Mostly we’re on the way to Spain for the sunshine. That includes the beach and maybe some slight acquaintance with a language that might have become the world’s top language if it hadn’t been beaten by English. As it is, we get all manner of fruit and vegetables from Spain, not to mention sherry and one of the world’s great books ‘Don Quixote’.. by Cervantes.
But 2.000 years ago Paul was on his way to Spain for quite other reasons. He had pounded the streets and boarded ships all over the eastern end of the Mediterranean and he now wanted to take the Christian Gospel to the other end of the Med. Spain had struggled with Rome for the mastery of the known world when Carthage was at its height. Hannibal had done the impossible with his troops and his elephants in a bid to take over leadership of the world . Rome had never faced such a threat and though Hannibal eventually failed he defeated army after army of the Romans sent to teach him a lesson.
Later it became Islam that tried its muscle in the peninsula. It succeeded – nearly totally – so that Spain gained an aspect of its culture that owed nothing to Christianity. And then with its neighbour Portugal and some assistance from the Pope South America became shaped as a string of Catholic countries that run on one side or the other of the Andes to this day.
But as far as we know Paul never got to Spain. Napoleon got there, not without some irritation caused by the British. (British warships based at Port Mahon provided some of the impetus that led to the invention of mayonnaise in the Balearics.)
But that is to look into the future as it was for Paul’s generation of Spaniards. We have no more information about what might have been a huge missionary task than we have about what Barnabas and John Mark may have achieved when they left Paul and went off on another venture altogether.
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