Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [174]
Paul’s first journey, around 47-48 CE, took him first to Cyprus and then through Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) before returning to Antioch (Syria), then one of the largest cities in the Roman empire. His second journey was even more arduous. Crossing Anatolia again Paul went by sea to Macedonia and Greece, finally reaching Athens. On the third mission, he again went through Anatolia, stopping at Ephesus on the Aegean coast. A major port city, it was also home to a large cult who worshiped the Greek fertility goddess Artemis (called Diana by the Romans). The Temple to Artemis was considered one of the Wonders of the Ancient World. The local metalworkers union did not take kindly to Paul’s suggestion that people stop worshiping idols. Paul’s preaching started a riot in Ephesus. He escaped and sailed for Greece.
After this third journey, Paul returned to Jerusalem, where he was persecuted by Jewish authorities for trying to persuade people to break Jewish Law. Nearly killed by an angry mob because he had allegedly profaned the Temple, Paul was saved when Roman troops arrived. As a Roman citizen, Paul appealed to the Roman officials, who imprisoned him for two years. In 60 CE, Paul won the right to put his case before the emperor, although the thought of appealing to the ferociously anti-Christian madman Nero seems practically insane. He sailed for Rome, but his ship was caught in a storm and Paul miraculously survived. Bitten by a snake when he arrived on the island of Malta, Paul was again miraculously saved from harm, and after being shipwrecked on the island of Malta, he made it to Italy. Acts ends with Paul under a mild form of house arrest in the imperial capital, preaching the gospel and writing letters to the churches he has established. Acts says nothing further about Paul’s appeal or ultimate fate, or that of Peter. Both eventually disappear from the biblical account without specific word of what happens to them. How Peter even got to Rome is a mystery. According to well-established tradition, especially in Peter’s case, both apostles were martyred at Rome during Emperor Nero’s persecution of Christians after the Great Fire in Rome in 64 CE.
Hated by Roman authorities for their unwillingness to recognize the divinity of the emperor, Christians soon proved to be an appealing target for Nero’s depraved appetite for providing spectacles for the citizens of Rome. In The First Century, William Klingaman describes the atmosphere in which Paul and his fellow Christians found themselves: “Christians were arrested and tortured until they revealed the names of their brethren; those in turn were crucified, or dressed like wild animals and torn apart by dogs in the arena. But the depths of Nero’s cruelty and sadism were revealed only when he impaled scores of Christ’s followers on stakes and then burned them alive, as human torches to illuminate the city at night.” (p. 301)
Tradition has it that Paul was martyred in 67 CE. Later Christian tales told a story of Peter being executed, requesting to be crucified upside down, since he was unworthy to suffer the precise fate of Jesus.
As the chief proponent of what became the established orthodoxy of the Christian church, first in Roman Catholicism, and after the Protestant Reformation in all of the Protestant churches, Paul has taken a lot of the blame for the traditional sexism of the church. Twice in his letters Paul tells women to keep silent in church. In 1 Corinthians he writes, “Women are to remain quiet in the assemblies.” Yet he writes in the same letter, “Man is nothing without woman, and though woman came from man, so does every man come from a woman, and everything comes from God.” On a less severe