We began the day with a
lecture and discussion of what sort of man Paul was. We talked quite a bit
about his Damascus road experience and its impact on his life. Paul wrote of it
only indirectly but Luke tells the story three times. The thing I find puzzling
is that Paul does say he was a Pharisee and student of the Pharisees. Luke
tells us he was a student of Gamaliel and that Gamaliel was tolerant of
Christians. That makes sense, as we know independently that Gamaliel was a
student of Hillel, which makes him a liberal inclusive Pharisee. The Pharisees
were quite at odds with the Sadducees. So what was Paul doing on the road to
Damascus persecuting Christians under the auspieces of the Temple authorities
who were Sadducees? The whole situation was odd to begin with. I am not
suggesting it did not happen like that. I am wondering what shifting and
shaking was already going on in Paul’s religion when he set out for Damascus.
Then we hit the road for Konya,
which was known as Iconium when Paul and Barnabas stopped to spread the gospel
on their way back to Antioch (Syria) from Cyprus.
On the bus we got 3 lectures,
including an overview of the 7 Ecumenical Councils and one on the life and
teachings of Rumi. We were learning about Rumi because we were on our way to
visit his tomb. I had always thought of Rumi as a Sufi. My ignorance is vast.
It turns out Rumi’s son founded Sufism to continue Dad’s teachings and carry on
the practice of whirling dervish dancing that Rumi took up late in life to deal
with the emotional pain caused by the disappearance and possible murder of his
teacher. I was surprised at my sense of the holiness of Rumi’s tomb despite the
photo-snapping crowds.
I was also struck by how many
verses of Rumi could as easily have been written 900 years earlier by the
Cappadocian poet Gregory of Nazianzus. FB friend Joe Rawls tells me that the dervishes
learned some of their dance from the dances of the Christian monks of
Cappadocia. Clearly Rumi took up his dance form someone who was doing it before
there were Sufis.
From there we went to the
Roman Catholic Church of St. Paul for a prayer service. The art was a mix of
Byzantine and Western religious painting. I was puzzled by a large fresco
behind the altar. It featured a woman,
St. Thekla, with a lion. It drove me to the Internet where I learned that it
comes from the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thekla. The story goes that Paul’s
main message was celibacy. When he visited Iconium this message got him tossed
in the dungeon, and kept in fetters, Thekla slipped in and spent the night
providing non-conjugal comfort to the bound Paul. This outraged her parents who
turned her over to the authorities who in turn sentenced her to be burned at
the stake but a storm extinguished the fire. So they attempted to feed her to
the wild beats but she was protected by a lioness who shared her religious
perspective. Thereafter she and Paul travelled about as missionary partners. A
theological disaster of a story, but what a plot! I have so much to learn. The
fact that a Roman Church would have a fresco from the apocryphal Acts of Paul
and Thekla behind the altar still has me shaking my head. So much that I assume
in life keeps turning out to be wrong.
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