I had the pleasure of filling in for David Binkley in the auditorium class last Sunday. He is teaching a class on Paul, and his missionary journeys. Bink has done a great job of describing the broad education Paul received while he was still Saul. Saul was trained as a Rabbi, as a leather worker/tentmaker, and received a fine classical education as well. We looked at the many times Paul quoted classical authors – Euripides, Epimenides, Meander – and the way he was prepared to speak in Athens , and before King Agrippa. The evidence is strong that the young man Saul had received both a great Hebrew education, and a great Greek education.
On Sunday we looked at that time Paul spoke before King Agrippa, and listened as he recounted what happened to him on the Damascus road:
I heard a voice saying to me in Hebrew, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads. (Acts 26.14)
There is much about this moment that amazes. The voice from heaven would itself demand attention - the voice from heaven calling one’s name even more so. But this voice speaks in Hebrew. Common folk in Palestine spoke the Aramaic they brought back with them from Babylon. Hebrew was the language of the Old Testament. The languages are closely related, but not identical. Speaking to Saul in Hebrew assumes his proficiency in that language. But there is something more.
The phrase, “It is hard for you to kick against the goads,” is a quote from Euripides. It is a line from his play The Bacchae. The play is about Pentheus, King of Thebes, and his struggle to preserve public order while everyone is leaving town to worship the god Dionysus. The theme of the play is that our responsibility to the divine is greater than our responsibility to the State. Jesus quotes Euripides to Saul. Jesus translates the Greek of Euripides into Hebrew to do so. Amazing.
I used the quote above to demonstrate further how specifically God had been preparing Saul for his particular mission. I asked, Sunday, “How many people on earth would have been able to recognize a quote from Euripides in Hebrew?” That subset would be about as small as the number of people who would recognize a quote from Jack Kerouac in Farsi.
“Only one,” I said, “There was only one person on earth so prepared.”
I was wrong.
There was at least one other.
There was another man who would have known. He was young, learned, handsome, rich, well connected, and powerful. He was proud of his Jewish roots and something of an expert on the law. He had friends in the highest circles of power in Rome and Alexandria and frequented the theater. He was, at the time, making a courtesy visit to the new provincial governor. His name was Agrippa, and Rome allowed him to wear the title his great-grandfather had worn: King.
King Agrippa would have recognized a quote from Euripides translated into Hebrew. Paul doesn’t convert Agrippa, but he almost reaches him – renders him incoherent, actually, because whatever Agrippa is trying to say to Paul in Acts 26.28, it isn’t a complete sentence.
There are three important lessons here:
1. Our unique experiences prepare us for specific moments of service.
2. God will make sure our opportunity to respond to the gospel is specific to our circumstance, and
3. Some of us choose to refuse God’s call anyway.
Two men had shared a specific educational background that allowed them to fully understand a line of Greek translated into Hebrew. God used that line to specifically offer them the choice to be saved. One was obedient. One was not.
Again, all is reduced to God’s call, and our responsibility to choose.
