DUQiSNE yNIVERSIIY HHMRK
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THE LIFE AND EPISTLES
ST. PAUL,
PEOPLE'S EDITION.
THE LIFE AND EPISTLES
Saint Paul.
BY
THE RET. W. J. CONTBEABE, M.A^
I<ATZ FELLOW OF TBDHTY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; AND
THE KEY. J. a HOWSOI^, D.D.,
PBDfCrPAL OF THE COLLEGLA.TE INSTITUTION, LIVEBPOOL.
A PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION BT
THE EEY. LEONAED BACON, D. D.,
PBOFSSSOB or BEYEALED THEOLOGY IN TALB OOLLBOB.
HARTFOED, CONK:
S. S. SORAI^TO:^' & GO.
1900.
'A
PREFACE
THE PEOPLE'S EDITION.
r 1 1 HOUGH the death of one of the writers of this book has -^ now thrown the sole responsibility of revision on the sur- vivor, the plan of a " People's Edition " was contemplated by both writers from the time when the first edition was published.
The survivor, in doing his best, while his life was yet spared, to prepare for a wider circle of readers a book which has been received with remarkable favor, has found, however, the execu- tion of the plan beset with peculiar difficulties. The simplest course would have been to give the text of the work without the notes ; but it was soon seen that many parts of the narrative would thus have been left destitute of important illustration, and many passages of the Epistles would have embarrassed, rather than helped, the mere English reader. On the assumption, then, that some of the notes must be retained, a question arose as to the selection. The writer of this preface might easily have cut down his own notes to a very narrow compass; but how was he to deal with the notes of a friend whom he could not consult ? To have omitted nearly all the former, and to have retained all the latter, would have been to disturb the whole symmetry of the book. Then came the further difficulty, — that, so far as the
JUN 2 8 1932
n PBEFACB TO THE PEOPUBS'S EDITION.
notes were criticisms of passages in the New Testament, they were, in the two former editions, based on the original text Ex- clusion or adaptation in all such cases was necessary for the reader who is presumed not to know Greek. But criticisms of this kind are, of course, by far the most frequent in the notes on the Epistles, which were not translated by the present editor : so that some change was most required precisely where, to him, adapta- tion was most difficult of execution, or where he was naturally most unwilling to assume the responsibility of exclusion.
It is hoped, that, under all these circumstances, general appro bation will be secured for the arrangement which has been adopted. Those readers have throughout been kept in view, who, though well educated, would not find it easy to refer to Greek or German books. Some few technical Greek terms are retained ; and here and there there is a reference to classical authors, which has seemed peculiarly important, or which it was hardly worth while to remove : but, on the whole, there are few citations except from books which are easily within reach. The references to Scripture are very frequent ; and it is believed that such references can hardly be too frequent It is presumed that the reader has the Authorized Version before him ; at the same time, it is hoped that the notes will continue to be useful to stu- dents of the Greek New Testament Some criticisms must necessarily, however, be taken for granted ; and, in such cases, occasional reference has been made to the two larger editions.^ In Mr. Conybeare's part of the work, no alteration whatever has been made, except as regards the verbal adjustments requisite for leaving out the Greek.* It is impossible to know whether his
^ The first edition, in quarto, and with course of a thorough repemsal : but, besides
rery numerous illustrations, was completed in the modifications mentioned above, the note«
1852 : the second, with fewer illustrations, but in the narratire portion are Tery considerably
after careful revision, was published in 1856. retrenched. Thus each of the three edition!
In this edition, the illustrations are still few- has a character of its own. er ; the text is unaltered, with the exception * This remark applies to the general bodi
of slight verba! changes suggested in the of the work. The Appendices, written by Mr
PREFACE TO THE PEOPLE'S EDITION. Vn
translation of some phrases and his interpretation of some texta
might have been modified if he had taken part in the revision.
Wherever it has been thought worth while to express a difference
of opinion, this is separately indicated.^ Such cases are very few.
The separate responsibilities of the whole work are clearly stated
in the Postscript to the Introduction.
The present writer is far from satisfied with the result of what
he has done, in this edition, with considerable labor, and to the
best of his judgment and ability ; but this he can say with truth,
that, while he feels the imperfection of his own work, this last
revision has left in his mind a higher estimate than ever of the
parts written by his fellow-laborer and friend.
J. S. H.
Conybeare, have been abbreviated in conformity and other retrenchments hare been made here
with the principles stated above. Such ques- in accordance with the special aim of this
tions £is the verbal peculiarities of the Pastoral edition.
Epistles could hardly be presented with clear i By notes in square brackets, distinguished
BOM to those who have no knowledge of Greek ; bj the letter h.
introduction;
THEp purpose of this work is to give a living picture of St. Paul himseUi and of the circumstances by which he was surrounded.
The biography of the Apostle must be compiled from two sources : first, his own let- ters ; and, secondly, the narrative in the Acts of the Apostles. The latter, after a slight sketch of his early history, supplies us with fuller details of his middle life ; and his Epis- tles afford much subsidiary information concerning his missionary labors during the same period. The light concentrated upon this portion of his course makes darker by contrast the obscurity which rests upon the remainder ; for we are left to gain what knowledge we can of his later years from scattered hints in a few short letters of his own, and from a single sentence of his disciple Clement.
But, in order to present any thing like a living picture of St. Paul's career, much more is necessary than a mere transcript of the scriptural narrative, even where it is full- est. Every step of his course brings us into contact with some new phase of ancient life, unfamiliar to our modem experience, and upon which we must throw light from other sources, if we wish it to form a distinct image in the mind. For example, to comprehend the influences imder which he grew to manhood, we must realize the position of a Jewish family in Tarsus ; we must understand the kind of education which the son of such a family would receive as a boy in his Hebrew home, or in the schools of his native city, and in his riper youth " at the feet of Gamaliel " in Jerusalem ; we must be acquainted with the profession for which he was to be prepared by this training, and appreciate the station and duties of an expounder of the Law. And, that we may be fuUy qualified to do all this, we should have a clear view of the state of the Roman Empire at the time, and especially of its system in the provinces ; we should also understand the political position of the Jews of the " Dispersion ; " we should be (so to speak) hearers in their synagogues; we should be students of their Rabbinical theology. And in like manner, as we follow the Apostle in the different stages of his varied and adventm-ous career, we mast strive continually to bring out in their true brightness the half-effaced forms and
» [It bu been thought better to leave this Intro- latlng to view* and llluetration* are not strictly dnctlon quite nntonched, though the passagea r(^ applicable to the present edition. — B.]
ix
X INTRODUCTION.
coloring of the scene in which he acts ; and while he "becomes all things to all men, that he might by all means save some," we must form to om-selves a living likeness of the things and of the men among which he moved, if we would rightly estimate his work. Thus we must study Christianity rising in the midst of Judaism ; we must realize the position of its early churches with their mixed society, to which Jews, Proselytes, and Heathens had each contributed a characteristic element ; we must qualify ourselves to be umpires (if we may so speak) in their violent internal divisions ; we must listen to the '^rife of their schismatic parties, when one said, " I am of Paul ; and another, I am of Apollos ; " we must study the true character of those early heresies which even denied the resurrection, and advocated impurity and lawlessness, claiming the right " to sin that grace might abound," * " defiling the mind and conscience " * of their followers, and mak- ing them " abominable and disobedient, and to every good work reprobate ; " * we must trace the extent to which Greek philosophy, Judaizing formalism, and Eastern supersti- tion, blended their tainting influence with the pure fermentation of that new leaven which was at last to leaven the whole mass of civilized society.
Again : to understand St. Paul's personal history as a missionary to the Heathen, we must know the state of the different papulations which he visited ; the character of the Greek and Eoman civilization at the epoch ; the points of intersection between the politi- cal history of the world and the scriptural narrative ; the social organization and grada- tion of ranks, for which he enjoins respect ; the position of women, to which he specially refers in many of his letters ; the relations between parents and children, slaves and mas- ters, which he not vainly sought to imbue with the loving spirit of the gospel ; the quality and influence, under the early Empire, of the Greek and Roman religions, whose effete corruptness he denounces with such indignant scorn ; the public amusements of the peo- ple, whence he draws topics of warning or illustration ; the operation of the Roman law, under which he was so frequently arraigned ; the courts in which he was tried, and the magistrates by whose sentence he suffered; the legionary soldiers who acted as hia guards ; the roads by which he travelled, whether through the mountains of Lycaonia or the marshes of Latium ; the course of commerce by which his journeys were so often regidated ; and the character of that imperfect navigation by which his life was so manj times * endangered.
While thus trying to live in the life of a bygone age, and to call up the figure of the past from its tomb, duly robed in all its former raiment, every help is welcome which en- ables us to fill up the dim outline in any part of its reality. Especially we delight to look upon the only one of the manifold features of that past existence which still is living. We remember with pleasure that the earth, the sea, and the sky still combine for us in the same landscapes which passed before the eyes of the wayfaring Apostle. The plain of Cilicia ; the snowy distances of Taurus ; the cold and rapid stream of the Cydnus ; tke broad Orontes under the shadoir of itB steep banks, with their thickets of jasmine and
» Bom. vL 1. * " Thrice hmve I iTiffered shipwreck," 2 CJor. xi.
* Tlt.LU. K; and thl« vm 'before he wm wrecked ap<»
•TH.L1A. Melita.
INTKODUCTIOJS. H
6 mnder ; the hills which " stand about Jerusalem," * the " arched fountains cold " in the ravines below, and those " flowery brooks beneath that wash their hallowed feet ; " the capes and islands of the Grecian Sea ; the craggy summit of Areopagus ; the land-locied harbor of Syracuse ; the towering cone of ^tna ; the voluptuous loveliness of the Cam- piiuian shore, — all these remain to us, the imperishable hantliwork of Nature. We can still look upon the same trees and flowers which he saw clothing the mountains, giving color to the plains, or reflected in the rivers ; we may think of him among the palms of Syria, the cedars of Lebanon, the olives of Attica, the green Isthmian pines of Corinth, whose leaves wove those " fading garlands " which he contrasts * with the " incorruptible crown," the pri2e for which he fought. Nay, we can even still look upon some of the works of man which filled him with wonder, or moved him to indignation. The " tem- ples made with hands "'which rose before him — the very apotheosis of idolatry — on llie Acropolis, still stand in almost undiminished majesty and beauty. The mole on which he landed at Puteoli still stretches its ruins into the blue waters of the bay. The remains of the Baian villas, whose marble porticoes he then beheld glittering in the simset, — hia first specimen of Italian luxury, — still are seen along the shore. We may still enter Rome as he did by the same Appian Road, through the same Capenian Gate, and wander among the ruins of " Caesar's palace " * on the Palatine, while om- eye rests upon the same aqueducts radiating over the Campagna to the unchanging hills. Those who have visited these spots must oft;en have felt a thrill of recollection as they trod in the footsteps of the Apostle ; they must have been conscious how much the identity of the outward scene brought them into communion with him, while they tried to image to themselves the feel- ings with which he must have looked upon the objects before them. They who have ex- perienced this will feel how imperfect a biography of St. Paul must be without faithfiJ representations of the places which he visited. It is hoped that the views * which are contained in the present work (which have been diligently collected from various sources) will supply this desideratum. And it is evident, that, for the purposes of such a biogra- phy, nothing but true and faithful representations of the real scenes will be valuable ; these are what is wanted, and not ideal representations, even though copied fi-om the works of the greatest masters : for as it has been well said, " Nature and reality painted at the time, and on the spot, a nobler cartoon of St Paul's preaching at Athens than the immortal Rafaelle afterwards has done." *
For a similar reason, maps have been given (in addition to careful geographical d&- flcriptions), exhibiting with as much accuracy as can at present be attained the physical features of the countries visited, and some of the ancient routes through them, together with plans of the most important cities, and maritime charts of the coasts and harbors where they were required.
» " The hllla stand »bont Jerusalem : " even so sentence In the text applies In strictness only to the
•• sundeth the Lord round »bou« his people." Ps. quarto edition. In the intermediate edition, it was
txtv. 2. remarked in a note, that, even there, " most of th«
* 1 Cor. Ix. 25. larger engravings were necessarily omitted, on
» Acts xvii. 24. * Phil. 1. 13. account of their size." — H.j
f See note on p. ix, and the Preface. The • Wordsworth's AthcTis and Attica, p. 7«.
XII IKTBODUCTION.
While thtu endeayoring to represent faithfullj the natural objects and architectural remains connected with the narrative, it has likewise been attempted to give such illns trations as were needful of the minor productions of human art as thej existed in the first centurj. For this purpose, engravings of coins have been given in all cases where they seemed to throw light on the circumstances mentioned in the historj ; and recourse has been had to the stores of Pompeii and Herculaneum, to the columns of Trajan and Anto- ninus, and to the collections of the Vatican, the Louvre, and e^)eciall7 of the British Museum.
But, after all this is done, — after we have endeavored, with every help we can com- mand, to reproduce the picture of St. Paul's deeds and times, — how email would our knowl- edge of himself remain if we had no other record of him left us but the story of his adven- tures 1 If his letters had never come down to us, we should have known indeed what he did and suffered ; but we should have had very little idea of what he was.* Even if we could perfectly succeed in restoring the image of the scenes and circumstances in which he moved ; even if we could, as in a magic mirror, behold him speaking in the school' of Tyrannus, with his Ephesian hearers in their national costume around him, — we should still see very little of Paul of Tarsus. We must listen to his words, if we would learn to know him. If Fancy did her utmost, she could give us only his outward, not his inward life. " His bodily presence " (so his enemies declared) " was weak and contemptible ; ** but " his letters " (even they allowed) " were weighty and powerful." * Moreover, an ef- fort of imagination and memory is needed to recall the past ; but, in his Epistles, St. Paul is present with us. " His words are not dead words ; they are living creatures with hands and feet," * touching in a thousand hearts at this very hotir the same chord of feeling which vibrated to their first utterance. We, the Christians of the nineteenth century, can bear witness now, as fiilly as could a Byzantine audience fourteen hundred years ago, to the saying of Chrysostom, that " Paul by his letters still lives in the mouths of men throughout the whole world : by them not only his own converts, but aU the faithful even unto this day, yea, and all the saints who are yet to be bom until Christ's coming again, both have been and shall be blessed." His Epistles are to his inward life what the moun- tains and rivers of Asia and Greece and Italy are to his outward life, — the imperishabk part which still remains to us when all that time can ruin has passed away.
It is in these letters, then, that we must study the true life of St. Paul, fi*om its inmost depths and springs of action, which were " hidden with Christ in God," down to its most minute developments and peculiar individual manifestations. In them we learn (to use the language of Gregory Nazianzene) " what is told of Paul by Paul himself." Their most sacred contents, indeed, rise above all that is peculiar to the individual writer ; for they are the commxmications of God to man concerning the faith and life of Christians, which St. Paul declared (as he oflen asserts) by the immediate revelation of Christ him-
» For his apeAcheB recorded In the Acts, charac- by hl« Kplatlei, they become an Important part of
lertBtic as they are, woiild by themselves have been his personal biography. » 2 Cor. x. 10.
too few and too short tto add much to our knowl- » Luther, as quoted In Archdeacon Hare's Mis-
edge of St. Paul; but, a xstrated as they now are Hon of the Comforter, p. 449.
rNTRODUCTIOA. xin
■elf. But his maimer of teaching these eternal truths is colored by his human character, »nd peculiar to himself. And such individual features are naturally impressed much more upon epistles than upon any other kind of composition : for here we have not trea- tises or sermons, which may dwell in the general and abstract, but genuine letters, writ- ten to meet the actual wants of living men ; giving immediate answers to real queptions, and warnings against pressing dangers ; full of the interests of the passing hour. And this, which must be more or less the case with all epistles addressed to particular church- es, is especially so with those of St. Paul. In his case, it is not too much to say that his letters are himself, — a portrait painted by his own hand, of which every feature may be " known and read of all men."
It is not merely that in them we see the proof of his powerful intellect, his insight into the foimdations of natural theology^ and of moral philosophy;* for in such points, though the philosophical expression might belong to himself, the truths expressed were taught him of God. It is not only that we there find models of the sublimest eloquence when he is kindled by the vision of the glories to come, the perfect triumph of good over evil, the manifestation of the sons of God, and their transformation into God's likeness, when they shall see him no longer* " in a glass darkly, but face to face," — for in such strains as these it was not so much he that spake as the Spirit of God speaking in him,* — but in his letters, besides all this which is divine, we trace every shade, even to the faintest, of his human character also. Here we see that fearless independence with which he " withstood Peter to the face ; " * that impetuosity which breaks out in his apostrophe to the " foolish Galatians ; " * that earnest indignation which bids his converts " beware of dogs, beware of the concision," ' and pours itself forth in the emphatic " God forbid " * which meets every Antinomian suggestion ; that fervid patriotism which makes him " wish that he were him- self accursed from Christ for his brethren, his kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Is- raelites ; " • that generosity which looked for no other reward than " to preach the Glad- Tidings of Christ without charge," " and made him feel that he would rather " die than that any man should make this glorying void ; " that dread of officious interference which led him to shrink from " building on another man's foundation ; " " that delicacy which ehows itself in his appeal to Philemon, whom he might have commanded, " yet for love's sake rather beseeching him, being such an one as Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ," " and which is even more striking La some of his farewell greetings, as (for instance) when he bids the Romans " salute Rufus, and his mother, who is also mine ; " ** that scrupulous fear of evil appearance which " would not eat any man's bread for nought, but wrought with labor and travail night and day, that he might not be charge- able to any of them ; " " that refined courtesy which cannot bring itself to blame till it has
* Rom. I. 20. express the force of the orifliial by any other Sd9>
» Rom. li. 14, 1ft. U«h phrase.
» 1 Cor. Till. U. » Bom. Ix. 3.
« Matt. X. ». » 1 Cor. Ix. 16 and 1».
» OM. 11. 11. u Rom. XV. 20.
« Oal. 111. 1. 11 Philemon 9.
' Pbil. ill. ». u Rom. xvi. 18.
^ Rom..ol 2; lOor. Tl.U,fco. It ia dUBeolt to « 1 Tbess. 11. 9.
XIF LNTKODUCTION.
first praised,' and which makes him deem it needful almost to apologize for the freedooi of giving adyice to those who were not personally known to him ; * that self-denying love which " will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest he make his brother to offend ; " • that impatience of exclusive formalism with which he overwhelms the Judaizers of Galatia, joined with a forbearance so gentle for the innocent weakness of scrupulous consciences ; * that grief for the sins of others, which moved him to tears when he spoke of-ihe enemies of the cross of Christ, " of whom I tell you even weeping ; " ' that noble freedom fix)m jeal- ousy with which he speaks of those, who, out of rivalry to himself, preach Christ even of envy and strife, supposing to add affliction to his bonds, — " What then V notwithstanding every way, whether in pretence or in truth, Christ is preached ; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice ; " * that tender friendship which watches over the health of Timothy even with a mother's care ; ' that intense sympathy in the joys and sorrows of his converts whif.h could say even to the rebellious Corinthians, " Ye are in our hearts, to die and live with you ; " * that longing desire for the intercourse of affection, and that sense of lonel'ness when it was withheld, which perha{)s is the most touching feature of all, !»• cause it approaches most ncarlr to a weakness, — " When I had come to Troas to preach the Glad-Tidings of Christ, and a door was opened to me in the Lord, I had no rest in my spirit because I found not Titus my brother ; but 1 parted from them, and came frc«n thence into Macedonia." And, " when I was come into Macedonia, my flesh had no re«i, but I was troubled on every side : without were fightings, within were fears. But Grod, who comforts them that are cast down, comforted me by the coming of Titus." * " Do thy utmost to come to me speedily : for Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this pres- ent world, and is departed to Thessalonica ; Crescens to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia ; only Luke is with me.""
Nor is it only in the substance, but even in the style, of these writings, that we recog- nize the man Paul of Tarsus, hx the parenthetical constructions and broken sentences, we see the rapidity with which the thoughts crowded upon him, almost too fast for utter- ance ; we see him animated rather than weighed down by " the crowd that presses on him daily, and the care of all the churches," " as he pours forth his warnings or his arguments in a stream of eager and impetuous dictation, with which the pen of the faithful Tertios can hardly keep pace.** And, above all, we trace his presence in the postscript to every letter, which he adds as an authentication, in his own characteristic handwriting," " which ifl a token in every epistle : thus I write." " Sometimes, as he takes up the pen, he is moved with indignation when he thinks of the false brethren among those whom he addresses : " The salutation of me Paul with my own hand : if any man love not the
1 Compare the laudatory ezpre«aion« In 1 Oor. » 1 Tim. t. 2S.
L &-7, and 2 Cor. 1. «, 7, with the heavy and almoat » 3 Cor. vll. 8.
anmlngled censure conveyed In th« whei« aulM*- * 3 Cor. 11. 13, and TfL S.
qnent part of these Eplstlea. " 2 Tim. It. 9. " * Oor. rl. 2S.
» Rom. XV. 14, 16. " Eom. rrl. 22. "I Tertlna, wb« wrote thia
» 1 Oor. vlll. 13. Bplfltle, salute you In the Lord."
* 1 Coi'. \ill. 12, and Som. zlv. 21. ^ Oal. vl. 11. " Bee the tige of the charaetert Sa
* Phil. 111. 18. which I write to yon with my own hand."
* Phil. i. 16. »* 2 Thew. 111. 17.
INTKODUCTION. XT
Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed." * Sometimes, as he raises his hand to -mite, h« feels it cramped by the fetters which bind him to the soldier who guards him : * " I Paul salute you with my own hand : remember my chains." Yet he always ends with the same blessing, — " The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you ; " to which he sometimes adds still further a few last words of affectionate remembrance, — " My love be with yon
all in Christ Jesus." *
c
But, although the letters of St. Paul are so essential a part of his personal biography, it is a difficult question to decide upon the form in which they should be given in a work like this. The object to be sought is, that they may really represent in English what they were to their Greek readers when first written. Now, this object would not be attained if the Authorized Version were adhered to ; and yet a departure from that whereof so much is interwoven with the memory and deepest feelings of every religious mind should be grounded on strong and sufficient cause. It is hoped that the following reasons may be held such : —
1st, The Authorized Version was meant to be a standard of authority and ultimate appeal in controversy : hence it could not venture to depart, as an ordinary translation would do, from the exact words of the original, even where some amplification was abso- lutely required to complete the sense. It was to be the version unanimously accepted by all parties, and therefore must simply represent the Greek text word for word. This it does most faithfully, so far as the critical knowledge of the sixteenth* century permitted. But the result of this method is sometimes to produce a translation unintelligible to the English reader.* Also, if the text admit of two interpretations, our version endeavors, if possiVle, to preserve the same ambiguity, and effects this often with admirable skill ; but such indecision, although a merit in an authoritative version, would be a fault in a trans- lation which had a different object.
2d, The imperfect knowledge existing at the time when our Bible was translated made it inevitable that the translators should occasionally render the original incorrectly ; and the same cause has made their version of many of the argumentative portions of the Epistles perplexed and obscure.
8d, Such passages as are affected by the above-mentioned objections, might, it is true, have been recast, and the authorized translation retained in all cases where it is correct eaid clear ; but, if this had been done, a patchwork effect would have been produced like that of new cloth upon old garments : moreover, the devotional associations of the reader would have been offended ; and it would have been a rash experiment to provoke such a contrast between the matchless style of the Authorized Version and that of the modem translator, thus placed side by side.
4th, The style adopted for the present purpose should not be antiquated ; for St. Paul was writing in the language used by his Hellenistic readers in every-day life.
• 1 Cor. rvl. 22. s Yet, had any other coarse been adopted, every
• Ccloss. IV. 18. » 1 Cor. xvl. 24. §ect would have had iu own Bible : aa it U, thla one
• Being executed at the very beginning of the traaBlatlon has been all but unanimoualy received enteenth. for three centnrlea.
XVI rNTRODUCTION.
5th, In order to give the true meaning of the original, something more than a mere verbal rendering is often absolutely required. St. Paul's style is extremely elliptical, and the gaps must be filled up. And, moreover, the great diflSculty in understanding his argu- ment is to trace clearly the transitions * by which he passes from one step to another. For this purpose, something must occasionally be supplied beyond the mere literal ren- dering of the words.
In fact, the meaning of an ancient writer may be rendered into a modem language in three ways : either, first, by a literal version ; or, secondly, by a. free translation; or, thirdly, by a paraphrase. A recent specimen of the first method may be found in the corrected edition of the Authorized Version of the Corinthians, by Prof. Stanley ; of the Galatians and Ephesians, by Prof. EUicott ; and of the Thessalonians, Galatians, and Romans, by Prof. Jowett ; all of which have appeared since the first edition of the present work The experiment of these translations (ably executed as they are) has confirmed the view above expressed of the unsatisfactory nature of such a literal rendering ; for it cannot be doubted, that though they correct the mistakes of the Authorized Version, yet they leave an English reader in more hopeless bewilderment as to St. Paul's meaning than that ver- sion itself. Of the third course (that of paraphrase), an excellent specimen is to be found in Prof. Stanley's paraphrases of the Corinthian Epistles. There is, perhaps, no better way than this of conveying the general meaning of the Epistles to an English reader ; but it would not be suitable for the biography of St. Paul, in which not only his general meaning, but his every sentence and every clause, should, so far as possible, be given There remains the intermediate course of a. free translation, which is that adopted in the present work : nor does there seem any reason why a translation of St. Paul should be rendered inaccurate by a method which would generally be adopted in a translation of Thucydides.
It has not been thought necessary to interrupt the reader by a note * in every instance where the translation varies from the Authorized Version. It has been assumed that the readers of the notes will have sufficient knowledge to understand the reason of such varia- tions in the more obvious cases. But it is hoped that no variation which presents any real difliculty has been passed over without explanation.
It should further be observed, that the translation given in this work does not adhere to the Textus Receptus, but follows the text authorized by the best MSS. Tet, though the Textus Receptus has no authority in itself, it seems imdesfrable to depart from it without necessity, because it is the text familiar to English readers. Hence the translator has adhered to it in passages where the MSS. of highest authority are equally divided
J In the translation of the Epistles given In the stroyed by such Inattention In the Authorized Ve^
present work, It has been the especial ahn of the slonl — " Who hath beUeved our r«j>(>r< 7 So, thezt,
trantlator to represent these transitions correctly. faith cometh by hearing."
They very often depend upon a word which uug- ' [See again note on p. rx, and the Preface. lo
ge«ts a new thought, and are quite lost by a want this edition, no note appended to the tranelatlona hu
of attention to the verbal coincidence. Thus, for been altered in meaning. Only such change* art
instance, in Rom. x. 16, 17, — " Who hath given made as is required by the omlMicn ol Greek
faith to our teaching! So, then, faith cometh by words. — H.] teaching," — how completely U the connection d»-
INTRODTJCTION. XTn
between its reading and some other, and also in some cases where the difference between It and the true text is merely verbal.
"Hie authorities consulted upon the chronology of St. Paul's life, the reasons for the Tiews taken of disputed points in it, and for the dates of the Epistles, are stated (so far as seems needful) in the body of the work or in the Appendices, and need not be further referred to here.
In conclusion, the authors would express their hope that this biography may, in its measure, be useful in strengthening the hearts of some against the peculiar form of imbe- lief most current at the present day. The more faithfully we can represent to ourselves the life, outward and inward, of St. Paul, in all its fulness, the more unreasonable must appear the theory, that Christianity had a mythical origin ; and the stronger must be our ground for believing his testimony to the divine nature and miraculous history of our Re- deemer. No reasonable man can learn to know and love the Apostle of the Gentiles without asking himself the question, " What was the principle by which, through such a life, he was animated ? "What was the strength in which he labored with such immense results ? " Nor can the most sceptical inquirer doubt for one moment the fiill sincerity of St. Paul's belief, that " the life which he lived in the flesh, he lived by the faith of the Son of God, who died and gave himself for him." * " To believe in Christ crucified and risen, to serve him on earth, to be with him hereafter, — these, if we may trust the account of his own motives by any human writer whatever, were the chief if not the only thoughts which sustained Paul of Tarsus through all the troubles and sorrows of his twenty-years' conflict. His sagacity, his cheerfulness, his forethought, liis impartial and clear-judging reason, all the natural elements of his strong character, are not, indeed, to be over- looked : but the more highly we exalt these in our estimate of his work, the larger share we attribute to them in the performance of his mission, the more are we compelled to believe that he spoke the words of truth and soberness when he told the Corinthians, that, ' last of all, Christ was seen of him also ; ' ' that ' by the grace of God he was what he was ; ' that, ' whilst he labored more abundantly than all, it was not he, but the grace of God that was in him.' "*
* ChU. IL ». ■ 1 0«r. XT. t. * Btmley'i Sermom on th4 ApottoHo Age, p IM.
POSTSCRIPT.
IT may be well to add, that, while Mr. Conybeare and Dr. HowBon have nndertakea the joint revision of the whole work, the translation of the Epistles and Speeches of St. Paul is contributed by the former ; the historical portion of the work principally, and the geographical portion entirely, by the latter : Dr. Howson having written Chapters L,
n., m., IV., v., VI., vn., vni., ix., x., xi., xn., xiv., xvi., xx., xxi. (except the
earlier portion), XXH. (except some of the later part), XXIII., XXIV., the latter pages of XVII., and the earlier pages of XXVI., with the exception of the Epistles and Speeches therein contained ; and Mr. Conybeare having written the Introduction and Appendices, and Chapters XQL, XV., XVII. (except the conclusion), XVIII., XIX., XXV., XX VL (except the introductory and topographical portions), XXVJJ., XXVILI., the earlier pages of XXI., and some of the later pages of XXIL
This seems the proper place for explaining tion. In such references, however, the num-
the few abbreviations used. T. R. stands for bering of verses and chapters according to the
Textus Btceptus; 0. T. for Old Tedamtnt; N. T. Authorised Version (not according to the Sep-
for NiW Testament; A. V. for Authorised Vtr- tuagint) has been retained, to avoid the causing
swn; and LXX. (after a quotation from the Old of perplexity to English readers who may at-
Testament) means that the quotation is cited by tempt to verify the references.
St. Paul, according to the Septuagint transla-
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER L
QrMt Men of Great Periods. — Period of Christ's Apostles. — Jews, Greeks, and Ro- mans. — Religions Civilization of the Jews. — Their History, and its Relation to that of the World. — Heathen Preparation for the Gospel. — Character and Language ol the Greeks. — Alexander. — Antioch and Alexandria. — Growth and Government of the Roman Empire. — Misery of Italy and the Provinces. — Preparation in the Empire for Christianity. — Dispersion of the Jews in Asia, Africa, and Europe. — Proselytes. — Provinces of Ciiicia and Judaa. — Their Geography and History. — Cilicia under tha Romans. — Tarsus. — Cicero. — Political Changes in Jud«ea. — Herod and his Fami- ly. — The Roman Governors. — Conclusion 1
CHAPTER n.
Jewish Origin of the Church. — Sects and Parties of the Jews. — Pharisees and Sad- dncees. — St. Paul a Pharisee. — Hellenists and Aramaeans. — St. Paul's Family Hel- lenistic, but not Helleniiing. — His Infancy at Tarsus. — The Tribe of Benjamin. — His Father's Citizenship. — Scenery of the Place. — His Childhood. — He is sent to Jerusalem. — State of Jud»a and Jerusalem. — Rabbinical Schools. — Gamaliel.— Mode of Teaching. — Synagogues. — Student-Life of St. Paul. — His early Man- hood.— First Aspect of the Church. — St. Stephen. — The Sanhedrin. — St. Stephen the Forerunner of St Paul. — His Martyrdom and Praf er M
CHAPTER m.
Funeral of St. Stephen. — Saul's continued Persecution. — Flight of the Christians. — Philip and the Samaritans. — Saul's Journey to Damascus. — Aretas, King of Petra. — Roads from Jerusalem to Damascus. — Neapolis. — History and Description of Damas- cus. — The Narratives of the Miracle. — It was a real Vision of Jesus Christ — Three Days in Damascus. — Ananias. — Baptism and first Preaching of Saul. — He retires into Arabia. — Meaning of the Terra " Arabia." — Petra and the Desert — Motives to Conversion. — Conspiracy at Damascus. — Escape to Jerusalem. — Barnabas. — Fort- night with St. Peter. — Conspiracy. — Vision in the Temple. — Sanl vrithdraws to Syria and Cilicia 71
CHAPTER IV.
Wider Diflfusion of Christianity. — Antioch. — Chronology of the Acts. — Reign of Caligii- la. — Claudius and Herod Agrippa I. — The Year 44. — Conversion of the Gten-
XXI
XXn CONTENTS.
tfles. — St Peter and Coraelins. — Joppa and Cwsarea. — St. Pet«r's Vision. — Bap- tism of Cornelius. — Intelligence from Antioch. — Mission of Bamabaa. — Saul with Barnabas at Antioch. — The Name " Christian." — Description and History of Anti- och. — Character of its Inhabitants. — Earthquakes. — Famine. — Barnabas and Saul at Jerusalem. — Death of St. James and of Herod Agrippa. — Return with Mark t* Antioch. — Providential Preparation of St. Paul. — Besults of his Mission to Jerusa- lem Ifl
CHAPTER V.
Second Part of the Acts of the Apostles. — Rerelation at Antioch. — Public Derotions. — Departure of Barnabas and Saul. — The Orontes. — History and Description of Sela- cia. — Voyage to Cyprus. — Salamis. — Roman Provincial System. — Proconsuls and Proprjetors. — Sergius Paulus. — Oriental Impostors at Rome and in the Provinces. — Elymas Barjesus. — History of Jewish Names. — Saul and Paul . . . . IM
CHAPTER VI.
Old and New Paphos. — Departure from Cyprus. — Coast of Pamphylia. — Perga. — Mark's Return to Jerusalem. — Mountain-Scenery of Pisidia. — Situation of Anti- och. — The Synagogue. — Address to the Jews. — Preaching to the Gentiles. — Perse- cution by the Jews. — History and Description of Iconium. — Lycaonia. — Derbe and Lystra. — Healing of the Cripple. — Idolatrous Worship oflFered to Paul and Barna- bas. — Address to the Gentiles. — St. Paul stoned. — Timotheus. — The Apostles re- trace their Journey. — Perga and Attaleia. — Return to Syria 190
CHAPTER Vn.
Controreisy in the Church. — Separation of Jews and Gentiles. — Difficulty in the Narra- tive. — Discontent at Jerusalem. — Intrigues of the Judaizers at Antioch. — Mission of Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem. — Divine Revelation to St. Paul. — Titus. — Private Conferences. — Public Meeting. — Speech of St. Peter. — Narrative of Barnabas and Paul. — Speech of St. James. — The Decree. — Public Recognition of St. Paul's Mis- sion to the Heathen. — St. John. — Return to Antioch with Judas, Silas, and Mark. — Reading of the Letter. — Weak Conduct of St. Peter at Antioch. — He is rebuked by St. Paul. — Personal Appearance of the two Apostles. — Their Reconciliation . ITf
CHAPTER Vm.
Political Divisions of Asia Minor. — Difficulties of the Subject. — Provinces in the Reigns of Claudius and Nero.— I. ASIA. — II. BITHYNIA. — HI. PAMPHYLIA. — IV. GALATIA. — V. PONTUS. — VI. CAPPADOCLV. — VH. CILICIA. — Visitation of the Churches proposed. — Quarrel and Separation of Paul and Barnabas. — Paul and Silas in Cilicia. — They cross the Taurus. — Lystra. — Timothy. — His Cir- cumcision.— Journey through Phrj-gia. — Sickness of St. Paul. — His Reception in Galatia. — Journey to the .^gean. — Alexandria Troas. — St. Paul's Vision . . 90S
CHAPTER IX.
Voyage by Samothrace to Neapolis. — Philippi. — Constitution of a Colony. — Lydia. — The Demoniac Slave. — Paul and Silas arrested. — The Prison and the Jailer. — Tha Magistrates. — Departure from Philippi. — St. Luke. — Macedonia described. — Its
CONTENTS. xxni
Condition as a Province. — The Via Egnatia. — St Paul's Jonmey through Amphipo- lis and ApoUonia. — Thessalonica. — The Synagogue. — Subjects of St. Paul's Preach- ing. — Persecution, Tumult, and Flight. — The Jews at Beroea. — St Paul again perse- cuted. — Proceeds to Athena ... S49
CHAPTER X.
Arriral on the Coast of Attica. — Scenery round Athens. — The Piraus and the " Long Walls." — The Agora. — The Acropolis. — The " Painted Porch " and the " Gar- den."— The Apostle alone in Athens. — Greek Religion. — The unknown God. — Greek Philosophy, — The Stoics and Epicureans. — Later Period of the Schools. — St. Paul in the Agora. — The Areopagus. — Speech of St. Paul. — Departare from Alhens SM
CHAPTER XI.
Letters to Thessalonica written fh)m Corinth. — Expulsion of the Jews from Rome. — Aquila and Priscilla. — St. Paul's Labors. — Arriral of Timothy and Silas. — Fint Epistle to the Thessaloniant. -— St. Paul is opposed by the Jews, and turns to the Gen- tiles. — His Vision. — Second Epistle to the TTiessalonian*. — Continued Residence in Corinth 99»
CHAPTER Xn.
Th© Isthmus and Acrocorinthus. — Early History of Corinth. — Its Trade and Wealth. — Corinth under the Romans. — Province of Achaia. — Gallio the Governor. — Tumult at Corinth. — Cenchrea. — Voyacre by Ephesns to Csssarea. — Visit to Jerusalem. — Antioch ... SS7
CHAPTER Xm.
The Spiritual Gifts, Constitution, Oramances, Divisions, and Heresies of the Primitive Church in the Lifetime of St. Paul S7l
CHAPTER XIV.
Departure from Antioch. — St. Paul's Companions. — Journey through Phrygia and Gala- tia. — Apollos at Ephesns and Corinth. — Arrival of St. Paul at Ephesns. — Disciples of John the Baptist. — The Synagogue. — The School of Tyrannus. — Ephesian Magic. — Miracles. — The Exorcists. — Burning of the Books .... iOS
CHAPTER XV.
Bt. Patil pays a short Visit to Corinth. — Returns to Ephesns. — Writes a Letter to the Corinthians, which is now lost. — They reply, desiring further Explanations. — State of the Corinthian Church — St. Paul writes the First Epistle to the Corinthians . 418
CHAPTER XVI.
Description of Ephesus. — Temple of Diana : her Image and Worship. — Political Consti- tution of Ephesns. — The Asiarchs. — Demetrius and the Silversmiths. — Tumult in the Theatre. — Speech of the Town-Clerk.— St. Paul's Departure . . . . 4»1
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XVn.
8t Paul At Troas. — He passes over to Macedonia. — Causes of his Dejection. — He meeta Titus at Philippi. — Writes the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. — Collection for the poor Christians in Judaea. — Liberality of the Macedonians. — Titus. — Journey by Dlyricum to Greece 47j
CHAPTER XVni.
Bt. Paul's Return to Corinth. — Contrast with his First Visit. — Bad news from Galatia. —
He writes the Epistle to the Galatians ilt
CHAPTER XIX.
St. Paul at Corinth. — Punishment of contumacious Offenders. — Subsequent Character of the Corinthian Church. — Completion of the Collection. — Phoebe's Journey to Rome.
— She bears the Epistle to the Romans 589
CHAPTER XX.
Tsthmian Games. — Route through Macedonia. — Voyage from Philippi. — Sunday at Troaa. — Assos. — Voyage by Mitylene and Trogyllium to Miletus. — Speech to the Ephesian Presbyters. — Voyage by Cos and Rhodes to Patara. — Thence to Phoenicia.
— Christians at Tyre. — Ptolemais. — Events at Csesarea. — Arrival at Jerusalem . 585
CHAPTER XXI.
Reception at Jerusalem. — Assembling of the Presbyters. — Advice given to St. Paul. — The Four Nazarites. — St. Paul seized at the Festival. — The Temple and the Gam- son. — Hebrew Speech on the Stairs. — The Centurion and the Chief Captain. — St. Paul before the Sanhedrin. — The Pharisees and Sadducees. — Vision in the Castle. — Conspiracy. — St. Paul's Nephew. — Letter of Claudius Lysias to Felix. — Night Journey to Antipatris. — Csesarea 620
CHAPTER XXn.
History of Jud«a resumed. — Roman Governors. — Felix. — Troops quartered in Palestine.
— Description of Csesarea. — St. Paul accused there. — Sj^eech before Felix. — Con- tinued Imprisonment. — Accession of Fcstus. — Appeal to the Emperor. — Speech before ^grippa 65S
CHAPTER XXin.
Ships and Navigation of the Ancients. — Roman Commerce in the Mediterranean. — Corn- Trade between Alexandria and Puteoli. — Travellers by Sea. — St. Paul's Voyage from Csesarea, by Sidon, to Myra. — From Myra, by Cnidus and Cape Salmone, to Fair Havens. — Phoenix. — The Storm. — Scamansliip during the Gale. — St. Paul's Vision.
— Anchoring in the Night. — Shipwreck. — Proof that it took Place in Malta. — Win- ter in the Island. — Objections considered. — Voyage, by Syracuse and Rhegium, to Puteoli . . . . • S77
CHAPTER XXIV.
The Appian Way. — Appii Forum and the Three Taverns. — Entrance into Rome. — The Praetorian Prefect. — Description of the City. — Its Population. — The Jews in Rome.
— The Roman Church. — St. Paul's Interview with the Jews. — His Residence in Rome . . . 7J6
CONTENTS. XXV
CHAPTER XXV.
JMaj of St. Paul's Trial. — His Occapations and Companions daring his Imprisonment. — He writes the Epistle to Philemon, the Epistle to the Colossiaru, and the Epistle to the Ephesians {so called) 744
CHAPTER XXVL
The Prntorinm and the Palatine. — Arriral of Epaphroditns. — Political Erents at Rome.
— Octaria and Poppaa. — St. Paul writes the Epistle to the Philippians. — Ho makes Conrerts in the Imperial Household ... 779
CHAPTER XXVn.
Authorities for St Paul's subsequent History. — Elis Appeal is heard. — His Acquittal. — He goes from Rome to Asia Minor. — Thence to Spain, where he resides two Years.
— He returns to Asia Minor and Macedonia. — Writes the First Epistle to Timotheus. • Visits Crete. — Writes the Epistle to Titus. — He winters at Nicopolis. — He is again imprisoned at Rome. — Progress of his Trial. — He writes the Second Epistle to IXmo- theus. — His Condemnation and Death 799
CHAPTER XXVin.
The Epistle to the Hebrews. — Its Inspiration not affected by the Doubts concerning its Au- thorship.— Its Original Readers. — Conflicting Testimony of the PrimitiTe Church oonceming its Author. — His Object in writing it — Translation of the Epistle 848
APPENDICES.
Apfbndix I. — (On the Chronology of Gal. ii.)
Afpeitdix n. — (On the Date of the Pastoral Epistles)
Apfbndix IIL — (Chronological Table and Notes)
□IDEZ
PKELIMINAEY DISSERTATION.
IT is not becansd tlm tralj great work need* anj commendation from bm that I consent to stand, as it were, for a little while between the learned authors and their readers, but because I have ventured to hope that what I have to say by way of introduction may be accepted as a humble contribution to the usefulness of "The People's Edition." This Life of Paul the Apostle, with his writings incorporated as biographical documents in a free but conscientious translation, was designed originally for the use of scholars conversant in some degree with the sources of the affluent and various learning by which the narra- tive is enriched and illustrated ; but in a People's Edition it will find, I doubt not, many intelligent readers to whom the facts and considerations offered in these few pages may be helpfuL
Even an unbeliever, if he be at all intelligent, must admit that the Christian religion is, at this moment, one of the most important facts in the condition of the civilized world ; and that, ever since its first appearance in history, it has been one of the most powerful among the forces that have impelled or controlled the world's progress. The year which was fixed upon, fourteen hundred years ago, as that in which Jesus Christ was bom, has become, by the general consent of civilized nations, the point from which aU time is measured, backward to the dimmest antiquity, and forward into the yet unknown future. In other words, the importance of Christianity as a fact and a force in history is recognized in the recognition of the Christian era. Any other method of dating, as, for example, in the British Empire, from the accession of the reigning sovereign, or, in our country, from the Declaration of Independence, is more for form than for use. The attempt of revolutionary France to abolish the Christian era, and to substitute for it the era of the Republic, was as futile as the simultaneous attempt to abolish the division of time into weeks, and is already remembered
XXVm PBELIMrNABY DISSEETATION.
only as a curiosity of history. Nothing future is more certain than that, in the progress of civilization and of international intercourse, making the knowledge and the arts of Christendom a common possession for mankind, all nations will learn to- count their years and centuries from the siipposed birthday of Christ. So signally has this Christian religion inserted itself into the world's history. It is not only a marvellous fact; it is a transcendent power : its beginning is the one epoch from which all the centuries before and after must be measured.
No thoughtful man, then, can fail to be deeply interested in the inquiry con- cerning the origin of Christianity, however he may doubt or deny its authori- ty as a revelation from God. When, where, and how did this religion begin ? It appears to-day vmder various forms and aspects, but always resting on the same basis of alleged facts. In its dogmas, in its ritual, in its external discipline, it has been modified from age to age ; at one time gradually corrupted by enthusi- asms or superstitions, at another time reformed. What was it in its beginning ? What were the ideas and sentiments, the faith, the expectations, the practices, and the character, of those who were first called Christians ? Such questions, surely, even if considered as historical questions only, are profoundly interesting to a thoughtful mind. What sources of information are there from which we may obtain a satisfactory answer to such questions ?
Apart from that little collection of writings which we caU the New Testament, we have really no information concerning the origin of Christianity. The great- est of aU revolutions in human thinking and in human afiairs began, and passed through the earliest stage of its progress, in an obscurity beneath the notice of philosophers and historians. When it first comes into recognition in secular literature, its existence is already a mystery to be accounted for, and no light appears in regard to its origin. Yet that was not a barbarous age. It was just the age in which the old civilization had reached its highest advancement. Over the wide extent of the empire that called itself the world, literature and the arts were in their glory. Grecian culture and the Grecian spirit of speculation had been superinduced upon the sterner qualities of the Roman race ; and many a provincial city, as well as the great centre of dominion, had its literary men, and its institute or college, in which accomplished teachers gave instmiction in philoso- phy and rhetoric to crowds of pupils. But the literature of that age took no careful notice, and made no deliberate record, of a movement, which, as we now see, was destined to change the history of the world. Three eminent Koman authors, who lived near the close of the first century and in the beginning of the second, and they only, mention distinctly the fact of Christianity as a new religion ; but they give no intelligent report of how it came into being.
PRELIMLNAKY DISSEBTATION. XXIX
It happens that those three authors were related to each other as friends. 'Laq oldest of them, Caius CoRNEiiius Tacitus, was bom about the year 66 of the Christian era. Caius Plinius C^cilius Seoundus, commonly called in English the younger Pliny, was bom in 61 or G2. Caius Suetonius Tban- QULLLUS was bom about the year 70, or two years before the fall of Jerusalem. They were all eminent men, of rare talents, accomplished by the best culture which the time could give, personally conversant with public affairs, employed in various offices of great responsibility, honored with the friendship of such an emperor as Trajan, yet more desirous of winning celebrity with future ages by literary achievements than by rising to the highest honors in the forum or in the imperial court. Two of them were historians, recording with exquisite art, and with something of philosophic sagacity, the events of their own age and of the age immediately preceding. The other survives in a voluminous collection of fomiliar letters to his friends, — just such memorials of men and times as the stu- dent of history most delights in. What information, then, do these three illus- trious authors give us concerning that most important theme in the history of their century, the origin and early progress of the Christian religion ?
The great work of Suetonius is his " Lives of the Twelve Caesars," beginning with Julius, and ending with Domitian. In his " Life of Claudius Caesar," whose reign began a.d. 42, and continued about e^lght years, there is one sentence which is commonly understood as referring to disturbances occasioned by Jewish hostility to the belief in Jesus as the Christ : " He [Claudius] expelled from Bome the Jews, who were continually raising tumults at the instigation of Chrestus." ^ That brief sentence, as the reader of this volume will have occa- gion to observe, describes, no doubt, the expulsion which brought the Christian Jew AquUa and his wife Priscilla from Italy to Corinth." Bnt at present we need only observe how meagre and unsatisfactory is the notice of a fact about which our curiosity in this nineteenth century demands full information. If the historian heedlessly wrote Chrestus for Christies, without inquiring what any person of that name had to do with the riots, then the Christian religion, Bome time after the year 42, and before the year 60, had become a subject of con- troversy among the Jews at Rome, and its enemies had attempted to suppress it by violence ; and farther this witness has nothing to say.
But in his "Life of Nero," the successor of Claudius, there is another passage, more explicit. Describing summarily those things done by Nero which were in part blameless and in part praiseworthy, before touching upon the crimes
» " Ju<l«o« Impnlrore Chretto awidne tumultu- » Aoto xrllL t. B«« pp. 83ft, 838, of thl« volniD*.
■otaa Bom* expallt." — Sitetonitu, GUad. 25.
XXX PBELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
which hare made that name forever infamous, he says, " The Christians, a sort of men of a new and mischievous superstition, were severely punished." * It seems, then, there were Christians at Rome when Nero was emperor. Their reli- gion was at that time new, and was considered (then, and forty or fifty years later, when Suetonius told the story) a mischievous superstition. They were severely punished for being Christians ; and, in the opinion of the historian, one of the good things which Nero did, or at least one of the things in that reign which deserve no reprehension, was the fact that Christians were thus punished. But why did he not tell us something more about those Christians ? Surely he might have told us (had he thought it worth the teUing) what their new super- stition was, whence it came, what mischievous practice or tendency there was in it. Could he have had only the faintest anticipation of what was to be about two hundred years from the date of his writing, — a Christian Caesar in the place of Nero, and that " new superstition " everywhere tritunphant over the old religion, — surely he would have taken pains to find out and to report some authentic particulars concerning the origin and early progress of a movement that was to bring about so great a change.
Of what Tacitus wrote, much has been lost; but there is one memorable pas- sage in which he speaks distinctly of the Christian religion. His " Annals " gave the succession of leading events in the empire, from the death of Augustus, A-D. 14, to the death of Nero, a.d. 68 ; and only about one-third of the great work has been lost. In the composition of such a work, nothing, it would seem, could be more natural than that he should find occasion to describe with some degree of minuteness, and with careful attention, the beginning and the early propagation of Christianity. Such an occasion occurred to him. He could not avoid speaking of the new religion ; but his account of it is very unsatisfactory to us, who know the historic importance of the facts which he ought to have described. Having narrated with picturesque effect the great conflagration of Bome in the reign of Nero, and the efforts which the empei^or made to efface from the minds of men the suspicion that he was himself the author of that destruction, Tacitus says, " Therefore Nero, to get rid of the rumor, substituted as the criminals, and punished with most exquisite tortures, those persons, odious for shameful practices, whom the vulgar called Christians. Christ, the author of that name, was punished by the procurator Pontius Pilate in tlie reign of Tibe- rius ; and the deadly superstition, repressed for a while, broke out again not only
t << AiBlcti sappUeUs Chriatlanl, geniu bominom mediocrl Isude dtgna, In ounm oontali : at seoers*- oapeniitlonLi nove ac maleficte." — Stiet., Nero, 10. rem « probrU ao Bcelerfbiu ejaa, de qulbos dehlaa ** H»e partlm nolla reprehenaione, partim etUm non dicaa." — Ibid, 19.
PBBIilMINABY DIS8BBTATION.
thioagh Jad»a, the original seat of that evil, but through the city also, whither, from erery side, all things horrible or shamefol flow together and come into rogue. IHist, some were arrested who made confession ; then, by the information obtained from them, a great multitude were found guilty, not so much of burning the city as of a hatred of the human race. Even in their dying, they were made sport o^ — some corered with skins of beasts, that they might be mangled to death by dogs ; others nailed to crosses ; others condemned to the flames, and, when the day went down, they were burned for illumination in the night. Nero had offered his own gardens for that spectacle, and gare at the same time a circus exhibition, going about himself among the rabble in the dress of a charioteer, or actually driring a chariot. The consequence was, that although the sufferers were wicked, and worthy of extreme punishment, commiseration was awakened, as if they suffered not from any consideration of the public welfare, but for the grati> fication of one man's cruelty." *
Tacitus, then, making his record of public erents, was compelled to take notice of the Christian religion as a fact in the reign of Nero. He describes more at length, what Suetonius mentions so briefly, the persecution of the Christians at Rome by that emperor. He tells us that it followed the great con- flagration, which is known to have been a.d. 64. From him we learn, in addition to what Suetonius has told us, the occasion and motive of the persecution, and what cruelties were inflicted on the sufferers. He even gives some information concerning the origin of that new religion ; that it arose in Judsea under the reign of Tiberius, which extended, as we know, from jl.d. 14 to a.d. 37 ; that its name was derived from Christ, who was punished by the procurator Pilate, whose term of oflBce began, as is ascertained from other sources of information, in the twelfth year of that reign ; that, instead of being suppressed by the pun- ishment inflicted on its author, it spread through Judaea, and through Rome itself Yet the description which he gives of Christianity is no more satisfactory to our reasonable curiosity than the more compendious statement given by Suetonius. The great conflagration, and the torture of Christians in Nero's gardens, were
*■ " Xrfo »bolendo nunorl I7ero anbdidlt reo», et addlU Ivdibrl*, vt feranim teryU eontectl Uniatm
qaaMitUaimla p««nl* adfeoit, quo* p«r flagiti* inTi- eanom intorlrent, aot crudbu* affixl, aut flammandl
■OS, Tolfrus GhristUno* app«ll»bat. Auctor nominLi atqne ubi deflciicet dlei in Tunm noctumi lumlnla
eJuaChrlBtaBjTiberlolmperltantc, perprocuratorem urerentur. Hortoa buos el spectaculo Nero obtul»-
Pontlxun Pllatnm, iuppllclo affectuB erat. Beprea- rat, et Clrcense ludlcrum edebat, habitu aurlgse per-
•aque In praesena exitlabillB anperatitlo mratu erom- mixtua plebl, Tel corricnlo InslstenB. Unde qui n-
pebat n»n mod6 per Judseam, orlginem ejna mail, qaam adversaB f ontea, et novigBlma exempia meritOB,
aed per urbem etlam qu6 cnncta nndique atrocia aut miaeratio orlebatur, taHqnam non utilltate publica,
pndenda conilnnnt, colebranturque. Igltnr primtUa aed In Baevitiam nninB abaumerentur." — Tacit., Ann,
eorreptl, qui fatebantur, delnde, Indlclo eorum multl- xr. 44. — The translation which I have given is aa
tado Ingena, hand perlnde In crlmlne Incendil, quam nearly literal aa the difference of the two languages
edlo hvBuni generis oonrloti ■nnt. Et pereontibui and thesententieasbreTity of the author will pennU.
XXXn PEELIMINAET DISSEETATION.
within the reach of the historian's personal memory. As a child, he might have seen what he describes so vividly. Forty years had passed, and he was writing abont Nero in the reign of Trajan ; but he did not think it necessary to recon- sider what he had received m childhood aa the common opinion about the Chris- tian religion. Any inquiry concerning its principles or practices seemed to him beneath the dignity of an historian. So, instead of telling us any thing which an historical inquirer at this day, tracing the greatest of revolutions to its origin, would be most eager to know, he dismisses the subject with a few bitter and contemptuous phrases. Christianity — the very name of it was " vulgar : " per- sons of his rank and culture rarely had occasion to mention the " odious " thing; it was a " deadly superstition." The wretches who in Nero's gardens were torn to pieces by dogs for the amusement of the public, or were set up on crosses that bystanders might enjoy the excitement of seeing so exquisite a form of mortal agony, or were covered with combustible matter, and burned, to give light as evening came on, deserved what they suffered ; though the populace held fast the opinion that Nero was the great iacendiary, and began to pity the wicked sufferers, and to deem them the objects not so much of imperial justice as of imperial cruelty. From this historian, then, we obtain only the scantiest infor- mation which he could give without failing to record what he recognized as a significant incident in the reign of Nero.
Not far from the time when Tacitus was writing his " Annals," and Suetonius his " Lives of the Caesars," Pliny, the intimate firiend of both, was administering the government of a province on the southern coast of the Black Sea. He had been appointed Propraetor of Bithynia and Pontus by the Emperor Trajan, a.d. 103, — about forty years after the persecution described by Tacitus. The last of the ten books of his collected epistles contains his correspondence with Trajan, mostly oflBcial. One of his despatches to the emperor gives some of that infor- mation concerning Christianity which the great historians disdained to give; and it has been preserved, not because the author thought that distant genera- tions would desire to know what he had happened to learn about that strange religion, but only because he thought that the letter, like other letters of his about matters of slight importance, would be valued for its literary merit. It was im- possible for him to conceive, that, of all his epistles, the one which in after-ages would be most thought of, and which would make him known to millions of readers, who, but for that, would never hear his name, was his business-like com- munication to the emperor on the question, what to do with Christians.
A close translation, with no attempt to represent the literary merit of the original, will answer the purpose of laying before the reader just what Plinj
PEELIMINARY DISSERTATION. T-rrtn
reported officially to the emperor about Christianity in Pontua and Bithynia^ lome time within the first ten years of the second century : * —
"It is my custom, sir, to refer every thing about which I am in doubt to you; for who can better direct my hesitation, or remove my ignorance ?
" I have never been present at any judicial examination of Christians, so that I «m ignorant in what manner and to what extent it is usual to punish them or to examine them. I have also been quite unable to decide whether there ia ftny discrimination on account of difference in age, or those who are of tender age are treated in the same way with the more robust; whether pardon is given to those who repent; or, if one has been at any time a Christian, it is nothing in his favor that he has ceased to be such ; whether the mere aame is punished, or only those shameful practices which are connected with the name.
" MeanwhUe, in the case of those who have been accused before me of being Christians, I have taken this course, — I have put the question to them, whether they were Christians. To those who confessed I put the question again, and the third time, threatening them with punishment. Those who persevered in th^t confession I ordered to be taken to execution ; for I did not doubt, that, whatever the nature of their confession might be, the pertinacity and inflexible obstinacy ought to be punished. There have been some possessed with that sort of mad- ness, whom, because they were Eoman citizens, I have set down in the list of persons who must be sent to Rome.*
"Soon, as often happens, the proceedings having caused the accusation to spread in aU (directions, there came to be many sorts of cases.* An anonymou* indictment was offered containing many names. I have thought proper to dis- charge those who deny that they are or have been Christians, when they repeated after me a prayer to the gods, and offered worship, with incense and wine, to your statue (which, for that purpose, I had ordered to be brought with the images of the deities), and, besides all that, reviled Christ ; which things they who are really Christians cannot, it is said, be forced to do. Others, named by an informer,* said that they were Christians, and immediately denied it : they said that they had been, but had ceased to be, Christians ; some three, some more, and a few even twenty years ago. These all venerated your statue and the images of the gods
*■ PUn., Bp. X. ^. The despatch and the empo» ■ DUnudaaU m arlmln* plorM cpedos Inelde
»!*■ reply «re given at full length In the original, nai.
■eeompanled with Ifelmoth'a translation, by Dr. * "IndiM,"— perhaps th* moiv aaonyaou te
Lyman Coleman, Chr. Antiquities, pp. 2&-S0. fenaw.
* Compare AeU ztL 87, zzil. 26-27, xxr. U, U,
XXZIT PRELIMINAEY DISSERTATION.
they also reviled Christ. But they aflSrmed that the sum whether of their crime or of their error was this, — that they used to meet on a stated day before light, and to sing among themselves, in turn, a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by an oath, not to any wickedness, but that they would never commit theft, robbery, nor adultery ; that they would never break their word ; that they would never deny a trust when called to give it up : and, after these performances, their way was to separate, and then meet again to partake of food, but only of an ordinary and harmless kind.^ Even this they said they had given up after my edict, by which, according to your orders, I had pro- hibited clubs.'
" Having heard so much, I deemed it the more necessary to ascertain the truth by putting to the torture* two women-servants who were called dea- conesses ; * but I found nothing more than a perverse and excessive superstition. Therefore, having postponed the investigation, I betake myself to you for advice ; for the affair seems to me to require such consultation, especially because of the number of persons implicated : for many of every age, of every rank, and of both sexes also, are summoned to trial, and will be simimoned ; for the contagion of that superstition has pervaded not only cities, but villages and also farms. It can be, I think, resisted and corrected. At least, it is evident enough that the temples, which a little while ago were forsaken, have begun to be frequented, «nd sacred observances long intermitted are renewed ; and the flesh of sacrifices, for which, of late, a purchaser could rarely be found, is now sold everywhere.* And this makes it easy to think how many might be reformed if repentance can gain pardon."
The sententious reply of Trajan to this letter adds nothing to the information given in the letter itself The emperor approves what Pliny has done. He iays that no fixed rule of proceeding in such cases can be given. At the same time, he says that there should be no effort to find out Christians. If any are accused and convicted, thoy must be punished ; yet if any man, being accused,
* " Ad eApiendum dbnin, promlAenum tamen et for any other purpose. It will not be difficult to faoMzlnm." The word " promlBCuum " may sigfnlfy keep watch over »o few." Trt^Jan, In reply, adverted that the food was distributed to all aUke; yet Tad- to the factions character of the province, and eBp«- tsa uses it to signify that which is ordinary. dally of its cities ; and said that organized socletiea
* This English word seems to represent fairly there, of whatever name, and for whatever object, the word " hetarias." In a former despatch (x. 42), would certainly become In a short time hetserise, or Pliny, having reported to the emperor a conflagra- sodalities. One characteristic of the Roman sodall* tioB at Nicomedia, which had been very destructive ties was that they were festive clubs, or lodges, and for want of a competent flre-departmont, asked his were therefore easily perverted to political or &•• advice abont Incorporating a fire-company of at least tlous nses.
a hundred and fifty mechanics. " I will take care," ■ Compare Acts zrU. 24.
h* said, " that none but a mechanic shaU be a mem- * " Mlnistrss."
htte, and that the privilege ooneeded shall not be naed * Compare 1 Oor. viii. 4-18, Asta xr. V.
PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. ^XT
shall deny that he is a Christian, and shall confirm his denial hy wou* ipping the Roman gods, however suspected his former conduct may have been, let hia recantation clear him. Anonymous accusations are to be disregarded.
How much information concerning the early history of Christianity can we gather from this correspondence ? The question, at present, is, not what light Pliny's letter throws on information derived from other sources, but only how much we should know if the incidental revelations made in this despatch, to- gether with what Suetonius and Tacitus tell us, were all our knowledge on the subject. Suppose the statesmanship of Trajan and PHny had extirpated that " perverse and excessive superstition," and this correspondence had come down to tell us about an extinct and forgotten religion : how much information would it give us ?
1. In the tenth year of the second century, or earlier, the people called Chris- tians had become very numerous in Pontua and Bithynia, — so numerous, that, by their influence, the resort to the temples of the established religion had been seriously diminished. Nor had that new religion then for the first time invaded the region. Some persons are mentioned who had not only accepted it, but had afterwards apostatized from it, as far back as a.d. 90.
2. The Christian religion was regarded and treated by the Roman Govern- ment as unlawful. It was a crime to be a Christian. At Rome, there had been, in times then recent, prosecutions and trials of persons charged with that crime ; for so much ia very distinctly implied when Pliny says, by way of apology for asking advice, that he had never attended at such trials.
3. It had become well understood that one who was really a Christian might be expected to die rather than to speak Ul of Christ, or to comply with the estab- lished religion in an act of worship. No such notion could have obtained cur- rency, unless the attempt had been made often and unsuccessfully to break down the obstinacy of Christians in that respect. In this way, it was settled by the good sense of PHny, and by the approval of Trajan, that, in the case of any person accused of Christianity, the question whether he was guilty might be peremptorily decided by calling upon him to perform an act of worship to the gods of the established religion, and to pronounce a malediction against Christ.
4u Ample testimony is given to the moral character of the Christians at that time in Pontus and Bithynia. Reluctant to punish men for a mere name, Pliny, when men and women were brought before him charged with being Chris- tians, thought it necessary to prove against them some of the shameful practices associated with that name in the common belief; but he could find no evidence to oonvict them of any thing shameful. He received the testimony of renegadei
XIXYl PBELTMTNARY DISSEBTATION,
who escaped punishment by renouncing their religion ; and th^ir testimoi. y was, that the Christians were bound by a sacred covenant to do nothing wrong, and that, in their assemblies, there was nothing worse than innocently eating together. Not satisfied with this, he used his power as a magistrate to extort the truth from those who were supposed to be keeping it back. He selected from among the accused two female slaves who seemed to hold some sort of an office in the Christian community ; and, having never thought that slaves could have any rights which Koman chivalry was bound to respect, he examined them by tor- ture : but they could only tell him the particulars of what he called a perverse and unbounded superstition.
5. Who would not like to read, at this day, the questions which were put to those two slave deaconesses on the rack, and the answers which they gave ? History ought to know what that superstition was. Neither Suetonius nor Taci- tus told what it was : nor does Pliny tell us any thing more than what the rene- gades told him ; which was, that the Christians had a custom of meeting on a certain day, at a very early hour, and singing a hymn to Christ as if he were a god. Concerning the beliefs and tenets of the Christians, the origin of their superstition, the methods in which it had been propagated, and the secret of the tenacity with which it had maintained itself for more than forty years sine© Nero undertook to suppress it at Rome, this correspondence gives no information.
We have been inquiring what the contemporaneous literature of the world can tell us concerning the origin and early progress of the Christian religion, and we have found little more than a careless recognition of Christianity as a fact that was beginning to attract the hostile attention of the Roman Government in the latter part of the first century and the beginning of the second. We learn from one author, that, about one thousand seven hundred and fifty-eight years ago, it had a great multitude of adherents in that part of Asia Minor which borders on the Black Sea; from two others, that it was severely perse- cuted at Rome about forty-six years earher; and, from one of the two, that it had its beginning in Judaea under the reign of Tiberius, whose officer, Pontius Pilate, punished its author, Christ. By vestiges so few and faint, we trace it back to about the thirtieth year of the Christian era, with regret that phOoso- phers and historians who saw the fact of the new religion did not suspect how important the fact was. A few years only after the date of Pliny's despatch to Trajan, the new religion begins to make a larger figure in the literature of the Roman Empire ; and at the same time it begins to have a copious literature of its own, from which we may ascertain, quite satisfactorily, what it then was, not only in its doctrines and spirit and its morals, but also in its traditions con- cerning its own origin.
PBELIMINABY DISSEKTATIOA. ZXXTO
Now, that Christian literature, commencing not long before the middle of the second century, is full of references to what we may call a more primitive Chris- tian literature, — the writings not indeed of Christ himself, but of his apostles and earliest disciples. Those writings were held in great veneration, as giving the original and authentic report of what Christ was, of what he said and did, of the truth which he brought into the world, of a reconciliation to be effected through him between human souls and God, and of the plan and hope which he inaugurated for the renovation of the world. We may, without any absurdity or contradiction, suppose those primitive writings to have been lost, and the re- ligion of which they were the original and authentic record to have come down to us in the living tradition of the Church, in formularies of doctrine or of wor- ship, in rules of government and discipline, and in the writings of the Christian fathers from about the middle of the second century. But what a loss would that have been I what a loss to history 1 what a loss to Christianity 1 How diligent- ly would old libraries in Europe, and older monasteries in Arabian and Lybian deserts, be explored and ransacked in the hope of finding those primitive docu- ments of the Christian religion 1 History, patiently tracing back the greatest of aU revolutions to its origin, would say, " We can spare the lost books of Livy and of Tacitus ; but give us those lost books in which the * perverse, unbounded, deadly superstition,' as the Romans called it, portrayed itself at its begLnning, and recorded its own earliest conflicts and victories." Earnest and inquiring believers would say, " Give us those lost books ; let us have our Christianity, not from the fathers, but from those apostles and evangelists to whose writings the fathers are continually referring us, not as defined and wrought into sys- tems by theologians, nor as formulated by councils, but as it was first received firom Christ himself, as it was first revealed in the story of his life and of his death, as it was first written down by men whom he had personally taught and commissioned."
Suppose now, that, as has happened in respect to other books long lost, those books, the primitive documents of Christianity, after having been lost for cen- turies, are at last recovered- Only a few years ago, an enthusiastic scholar, traveUing in search of ancient manuscripts, was so happy as to find in a convent on Mount Sinai a copy of the New Testament, written, as indubitable indica- tions prove, fall fifteen hundred years ago, — a volume so ancient, that the eyes of Constantino or of Athanasius might have looked upon it. If that " Siaaitic manuscript," when discovered, had been the only extant copy of the primitivo Christian documents, it is not difficult to imagine what would have been the importance of the discovery, both in its relation to the earliest history of Chris-
JCIVin PEELIMINAEY DISSERTATION.
tianity, and in its relation to Cliristianity itself as a divinelj revealed religion. Think with what carefulness the precious book would be transcribed and edited for scholars ! how many translations of it would be made, that Christians every- where might read, every man in his own language, the original and authentic record concerning Christ and his work and kingdom ! what treasures of learn- ing would be expended in the illustration of it ! what commentaries would be made for all sorts of readers, and for various uses, historical, doctrinal, practical, »nd devotional ! Think how the venerable writings of the fathers, from Justin Martyr downward, would be compared with these more venerable writings, so much nearer to the head-spring of the river of the water of life 1 how the theo- logical systems of this nineteenth-century Christianity would be brought into eomparison with what Paul and John and Peter and the Master himself taught concerning God and the way of life I what identities and resemblances would be traced out, or what contrasts would be shown, between the various fabrics of church polity now extant, and the societies of " holy persons in Christ Jesus, with the overseers and servants," when Christianity was new ! how the accepted max- ims of Christian morality, and the ordinary standards of Christian character, would be tested by comparing them with what was expected and what was demanded of those who were called Christians in the reigns of Claudius and of Nero 1 what diligence would be employed to ascertain how far the Christian consciousness in our day, with all that believing souls now experience of the power of godliness, is accordant with the Christian consciousness of the apostles, and with their experience of what they preached as the power of God to salvation I
Just such is the actual value, such the use we ought to make, and are making, of the writings included in the New Testament ; for our supposition only help? as to realize more freshly a very familiar fact. These writings purport to give us the testimony of personal witnesses concerning the origin of what is to-day one of the most important elements in the history and condition of the world. With these writings in our hands, we know how and where the Christian religion had its beginning ; what obstacles it encountered and overcame ; by what means, and by what concurrent forces in the providence of God, it was diffused through the civilized world ; how it happened to attract so early the attention of the Boman Government ; and what its relations were to the Jewish people, and to («heir immemorial and most peculiar religion. Thus the few documents contained in the New Testament enable us to fill up what, without them, would have been * mysterious and hopeless blank in the history of mankind. At the same time, they have for us another and greater value. They bring us historically nearer to the T>Ar8on of Christ than we can be brought by any possible help without them.
PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. XIXIX
They give us his words as his nearest friends and daily companions caught them from his lips. They show us what impression his unique person made on his immediate disciples, both by all that they heard from him, and by all that they saw in him; what place he held "in their religious consciousness, and in all their thinking about the reconciliation between God and men ; what place he held in their most reverent yet most tender affection, in their self-sacrificing zeal, in their immortal hope ; what they thought of him, and what they said about him, when he had passed away from among them. As we read these writings, we find oxix- selves brought into the circle nearest to Christ, among his earliest disciples. We sit among those who listened to the Sermon on the Mount. We are with the twelve as they learn from his parables, so slowly, what he teaches so patiently concerning the kingdom of God among men. We are with them on the Lake of Galilee, at Jacob's Well, in the house of the sisters at Bethany, in the grand porches of the Temple. We sit with them on the Mount of Olives, overlooking the city while he foretells its destruction. We are with them in the upper room where he keeps his last passover; and we go out with them, under tho full moon, into the garden. We look through their eyes upon his cross and hia tomb. We share in their amazement at his resurrection. We stand with them, gazing upward, while a cloud receives him out of their sight. Then we are with them in their consultations, waiting and praying, till they are summoned to their work so humble, and yet so august. As we follow them, we presently lose sight of them. The work they are doing is greater than they are : it overshadows them, and they disappear. It is not for their sake that the story is told, but for Christ's sake. It is of little moment to us that the New Testament gives no complete biography of any apostle, — never tells us where Paul died, or Peter, or John, or any of the twelve, save Judas the betrayer, and James the son of Zebedee ; but, what is of great moment to us, it does tell us what they thought of Jesus, and what the gospel was which he gave them for the world. We might like to know all about the apostles, where they severally labored, and how they died, as apocryphal legends falsely report ; but what the New Testament tells is far better than any thing could be which it does not tell.
We may use a story as an illustration, without vouching for it as true. Many years ago, it is said, there was published in Ireland, with the design of making an impression on Roman-Catholic readers, a little tract purporting to be "A Grenuine Letter from St. Peter." It was read by many, and heard by many who could not read, with eager and reverent curiosity. Nor was there any deception in the case. The little tract was just what it purported to be, " A Genuine Letter from St. Peter." It was simply the First Epistle of Peter, taken from the New
XL PBETiTMTNABY DISSERTATION.
Testament; and the reading or hearing of it was almost like sitting down with the holy apostle himself to hear him talk to Christians about Christ and salva- tion. Just such is the priyilege which we have in read'jig the primitive d^wu- ments of Christianity. Would you coimt it a privilege to hear from John the apostle ? You have before you three very characteristic letters from him, one of them quite extended ; and, what is more, he has written down for you in his old age, and you have received from him, his oft-repeated stories of things which he remembered about Jesus, but which had not till then been written. In like manner, you have two letters from Peter, " epistles general," or " catholic," they are called, — one of them addressed, comprehensively, to the "strangers" or Bojoumers, "chosen," "sanctified," "obedient," and "sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ," who were dispersed through those northern districts of Asia Minor, where Pliny, forty years afterward, found so many Christians ; the other inscribed in yet more general terms " to them who have obtained like precious ^th with us." We need not name all the writers whom this one little volume of the New Testament brings into direct communication with us ; but we can- not refrain from mentioning distinctly the characteristic letters of Paul, that great apostle, whose labors were so abundant, whose missionary journeys had so wide a circuit, and whose writings, whether addressed to individual friends or to communities of Christians, are so full of his individual life, throbbing, as it werO) in every sentence, with the intensity of his Christian thought and feeling.
But are these documents really what they are supposed to be ? Intelligent readers are aware that this question has been discussed with great learning and diligence on both sides, and, on the part of some writers, with great audacity of conjecture and assertion. A fall consideration of the evidences which go to prove that we have in the New Testament the primitive and authentic docu- ments of the Christian religion, and that such documents taken together, as we find them, could not have come into being otherwise than contemporaneously with the origin of that religion, would be impracticable within the limits of this Preliminary Dissertation. Yet a few thoughts may be suggested which the readers of " The Life and Epistles of St. Paul " will fijid occasion to appreciate and to verify.
L First of all, the remarkable fact, already referred to, that these documents do not give us the means of tracing the life of any apostle to its end, and that neither Paul nor any one of the original twelve (save Judas, and James the brother of John) is mentioned or alluded to in the New Testament as dead, e&nnot but impress an unprejudiced mind. The earliest authentic Christian
PBSLIMINABY DISSEBTATXON.
writing, oattiide of the New Testament (a letter from the church at Borne to the church at Corinth, written by Clement, " whose name ia in the book of life "),* mentions the deaths of Paul and Peter in a yery natural way.* How does it hap- pen that neither the death of Paul nor that of Peter is mentioned in any of the New-Testament writings ? We may raise a more particular question on this point. It has been said that the historical book caUed "The Acts of the Apostles" was not written by Luke, the companion of Paul, but was put together by some unknown compiler of traditions in the latter part of the second century ; and that the " most excellent TheophUus," to whom it is inscribed, was none other than Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch from a.d. 168 to a.d. 183. But, on that supposition, how does it happen that the book terminates abruptly, leaving Paul still a prisoner in his own hired house at Bome two years after his arrival there ? Could not the compiler of traditions, when that apostle had been dead a hundred years, find some tradition that would enable him to carry on the story ? What became of the appeal to Caesar ? Did the appellant have a trial ? or did he remain a prisoner till his death ? Surely such a termination of the story would have been impossible at any date subsequent to the death of PauL But if the book was written, as it purports to have been, by one who was with Paul on the journey, and arrived with him at Rome ; and if the Gospel according to Luke, and then this book, its sequel, were written while the prisoner was waiting for his trial, — there is the best possible reason for such a breaking-off without ending the story ; and that is the only reason that can be conceived of without violating all probability. The narrative is brought down to a point very near the date at which the writing was ended.
May not the fact, then, that in these collected writings the apostles disappear without our knowing what became of them, be taken as proof that they were, in their origin, contemporaneous with the apostles ? Had there been time for tradition concemiug the apostles to grow into fable, and for a halo of myth to form itself around each saintly name, the story of what they did, and whither they went, and where and how they died, could not have been left so imperfect as we have it ia the New Testament.
II. The attention of biblical scholars was long ago arrested by a certain peculiarity of language or style, which, in one degree or another, characterizes all the New-Testament writings. It can hardly be denied that the entire volume was written by Hellenist Jews ; that is, by persons who used the Greek language with Hebrew idioms. Of course, then, it was written when the Christian community, for whose use at the first these writings were designed, consisted
1 Phil. iT. a. « Clem- Eom. L 6,
XLH PBET.TMTXABY DISSERTATION.
largely of Jewish converts, and when its leaders especially were men of Jewisk birth and training. Accordingly, the Hellenistic style or dialect is peculiar to the New Testament. If we find any thing of it in the fathers, even in the earliest of them, we cannot but ascribe the phenomenon to a conscious or imconscious imitation of what is called the biblical or scriptural style, which is really nothing else than the Hebrew style.
III. Another characteristic of the New Testament is much more to omr purpose. Its contents are an indication of its date. Some of the questions which the Epistles, especially, touch upon distinctly as the live questions of their time, are questions which, in a few years after the apostolic age, had ceased to be controverted or agitated among Christians. In particular, the question whether a Gentile could be a Christian, partaking in the privileges and hopes of Christ's kingdom, without first becoming a Jew, was never a contro- verted question in the Christian community for any considerable time after the faU of Jerusalem. On the contrary, when the separation of the new kingdom of God from the old Mosaic institutions had been visibly completed, the tables were turned ; and the question then was, rather, whether a Jew could be a Christian without renouncing his nationality. But the New Testament wan written, as almost every page of it testifies, at a time when Christianity had not yet been completely detached from Judaism, but was still, in the view of Syna- gogue and Sanhedrin, of procurators and proconsuls, and of mobs at Philippi, at Ephesus, and at Jerusalem, a Jewish sect or schism. It shows upon its surface the slow progress of conviction on that subject in the minds of the apostles themselves; how, while their Master was personally teaching them, they never grasped the breadth of his conception ; how the day of Pentecost did not quite emancipate them from their Jewish narrowness ; how even Peter's vision at Joppa, and the interpretation forced upon him at Caesarea, did not perfectly enlighten them ; and how, at last, the deputation from Antioch, with their report of what Christianity was doing in the great city where it first received its name, brought them to commit themselves in the most formal way for the gospel of a kingdom of heaven in which there is neither Jew nor Gentile. That " mystery," hid from foregoing ages, but revealed at last, crops out in the Gospels ; for it imderlies them. It gives unity to the story of the Acts of the Apostles; it shines forth everywhere in the Epistles of Paul, whose "false brethren," Jews professing to believe in Christ, and trying to make the gospel a monopoly for Judaism, were his most vexatious adversaries. Can any reader of those writings believe that the New Testament, so full of that essentially tran- sient question, was forged, or somehow grew, as a myth grows, after that question had begun to be forgotten ?
PBELIMtNAKY DISSERTATION. lUn
IV. We who receive these writings as not only apostolic but divinely inspired encounter a serious difficulty in our interpretation of them. If they are what they purport to be, they seem to show that the first Christians, under the teaching of the apostles who reported to them the words of Christ, were expect- ing what is now called Christ's second advent, as an event that was to take place before that generation should have passed away; and that, with that expected coming of Christ, they generally associated in their thoughts the resurrection of the dead, the final judgment, and the end of the world. Yet to-day, at the end of eighteen hundred years, Christ has not come again in manner and form as he was expected to come in the lifetime of the apostles. We recognize the difficulty, though we hold, that, In one way or another, it can be solved without impairing our reverence for these Scriptures. There ia no need of our pausing here to show how it can be solved ; for at present we have to do with it as a fact rather than with the solution of it. Indeed, if the difficulty should even be pronounced incapable of any solution consistent with the inspi- ration of these Scriptures, the fact that there is such a difficulty woidd be only BO much the more conclusive in its bearing on the question now before us. Are these collected writings, as they purport to be, the primitive records of Chris- tianity, contemporaneous with its origin ? If they are not, but were forged at some later date (even though it were only a few years later) by writers who thought that the pious fraud of personating the apostles was a service acceptable to God, how was it possible for those pious forgers, after the apostles, and, with them, all the men of the apostolic age, were dead, not to beware of creating such a difficulty ? Is it less than absurd to suppose that they deliberately put into the documents they were forging what was likely to pass for evidence that the apostles were in error about the day of the Lord? Would they not have distinguished more carefully between Christ's coming to judge all nations, and his coming in the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Temple ? — between the end of the world and the end of the Mosaic dispensation ?
V. Any contriver of an hypothesis to account for the existence of the New- Testament documents, without admitting their historic value as contemporaneouB with the origin of Christianity, ought to show us where or by whom, prior to the beginning of the third century, such writings could have been produced. Let him compare them with what genuine remains we have of Christian authorship in the age immediately following the apostles, — the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Epistles of Ignatius. The man who could write the fourth Gospel, without having been a personal disciple of Jesus, must have been » man of mark in his time. To fabricate that book out of loose and mythical
XLIV PKELIMINABY DISSBfiTATION.
traditions must have been a much greater achievement of genius than to write it from long-cherished recollections of a dear and intimate friendship with Jesua, though it is a wonderful book to be produced even in that simple manner. In which of three or four generations next after the apostles are we to look for a Christian author capable of such a work ? Could a man like Ignatius, or like the author of the epistle which bears the name of Barnabas, or like Hermas, or even like the literary Justin Martyr, so personate Paul as to produce the Epistle to the Romans ? The man with genius enough to do that had a dramatic power that might have produced a play like one of Shakspeare's. Who was there in those three or four generations that could have written even the First Epistle of Peter? We might ask the same question in reference to almost every book of the collection. But, instead of that, let us ask, once for all, If the age which produced Christianity was not competent to produce these Scriptures, in what later generation could they have been produced ?
In brief, this wide difference between the primitive Christian literature which we find collected and canonized in the New Testament, and the Christian literature of the next following ages, — apostolical fathers, apostolical canona and constitutions, apocryphal gospels, and every thing of that sort, — is little less than demonstration, not only that the Christians of those early ages were capable of distinguishing the genuine from the spurious, and were careful to exclude from among their Holy Scriptures every thing not authenticated, but also, and qtdte independently of their verdict, that the New Testament is what it purports to be. Aside from the difference in style and idiom, and in the bearing on questions peculiar to the apostolic age, there is a difference in tone and spirit, a difference in respect to plain and sturdy common sense as opposed to feeble sentimentalism, a difference in respect to healthiness of conscience as opposed to morbid scrupulousness or enthusiastic exaggerations of self-sacrifice; and such differences show us convincingly, that, in the New Testament, we have not the work of nobody knows who in some post-apostolic age, but the really primitive documents of the Christian religion.
VI. All the foregoing suggestions will find ample illustration in the study of these documents, with such aids as are now more and more within the reach, not of privileged scholars only, but of " the people." This excellent work on " The Life and Epistles of St. Paul " is eminently valuable for the light which V throws incidentally upon almost every topic of the evidence given by the New Testament itself in proof of its own authenticity. But the most copious illustration of that general argument is on a topic not yet mentioned ; namely, the coincidences between the historical and geographical references in these
PKELIMIXARY DISSERTATION. XL?
wTitinga, and that Jtnowledge of facts which we are enabled to gain from othei ■onrces.
One of the most charming as well as convincing books of argumentation in the English language, or in any other, is Paley's " Horae Paulinse." Taking that portion of Paul's personal history which is given in the Acts of the Apos- tles, and comparing it with the collection of epistles bearing his name, if we find, at one point and another, an irreconcilable discrepancy between the two, we infer with great certainty that either the history is at those points false, and therefore is generally not worthy of confidence, or the epistles are forgeries. If we find a close and obviously careful coincidence at every point, we can hardly avoid the suspicion that either the history was compiled from the letters, or the letters were composed as imaginary illustrations of the history. But if the coincidences are of such a sort as to exclude the supposition of their having been contrived ; if there are seeming and obvious discrepancies, which, upon closer examination, are reconciled by the discovery of a latent and undesigned coincidence ; if a fact mentioned in the one is illustrated by some obscure allusion incidentally occurring in -the other; if these latent and manifestly undesigned coincidences are multiplied as we proceed in our study of the documents, — the argument accumulates in its progress, and we arrive at the firmest sort of a conviction that the history is true, and the letters genuine. Nor shall we be moved from that conviction if some apparent discrepancies remain. We may suppose, that, if we had one or two facts not mentioned on either side, the ■eemiag disagreement would be reconciled. We may even admit, that, just there, the historian was mistaken, or that the writer of the letters made an inaccurate allusion ; but the accumulated strength of the argument for the credibility of the historian and the genuineness of the letters will not be seriously impaired.
Other writers have applied the same method of examination to other portiona of the New Testament. For example, a similar argument has been made by tracing out the latent coincidences between the four Gospels and the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus. The field of inquiry and of argument into which Paley introduces us is wide and fruitful ; and the evidence thus obtained is always cumulative. Coincidences that might have been contrived, and that obtrude themselves upon the reader, add little to the argument; but every latent and undesigned coincidence which we detect between one portion of the New Testament and another, or between any book of the New Testament and any other authentic source of information, is an additional strand twisted into the cable that holds us to our anchor in the trustworthiness of these documenta as the original records of the Christian faith.
XLVI PKELIMINAHY DISSERTATION.
The authors of the work, which, in this edition, is offered to " the people,** have not made it any part of their design to reproduce or to extend the beauti- ful argumentation of Paley. But the ingenuous reader cannot but be impressed with the fact, that the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of Paul, while they do by no means repeat each other, are marvellously supplementary to each other (the history illustrating the epistles, and the epistles illustrating the history); every letter, by perfectly incidental indications of time and locality, finding its place in the history, and the history often explaining with great felicity allusions in the letters which would otherwise have been obscure. But the argument from coincidences is not exhausted by even a complete exhibi- tion of these instances. The principle has a wider reach ; and the work of Conybeare and Hcwson is one great repository of discovered coincidences between the New Testament and all that we can learn from other sources con- cerning the age in which it purports to have been written.
Briefly the principle of the argument is this : If the seemingly historical documents of the New Testament were fictions of the second centiuy, or were produced, like the apocryphal gospels, by a mythical tendency in the ages fol- lowing the origin of Christianity, they would not be found to harmonize with the authentic history of the age which they pretend to represent, nor (if they were composed elsewhere) with the geography of the country or countries in which the scene is laid. Such is the fact with the apocryphal gospels, as it is also with the fictitious Book of Judith in the Old-Testament apocrypha. If the historical documents collected in the New Testament were of that sort, it would be impossible to make them fit into the known history of the Jewish people and of the Roman Empire during the fijst seventy years of the Christian era. They could give no illustration to history, nor could history illustrate them. But what is the fact ? The literature of the Roman Empire through the first Christian century knew nothing of Christianity, or alluded to it only with con- tempt. Yet what wealth of illustration is poured upon the New Testament from the history which that literature gives us, and even from the coins and monuments of the period 1 How is the whole story of Paul, for example, from his birth and early education at Tarsus to his latest epistle from the prison in which he was waiting for a martyr's death at Rome, adjusted and fitted into its place in the history of the Roman Empire as it then was 1 The entire New Testament, with the account which it gives of Christ, and of the world-move- ment which began in his life and death, finds and fills a gap in the world's history, and is itself a grand coincidence.
A few years ago, in one of our cities, a trial for murder was in progress. Tb*
PEELIMINAil\ DISSERTATION. ILTn
ftcciued had able counsel, who had planned for him an ingenious defence. Wit- ness after witness had been examined and cross-examined ; and, though the probabilities were accumulating against him, it was felt bj the spectators, and it was seen in the countenances of the jury, that as yet there was no conclusire proof of guilt. At last, a knife was exhibited, which had been taken from the prisoner's person. If that knife had been bloody, no trace of blood was left upon it : but there was a gap in the blade ; and to that the attention of the jury was directed by the prosecutor. Then was exhibited a little flake of steel, which the physicians who examined the murdered body had discovered in the fatal wound. The Irnife and the flake were passed to the jury, that the relation of the flake to the gap might be seen by them with the aid of a magnifying glass ; and in the awful silence, as each juror looked through that glass, the change in his countenance was a verdict of ^* guilty." Such is the nature, and loch may be the oonclosiTeneUi of an argument &om ooincidenoe.
TSIB
LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.
CHAPTER I.
Great Men of Great Periods. — Period of Christ's Apostles. — Jews, Greeks, and Romans.
— Religious Civilization of the Jews. — Their History and its Relation to that of th« World. — Heathen Preparation for the Gospel. — Character and Language of the Greeks. — Alexander. — Antioch and Alexandria. — Growth and Government of the Roman Empire.
— Misery of Italy and the Provinces. — Preparation in the Empire for Christianity. — Dispersion of the Jews in Asia, Africa, and Europe. — Proselytes. — Provinces of Cilicia and Judffia. — Their Geography and History. — Cilicia under the Romans. — Tarsus. — Cicero. — Political Changes in Judaea. — Herod and his Family. — The Roman Govemoii.
— Conclusion.
THE life of a great man, in a great period of the world's history, is a subject to command the attention of every thoughtful mind. Alexander on his Eastern expedition, spreading the civilization of Greece over the Asiatic and African shores of the Mediterranean Sea, — Julius Caesar contending against the Gauls, and subduing the barbarism of Western Europe to the order and discipline of Roman government, — Charlemagne compressing the separating atoms of the feudal world, and reviving for a time the image of imperial unity, — Columbus sailing westward over the Atlantic to discover a new world which might receive the arts and religion of the old, — Napoleon on his rapid campaigns, shattering the ancient system of European States, and leaving a chasm between our present and the past : — these are the colossal figures of history, which stamp with the impress of their personal greatness the centuries in which they lived.
The interest with which we look upon such men is natural and in- evitable, even when we are deeply conscious that, in their character and their work, evil was mixed up in large proportions with the good, and when we find it difficult to discover the providential design which drew the features of their respective epochs. But this natural feeling
1
2 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. chat, i
rises into something higher, if we can be assured that the period we contemplate was designedly prepared for great results, that the work we admire was a work of unmixed good, and the man whose actions we follow was an instrument specially prepared by the hands of God. Such a period was that in which the civilized world was united under the first Roman emperors : such a work was the first preaching of the Gospel : and such a man was Paul of Tarsus.
Before we enter upon the particulars of his life and the history of hia work, it is desirable to say something, in this introductory chapter, con- cerning the general features of the age which was prepared for him. We shall not attempt any minute delineation of the institutions and social habits of the period. Many of these will be brought before us in detail in the course of the present work. We shall only notice here those circumstances in the state of the world, which seem to bear the traces of a providential pre-arrangement.
Casting this general view on the age of the first Roman emperors, which was also the age of Jesus Christ and His Apostles, we find our attention arrested by three great varieties of national life. The Jew, the Greek, and the Roman appear to divide the world between them. The outward condition of Jerusalem itself, at this epoch, might be taken as a type of the civilized world. Herod the Great, who rebuilt the Temple, had erected, for Greek and Roman entertainments, a theatre within the same walls, and an amphitheatre in the neighboring plain.* His coins, and those of his grandson Agrippa, bore Greek inscriptions : that piece of money, which was brought to our Saviour (Matt, xxii., Mark xii., Luke xx.), was the silver Denarius^ the "image" was that of the emperor, the " superscription " was in Latin : and at the same time when the common currency consisted of such pieces as these, — since coins with the images of men or with Heathen symbols would have been a profanation to the " Treasury," — there might be found on the tables of the money-changers in the Temple, shekels and half-shekels with Samaritan letters, minted under the Maccabees. Greek and Roman names were borne by multitudes of those Jews who came up to worship at the festivals. Greek and Latin words wore current in the popular " Hebrew " of the day : and while this Syro-Chaldaic dialect was spoken by the mass of the people with the tenacious afiection of old custom, Greek had long been well known among the upper classes in the larger towns, and Latin was used in the courts of law, and in the oflBcial
* JoSBPH. ^nf. XT. 8, 1. War, i. 21, 8. Jewish War, will be rery frequent. Occa- Our reference to the two great works of sionally also we shall refer to hie Life and Jotephns, the Jetnsh Antiquitiet, and the hia discourse against Apion.
CHAP. I. JEWS, GREEKS, AND KOMAJ^S. 8
correspondence of magistrates. On a critical occasion of St. Paul's life,^ when he was standing on the stair between the Temple and the fortress, he first spoke to the commander of the garrison in Greek, and then turned round and addressed his countrymen in Hebrew ; while the letter ' of Claudius Lysias was written, and the oration' of TertuUus spoken, in Latin. We are told by the historian Josephus,* that on a parapet of stone in the Temple area, where a flight of fourteen steps led up from the outer to the inner court, pillars were placed at equal distances, with notices, some in Greek and some in Latin, that no alien should enter the sacred enclosure of the Hebrews. And we are told by two of the Evangelists,' that when our blessed Saviour was crucified, " the super- scription of his accusation " was written above His cross " in letters of Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin."
The condition of the world in general at that period wears a similar appearance to a Christian's eye. He sees the Greek and Roman ele- ments brought into remarkable union with the older and more sacred element of Judaism. He sees in the Hebrew people a divinely-laid foundation for the superstructure of the Church, and in the dispersion of the Jews a soil made ready in fitting places for the seed of the Gospel. He sees in the spread of the language and commerce of the Greeks, and in the high perfection of their poetry and philosophy, appropriate means for the rapid communication of Christian ideas, and for bringing them into close connection with the best thoughts of unassisted humanity. And he sees in the union of so many incoherent provinces under the law and government of Rome, a strong framework which might keep together for a sufficient period those masses of social life which the Gospel was in- tended to pervade. The City of God is built at the confluence of three civilizations. We recognize with gratitude the hand of God in the his- tory of His world : and we turn with devout feeling to trace the course of these three streams of civilized life, from their early source to the time of their meeting in the Apostolic age.
We need not linger about the fountains of the national life of the Jews. We know that they gushed forth at first, and flowed in their appointed channels, at the command of God. The call of Abraham, when one family was chosen to keep and hand down the deposit of divine truth, — the series of providences which brought the ancestors of the Jews into Egypt, — the long captivity on the banks of the Nile, — the work of Moses,
^ Acts xxi. xxii * Acts xxiv. Dean MUman {Bampton
^ Acts xxiii. A docnment of this kind, Lectures, p. 185) has remarked on the pecaliar-
•ent with a prisoner by a subordinate to a ly Latin character of Tertullus's address.
superior officer, would almost certainly be in * War, v. 5, 2. Compare vi. 2, 4.
Latin. ^ Luke xxiii. 38 ; John xix. 20.
4 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PA.UL. chaf i
whereby the bondsmen were made into a nation, — all these things are represented in the Old Testament as pccurring under the immediate direction of Almighty power. The people of Israel were taken out of the midst of an idolatrous world, to become the depositaries of a purer knowl- edge of the one true God than was given to any other people. At a time when (humanly speaking) the world could hardly have preserved a spirit- ual religion in its highest purity, they received a divine revelation enshrined in symbols and ceremonies, whereby it might be safely kept till the time of its development in a purer and more heavenly form.
The peculiarity of the Hebrew civilization did not consist in the cul- ture of the imagination and intellect, like that of the Greeks, nor in the organization of government, like that of Rome, — but its distinguishing feature was Religion. To say nothing of the Scriptures, the prophets, the miracles of the Jews, — their frequent festivals, their constant sacri- fices,— every thing in their collective and private life was connected with a revealed religion : their wars, their heroes, their poetry, had a sacred character, — their national code was full of the details of public worship, — their ordinary employments were touched at every point by divinely- appointed and significant ceremonies. Nor was this religion, as were the religions of the Heathen world, a creed which could not be the common property of the instructed and the ignorant. It was neither a recondite philosophy which might not be communicated to the masses of the peo- ple, nor a weak superstition, controlling the conduct of the lower classes, and ridiculed by the higher. The religion of Moses was for the use of all and the benefit of all. The poorest peasant of Galilee had the same part in it as the wisest Rabbi of Jerusalem. The children of all families were taught to claim their share in the privileges of the chosen people.
And how different was the nature of this religion from that of the contemporary Gentiles ! The pious feelings of the Jew were not dissipated and distracted by a fantastic mythology, where a thousand difierent objects of worship, with contradictory attributes, might claim the attention of the devout mind. " One God," the Creator and Judge of the world, and the Author of all good, was the only object of adoration. And there was nothing of that wide separation between religion and morality, which among other nations was the road to all impurity. The will and approbation of Jehovah was the motive and support of all holi- ness : faith in His word was the power which raised men above their natural weakness : while even the divinities of Greece and Rome were often the personifications of human passions, and the example and sanc- tion of vice. And still further : — the devotional scriptures of the Jews express that heartfelt sense of infirmity and sin, that peculiar spirit of prayer, that real communion with God, with which the Christian, in
cHAjp.i. RELIGIOUS CIVILIZATION OF THE JEWS. 5
his best moments, has the truest sympathy.* So that, while the best hymns of Greece^ are only mythological pictures, and the literature of Heathen Rome hardly produces any thing which can be called a prayer, the Hebrew psalms have passed into the devotions of the Cliristiau Church. There is a light on all the mountains of Judaea which never shone on Olympus or Parnassus : and the " Hill of Zion," in which "it pleased God to dwell," is the type of "the joy of the whole earth,"' wliile the seven hills of Rome are the symbol of tyranny and idolatry. " He showed His word unto Jacob, — His statutes and ordinances unto Israel. He dealt not so with any nation ; neither had the Heathen knowledge of His laws."*
But not only was a holy religion the characteristic of the civilization of the Jews, but their religious feelings were directed to something in the future, and all the circumstances of their national life tended to fix their thoughts on One that was to come. By types and by promises, their eyes were continually turned towards a Messiah. Their history was a continued prophecy. All the great stages of their national exist>- ence were accompanied by effusions of prophetic light. Abraham was called from his father's house, and it was revealed that in him " all fami- lies of the earth should be blessed." Moses formed Abraham's descend- ants into a people, by giving them a law and national institutions ; but while so doing he spake before of Him who was hereafter to be raised up " a Prophet like unto himself" David reigned, and during that reign, which made so deep and lasting an impression on the Jewish mind, psalms were written wliich spoke of the future King. And with the approach of that captivity, the pathetic recollection of which became per- petual, the prophecies took a bolder range, and embraced within their widening circle the redemption both of Jews and Gentiles. Thus the pious Hebrew was always, as it were, in the attitude of expectation : and it has been well remarked that, while the golden age of the Greeks and Romans was the past, that of the Jews was the future. While other nations were growing weary of their gods, — without any thing in their mythology or philosophy to satisfy the deep cravings of their nature, — with religion operating rather as a barrier than a link between the edu- cated and the ignorant, — with morality divorced from theology, — the whole Jewish people were united in a feeling of attachment to their
1 Neander observes that it has been justly 350 years before St. Patil was there ; yet ij
remarked that the distiuctive peculiarity of the breathes the sentiment rather of acquiescence
Hebrew nation from the very first, was, that in the determinations of Fate, than of resigna-
conscience was more alive among them than any tion to the goodness of Providence. See ob
other people. Acts xvii. 28.
* There are some exceptions, as in the hymn * Ps. xlviii. 2, Ixviii 16.
of tho Stoic Cleanthes, who was bom at Assos * Ps. cxlvii. 19, 20.
6 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. chap. i.
sacred institutions, and found in the facts of their past history a pledge of the fulfilment of their national hopes.
It is true that the Jewish nation, again and again, during several cen- turies, fell into idolatry. It is true that their superiority to other nations consisted in the light which they possessed, and not in the use which they made of it ; and that a carnal life continually dragged them down from the spiritual eminence on which they might have stood. But the Divine purposes were not frustrated. The chosen people were subjected to the chastisement and discipline of severe sufferings : and they were fitted by a long training for the accomplishment of that work, to the conscious per- formance of which they did not willingly rise. They were hard pressed in their own country by the incursions of their idolatrous neighbors, and in the end they were carried into a distant captivity. From the time of their return from Babylon they were no longer idolaters. They presented to the world the example of a pure Monotheism. And in the active times which preceded and followed the birth of Christ, those Greeks or Romans who visited the Jews in their own land where they still lingered at the portals of the East, and those vast numbers of proselytes whom the dis- persed Jews had gathered round them in various countries, were made familiar with the worship of one God and Father of all.*
The influence of the Jews upon the Heathen world was exercised m inly through their dispersion : but this subject must be deferred for a few pages, till we have examined some of the developments of the Gj eek and Roman nationalities, A few words, however, may be allowed in pass'ng, upon the consequences of the geographical position of Judaea. The situation of this little but eventful country is such, that its in- ha itants were brought into contact successively with all the civilized na- tions of antiquity. Not to dwell upon its proximity to Egypt on the one han d, and to Assyria on the other, and the influences which those ancient kingdoms may thereby have exercised or received, Palestine lay in the road of Alexander's Eastern expedition. The Greek conqueror was there before he founded his mercantile metropolis in Egypt, and thence went to India, to return and die at Babylon. And again, when his empire was divided, and Greek kingdoms were erected in Europe, Asia, and Africa, Palestine lay between the rival monarchies of the Ptolemies at Alexandria and the Seleucids at Antioch, — too near to both to be sa!fe from the invasion of their arms or the influence of their customs and their language. And finally, when the time came for the Romans to
I Humboldt has remarked, in the chapter of Monotheism, and portrays nature, not at
on Poetic Descriptions of Nature (Kosmos, self-subsisting, but ever in relation to a Highei
Sabine's Eng. trans., vol. ii. p. 44), that the Power. descriptive poetry of the Hebrews is a reflex
CHAF.i. CHARACTER ASD LANGUAGE OF THE GREEKS. 7
embrace the whole of the Mediterranean within the circle of their power, the coast-line of Judaea was the last remote portion which was needed to complete the fated circumference.*
The full eflfect of this geographical position of Judaea can only be seen by following the course of Greek and Roman life, till they were brought so remarkably into contact with each other, and with that of the Jews : and we turn to those other twr nations of antiquity, the steps of whose progress were successive stages in what is called in the Epistle to the Ephesians (i. 10) ** the dispensation of the fulness of time."
If we think of the civilization of the Greeks, we have no difficulty in fixing on its chief characteristics. High perfection of the intellect and imagination, displaying itself in all the various forms of art, poetry, lit- erature, and philosophy — restless activity of mind and body, finding its exercise in athletic games or in subtle disputations — love of the beauti- ful — quick perception — indefatigable inquiry — all these enter into the very idea of the Greek race. This is not the place to inquire how far these qualities were due to an innate peculiarity, or how far they grew up, by gradual development, amidst the natural influences of their native country, — the variety of their hills and plains, the clear lights and warm shadows of their climate, the mingled land and water of their coasts. We have only to do with this national character so far as, under divine Providence, it was made subservient to the spread of the Gospel.
We shall see how remarkably it subserved this purpose, if we consider the tendency of the Greeks to trade and colonization. Their mental ac- tivity was accompanied with a great physical restlessness. This clever people always exhibited a disposition to spread themselves. Without aiming at universal conquest, they displayed (if we may use the word) a remarkable catholicity of character, and a singular power of adaptation to those whom they called Barbarians.^ In this respect they were strongly contrasted with the Egyptians, whose immemorial civilization was confined to the long valley which extends from the cataracts to the mouths of the Nile. The Hellenic' tribes, on the other hand, though they despised foreigners, were never unwilling to visit them and to cul- tivate their acquaintance. At the earliest period at which history en-
' For reflections on the geographical posi- who does not speak Greek. See Acts xxviii.
tion of Palestine in relation to its history, see 2, 4 ; Rom. i. 14 ; 1 Cor. xiv. 11 ; Col. iii. 11.
Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, Kurtz's History ^ " Hellenic " and " Hellenistic," corre-
of the Old Covenant (in Clark's " Foreign sponding respectively to the " Greek " and
Theological Library "), and the Quarterly Re- " Grecian " of the Authorized Version, are
view for October, 1859. words which we must often use. See p. 10,
^ In the N. T. the word " barbarian " is n. 8. used in its strict classical sense, i.e. for a man
8 TEE LIFE AND EPISTLES OP ST. PAUL. aoAt.i.
ables us to discover them, we see them moving about in their ships on the shores and among the islands of their native seas ; and, three or four centuries before the Christian era, Asia Minor, beyond which the Per- sians had not been permitted to advance, was bordered by a fringe of Greek colonies ; and Lower Italy, when the Roman republic was just beginning to be conscious of its strength, had received the name of Greece itself.* To all these places they carried their arts and literature, their philosophy, their mythology, and their amusements. They carried also their arms and their trade. The heroic age had passed away, and fabulous voyages had given place to real expeditions against Sicily and constant traflEic with the Black Sea. They were gradually taking the place of the Phcenicians in the empire of the Mediterranean. They were, indeed, less exclusively mercantile than those old discoverers. Their voyages were not so long. But their influence on general civiliza- tion was greater and more permanent. The earliest ideas of scientific navigation and geography are due to the Greeks. The later Greek trav- ellers, Strabo and Pausanias, will be our best sources of information on the topography of St. Paul's journeys.
With this view of the Hellenic character before us, we are prepared to appreciate the vast results of Alexander's conquests. He took up the meshes of the net of Greek civilization, which were lying in disorder on the edges of the Asiatic shore, and spread them over all the countries which he traversed in his wonderful campaigns. The East and the West were suddenly brought together. Separated tribes were united under a common government. New cities were built, as the centres of political life. New lines of communication were opened, as the channels of commercial activity. The new culture penetrated the mountain ranges of Pisidia and Lycaonia. The Tigris and Euphrates became Greek rivers. The language of Athens was heard among the Jewish colonies of Babylonia ; and a Grecian Babylon ^ was built by the con- queror in Egypt, and called by his name.
The empire of Alexander was divided, but the eflfects of his cam- paigns and policy did not cease. The influence of the fresh elements of social life was rather increased by being brought into independent ac- tion within the spheres of distinct kingdoms. Our attention is particu- larly called to two of the monarchical lines, which descended from Alex- ander's generals, — the Ptolemies, or the Greek kings of Egypt, — and the Seleucids, or the Greek kings of Syria. Their respective capitals, Alexandria and Antioch, became the metropolitan centres of commer- cial and civilized life in the East. They rose suddenly ; and their very
1 Mag:na Griecia. ' Alexandria.
ANTIOCH AND ALEXANDRIA. 9
appearance marked them as the cities of a new epoch. Like Berlin and St. Petersburg, they were modern cities built by great kings at a defi- nite time and for a definite purpose. Their histories are no unimportant r.hapters in the history of the world. Both of them were connected with St. Paul : one indirectly, as tlie birthplace of Apollos ; the other directly, as the scene of some of the most important passages of the Apostle's own life. Both abounded in Jews from their first foundation. Both became the residence of Roman governors, and both afterwards were patriarchates of the primitive Church. But before they had r^ ceived either the Roman discipline or the Christian doctrine, they had served their appointed purpose of spreading the Greek language and habits, of creating new lines of commercial intercourse by land and sea, and of centralizing in themselves the mercantile life of the Levant. Even the Acts of the Apostles remind us of the traffic of Antioch with Cyprus and the neighboring coasts, and of the sailing of Alexandrian corn-ships to the more distant harbors of Malta and Puteoli.
Of all the Greek elements which the cities of Antiocli and Alexandria were the means of circulating, the spread of the language is the most im- portant. Its connection with the whole system of Christian doctrine — with many of the controversies and divisions of the Church — is very momentous. That language, which is the richest and most delicate that the world has seen, became the language of theology. The Greek tongue became to the Christian more than it had been to the Roman or the Jew. The mother-tongue of Ignatius at Antioch, was that in which Philo ^ composed his treaties at Alexandria, and which Cicero spoke at Athens. It is difficult to state in a few words the important relation which Alexandria more especially was destined to bear to the whole Christian Church. In that city, the representative of the Greeks of the East, where the most remarkable fusion took place of the peculiarities of Greek, Jewish, and Oriental life, and at the time when all these had been brought in contact with the mind of educated Romans, — a theo- logical language was formed, rich in the phrases of various schools, and suited to convey Christian ideas to all the world. It was not an acci- dent that the New Testament was written in Greek, the language which can best express the highest thoughts and worthiest feelings of the in- tellect and heart, and which is adapted to be the instrument of education for all nations : nor was it an accident that the composition of these books and the promulgation of the Gospel were delayed, till the instruc- tion of our Lord, and the writings of His Apostles, could be expressed ia the dialect of Alexandria. This, also, must be ascribed to the foreknowl-
^ We shall frequently have occasion to was a contemporary of St. Paul See mention this learned Alexandrian Jew. He p. 34.
10 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OP ST. PAUL. cha^. i.
edge of Him, who " winked at the times of ignorance," but who " made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of theii habitation." '
We do not forget that the social condition of the Greeks had been falling, during this period, into the lowest corruption. The disastrous quarrels of Alexander's generals had been continued among their suc- cessors. Political integrity was lost. The Greeks spent their life in worthless and frivolous amusements. Their religion, though beautiful beyond expression as giving subjects for art and poetry, was utterly powerless, and worse than powerless, in checking their bad propensities. Their philosophers were sophists ; their women might be briefly divided into two classes, — those who were highly educated and openly profli- gate on the one side, and those who lived in domestic and ignorant seclusion on the other. And it cannot be denied that all these causes of degradation spread with the difiusion of the race and the language. Like Sybaris and Syracuse, Antioch and Alexandria became almost worse than Athens and Corinth. But the very difiusion and develop- ment of this corruption was preparing the way, because it showed the necessity, for the interposition of a Gospel. The disease itself seemed to call for a Healer. And if the prevailing evils of the Greek popula- tion presented obstacles, on a large scale, to the progress of Christianity, — yet they showed to all future time the weakness of man's highest powers, if unassisted from above ; and there must have been many who groaned under the burden of a corruption which they could not shake off, and who were ready to welcome the voice of Him, who " took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.'"^ The " Greeks," ' who are mentioned by St. John as coming to see Jesus at the feast, were, we trust, the types of a large class ; and we may conceive His answer to Andrew and Philip as expressing the fulfilment of the appointed times in the widest sense — "The hour is come, that the Son of Man should be glorified."
Such was the civilization and corruption connected with the spread of the Greek language when the Roman power approached to the eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea. For some centuries this irresistible force had been gathering strength on the western side of the Apennines. Gradually, but surely, and with ever-increasing rapidity, it made to
' Acts xvii. 30, 26. for a Hellenist, or Grecizing Jew — as in Act«
"^ Matt. viii. 17. vi. 1, ix. 29 — while the word " Cheek" is used
• John xii. 20. It ought to be observed for one who was by birth a Gentile, and who
here, that the word " Grecian " in the Author- might, or might not, be a proselyte to Judaisin,
ised Version of the New Testament is used or a convert to Christianitv.
GEOWTH OP THE KOMAN EMPIEE. 11
itself a wider space — northward into Etruria, southward into Campania. It passed beyond its Italian boundaries. And six hundred years after the building of the City, the Roman eagle had seized on Africa at the point of Carthage, and Greece at the Isthmus of Corinth, and had turned its eye towards the East. The defenceless prey was made secure, by craft or by war; and before the birth of our Saviour, all those coasts, from Ephesus to Tarsus and Antioch, and round by the Holy Land to Alexandria and Cyrene, were tributary to the city of the Tiber. We have to describe in a few words the characteristics of this new dominion, and to point out its providential connection with the spread and consoli- dation of the Church.
In the first place, this dominion was not a pervading influence exerted by a restless and intellectual people, but it was the grasping power of an external government. The idea of law had grown up with the growth of the Romans; and wherever they went they carried it with them. Wherever their armies were marching or encamping, there always attended them, like a mysterious presence, the spirit of the City of Rome. Universal conquest and permanent occupation were the ends at which they aimed. Strength and organization were the characteristics of their sway. We have seen how the Greek science and commerce were wafted, by irregular winds, from coast to coast : and now we follow the advance of legions, governors, and judges along the Roman Roads, which pursued their undeviating course over plains and mountains, and bound the City to the furthest extremities of the provinces.
There is no better way of obtaining a clear view of the features and a correct idea of the spirit of the Roman age, than by considering the material works which still remain as its imperishable monuments. Whether undertaken by the hands of the government, or for the osten- tation of private luxury, they were marked by vast extent and accom- plished at an enormous expenditure. The gigantic roads of the Empire have been unrivalled till the present century. Solid structures of all kinds, for utility, amusement, and worship, were erected in Italy and the provinces, — amphitheatres of stone, magnificent harbors, bridges, sepul- chres, and temples. The decoration of wealthy houses was celebrated by the poets of the day. The pomp of buildings in the cities was rivalled by astonishing villas in the country. The enormous baths, by which travellers are surprised, belong to a period somewhat later than that of St. Paul ; but the aqueducts, which still remain in the Campagna, were some of them new when he visited Rome. Of the metropolis itself it may be enough to say, that his life is exactly embraced between its two great times of renovation, that of Augustus on the one hand, who (to use his own expression) having found it a city of brick left it a city of marble,
12 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. chap. L
and that of Nero on the other, when the great conflagration afforded an opportunity for a new arrangement of its streets and buildings.
These great works may be safely taken as emblems of the magnitude, strength, grandeur, and solidity of the Empire ; but they are emblems, no less, of the tyranny and cruelty which had presided over its formation, and of the general suffering which pervaded it. The statues, with which the metropolis and the Roman houses were profusely decorated, had been brought from plundered provinces, and many of them had swelled the triumphs of conquerors on the Capitol. The amphitheatres were built for shows of gladiators, and were the scenes of a bloody cruelty, which had been quite unknown in the licentious exhibitions of the Greek thea- tre. The roads, baths, harbors, aqueducts, had been constructed by slave-labor. And the country villas, which the Italian traveller lingered to admire, were themselves vast establishments of slaves.
It is easy to see how much misery followed in the train of Rome's advancing greatness. Cruel suffering was a characteristic feature of the close of the Republic. Slave wars, civil wars, wars of conquest, had left their disastrous results behind them. No country recovers rapidly from the effects of a war which has been conducted within its frontier ; and there was no district of the Empire which had not been the scene of some recent campaign. None had suffered more than Italy herself. Its old stock of freemen, who had cultivated its fair plains and terraced vine- yards, was utterly worn out. The general depopulation was badly com- pensated by the establislmient of military colonies. Inordinate wealth and slave factories were the prominent features of the desolate prospect. The words of the great historian may fill up the picture. " As regards the manners and mode of life of the Romans, their great object at this time was the acquisition and possession of money. Their moral conduct, which had been corrupt enough before the Social war, became still more so by their systematic plunder and rapine. Immense riches were accumu- lated and squandered upon brutal pleasures. The simplicity of the old manners and mode of living had been abandoned for Greek luxuries and frivolities, and the whole household arrangements had become altered. The Roman houses had formerly been quite simple, and were built either of bricks or peperino, but in most cases of the former material ; now, on the other hand, every one would live in a splendid house and be sur- rounded by luxuries. The condition of Italy after the Social and Civil wars was indescribably wretched. Samnium had become almost a des- ert ; and as late as the time of Strabo there was scarcely any town in that country which was not in ruins. But worse things were yet to come." ^
1 Niebnhr's Lectures on the History of Rome, toI. i. pp. 421, 422.
emAr.i. MISEBY OF ITAI^Y AND THE PROVINCES. 13
This disastrous condition was not confined to Italy. In some respects the provinces had their own peculiar sufferings. To take the case of Asia Minor. It had been plundered and ravaged by successive generals, — by Scipio in the war against Antiochus of Syria, — by Maulius in his Galatian campaign, — by Pompey in the struggle with Mithridates. The rapacity of governors and their officials followed that of generals and their armies. We know what Cilicia suffered under Dolabella and his agent Verres: and Cicero reveals to us the oppression of his predecessor Ap- pius in the same province, contrasted with his own boasted clemency. Some portions of this beautiful and inexhaustible country revived under the emperors.' But it was only an outward prosperity. Whatever may nave been the improvement in the external details of provincial govern- ment, we cannot believe that governors were gentle and forbearing, when Caligula was on the throne, and when Nero was seeking statues for his golden house. The contempt in which the Greek provincials themselves were held by the Romans may be learnt from the later correspondence of the Emperor Trajan with Pliny the governor of Bithynia. We need not hesitate to take it for granted, that those who were sent from Rome to dispense justice at Ephesus or Tarsus, were more frequently like Ap- pius and Verres, than Cicero^ and Flaccus, — more like Pilate and Felix, than Gallio or Sergius Paulus.
It would be a delusion to imagine that, when the world was reduced under one sceptre, any real principle of unity held its different parts together. The emperor was deified,' because men were enslaved. There was no true peace when Augustus closed the Temple of Janus. The Empire was only the order of external government, with a chaos both of opinions and morals within. The writings of Tacitus and Juvenal remain to attest the corruption which festered in all ranks, alike in the senate and the family. The old severity of manners, and the old faith in the better part of the Roman religion, were gone. The licentious creeds and practices of Greece and the East had inundated Italy and the West: and the Pantheon was only the monument of a compromise among a
1 Niebnhr's Led. ti Hist, of Rome, toI. i. * The image of the emperor was at that p. 406, and the note. time the object of religions rcTcrence : he was
2 Much of our best information concerning a deity on earth (Dis aqua potestas, Juv. iv. the state of the provinces is derived from 71); and the worship paid to him was a real Cicero's celebrated " Speeches against Verres," worship. It is a striking thought, that in and his own Cilician Correspondence, to which those times (setting aside effete forms of reli we shall again have occasion to refer. His gion), the only two genuine worships in the civ- •* Speech in Defence of Flaccus " throws much ilized world were the worship of a Tiberius oi light on the condition of the Jews under the a Nero on the one hand, and the worship oi Romans. We must not place too much confi- Chsibt on the other.
denco in the picture there given of this Ephe- ■ian governor.
14 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. ota». i
multitude of effete superstitions. It is true that a remarkable religious toleration was produced by this state of things : and it is probable that for some short time Christianity itself shared the advantage of it. But still the temper of the times was essentially both cruel and profane ; and the Apostles were soon exposed to its bitter persecution. The Roman Empire was destitute of that unity which the Gospel gives to mankind. It was a kingdom of this world ; and the human race were groaning for the better peace of " a kingdom not of this world."
Thus, in the very condition of the Roman Empire, and the miserable state of its mixed population, we can recognize a negative preparation for the Gospel of Christ. This tyranny and oppression called for a Con- soler,^ as much as the moral sickness of the Greeks called for a Healer ; a Messiah was needed by the whole Empire as much as by the Jews, though not looked for with the same conscious expectation. But we have no diflBculty in going much farther than this, and we cannot hesitate to discover in the circumstances of the world at this period, significant traces of a positive preparation for the Gospel.
It should be remembered, in the first place, that the Romans had already become Greek to some considerable extent, before they were the political masters of those eastern countries, where the language, mythology, and literature of Greece had become more or less familiar. How early, how widely, and how permanently this Greek influence pre- vailed, and how deeply it entered into the mind of educated Romans, we know from their surviving writings, and from the biography of eminent men. Cicero, who was governor of Cilicia about half a century before the birth of St. Paul, speaks in strong terms of the universal spread of the Greek tongue among the instructed classes; and about the time of the Apostle's martyrdom, Agricola, the conqueror of Britain, was receiv- ing a Greek education at Marseilles. Is it too much to say, that the general Latin conquest was providentially delayed till the Romans had been sufiiciently imbued with the language and ideas of their predecessors, and had incorporated many parts of that civilization with their own ?
And if the wisdom of the divine pre-arrangements is illustrated by the period of the spread of the Greek language, it is illustrated no less by that of the completion and maturity of the Roman government. When all parts of the civilized world were bound together in one empire,
^ We may refer here to the apotheosis of contrast will be found in Scheffer's modem
Angustns with Tiberius at his side, as repre- picture — " Christus Consolator," — where the
sen ted on the " Vienna Cameo " in the midst Saviour is seated in the midst of those who
of figures indicative of the misery and enslave- are miserable, and the eyes of all are turned ta
ment of the world. An engraving of this Him for relief. Cameo is given in the quarto edition. Its b«8t
OBAr.i. DISPERSION OF THE JEWS. 15
— when one common organization peryaded the whole — when channels of communication were everywhere opened — when new facilities of travelling were provided, — then was " the fulness of time" (Gal. iv. 4), then the Messiah came. The Greek language had already been prepared as a medium for preserving and transmitting the doctrine ; the Roman government was now prepared to help the progress even of that religion which it persecuted. The manner in which it spread through the prov- inces is well exemplified in the life of St. Paul ; his right of citizenship rescued him in Macedonia^ and in Judaea ;2 he converted one governor in Cyprus,' was protected by another in Achaia,* and was sent from Jerusalem to Rome by a third.*^ The time was indeed approaching, when all the complicated weight of the central tyranny, and of the provincial governments, was to fall on the new and irresistible religion. But before this took place, it had begun to grow up in close connection with all departments of the Empire. When the supreme government itself became Christian, the ecclesiastical polity was permanently regulated in conformity with the actual constitution of the state. Nor was the Empire broken up, till the separate fragments, which have become the nations of modern Europe, were themselves portions of the Catholic Church.
But in all that we have said of the condition of the Roman world, one important and widely diflfused element of its population has not been mentioned. We have lost sight for some time of the Jews, and we must return to the subject of their dispersion, which was purposely deferred till we had shown how the intellectual civilization of the Greeks, and the organizing civilization of the Romans, had, through a long series of remarkable events, been brought in contact with the religious civilization of the Hebrews. It remains that we point out that one peculiarity of the Jewish people, which made this contact almost universal in every part of the Empire.
Their dispersion began early ; though, early and late, their attachment to Judaea has always been the same. Like the Highlanders of Switzer- land and Scotland, they seem to have combined a tendency to foreign settlements with the most passionate love of their native land. The first scaitering of the Jews was compulsory, and began with the Assyrian exile, when, about the time of the building of Rome, natives of Galilee and Samaria were carried away by the Eastern monarchs ; and this was followed by the Babylonian exile, when the tribes of Judah and Benjamin were removed at difierent epochs, — when Daniel was brought to Babylon, and Ezekiel to the river Chebar. That this earliest dispersion was not
1 Acts XTi. 37-39. * Acts xTiii. 14-17.
* Acts xxii. 25. » Acts xxt. 12, xxrii. I.
' Acts xiii. 12.
16 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. chap. i.
without influential results may be inferred from these facts ; — that, about the time of the battles of Salamis and Marathon, a Jew was the minister, another Jew the cupbearer, and a Jewess the consort, of a Persian mon- arch. That they enjoyed many privileges in this foreign country, and that their condition was not always oppressive, may be gathered from this, — that when Cyrus gave them permission to return, the majority remained in their new home, in preference to their native land. Thus that great Jewish colony began in Babylonia, the existence of which may be traced in Apostolic times,^ and which retained its influence long after in the Talmudical schools. These Hebrew settlements may be fol- lowed through various parts of the continental East, to the borders of the Caspian, and even to China. We however are more concerned with the Doasts and islands of Western Asia. Jews had settled in Syria and Phoenicia before the time of Alexander the Great. But in treating of this subject, the great stress is to be laid on the policy of Seleucus, who, in founding Antioch, raised them to the same political position with the other citizens. One of his successors on the throne, Antiochus the Great, established two thousand Jewish families in Lydia and Plirygia. From hence they would spread into Pamphylia and Galatia, and along the western coasts from Ephesus to Troas. And the ordinary channels of communication, in conjunction with that tendency to trade which already began to characterize this wonderful people, would easily bring them to the islands, such as Cyprus'* and Rhodes.
Their oldest settlement in Africa was that which took place after the murder of the Babylonian governor of Judaea, and which is connected with the name of the prophet Jeremiah.' But, as in the case of Antioch, our chief attention is called to the great metropolis of the period of the Greek kings. The Jewish quarter of Alexandria is well known in his- tory ; and the colony of Hellenistic Jews in Lower Egypt is of greater importance than that of their Aramaic* brethren in Babylonia. Alex- ander himself brought Jews and Samaritans to his famous city ; the first Ptolemy brought many more ; and many betook themselves hither of their free will, that they might escape from the incessant troubles which disturbed the peace of their fatherland. Nor was their influence con- fined to Egypt, but they became known on one side in Ethiopia, the country of Queen Candace,*^ and spread on the other in great numbers to the " parts of Libya about Cyrene."*
A See 1 Pet. t. 13. • See 2 Kings xxt. 22-26, Jer. xliia.
' The fanning of the copper mines in Cy- xliv. prns by Herod (Jos. Ant. xvi. 4, 5) may hare * This term is explained in tbe next chap- attracted many Jews. There is a Cyprian ter, see p. 33, note 2. inscription which eeems to refer to one of the * Acts viii. 27. Herod*. ® Acts ii. 10. The second book of Maeca-^
CHAT. I. THE JEWS IN EUROPE. , 17
Under what circumstances the Jews made their first appearance in Europe is unknown ; but it is natural to suppose that those islands of the Archipelago which, as Humboldt has said, were like a bridge for the pas- sage of civilization, became the means of the advance of Judaism. The journey of the proselyte Lydia from Thyatira to Philippi (Acts xvi. 14), and the voyage of Aquila and Priscilla from Corinth to Ephesus (Ibid, xviii. 18), are only specimens of mercantile excursions which must have begun at a far earlier period. Philo^ mentions Jews in Thessaly, Bceotia, Macedonia, ^tolia, and Attica, in Argos and Corinth, in the other parts of Peloponnesus, and in the islands of Eubcsa and Crete : and St. Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, speaks of them in Philippi, Thessalonica, and Beroea, in Athens, in Corinth, and in Rome. The first Jews came to Rome to decorate a triumph ; but they were soon set free from captivity, and gave the name to the " Synagogue of the Libertines "^ in Jerusalem. They owed to Julius Caesar those privileges in the Western Capital which they had obtained from Alexander in the Eastern. They became influ- ential, and made proselytes. They spread into other towns of Italy ; and in the time of St. Paul's boyhood we find them in large numbers in the island of Sardinia, just as we have previously seen them established in that of Cyprus.' With regard to Gaul, we know at least that two sons of Herod were banished, about this same period, to the banks of the Rhone ; and if (as seems most probable) St. Paul accomplished that journey to Spain, of which he speaks in his letters, there is little doubt that he found there some of the scattered children of his own people. We do not seek to pursue them further ; but, after a few words on the proselytes, we must return to the earliest scenes of the Apostle's career.
The subject of the proselytes is sufficiently important to demand a separate notice. Under this term we include at present all who were attracted in various degrees of intensity towards Judaism, — from those who by circumcision had obtained full access to all the privileges of the temple-worship, to those who only professed a general respect for the Mosaic religion, and attended as hearers in the synagogues. Many proselytes were attached to the Jewish communities wherever they were dispersed.^ Even in their own country and its vicinity, the number, both in early and later times, was not inconsiderable. The Queen of Sheba,
bees is the abridgment of a work written by gognes mentioned in Acts ti. 9 are discussed
a Hellenistic Jew of Cyrene. A Jew or prose- in the next chapter.
lyte of Cyrene bore our Saviour's cross. And ^ In the case of Sardinia, however, they
the mention of this city occurs more than once were forcibly sent to the island, to die of th«
in the Acts of the Apostles. bad climate.
1 See note, p. 9. * In illustration of this fact, it is eaay to
^ This body doubtless consisted of mann- adduce abundance of Heathen testimony.
mitted Jewish slares. The synagogue or syna- 2
18 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. cha». I.
in the Old Testament ; Candace, Queen of ^Ethiopia, in the New ; and ISAng Izates, with his mother Helena, mentioned by Josephus, are only royal representatives of a large class. During the time of the Maccabees, some alien tribes were forcibly incorporated with the Jews. This was the case with the Ituraeans, and probably with the Moabites, and, above all, with the Edomites, with whose name that of the Herodian family is his- torically connected. How far Judaism extended among the vague col- lection of tribes called Arabians, we can only conjecture from the curious history of the Homerites, and from the actions of such chieftains as Aretas (2 Cor. xi. 82). But as we travel towards the West and North, into countries better known, we find no lack of evidence of the moral effect of the synagogues, with their worship of Jehovah, and their prophecies of the Messiah. " Nicolas of Antioch " (Acts vi. 6) is only one of that " vast multitude of Greeks " who, according to Josephus,^ were attracted in that city to the Jewish doctrine and ritual. In Damas- cus, we are even told by the same authority that the great majority of the women were proselytes ; a fact which receives a remarkable illustration from what happened to Paul at Iconium (Acts iii. 50). But all further details may be postponed till we follow Paul himself into the synagogues, where he so often addressed a mingled audience of " Jews of the disper- sion" and " devout" strangers.
This chapter may be suitably concluded by some notice of the provinces of Cilida and Judcea. This will serve as an illustration of what has been said above, concerning the state of the Roman provinces generally ; it will exemplify the mixture of Jews, Greeks, and Romans in the east of the Mediterranean, and it will be a fit introduction to what must imme- diately succeed. For these are the two provinces which require our attention in the early life of the Apostle Paul.
Both these provinces were once under the sceptre of the line of the Seleucids, or Greek kings of Syria ; and both of them, though originally mhabited by a "barbarous"' population, received more or less of the influence of Greek civihzation. If the map is consulted, it will be seen that Antioch, the capital of the Graeco-Syrian kings, is situated nearly in the angle where the coast-line of Cilicia, running eastwards, and that of Judaea, extended northwards, are brought to an abrupt meeting. It will be seen also, that, more or less parallel to each of these coasts, there is a line of mountains, not far from the sea, which are brought into contact with each other in heavy and confused forms, near the same angle ; the principal break in the continuity of either of ihem being the valley of the Orontea, which passes by Antioch. One of these mountain lines is the
» War, Tu. 8, «. ■ See p. 7, note.
CBLAr.L CILICIA UNDER THE ROMANS. 19
range of Mount Taurus, which is so often mentioned as a great geographi- cal boundary by the writers of Greece and Rome ; and Cilicia extends partly over the Taurus itself, and partly between it and the sea. The other range is that of Lebanon — a name made sacred by the scriptures and poetry of the Jews ; and where its towering eminences subside towards the south into a land of hills and valleys and level plains, there is Judcea, once the country of promise and possession to the chosen people, but a Roman province in the time of the Apostles.
Cilicia, in the sense in which the word was used under the early Roman emperors, comprehended two districts, of nearly equal extent, but of very different character. The Western portion, or Rough Cilicia, as it waa called, was a collection of the branches of Mount Taurus, which come down in large masses to the sea, and form that projection of the coast which divides the Bay of Issus from that of Pamphylia. The inhabitants of the whole of this district were notorious for their robberies : the northern portion, under the name of Isauria, providing innumerable strongholds for marauders by land ; and the southern, with its excellent timber, its cliffs, and small harbors, being a natural home for pirates. The Isaurians maintained their independence with such determined obstinacy, that in a later period of the Empire, the Romans were willing to resign all appearance of subduing them, and were content to surround them with a cordon of forts. The natives of the coast of Rough Cilicia began to extend their piracies as the strength of the kings of Syria and Egypt declined. They found in the progress of the Roman power, for some time, an encouragement rather than a hinderance ; for they were actively engaged in an extensive and abominable slave-trade, of which the island of Delos was the great market ; and the opulent families of Rome were in need of slaves, and were not more scrupulous than some Christian nations of modern times about the means of obtaining them. But the expeditions of these buccaneers of the Mediterranean became at last quite intolerable ; their fleets seemed innumerable ; their connections were extended far beyond their own coasts ; all commerce was paralyzed ; and they began to arouse that attention at Rome which the more distant pirates of the Eastern Archipelago not long ago excited in England. A vast expedition was fitted out under the command of Pompey the Great; thousands of piratic vessels were burnt on the coast of Cilicia, and the inhabitants dispersed. A perpetual service was thus done to the cause of civilization, and the Mediterranean was made safe for the voyages of merchants and Apostles. The town of Soli, on the borders of the two divisions of Cilicia, received the name of Pompeiopolis,^ in honor of the
'^ A similar case, on a small scale, is that of the French power, since the accession of of Philippeville in Algeria; and the progress Louis Philippe, in Northern Africa, is perhaps
20 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. crap. i.
great conqueror, and the splendid remains of a colonnade which led from the harbor to the city may be considered a monument of this signal destruction of the enemies of order and peace.
The Eastern, or Flat CiHcia, was a rich and extensive plain. Its orolific vegetation is praised both by the earlier and later classical jFriters, and, even under the neglectful government of the Turks, is still noticed by modern travellers.' From this circumstance, and still more from its peculiar physical configuration, it was a possession of great political importance. Walled ofl' from the neighboring countries by a high barrier of mountains, which sweep irregularly round it from Pom- peiopolis and Rough Cilicia to the Syrian coast on the North of Antioch,
— with one pass leading up into the interior of Asia Minor, and another giving access to the valley of the Orontes, — it was naturally the higli road both of trading caravans and of military expeditions. Through this country Cyrus marched, to depose his brother from the Persian throne. It was here that the decisive victory was obtained by Alexander over Darius. This plain has since seen the hosts of Western Crusaders ; and, in our own day, has been the field of operations of hostile Mohammedan armies, Turkish and Egyptian. The Greek kings of Egypt endeavored, long ago, to tear it from the Greek kings of Syria. Tlie Romans left it at first in the possession of Antiochus : but the line of Mount Taurus could not permanently arrest them : and the letters of Cicero remain to us among the most interesting, as they are among the earliest, monu- ments of Roman Cilicia.
Situated near the western border of the Cilician plain, where the river Cydnus flows in a cold and rapid stream, from tlie snows of Taurus to the sea, was the city of Tarsus, the capital of the whole province, and " no mean city " (Acts xxi. 39) in the history of the ancient world. Its coins reveal to us its greatness through a long series of years : — alike in the period which intervened between Xerxes and Alexander, — and under the Roman sway, when it exulted in the name of Metropolis^
— and long after Hadrian had rebuilt it, and issued his new coinage with the old mythological types.' In the intermediate period, which is
the nearest parallel in modem times to the his- Asia Minor contains some luxuriant specimens
tory of a Roman province. As far as regards of the modern vegetation of Tarsus ; but the
the pirates, Lord Exmouth, in 1816, really did banana and the prickly pear were introduced
the work of Pompey the Great. It may be into the Mediterranean long after St. Paul's
doubted whether Marshal Bugeaud was more day.
lenient to the Arabs, than Cicero to the Eleu- ^ ^he coin at the end of the chapter was
thero-Cilicians. struck under Hadrian, and is preserved in the
Chrysippns the Stoic, whose father was a British Museum. The word J/efro/Jo/w is con-
■ative of Tarsus, and Aratus, whom St. Paul spicuous on it. The same figures of the Lion
quotes, lived at Soli. and the Bull appear in a fine series of silver
^ Laborde'i illustrated work on Syria and coins of Tarsus, assigned by the Due de
CKAP. I. TABSnS. 21
that of St. Paul, we have the testimony of a native of this part of Asia Minor, from which we may infer that Tarsus was in the Eastern basin of the Mediterranean, almost what Marseilles was in the Western. Strabo says that, in all that relates to philosophy and general education, it was even more illustrious than Athens and Alexandria. From his description it is evident that its main character was that of a Greek city, where the Greek language was spoken, and Greek literature studiously cultivated. But we should be wrong in supposing that the general population of the province was of Greek origin, or spoke the Greek tongue. When Cyrus came with his army from the Western Coast, and still later, when Alex- ander penetrated into Cilicia, they found the inhabitants " Barbarians.'' Nor is it likely that the old race would be destroyed, or the old language obliterated, especially in the mountain districts, during the reign of the Seleucid kings. We must rather conceive of Tarsus as like Brest, in Brittany, or like Toulon, in Provence, — a city where the language of refinement is spoken and written, in the midst of a ruder population, who use a different language, and possess no literature of their own.
[f we turn now to consider the position of this province and city under the Romans, we are led to notice two different systems of policy which they adopted in their subject dominions. The purpose of Rome was to make the world subservient to herself : but this might be accomplished directly or indirectly. A governor might be sent from Rome to take the absolute command of a province : or some native chief might have a king- dom, an ethuarchy,^ or a tetrarchy assigned to him, in which he was nomi- nally independent, but really subservient, and often tributary. Some prov- inces were rich and productive, or essentially important in the military sense, and these were committed to Romans under the Senate or the Emperor. Others might be worthless or troublesome, and fit only to reward the services of a useful instrument, or to occupy the energies of a dangerous ally. Both these systems were adopted in the East and in the West. We have examples of both — in Spain and in Gaul — in Cilicia and in Judaea. In Asia Minor they were so irregularly combined, and the territories of the independent sovereigns were so capriciously granted or removed, extended or curtailed, that it is often difficult to ascertain what the actual boundaries of the provinces were at a given epoch. Not to enter into any minute history in the case of Cilicia, it will be enough to say, that its rich and level plain in the east was made a Roman province by Pompey, and so remained, while certain districts in the western portion were assigned, at different periods, to various native chieftains. Thus the territories of Amyntas, King of Galatia, were ex-
Lajnes to the period between Xerxe* and ^ See note at the end of Ch. Ill
Alexander.
22 THE LIFE A^D EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. cha». i
tended in this direction by Antony, when he was preparing for his great struggle with Augustus : just as a modern Rajah may be strengthened on the banks of the Indus, in connection with wars against Scinde and the Sikhs. For some time the whole of Cilicia was a consoHdated prov- ince under the first emperors : but again, in the reign of Claudius, we find a portion of the same Western district assigned to a king called Polemo II. It is needless to pursue the history further. In St. Paul's early life the political state of the inhabitants of Cilicia would be that of subjects of a Roman governor : and Roman officials, if not Roman soldiers, would be a familiar sight to the Jews who were settled in Tarsus.^
"We shall have many opportunities of describing the condition of prov- inces under the dominion of Rome ; but it may be interesting here to allude to the information which may be gathered from the writings of that distinguished man, who was governor of Cilicia, a few years after its first reduction by Pompey. He was intrusted with the civil and military superintendence of a large district in this corner of the Mediterranean, comprehending not only Cilicia, but Pamphylia, Pisidia, Lycaonia, and the island of Cyprus ; and he has left a record of all the details of his policy in a long series of letters, which are a curious monument of the Roman procedure in the management of conquered provinces, and which possess a double interest to us, from their frequent allusions to the same places which St. Paul refers to in his Epistles. This correspond- ence represents to us the governor as surrounded by the adulation of obsequious Asiatic Greeks. He travels with an interpreter, for Latin is the official language; he puts down banditti, and is saluted by the title of Imperator ; letters are written, on various subjects, to the governors of neighboring provinces, — for instance, Syria, Asia, and Bithynia ; ceremonious communications take place with the independent chieftains. The friendly relations of Cicero with Deiotarus, King of Galatia, and his son, remind us of the interview of Pilate and Herod in the Gospel, or of Festus and Agrippa in the Acts. Cicero's letters are rather too full of a boastful commendation of his own integrity ; but from what he says that he did, we may infer by contrast what was done by others who were less scrupulous in the discharge of the same re- sponsibilities. He allowed free access to his person ; he refused expen- sive monuments in his honor ; he declined the proffered present of the pauper King of Cappadocia ; ' he abstained from exacting the customary expenses from the states which he traversed on his march ; he remitted
1 Tarsus, as a " Free City " { Urbs Libera), * See Hor. 1 Ep. Ti. 89.
woald hare the privilege of being garrisoned hj its own soldiers. See next chapter.
CHAP. I. POLITICAL CHANGES IN JUD^A 28
to the treasury the moneys which were not expended on his province ; he would not place in official situations those who were engaged in trade ; he treated the local Greek magistrates with due consideration, and con- trived at the same time to give satisfaction to the Publicans. From all this it may be easily inferred with how much corruption, cruelty, and pride, the Romans usually governed; and how miserable must have been the condition of a province under a Verres or an Appius, a Pilate or a Felix. So far as we remember, the Jews are not mentioned in any of Cicero's CiUcian letters ; but if we may draw conclusions from a speech which he made at Rome in defence of a contemporary governor of Asia,^ he regarded them with much contempt, and would be likely to treat them with harshness and injustice.''
That Polemo II., who has lately been mentioned as a king in Cilicia, was one of those curious links which the history of those times exhibits between Heathenism, Judaism, and Christianity. He became a Jew to marry Berenice,' who afterwards forsook him, and whose name, after once appearing in Sacred History (Acts ixv., xxvi.), is lastly asso- ciated with that of Titus, the destroyer of Jerusalem. The name of Berenice will at once suggest the family of the Herods, and transport our thoughts to Judaea.
The same general features may be traced in this province as in that which we have been attempting to describe. In some respects, indeed, the details of its history are different. When Cilicia was a province, it formed a separate jurisdiction, with a governor of its own, immediately responsible to Rome : but Judaea, in its provincial period, was only an appendage to Syria. It has been said * that the position of the ruler resi- dent at Caesarea in connection with the supreme authority at Antioch may bo best understood by comparing it with that of the governor of Madras or Bombay under the governor-general who resides at Calcutta. The comparison is in some respects just : and British India might supply a further parallel. We might say that when Judaea was not strictly a prov- ince, but a monarchy under the protectorate of Rome, it bore the same relation to the contiguous province of Syria which, before the recent war, the territories of the king of Oude * bore to the presidency of Bengal.
1 This was L. Valerius Flaccus, who had Claudius gave him part of Cilicia instead of it
served in Cilicia, and was afterwards made Joseph. Ant. xx. 7, 3.
Governor of Asia, — that district with which, * See the introduction to Dr. Traill's Jose-
and its capital Ephesus, we are so familiar in phus, a work which was interrupted by the
the Acts of the Apostles. death of the translator during the Irish famine,
' See especially Cic. Flacc. 28 ; and for the and was continued by Mr. Isaac Taylor, opinion which educated Romans had of the 6 Another coincidence is, that we made the
Jews, cee Hor. 1 Sat. iv. 143, v. 100, ix. 69. Nabob of Oude a king. He had previously been
8 He was the last King of Pontus. By Ca- hereditary Viaier of the Mogul, ligula he was made King of Bosphorus ; but
24 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. chaf.i.
Judaea was twice a monarchy ; and thus its history furnishes illustrar tions of the two systems pursued by the Romans, of direct and indirecl government.
Another important contrast must be noticed in the histories of these two provinces. In the Greek period of Judsea, there was a time of noble and vigorous independence. Antioclius Epiphanes, the eighth of the line of the Seleucids, in pursuance of a general system of policy, by which he sought to unite all his different territories through the Greek religion, endeavored to introduce the worship of Jupiter into Jerusalem.' Such an attempt might have been very successful in Syria or Cilicia : but in Judaea it kindled a flame of religious indignation, which did not cease to burn till the yoke of the Seleucidae was entirely thrown off: the name of Antiochus Epiphanes was ever afterwards held in abhorrence by the Jews, and a special fast was kept up in memory of the time when the " abomi- nation of desolation " stood in the holy place. The champions of the independence of the Jewish nation and the purity of the Jewish religion were the family of the Maccabees or Asmonaeans : and a hundred years before the birth of Christ the first Hyrcanus was reigning over a prosper- ous and independent kingdom. But in the time of the second Hyrcanus and his brother, the family of the Maccabees was not what it had been, and Judaea was ripening for the dominion of Rome. Pompey the Great, the same conqueror who had already subjected Cilicia, appeared in Da- mascus, and there judged the cause of the two brothers. All the country was full of his fame. In the spring of the year 63 he came down by the valley of the Jordan, his Roman soldiers occupied the ford where Joshua had crossed over, and from the Mount of Olives he looked down upon Jerusalem.'^ From that day Judaea was virtually under the government of Rome. It is true that, after a brief support given to the reigning family, a now native dynasty was raised to the throne. Antipater, a man ©f Idumaean birth, had been minister of the Maccabaean kings : but they were the Rois Faineants of Palestine, and he was the Maire du Palais. In the midst of the confusion of the great civil wars, the Herodian family succeeded to the Asmonaean, as the Carlovingian line in France succeeded that of Clovis. As Pepin was followed by Charlemange, so Antipater prepared a crown for his son Herod.
At first Herod the Great espoused the cause of Antony ; but he cod-
1 Here we may observe that there are ex- from the religious movement alladed to in th«
tant coins of Antiochus Epiphanes, where the text.
head of Jupiter appears on the obverse, in ^ Pompej heard of the death of Mi thridatet
place of the portrait usual in the Alexandrian, at Jericho. His army crossed at Scythopolii,
Selencid, and Macedonian series. Since such by the ford immediately below the Lake o/
emblems on ancient coins have always sacred Tiberias. BBoauio^, it i* very probable that this aroee
HEKOD AlfD HIS FAMILY. 26
trired to remedy his mistake by paying a prompt visit, after the battle of Actium, to Augustus in the island of Rhodes. This singular inter- view of the Jewish prince with the Roman conqueror in a Greek island was the beginning of an important period for the Hebrew nation. An exotic civilization was systematically introduced and extended. Those Greek influences, which had been begun under the Seleucids, and not dis- continued under the Asmonaeans, were now more widely difiused : and the Roman customs,' wliich had hitherto been comparatively unknown, were now made familiar. Herod was indeed too wise, and knew the Jews too well, to attempt, like Antiochus, to introduce foreign institu- tions without any regard to their religious feelings. He endeavord to ingratiate himself with them by rebuilding and decorating their national temple ; and a part of that magnificent bridge which was connected with the great soutlieru colonnade is still believed to exist, — remaining, in its vast proportions and Roman form, an appropriate monument of the Herodian period of Judaea.^ The period when Herod was reigning at Jerusalem under the protectorate of Augustus was chiefly remarkable for great architectural works, for the promotion of commerce, the influx of strangers, and the increased difiusion of the two great languages of the heathen world. The names of places are themselves a monument of the spirit of the times. As Tarsus was called Juliopolis from Julius Caesar, and Soli Pompeiopolis from his great rival, so Samaria was called Sebaste after the Greek name of Augustus, and the new metropolis, which was built by Herod on the sea-shore, was called Caesarea in honor of the same Latin emperor : while Antipatris, on the road (Acts xxiii. 81) be- tween the old capital and the new,' still commemorated the name of the king's Idumaean father. We must not suppose that the internal change in the minds of the people was proportional to the magnitude of these outward improvements. They suffered much ; and their hatred grew towards Rome and towards the Herods. A parallel might be drawn between the state of Judaea under Herod the Great, and that of Egypt under Mahomet Ali,^ where great works have been successfully accom-
^ Antioclms Epiphanes (who was called fragment of the great Christian works con- Epimanes from his mad conduct) is said to structed in this southern part of the Temple- hare made himself ridiculous by adopting Ro- area in the age of Justinian, man fashions, and walking about the streets ^ -phe tracing of the road by which St. of Antioch in a toga. Paul travelled on this occasion is one of the
^ See the woodcut opposite. The arch ex- most interesting geographical questions which
tends about fifty feet along the wall, and its will come before us.
radius must have been about twenty feet. It * There are many points of resemblance
ia right to say that there is much controversy between the character and fortunes of Herod
ibout its origin. Dr. Robinson assigns it to and those of Mahomet Ali : the chief differ-
Uie age of Solomon : Mr. Fergusson to that ences are those of the times. Herod secured
l€ Herod : Mr Williams holds it to be a his position by the influence of Augustn* ;
26 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OP ST. PAUL. oha». i,
plished, where the spread of ideas has been promoted, traffic made busy and prosperous, and communication with the civilized world wonderfully increased, — but where the mass of the people has continued to be mis- erable and degraded.
After Herod's death, the same influences still continued to operate in Judaea. Archelaus persevered in his father's policy, though destitute of his father's energy. The same may be said of the other sons, Antipas and Philip, in their contiguous principalities. All the Herods were great builders, and eager partisans of the Roman emperors : and we are familiar in the Gospels with that Ccesarea (Caesarea Philippi), which one of them built in the upper part of the valley of the Jordan, and named in honor of Augustus, — and with that Tiberias on the banks of the lake of Ge- nesareth, which bore the name of his wicked successor. But while Antipas and Philip still retained their dominions under the protectorate of the emperor, Archelaus had been banished, and the weight of the Roman power had descended still more heavily on Judaea. It was placed under the direct jurisdiction of a governor, residing at Caesa- rea by the Sea, and depending, as we have seen above, on the governor of Syria at Antioch. And now we are made familiar with those features which might be adduced as characterizing any other province at the same epoch, — the praetorium,^ — the publicans,'^ — the tribute-money,' — sol- diers and centurions recruited in Italy,* — Caesar the only king,' and the ultimate appeal against the injustice of the governor.* In this period the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ took place, the first preaching of His Apostles, and the conversion of St. Paul. But once more a change came over the political fortunes of Judaea. Herod Agrippa was the friend of Caligula, as Herod the Great had been the friend of Augustus ; and when Tiberius died, he received the grant of an independent principality in the north of Palestine.'' He was able to ingratiate himself with Claudius, the succeeding emperor. Judaea was added to his dominion, which now embraced the whole circle of the territory ruled by his grandfather. By this time St. Paul was actively pur- suing his apostolic career. We need not, therefore, advance beyond this
Mahomet All secured his bj the agreement of (Acts x. 1) will come nnder our notice m
the European powers. Chap. IV., and the "Augustan Band" (Ibid.
1 Joh. xviii. 28. xxrii. 1 ) in Chap. XXII.
2 Luke iii. 12, xix. 2. ® Joh. xix. 15. 2 Matt. xxii. 19. ^ Acts xxv. 11.
* Most of the soldiers quartered in Syria '' He obtained under Caligula, first, the t«-
were recruited in the province : but the Cohort, trarchy of his uncle Philip, who died ; and
to which Cornelius belonged, probably consist- then that of his uncle Antipas, who followed
ed of Italian volunteers. The "Italian Band " his brother Archelaus into banishment.
CHAP. L CONCLUSION. 27
point, in a chapter which is only intended to be a general introduction to the Apostle's history.
Our desire has been to give a picture of the condition of the world at this particular epoch : and we have thought that no grouping would be so successful as that which should consist of Jews, Greeks, and Romans. Nor is this an artificial or unnatural arrangement : for these three nations were the divisions of the oivilized world. And in the view of a religious mind they were more than this. They were " the three peoples of God's election ; two for things temporal, and one for things eternal. Yet even in the things eternal they were allowed to minister. Greek cultivation and Roman polity prepared men for Christianity."* These three peoples stand in the closest relation to the whole human race. The Christian, when he imagines himself among those spectators who stood round the cross, and gazes in spirit upon that " superscription," which the Jewish scribe, the Greek proselyte, and the Roman soldier could read, each in his own tongue, feels that he is among those who are the representatives of all humanity.'' In the ages which precede the cru- cifixion, these three languages were like threads which guided us through the labyrinth of history. And they are still among the best guides of our thought, as we travel through the ages which succeed it. How great has been the honor of the Greek and Latin tongues ! They followed the fortunes of a triumphant church. Instead of Heathen languages, they gradually became Christian. As before they had been employed to express the best thoughts of miassisted humanity, so afterwards they became the exponents of Christian doctrine and the channels of Chris- tian devotion. The words of Plato and Cicero fell from the lips and pen of Chrysostom and Augustine. And still those two languages are associated together in the work of Christian education, and made the instruments for training the minds of the young in the greatest nations of the earth. And how deep and pathetic is the interest which attaches to the Hebrew ! Here the thread seems to be broken. "Jesus, King of the Jews," in Hebrew characters. It is like the last word of the Jewish Scriptures, — the last warning of the chosen people. A cloud henceforth is upon the
1 Dr. Arnold, in the journal of his Tour in higher sense. The Roman, powerful but not 1840 (Life, ii. 413, 2d edit.). The passage happy — the Greek, distracted with the inqui- continues thus : — "As Mahometanism can ries of an unsatisfying philosophy — the Jew, bear witness ; for the East, when it abandoned bound hand and foot with the chain of a cere- Greece and Rome, could only reproduce Juda- monial law, all are together round the cross. ism. Mahometanism, six hundred years after Christ is crucified in the midst of them — Christ, proving that the Eastern man could crucified for all. The " superscription of Has bear nothing perfect, justifies the wisdom of accusation " speaks to all the same language God in Judaism." of peace, pardon, an'i love.
^ This is true in another, and perhaps a
z»
THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.
people and the language of Israel. " Blindness in part is happened unto Israel, till the fulness of the Gentiles be come in." Once again Jesus, after His ascension, spake openly from Heaven " in the Hebrew tongue " (Acts xxvi. 14) : but the words were addressed to that Apostle who was called to preach the Gospel to the philosophers of Greece, and in the emperor's palace at Rome.^
^ See inscriptioB in the three langioages on a ChristiaA tomb in the Bomaa C»tao«Kba, at tM ead of the Tolome.
CMb of Tanas. IMiIm (Sm p. », m. 1.)
CHAPTER IL
Jewish Origin of the Chnroli. — Sects and Parties of the Jews. — Pharisees and Saddacees. — St. Paul a Pharisee. — Hellenists and Arameeans. — St. PanUa Family Hellenistic but not Hellenizing. — His Infancy at Tarsus. — The Tribe of Benjamin. — His Father's Citizen- ship. — Scenery of the Place. — His Childhood. — He is sent to Jerusalem. — State of Judaea and Jerusalem. — Rabbinical Schools. — Gamaliel. — Mode of Teaching. — Syna- gogues. — Student-Life of St. Paul. — His Early Manhood. — First Aspect of the Church. — St. Stephen. — The Sanhedrin. — St. Stephen the Forerunner of St. Paul. — His Martyr- dom and Prayer.
CHRISTIANITY has been represented by some of the modern Jews as a mere school of Judaism. Instead of opposing it as a system antagonistic and subversive of the Mosaic religion, they speak of it as a phase or development of that religion itself, — as simply one of the rich outgrowths from the fertile Jewish soil. They point out the causes which combined ^i the first century to produce this Christian development of Judaism. It has even been hinted that Christianity has done a good work in preparing the world for receiving the pure Mosaic principles which will, at length, be universal.'
We are not unwilling to accept some of these phrases as expressing a great and important truth. Christianity is a school of Judaism : but it is the school which absorbs and interprets the teaching of all others. It ta a development ; but it is that development which was divinely foreknown and predetermined. It is the grain of which mere Judaism is now the worthless husk. It is the image of Truth in its full propor- tions ; and the Jewish remnants are now as the shapeless fragments which remain of the block of marble when the statue is completed. When we look back at the Apostolic age, we see that growth proceed- ing which separated the husk from the grain. We see the image of Truth coming out in clear expressiveness, and the useless fragments falling oflf like scales, under the careful work of divinely-guided hands. If we are to realize the earliest appearance of the Church, such as it
1 This notion, that the doctrine of Christ Judaism : but a more powerful spell than this will be re-absorbed in that of Moses, is a curi- philosophy is needed to charm back the stately oui phase of the recent Jewish philosophy. river into the narrow, rugged, picturesque " We are sure," it has been well said, " that ravine, out of which centuries ago it found it» Christianity can never disown its source in way."
»
30 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. cha?. il
was when Paul first saw it, we must view it as arising in the midst of Judaism ; and if we are to comprehend all the feelings and principles of this Apostle, we must consider first the Jewish preparation of his own younger days. To these two subjects the present chapter will be devoted.
We are very familiar with one division which ran through the Jewish nation in the first century. The Sadducees and Pharisees are frequently mentioned in the New Testament, and we are there informed of the tenets of these two prevailing parties. The belief in a future state may be said to have been an open question among the Jews, when our Lord appeared and " brought life and immortality to light." We find the Sadducees established in the highest oflSce of the priesthood, and pos- sessed of the greatest powers in the Sanhedrin : and yet they did not believe in any future state, nor in any spiritual existence independent of the body. The Sadducees said that there was " no resurrection, neither Angel nor Spirit." They do not appear to have held doctrines which are commonly called licentious or immoral. On the contrary, they adhered strictly to the moral tenets of the Law, as opposed to its mere formal technicalities. They did not overload the Sacred Books with traditions, or encumber the duties of life with a multitude of minute observances. They were the disciples of reason without enthusi- asm, — they made few proselytes, — their numbers were not great, and they were confined principally to the richer members of the nation.^ The Pharisees, on the other hand, were the enthusiasts of the later Judaism. They " compassed sea and land to make one proselyte." Their power and influence with the mass of the people was immense. The loss of the national independence of the Jews, — the gradual extinction of their political life, directly by the Romans, and indirectly by the family of Herod, — caused their feelings to rally round their Law and their Religion, as the only centre of unity which now remained to them. Those, therefore, who gave their energies to the interpretation and exposition of the Law, not curtailing any of the doctrines which were virtually contained in it and which had been revealed with more or less clearness, but rather accumulating articles of faith, and multiplying the requirements of devotion ; — who themselves practised a severe and ostentatious religion, being liberal in alms-giving, fasting frequently, making long prayers, and carrying casuistical distinctions into the smallest details of conduct ; — who consecrated, moreover, their best zeal and exertions to the spread of the fame of Judaism, and to the in-
1 Acts xxiii. 8. See M«tt. xxii. 23-34. ArU. xiii. 10, 6 ; xTiii. 1, 4, comparing the
' See what Josephus says of the Sadducees : question asked, John yii. 48.
caAF.n. ST. PAUL A PHARISEE. 31
crease of the nation's power in the only way which now was practicable, — could not fail to command the reverence of great numbers of the people. It was no longer possible to fortify Jerusalem against the Heathen : but the Law could be fortified like an impregnable city. The place of the brave is on the walls and in the front of the battle : and the hopes of the nation rested on those who defended the sacred outworks, and made successful inroads on the territories of the Gen- tiles.
Such were the Pharisees. And now, before proceeding to other features of Judaism and„ their relation to the Church, we can hardly help glancing at St. Paul. He was " a Pharisee, the son of a Phari- see," ' and he was educated by Gamaliel,^ " a Pharisee." ^ Both his father and his teacher belonged to this sect. And on three distinct occasions he tells us that he himself was a member of it. Once when at his trial, before a mixed assembly of Pharisees and Sadducees, the words just quoted were spoken, and his connection with the Pharisees asserted with such effect, that the feelings of this popular party were immediately enlisted on his side. " And when he had so said, there arose a dissension between the Pharisees and the Sadducees ; and the multitude was divided. . . . And there arose a great cry ; and the Scribes that were of the Pharisees' part arose, and strove, saying, we find no evil in this man." ' The second time was, when, on a calmer occasion, he was pleading before Agrippa, and said to the king in the presence of Festus : " The Jews knew me from the beginning, if they would testify, that after the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee." ' And once more, when writing from Rome to the Philip- pians, he gives force to his argument against the Judaizers, by telling them that if any other man thought he had whereof he might trust in the flesh, he himself had more, — " circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews ; as touching the Law, a Pharisee." ^ And not only was he himself a Pharisee, but his father also. He was " a Pharisee, the son of a Phari- see." This short sentence sums up nearly all we know of St. Paul's parents. If we think of his earliest life, we are to conceive of him as born in a Pharisaic family, and as brought up from his infancy in the " straitest sect of the Jews' religion." His childhood was nurtured in the strictest belief. The stories of the Old Testament, — the angelic appearances, — the prophetic visions, — to him were literally true. They needed no Sadducean explanation. The world of spirits was a
* Acts xxiii. 6. • Acts v. 34. * Acts xxvi.
• Acts xxii. 3. * Acts xxiii. •Philip, iii. 4.
82 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. ctult. u.
reality to him. The resurrection of the dead was an article of his faith. And to exhort him to the practices of religion, he had before him the example of his father, praying and walking with broad phylacteries, scrupulous and exact in his legal observances. He had, moreover, as it seems, the memory and tradition of ancestral piety ; for he tells us in one of his latest letters,^ that he served God " from his fore- fathers." All influences combined to make him " more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of his fathers," ^ and " touching the righteous ness which is in the Law, blameless." ' Every thing tended to prepare him to be an eminent member of that theological party, to which so many of the Jews were looking for the preservation of their national Jife, and the extension of their national creed.
But in this mention of the Pharisees and Sadducees, we are far from ex- hausting the subject of Jewish divisions, and far from enumerating all those phases of opinion which must have had some connection with the growth of rising Christianity, and all those elements which may have contributed to form the character of the Apostle of the Heathen. There was a sect in Judaea which is not mentioned in the Scriptures, but which must have acquired considerable influence in the time of the Apostles, as may be inferred from the space devoted to it by Josephus* and Philo. These were the Ussenes, who retired from the theological and political distrac- tions of Jerusalem and the larger towns, and founded peaceful communi- ties in the desert or in villages, where their life was spent in contempla- tion, and in the practices of ascetic piety. It has been suggested that John the Baptist was one of them. There is no proof that this was the case : but we need not doubt that they did represent religious cravings which Christianity satisfied. Another party was that of the Zealots,'^ who were as politically fanatical as the Essenes were religiously contemplative, and whose zeal was kindled with the burning desire to throw off" the Roman yoke from the neck of Israel. Very difierent from them were the Rero- dians, twice mentioned in the Gospels,* who held that the hopes of Juda- ism rested on the Herods, and who almost looked to that family for the fulfilment of the prophecies of the Messiah. And if we were simply enumerating the divisions and describing the sects of the Jews, it would be necessary to mention the Therapeutce^ a widely-spread community in Egypt, who lived even in greater seclusion than the Essenes in Judaea. The Samaritans also would require our attention. But we must turn
1 2 Tim. i. 8. of the Grospel (Lnke ri. 15), though the party
• Gal. i. 14. was hardly then matured.
• PhO. iii. 6. ® Mark iii. 6 ; Matt. xxii. 16 : see Mark
• War, ii. 8. xii. 13.
• We have the word in th« '* Simo» Z«lotei " ' Described in great detail by Philo.
«HAP. n. HELLENISTS AJSTD ARAM^AJSTS. 38
from these sects and parties to a wider division, which arose from that dispersion of the Hebrew people, to which some space has been devoted in the preceding chapter.
We have seen that early colonies of the Jews were settled in Babylonia and Mesopotamia. Their connection with their brethren in Judaea was continually maintained: and they were bound to them by the link of a common language. The Jews of Palestine and Syria, with those who lived on the Tigris and Euphrates, interpreted the Scriptures through the Targums ' or Chaldce paraphrases, and spoke kindred dialects of the lan- guage of Aram : "^ and hence they were called Aramcean Jews. We have also had occasion to notice that other dispersion of the nation through those countries where Greek was spoken. Their settlements began with Alexander's conquests, and were continued under the successors of those who partitioned his empire. Alexandria was their capital. They used the Septuagint translation of the Bible ;^ and they were commonly called Hellenists^ or Jews of the Grecian speech.
Tlie mere difference of language would account in some degree for the mutual dislike with which we know that these two sections of the Jewish race regarded one another. We were all aware how closely the use of an hereditary dialect is bound up with the warmest feelings of the heart. And in this case the Aramaean language was the sacred tongue of Palestine. It is true that the tradition of the language of the Jews had been broken, as the continuity of their political life had been rudely interrupted. The Hebrew of the time of Christ was not the oldest Hebrew of the Israelites ; but it was a kindred dialect, and old enough to command a reverent affection. Though not the language of Moses and David, it was that of Ezra and Nehemiah. And it is not unnatural that the Aramaeans should have revolted from the speech of the Greek idolaters and the tyrant Antiochus,* — a speech which they associated moreover with innovating doctrines and dangerous speculations.
For the division went deeper than a mere superficial diversity of speech. It was not only a division, like the modern one of German and Spanish
1 It is uncertain when the written Targnms the western, which is the parent of the SyruK,
came into use, but the practice of paraphrasing now, like the former, almost a dead language.
orally in Chaldee must have begun soon after The first of these dialects began to supplant
the Captivity. the older Hebrew of Judaea from the time of
'^ Aram — the " Highlands " of the Semitic the Captivity, and was the " Hebrew " of th«
tribes — comprehended the tract of country New Testament, Luke xxiii. 38 ; John xix.
which extended from Taurus and Lebanon to 20; Acts xxi. 40, xxii. 2, xxvi. 14. Arable,
Mesoj)Otamia and Arabia. There were two the most perfect of the Semitic languages, hat
main dialects of the Aramaean stock, the eas^ now generally overspread those regiona. em or Babylonian, commonly called Chaldee » See p. 35, n. 2.
(the " Syrian tongue " of 2 Bangs xviii. 26 ; * See pp. 24, 25, and notes.
Isai. xxxvi. 11 , Ear. iv. 7 ; Dan. ii. 4) ; and
34 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OP ST. PAUL. chaf. ir.
Jews, where those who hold substantially the same doctrines have acci- dentally been led to speak different languages. But there was a diversity of religious views and opinions. This is not the place for examining that system of mystic interpretation called the Cabala,' and for determining how far its origin might be due to Alexandria or to Babylon. It is enough to say, generally, that in the Aramaean theology, Oriental elements pre- vailed rather than Greek, and that the subject of Babylonian influences has more connection with the life of St. Peter than that of St. Paul. The Hellenists, on the other hand, or Jews who spoke Greek, who lived in Greek countries, and were influenced by Greek civilization, are asso- ciated in the closest manner with the Apostle of the Gentiles. They are more than once mentioned in the Acts, where our English translation names them " Grecians," to distinguish them from the Heathen or prose- lyte " Greeks.'" Alexandria was the metropolis of their theology. Philo was their great representative. He was an old man when St. Paul was in his maturity : his writings were probably known to the Apostles ; and they have descended with the inspired Epistles to our own day. The work of the learned Hellenists may be briefly described as this, — to ac- commodate Jewish doctrines to the mind of the Greeks, and to make the Greek language express the mind of the Jews. The Hebrew principles were "disengaged as much as possible from local and national conditions, and presented in a form adapted to the Hellenic world." All this was hateful to the zealous Aramaeans. The men of the East rose up against those of the West. The Greek learning was not more repugnant to the Roman Cato, than it was to the strict Hebrews. They had a saying, " Cursed be he who teacheth his son the learning of the Greeks."" We could imagine them using the words of the prophet Joel (iii. 6), "The children of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians, that ye might remove them from their border: " and we cannot be surprised that, even in the deep peace and charity of the Church's earliest days, this inveterate division re-appeared, and that, " when the
* S«e Ch. Xm. his duty in what langiiage he can." The fol- ' See Chap. I. p. 10, note. lowing saying is attributed to Rabban Simeon,
• This repugnance is illustrated by many the son of Gamaliel : " There were a thousand passages in the Talmudic writings. Rabbi boys in my father's school, of whom five hnn- Leri Ben Chajathah, going down to Caesarea, dred learned the law, and five hundred the heard them reciting their phylacteries in wisdom of the Greeks ; and there is not one Greek, and would have forbidden them ; of the latter now alive, excepting myself here, which when Rabbi Jose heard, he was very and my uncle's son in Asia." We learn alss angry, and said, " If a man doth not know from Josephus that a knowledge of Greek wa» how to recite in the holy tongue, must lightly regarded by the Jews of Palestine.
he BOt recite them at all * Let him perform
CHAP.n. HELLENISTS AND ARAJkLEANS. 36
number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews.'"
It would be an interesting subject of inquiry to ascertain in what proportions these two parties were distributed in the different countries where the Jews were dispersed, in what places they came into the strongest collision, and how far they were fused and united together. In the city of Alexandria, the emporium of Greek commerce from the time of its foundation, where, since the earliest Ptolemies, literature, philosophy, and criticism had never ceased to excite the utmost in- tellectual activity, where the Septuagint translation of the Scripture had been made,' and where a Jewish temple and ceremonial worship had been established in rivalry to that in Jerusalem,' — there is no doubt that the Hellenistic element largely prevailed. But although (strictly speaking) the Alexandrian Jews were nearly all Hellenists, it does not follow that they were all Hellenizers. In other words, although their speech and their Scriptures were Greek, the theological views of many among them undoubtedly remained Hebrew. There must have been many who were attached to the traditions of Palestine, and who looked suspiciously on their more speculative brethren : and we have no difficulty in recognizing the picture presented in a pleasing German fiction,^ which describes the debates and struggles of the two tendencies in this city, to be very correct. In Palestine itself, we have every reason to believe that the native population was entirely Aramaean, though there was no lack of Hellenistic synagogues* in Jerusalem, which at the seasons of the festivals would be crowded with foreign pilgrims, and become the scene of animated discussions. Syria was connected by the link of language with Palestine and Babylonia ; but Antioch, its metropolis, commercially and politically, resembled Alexan- dria : and it is probable that, when Barnabas and Saul were establish- ing the great Christian community in that city,® the majority of the Jews were " Grecians " rather than " Hebrews." In Asia Minor we should at first sight be tempted to imagine that the Grecian tendency
* Acts Ti. 1 . by Onias, from whose family the high priest-
2 It ia useless here to enter into any of the hood had been transferred to the family of the
legends connected with the number " seventy." Maccabees, and who had fled into Egypt in the
This translation came into existence from 300 time of Ptolemy Philopator. It remained in
to 150 B.C. Its theological importance cannot existence till destroyed by Vespasian. See
be exaggerated. The quotations in the N. T. Josephus, War, i. 1, 1, rii. 10, 3 ; Ant. xiii. 3. from the 0. T. are generally made from it. * Helon's Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, published
See p. 37. in Glerman in 1820, translated into English is
' This temple was not in the city of Alex- 1824. andria, but at Leontopolis. It was built (or * See Acts ri. 9.
rather it was an old Heathen temple repaired) • Acts xi. 25, &c.
36 THE LIFE. AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. chap. u.
would predominate ; but when we find that Antiochus brought Babylonian Jews into Lydia and Phrygia, we must not make too con- fident a conclusion in this direction ; and we have grounds for imagin- ing that many Israelitish families in the remote districts (possibly that of Timotheus at Lystra) ^ may have cherished the forms of the tradition- ary faith of the Eastern Jews, and lived uninfluenced by Hellenistic novelties. The residents in maritime and commercial towns would not be strangers to the Western developments of religious doctrines : and when Apollos came from Alexandria to Bphesus,^ he would find himself in a theological atmosphere not very different from that of his native city. Tarsus in Cilicia will naturally be included under the same class of cities of the West, by those who remember Strabo's assertion that, in literature and philosophy, its fame exceeded that of Athens and Alexan- dria. At the same time, we cannot be sure that the very celebrity of its Heathen schools might not induce the families of Jewish residents to retire all the more strictly into a religious Hebrew seclusion.
That such a seclusion of their family from Gentile influences was maintained by the parents of St. Paul, is highly probable. We have no means of knowing how long they themselves, or their ancestors, had been Jews of the dispersion. A tradition is mentioned by Jerome that they came originally from Giscala, a town in Galilee, when it was stormed by the Romans. The story involves an anachronism, and contradicts the Acts of the Apostles.' Yet it need not be entirely disregarded ; espe- cially when we find St. Paul speaking of himself as " a Hebrew of the Hebrews," * and when we remember that the word " Hebrew " is used for an Aramaic Jew, as opposed to a " Grecian " or " Hellenist." ' Nor is it unlikely in itself that before they settled in Tarsus, the family had belonged to the Eastern dispersion, or to the Jews of Palestine. But, however this may be, St. Paul himself must be called an Hellenist ; because the language of his infancy was that idiom of the Grecian Jews in which all his letters were written. Though, in conformity with the
1 Acts xvi. 1 ; 2 Tim. i. 5, iii. 15. but an Hellenist. . . . St. Paul appeareth tome
' Acts XTiii. 24. to have plainly intimated, that a man might be
» Acts xxii. 3. of the stock of Israel and of the tribe of Ben-
* Phil. iii. 5. Cave sees nothing more in jamin, and yet not be a Hebrew of the He-
this phrase than that " his parents were Jews, brews ; but that, as to himself, he was, both by
ind that of the ancient stock, not entering in father and mother, a Hebrew, or of the race
by the gate of proselytism, but originally de- of that sort of Jews which were generally most
scended from the nation." — Life of St. Paul, esteemed by their nation." — History of the
i. 2. Benson, on the other hand, argues, from First Planting of the Christian Religion, vol i.
this passage and from 2 Cor. xi. 22, that p. 117.
there was a diOerence between