Pablo de Tarso | Santiago Guijarro

It has been my turn to talk to you about a figure who was and has continued to be decisive in the history of Christianity. Paul of Tarsus is a character full of paradoxes, a controversial character who has had, as I say, various readings and various interpretations throughout the history of the Christian churches mainly but also in diverse cultural spheres to cite only two examples of what the figure of Paul has meant since perhaps the most decisive moment in what is the trajectory of the reception of the recovery of this figure is already found in the second century where there is an enormous debate about the tradition about the legacy of Paul, the figure of Paul was decisive here for the configuration of the great church of what has later been called the great church and it was in a context of discussion in a context of controversial and of different opinions or for going to another time in the 16th century on the occasion of the Protestant Reformation because the figure of Paul was decisive figure of Paul is decisive because of how much we had in the roots of the Protestant Reformation there is a new reading of the figure of

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has come to us through multiple memories memories that have preserved different aspects of his personality accessing the historical paulo is a practically impossible task as it is for almost any character in history what is transmitted to us about the past is always a reading an interpretation and the same stories that we have about the characters of the past because those are interpretations rereadings of the meaning of this character in the case of Pablo, as I say, we find ourselves from the beginning from the first moments with multiple readings of the figure of Paul, the oldest Christian sources mention him incessantly and the first thing to do to approach the figure of the historical Paul is evidently to make a discernment and a selection of those sources, to value them in what they have that is more or less historical and so on.

If we leave aside for example the later second century sources for example the acts of Paul and Key or the oldest strata of those of the pseudo Clement writings and those that are also from the second century and that offer a very different vision of Paul These are these later texts, but if we leave them aside at the beginning, they are found in the very first testimonies about Paul. We find, let's say, a Paul interpreted with a Paul who arrives loaded with an interpretation. We basically have two sources. Approaching the historical figure of Pablo are two very different sources that I am going to try to characterize briefly so that when you mention them yourselves can judge the value of each of them, the source or the version of the text that has perhaps most influenced the image received in the image. that we have received in the Western tradition about Paul I believe is that of the book of the acts of the apostles the book of the acts of the apostles is a story whose protagonist largely more than half of the book the protagonist is a sword, but the book of the acts of the apostles is written quite some time after Paul died, perhaps at the end of the first century, because it has a look at Paul that is, let's say distanced, that is, distanced in time, but very interested in terms of the character. book of the acts of the apostles written by the same person who wrote the third gospel the gospel of luke that is why we refer to him as luke the book of the acts of the apostles is addressed to some christian groups for whom paul is a hero He is the hero he is the founder and the vision that Paul provides this this text is a vision a somewhat idealized vision but attention the book of the acts of the apostles in the author of the book of the acts of the apostles has good information knows many things, some are kept quiet, others are softened, but I believe that it is a source that should not be disregarded, it must be taken into account because at the least expected moment it can give us very interesting information about the suit, which we will see especially in the time of which the other source that is the main one does not say anything good a source the book of the acts of the apostles a distanced look 50-60 years after the death of paul and therefore and directed to a context where it is exalted the father figure but with good information the other source the other source are the same stick letters letters that he wrote as we are going to see in a very brief period of his life and that reflect a part of what his life was like being there we find ourselves directly with the voice of paul paul who speaks in the first person this is a truly exceptional thing surely the only voice of christian origins that reaches us abundantly and directly is the voice of paul that one would say this is the source here where We have to look for information about the historical Paul but also this source, these letters that have undergone a fairly long editing process because they are a source that must be looked at with a certain critical attitude in the first place because the speaker is very involved in the problems.

It is a very participatory vision that these letters give, the problems are almost unprocessed, sometimes with opinions or points of view that are a little partisan, that is, they reflect Paul's point of view when Paul talks about the confrontation he has with other missionaries. Your point of view is very particular, a very involved vision is very involved and that of course we do not always have to value it and that after more information about a part of the life of peace with these two sources we have to turn to these two sources to recover the historical figure of Paul the historical Paul I am going to handle both although I already told you from the outset that the fundamental starting point will logically be Paul's letters because in these letters he not only speaks indirectly about what he is experiencing but also Sometimes a series of facts about his own life are mentioned and so that this has greater vividness and so that it can be seen that we can actually hear Pablo's voice, I have decided to introduce an innovation that some friends have told me that perhaps It would break the speech of the exhibition a little.

I have decided, well, I am going to play a few audios of another voice that is Pablo's voice and we are going to listen to the texts that I will quote from the letters. We are going to listen to them. I am not going to. I am not going to listen to them. I read therefore we have these two accounts so my conference is going to focus on the historical figure not on the memory about which sometimes a more common image has been configured. You have, for example, a magnificent pictorial representation of a French painter. of the 18th century that represents the conversion of peace, an episode that Paul never talks about in his letters as it is narrated because neither does the book of events tell it that way.

Paul, falling from his horse, says that he had a flash, an encounter, the interpretation that This is surely the scene of Paul's life most represented in art, that of his conversion. Later on, when we talk about it, we may have to start using another word to describe this experience that Paul had. So what can we know with certainty about the historical Paul because we can know many things and not only can we know many things but what is even more important we can order them chronologically. This is very important to build a biography because we can get an idea of ​​how the man has progressed. character and my interest this afternoon because in a certain way it is also to show try to show how the figure of Pablo evolved, how the figure of Pablo could have evolved from the experiences that he had, we can follow his trajectory, something that is much more difficult for the figure of Jesus of Jesus we have a lot of historically reliable and plausible reliable information but it is much more difficult to order them chronologically and this is very important when it comes to recovering the character.

I am going to articulate in my presentation based on three experiences that in my view were determinants in Pablo's life trajectory three moments that represent a before and after that changed his life and I say from the outset that those changes to which I am going to allude that were very important occur in the context of a certain continuity the people we do not make radical leaps so there is an evolution in the life of Paul Paul was an observant Jew a Jew before his conversion before his encounter with Jesus and he continued to be one afterwards he never stopped being what he had been before he was accumulating experiences He was progressing in his own understanding because, as happens to each of us, we are building on the new experiences that we are having.

Well, these three experiences that seem to me to be decisive in the life of Paul are the first, the one that we have represented. There, but instead of defining it in terms of conversion, which is the most common, I am going to talk about his vocation. Conversion itself is the passage from one religion to another, and perhaps in the most common imagination the idea we have is that Paul was a Jew. and at this moment he became a Christian, well, scientifically, seriously, historically, it cannot be said. Paul had a vocation experience that profoundly transformed him. He transformed deeply, but we cannot properly speak of conversion.

Paul was a Jew. He continued to be a Jew. He continued to think as a Jew. He always wanted to be. a Jew faithful to God's design, which he understood was God's design, so the first is this, this profound change that occurs in his life, you are going to hear what he himself says, it is a very important change, there is a before and a Afterwards, what he previously considered profit now comes to say I consider garbage, I am not interested in the change that occurs there in his life, there is a second moment of change in his life, much less certainly not represented in art and much less valued but that Perhaps it is one of the things that I would like to highlight this afternoon as a novelty in the understanding of what is based perhaps on this first change.

A second change in his life occurs at the moment in which he has a confrontation with the leaders. of the church of Jerusalem the discussion a rupture that is correct a rupture that occurs and that he himself tells about in the letter to the Galatians about his letters we are going to also listen to this episode when he faces not only the leaders of the church of Jerusalem but also even with Pedro and that is when a new stage begins in his life. He has to leave the environment in which he had been until then. He has to leave Antioquia and a new stage begins.

The stage in which he will act as an independent missionary and perhaps it is the best known to all of us because it is the stage he talks about in his letters and finally I believe that there is another important moment in his life that marks a before and after, which is the moment in which he, having done everything This journey that lasted six or seven years as an independent missionary, he realizes, takes stock and decides to go to Jerusalem carrying a collection that he had prepared for a long time that has a very important meaning for him and there is another turn in his life. life because there your life is also going to change that last stage that begins there is precisely the one that we know the least we know the least or in other words that is the stage about which the sources give us perhaps less reliable information so these three experiences In the framework of a continuity of life of a continuity of life, they point out that I believe four stages in Paul's life, so I am talking about each of these stages and the changes that are taking place.

I have called the first stage the stage. of Paul the Pharisee because he says so, he defines himself as a Hebrew Jew, son of Hebrews, of the ancient Benjamin Pharisee regarding the law and this seems to me to have been very determining for him before his vocation before his experience. vocational well I will talk about the stage because the vocational experience to the extent that we can approach it because he also talks about it several times the second stage is that of the pub what Paul would call a disciple of Jesus I am not going to call him a Christian because perhaps that is a word that we must reserve for later, when we would say, this group of believers in Jesus, Jews and non-Jews, let's say in the second century, formed a new religion, Christianity, that word, the disciple, the Pharisee, a disciple of Jesus who is becoming a disciple of Jesus.

A fairly long stage lasts approximately 16 years, which is quite a long time in the life of a person in ancient times and we do not know many things directly from Paul, but some things later come this experience of rupture or separation or division of opinions with the leaders of the church of Jerusalem that I am also going to try to characterize and begins another stage that is relatively brief 67 years which is Paul's stage as an independent missionary is on the cover that we know best because it is the stage in which he wrote The letters that have reached us were all written at this time and therefore it is necessary to have quite detailed information and I am going to focus on two or three aspects: the decision to go to Jerusalem again and take up the collection, which was very important in his life that says a lot about his own personal trajectory and finally what we could call the end of dad's life of which we would say historically because we have less less precise information so I start with the first stage the first phase and Here we are going to move on from the images of the figurative images of art that are within the field ofThe legend of the comment on images that have to do with a more concrete reality that appears, the Wailing Wall, which is a building that existed in Paul's time and that Paul surely saw, seems to be true with modern-day Jews, this first stage of What we could call Paul's Pharisee is perhaps the longest but also from the period for which we have the least information.

What he says in his letters because he insists. He insists a lot on some aspects. He insists on his Hebrew origin and insists on his condition as a Pharisee. He insists. Also in the fact that he had been a persecutor of the church, a persecutor of the church, as a characteristic of him, the first trait and the first element to grasp Paul's personality, it seems to me to be the subcondition of being a Jew of the diaspora. Judaism since the century since the time of Alexander the Great had expanded or had spread throughout the empire and living in the cities of the diaspora, what to go to the diaspora, that is, outside the land of Israel, was A determining condition in the game there were more Jews outside of Palestine outside of the land of Israel who lived much more outside and had been incorporated into the CNDH culture or in the various places where Pablo lived, according to the information that remains here.

In the book of acts in a city called Tarsus, an important city in Cilicia, a city where there were schools of rhetoric, the Jews of the Diaspora were completely immersed in the culture. They spoke Greek. Paul, Paul's letters, being a Jew, are not written. Neither in Hebrew nor in Aramaic are they written in Greek in its vehicular language, the vehicular language of the empire in the day in which these two elements configure in a very important way the character of Paul, who is a Jew born into a Hebrew family, therefore with all the traditions, knowledgeable of the traditions of the holy people but at the same time in the context of the diaspora we are going to hear how he himself tells it in a controversial context in the letter to the Philippians saying if others have something to boast about, I was also circumcised 8 days after I was born I am of the lineage of Israel of the tribe of Benjamin Hebrew on all four sides Pharisee in the way of understanding the law ardent persecutor of the church blameless in regard to the fulfillment of the law today I was circumcised the 8 days of being born a Jew that this has shaped him and make a pro-shop or graphic description a description of his very important identity Jew of the diaspora Pharisee a very important characterization here we have to make an effort to change what constitutes The most common mentality about the Pharisees, the idea that in the Christian tradition we have of Pharisaism is very conditioned by the image of them that appears in the gospels and especially in the gospel of Matthew and the gospel of John and these gospels were written to end of the century of the first century when a confrontation was taking place between Judeo-Christianity and Jewish Pharisaism, therefore an image in a certain way with shades with negative charged tones, the Pharisees will be excellent people, observant people concerned about a serious religious experience, people who studied the law who studied the law seeking in it the will of God people who in many aspects were very open much of the attitude that Paul has with respect to non-Jews the reception of Gentiles I believe has a deeply Pharisee root in the sense that in the synagogue, especially in the synagogues of the diaspora, pagans were admitted in many ways, it was not an extraordinary thing, therefore Paul is a person, let's say, passionately observant, passionate who seeks the will of God in the study of the law. and this for him is a positive thing and we have to learn to see the positive aspect of what it means to be false and finally a persecutor of the church persecutor of the church that in several places he mentions it is very difficult to know but what this persecution consisted of because we have the clearest, most detailed news through the book of the acts of the apostles, but it is very likely that Paul, surely linked to a local synagogue, perhaps to the synagogue of Damascus, understood that the participation of these Jewish and pagan believers When Jesus was leaving, they also met in the synagogue with the other Jews.

It was something that could be very damaging. He understood that there was something new that could be truly harmful, and this attitude of his, this concern of his, made him relate to them. that he knew them and it is in this climate of knowledge that the persecutor ends up being transformed. It is in this climate where Paul, let's say, lives the decisive determining moment of his life, which is represented in art as a conversion, that is, this moment of vocation. This discovery that indeed God's plan, God's will, had manifested itself through Jesus, I believe that this is a process.

It was not that one day Paul suddenly had a flash of light and in a totally artificial way, it is not in this relationship in this relationship with the disciples of Jesus whom he persecutes and with whom he necessarily has to relate there are other cases in history where he begins to understand the reasons of the persecuted and begins to discover the truth that they carry that they carry forward these persecuted people and of course then this creates the climate for what he describes because as a transforming experience a deeply transforming experience the book of events tells us it tells it three times it is an event to which he gives great importance but Paul himself He tells it in the letter to the Galatians in a text in which with the passage of time he himself has reflected on that experience and the formula with terms that are found in the stories of the vocation of the prophets, that is, it is already an experience formulated, we are going to listen to how he himself tells it in the letter to the Galatians, I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel announced by me is not an invention of men because I did not receive it nor did I learn it from any man.

Jesus Christ has revealed it to me. You have I have undoubtedly heard of an ancient behavior in Judaism with which I furiously persecuted the church of God, trying to destroy it, but when God, who chose me from my mother's womb and called me out of pure benevolence, was pleased to reveal it to his son and to make his message among the pagans immediately without consulting any man and without going up to Jerusalem to see who were apostles before me, I went to Arabia and then again to Damascus, this experience that Paul relates here in the terms proper to the vocation of the prophets here resonates because the vocation of Jeremiah the vocation of the servant of Yahweh that is, he has thought reflected on his experience what this experience consisted of he speaks in other places in his letters and expresses it with terms that refer because they are incomplete to talk about what a religious experience is.

He expressed himself to me. Maybe I haven't seen the Lord. It was an experience of a personal encounter of certainty of security that radically changed his life. He goes so far as to say in the letter to the Galatians I am no longer I who live is Christ who lives in me, there has been a fusion of the person of with this encounter for him the relationship with that Jesus who had died and crucified is something alive so this is this is the the driving force this will be the driving force that is added to what Paul was already Paul does not stop being the the the Hebrew who was from the tribe of Benjamin circumcised eight days after being born a Pharisee does not stop being that is that and what has been given in him is a form different from living that that that vocation that call that condition in a later letter the letter to the Philippians explains in more detail this change that has occurred in his life and there he talks about what he previously considered a gain he now comes to consider garbage A transformative experience that he had to meditate on says in that text that we have heard that for three years he was in Arabia after Arabia there is the desert region to the east of Palestine in an experience of seeking clarification so that the transformation that occurs in Paul does not It is a specific thing, it will be a progressive experience that will acquire more and more certainty and greater holy settlement in your life.

After three years he says, after three years he says, I went up to Jerusalem, a stage begins here, a stage that has as its center the community of Antioch there is one of the streets that lead to Antioch there is one of the mosaics that have been found in Antioch Antioch then we will see it on the map it was one of the great metropolises of the Roman Empire one of the great cities where they immediately began to to set up a Christian community, well, this second stage of Paul's life, Paul's disciple, Paul who is becoming a disciple, Paul who becomes a disciple of Jesus, is a long stage about which we have relatively little information, it goes from approximately the year 33 to the year 49 15-16 years between the first three years in which he tells about that search experience in the desert perhaps and after three years he says he went up to Jerusalem.

When he remembers this stage I mentioned above all the two trips he made to Jerusalem, one at the beginning In the end, on the first trip, his objective was to meet with Pedro. There are scholars who discuss what exactly what Pablo Gesantes says means, what fun to contrast with Pedro, what Pedro told me, to tell Pedro, in any case, his objective was to talk to Pedro. the one who had known Jesus more closely and says I was there for fifteen days with him Paul is becoming a disciple he is in the process of becoming a disciple and he is going to ask someone who knows the tradition who can inform him first-hand about Jesus This first trip, the second trip takes place 14 years later and it is a trip that has a very different objective.

There he is no longer going to ask Peter about Jesus but rather he is going to ask if what he is doing and what they are doing in Antioch and specifically its way of welcoming and relating to those who were not Jews, preaching the gospel, denouncing the good news to those who were not Jews, if that was appropriate, this second visit to Jerusalem, which takes place throughout the year 47 48, also has It is also narrated in the in the book of the acts of the apostles but with with another with other accents what Paul what Paul says is that he went there to see if what he was doing is going well and he says and I went psuv and moved by a revelation and he greatly emphasizes two or three things that happened there first that the duckling who was with him and was Jewish they did not make him circumcise circumcision you already know that it is the sign of belonging to the Jewish people now that they did not do it he made him a Jew but rather accepted him as a pagan.

He also says that there were some false brothers who spied on the freedom that we have in Christ and who wanted to make these pagans circumcise but these were not, we would say the representatives of the church of Jerusalem because he says the who were considered as columns Peter James John they imposed nothing on me we shook hands as a sign of agreement they would go to the circumcision of the Jews and we to the nations and to the nations there is a distribution let's say of the missionary fields this second visit of Paul is The end of this stage is very important, but what has happened in this stage that has happened in these fourteen years of Paul's life.

Here the book of facts gives us more information or rather more detailed information. He practically says nothing directly. but indirectly in his letters he suggests that it was a very intense period for him. In his letters, for example, he frequently quotes hymns that he has learned, traditions that he has received in the community, probably from Antioch, the tradition of the Lord's Supper, the tradition of the apparitions. In other words, it was a time of learning for him, it was a time for him to come into contact with other believers in Jesus who had more information, it was a time of sharing, and here, from a historical point of view, there is an enigma and that is to what extent in this Paul's time he already participated in a missionary activity that will be the center of his task in the next stage.

The book of the acts of the apostles tells of a long missionary journey that Barnabas made and which is very stylized from the point of view. literary and theological, therefore the historian has a certain suspicion that what is being told may be more of a proposal or an explanation, a theological construction, or yet the itinerary described is quite precise and the fact that Paul later goes up to Jerusalem to talk about a topic that has to do with the mission, if we can admit the pagans and what we are doing is good, it implies that Luke is indeed in the book of acts, although the way he tells it is very elaborate, but it has a knowledge that Paul actually already participated has already participated in a missionary activity at this time, that is, Paul is a disciple and perhaps also already dedicated to the cause of spreading the good news but still as a missionary dependent on the church of jerusalem being part of a team that is sent by the church forgiveness of antioch a team that is sent by the church antioch well at this point at this point the second happens the second experience that I told you about at the beginning and that I believe that that It represents a very important change in his life in Antioch where, more or less peacefully, he not only announced the gospel to the pagans but also mixed communities of Jews and pagans began to be formed and this is a new thing because what they had remembered jerusalem wasthat some would go to the Jews and obtain the pagans, they understood that they were two different missions, a very different thing was to mix the one and the other, especially in table communion, this for a Jew is very important, very important for many reasons, for the meals, for the people etcetera then however in the community of Antioch had already begun to practice this mixed form of life of table communion of Jews and pagans and at the beginning Peter was there it seems that well then he also participated but as Paul himself tells In a text that we are going to listen to now, because when the envoys from Jerusalem arrived, Paul changed his attitude and here a certain fracture occurs between Paul on the one hand and the leaders of the Church of Jerusalem Peter and Barnabas on the other.

We are going to listen to how he tells it. the same paul but when peter arrived in antioch i had to confront him openly because of his inappropriate behavior. in fact before some of those from james came he had no qualms about eating with those of pagan origin but when they came he began to withdraw and separate himself For fear of the supporters of circumcision, the other Jews invited him in this attitude and even Barnabas himself allowed himself to be carried away by it. This situation produced a certain rupture. Paul understood that table communion between Jews and pagans in these mixed communities was compromised. the truth of the gospel, which is a word, an expression that he uses very frequently, as he was a person of great convictions, very passionate, so he decides, he realizes that for him, his place is already ours in Antioch and that is when a stage in his life begins. which is the one that we know best but it is a different stage.

I would like to emphasize that traditionally people talk about the three voyages of Paul and this has been a construction that over time has been made. The first one that began to be made was the book. of the facts The book of facts places this second stage of the Pauline mission in continuity with the first, practically saying that it begins almost as a visit to the communities that Paul and Barnabas had evangelized, however, taking into account this information, Paul remains The rupture that has occurred because they do not understand things is not that a total rupture is coming but there was a division of opinions that made Pablo and some of his collaborators begin a new path and here begins a new a new stage that is Paul's stage as an independent missionary that position there as an image one of the most famous ports of the Mediterranean in Roman times, which is the port of Caesarea Caesarean section in Palestine begins a new stage as an independent missionary that is, bah after this separation with respect to the church of jerusalem or this difference of opinions he feels that he has to continue with the mission that he believes he has received so that to paul the pharisee to the jewish people to paul who has had an experience of encounter with the risen jesus to paul who has made a disciple now begins a new stage this is the stage that we know best but I say I would like to insist that it is a new stage a new stage the idea that Paul's various missionary journeys are related and are continuity of one another is an idea that has been established over time and especially in the 18th century when the missions, especially the British missions, had London as their starting point and return point to London and thus they read the book of the events of the apostles as if Paul's missions all started from Antioch and returned to Antioch, if one carefully reads the book of the acts of the apostles, one realizes that behind Luke's intention of wanting to relate the two missions, they never very well distinguish the mission of chapters 13 and 14 paul and barnabas employees of the community of antioch and the mission that paul undertakes after the jerusalem assembly that represents a new beginning in the jerusalem assembly this division of fields had been agreed upon but The new problem that arises, which is the problem of the Mesa community, means that Paul began a new path and that new path is there on this map.

That new path begins here in Antioquia. It begins in Antioquia and probably heads very quickly. To the borders we would say of the influence of Judaism. Notice that each time as we move away from this Palestinian area, the land of Israel, as we move away from here, of course, the influence of Judaism is less and less. Paul and his first collaborators make this They walk very quickly, almost in the same year, they arrive at Philippi, which is the first city they evangelize in this stage or the first city in which they settle, and immediately to this one, Thessaloniki is here, Thessaloniki, here you have it, it is here, well, this path, this path that Still here, he was the one who traveled along a famous Roman road, which was the Via Ignacia, the Via Gracia, so it is very likely that Paul's idea is that road, like all the roads in ancient times, he reached Rome, it is very likely that the one that Paul's first idea of ​​leaving and Rome has all the charm because the path he was following, well what happened, would have taken him to Rome.

What happened was that when he arrived at these cities that were already cities that were much more Ellenite, much less Jewish at the time. arrive, a phenomenon occurs which is the creation of small groups of disciples that begin to be quite stable and on the other hand the difficulty that they encounter from one city to another due to the persecution due to the opposition that they then encounter in That moment is most likely when they decide to leave the main road and that is when they head first to Athens and then to Corinth, which is where they arrive practically that same year, six months after arriving in Thessaloniki, so they do this whole journey, which is quite a few kilometers.

Paul and Tito and Timothy and Silva do it, they do not do it in a very short space of time. Well, in these years, Paul's activity is going to develop in this environment, this is the Aegean Sea, and that is why this Pauline mission or this stage of the Pauline mission is known as the vision of Gea. Here there are not two journeys, the second and the third, as you probably found in your Bible, but rather there is a single mission that is different from the first one and in that it is different, it can be different in people. to whom it is addressed in the contexts in which it occurs is also different in the group of people that Pablo Barreal going around him in the human environment is also different in the missionary strategy that is adopted, that is, in this mission Pablo he encounters a new world with a new world a world that he knew but it is not the same tarsus is around here that is still under the influence of the land of Israel the Jews of tarsus are closer to Jerusalem it is not the same tarsus that This entire area of ​​​​the axis where Judaism is clearly a minority, there are Jews, but the communities, the groups, the Jewish neighborhoods are a minority, so this necessarily produces a reflection in Pablo.

There is a different context that makes him even have to formulate the announcement, the message of a In a different way, in the first of these letters, the oldest, the first letter to the Thessalonians, says that he praises them because they have converted from idols to the living and true God. That is never said to a Jew. A Jew should not convert. God lives green and true and believes in him. Paul's recipients here are mostly Jews and Paul here has to specify to adopt a different language and strategy. Therefore, the context is different, the environment and the environment is also different.

Omar in In these years, from the year 49 to the year 56, around the figure of Paul, a network of mixed communities was created where what was most difficult to live in Antioch is lived, where Jews and pagans share the same table, celebrating the same Eucharist they live in communities in mixed communities and these communities are connected to each other through a fairly large group of people. In Paulo's letters, more than 50 names of people who collaborate are mentioned and they are very diverse, for example one of The things that stand out in Paul's letters are that many of these people were women, the idea that there is about Paul is that Paul was a misogynist and yet if you don't go to his letters and read the texts that in many of the People who collaborate in the mission are women who also have very important roles within the church.

In this stage, there is an example, a very interesting case, which is the case of a marriage and very significant, a marriage formed by a Jew. from the point that he had gone to Rome and lived in Rome and a woman probably originally from Rome who had been expelled from Rome by Claudius perhaps because of the discussions that the arrival of Jews who believed in Jesus to the synagogues of Rome had caused some dissensions he says he says suetonius that because of a certain christ motivated by a certain one believes this is good these jews who believe in jesus who have had to leave rome' expelled by the emperor paul meets them when he arrives in corinth with since paul is not he was not the first who came to Corinth was not the first evangelizer of Corinth, they were pris kayak and the was this couple and practically all these years he lived with them with this couple first in Corinth where with great of the same trade because they work next to their home he probably became the meeting center of the group of the group of the disciples of Jesus and later when Paul moved to Ephesus, which was another of his centers of operations where he spent three years, when he moved to Ephesus they also went there and when he wrote from Ephesus to the community From Corinth he sends greetings from Prisca and here they are and from the church that meets in his house and later we will see when Paul makes plans to go to Rome they are ahead because Claudius the emperor has just died and they can now return His decree was no longer valid.

They can return to Rome. Well, this group of Jewish believers in Jesus who had to leave Rome and played a very important role in the Pauline mission, these years of the Ejea mission, which, as I say, I insist, are very brief. The years that Paul's letters tell us about are six of 8 years at most, from the year 49, perhaps to the year 55, in which he writes the last of his letters, the letter to the Romans, so in This time there is a new context, new recipients, there is also a new, a new way of organizing and there is also, this is very important, a new missionary strategy.

Here I have given you an image of the ruins of Corinth, which is one of the communities that most headaches brought Paul described several election letters to suffer a lot and in this contrast it was perhaps where he also matured his missionary style after a first announcement that normally took place not as we sometimes imagine in the public square where there has been a speech, it is very likely that Pablo never spoke in public, but rather the encounter, this encounter took place in the environments of daily life, for example in Salonica, he himself says it in the workshop where Pablo worked with others with his colleagues in the same trade, because the people came spoke the workshop as admission in the school of tyrant in Ephesus that he mentions also that is to say in places of daily life in the house in the synagogue in the usual places and probably on very few occasions Paul had the opportunity of addressing a large audience we will say the transmission of the good news by these groups of missionary activity of palo es na it is a contact activity it is an activity from you to you personally and the result of that activity is the creation of support groups in which life is shared where it is going to be said life goes ahead the way of life in the first Christian communities was ahead of the message and in Paul's experience also this sending of mission companions to see how they are when they go to current one day to timothy so that they go to Thessaloniki to see how that community continues this constant coming and going the letters that it sends them is a network of supportive relationships where in which the message that is preached is made credible this life that these support groups form for these Christian communities are the basis on which the message that Paul and his collaborators preach is understood, he says, we announce the gospel to each of you personally while we worked so that in this time Paul, say, learns. from the experience to being a missionary one more experience that is added to the previous ones the Pharisee Paul the Hebrew Paul born in the diaspora with a Hellenistic education but I have a Jewish tradition that has the experience of the encounter with the resurrected one that changes him profoundly that he learns to be a disciple in those communities of Damascus of Antioch of Jerusalem asking speaking discussing that he begins to participate more actively in the life of these groups that he feels that he cannot live in accordance with this narrowness that the leaders of the Church of Jerusalem propose and that He begins this mission, he learns here to be a missionary, but there comes a time in this stage when he takes stock and this is the other experience, the third and last of the strong experiences, I believe, of his life, Pablo takes stock of what his career has been like. and looking back he compiles and says well I have reached a point in which I already know what I did not know when I left Antioch he understands what the meaning of his mission has been and he left guided by the conviction that the gospel that he had been revealed to him, not by man, as the letter to the Galatians says, prompted him to beginthat path but now he has probably understood, reading the oracles of the prophet Isaiah, a text that he knew by heart and it spoke of how the Gentiles would come to the temple of the Lord and how the conversion of the Gentiles would be the final moment, the eschatological moment. moment of consummation throughout the intense missionary activity because he has been understanding what his mission was.

I believe that when Paul left Antioch he was not clear about the project, the project is being done along the way or as the poet would say, he was making his way Walking little by little at this moment, however, when I reached a moment of pause, I was in Corinth and as you have seen, it is relatively close to Rome, a week away by navigation, so with communication, then there you already plan what is going to be the next stage of your life here there is a plan and that plan has above all two moments or two actions the first is you have to go to the confines of the known world therefore to the other side of the empire and for that the support of the community of rome writes the letter to the romans it is a letter of introduction it is a letter in which he asks for the support of the community to go to the other side and he has to go to jerusalem to restore communion with the mother church a communion that he never It has completely broken but it feels from the beginning that it is broken.

Let's listen to how he understands or how he takes stock of this text that we are going to hear is from the end of the letter to the Romans in chapter 15, which is where he takes stock of this stage I could be proud in Christ Jesus of the task carried out in the service of God but I would only dare to speak of what Christ has accomplished using me so that with word with action through signs and wonders and with the force of holy spirit the pagans welcomed the faith so from Jerusalem and in a circle to the lyrical I have made the gospel of Christ known that I have tried not to proclaim the gospel where Christ was already known so as not to build on another's foundation you already have an idea of what has been his career and now he has two things left: go to Jerusalem to restore it with communion with that church and then go to Rome, what happened in Jerusalem, we do not know very well, the book of the acts of the apostles dedicates almost a quarter of it to it. of the book to talk about this stage but the inconsistencies with what Paul himself says about that trip are such that one has the impression that here in Luke he has kept important things quiet.

Paul was very concerned about this collection in such a way that for two or three years, in the letters that the different communities write, he talks to them about this collection, we are going to make a collection for Jerusalem, it is the only thing they had asked him to remember the poor, but he understands that this collection has a deeper meaning, it is not just an action. charitable is an action of communion with that church it is an offering that is presented to the temple delegates came from Macedonia and from here to go with him among other things because in ancient times when traveling when they carried a considerable amount of money they had to carry a certain protection the book of the acts of the apostles does not say anything about that it speaks of paul's passion curiously in all the adventures that happen to paul in jerusalem when he has to appear before the procurator etc. a support is never mentioned a word of the The church of Jerusalem is absent, it gives the impression that the collection he took was not well received and in that sense Paul's life in a certain way historically ends from what we can guess and here we are already entering the field of what we rather guess What we know ends in a certain failure, the book of the acts of the apostles says that he went to Rome to celebrate and that he quietly spent two years there denouncing the gospel.

It is an ending that seems artificial and then tradition has been talking about what it refers to. At this end of Paul's life, he has been talking about his martyrdom, but in some traditions he talks about his trip to Spain. It is said that he traveled to Spain at the end of the first century. He is already linked to the figure of Peter in the memory of the church. of Rome, all of this is information that is difficult to contrast. Here we are already leaving the field of historical verification and we are entering into a memory of another type that is well based on the legend.

There is no doubt that this legend is formulated in a context in which the fact that Paul was a very important character very valued very valued ends Paul's life but we cannot know exactly how these memories these memories have a historical root because in the second century no one could say that Paul had been martyred if he had not been martyred fifty years people remembered these memories but we cannot know precisely what the end of Paul's life was like. We do know that in the second century of the Christian movement Paul's legacy emerges with an unusual force. and that is due, I believe, to two things.

Firstly, it is due to the fact that the communities that he had founded were communities with enormous vitality that managed to embody a way of life, a lifestyle, a completely novel and very impressive social and religious proposal that We would say it ends up forming the nucleus of what will later be the great church, some very lively communities that have preserved Paul's legacy. There is also literature about these communities directed at these communities linked to these communities and the second reason is that Paul wrote and the letters that he wrote had been preserved and in this first century at the end of the first century they are transformed into a book and a process very similar to that of Jesus Jesus is reflected in the books in the gospels the book is transformed Paul the book is also transformed the legacy of Paul is accessible directly through his letters, those letters and those letters became part of the canon of the New Testament, in fact, some think that they are the first nucleus of this canon and that is what made the figure of Paul, as I say In the second century he was a very controversial figure because from those who like Marcion made a canon only with Paul's letters to other Judeo-Christian Christian groups who called Paul the enemy so that in this dispute of the second century he emerges by the force of Due to the impulse of the seed that had been sown in the communities and from what can be read in his letters, the figure of Paul emerges with enormous strength in such a way that it is in the second century where Paul ends up reaching the place he has had. later in the history of Christianity historically in the first century in the second second third of the first century which is the one we know best we can say that the figure of Paul historically is a figure in a certain way Martin but he is such the force is such the impetus is Such is the depth of his thought, of his proposal that is transformed or materialized in those communities that effectively in the second century it emerges with this force.

To speak of Paul's reception of Paul's letters and of Paul's legacy would be the subject of another conference. today ends here thanking you for your attention and patience, thank you very much