What does Arabia mean to Apostle Paul?

EDUARDO JIMENEZ

Hi amigos!

I am studying the events surrounding the conversion of Paul, specifically about his retirement to Arabia. I am consulting The Dictionary of Pauls and His Letters, but I wonder if there are other resources that speak more in detail about these episode.

Why retirement to Arabia? Why Arabia? What was Arabia in the life of Paul, who in the most decisive moments of his life he retired 3 yrs to that region? When he says in Galatians that after his conversion, "I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood (Ga 1:16).", Is referring to his stay in Arabia?

I heard someone say that during this period, obviously consulted with who had been his teacher (Gamaliel), as good talmid. But I have not found evidence on this.

Suggestions, comments, please.

Gracias por sus aportes!

Rosie Perera

What Paul did in Arabia seems speculative at best, since we have so little to go by in Scripture.

However I did find this possible theory in Robert L. Reymond, Jesus, Divine Messiah: The New and Old Testament Witness (Fearn, UK: Christian Focus Publications, 2003), p. 422.

 

Apostolic Training and Authorization?

Did he obtain the gospel he was preaching after his conversion, if not at the feet of Gamaliel, at the feet of the Apostles? Listen to Paul again:

  … when God … was pleased to reveal his Son to me …, I did not consult any man nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went immediately into Arabia and later returned to Damascus (Gal 1:15–17).

In this connection, there is separate evidence, if Paul intended by this reference to Arabia to refer to the Nabataean Kingdom, that Paul did not simply devote himself to a life of quiet contemplation in Arabia after his conversion but in fact immediately began to missionarize the populace there. Paul informs us in 2 Corinthians 11:32–33 that “the governor under King Aretas guarded the city of Damascus in order to seize me,” but one does not stir up the kind of trouble he alludes to in the Corinthians passage merely by meditation. This would suggest that long before he made any contact with the Jerusalem Apostles Paul had already engaged himself in Gentile evangelism.

 

 

I also found this in the old edition of the ISBE, in the article on "Paul, The Apostle":

WORK.

 1.  ADJUSTMENT:

There was evidently a tumult in Paul’s soul. He had undergone a revolution, both intellectual and spiritual. Before he proceeded farther it was wise to think through the most important implications of the new standpoint. Luke gives no account of this personal phase of Paul’s career, but he allows room for it between Acts 9:21 and 22. It is Paul who tells of his retirement to Arabia (Galatians 1:17 f) to prove his independence of the apostles in Jerusalem. He did not go to them for instruction or for ecclesiastical authority. He did not adopt the merely traditional view of Jesus as the Messiah. He knew, of course, the Christian contention well enough, for he had answered it often enough. But now his old arguments were gone and he must work his way round to the other side, and be able to put his new gospel with clearness and force. He was done with calling Jesus anathema (1 Corinthians 12:3). Henceforth to him Jesus is Lord. We know nothing of Paul’s life in Arabia nor in what part of Arabia he was. He may have gone to Mt. Sinai and thought out grace in the atmosphere of law, but that is not necessary. But it is clear that Paul grew in apprehension of the things of Christ during these years, as indeed he grew to the very end. But he did not grow away from the first clear vision of Christ. He claimed that God had revealed His Son in him that he might preach to the Gentiles (Galatians 1:16). He claimed that from the first and to the very last. The undoubted development in Paul’s Epistles (see Matheson, Spiritual Development of Paul, and Sabatier, The Apostle Paul) is, however, not a changing view of Christ that nullifies Paul’s “original Christian inheritance” (Kohler, Zum Verstandnis des Apostels Paulus, 13). Pfieiderer (Influence of the Apostle Paul on the Development of Christianity, 3rd edition, 1897, 217) rejects Colossians because of the advanced Christology here found. But the Christology of Colossians is implicit in Paul’s first sermon at Damascus. “It is impossible to escape the conclusion that the significance and value of the Cross became clear to him almost simultaneously with the certainty of the resurrection and of the Messiahship of Jesus” (Garvie, Studies, etc., 57). The narrow Jew has surrendered to Christ who died for the sins of the world. The universal gospel has taken hold of his mind and heart, and it will work out its logical consequences in Paul. The time in Arabia is not wasted. When he reappears in Damascus (Acts 9:22) he has “developed faith” (Findlay, HDB) and energy that bear instant fruit. He is now the slave of Christ. For him henceforth to live is Christ. He is crucified with Christ. He is in Christ. The union of Paul with Christ is the real key to his life. It is far more than a doctrine about Christ. It is real fellowship with Christ (Deissmann, Paul, 123). Thus it is that the man who probably never saw Christ in the flesh understands him best (Wernle, Beginnings of Christianity, I, 159).

James Orr, M.A., D.D., The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: 1915 Edition, ed. James Orr (Albany, OR: Ages Software, 1999).