om, who visited it at the
beginning of the second century A.D., found it a thoroughly Oriental
town, and notes that the women were closely veiled in Eastern fashion.
Possibly this accounts for St. Paul's prejudice against unveiled women
in church. One Greek institution, however, survived and flourished--a
university under municipal patronage. Strabo speaks with high admiration
of the zeal for learning displayed by the Tarsians, who formed the
entire audience at the professors' lectures, since no students came from
outside. This last fact shows, perhaps, that the lecturers were not men
of wide reputation; indeed, it is not likely that Tarsus was able to
compete with Athens and Alexandria in attracting famous teachers. The
most eminent Tarsians, such as Antipater the Stoic, went to Europe and
taught there. What distinguished Tarsus was its love of learning, widely
diffused in all classes of the population.

St. Paul did not belong to the upper class. He was a working artisan, a
'tent-maker,' who followed one of the regular trades of the place.
Perhaps, as Deissmann thinks, the 'large letters' of Gal. vi. 11 imply
that he wrote clumsily, like a working man and not like a scribe. The
words indicate that he usually dictated his letters. The 'Acts of Paul
and Thekla' describe him as short and bald, with a hook-nose and
beetling brows; there is nothing improbable in this description. But he
was far better educated than the modern artisan. Not that a single
quotation from Menander (1 Cor. xv. 33) shows him to be a good Greek
scholar; an Englishman may quote 'One touch of nature makes the whole
world kin' without being a Shakespearean. But he was well educated
because he was the son of a strict Jew. A child in such a home would
learn by heart large pieces of the Old Testament, and, at the Synagogue
school, all the _minutiae_ of the Jewish Law. The pupil was not allowed
to write anything down; all was committed to the memory, which in
consequence became extremely retentive. The perfect pupil 'lost not a
drop from his teacher's cistern.' At the age of about fourteen the boy
would be sent to Jerusalem, to study under one of the great Rabbis; in
St. Paul's case it was Gamaliel. Under his tuition the young Pharisee
would learn to be a 'strong Churchman.' The Rabbis viewed everything
from an ecclesiastical standpoint. The interests of the Priesthood, the
Altar, and the Temple overshadowed everything else. The Priestly Code,
says Mr. C