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The Apostle Paul was probably born in the later years of Herod, or early in the short reign of Archelaus, when, under the sway of the emperor Augustus, the Roman world was at peace, and when the wickedness of the imperial despotism had not yet fully developed itself. The pirates who had infested the Eastern Mediterranean had been sternly suppressed. The Jewish people were still enjoying everywhere ample toleration under the Roman rule, and a Jewish family like St. Paul's, settled at Tarsus in Cilicia, would have been in sufficiently comfortable circumstances. For Tarsus was a free city of the Empire; that is to say, it was governed by its own magistrates, and was exempted from the annoyance of a Roman garrison; but it was not a colony like Philippi in Macedonia, and the freedom of Rome, which St. Paul says he had at his birth, would probably have been earned by some services rendered by his father during the civil wars to some one of the contending parties in the State. It is at least probable from the expression, "a Hebrew of the Hebrews," which he applies ¢o himself, that his parents were originally emigrants from Palestine. We know that they were of the tribe of Benjamin, and that they were strict members of the Pharisee sect. Probably his father was engaged in the Mediterranean trade. To his mother, it is a remarkable circumstance, there is not one reference in his writings, He had a sister whose son lived in later years at Jerusalem, and who would have been his playmate at Tarsus. The Talmud says that s father's duty toward his boy is to circumcise him, to teach him the law, and to teach him a trade. We know from the Epistle to the Philippians that the first of these precepts was accurately complied with on the eighth day after the child's birth. The second would probably have been obeyed by sending the boy, not to one of the Greek schools in which Tarsus abounded, but to a Jewish school attached to one of the synagogues, where, after the age of five, he would have learnt the Hebrew Scriptures, — at ten those floating maxims of the great Jewish doctors which were afterwards collected in the Mishna, so as, at thirteen, to become what was called a "Subject of the Precept," after a ceremony which was a kind of shadow of Christian confirmation. The third requirement was complied with by setting him to make tents out of the hair-cloth supplied by the goats which abounded on the slopes of the neighbouring mountains of the Taurus, and which was a chief article in the trade of the port — tents which to this day, according to Beaufort, are used largely by the peasantry of south-eastern Asia Minor during the harvesttime. At or soon after thirteen the little Saul would have been sent from home, probably in a trading vessel bound from the port of Tarsus for Caesarea, on his way to Jerusalem. Already, as a boy, the Holy City must have possessed for him an interest surpassing any which could be raised by any other place on earth. Every great festival would have been followed by the return of one or more of his countrymen to Tarsus, full of the inspiration of the sacred sights, full of the splendour of the new temple, full of the fame and learning of the great doctors of the law. Especially he would have heard much of the two rival schools of Hillel and Shammai, of which the former exalted tradition above the letter of the law, while the latter preferred the law to tradition when they clashed. Of these the school of Hillel was much the more influential, and when St. Paul was a boy or a young man its one great ornament was Gamaliel, who was evidently one of those men whose candour, wisdom, and consistent elevation of character would have secured him influence in any society, or in any age of the world. It was at the feet of Gamaliel, St. Paul tells us, he was brought up; and this expression "at the feet of Gamaliel" exactly recalls to us the manner in which the Rabbinical Assemblies of the Wise, as they were termed, were held. The teacher sat on a raised platform, — the pupils on low seats, or on the floor beneath. At this period of St. Paul's life we are, to a certain extent, in the region of conjecture; but it is, upon the whole, scarcely doubtful that he would have returned to Tarsus in the prime of manhood, before he reappeared in Jerusalem as a member of the synagogue which was connected with, or maintained by, the Jews in Cilicia. This visit would have completed his acquaintance with the language, and to a certain limited extent with the literature, of Greece. At this time in his life, too, St. Paul would probably have become familiar with that large section of the Jews of the dispersion whose centre was Alexandria, who in everything but religion were nearly Greeks, whose religion was taking more and more of the Greek dress every day This education was moulding and developing a character which may be described by one single word — intensity. There was much besides. There was sensitiveness; there was impetuosity; there was courage; there was independence; but, in all that he did, Paul of Tarsus, before his conversion as well as after it, threw his whole .energy, whether of thought or resolution, into his work.

(Canon Liddon.)

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KJV: For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it:

WEB: For you have heard of my way of living in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the assembly of God, and ravaged it.