Saul Abbaskoptzi knew that his mangled son could never become a priest. Still, as an orthodox Jewish boy, Junior might as well receive a biblical education. Off to Jerusalem he went. But I also think that Saul Sr. wanted to get the kid out of the house. Saul Junior had not been an easy child – blameless under the Law, true, but self-righteous and annoying.

Four years later, Saul Jr. graduated from Talmud Torah School with high marks (and with red welts high and low, for Saul's teacher, Rabbi Gamaliel of Jerusalem, was strict in administering Scriptural punishments for minor infractions of the school rules; which, in Saul's case, were delivered with a gleeful rigour, since even Gamaliel found the Tarsus boy to be self-righteous and annoying).

Barely eighteen, Saul returned to Tarsus, where he lived with his mother and supported himself by taking over his absentee father's tent dealership – but that was a tough way to make a living. Saul and his mother never went hungry, but by the late 30s most itinerant Jews who could afford to buy into the kosher tent market had already done so, leaving Saul with a shrinking sales base. His business hit the skids.

Saul's tents, by the way, were strictly residential. In those days there was no recreational camping, nor any rent-a-tent market for bar-mitzvah celebrations, as we have today. Else, Saul might well have missed his calling to become an apostle. In fact, it annoys me that I did not tempt Saul with the rent-a-tent idea in time for it to have made a difference in the his bottom line; I might thereby have deterred Saul from the evangelism business, which I have always thought was a poor career move for both his sake and mine, and a catastrophe for Western Civilization.

– L.

(To be continued!)