Galatians 1:14
14 And [kai] profited [prokopto] in [en] the Jews' religion [Ioudaismos] above [huper] many [polus] my equals [sunelikiotes] in
[en] mine own [mou] nation, [genos] being [huparcho] more exceedingly [perissoteros] zealous [zelotes] of the
traditions [paradosis] of my [mou] fathers. [patrikos] KJV-Interlinear
14 and I was advancing in Judaism
beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely
zealous for my ancestral traditions. NASB
Profited, means that Paul, then known as Saul,
excelled, made good, advanced in the then religion of his ancestors.
Paul was born a Jew as well as a Roman
citizen. He was a Pharisee, the son of a
Pharisee, a Hebrew sprung out of Hebrews, Acts 23:6; Phil. 3:5.
He grew up in the traditions of his parents and
their parents before them.
As he states here, he excelled with enthusiasm. And so much so, that there was no equal in
any of his peers, to his own religious zeal and success.
He was entrenched and dedicated to his
beliefs. And even though we do not know
where exactly Saul was during the crucifixion event, we can be certain that he
was on the anti-Jesus side of things, and celebrating the arrest and
crucifixion of Jesus as, in his mind, the removal of just another anti-religious
fanatic.
Saul was at the head of the anti-Christian
movement, and he persecuted Christians with a zeal that no one else could
match.
So, Saul knew of the Christian faith, and had to
have known that this movement followed the crucifixion and was related to it, even
though he rejected the idea that Jesus was the Messiah.
Paul, as Saul, states that he pursued this with a
zeal that exceeded the traditions of his ancestors. And that indicates the rise of a more
fanatical element in the priesthood, from a younger generation that was
contemporary with Paul.
The zeal eventually would end in the destruction of
Jerusalem and Judah, by Rome, some forty years after the Cross.
This also points to the magnitude of the national rejection
of the Messiah, the extreme disregard of the scriptures, and the indifference
toward the prophecies that pointed to the birth of Christ up to and including
his sacrifice.
Even Herod the Great, and his advisors, knew of the
prophecy of the birth of a king, and he tried to have all male infant babies
killed in order to kill Jesus. None of
the priests went to seek out the child.
And some thirty-three- and-a-half years later, even
the priesthood, the so called experts of scripture, killed the very Messiah
they were waiting for, thus fulfilling the very prophecy that they rejected.
So from birth, to the cross, to the destruction of
Jerusalem, a period of about seventy years, the fanaticism of Judaism grew
rapidly, and Saul was caught up in the middle of it all.
Most folks who are engaged in and saturated in, their
beliefs, are so stuck in their ways that it is very difficult for them to
change. Most do not change.
And as Paul has pointed out, it was not his
education or tradition or his contemporizes, that taught him the true gospel. They were too radical and drifting further and
further away from truth with each passing day and year.
He learned from Christ and from Christ alone.
