Excerpts from Paul: A Novel
(Published 08.00 by Zondervan)
This compelling novel recounts the life of the Apostle Paul from the
perspectives of those who knew him well.
Each speaker contributes his or her unique memories while jointly
recreating the apostle’s multi-faceted life story:
Jude: Remembering Saul the Pharisee
He was talking: “Mattiathias and Pedaiah and I will spend three days in
silence, observing, listening. We’ll
catch these ravening beasts with the lies in their throats. On the morning of the fourth day, the first
day of the week, I’ll dictate a letter to the Council in Jerusalem. Pedaiah will carry south, and then
Mattithias and I and you, Jude, and the leaders of the synagogues will in the
righteousness of God punish those who would destroy the people of God.”
“Excuse me, excuse me,” I called behind him. “How will we do this? How
will we punish them?”
Saul stopped and turned around to answer me. My legs and my lungs were grateful for the rest, but there was
another sort of panting inside of me.
With all my heart I wanted to return our congregations to peace
again. Oh, how I hated the people who
had come to tear us apart. But I was
also thinking of Ananias. So I said,
“How will we punish them?”
“With words, sir,” he said, searching my face with his little
eyes. “And with rods and with
imprisonment,” he said, “and with death, if that becomes necessary again.”
James:
On his first memories of Paul
The young Cilician who had debated Stephen with such a swift and
scribal knowledge of the scripture was also present at his execution. He sat to one side, his great head balanced,
unmoving. If he participated, it was as
an officer of the council whose report of the stoning would seal the
matter. That, at least, was my
assumption.
I did not know his name then. I
do now, of course. Perhaps the whole
world knows his name by now.
Let me conclude this particular account with a second admission: Because of the affliction he has visited upon Jerusalem and the churches down to this day—requiring of me more negotiation than the energies of one man can sustain—I could dearly wish I had never heard the name. I would have lived in plain piety without the knowledge. Yet, though he has strained the goodness in me, he has sometimes caused in me the heat that proves me living. He was “Saul,” of tribe of Benjamin. In Greek (the language of his life and all his letters) he is “Paul.”
Prisca: On her first
meeting with Paul
On the day when I first met Paul in the marketplace—after the rain, after the crowds had dispersed, after the man had resumed his felling stitch to waterproof Timothy’s tent—I said, Can I sit beside you a while? He paused and gazed at me. His eyes are the color of polished walnuts. Prisca, he said. I nodded. The wife of Aquila, he continued, leatherworkers from Rome. I nodded again, unable not to look at him. Why do you want to sit by me? He asked, and I answered immediately: Because you name the name of Jesus.
I didn’t say as well that I was grieving the death of my mother. I didn’t name the comfort his previous words had granted me: The dead in Christ shall rise first, then we who are alive . . .
Barnabas: On the occasion of persecution
In a ditch! He must have been
thrown into the ditch. Just beyond the
third mile-marker we found him halfway down the near side of a wadi, his legs
doubled beneath him, his arms flopped up over his face and his bloody
head. I jumped down into muddy water
deeper than he, and with the hem of my robe began to wipe the thickening
blood. Timothy stood frozen above
us. Saul, Saul.
“We’ll carry him home,” I whispered—and just that, the uttering of
words and the sound of my sorrowful voice broke me down, and I started to cry.
Then with scorn and with humor together, my brother, my partner apostle
said, “Oh, Barnabas, that’s silly.”
Saul’s eyes were open! Glints
of light reflected from his eyeballs!
He was looking at me. He moved.
He shifted his weight. He reached up
and touched the side of my nose.
“No need for tears,” he said, then turning onto his hands and knees, he
climbed from the ditch and stood up and said, “Come on,” and began to walk back
to the city.
Timothy was quicker than I. He
rushed to the man, to this miracle of the Lord Jesus Christ, and gave him a
strong young shoulder for leaning on.
Yes, yes, yes, O Jesus, yes; even my Jewishness! I could give over the
whole of my heritage to follow where that little, bold, and bandy-legged man
was going.
I’m out of breath. I can hardly keep up. Barnabas said we should ship south. Paul said, “No, we’re going to walk.” Barnabas said, “Why?” Paul said, “So’s to talk to everyone on the way.” And that’s what we’ve been doing. Hardly a day’s break. No rest. It’s the rainy season, but Paul wakes up before dawn and takes off running rain or shine. Or it seems to be it’s running. We follow lickety-split. At noon he comes to a village where some believers live (how does he know where all the believers live?) and we go to their house. We eat a little lunch and Paul tells his story. I mean the story of meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus. The farther south we go, the more’s the people who’ve never seen Paul face-to-face, so for them it’s a wonderful tale.
Barnabas: On the
dissension in the early church
Peter rose to his feet. He said, “Titus, we love you—“
Saul interrupted with force: “But suddenly you will not eat with him? You’ve eaten with him often enough before. What’s changed? What breaks you? James writes a letter, and straightway Simon bows and becomes a hypocrite!”
Peter said, “Strong language, Saul. These are simply matters of decency and fellowship—“
Saul cut though Peter’s words like a saw: “For freedom Christ has set us free!” he cried.
Peter said, “Then let Titus use his freedom to avoid offending the Jews. Let him choose to serve the clean foods only.”
Paul stepped to Peter, thrusting his face forward. “If you, a Jew,” he cried “have lived like a Gentile, how can you now compel a Gentile to live like a Jew?”
“I learn. I’m enlightened.” Peter said. “I’m willing to listen to faithful people. Let Titus do the same.”
“Not at your command!” Saul yelled. “If you or Barsabbas or faithful James command it, it can’t be freedom. It’s obedience!”
Peter thundered back: “Jesus, not me! Jesus commands our love for God and our love for the other.”
Saul’s voice suddenly dropped. It coiled itself and came forth as tight and silent as a serpent. “I am persuaded,” he said, raking everyone with his red-rimmed, glittering eyes, “I am persuaded that in Jesus nothing is of itself unclean. It’s unclean only for those who think it is unclean. You Jews are making your bounden minds superior to the freedoms that Jesus gives us all. You’re demanding Gentiles to live under the rule of your weakness. And now I know, and hereafter I will preach it wherever I go, that all who rely on the works of the Law are under a curse. Under a curse, Simon. For this is what the Law does best: It reveals the sin in us, the weakness in us, like the weakness I find in you right now. And it drives us to promises and the righteousness we have in Christ Jesus, our Lord!”
Titus: On the
relationships within the church
Last year autumn, Silas showed up in Antioch. Silvanus. He says Paul calls him Silvanus—and he hates that name. Well, when he came he said they’d been as far away as Corinth. Said he decided to come back to make friends with his friends again and to ‘cast his lot,’ as he said it, with Peter. In worship at old Simeon Niger’s house, then, he talked about the churches he and Paul had started on their travels to Corinth. Churches first in Galatia, and then in Macedonia, then in Achaia. I’ll tell you what: It dazzled me to hear these things. My friend, my Paul was busy still in the distant places, huffing and puffing and preaching Jesus. Hoo, I was gladder than I’d been for a year!
But the same news did something completely different to Judas Barsabbas. He got very grim that night and very pale, which I remember on account of, the next thing was: he disappeared. I mean, the next day—one month before winter set in—Judas Barsabbas was gone. And who am I? No one told me where he went. Well, and I didn’t think to ask, either. Things change. But yesterday good old Barnabas came knocking on my father’s door. To see me, not my father.
Timothy: On Paul’s
defense of a pure gospel
At the shop that evening Paul would not be comforted. He paced up and down the small room, spitting fury, dictating a spew of words which I strove to transcribe on fresh papyrus. But it seemed that the man had lost more blood than he would admit. At odd moments he would slump down, pale and fainting and suddenly still. No matter: as soon as his senses returned, he rose up again, pacing raging.
“Kuno-tharses! Hateful! Deceitful! Foes of the freedom of Christ! Timothy, they gave me the right hand of fellowship! Titus remembers, don’t you, Titus? No one required you to be circumcised. Nothing was added to me. Nothing! But now they want to destroy the gospel of Christ!”
Young Titus had brought us the copy of a certain letter by a man named Judas Barsabbas, a letter in which Barsabbas was thinking God that fourteen plus twenty men were likely to be circumcised by Passover. The letter had been sent to Antioch, but its place of origin was Pessinus in Galatia—the same place where Paul had fallen ill two and a half years ago, the town where Paul and Silvanus and I had preached and established a baby church.
“Circumcised?” Paul howled. “Circumcised! The dogs are pursuing us, stealing God’s children as if they were sheep, cutting them bloody, castrating them under the Law, casting them straight to hell!”
Prisca: On Paul’s
mellowed personality in later life
Paul’s voice had changed. I mean, his whole manner of speaking had changed. That snarling, aggressive, supercilious whine—that nasal screech of his—had softened into something almost introspective. He breathed more. He preached with less violence, less drama, less—what should I call it?—gesticulation. He announced his themes at the beginning of a proper talk, then he would pause now and again to collect his thoughts. The apostle was teaching now, leading people in a planned path, adhering to a self-conscious strategy.
When had the change taken place? I don’t know. Whether it happened while he was gone from us or else in the year of his return, I really don’t know. I didn’t become completely aware of the difference in his voice until the evening when he escorted Lydia to our house for dinner.
For more information about Paul: A Novel
(Zondervan),
contact Pamela McClure at 615/595-8321 or pamela@mmpublicrelations.com