THE APOSTLE PAUL CHAPTER IV Epvucation: JEwIsH INFLUENCE Ir is time to turn from the possible Greek culture of Saul-Paul of Tarsus—which after all must remain problematical—to the Jewish side of his education, where we stand on surer ground. That he was a Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee, he himself testifies; that he was a pupil of the famous head of the Pharisaic school, Gamaliel, is asserted in Acts, and I see no valid reason for doubting the statement. Nay more, it has in its favour the well- established fact that Gamaliel had among his scholars many Hellenistic Jews, and was himself more favour- ably inclined than the other Palestinian teachers towards the Hellenistic tendency in Jewish theology. If Paul, therefore, sat as a pupil at the feet of Gamaliel it is all the easier to explain his familiarity with the Alexandrian Book of Wisdom, and with the alle- gorical method of interpreting Scripture which was more usual in Hellenistic than in Palestinian circles. But however that may be, whether Paul received his Jewish education only in his parents’ house and in the synagogue at Tarsus, or whether he studied also in the school of Gamaliel in Jerusalem, it is in any 64