Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which
were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto
Damascus. (Gal 1:17)
Commenting
on why the newly-converted Saul would go to Arabia, N.T. Wright offers this
answer:
So why Arabia? . . . The word “Arabia” in the
first century covered a wide range of territory . . . [however] one of the only
other references to it in the New Testament—indeed, in the same letter, Paul’s
letter to the Galatians—gives us a far more specific location: Mt. Sinai, in
the peninsula to the south of the Holy Land and to the east of Egypt . . . Sinai
was where Elijah had gone when it all went horribly wrong. Sinai was where Saul
of Tarsus went—for the same reason.
The echoes of the Elijah story are small but significant.
After his zealous victory over the prophets of Baal, Elijah is confronted by a
messenger from Queen Jezebel, herself an enthusiastic backer of the Baal cult.
The royal threat is blunt; Elijah’s life is on the line. Zeal turns to panic He
runs away, all the way to Mt. Horeb (1 Kings 19:1-9). (Horeb is either another
name for Sinai or the name of a mountain close by from which the Israelites set
off to Canaan.) There he complains to God that he has been “very zealous for
the LORD, the God of hosts” (in other words, he has killed the prophets of
Baal), but that it hasn’t worked. The people are still rebelling, and he alone
is left, the last loyalist. He repeats this complaint a second time after a
powerful revelation of wind, earthquake, and fire had been followed by “a sound
of sheer silence,” one modern translation of a Hebrew phrase that in the King
James Version appears as “a still small voice” (1 Kings 19:5-10).
When God finally answers, Elijah is told, “Go,
return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus,” where he is to anoint new
kings for Syria and Israel and a new prophet, Elisha, to take his own place (1
Kings 19:15). They will do what needs to be done to remove Baal worship from
the land. What’s more, God declares to the puzzled prophet, “I will leave seven
thousand in Israel” who will stay loyal (1 Kings 19:18). (Paul quotes that
passage in another letter, likening himself to Elijah as the focal point of a “remnant.”)
(Rom. 11:3-4)
Already those with ears to hear may catch echoes
of Paul in Galatians. He has been “exceedingly zealous for the ancestral
traditions,” leading him to use violence in trying to stamp out heresy. Paul
says that he “went away to Arabia”—just as Elijah did—and “afterward return to
Damascus”—again just like Elijah. So what is this all about? Why did Saul go to
Arabia?
The parallel
with Elijah—the verbal echoes are so close, and the reflection on “zeal” so
exact, that Paul must have intended them—indicates that he, like Elijah, made a
pilgrimage to Mt. Sinai in order to go back to the place where the covenant was
ratified. He wanted to go and present himself before the One God, to explain
that he had been “exceedingly zealous,” but that his vision, his entire
worldview, had been turned on its head. And he received his instructions: “Go
back and announce the new king.” (N.T. Wright, Paul: A Biography [London: SPCK, 2018], 62-64; emphasis added;
comment in square bracket added for clarification)
