October 21

Saul at School

Acts 22:3

We closed our last evening’s Reading with an extract from a very able and costly production with which our theological literature has lately been adorned. Desirous to follow the authors in their ingenious endeavor to trace the boyhood of Saul, we will commence the present Reading with a further extract from the same work.

“It is usually the case that the features of a strong character display themselves early. His impetuous, fiery disposition would sometimes need control. Flashes of indignation would reveal his impatience and his honesty. The affectionate tenderness of his nature would not be without an object of attachment, if that sister, who was afterwards married, Note: Acts 23:16. was his playmate at Tarsus. The work of tent-making, rather an amusement than a trade, might sometimes occupy those young hands, which were marked with the toil of years when he held them to the view of the elders at Miletus. Note: Acts 20:34. His education was conducted at home rather than at school: for, though Tarsus was celebrated for its learning, the Hebrew boy would not lightly be exposed to the influence of Gentile teaching; or, if he went to a school, it was not a Greek school, but rather to some room connected with the synagogue, where a noisy class of Jewish children received the rudiments of instruction, seated on the ground with their teacher, after the manner of Mohammedan children in the East, who may be seen or heard at their lessons near the mosque. At such a school, it may be, he learnt to read and to write, and going and returning under the care of some attendant, according to that custom which he afterwards used as an illustration in the Epistle to the Galatians (and perhaps he remembered his own early days while he wrote the passage), when he spoke of the Law as the slave who conducts us to the school of Christ. Note: Galatians 3:24.—This text is much marred in the authorized version, where the “pedagogue” is made a “schoolmaster,” as he still is in our common parlance, instead of being, as he really was, the servant who took his master’s son to school. His religious knowledge, as his years advanced, was obtained from hearing the Law read in the synagogue, from listening to the arguments and discussions of learned doctors, and from that habit of questioning and answering, which was permitted even to the children among the Jews. Familiar with the pathetic history of the Jewish sufferings, he would feel his heart filled with that love to his own people which breaks out in the Epistle to the Romans [Romans 9:4-6]—a love not then, as it was afterwards, blended with love towards all mankind—but rather united with a bitter hatred to the Gentile children whom he saw around him. His idea of the Messiah, so far as it was distinct, would be the carnal notion of a temporal prince—a ‘Christ known after the flesh,’—and he looked forward with the hope of a Hebrew to the restoration of ‘the kingdom to Israel.’ He would be known at Tarsus as a child of promise, and as one likely to uphold the honor of the Law against the half-infidel teaching of the day.”

We have cited this interesting passage unaltered, concurring generally in its statements. But in some points the less distinction between the condition of a Hebrew lad in a Greek city like Tarsus, and what it was or might have been at Jerusalem, is not sufficiently kept in view. It may be doubted whether in the former city the apparatus for public teaching and disputation was so complete as is here supposed; and we more than doubt that hatred to Gentile children, however likely to be entertained in Palestine, where strangers were few, was felt so strongly, if at all, among those who had been born and brought up in the cities of the heathen. We take it that there was little positive ill-will, unless in times of excitement; but that there was simply just that social separation which always exists among persons of different religion and origin, such in fact as may be witnessed every day in our own country. And it is certain that the Jews could never be in social intimacy with any people, their laws respecting food being alone sufficient for social isolation.

That the schools, in which the elements of learning were imparted to boys, were similar to those we now behold in the East, there is little reason to question. A short account, therefore, of these schools, and the instruction given in them, will furnish the best illustration of the subject. With the substitution of the synagogue for the mosque, and the Bible for the Koran, the analogy is probably as close as need be desired.

The first and earliest object of a parent is to instill into the mind of his son the principles of his religion, and the observances proper to it; and then he endeavors, if possible, to obtain for him the instructions of a school-master, if the small expense can be afforded. Most of the children of the higher classes, and many of the lower, are taught by the school-master to read, and to recite the whole, or certain portions, of the Koran by heart. They afterwards learn the common rules of arithmetic.

Modern Turkish School

Schools are sufficiently numerous in every large town, and there is seldom any considerable village without one. In metropolitan cities almost every mosque has a school attached to it, in which children are taught at a very trifling expense. The sum of about a penny paid every Thursday is a very common school fee; and the master of a school attached to a mosque receives also from the endowment some principal articles of clothing once a year, when the boys also obtain some garments and a little money. The lessons are generally written upon tablets of wood painted white; and when one lesson is learned, the tablet is washed, and another is written. As a substitute for this, slates have been found very acceptable where introduced by missionaries. The school-master and his pupils sit upon the ground; and each boy has a tablet in his hands, or a copy of the Koran, or one of its thirty sections, on a little rude kind of desk of palm sticks. All who are learning to read recite their lessons aloud, at the same time rocking their heads and bodies incessantly backward and forward. This is a practice of almost every one who reads the Koran, being supposed to help the memory; but the din which it occasions in a school is more easily imagined than described. Yet in the midst of all this noise, the experienced ear of the master instantly detects an error which any of the boys may fall into, and distinguishes the offender, who is forthwith called to account. The discipline of the school is maintained by

“The good old rule, the simple plan,”

of bodily chastisement. This is inflicted by a palm-stick upon the soles of the naked feet; for in school, as in other places, the heads are covered and the feet bare, and the quantity of shoes near the entrance of the apartment is a strange sight to the inexperienced. Corporal punishment is, however, very rarely inflicted, the real respect with which Eastern children are taught to regard their seniors, being generally quite sufficient to maintain the authority of the school-master and the discipline of the school.

It will be seen that the common schools teach little more than reading and learning by heart; the reading lessons being written on the tablets, not by the boys themselves, but by the master; and one who can read well and recite a good portion of the Koran, is in general held to be quite sufficiently educated.

The schoolmasters seldom teach writing; and it is learned by few boys but those whose destined employment will require it; and they then learn it usually of one of the officers employed in the bazaars. Some parents employ a tutor to teach their sons at home; and those who aspire to a high education can acquire it on easy terms at the Medressehs or colleges attached to the great mosques, answering to the school in which Saul completed his education at Jerusalem. Girls are not taught to read or write, unless in very rare instances; and we well remember the bewildering amazement, with which the females of a small Eastern town flocked together, to behold an English lady writing in her journal at our evening encampment. Yet there are schools in which they are taught embroidery and needle-work, and in this they excel. Their religious education is, however, very much disregarded, and scarcely any religious duties are expected from them. Among the Jews, the women were not to this degree neglected; for the females introduced to our notice in the New Testament, are generally well versed in the Scriptures. Among them also, writing seems to have been more generally a part of common education than it is at present in the East; but with these differences, the parallel seems to run very close.