THE STRUGGLE CHAPTER SIXTEEN - Page 1

SAUL'S STUDENT YEARS under Gamaliel passed quickly. For the first time in his life he knew that he had met the leading minds of his generation. It seemed that he had been born for this opportunity. As he tested himself against his teachers, the days melted into months and years. He pursued excellence and knowledge in a release of energy that seemed to know no bounds.

To Esrom, Miriam and Hulda, Saul became a blur of purpose and motion as he went about his routines tirelessly. He shared a room with Dan in Hulda's house, and the two attended rabbinical school together. But the longer they lived under the same roof, the more their differences took them in separate directions. Perhaps it was inevitable. Saul's energy and intensity was a source of constant irritation to Dan's quiet, contemplative nature.

For Saul, each day began early. He would rise well before dawn and open his window. Standing at a lectern, he would read a section of the law or prophets by candle light. Then he would place the Scripture down and turn to a night stand, pouring a steady stream of water over his hands from a sanctified pitcher. Only an unbroken stream of water could be considered ceremonially clean to a Pharisee of his sect. He performed this ritual, believing that his hands had become unclean through the handling of the scrolls.

After washing, he would recite that portion of the oral tradition elucidating the text he had just read. These interpretations, called "the Halakah of Moses," had been handed down by holy men. The spoken words of the Halakah were less defiled, he was taught, more holy than the written law itself. In this, the Hillel school differed from the Shammai Pharisees--also from the Sadducees. These other Jews studied the written text, rejecting the oral traditions.

Saul came to look down on such men. In his view, they were weaker in the faith, having an idolatrous attachment to written words, instead of the spoken word. After all, the spoken word had created the worlds. But these men required the dull and silent study of letters, without which they could not believe--or so he judged them. Someone must become an example to them of the higher faith, he thought, and to that end he made it his personal goal to keep the Halakah perfectly. Only a man who practiced the oral tradition flawlessly, he said, could convince such weak minded Jews of their narrow errors.

Every oral injunction about tithing, fasting, praying and keeping the Sabbath became his personal obsession. Rituals of cleanliness and separatism were especially dear to him. In order to make himself a vessel sanctified to the use of God, he did his ritual washing of hands, feet, cups and dishes, with exaggerated motions, so that others could see. In this, he witnessed to those who saw him in the defiled City of David. In like manner, he always spoke his morning recitations and prayers from an open window to be heard by passers by, and he announced his fasting days with sackcloth and ashes at the gate of the Temple. He did not wish anyone in Jerusalem to misunderstand his determination to please God perfectly, even though he was still just a student.

After taking breakfast, in which he ceremonially set aside a tithe of all that he ate, including the herbs and spices used to garnish his plate, he took a brisk walk--always along the same route--to rabbinical school. Much of his life had become ritual now. To him the rituals were alive with meaning--and those, like walking to school, which he performed by rote, only freed his mind to race along invisible paths in search of God's greater glory.

Along the ritual walk to school he would hardly notice the surrounding activities on the street, so eager was his mind for the intellectual contest ahead of him. He could hardly wait to see who Gamaliel had brought each day to lecture and comment on the body of Scripture. After each guest rabbi had delivered his wisdom, Gamaliel would encourage his students to examine his words. "You have heard," Rabban would say, "now question, doubt, contradict! Truth stands against opposition, nay, rises upon its back!" In these class debates Saul excelled, quickly rising to the top of his class by dint of his own superior arguments. Even his teachers were amazed.

But as the years passed, a subtle tension arose between student and master. In the rigorous observances of Pharisaic law, Gamaliel believed that the rituals were intended to eventually produce "a spiritual man." In Saul he feared that he had created a proud monster, rather than a humble servant of God. In session after session it became apparent that Saul strongly disagreed with Gamaliel's beliefs on this point. To Saul, doing the rituals perfectly made any Jew "spiritual."

Shallum and Jephuneh also attended rabbinical school. Saul was not happy to discover this, but consoled himself with the knowledge that they had been placed with Gamaliel as a favor to their father, who rarely saw them and took little interest in their lives. Academically, the two dragged the level of discussion in class ever downward. Saul overwhelmed them in class, and at the same time, distanced himself from them by constantly challenging them to act as Pharisees to perfection. "God deserves such discipline and devotion," he preached, "and yes, He demands it!"

Such sermons were lost on Shallum and Jephuneh. They would pretend to take it to heart to satisfy Saul, but privately took it as a joke. Their personal reasons for being in rabbinical school were to advance their own careers politically within the hierarchy of Jerusalem. The process of education was a means to be used and discarded as needed.

In school, even Saul's cousin Dan became uneasy with his fanatical harangues. On more than one occasion, Saul went so far as to demonstrate the hypocrisy of his master Gamaliel under cross examination. This drove Dan to distraction. He loved and revered Gamaliel, finding no fault with him, and resenting Saul for doing so.

To his closest colleagues, Gamaliel confided that Saul's classroom challenges pushed the limits of proper respect. But he had to admit that his student seemed genuinely motivated by a desire to please God, and so in the open classroom it seemed impossible to accuse him--or silence him. At times the old master fell silent himself, overwhelmed by the Tarsian's logic and fervor. To some, such as his friend Nicodemus, Gamaliel confessed that he was intimidated by his student, Saul of Tarsus. But as the years in Jerusalem wore on, with some private misgivings, Gamaliel publicly proclaimed Saul to be his prize student. Saul accepted the honor in stride, as if it had been expected from the beginning. From the start he had intended to become a Pharisee of Pharisees. Nothing less.
One day after a turbulent classroom discussion Dan looked at Saul with a troubled expression as they made their way home. "Saul, are you the only person in Israel who does not admire and respect Gamaliel?"

"I respect God. And as for Gamaliel, frankly, I expected a more forceful man. He is much weaker in character than I expected."

"How can you say that?"

"I would think if Gamaliel was a great leader in this city, he would have helped to rid Jerusalem of these cursed emblems of Greeks and Romans, and restore our sacred city to its ancient purity."

"We know that he grieves over these things," Dan said.

"Grieves? Grieving is not enough. We need someone like Gideon who can go out in the darkness of night, if needs be, and cast down the idols."