on gender relations, 903 00:44:03,533 --> 00:44:07,423 on women, that is so unsettling, that is so radical? 904 00:44:07,423 --> 00:44:09,793 - I think one of the really striking features of Paul 905 00:44:09,793 --> 00:44:13,153 is that he throws open the doors in terms of equality, 906 00:44:13,153 --> 00:44:15,093 in terms of gender and in terms of all sorts 907 00:44:15,093 --> 00:44:17,053 of other relationships in the community, 908 00:44:17,053 --> 00:44:19,173 and issues a welcome to anyone 909 00:44:19,173 --> 00:44:22,141 who wants to be a member of this Christ community. 910 00:44:22,141 --> 00:44:25,724 (religious choral singing) 911 00:44:30,493 --> 00:44:33,423 - No-one's influence did more to shape the Bible 912 00:44:33,423 --> 00:44:34,983 that has been read over the centuries 913 00:44:34,983 --> 00:44:38,856 by millions upon millions of Christians than St. Paul. 914 00:44:41,763 --> 00:44:44,743 The tensions that run throughout his letters 915 00:44:44,743 --> 00:44:46,163 are the same that run throughout 916 00:44:46,163 --> 00:44:49,103 the entire practice of the Christian faith 917 00:44:49,103 --> 00:44:51,626 and therefore of Western society as a whole. 918 00:44:53,623 --> 00:44:57,553 Between the conservative and the revolutionary, 919 00:44:57,553 --> 00:45:01,866 between our debt to the past and our hopes for the future, 920 00:45:04,123 --> 00:45:07,406 between the letter and the spirit of the law. 921 00:45:13,563 --> 00:45:15,603 Today, we live in a society that shrinks 922 00:45:15,603 --> 00:45:18,693 from looking to the Bible to define itself. 923 00:45:18,693 --> 00:45:20,883 All the same, it seems to me that Paul remains 924 00:45:20,883 --> 00:45:23,303 the West's patron saint. 925 00:45:23,303 --> 00:45:26,243 More than Darwin, more than Marx, more than Freud, 926 00:45:26,243 --> 00:45:30,563 it's Paul, this man who died almost 2,000 years ago 927 00:45:30,563 --> 00:45:32,643 who lives on inside our heads, 928 00:45:32,643 --> 00:45:36,026 in all his contradictions, in all his complexities. 929 00:45:36,873 --> 00:45:41,043 When we look at the world we do so for good and ill 930 00:45:41,043 --> 00:45:42,930 through Pauline eyes. 931 00:45:42,930 --> 00:45:46,160 (gentle music) 932 00:45:46,160 --> 00:45:48,393 - [Speaker] "There is neither Jew nor Greek. 933 00:45:48,393 --> 00:45:50,463 There is neither bond nor free. 934 00:45:50,463 --> 00:45:52,510 There is neither male nor female." 935 00:45:54,893 --> 00:45:57,463 - And perhaps, following the implications 936 00:45:57,463 --> 00:46:01,033 of his praise of love to their logical conclusions, 937 00:46:01,033 --> 00:46:03,466 there is neither straight nor gay as well. 938 00:46:07,083 --> 00:46:09,373 And like Paul himself, after his vision 939 00:46:09,373 --> 00:46:12,223 of the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, 940 00:46:12,223 --> 00:46:15,753 we are caught between two conflicting desires. 941 00:46:15,753 --> 00:46:17,043 On the one hand, 942 00:46:17,043 --> 00:46:19,483 we want to proclaim a glorious new beginning, 943 00:46:19,483 --> 00:46:24,483 liberated from all Paul's tut-tuttings, all his strictures, 944 00:46:24,623 --> 00:46:26,773 but at the same time, we do, I think, 945 00:46:26,773 --> 00:46:28,883 want to continue to define ourselves 946 00:46:28,883 --> 00:46:32,933 in terms of the ethics, the morals, the ideals, 947 00:46:32,933 --> 00:46:35,823 that Paul more than any other writer 948 00:46:35,823 --> 00:46:38,573 has bequeathed to us today. 949 00:46:38,573 --> 00:46:39,736 That we're all one. 950 00:46:40,723 --> 00:46:43,773 That the weak can confound the mighty. 951 00:46:43,773 --> 00:46:46,176 That all you need is love. 952 00:46:47,319 --> 00:46:50,152 (dramatic music) 953 00:47:00,443 --> 00:47:03,353 - The Lord destroyed with a word that proceeds 954 00:47:03,353 --> 00:47:05,163 out of his mouth. 955 00:47:05,163 --> 00:47:06,443 - [Narrator] In the next program, 956 00:47:06,443 --> 00:47:09,410 Robert Beckford goes in search of the "Book of Revelation". 957 00:47:11,029 --> 00:47:12,753 - The Book of Revelation speaks to everybody. 958 00:47:12,753 --> 00:47:17,306 It just doesn't say the same message to everybody. 959 00:47:18,283 --> 00:47:22,746 It doesn't always say the message that you want to hear. 960 00:47:26,424 --> 00:47:29,257 (end theme music)