Graduation

What this episode covers

It’s late spring, and it’s graduation season here in North America.  Students are congratulated, honored for completing some level of education, encouraged as they go on to the next step—whether that’s additional school or heading into employment, the adult world, supporting themselves. We don’t encounter much in the way of formal schooling in the Bible.  Paul mentions being “educated at the feet of Gamaliel”, an important Torah scholar in Jerusalem.  There were rabbis (which means teachers), and they had disciples (which means students).   The Greco-Roman world, in which our New Testament is set, did have formal education, including universities, but there’s only slight reference to it.  Paul advances a brief parable that the Law was a paidagogos to bring us to Christ.  This is the origin of the English word “pedagogue”, a teacher—but in Greek it doesn’t actually mean a teacher.  It’s the role of a servant whose duty was to take a child to school.  Paul goes on to refer to a sort of graduation—saying we are no longer under a paidagogos.  We’ve graduated from Law to faith, he says.  (Galatians 3:24-25)...

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