PAUL THE APOSTLE: A BIOGRAPHY
By John Pollock. Kingsway. 311 pages.
ISBN 0 85476 848 3
But we know all about Paul, don't we? Luke got there long before Pollock and even the poorest Bible reader finds the Acts enthralling. Yet what a difference there is between the eye of even the most diligent Bible reader and the trained eye and disciplined research of an experienced biographer!
Luke's chaste and restrained style draws the same veil over Paul's sufferings in Acts as previously over the Lord's sufferings in the Gospel: what in the latter case we may not know, in the former we need not know. Pollock's style is equally restrained. There is no sensationalism as we follow the beloved apostle to the scourge or the dungeon, but there are tears in plenty to shed over such suffering endured, such devotion to the Lord Jesus so dearly bought, and such ceaseless and unsparing commitment. Luke husbands his precious space to fill our eyes as much with the story of the spreading gospel as with the man who was its agent, but Pollock can pause to make connections. It is fascinating, for example, to discover that Paul's letters, shaped as they were by the needs of the church addressed, were also shaped by the thoughts foremost in his ministry to the church where he was then resident. In his preface, Pollock frankly admits that a biographer must sometimes make the best guess he can about what actually happened, and sometimes can only record what happened by putting a particular gloss or making an informed reconstruction. His brilliance in all this cannot be overstated - the apostle's Ephesian residence is a notable case in point, the use made of 2 Corinthians in reconstructing a particularly dreadful experience - not to mention a strikingly impressive case for Ephesus as the point of origin of Philippians.
This is a very great book, written by a lover of Paul and bound to make every reader fall in love with the apostle all over again. Yet as with Luke and Acts, so with Pollock and Paul, the main character in the book is the Lord Jesus Christ; it is he on whom the spotlight falls; and every reader will find that the more we weep with and over Paul, and the more we marvel at his untiring and courageous life, the more we want to love and the more we come to love the Lord who had captured his heart.
