What I learned in Sunday School this Sunday

September 20, 2015
What I learned in Sunday School

So: 

      Paul and whoever was with him come to Thessalonica, where, according to Acts, “there was a synagogue of the Jews.” Paul goes in, because that’s what Paul does, and for three weeks he argues with them until he’s proved “from the scriptures” that “the Christ,” who suffered and rose, was the Christ.

     Some, it seems, are persuaded by the argument, as are a number of Greeks and women.

     More, it seems, are not persuaded. They – the unconvinced, Jews from the synagogue – start a protest that soon gets out of hand, as, we know, protests can do; and some of the protesters attack the house of Jason, where Paul is supposed to be staying, trying to get him to come out.

     Paul seems to be conveniently elsewhere, but Jason is handy and a few friends he has over. So, them they drag before “the authorities,” and they charge them with (frankly) fornifreculating with the order of things, especially, the accusers say, declaring that there is a king other than Caesar, name of Jesus. Naturally, this upsets the authorities – hell, it upsets everybody. Still, they do the right thing: they let Jason and the rest out on bail.
     And Jason and the rest do some thing: they get hold of Paul and his peeps, and they help them slip away in the middle of the night to Beroea. There Paul goes into the synagogue, and the events of Thessalonica repeat themselves, except – according to Acts – the Jews of Beroea are “nobler,” so more of them accept Paul’s arguments, along with the usual Greeks and women.

Yeah, but:

                 According to Acts, those cursèd Jews from Thessalonica, when they hear that Paul is in Beroea – they come over and stir up another crowd there.

     And Paul has to get away again, farther away. The Beroeans that bought him buy him a ticket on a boat to Athens.

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     Luke – let’s say he wrote Acts, a man named Luke (This also I learned in Sunday School; his name may have been something else.) – Luke seems more than a little discombobulated by all this. Why would the Jews of Thessalonica want to be such rabble-rousing budvases, when all Paul did was come into their place of worship and start an argument?

Well:

          There are, in my experience, people that can reason with people and people that can only yell at them; and, if they don’t get their way, yell some more, maybe even ad hominem – meaning the yellers start calling the yellees names.

     Who knows exactly what Paul said to the Jews of Thessalonica, but here’s what he said about them not long after he left. (This is the second part of what I learned in Sunday School: the first from Acts and this from the first letter Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, meaning presumably Jason and his Greek neighbors and women friends.)

     As you know, I don’t hide the truth, so I don’t make mistakes. I don’t flatter; I’m not in this for the money or the fame or to make people feel good - God knows! Still, I am the gentlest of men, as you also know; I am like a nanny with his lordship’s children.      But the Jews! who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets – they had to try to stop us. It’s the way they are.

Sing:

         For the Bible tells me so.

    

But:

         Bible scholars have a different idea. There is a way around around this crude argumentum ad stirpem jackassery.* Paul didn’t do it. So, it’s in the Bible, but it’s not somehow. Or so the well-informed teacher tells me. And the eldest among the elders and the Greeks and the women agree.

 

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 * . . . not paulassery, because . . .