Was Paul Familiar with the Scriptures?

It is made clear in Acts 27 that Paul was familiar with "all the learning of the Greeks." Tarsus, his native city, was a famous seat of learning and philosophical research, and he probably had the advantage of training in its schools. The son of a Pharisee and trained from boyhood to the pursuits of a doctor of Jewish law, he presumably was instructed in the elements of Rabbinical lore, including of course the Jewish Scriptures. These are the inferences of those writers who have studied his life career. This could not apply to the New Testament writings as we now know them, for they were only in the making, and must have been very incomplete; but it is a fair presumption that in his later career, as an apostle, he was not ignorant of such writings as may then have been in existence, dealing with the events of Jesus' life and ministry. There was no New Testament, in the modern meaning of the term, in Paul's day, and could not have been, for obvious reasons.

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