Columbia (Bntoerritp THE LIBRARIES €en <8yot\)s of €l)ttrd) Ijistorg ©Mtefc bg M)n iuiton, ID.S3., CC.JD. mi. i £en <£poc#e of £$mc§ f isfovg THE APOSTOLIC AGE ITS LIFE, DOCTRINE, WORSHIP AND POLITY BY JAMES VERNON BARTLET, M.A. SOMETIME SCHOLAR OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD AND SENIOR UNIVERSITY GREEK TESTAMENT PRIZEMAN LECTURER IN CHURCH HISTORY IN MANSFIELD COLLEGE & (Ttet» ngorft MDCCCXCIX Copyright, 1899, by Charles Scribner's Sons Cf^l 6 2^* TO MY PARENTS MY FIRST TEACHERS IN RELIGION TO Drs. A. M. FAIRBAIRN AND W. SANDAY MY EARLIEST MASTERS IN THEOLOGY 312908 CONTENTS. BOOK I. THE FIRST GENERATION : A. D. 29-62. PAGE CHAP. I. — Eaely Palestinian Days — The Kingdom of Is- rael, — St. Paul on Christ's Resurrection. — The Cbristoph- anies. — The Return to Jerusalem. — The Gift of Tongues. — In Paul and Acts. — The Messianic Community. — The Old and the New Israel. — The Primitive Preaching. — The Challenge of the Authorities. — Steadfastness of the Apostles. — Popularity and Second Arrest. — The Seven Almoners. — Stephen. — Stephen's Speech. — Scattering and Extension. — Simon Magus, and the Eunuch. — Saul the Persecutor. — Saul the Christian. — The Case of Cornelius. — Peter in Cornelius' House. — The Prohlem of the Gen- tiles 1 CHAP. II. — The Field Broadens — Antioch and Jerusa- lem. — Herod's Persecution. — Paul's Second Visit to Je- rusalem. — A Revelation its Occasion. — Its Date and Na- ture. — Not that of Acts xv. — The Issue already involved. — The Nature of the Issue 47 CHAP. III. — The First Missionary Journey — Cyprus. — The New Outlook. — The Advance into Galatia. — Pisidian Antioch. — Turning to the Gentiles. — Iconium. — Lystra. — The Return Journey. — Judaizing Reaction. — Paul's At- titude : ' Galatians.' — The Jerusalem Conference. — James' Summing Up. — Significance of the Problem. — The Chris- tianized Dispersion 64 CHAP. IV.— The First European Mission— Timothy Joins Paul. — Timothy's Special Gift. — Philippi. — Im- prisonment and Release. — Troubles at Thessalonica. — Paul at Athens.— Paul on Mars' Hill.— Slight Effect of His Speech. — Corinth, and the Thessalonian Letters. — Their Primitive Teaching. — Early Form of the Christian Hope. — Christian Life, Personal and Social. — Persecution of Sosthenes. — Antioch Once More . . 92 CHAP. V. — Work in Asia and Greece : Consolidation — Apollos. — Certain Disciples at Ephesus. — Ephesus. — Exorcism and Magic. — Trials and Dangers at Ephesus. — The Converts at Corinth. — The Judaizers' Attack on Contents. PAGE Paul. — What the Corinthian Letters Involve. — 1 Corin- thians. — Practical Details.— The Lost Letter. — 2 Corin- thians.— The Riot at Ephesus.— The Attitude of the Au- thorities.— First Visit to Qoriuth.— The Collection : Fields Beyond.— Troas: Ohject of the Journey.— The Address at Miletus. — Forebodings 120 CHAP. VI. — Imprisonment and Martyrdom — Purifica- tion in the Temple. — Before the Sauhedriu. — Before Felix ; Confined in Csesarea. — Felix's Treatment of Paul. — The End Hinted. — The End of Acts.— Some Incidents of the Voyage.— Roman Judaism.— Paul's Preaching in Rome. — The Ephesian Church.— The Instructions to Timothy.— Origin of the Letter to Titus. — Jewish and Pagan Notions Compared.— Epaphras' Report of the Co- lossians.— General Nature of Ephesians.— Paul Among His Friends.— The Desertion of Demas.— Paul's Isola- tion at Rome. — His Optimism for the Cause. — Paul's Last Days.— Lightfoot on the Partition Theories . . . 160 CHAP. VII.— Later Palestinian Days— The Sadducees and Herodians un-Jewish. — Ringleaders of Zealotry. — The Martyrdom of James. — James' Death Interpretative of Hebrews. — Inconsecutiveness of Acts. — Itineraries of the Apostles. — Rank of James the Lord's Brother. — Contrast- ing Views of the Thorah. — James' Zeal not Pharisaic but Esseuic— Concordat Supported by Christian Conscious- ness.— Paul's Attitude at Antioch.— James more Jewish than Peter. — Yet no Judaizer : His Epistle. — James' Semi-Prophetic Strain. — Jewish Christians Among the Diaspora. — Messianic Rule Offensive to Rich and "Wise." — Unworldliuess the Essence of James' Idea. — Spheres of Belief and conduct Inseparable. — Faith not to be Divorced from Works. — Essential Agreement be- tween James and Paul. — James' Emphasis of Private Ministry. — James Imbued with the Master's Personal- ity. — James not Jesuitical or Dominican. — Coherence of James' Epistle and the Didach6.— The Negative 'Golden Rule.'— The Rule of love.— The Way of Death a Cata- logue of Vices. — Internal Evidence of an Early Date . 203 BOOK II. THE AGE OF TRANSITION : A. D. 62-70. CHAP. I. — Judaism and the Empire — Strife with Romans in Jerusalem and Csesarea. — Earlier Stages of the War. — The Holy City Profaned by the Zealots. — The Situation Contents. PAGE on the Death of Nero. — Rise of the New Dynasty. — The Defence of Jerusalem. — Josephus' Account of the War. — Danger of Exclusive Judaism Averted 260 CHAP. II. — Palestine and the Epistle " to Hebrews " — Problems of James' Martyrdom. — The Writer's Identity Mysterious. — His Purposes in the Epistle. — Warnings and Remonstrances. — The Final Appeal: its Meaning. — The Sequel. — The Judaeo-Christian Attitude. — Chris- tians in Galilee. — Roman Suspicion of the Messianic Hope 277 CHAP. III. — Asia Minor and First Peter— Peter's Leanings toward Paul. — He Counsels Patience. — His Debt to the Pauliue Epistles. — Peter and Paul in Rome. — Peter's Faith and Death 297 CHAP. IV. — North Syria and the Didache — The "Di- dache^" Analyzed. — The Baptismal Formula. — The Lord's Prayer and Doxology. — Encharistic Prayers. — "The Holy Vine of David" not Jesus. — Origins of the Metaphor. — The Johanuiue Tradition. — The Silence as to the Cross. — The Great Vogue of the Didache\ — Its Ecclesiastical Portions.— Abuses of Prerogative. — Condi- tions of the Eucharist. — The Election of Bishops and Deacons. — Concern for Purity of Communion. — The Epilogue. — The Three Signs. — The New Conception . . 309 CHAP. V. — The Epistle of Jude and II Peter — Cur- rent view of the Unseen World. — Antiuomian Theology. — J ude's Ethical Teaching. — Period of Transition . . . 344 CHAP. VI.— Early W t ritten Gospels— Christ's Practical Teaching. — The "Sayings of Jesus." — Difference from the Evangelists. — The Glorified Christ. — The Ideal or Mystical Element. — Oral Tradition. — Lack of Historical Coherence. — Mark, and his Gospel. — Genesis of Matthew's Gospel. — New Color Given to the Tradition 352 BOOK III. THE SECOND GENERATION: TRIALS AND CONSOLIDATION. CHAP. I. — After the Storm: The Epistle of Barna- bas — The Epistle of Barnabas. — Contents of the Epistle. — Two Kinds of Ideas. — Judaism and the Gospel. — Views of the Jewish Bible. — Relations of the Old and New. — Genuine Piety of "Barnabas." — Date of "Barnabas" . 372 CHAP. II. — The Apocalypse of John — True Theory of the Apocalypse.— Christian View of Rome. — The Coming Contents. PAGE of Anti-Christ. — John's Idea of the Church or Bride. — The True Judaism. — Persecution and other Dangers. — "The Deep Things of Satan."— "The Hidden Manna." — Date of the Apocalypse. — Its Relative Significance . . 388 CHAP. III. — Empire verses Church : Luke— Practical Aim of Luke. — Christians and the Courts. — The Case of Flavins Clemens. — The Gospel for Man as Man .... 409 CHAP. IV. — "The Churches of Asia" — Second and Third John — False "Progress" Condemned. — First John.— Relation with the Asian Churches. — The New Commandment. — Erroneous Christology. — John's Prac- tical Attitude. — The Religious Life. — Motive of the Fourth Gospel.— First Draft and Appendix.— Mysticism, Pauline and Johannine. — The Synoptics Supplemented, 418 CHAP. V.— Rome and Corinth : Clement's Epistle— Life of the Roman Church. — Roman Notion of Corin- thian Affairs.— Not quite True to the Facts.— Gifts, and the Lead in Worship. — Direction of Christian Sentiment at Rome. — The Christians' Sacrifice of Prayer.— Origin of Liturgical Prayer. — Clement of Rome 442 BOOK IV. CHURCH LIFE AND DOCTRINE. CHAP. I. — CHURcn Fellowship. — Baptism. — Confirma- tion. — The Eucharist. — Domestic Eucharists, and Agapre. — Pliny's Report. — Variation of Church Customs. — Status of Children. — Spontaneous Simplicity of the Age . . 459 CHAP. II. — Organization and Discipline — The Minis- try. — Apostle Authority. — Origins of Organizations. — Ministerial Functions. — "Charismatic" Gifts. — Appoint- ment of Ministers. — No Episcopal System. — The Congre- gation the Unit. — Practical Ethics. — Ethical Changes Wrought 476 CHAP. III. — Types of Doctrine — Judas — Christianity and the Cross. — The Pauline Experience. — Its Anti-Legal ism. — The Divine Life in Man. — Post-Apostolic Doctrine . 497 Literary Appendix 509 PREFACE. HE late appearance of this volume in the series to which it belongs, calls for a word of explanation. It is scarcely two years since the death of Bishop A. C. Coxe, of Western New York, who had already put his hand to the work, led to the task being transferred to the present writer. Under these circumstances he hopes that the original sub- scribers will not grudge the time taken in carrying through, amid other duties, the needful studies and reducing the results to something like unity. How far this volume may deserve its place in " a series of popular monographs," its author is hardly able to judge. But he has at any rate tried to avoid abstract or artificial grouping, and to describe the concrete life of the Apostolic Age as it manifested itself, now here, now there, at the points of greatest activity. In this way the emphasis and perspective of the facts, whether of the Church's " constitution, fundamental polity, doctrine, worship, or social and spiritual life," seem to have the best chance of tell- ing on the mind directly and in their own right. Only in three chapters at the end has a formal at- tempt been made to systematize some of the facts already presented, for the most part, in their own proper contexts. i ii Preface. For the purposes of the present series the " Apos- tolic Age " is taken as ending only with the close of the first century. It covers, that is, two full gener- ations of the Church's opening life ; during which, as it is believed, one apostle at least, John the son of Zebedee, perpetuated the memories of the original circle of the Founder's disciples. Here already there is a blending of "Apostolic" and "sub-Apos- tolic " Christianity — to use the terms in their more limited senses— and a corresponding overlapping of canonical and non-canonical Christian literature. In the text, which may generally be read with only quite occasional use of footnotes (added mainly for the sake of the studious), the author has aimed at writing pure history, without staying to point any far-reaching moral. But a preface is perhaps a fit place in which to throw out a few hints to those un- familiar with the problems involved in a history of the Apostolic Age. The historian has to mediate between the mind of his own age and the facts of past ages. This task is the harder, yet the more needful, in propor- tion as the facts are themselves of the mental order. For such must be seen first and foremost through the souls of the men and women in whom they once lived, if they are to be other than the mirage of our own latter-day consciousness. The historian of the Apostolic Age, then, has to make live again to the reader's imagination the complex world of thought and action to which primitive Christian experience — even where most under the renovating sway of the New Message — was largely relative. As surely as Preface. iii the men of that age looked on the universe in the light of the Ptolemaic or geocentric system, so surely did they view life all round by the aid of in- tellectual forms often correspondingly diverse from ours. Here lies the main difficulty for the reader of the New Testament. He is ever coming upon phrases that do not really appeal to him, ideas that he cannot personally assimilate, however deeply in sympathy he may be with the general spirit of the whole or even of the special passage in question. His embarrassment is just the same as an early Christian would experience, if confronted with a mediaeval or modern book on religion. The back- ground taken for granted, because part of the culture of the age, is in each case unrealized: the larger con- text is lacking. It is this which the historian has to supply. He has, in a word, to make himself and his fellows the intellectual contemporaries of the men of his story. In the end, nothing should seem strange or pointless. In this light our Introductory chapter is the most necessary of all. Its chief defect is not its length, but rather its inadequacy to the function of making the reader contemporary with Peter, Paul, Apollos, John — acquainted with all the social, moral, and intellectual conditions of Judaism in and beyond Palestine, and with life in the great centres of the Empire. It is hoped, however, that the effect of it may be felt in the enhanced actuality and point of much that follows. A master of the subject 1 reckons as our chief 1 Haruack, "Research in early Church History," Contemporary Review, Aug. 1886. iv Preface. recent gain in early Church history, the fact that we have become "richer in historical points of view." He cites as a palmary instance the perception — so fatal to one famous account of the Catholicism of the second century, as a compromise between Judaeo- Christian and Pauline tendencies — that Paul's spe- cial mode of thought never laid hold of Gentile Christians as a class : that, in fact, their Christianity was from the first continuous rather with a prior type of monotheistic religion, midway between the more liberal Judaism outside Palestine and the better Graeco-Roman sentiment on Providence and on morality as essential worship. The same scholar also alludes to our growing sense of the many and varied religious types embraced within Judaism itself. On this latter idea I have been led to lay peculiar stress, as on one not even yet sufficiently applied to New Testament literature. Dr. Hort has extended it, with good results, to the errors de- scribed in the Pastoral Epistles. He may not there, or in the matter of the Colossian errors, have at- tained final results. But the tendency, namely to use all known Jewish types of thought to explain varieties emerging among the Christians, is a true one: and I have ventured to carry it further, in viewing the most primitive Juclseo-Christian piety, notably that of the Epistle of James and the Didache, as largely conditioned by nurture on the " Wisdom " literature of Judaism. If the reader rises from the perusal of these pages with a fresh feeling for the diversity in unity charac- teristic of the Apostolic Age, he will, I believe, make Preface. V no mistake. The age was pre-dogmatic. It was swayed simply by a religious impression of the new and joyous vision of God as revealed in the Christ, and of Christ as Lord of the spiritual world and so the Son of God in a religious sense. Beyond this the common consciousness did not go. The essen- tially religious and vital quality of its faith is shown in the unembarrassed freedom with which, in differ- ent circles, it instinctively expressed itself in terms of its own prior mental training. " No man can (truly or religiously) say, • Jesus is Lord,' save in virtue of (the) Holy Spirit " : this was the common foundation, the Gentile equivalent of Peter's " Thou art the Christ." Thereafter, efforts to grasp intel- lectually the meaning of this vital and experimental conviction went on under varying conditions, with varying rapidity, and with results only par- tially known to us. For nearly all records, save what in this connection we may style the Christian Classics, the writings of the Apostles and those closely associated with them, have failed to survive : and of the few which do survive, only the Didache seems unaffected by such Apostolic writings. All the more striking, then, is the unity of spirit amid the diversity of thinking. " In things neces- sary unity, in things secondary liberty, in all things charity " : if this be the abiding motto of a true Catholicity, then the Apostolic Age realized it to the full. And its necessary things were few, simple, but radical ; reducible in the last resort to one — the heart's devoted faith in one Lord, as pledged in bap- tism and evinced in obedience of life. But that one vi Preface. thing involved and carried with it all else needful for life and godliness. May the experience of the Apos- tolic Age, as it becomes better known not only in detail but also in its underlying conception of what Christian religion really is, yet prove the great Eirenicon, harmonizing the distinctions to which its partial rediscovery at the Reformation gave rise under the peculiar political and mental conditions of the sixteenth century. My large indebtedness to many scholars of my own and other lands, beyond that hinted in text and footnotes, I here gladly acknowledge. Yet no effort has been spared to see the facts afresh with one's own eyes. Indeed I could wish that this had not led so often to the necessity of striking out rather an independent path on literary questions. But my hope is that, either in text or Literary Appendix, due notice of alternative views has always been given. Finally, my special thanks are due to my friend, A. S. Peake, M. A., late Fellow of Merton College, and now of Manchester, who under no slight stress of time perused my first proofs and made some valued suggestions. Vernon Bartlet. Oxford, June, 1899. INTRODUCTORY. 1. SCOPE, SOURCES, CHRONOLOGY. HE " Apostolic Age " is generally taken to cover the period of some forty years between the Crucifixion and the destruc- tion of the Temple. Within this falls not only the narrative contained in Acts, but also nearly all that we can reckon historic in what reaches us otherwise touching the original Apostles, those namely who were contemporaries of their Lord, Jesus Christ. In particular, these years embrace the whole course of the two chief founders of the actual Church of the first century, Peter, the Apostle of the Jews, and Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles. Yet, in spite of this and of the momentous change in men's thoughts as to the Kingdom of God wrought by the ruin of the Jewish State and temple-worship in 70 A. D., there is another and larger sense in which the "Apostolic Age" closes only with the end of the century, when the living voice of the last of Christ's personal disciples became silent among men by the decease of the Apostle John. Nor was he the sole survivor into the period between 70 and 100. For beside some traditional traces of a few of the Twelve as still at work, there survived others of the large body of personal disciples, reckoned at 120 in the earliest Jerusalem days (Acts i. 15). These, vii viii The Apostolic Age. by continuing in their own persons the original Apostolic traditions, continued also in a real sense the Apostolic Age. It is with this larger mean- ing, then, that we invest the phrase in what fol- lows. The scope of our subject being defined, we have yet to consider briefly the nature of the sources whence comes our knowledge of it. First and fore- most, of course, in point of fulness, explicitness, and continuity, is the Acts of the Apostles, an ordered and highly finished historical composition, written on a definite plan and with definite aims, and so in- volving an interpretation of primitive Christianity. All agree that it is no bare chronicle, compiled with- out selective insertion or omission, and therefore without artistic perspective or emphasis. But is it a fundamentally true interpretation, or does its per- spective distort the real history as it occurred? This is the crucial question for every student of the Apos- tolic Age : " what think you of Acts — is it genuine history or has idealism largely come between its author and the reality?" The answer to this de- pends mainly on our estimate of its relation to our second prime source of information, St. Paul's Epis- tles. Since the time of Paley's Horce Paulines, with its principle of " undesigned coincidences," the Pauline Epistles have been used by exact scholars of all schools as the true criterion of historicity in Acts. For the special nature of these letters as per- sonal, occasional, and utterly unstudied productions, addressed to limited groups of readers for purposes Introductory. ix remote from those of historical narrative, sets them above all suspicion of coloring the past for later ends ; and at the same time guarantees the strictly contemporary character of the evidence incidentally afforded to such matters of fact as are alluded to in them. Thus in the critical construction and verifica- tion of historic Christianity — and that for the gospels as well as for the Acts — such Pauline Epistles as may at any time be admitted to be genuine must rank as the bed-rock whereon all securely rests. As letters " they reflect the mood of the time and the given circle with perfect vividness of light and shade, ere it fades into the neutral tints of a set narrative." 1 And hence they are a unique check upon the feelings, ideas, motives, interwoven with the narrative in the Acts. If it comes out of the test successfully, it is proved to be history in a sense in which few ancient records of the like sort — if indeed there be any in- volving equally subtle psychological situations — can aspire to the title. Whether it does so emerge vic- torious is a point which it would be unfitting here to prejudge. It may, however, be remarked on the threshold, that after considering the book in the light of highly adverse criticism, and having special regard both to the Pauline letters and to points of contact between Acts and its environment in clas- sical antiquity, Professor W. M. Ramsay in his re- cent study of St. Paul places the author of Acts " among the historians of the first rank." By these he understands those few, who, like Thucydides, hav- ing " excellent means of knowledge, either through 1 See article " Epistle," in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, p. 731 a. The Apostolic Age. personal acquaintance or through access to original authorities, bring to the treatment of their subject genius, literary skill, and sympathetic insight into human character and the movement of events. Such an author seizes the critical events, concentrates the reader's attention on them by giving them fuller treatment, touches more lightly and briefly on the less important events, omits entirely a mass of un- important details, and makes his work an artistic and idealized picture of the progressive tendency of the period." 1 Here it will be seen that Ramsay ad- mits idealization to be present in Acts only in the good sense of insight into the motives at work below the surface of the crude facts : and this conviction goes along with another as to the identity of the author, whom he regards as himself among those de- scribed by the first person plural in certain passages of the second part of the work, and as consequently one of Paul's companions. It is natural that, where the one conviction is not shared, its companion should also be discarded. Thus many, and among them Professor McGiffert in his recent work on the Apostolic Age (which sets by no means small store by the Acts), regard the so-called " we " passages as belonging only to a travel-narrative used along with other data by the author of Acts. He himself, on the other hand, belonging to the second rather than to the first generation of Christians, was unable to prevent certain conceptions proper to his own day (c. 80-90) from affecting his interpretation of the primitive facts, and so produces at times an inac- 1 St. Paul, the IVaveller and the Roman Citizen, pp. 2 ff. Introductory. xi curate picture of the deeds and words of the parties concerned. Such are the two views. Leaving, then, our decision between these alterna- tives to work itself out gradually through discussion of each point on its own merits, as it emerges, we continue the enumeration of our materials. And next one may name the Apocalypse, which, whatever its date and authorship in its present form, certainly contains passages reflecting the state of mind in some Christian circle not long after the final agony of the Jewish polity, and amid the persecutions rife under the Flavian dynasty (70-96). Most valuable too for the second generation are its messages to the Seven Churches. These may be supplemented by what is implied touching the state of various Churches in the so-called "Catholic"" Epistles, though their evidence is far harder to use on ac- count of uncertainties as to date, authorship, and the localities addressed. Lastly, a class of evidence calls for notice which needs the most delicate handling, that of the Gospels themselves. Of course it is obvious that the Fourth Gospel has much to teach us about the state of Christian thought in the late decades of the first century. Indeed Chapter xx. 31, read along with 1 John iv. 2, virtually calls attention to a special pur- pose it was meant to serve. But since the Synoptic Gospels make no more claim than does the Johannine Gospel to be exhaustive narratives of the great Min- istry, it is clear that selection among the facts, whether of word or deed, has here also been at work ; and this selection throws back welcome light xii The Apostolic Aye. upon the instinctive wants and ideals of the Apos- tolic Age. In this case, moreover, the selection in- volved is twofold. First, that working in the Church at large, causing it to prize and preserve in its oral instruction (catechesis) certain parts of the rich treasure of Apostolic recollections, while suffering oblivion to absorb much that we could have wished recorded, and which in fact has been partly pre- served for us through the more subtle receptivity and long-brooding memory of one Apostle, him " whom Jesus loved." And next, that more local and personal selection which is involved in the dis- tinctive features and special emphasis or appeal characteristic of each of the first three Gospels. All this, if used with due care, can tell us a good deal about the Apostolic Age through which these records were transmitted, first orally, then in smaller and simpler written units than those known to us, (cf. Luke i. 1-4, and, concretely, the sayings of Jesus in the Oxyrhynchus papyrus recently dug up), and finally in those comprehensive Gospels that by an intrinsic superiority survived and at last became canonical. But such indirect evidence can be read only by skilled eyes, and even then but tentatively. Compared with these Biblical sources, and early patristic writings like the so-called " Apostolic Fath- ers," non-Christian literature yields but little direct result. Yet it is of indirect value, particularly as a means whereby the chronological data embedded in our sources proper may be checked and utilized for historical purposes. Of the writers who thus help us in one way or another, one may name Josephus, Introductory. xiii born c. 37-38, whose Jewish War was written before 79, and his Antiquities completed c. 93-94 ; Tacitus, born c. 54, whose Amials, published e. 115, recount the history of the Empire from the death of Au- gustus to that of Nero: Pliny the elder and his nephew, the well-known writer of Epistles ; Sueto- nius, who when private secretary to Hadrian wrote, c. 120, Lives of the Csesars (Julius to Domitian) ; and finally Dion Cassius, author of a huge Roman history going down to 229. Of these Josephus is of course the most valuable, being well-informed on Palestinian matters both of fact and of thought, though he sometimes accommodated the latter to Roman tastes. Finally, in a class by himself and helping to explain certain aspects of Christian thought in the second generation in particular, we have Philo, the Alexandrine Judseo-Greek philoso- pher, who died about 45 A. D. The chronology of the Apostolic Age has just been alluded to. It eludes anything like precision on our present data, in spite of fairly numerous syn- chronisms with Jewish or Roman history. Separate points will be dealt with as they occur. But it may be useful to keep in mind the following dates as being probable. They are for the most part those adopted by the most recent writers 1 on the subject. 1 Mr. C. H. Turner, in the exhaustive article Chronology of the New Testament in Dr. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bihle (T. & T. Clark), and Prof. B. W. Bacon of Yale. Dr. Ramsay adds one year, Bishop Lightfoot two years, to the dates after 47 A. D. Prof. McGiffert's reckoning, like Prof. Harnack's, places everything ahout two to three years earlier from the same date onward : he also places Paul's conversion about 31-32 A. D. The present writer, while unable to agree with the former of these positions, believes the latter very near the truth. xiv The Apostolic Age. Those in italics, however, are preferred by the pres- ent writer for reasons to be explained. A. D. The Crucifixion 29 Paul's Conversion 31-32 (Ramsay 33, Turner 35-36) 1st Visit to Jerusalem 34-35 ( " 35-36, " 38) [ Visit of Gal. ii. 44-46} Famine Visit 46 (= Gal. ii., Ramsay) 1st Missionary Journey 47 Jerusalem Conference, and 2d Miss. Journey 49 Visit to Jerusalem, and 3d Miss. Journey 52 Last visit to Jerusalem and Arrest 56 Rome reached early in 59 Endof^craC) and unlettered, even their leaders, a Peter and a John, as regards technical knowledge of the Law ; and so were dis- qualified for the good life in the eyes of the Phari- sees, a mere rabble little short of accursed in God's sight. The very notion of a prophet of Galilean origin and a Nazarene, was in itself absurd (John vii. 49, 52). Of course such simple folk had their own limi- tations. Even more than their religious leaders and shepherds, these poor bewildered sheep were apt to follow the vagaries of an undisciplined imagination, stirred by the patriotic and scenic side of the Messianic Hope. Few in Palestine in those days could consciously distinguish poetic imagery in the ancient prophets, imagery largely borrowed from conditions no longer on the national horizon, from the abiding principles of their message. And so a weird amalgam of half-understood images, drawn from the variegated and piecemeal utterances of prophecy had formed itself in most minds. It was indeed kaleidoscopic in character. But it focused itself in some shape around the notion of a great na- tional Deliverance, cancelling the impotence of the Jewish people, in face of the oppressive Gentile, by xl The Apostolic Age. an exhibition of power worthy the Mighty One of Israel. This Apocalyptic mode of thought, which was embodied in an influential literature gradually coming within our knowledge, had naturally its greatest influence in the naive, untutored minds of the simpler sort. And the historian has to reckon very seriously with this fact, not only as a hindrance to prompt discipleship to Jesus in the days of His flesh, but also as coloring men's notions of the Messianic Kingdom and its future long after they were persuaded that Jesus was really the Messiah. One way of getting over the offence of the Cross was by a mere postponing of all they had hoped for in Him at His first coming, to His constantly ex- pected second Advent. But this meant also a post- ponement of the day of real transformation in their thoughts about the nature of the Kingdom and about God's way of making it come on earth. Nor must we be surprised if we find the mind of Christ often veiled by the forms in which His followers were able to apprehend His Gospel. Yet after all, there was in their minds no inner principle of antagonism to Jesus' teaching touching the essence of religion here and now, as there was among the "great" and "wise" with their pride of position and learned prejudices. This teaching was the verbal transcript of His own filial piety, as living face to face with the Father, that " Holy Father " in whom blended in perfect accord the Justice and Love that men found so hard to reconcile in their thought of God. But Jesus did not promulgate his Gospel of divine Fatherhood and human Sonship as Introductory. xli a dogma, in formal and therefore abstract fashion. He used popular speech, the language of homely but vivid imagery, often bound up with traditional associations, and most unfit for the literal and prosaic expression of any sort of " orthodoxy." But on the other hand it was the most stimulating and vital medium for the spirit that it was His supreme care to stir into life. Its poetry and even paradox were above all things suggestive, and opened springs of fresh thought and feeling long sealed by con- ventional correctness and torpor. Men had to interpret His sayings to themselves, if they were to get any good from them. And this made appeal to the best and deepest that lay latent in them. Men had to seek, before they could even fancy that they had found: they had to cooperate with the Teacher by the travail of their souls. Only to him who " had," who used all that was in him, was anything "given" by such a Gospel. On the other hand no special culture was needed, only a "pure" or sincere heart. And then the word came into the simplest mind with a strangely moving, humbling, liberating power. Through the straits of contrition and self-abandonment the soul came forth " into a large place" — far larger than it could perceive for many a long day. Herein lay another peculiarity of Christ's message. It was so purely affirmative of a few elemental reli- gious truths, radiating from the relation of Father to son, of son to Father, that while He was in fact making old things new and effecting the most rad- ical of spiritual revolutions, the fact was least sus- xlii The Apostolic Age. pected by those who most felt its power. Its enemies saw its logical bearings far more clearly than its friends. Quite early the former saw that the regal liberty with which Jesus " fulfilled " the Mosaic Law in his own way, made him not the slave but the Lord of the Law in whole as in part : and they judged Him accordingly. The latter were at first conscious only of a new pulse of life, a reli- gious exhilaration, a sense of moral individuality in relation to the fulfilment of God's Law, as some- thing of which they now saw the aim and spirit. It was but dimly that any of them felt the novelty of the sense in which Jesus "fulfilled the Law and the Prophets." It was but slowly that they came to re- alize, through the logic of facts and the march of events, how decisively they had already broken with Jewish national Legalism in following His lead with childlike confidence. For Jesus had not criticised in a formal or abstract way either the Jewish Law, as distinct from perversions or evasions of its spirit, or the popular apocalyptic forms in which the Mes- sianic hope was cherished. He used the current conceptions of each with a sovereign freedom, at once conscious of their inadequacy to the divine re- lations mirrored immediately in the pure depths of His own soul, and at the same time content to use them as the only forms of human thought then available, the outcomes of the Father's providential education of the Chosen People. It was His to place in the mass He found to hand the leaven able to leaven its very elements, the seed which had in itself a life of unsuspected potency. The rest was Introductory. xliii the Father's care, as was also the path Himself was called to tread as Son and therefore Messiah in God's own deep sense. But as for His simple followers, they could not view things from the inside outwards, as did their Master ; as touching principles, they were only feel- ing their way inwards from the outside. The dangers of this transition period, dangers latent in the un- conscious conservatism of the common people, were neither slight nor few. 1 This Jesus Himself recog- nized, in speaking of the patching an old garment with a piece of fresh cloth, and of trying to preserve new wine in old wine-skins. Certain forms of thought and usage had grown with the growth of the old religion : and the new spirit could not be con- fined by them without tension and loss. The par- able had both a present and a future application. The Apostolic Age is one long exemplification of its truth : nor was its significance even then exhausted. To the Spirit, however, whose living energy was to rule and guide the Christian Society, its Founder confidently pointed, as the guarantee of a due bal- ance between inward life and outer forms of self-ex- pression according to changing conditions and ne- 1 It was only through the Temptation that Jesus passed, in the first hours of His Messianic Vocation, into the serenity of con- scious acceptance of the Father's purely spiritual path for Mes- siah, His Son. And the difference between the alternative ideals of Messiahship is revealed by His joy in welcoming Peter's perception of the true type in a supreme moment at Csesarea Philippi, and by the sharpness of the rebuke that met the tempter's voice which spoke in Peter's next words. Through like trials had the Christian Church to pass, in entering upon its true herit- age in the Gospel. xliv The Apostolic Age. cessities. Peter's early speeches, and Stephen's Apology ; the Epistles to the Galatians, the Ro- mans, the Hebrews ; the Jobannine Epistles and Gospel — what are these but fingerposts in the pil- grimage by which the Apostolic Age entered more fully into the Gospel of Christ ? CHRONOLOGY. The Crucifixion .... Paul's Conversion .... Paul's first visit to Jerusalem Caius (Caligula), emperor Claudius, emperor .... Herod Agrippa I., king of Palestine . Palestine under Roman Procurators . Paul's visit to Jerusalem with Famine Fund Paul's First Missionary Journey- Jerusalem Conference : Second Missionary Journey, Corinth reached, late in Paul visits Jerusalem : Third Missionary Journey, Nero, emperor ..... Paul leaves Ephesus for Greece, spring, Paul visits Jerusalem, and is arrested, spring Paul confined at Csesarea, autumn, Paul reaches Eome, early in . Nero's rule begins to degenerate Acts ends : Paul's martyrdom, also James' . Peter reaches Eome .... Fire of Rome, summer : death of Peter and many Christians Outbreak of Jewish "War Death of Nero, June 9 : Galba succeeds Vespasian in Judssa declared emperor Jerusalem taken, the Temple burned Vespasian and his two sons in power John and other apostles in "Asia" Titus, emperor Domitian, emperor Roman letter to Corinth (1 Clement) Nerva, emperor Trajan, emperor A. D. March, 29 (30) 30-33 Oct, 34-35 37-41 41-54 41-44 44-66 46 47 49 (50) 1 50 52 54 55 56 56-58 59 59 61-62 62-63 64 66 68 July, 69 Aug. 70 71-79 c. 70-95 79-81 81-96 95-96 96-98 Jan. 98-117 'Henceforward Turner and Ramsay differ by a year, see p. xiii. This map is reproduced from Fisher's " History of the Christian Church." The author of " T. from Greenwich ostolic Age," however, places 8. Paul's Galatian churches in South, not in North Galatia. BOOK I. The First Generation : A. D. 29-62. CHAPTER I. EARLY PALESTINIAN DAYS. The Peaceful Beginnings (Acts i. ii.). HE curtain lifts in Acts upon the clays that followed the Passion, during which the personal disciples of Jesus were quickened, by experience of their Mas- ter's presence, out of despair into a re- novated faith. For had He not vanquished death, and so given final proof of His Messiahship, notwith- standing all the paradoxes of His earthly career? But of these wondrous days, a very life from the dead for the disciples and creative of the Church that was to be, no one complete and connected ac- count seems to have gone forth and become the com- mon property of all Christians. Indeed Luke l him- self reflects in his two works, the Gospel and Acts, different degrees of information touching the appear- ances of the risen Christ. The way in which he re- sumes the topic with which his Gospel had closed shows that he was desirous of supplementing what he had there stated, to the best of his knowledge, 2 > So we style the author of Acts throughout, without foreclosing the question of authorship, discussed in the Literary Appendix. 2 In the last paragraphs of ch. xxiv. there are one or two points (e. g., vv. 44, 50, with Dr. Plummer's notes), at which interviews which were really separated in time are simply strung together by a loose connecting particle like our "and" (Se): and at the date of writing them Luke had no definite idea as to the time that elapsed between resurrection and ascension. A 1 The Apostolic Age. by fresh detail that had since rewarded the unwearied research to which he alludes in the preface to that Gospel. He may formerly have thought, like the writer of the so-called Epistle of Barnabas (uyv/.w~) committed to the earth (ib. 44). And this confirms the view, often confi- dently challenged, that the " empty grave " was an element in the original Apostolic witness, not a later St. Paul on Christ's Resurrection. supplement. (2) Next his use in his own case of the words l " as to the one untimely born " implies, on the one hand, that he conceived the appearance to himself to have been like the rest constituting the series ; and on the other hand, that the series itself was not an unbroken one, distributed evenly over the considerable period between the Passion and his own Conversion. Rather there was a period of frequent Christophanies ; then they seemed to cease altogether; and the unlooked-for recurrence in his own case was an anomaly, as it were, of Divine Grace. (3) This falls in with the impression con- veyed by our Gospels, though it goes beyond them in naming several otherwise unrecorded appear- ances, and again takes no notice of some, notably those to Mary and to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, found in John (cf. Matt, xxviii. 9) and Luke respectively. 2 (4) Once more, the prominent »The idea is that of an immature birth, involving (1) irregularity of time — here an unexpected, abrupt call from darkness to light ; (2) the weakness of immaturity— by natural opportunity he was the worst off among apostles, while yet grace had accomplished most through him. 3 Paul's list makes no claim to be exhaustive. In particular it does not negative the idea that there was any Christophany to women, one or more, such as John (xx. 11-18, cf. Matt, xxviii. 9, 10) records. Paul is recording the official testimony to the resurrection of Jesus which could be put forth to convince men anywhere and everywhere. But in witness of this responsible sort, women would hold no place ; partly because women were at a discount in that age and would not tell as witnesses, and partly because as a matter of fact the women's testimony had not car- ried conviction even to the disciples who first heard it. Hence whether Paul had or had not heard of it, he had here no reason to refer to it (cf. end of Mark's Gospel in the MS. known as L.). 6 The Apostolic Age. place assigned to Peter, as if at least the primary witness of the Risen Christ, answers to the hint in Luke xxiv. 34. There it appears that to Simon the Lord had appeared even earlier than to those on the road to Emmaus ; so that in fact Peter's wit- ness was the prime factor in the conviction of the Apostolic circle. (5) Finally the run of the sen- tences ("that He was raised on the third day . . . and that He appeared to Cephas, then l to the Twelve ") tends to support the view implied in our Gospels, that the very first appearances were on the day of Resurrection itself (which apart from some such manifestation could hardly be dated at all), and therefore in Jerusalem, not in Galilee as some eminent critics assert. Is it urged that Christ Himself is recorded in Mark and Matthew to have appointed Galilee as trysting- place for His disciples? An obvious reply is that Matthew 2 actually records the realization of this forecast (xxviii. 16), and yet records also an earlier appearance to women on their affrighted return from the Sepulchre. The Evangelist cannot, then, have understood the reference to Galilee in the way here suggested. Again if the words preceding the Mas- ter's reference to Galilee, "I will smite the shepherd and scattered shall be the sheep," are taken to imply a universal flight of His followers from Jerusalem ere the Resurrection morn — this after all is quite arbi- 1 "Then" (elra),in contrast to "next" (e7r££ra), suggests that any gap in time, following on the appearance to Peter, came after and not before the appearance to " the Twelve." 8 Mark lacks its original ending, and so cannot be cited. The Christophanies. trary. Granting that the disciples were scattered from the Master's side by the very act of His arrest, yet some at least stayed in Jerusalem to see the ap- parent end in His death. And there is nothing to show that then at least they must have straightway departed. Rather they would be so stunned as to remain passive, waiting at least to the end of the Feast that had brought them thither. 1 Hence there is nothing to mar the intrinsic prob- ability that the first Christophanies surprised Peter and the Apostolic circle still in Jerusalem (see Acts xiii. 31). Then, the feast ended, they departed to realize it all in the quiet of their Galilean homes and await, no longer in despair but in awful hope, further heavenly guidance. Here would come in the Galilean Christophanies, those of the second epoch introduced by Paul with the word " next." These include sev- eral successive episodes. First " to over 500 disciples on a single occasion," probably with the eleven Apos- tles at their head (cf. Matt, xxviii. 16 f.) ; next "to James," so making him at once a believer and an Apostle in the wider sense — the sense in which it is added, " then to the Apostles one and all," an ex- 1 This indeed is explicitly stated in the Gospel of St. Peter, probably compiled on the basis of our four Gospels in the second or third quarter of the second century, but containing supple- mentary matter which sometimes has verisimilitude. The frag ment recovered five or six years ago in Egypt ends as follows : " Now it was the last day of the unleavened bread and many went forth returning to their homes, as the feast was ended." Then comes a passage taking us at once to John xxi. The whole fol- lows on the vision of angels to the women on the third day; and the absence of reference to Jerusalem appearances is clearly due to its Docetic Christology. The Apostolic Age. pression : to be distinguished from " the Twelve " already named. Such a vision or visions consti- tuted them, by the standards of the Apostolic Age, 2 "Apostles" rather than mere "disciples." And " last of all " in the whole series, Paul continues — classing himself perhaps with the aforesaid Apos- tolic class ("the least of Apostles," v. 9)— "as to the one born out of due time, He appeared to me likewise." The net result is to confirm the impression con- veyed by Acts, that before the Twelve and certain other disciples had gathered again at Jerusalem on the eve of the ascension, a series of Christophanies, extending over a month or more, had already taken place. And though we cannot indicate the exact point in Paul's enumeration with which Acts ch. i. 6-14 might best coincide, yet no great forcing seems needful to secure a general harmony of outline be- tween Paul's account on the one hand and those of the Gospels and the Acts on the other. 3 When, and under what incentives, the return from Gali- lee took place, we cannot say precisely. Prob- ably it was somewhat on this wise. Having been 1 Perhaps too it implies by its form (-natTcs after rol? dnoffToXms), and by its close connection with James' case, a whole series of similar appearances to individuals. 2 See 1 Cor. ix. 1, 5&, where Paul seems to imply this. 3 The probability is that the final appearance vouchsafed to the larger Apostolic circle was in Jerusalem itself (cf. Lukexxiv. 50). Nor have we reason to suppose that any Christophanies occurred after the ascension, the case of Paul, " the untimely born," being in fact the unique exception. Paul himself distinguished such Christophanies from mere " visions and revelations of the Lord," such as he refers to in 2 Cor. xi. 1. The Return to Jerusalem. convinced by a series of Christophanies in Galilee that their Master had been vindicated by resurrec- tion as Messiah in spite of the episode of death (hitherto to them no part of the Messianic forecast in prophecy and tradition), the Eleven and other personal disciples repaired to Jerusalem, expecting His immediate return to the nation in power and majesty, in its sacred capital, the scene of His death. This is the thought latent in the question possessing their souls in Acts i. 6 ff., where they inquire, " Lord, is it at this present time that thou restorest the king- dom to Israel ? " The question, too, suggests that they had come up to Jerusalem as in obedience to the Master's example in His last visit to Jerusalem, with the brief triumph of the public entry. What they had then anticipated without any check, that they were looking for after the great tragedy, in the faith that once more He lived and that with a more divine life than before. In fact He had already been in- stalled as Messiah by God's great intervention, and the words of Psalm ex. were now His heritage : " The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at My right hand until I have made thy enemies the footstool of thy feet " (iii. 20 f.). It was as they waited, still expectant of some great crisis of return on His part, that the promised expe- rience of the day of Pentecost came on them un- awares. Without as yet radically changing their conceptions, it impelled them to the ministry of wit- nessing to others what they had experienced. This they did with the added assurance that the pouring forth of the Spirit was a fresh token that Jesus was 10 The Apostolic Age. installed as Messiah in heaven, that it indeed marked the first stage of the great Day of Jehovah spoken of in Joel ii. 28 ff. (Acts ii. 16 ff. 33). They felt themselves impelled to take up their Lord's work of preparing Israel for the great Day of reckoning and purification, such as the Baptist had conceived the Messiah's Day to be (Luke iii. 16, 17). The genuine Israel was to be separated from the then crooked generation (Acts ii. 40), and so share salvation in the Messianic Kingdom. With such conceptions in mind we can enter into the course of events in these early days. Besides the Eleven, who seem to have lodged to- gether (i. 13), there were prominent in the body of some 120 disciples, then in Jerusalem, certain women (a class noticed particularly also in Luke's Gospel, viii. 2 f.; xxiii. 49), including Mary the mother of Jesus, also His own brethren, whose honored status in the early community is confirmed by Paul (1 Cor. ix. 5 ; xv. 7). This inner circle is described as much given to united prayer, probably in the large upper- room in the Apostles' lodgings, as well as more in- dividually in the Temple : and their frame of mind was one of praise and great joy (Luke xxiv. 52-53). This cheerful spirit and this close sympathy continue to mark all that follows. They were essentially in fellowship — " together " is the phrase used Qm rd abrb, i. 15 ; ii. 1, 44, 47 : cf. Luke xvii. 35). To this circle Peter soon suggested the election of some one to restore the Apostolic body to its original number, doubtless felt to have symbolic meaning in relation The Gift of Tongues. 11 to the twelve tribes of Israel 1 (cf. Luke xxii. 30 ; Matt. xix. 28). Incidentally, we learn the original qualifications of an Apostle, viz, to have accompanied Jesus through- out His ministry (reckoned from the baptism) and seen Him after the resurrection. We gather more- over, that Barsabbas (or Justus) and Matthias were only the two selected candidates from a larger num- ber of such persons not included in the favored Eleven. 2 The obscurity into which Matthias at once passes is one shared by most of his colleagues ; a fact which should warn us against attributing to the Twelve as such too much influence, as distinct from the leadership of two or three marked personal- ities. Such " Pillars " were Peter and the sons of Zebedee, 3 to whom must be added James, the Lord's brother. Indeed, ere very long the quasi-dynastic prestige of the blood-relations of Jesus the Messiah came among Jewish Christians to overshadow the standing of all Apostles, save Cephas only (note the ascending scale in 1 Cor. ix. 5). Of the Pentecostal gift of the Spirit we have already seen the significance. One or two special points, however, invite notice. First as to the at- tendant gift of " tongues," our narrative plainly points to various languages as blending in this in- 1 Here the story of Judas' fate is given in a parenthesis (already in Luke's source), and in a form probahly less exact than in Matt, xxvii. 5-8 : see Ramsay, St. Paul 367 f. 2 Cf. Hort, Christian Ecclesia 22 ff., on the term "Apostle" in the Gospels and in Acts. 3 Gal. ii. 9; cf. Acts iii. 1 ; xii. 2. 12 The Apostolic Aye. spired utterance. Men differing in speech recognized each his own among the words spoken. But the impression suggested by the glosaolalia of 1 Cor. xii.-xiv. is of another kind, that namely of ecstatic adoration in praise or prayer, addressed not so much to men as to God. Men cannot follow the speaker who in Spirit is uttering " mysteries " or truths under an obscure form. Hence, Paul con- trasts it with " prophecy " which edifies others, whereas " he that speaketh in a tongue l edifies but himself "(1 Cor. xiv. 2-4, 28). Purely emotional or inarticulate ejaculations were apt so to get the upper hand as to sacrifice all intelligibility (xiv. 7-9). Against this danger he warns the Corinthians by way of remonstrance. There is a gift of "interpre- tation " relative to tongues, which maj r be found in the same person or in another (1 Cor. xii. 10, 28 ; xiv. 5, 27 f.). And in church-meeting at least, the one gift should not be exercised apart from the pres- ence of the other ; else would there be no general benefit ; especially as tongues are for a sign to unbe- lievers rather than for believers, and the former would be apt to scoff at the phenomena as mere mad- ness unless interpretation followed (xiv. 22, 23). 2 ll 'Tongue" (jXwaaa) is here technical for speech distinctive of the spiritual life, just as Greeks used it of " barbarian " speech. The new religious experience did in fact create a new language of its own, one of more immediate speech with God in ecstatic prayer (1 Cor. xiv. 2, 14). It seemed to outsiders a soliloquy ; and Paul aimed at keeping the reflective mind (yoo'z) cooperating with the faculty of inspired emotion (7zveu/ia) dominant in glosso- lalia, in order that "interpretation " might be possible (ib. 7-19, 27). 8 Paul ascribes to a single person "tongues" or "kinds of In Paul and Acts. 13 The faculty of such interpretation is by Paul treated as a special gift of the Spirit; whereas at Pentecost it is otherwise. And on the whole a broad contrast between the two accounts must be recognized. It is simplest to suppose that from the source used for Acts ii. Luke had gathered that a phenomenon of exceptional nature, namely ecstatic speech in foreign tongues, had inaugurated the Messianic era of the Spirit. In fidelity to his au- thority he so set it down, feeling that it was generic- ally the same (if specifically different) as the glosso- lalia which he knew from personal experience, and to which he refers several times in his subsequent narrative. The peculiarity of a " tongue " was its ejaculatory, emotional, often abrupt form ; accord- ingly, words in several languages might emerge, in moments when reflection was in abeyance, seeing that many early Christians were at least bilingual or trilingual. Hence the two conceptions are not quite mutually exclusive, if in part based on differ- ent aspects of the glossolalia. 1 But we cannot hesi- tate for a moment in declaring for Paul's description as reflecting the normal facts touching the "gift of tongues " in the Apostolic Age : and it is hard to believe, in view of the back-references in Acts x. 46 f., xi. 15 (where the source used is probably tongues" (xiii. 1; xiv. 10), possibly alluding to the respective forms of prayer, praise (^cd/ioc), thanksgiving (jzukoyia), dis- tinguished in ch. xiv. 13-16. 1,1 Jesus — anathema," " Jesus— Lord," "Our Lord cometh " (Maranatha), "Abba, Father," such ejaculatory utterances — some- times, perhaps, the result of a thought breaking suddenly on the soul — contribute something to our knowledge of the facts. 14 The Apostolic Aye. different), that the Pentecostal form of it was really as unique as has usually been assumed. Paul him- self quotes the prophecy about God's speaking to His people " by men of strange tongues " as exempli- fied in principle by glossolalia. And it is quite possible that in time confusion arose between the two senses of the word "strange," and that this has crept into the account in Acts. The fact at the bottom of glossolalia in any form was one and the same. In it men were raised above their normal selves by a divine impulse. And this is the feature to which Peter's argument appeals in citing Joel. The Messianic Age was to be essentially the age of the Spirit present in the whole people. And it is of the first importance to bear this conception in mind throughout: otherwise the genius of Apostolic Chris- tianity and its usages cannot be grasped. Peter's speech is full of traditional Messianic conceptions. These still, as for long after, overlaid in the minds of the disciples certain things most distinctive of Jesus, their Messiah, and so hindered the full effect of His Spirit upon their thoughts and ideals. The categories through which they viewed Him officially, as distinct from their memory of His personality and ways, they held in common with their unconverted hearers. And so the violent and catastrophic note prevails in Peter's discourse. His standpoint is very much that of a prophecy like Malachi, with its search- ing Messenger of the Covenant, who should work as a refiner's fire among the people, consuming the dross and gathering the true Israel into a yet closer relation. Such a Messianic community would in The Messianic Community: 15 truth be Jehovah's " Kingdom," a theocracy to which all the Gentiles should be subject in one way or another. This coalesces with the picture of the Davidic Messiah set forth in certain Psalms. Final deliverance from death and corruption (Ps. xvi.) and exaltation at God's right hand of power (Ps. ex.) are realized in the resurrection and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth. And so the burden of Peter's words as reported, and of the " other words besides " (v. 40), was "Save yourselves from this crooked generation." In this light must we view the call, " Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, unto remission of sins and the reception of the royal bounty in the form of the Holy Spirit." Baptism here means the washing away of the stains of the sinful past (xxii. 16), repented of and forgiven in the name of Jesus Messiah. This forgiveness is viewed as ratified by the gracious gift of the Spirit, wherewith the heavenly King pledges His favor restored to those who yield themselves in penitent homage unto obedience of faith. Such elect souls were then added to the ex- isting community or fellowship — the nucleus of re- generate Israel : and the life of close communion thus begun is summarized in the statement that " they were attending steadfastly upon the Apostles' teaching and upon the fellowship — the breaking of (the) bread and the prayers." By " the breaking of bread " is meant a meal of Communion, the primitive form of Eucharistic service, " an expressive act by which the unity of the many as partakers of the one Divine sustenance (life) is signified." So close in- deed was their sense of oneness in interest, their 16 I 1 he Apostolic Age. spiritual family-feeling, that " the believers in fellow- ship " (ki:\ to auro) observed, in fact community in the use of their goods ; where there was need, there at once was supply ; and that by no constraint other than that of loving sympathy. Nor did they with- draw from the wonted forms of Jewish piety, but rather filled them to the full with their new-found enthusiasm of glad motive. They haunted the Temple ; they also in home-gatherings broke the bread of sacred fellowship, so finding an exultant joy in their very food, with praise to God the Giver of all, both physical and spiritual. And that they did not loosen any tie binding them to Jewish piety, is shown by the fact that they were in favor with the whole people and had constant accessions to the safe haven of their fellowship (vv.43-47). What then are we to think of such a relation to Judaism, in the light of their Master's own principles and inner spirit? We mitst distinguish sharply be- tween practice and mental attitude. In the former respect they were in perfect continuity with the path pursued by Jesus Himself; and there is nothing to show that He would have had them act otherwise. But as regards religious outlook, the contrast is more noteworthy even than the likeness. Not that Jesus had taken up a formally critical or negative attitude either to the Mosaic Law or to the Messianic ideal of His day: but His spirit in relation to both was none the less above the thoughts of the Judseo- Christian mind. Christ was the " fulfiller " of the Law and the Prophets, " in that He sought to give The Old and the New Israel. 17 effect to their true purpose and inner meaning. He indicated that for Himself and His true disciples the old form of the Law had ceased to be binding ; but He did not disobey its precepts or even the pre- cepts of tradition, or encourage His disciples to do so, except in so far as obedience would have promoted that Pharisaic misuse of the Law and of tradition alike which called for His warmest de- nunciations. Nay, He did homage to that (for its time) right service of the old order which was repre- sented by John the Baptist, though He at the same time proclaimed its entirely lower and transitory character. . . . The fundamental point, a ful- filment of the Law which was not a literal retention of it as a code of commandments, was, as it is still, a conception hard to grasp : it was easier either to perpetuate the conditions of the old covenant or else to blaspheme them. 1 Again, there was ample matter for apparent contradiction in the necessity for a time of transition, during which the old order would live on by the side of the new, not Divinely deprived of its ancient sanctity, and yet laid under a Divine warning of not distant extinction. . . . The great point to remember is, that it was hardly possi- ble for either aspect (of Christ's attitude) to be for- gotten in men's recollections of the original Gospel at any period of the Apostolic Age, however vaguely and confusedly both might be apprehended." ' iThe media via here marked out underlies the well-known say- ing in Codex Bezse, addressed to a man found working in the field op the Sabhath: "O man, if thou knowest what thou doest, blessed art thou ; but if thou knowest not, accursed art thou and a transgressor of the Law." *Hort, Judaistic Christianity, 36-38. B 18 The Apostolic Age. Some difficulty has not unreasonably been felt about the large numbers into which the Church leaped suddenly, here some 3,000, and a little later some 5,000 men alone (iv. 4). Would not so large and striking a movement have forthwith caused serious friction with the authorities? But there was as yet no formal Church to mark off all believers in Jesus as Messiah from their fellows; their orthodoxy of practice would at once contribute to their numbers and protect them from persecution. And indeed, until they threatened public order by the marked excitement caused by such deeds and words as are next recorded, they had as much right to be as any other sect in Judaism. Still it is likely that in the picture just given (apart from the 3,000) Luke anti- cipates somewhat, as is allowable in a summary. (b) Days of Friction (Acts iii.-v.). Our author having just referred to "wonders and signs " as wrought through the Apostles (ii. 43), now proceeds in Chapter iii. to cite an instance, the healing of the lame man at the gate of the Temple called "Beautiful." His account is not only most vivid, but also witnesses indirectly to the correct Jewish piety of the Apostles as regards Temple- worship and due hours of prayer. 1 The reference to Solomon's Porch as the spot where Peter gave his second address, in explanation of this miracle, is a mark of originality ; and the speech itself, which is full of Hebraic touches, may be considered typical 1 " To observe the hour of prayer, the ninth hour " (iii. 1), i. e., 3 P. M. The Primitive Preaching. 19 of the line taken in the preaching of these early clays. As such it contains certain phrases highly expressive of the community's faith touching Jesus, now felt more than in the days of His flesh to be " the pioneer Leader of life." It is His Name, declarative of His Messianic office, that is the ground of the faith whereon turned the act of power just accomplished. On condition of penitent turning unto the Lord (cf. ix. 35) for the cancelling of past sins, especially as indicated in its late rejection of Jesus, the nation is promised "seasons of restoration from the presence of the Lord " and the return of the Christ prepared for them, namely Jesus, who is now in heaven await- ing the times of restitution (cf. i. 6) of all things whereof God had spoken through His prophets from the first. Jesus is the "Servant" of Jehovah, the Prophet, whom God through Moses promised to raise up, with a view to blessing all nations accord- ing to the covenant with Abraham. It was to them first of all that Jesus had been sent in His earthly ministry, to bless them in turning each away from his sins. And then Peter was about to add that, if even now they would turn to Him and accept the Messianic blessing for Israel, all would yet be well. 1 But he was interrupted by the arrival of the captain of the Temple, himself a priest of high rank, and the Sadducees, who were " distressed " at their ventur- 1 How exactly ou the lines of Is. xl. ff. is this preaching. There "the Servant of Jehovah, i.e., the company of religious teachers which formed the kernel of the Jewish people, was to convert, first, lukewarm or indifferent Jews, and then the otber nations to the true religion " (Cbeyne, Jewish Religious Life after the Exile, 216). * 20 The Apostolic Age. ing to teach the people and proclaim in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. This arrest, both as to its date and the motive as- signed to it, raises some questions tou ;hing the early chapters of Acts, and must be examined in detail. When we place ourselves resolutely back in these early days, several things become clear. There was in the first instance no reason why the disciples, de- vout Jews in their practice, should not add some distinctive beliefs to those generally received. There were several sects of this sort within Judaism, of which the Essenes were an extreme instance. These men were tolerated even in certain non-conforming features, such as repudiation of animal sacrifice, which led to absence from the Temple feasts. But this was largely because their aloofness from the centres of population made them no danger to national re- ligious life or public order. Similarly, as long as the disciples of Jesus did not attract too much attention, they were in no great danger of being molested simply because they chose to believe and declare their belief in One who had been publicly crucified not long since. But once let them engross popular attention beyond a given point, and they became an annoyance to the authorities both in Church and State, and their right to teach in public places was like to be challenged. And so it came about. The healing of the lame man brought things to a head, by adding popular excitement to their wonted testi- mony. Hence the Temple authorities challenged their right to collect a crowd by their teaching within the very precincts of the authorized reli- The Challenge of the Authorities. 21 gion. 1 It was quite natural that such opposition should come from the ruling priestly order rather than the Pharisees, whose sphere was the synagogue ; and the exact enumeration of several of the high -priestly clan in Chapter iv. 6 gives additional verisimilitude to the narrative. Some, however, regard the speci- fication of the Resurrection as the burden of this un- authorized " teaching " (iv. 2), as due to Luke rather than to his source, on the ground that "the Sadducees were not bigoted theologians who desired to stop the mouths of all that differed with them." But surely their "creating too much of an excitement in the city " by their teaching cannot be separated from its distinctive note, the Resurrection, which was not proclaimed as an abstract dogma, but as true of Jesus in particular, to whom everything, the recent miracle of healing for instance, was constantly be- ing referred. In other words the belief in the Resur- rection of Jesus was the root of the fact of the preaching and of its results. The object, then, of the authorities was, without entering formally into the content of their preaching, to curtail their freedom of public speech in the in- terest of the existing order ; especially as belief in a Messiah who had risen, and might reappear at any time, was apt to produce just that unsettlement which would bring the Procurator down heavily on the authorities. Hence their challenge as to the power or person authorizing such exciting teaching (iv. 7). To this Peter's reply is that the warrant lay in Israel's Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, a proof of 1 Much as they had challenged their Master's right, Luke xx. 1. 22 The Apostolic Age. whose power stood before them in the person of the man now restored by faith in His name and office. "The Salvation " (jj oW.tt; />:'«, v. 12), the Messianic Deliverance from all evils for which Israel was look- ing, was to be found in Him and no other (9-12). Struck by the confident tone of these unlettered men, the authorities " took fresh cognizance of the fact that they had been companions of Jesus," whose person and fate would be still fresh in their memory. Their difficulty in taking action lay in the fact that a man had been marvelously restored ; and to pun- ish his benefactors would be likely to create yet further excitement among the populace (cf. 21 f.). So, following the policy natural to men in office but not strong in the regard of their countrymen, namely that the chapter of accidents is on the side of those who wait, they gave them an official warning against speaking any more "in this Name," and hoped that the matter would go no further. Peter and John gave them no encouragement in their official optimism, telling them it was a matter not of technical training but of simple witness to facts. And being dismissed with a final word of warning, they betook themselves forthwith to their friends. The incident had one marked result : it made the populace more shy of gathering around the Chris- tians within the Temple precincts (v. 13). On return to their own special circle, they re- ported the authorities' words, and then with one soul turned to prayer for strength to obey God rather than man. They express their confidence that the Sovereign Lord of all things, who had in Steadfastness of the Apostles. 23 prophecy foretold such enmity to Himself and His Anointed, held all in His hand. Foreigners and fel- low countrymen alike had wrought their will against His " Holy Servant Jesus," His " Anointed One." But nothing lay outside His fixed counsel. And so, looking past the threats, they craved the grace of "boldness of speech" in speaking God's message, as also His manifest support in healings, signs, and won- ders, wrought " through the Name of His Holy Serv- ant, Jesus." l Their prayer was answered by a fresh experience of the Holy Spirit's present power, re- sulting in the needful "boldness " to continue their preaching. On the other hand the mass of believers were as united in heart and soul as at the first, so exhibiting in their way also tokens of the Holy Spirit in their midst. For selfish egoism was swal- lowed up of the love that counted " mine " as also "thine" among true brethren. So, supported by rank and file, " the commissioned witnesses of the Lord Jesus " discharged their witness touching the Resurrection with great power; while great grace was poured out upon them all. Insomuch that those who possessed land or house property sold it, to bring the proceeds and place them at the Apostles' disposal: and under their direction the actual wants of each were met as they arose. 2 In this yielding of 1 The archaic type of this prayer will appear yet more clearly when we reach the prayers in the DidacJie. 2 Hort (Christian Ecclesia, 46) sees in this the hint of a "fresh im- pulse towards consolidation," due to a new sense that they too were called to endure the same opposition which by God's providence had befallen their Messiah. Hence the notice of their corporate spirit is no otiose repetition of ii. 44 f., but represents advance of 24 The Apostolic Aye. one's wealth outright to the community, Joseph, who received from the Apostles the surname of Barnabas " son of Consolation " (possibly in memory of this helpful deed), a Levite of Cypriot birth, set the most notable example. Over against him, however, in the tradition of the community, stood in black colors the figures of Ananias and his wife Sapphira, as typical cases of insincerity the more shocking in proportion to the atmosphere of manifested Spirit-power in which they were then living. They " lied to the Holy Spirit " dwelling in and with the Apostles. The words of Peter are evidence that there was no strict communism, but simply "a voluntary and variable contribution " to a common stock on a large scale. The individual was not merged in the community. But the fact that the new community was attaining a fresh distinctness and cohesion in the consciousness both of those within and those without, seems sug- gested (in Luke's subtle, allusive way) by the use for the first time of the term " Church " (ecclesia), in the remark that " great fear came upon all the ecclesia and upon all that heard of these things " (v. II). 1 Thus, once more, a description of the developing community suggests itself to the writer. He refers organization in their common life of love. Charity became cen- tralized, as it were, instead of being exercised by each man in- formally to his needy neighbor. It also serves to introduce the story of Ananias and Sapphira. ir rhe historicity of this section has been questioned as much as that of any in Acts. But the circumstantiality of the names is against its being "a moral apologue." There is nothing incred- ible iu deaths caused by shock at such a solemn exposure of de- ceit. It is incorrect to represent the narrative as implying that Peter imprecated death on them. Pojiularity and Second Arrest. 25 to the fulfilment of the prayer of the Apostolic circle in the wonders wrought among the people through their instrumentality. And then he describes the believers as more clearly differentiated from others, as they congregated for teaching in Solomon's Porch — "the great arcade reaching along the whole east side of the vast Temple precinct." Outsiders, how- ever, held aloof from their company in public, on account of the former descent of the authorities. Still the people admired them ; nay rather, there were constantly being added to them believers on the Lord, numbers both of men and women. So much so, that the sick were brought forth into the streets on couches in the hope that Peter's passing shadow might perchance fall upon some one of them — a mode of statement that suggests no countenance of the practice on Peter's part. Even the populace in the neighboring towns were beginning to bring their sick and possessed. This extension to the ad- jacent country was a new feature. Such popularity was too much for the Jewish au- thorities. The High Priest and his party, the Sad- ducees, were filled with jealousy — possibly also with fear of Roman interference. They had already cau- tioned them: so now they imprisoned the Apostles in the public jail. 1 The Apostles are brought before 1 Their release by an angel is probably a secondary feature in the source on which our author draws. It looks like the double of Peter's release in ch. xii. ; but the special ground for suspicion is that here the deliverance is not effectual, serving only to en- hance the reader's sense that the authorities were fighting against God. "The words of this life" is a primitive Christian phrase, of a piece with "the Leader of Life" (iii. 15) and pointing be- hind Luke to a Judseo-Christian source. 26 The Apostolic Aye. "the Sanhedrin and the whole senate of the sons of Israel." The High Priest's remonstrance recalls the warning of Chapter iv. 18. He says, "We strictly charged you not to teach on the warrant of this Name : and lo ! ye have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and are for making us responsible for the blood of this man." Again the Apostolic appeal is to God, the God who in raising Jesus had cancelled the curse of crucifixion at their hands. " Him God had by His right hand raised as Leader and Saviour, to give repentance to Israel and remission of sins": whereof they were wit- nesses, as well as the Holy Spirit which God had given — a supreme Messianic gift — to those who were yielding Him obedience. This was a line of reply most galling to the Sadducaic party, who would fain have done away with such folk. But the Pharisee Gamaliel, Paul's master, counselled self-restraint on the ground that false Messiahs and their adherents always came to a speedy end, if left alone. So had it been with Theudas, and so with Judas of Galilee. So too would it be with these men, if God was not behind them. 1 Gamaliel's counsel prevailed. And 'There is a difficulty about Theudas. The only one known to history (through Josephus Ant. xx. 5, 1) arose under Cuspins Fadus. c. 45 A. D., while this one seems to have lived some time before our date (c. 30-33), or rather before Judas of Galilee (the Gaulouite, of Gamala, Jos. Ant. xviii. 1, 1 ffi, cf. xx. 5, 2. B. J. ii. 8, 1), who rose in the days of " the enrolment " under Qui- rinius, about the time of the Christian era. But our knowledge of the many false Messiahs is so imperfect that we must leave the difficulty unsolved, judgiug it meantime in the light of our gen- eral estimate of Luke as a careful historian. See Luke xiii. 1 ; Mark xv. 7, cf. Luke xxiii. 19, for instances of troubles under The Seven Almoners. 27 with the extra deterrent of scourging, they were again charged not to speak in Jesus' name and dis- missed, glorying in the honor of dishonor "for the Name." But in no way did the Apostles cease teach- ing and announcing as good news the Messiahship of Jesus, both in the Temple and in private houses. " It is at this point that the preaching of Stephen opens new horizons and leads to a new course of events." (c) Stephen and Persecution (Acts vi.-viii. 3). The Hebraic phrase "in those days" with which Chapter vi. opens does not help us much chronolog- ically (cf. i. 15 : ix. 37 ; xi. 27) ; but the " disciples " (here so called for the first time in Acts l ) were at any rate becoming numerous, though apparently not beyond the possibility of some sort of common meet- ing on special occasion (v. 2). Of organization proper we have so far had little trace ; and it is doubtful whether there were even " elders " in any official sense in the Messianic community. We have no evidence that its differentiation from Judaism in general had as yet gone so far; and besides, to them would naturally have fallen the ministry (cf. xi. 30) Pilate of which we have only the most casual knowledge. Ramsay discnsses the matter afresh in his last book (Was Christ bom at Bethlehem? 252 ff.). He reinforces his distinction between the census (during Quirinius' special mission in Syria) taken by Herod and that taken by Quirinius, and claims that Luke should be trusted. 1 A mark perhaps of a new document : it occurs three times in seven verses, and seven times in ch. ix. Barnabas, Philip, or Mark, may be suggested as possible authors. 28 The Apostolic Age. devolved on " the Seven," as recorded in the verses which follow. The believing Hellenists or Greek- speaking Jews 1 settled in Jerusalem, whose pro- portion to the whole body of believers is obscure, were complaining that the widows among them were neglected in the daily ministration of relief, in com- parison with the widows of native Jews who would be better known and possibly more highly esteemed in the community at large. 2 But whatever native prejudice may have existed, the Twelve (only here so described in Acts, cf. the Eleven in i. 26 ; ii. 14) were superior to it and, as on several subsequent occasions, acted as a unifying and comprehensive factor in the development of the Christian Ecclesia. They now convened the body of the disciples, and proposed the creation of a special board for the ad- ministration of the collective charity. They were themselves loath to turn aside from their proper ministry of " the Word of God " to that of " tables." Hence they bade the " brethren " choose seven men of good repute, "full of Spirit and of wisdom," for them to institute " over this need " in their stead, by the usual Jewish form of Semichah, the laying on of hands accompanying the appointment of a Rabbi and 1 Hort (Jud. Chr. 48) remarks that "possibly a proselyte might also be called a Hellenist with reference to his language "; cf. Nicolaus in v. 5. s "In Judaea the use of the Hebrew language was regarded as a symbol of patriotism and zeal, that of the Greek as a token of foreign sympathies. The Hellenists were therefore an unpopular minority in Jerusalem, engaged for the most part either in the service of the Roman government or in foreign commerce and the affairs of Jewish colonies abroad " (Rendall, ad. loc). Stephen. 29 admission to the Sanhedrin. The multitude agreed and presented "Stephen, a man full of faith and Holy Spirit," and Philip and Prochorus and Nicanor and Timon and Parmenas and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antiochene origin — a list notable for its ap- parently uniform Hellenist character. But in any case the notable thing is that Hellenists and Hebrews were formally recognized as on one footing. The persecution that ere long arose, through Stephen's preaching, seems to have dispersed the board of Seven. Accordingly when Barnabas and Paul go up with relief from Antioch in xi. 30, it is to the "elders" of the community, now organized in its distinctness on the usual Jewish lines, that they formally present the gift. Philip is indeed styled one of " the Seven " in Acts. xxi. 8, as well as " the Evangelist." But the Seven are not called " Dea- cons," nor were they strictly the first of the class later so described in connection with the Pauline churches. In this important narrative, then, we see the Ecclesia passing into more organic being. There is now some differentiation of functions; and a share of responsibility rests upon the members at large, as having selected the new functionaries. Hence our author once more marks progress by a general statement, that " the Word of God continued to grow and the number of the disciples was multiply- ing in Jerusalem exceedingly; and a great multi- tude of the priests (getting over their fear) were yielding obedience to the faith " — a new feature in the situation. 30 The Apostolic Age. The wider outlook of Hellenistic Jews would tend to give fresh emphasis to the less Judaic side of their common faith. And this we see in the lead taken by Stephen, whose spiritual power of every kind soon made him a marked man for friend and foe alike. Himself probably a member of one of the synagogues frequented by Hellenists from places like Cyrene and Alexandria l in the South, from Cilicia and Proconsular Asia in the North of the Levant (such as Saul of Tarsus may well have worshipped in), Stephen now drew upon himself by his powerful preaching the opposition of his fellow Hellenists, probably anxious to show themselves not a whit behind native Hebrews in zeal for the re- ligion of their fathers. The charge against him was like that brought against Jesus himself; and though in either case the words alleged were probably garbled in a sense, yet there was enough in them to justify the feeling that they meant so unwonted an attitude to Mosaism as to appear blasphemous. For the appeal was to the prophetic instead of the scribal conception of the Law and of God. A great stir arose : and this time it was " the people and the elders and the Scribes," even more than the priests and Sadducees, who were affected. Stephen was seized, brought before the Sanhedrin, and there confronted 1 Our MSS. place first" the synagogue of the Freedmen " (Liber- tini), i. e., men once slaves in the Roman world or at least of servile origin, but now free. These would certainly form a considerable body, probably of men once resident in Italy. Blass suggests that we should read "Libyans" {Aiftuarlvoi), the geographical neigh- bors of the Cyreuians. But why, then, are Roman Hellenists omitted entirely ? Stephen's Sp>eech. 31 by witnesses whose falsity lay in the sinister turn they gave to certain words he had used. Quite possibly he had quoted the words of Jesus touching the destruction of the Temple and city as sure to be fulfilled should the nation persistently refuse its Messiah. But he had implied no disrespect for Temple or Law, which the whole Christian com- munity honored by strictest obedience. He simply spoke in the spirit of the great prophets, saying that such privileges did not tie Jehovah's hands from punishing stiffneckedness in His people : and if once before by the destruction of a temple, why not again, if needful ? This is the tone of his defence, which dwells upon the changing and progressive forms under which the Covenant relation of Jehovah and His people had been conserved through many dark days in their past history. His speech is a philosophy of Israel's religious history in the prophetic manner : and it is most significant that he goes back, beyond the Law, to the Promise given to Abraham, making it the basis of all — as in Paul and the Epistle to the Hebrews later on. Even Moses they had treated badly when he brought them God's message of deliverance ; they had failed to use the institutions of Mosaism : and now they were re- jecting the greater than Moses, Messiah, in whom the "living oracles" of God were yet more fully offered to them. The Temple itself could not guarantee God's favor and presence, as Isaiah lxvi. 1 f. warned them. If they were resisting the higher light, they were resisting the Holy Spirit, as their fathers had so often done : and that cancelled all 32 The Apostolic Aye. privilege. This charge he pressed home in Biblical language of great force and vehemence, asking which of the prophets had not been persecuted by their fathers, the slayers of those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, whose death he now laid to their own charge. As a climax, he retorted the accusation levelled at himself; "men who received the Law as heaven-given ordinances, and kept it not ! " The moral to be drawn from past and pres- ent was the same — God's Law holy and spiritual, Israel carnal and obstinate in its trust in the ex- ternals of its worship. Doubtless another shaking of the forms that seemed so inviolable was at hand. 1 Whether Stephen had finished or not, it was the last sentence they would suffer him to speak. Stung by his piercing speech, the enraged Sanhedrin, treat- ing his rapt words, " Lo ! I behold the heavens opened and the Son of Man 3 standing on the right hand of God," as yet more blasphemy, hurried him forth from the city and stoned him. The proceed- ings, though in correct Jewish form (cf. Lev. xxiv. 14-16; Deut. xvii. 7), were tumultuary in character, 1 McGiffert, History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age (85 ff.), j ustly observes that such a speech, making no reference to the abrogation of the Law or the calling of the Gentiles, must be based on an authentic report. 2 This title, though unique outside the Gospels, seems to be used by Stephen with allusion to Dan. vii. 13, even as Jesus may have used it in Luke xxii. 69, so incurring the charge of blas- phemy. In any case it is a watermark of a Judseo-Christian source behind the Acts (cf. James' use of it at his martyrdom, as reported by Hegesippns), and should check hasty inferences from the Gospels, e. g., that it was a title used by Jesus of Himself but not by the early Christians of Him, Scattering and Extension. 33 seeing that the death penalty was reserved to the Roman governor. The great excitement sufficiently explains the act : and there may have been special conditions in respect to the procurator of the day (Pilate), which made it easier than usual to get their temerity condoned. 1 The day had been a momentous one for the future of the Church, soon to be no longer merely " the Church in Jerusalem " (viii. 1). Upon it fell fresh sus- picion of revolutionary and blasphemous belief, through the boldly aggressive way in which Stephen had, for the first time, made explicit what was in- volved in faith in Jesus as Messiah, over against the existing state of Jewish religion. They seemed now not only a troublesome sect, but an heretical one of radical tendencies. Hence persecution followed, so violent as to produce a general scattering for a time from Jerusalem, particularly of the Hellenistic wing known to be in closest connection with Stephen. And Luke notices anticipatorily that the young Saul, who had been present at and sympathizing in Stephen's death, was foremost in these repressive measures. (d) Further Extension (Acts viii. 4-xi. 18). The sphere affected by this dispersion was prima- rily Palestine, namely Judsea in the larger or Roman sense (including Galilee and Pereea, see i. 8, ix. 31, 1 Compare the parallel case of James, the Lord's brother, who was killed probably about 62 A. D. Pilate, who was deposed be- fore Easter, 36 A. D., was certainly in rather a weak position in the last years of his office. C 3-1 The Apostolic Age. cf. Luke vii. 17, iv. 44) and Samaria. The first part of the historian's programme, that touching the for- tunes of the Gospel in Jerusalem itself (i. 8), is now at an end. Hence he begins forthwith to relate the extension of the Church rendered possible by the scattering, which must have reinforced the begin- nings already existing up and down Judaea, and even, as it seems, in Damascus (ix. 2). Luke first describes the evangelization in Samaria (perhaps derived from Philip himself, cf. xxi. 8). The Samaritans, though a people of mixed blood, observed the Jewish religion in an undeveloped form, and hence were not treated as complete aliens. Philip's work then did not involve any breach of Jewish law, only a widening of sympathy as com- pared with average Jewish prejudices. The Messi- anic hope existed among them in some form (John iv. 25) and presented a point of contact possibly ren- dered the more effective by some memory of Jesus as having passed through their land not long since. Works of power further prepared the way; and Philip's gospel touching the " Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ " found a ready response, both men and women accepting baptism unto Mes- siah's name. The news created some stir at Jerusa- lem as involving a new departure and so seeming to require formal Apostolic sanction. To this end Peter and John were sent to the scene ; and finding that the token of full membership in the New Israel, the manifested Holy Spirit power, was as yet lack- ing to these converts, prayed that this Divine sanc- tion might seal their election by God (cf. x. 44-48), Simon Magus, and the Eunuch. 35 Then, as they laid on their hands, to symbolize the heavenly act of blessing, as was seemingly usual (cf. Ananias in the case of Paul, ix. 17, also xix. 6, 7), the Samaritans began to show the wonted signs of the Spirit. 1 This excited the professional ambition of a certain Simon who prior to becoming a convert had plied the calling of a magus or magician of great repute among the whole Samaritan race, "giving out that himself was some Great One "—even " the Power of God that goes by the name of Great " (ij Auva/jLisroo dtoo y xaXou/i&rj MsydXr;, v. 10). Accordingly, in the unethical spirit characteristic of heathen reli- gions, this man proposed to buy from the Apostles a share in such a showy gift as he conceived them to possess in their own right : but only to call forth Peter's indignant rebuke of that form of impiety which has since been called " Simony." 2 " After delivering their full testimony and speaking the Word of the Lord," the Apostles "returned to Jeru- salem, evangelizing as they went many villages of the Samaritans." For Philip, however, a yet further piece of service in the enlargement of the Church's bounds was re- served. His baptism of the Ethiopian court official 'Why this had not occurred already at their baptism, as was obviously the case (without any Apostolic intervention) with the converts at Antioch a little later (xi. 20 ff.), is not quite clear. The idea seems to be that this full proof that the Messianic Salva- tion was available beyond Israel as such, was associated with the ministry of those to whom the opening of the Kingdom was first entrusted. 2 Simon's subsequent career, according to tradition, took the form of rivalry to the Messiahship of Jesus to whom he had once professed adhesion. 36 The Apostolic Age. or Eunuch represented an advance on the case of a proselyte like Nicolaus : for the latter was fully in- corporated in the Jerusalem community, where pros- elytes were but an element absorbed in the central body ; whereas this detached proselyte would now stand by himself as a distant member of the Ecclesia. The distinction may be little to us : but to Jews it was otherwise. For the conception of Jerusalem as the sacred hearth of Israel, to which even Jews beyond Palestine belonged in idea — a fact witnessed to by their visits to the Feasts — was still a reality in pious Jewish minds. Hence by the baptism of this man the New Ecclesia took another step toward the full ideality or spiritual unity which it attains in the Pauline epistles. But the step was not as important as that in the case of Cornelius, to which accord- ingly far greater emphasis is given. Two points may be noted in passing : (1) the use of Is. liii. as a Messianic passage with a redemptive bearing, of which the gospels contain hints : (2) the fact that this proselyte took baptism into the Messianic King- dom as quite a natural thing. This must be borne in mind in interpreting primitive baptism. Philip's parting from the Eunuch is described in a way that seems moulded on Old Testament models : l and Azotus (Ashdod) becomes his fresh point of de- parture. Thence he made a tour of the cities in that region (the Maritime Plain) until he reached Csesa- rea, the political capital, where we find him residing l E.g., Ezekiel xi. 24, "Aud the spirit lifted me up, and brought me in the vision by the spirit of God into Chaldsea"; cf. iii. 12, 14; 1 Kings xviii. 12 ; 2 Kings ii. 1, 16. Saul the Persecutor. 37 some twenty-five years later (xxi. 8). Among traces of his labors we may reckon " the saints " at Lydda and " the disciples " at Joppa visited by Peter on a tour of inspection (ix. 32 ff.). Meantime Luke's narrative doubles back to record the most momentous event in the history of Apos- tolic Christianity, the conversion of Saul the Phari- see, whom it left in the full fervor of his persecuting zeal at Jerusalem (viii. 3). To use his own words in Galatians, (i. 24), Saul was bent on " making havoc " of the new faith, being persuaded that it was his duty to do many things hostile to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. Accordingly he shut up many of the Saints in prisons, having received such authority as belonged to the high-priestly rulers ; he tried to compel many to blaspheme the name of Jesus by pains and penalties inflicted in many a synagogue ; and even voted for the extreme penalty of death where this was feasible. But not content with smit- ing the heretics, both men and women, in their headquarters, his fury impelled him to pursue them even beyond Judaea, to foreign cities. Among these Damascus would naturally be chief. And so to Da- mascus Saul hied, with full commission from the high priests in letters to their " brethren "at the head of the synagogues in Damascus, in order to bring such of the heretical "way" as he might find to Jerusalem for punishment (xxvi. 9-12 ; xxii. 5, 19 ; ix. 2). Possibly it was fugitives from Jerusalem that Saul had mainly in view. But in any case it does not seem that there was as yet any organized Chris- tian life in Damascus (ix. 2; xxii. 12). 38 The Apostolic Age. Into the personal details of Saul's conversion we shall have to enter subsequently in connection with his special religious history. Here we have only to notice its sequel, so far as it enters at once into the general stream of the Christian Mission. After he had responded to Ananias' appeal to arise and by ac- cepting baptism wash away his sins, invoking the name of Jesus as Messiah (xxii. 16), and had re- covered both sight and strength after the tremen- dous strain through which he had just passed, the converted Pharisee retired into the adjacent sparsely inhabited region to the south-southeast, called vaguely Arabia. 1 He probably wished to let the sensation of his conversion subside before attempting to deliver his witness: but we may also surmise a personal necessity created by his new experience itself. The Spirit was driving Saul, like his Master before him, into solitude ; where alone and undistracted he faced the full issues involved in the great revelation to his soul of Jesus as Messiah or God's true Son (Gal. i. 16). He withdrew to settle his future with his God and with his new Lord. This done, but not till then, 2 he could return to Damascus and begin a ministry of some two years in its synagogues, the burden of 1 Damascus was at this time or soon after in the bands of the Arabian King whose seat was at Petra. 'This sequence is settled by the "straightway '* of Gal. i. 16, to which Acts ix. 20 must bend. Ramsay observes (p. 380) that Luke is not strong on the temporal relations of events : and Paul's withdrawal from the city had a purely personal significance, and so may well have escaped the knowledge of one who was in- terested primarily in the public progress of the Gospel. Acts ix. 19, 20, could however hardly have been written by one familiar with the Epistle to the Galatians. Saul the Christian. 39 which was " Jesus is the Son of God " (Acts ix. 20) — to the amazement of all cognizant of his past. His argument for the Messiahship of Jesus continued to gain fresh force and cogency for Jewish minds: so much so, that after a time (some two years or so after his conversion) his life came into imminent danger. The Jews, as he tells us in 2 Cor. xi. 32 f., obtained the cooperation of King Aretas' representa- tive and so were able to secure the city gates against his flight, whether by day or night. So that the bold preacher was driven to the humiliation of mak- ing his escape in a basket lowered from the city wall. He now betook himself to Jerusalem, for the first time as a Christian, feeling the present a good op- portunity of sounding Peter, 1 the recognized author- ity on his Lord's life and words. Doubtless his desire for conference related not only to historical facts of which Peter was the leading witness, but also to matters of policy touching the future of the Church. Barnabas, quite possibly an old associate, both being Hellenists, seems to have been of service to Saul in the end he had in view. And though most of the Apostles appear to have been absent, a good understanding was established with the two chief men of the Church, Peter and James the Lord's brother (Gal. i. 18 f.). This understanding was as an anchor that bore all the strain and stress of parties in the days that were to come, and so was of priceless value for the union of Jew and Gentile I So Gal. i. 18, which gives the inner side, Paul's own purpose; whereas Acts (ix. 26 f.) in its vague use of the classes "disciples," and "apostles, 1 ' gives only the popular account of the visit. 40 The Apostolic Age. in one Church of Christ. Saul's stay was, however, very brief; only a fortnight. Accordingly when he departed to the regions of Syria and Cilicia, he was on his own testimony (Gal. i. 21 ff.) " unknown by face to the Churches of Judsea that were in Christ." l All they knew then and for long after was the common report that their quondam persecutor " was now preaching as good news the faith of which he had once made havoc " : and this was enough to cause them to glorify God in his case. 2 Here the narrative leaves Saul for the present, and returns to the general march of events, with the words: "So the Church throughout all Judsea and Galilee 3 and Samaria had peace (from persecution) being continuously built up; and walking in the fear of their Lord and in the cheer of the Holy Spirit was being ever multiplied." This is one of our author's summaries, which do not aim at definite harmony with the facts immedi- ately preceding or succeeding, but serve rather to give atmosphere to the epoch in question. It simply ir rhis shows that the preseut text of Acts xxvi. 20, "and throughout all the country of Judsea " (which is not even Greek as it stands), must be inaccurate. *Acts (ix. 28 f.) implies a rather public ministry in Jerusalem (among the Hellenists in particular), leading to a plot on Saul's life only anticipated by the brethren's hurrying him off to Csesarea and thence by sea to Tarsus. That Saul had thoughts of "witnessing" in Jerusalem we learn also from xxii. 17 f. ; and some abortive attempt is compatible even with Gal. i. 19 ff. 3 The first hint that Galilee too was a home of Christians. Note also the singular, the Church. It is no longer that of Jerusalem merely, and yet it has the unity attaching to Jewish soil, the sphere of the ancient Ecclesia whose proper home was the whole land of Israel. The Case of Cornelius. 41 marks progress. Within the era, then, of steady growth throughout Palestine, there occurred a series of events during one of Peter's tours of inspection among the new groups of disciples, the Lord's special " Saints " or consecrated ones, 1 that had recently arisen here and there through ministry such as that of Philip. The first of the series, the cases of ./Eneas in Lydda and Dorcas in Joppa, simply illus- trate the presence and power of God accompanying Peter as leading agent in the building up of the New Commonweal in Palestine. The next case, that of Cornelius, is big with significance for the future, and represents a step forward in principle, even as the Samaritan Mission had meant a former extension in the conception of the New Ecclenia. And once more its larger scope is recognized and ratified by men specially entrusted with " the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven," the right to say what classes of men satisfy the condition of genuine Messianic faith. 2 Accordingly the story of Cor- nelius and his friends merits careful consideration. 3 Peter was still lingering at Joppa, lodging with one Simon, a tanner ; the Galilean fisherman was not punctilious as to Rabbinic views of clean and unclean trades. There he received the momentous 1 First used in ix. 13. " Members of the Holy Ecdesia of Israel were themselves holy by the mere fact of membership ; and the prerogative phrase is here boldly transferred to the Christians. . . Its use is the correlative of the term Ecdesia " (Hort Chris. Ecd. 56). 2 Matt. xvi. 17-19, cf. xviii. 18, as also Lnke xi. 52, Rev. iii. 7, passages which all hark back to the idea in Isaiah xxii. 21, 22. 3 The repeated references to it (x. 1 ff., xi. 1 ff., xv. 7 ff.), reveal its importance. 42 The Aiiostolic Age. request of Cornelius, a centurion of the Italic r cohort forming part of the permanent garrison of Csesarea, where the Roman procurator resided in the palace built by Herod the Great (who had made the semi-Greek seaport what it then was). Cornelius, though a devout worshipper of the God of Israel, rich in prayers and alms, the distinctive ideal of cur- rent Jewish piety, was yet not a full proselyte. He had not, by the rite which marked off Israel as a distinct polity among the nations, become virtually a naturalized Jew. Hence his petition involved a great issue, that of the non-national and purely spiritual basis of Messiah's new community of the righteous. And it seemed unlikely that Peter would see his way to ignore " the middle wall of partition " which severed Jew and Gentile as regards anything like close social intercourse. But the mind of Peter, who was never inclined to magnify matters of form, had already been prepared by a vision which must have brought up older memories of his Master's teaching touching defilement (cf. Mark vii. 14 ff.). In figurative fashion it taught him the relative nature of the distinction between " clean " and " unclean " in a religious sense, as ap- plied to what comes by the accident of birth; seeing that God, the Creator, might will to cancel the line hitherto observed in deference to His prior ordinance, 1 The existence iu Judsea of a cohort of Roman citizens from Italy is out of keeping with the general rule as to the use of auxiliaries, such as the Samaritan cohort in xxvii. 1. But an in- scription in Pannonia, dating from 69 A. D., points to the existence of such a band in Syria, and so removes ajjnor/improbability : see Ramsay " Was Christ bom at Bethlehrm ?" pp. 260 ff. Peter in Cornelius' House. 43 and sanctify to His own ends any of the creatures of His hand. Accordingly, when the men arrived, Peter was prepared by the prompting of the Spirit to cast aside all scruples and in sheer obedience to God accompany those who alleged a direct divine mandate in sup- port of their unwonted boldness. Feeling the importance of the occasion, Peter took with him certain of the Joppa Jewish Christians, some six at least (xi. 12), as witnesses of what might occur. He found Cornelius and a number of his closest friends assembled, explained that God had overruled his scruples as to such intimate inter- course with foreigners, 1 and then enquired the reason of his being summoned. Cornelius recounts, with soldierly brevity and emphasis on prompt obedience, his vision during the afternoon hour of prayer : and then Peter confesses the new light that has just fallen on the ways of Israel's God, as a God who " respecteth not persons," in that He now shows His acceptance of men who in His fear work right- eousness (cf. v. 2), even though they stop short of circumcision. The speech which follows is important as a sample 1 It is to be noted that only the traditional, not the written law, was in question ; and the former lay less heavily on a Gali- lean than on a Judsean. Josephus, Ant. xx. 2, 4, tells how Ana- nias, the Jewish merchant who won Izates of Adiabene to Judaism, dissuaded him from circumcision as inexpedient in his case, say- ing " that he might worship God without, even though he did resolve to follow the Jewish law entirely, which worship of God was of a superior nature to circumcision." On the other hand a Galilean Rabbi, Eleazar,took the other line. 44 The Apostolic Age. of primitive preaching in the historic manner, on lines which remind us of the Petrine Gospel of Mark. God hath sent His message to the sons of Israel, de- claring glad peace through Jesus Christ ; but Christ and His Lordship are for all. The broad fact of the ministry throughout the whole of Judaea (Jewish territory), following on the baptism preached by John, is familiar; how that Jesus of Nazareth was anointed of God with Holy Spirit power, so that He went about doing beneficent deeds and healing all in the thraldom of the devil; for God was with Him. But the Jews put Him to death as an accursed one, on a tree (cf. Deut. xxi. 22 f. ; Gal. iii. 16). Him God raised up on the third day, and gave Him to be manifested, not indeed to all the Jewish people, but to witnesses, even to those afore chosen by God. Their charge was to preach to the Jewish people, and to testify that He it is who hath been designated by God as Judge of living and dead. To Him all the prophets witness, that through His name every one that believeth receiveth thereby forgiveness of sins. At this critical point, at which the universality of salvation through faith in Messiah is alluded to after the fashion of the Hebrew prophets, the token of its actual fulfilment appeared in the wonted signs of the Holy Spirit's presence. The astonishment of the Jews who had come with Peter was boundless. But he, already better prepared for something of the sort, ordered that baptism, the formal or human seal of membership in the Messianic community, should be added where the Divine had shown the way. Nay more, in the fulness of the new sense of oneness — The Problem of the Gentiles. 45 the middle wall of partition broken down— he yielded to the entreaty that he would stay as their guest for a season. The news spread, causing a profound sensation throughout Judaea. And on his return to Jerusalem, Peter was challenged for having accepted Gentile hospitality. His defence was simple and to the point. He told the story of his strange experiences and appealed to the promised Spirit-baptism, the dis- tinctive mark of the New Israel. " If then," he ar- gued, " God has given to them the like boon as also to us, on belief upon the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I, that I should avail to hinder God ? " To this there was no answer. Divine facts must be accepted and God glorified in His sovereignty in granting even to Gentiles that change of heart which admitted to the true life. So objection was silenced. But in the light of subsequent events, we cannot infer that all accepted the admission of the uncircumcised, as a class, into the New Israel. Many, possibly the ma- jority, still regarded the case in question as in some way exceptional ; x assuming perhaps that circumci- sion would here follow, instead of preceding, Mes- sianic faith, 2 and certainly that this new class of con- verts would be a small minority hanging upon the skirts of genuine Israel and never attaining such 1 Possibly our author did not quite realize the exact state of their miud, or he would not have put their sentiment of acquies- ence so broadly as in xi. 18. 1 This is suggested by the attitude of superiority on the part of Jewish believers implied in Gal. ii. 12, 13. It is also the position taken up by the Judaizers whom Paul controverts in Galatians (e. g., iii. 3). 46 The Apostolic Aye. numbers as to constitute a Messianic ecclesia in their own right. These latent reservations come to light through the logic of events, the logic which counted most with the bulk of these primitive Christians. And the chief event of the kind in question was the foun- dation of a considerable ecclesia, no longer on Jew- ish soil, but in the great city of Antioch, with its mixed population and its cosmopolitan ideals in re- ligion, flere obviously the old problem was bound to recur under new conditions ; since there the pre- ponderance of the Jewish element among believers no longer went without saying. Once Judaism be- gan to be swamped, reaction arose. CHAPTER II. THE FIELD BROADENS. (a) Foundation of the Antiochene Church. HE connection of the fresh paragraph in Acts, on the beginning of Antiochene Christianity, with what precedes is logical rather than chronological. "Now they who were scattered by the tribulation oc- casioned by Stephen reached in due course as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking (as a class) the word to none save Jews only. But there were certain of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene (and so wider in their sympathies), who, when they came to Antioch, spoke also to the Greeks " ' — naturally those already to some degree in touch with the synagogue. Thus there is continuity of thought with xi. 18, where the extension to the Gentiles is already pres- ent in germ. ■The antithesis of the two sentences (xi. 19, 20) requires noth- ing less than this. The balance of MS. authority is in favor of "Hellenists," i. e., Jews of Hellenic or Greek culture. But this may easily be due to assimilation of the first case in Acts in which "Hellenes" occurs, to "Hellenists," which has already occurred twice in somewhat similar contexts (vii. ix. 29). Intrin- sic probability makes decidedly for the view taken in the text ; as does also the use of " the Lord Jesus," rather than " the Christ Jesus" (see v. 42, where Jews are concerned). "Hebrews " and "Hellenists" may be contrasted (vi. 1); not "Jews" and "Hel- lenists." 47 48 The Apostolic Age. The reception given to the message touching Jesus as Lord was most hearty, and many " turned unto the Lord." When the news reached Jerusalem, the oc- casion was felt to merit careful consideration : and Barnabas, himself a Cypriot and not one of the Twelve, 1 was despatched to examine this momentous extension of the Messianic community. He was soon satisfied that it was the veritable " grace of God " that was at work, and joyfully encouraged the converts one and all to adhere firmly to their heart's intent, in reliance on the Lord. This attitude, we learn, was quite characteristic of his wonted good- ness of heart and inspired insight of faith. Hence when the work continued to spread, Barnabas, feel- ing the need of an associate of high gifts, bethought himself of his friend Saul, whose recent mission work must have reached his ears, and went to Tar- sus in quest of him. Having found him out somewhere in those regions, he returned with him ; and together for a whole year they enjoyed the Church's hospitality, 2 and were enabled to instruct a considerable multitude. And then Luke adds a re- mark indicative of the new bases of union recog- nizable even to outsiders, in contrast to the way in which a Jewish sect might be regarded. " It was in Antioch that the disciples primarily got the name of 1 This is noteworthy (in contrast to viii. 14), both as showing the strength of the feeling that Palestine was the strict sphere of the New Israel and so of the Apostles, and as hinting that the lo- cal self-direction of the Jewish communities abroad, subject only to a certaiu loyalty to the Jerusalem authorities, was taken as holding also for the New Israel. 2 The probable sense of Tova/d^vat here, as in Matt. xxv. 36. Antioch and Jerusalem. 49 Christians " — a word formed on the analogy of party names used by Asiatic Greeks. Gentile observers would take "Christ" to be a proper name, just as later in Rome it was thought that a certain "Chrestus" was fomenting trouble in the Jewish quarter. Heuce the name marks the first clear differ- entiation of Christians from the synagogue : but being at first a nickname, meaning " the partisans of Christ " (cf. xxvi. 28, a rather jesting remark), it seems to have been adopted only gradually by Gentile be- lievers themselves, being first found in use about 63 A. D. 1 It is probable that the bulk of Jewish Christians in Antioch mixed freely with their Gentile brethren, even to the extent of eating together; since other- wise Peter would hardly have done so on his first coming to Antioch some years later. For after all, the restriction was only a piece of Scribism, the in- fluence of which among Jews long resident in a great Gentile city must have been very secondary. Hence we may imagine the Antiochene ecclesia as one in which Jewish exclusiveness had hardly any footing, apart from temporary pressure from Jeru- salem (as in Gal. ii. 12, 13). It was a community amid which Paul could move quite at his ease, and was destined ere long to prove itself the mother ecclesia of Gentile Christianity, even as Jerusalem had been of Palestinian Christianity. Thus its foundation, rather than the admission of Cornelius, must be held to mark the true beginning of the great Gentile Mission as known to us (in contrast *1 Peter iv. 16, cf., Didache, xii. 4 ; Ignatius, passim. D 50 The Apostolic Age. to what we may infer touching Saul's earlier labors, Gal. i. 21 ff.) ; and this was in turn the prelude to the Church's gradual realization of its universal calling. Once more it was the logic of facts bearing the divine impress, and not a deliberately planned aggression on the Gentile world, that led the way to the larger future and opened the eyes of the Judseo-Christian Church, as it had hitherto been, to the counsels of God touching the fulness of the Gentiles as included in Messiah's heritage. But though differing from the first in respect to the primarily Jewish and Gentile character attach- ing to them respectively, the ecclesice of Jerusalem and Antioch were at the same time on terms of sisterly charity. This found expression in very practical form on the occasion of a famine, which fell on Judeean Christians the more heavily that among them " the poor saints " seem to have been in a large majority. The generosity of the Antiochene Christians was prepared beforehand, through the visit of certain " prophets " or highly gifted preach- ers belonging to the Mother Church. Of these, one, Agabus by name, rose amid the assembled brethren 1 and indicated through the Spirit the approach of 1 In Codex Bezse, supported by Augustine, Serm. dom. 2, there is an addition to v. 27: "And there was much exultation. Now when we were assembled together." On this Blass exclaims, " Lo, an obvious proof that our author was an Antiochene. " But neither this nor an alternative theory, that we find here the first cropping out of the "we" pieces in the Acts, is so likely as the view that here we have betrayed to us the secret that the peculiar text un- derlying our Codex Bezse had its birth in Antioch. HerocVs Persecution. 51 great famine over the whole world (as our author understood his information 1 ), but specially in the Holy Land. Then the disciples, according to their several ability, prepared each severally to send help to the brethren living in Judsea, so general was the fraternal spirit in the breasts of these Antiochene Christians. When the contributions were actually sent, they were conveyed by Barnabas and Saul, the leaders in Antioch, to the hands of " the Elders," apparently of the Judaean churches as a whole, though Jerusalem is no doubt meant in particular. The fact that Elders are here mentioned for the first time without any preface or explanation, in striking contrast to the origin of the Seven in Chapter vi., must imply that they corresponded in the New Israel to the class so named in the Old, and were assumed to have arisen as a matter of course at a prior stage in the Church's development. But ere the envoys fulfilled this helpful ministry, probably before they had even started on it, persecu- tion once more overtook the Judsean Church, this time at the hands of the native prince, Herod Agrippa, under whom the whole of Palestine was then for a short period united (41-44 A. D.). Herod struck at the leaders, beheading James the son of Zebedee and imprisoning Peter, to the satisfaction of the Jews, about Passover, 44 A. D. Thus Chapter xii. comes in parenthetically and must not be used to fix the chronology of the events connected with Ramsay justifies the phrase as accurate, provided we under- stand that famine did not befall all parts of the world at once (p. 48 f.). Possibly t^v yyv ma y have been meant by his source. 52 The Apostolic Aye. the Famine, which reached its height probably about 46-47 A. D. Strikingly vivid and fresh as is the narrative of Peter's deliverance, its details concern us mainly as casting light on the inner life of the Jerusalem Christians. Thus we find that the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, was a chief place of re- sort for the brethren — a hint of the household char- acter which their meetings for worship and fellow- ship still retained. Again the words of Peter, " Tell this news to James and to the brethren," set before us the same conditions that meet us in Paul's refer- ences to the Church of Jerusalem. Peter himself then vanishes from the public eye for the time, withdrawing " to a different place " to escape Herod's wrath. This indeed was fierce, but it was of short duration, for he soon after died at Csesarea of a loathsome disease, a divine judgment, as it was generally believed, upon his impious pride in the popular adulation which greeted his oration to a Tyrian and Sidonian deputation, waiting on him touching a point in dispute. On the other hand the word of the Lord was ever on the increase. And ere long the ties of fellowship between the young Antiochene Church and the Mother Church in Judaea were drawn closer by aid rendered in time of sore need. This probably occurred about 46-47 A. D., when the famine became really serious. (b) Paul and the Fresh Missionary Impulse. We now come upon the central difficulty of Pauline Chronology. For it is to the visit just alluded to PauVs Second Visit to Jerusalem. 53 that Professor Ramsay refers what Paul, in Galatians ii. 1-10, describes as his second visit to Jerusalem. But the chronological difficulty is only a symbol of another more vital than itself, namely that touching the development of the relations between Jewish and Gentile Christians, which in turn involved the essential idea of Christianity. Was the Christian Church at bottom a national or a universal institu- tion ? Had man a standing in it simply as man, or only as tolerated or even welcomed guest of the Jew ? Had Moses any blessings to confer on man which were not ipso facto included in the final bless- ing in Jesus the Christ? Such were the issues. They were not all realized at once. The existing institution of proselytism, with its various grades, tended to keep some of them in the background for longer than we are apt to imagine, especially on what we may call the " Foreign Mission-Field," where Saul and others were at work on the basis of a " Colonial " mission among the synagogues of the Dispersion. Thus it was only gradually that the controversy in its acute form came into being — and the stages of its growth must be closely watched. In this connection the stage represented by Gal. ii. is of decisive interest. Paul's visit is generally assumed to correspond to Acts xv. : but that is the third, and not the second, visit recorded in Acts. Can we suppose that what appears in Galatians as the second visit was not meant by Paul to be taken as absolutely such, but that it was only the second visit for a specific object, namely to consult with the leading Apostles? Hardly, and for two reasons. It 54 The Apostolic Age. seems excluded first by the nature of the insinua- tions which he is refuting ; and next, and that more decisively, by the way in which he expresses himself. To begin with, he has to disprove the insinuation that, prior to his first preaching to the Galatians, lie had been dependent upon the original Apostles for his Apostolic commission in some degree at least. Hence, deliberately to omit reference to any visit that might be cited by the other side, even though that visit had ostensibly quite another object, would seriously weaken the finality of his reply. Policy would lead him to dismiss this visit as irrelevant by means of some passing allusion. But instead of this he seems to give an exhaustive summary of his movements as lying outside Judaea altogether be- tween the visits of Gal. i. 18 and ii. 1. For after the former, he says, " next I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia ; but I remained unknown by face ' to the churches of Judsea that are in Christ, only they were in possession of the report that 'our quondam persecutor is now preaching the faith of which once he used to make havoc.' And their at- titude was that of glorifying God in my case." Then, without a hint that he had ever left the regions just named, he continues: "Next, after an interval of fourteen years I again went up to Jerusalem along with Barnabas, taking with us also Titus : and it was in pursuance of a revelation that I went up." Such is Paul's account, to which all else must be accom- modated. We may assume then, provisionally at 1 Imagine him peuning this sentence of a period within which fell his relief-visit to Judsea ! A Revelation its Occasion. 55 least, that Acts xv. cannot satisfy these require- ments, 1 even apart from striking contrasts in the de- tails of the two visits when thoughtfully compared. This being so, it is natural to fall back on the second visit of Acts, that occasioned by the famine. But why should Paul not mention this, the primary ostensible object? Grant that to himself it had, as Ramsay supposes, an inner and personal significance arising out of a revelation that the moment had come for reaching a clear understanding between the Jewish and Gentile Missions in the persons of their leading spirits. Yet surely it would have strength- ened Paul's case and rendered further reasons almost superfluous as against the Judaizers in Galatia, had he simply referred to this second visit as having the practical object of fraternal aid. Instead of this, he ignores all reasons save that afforded by some divine revelation to himself. Its inner purport can have been no other than the " mystery " (Eph. iii. 4 ff.) of the unity of Jew and Gentile in Christ, which made the Gentiles " fellow heirs and fellow members of one body (the Ecclesia), and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel." This is how he describes retrospectively, at a later date, his special message which he was to preach to the Gentiles, even "the untrackable riches of the 1 Why should Paul omit explicit reference to the Judaistic chal- lenge in Antioch (Acts xv. 1 f.), if this had already occurred? It would have made his after success at Jerusalem all the more impressive. Again Paul was at least primarily concerned to prove the independence of his Gospel as first preached in Galatia ; while this third visit did not occur until after that first preach- ing (t. e., on the " South Galatian Theory " ; Bee p. 71 AT.). 56 The Apostolic Age. Christ," and through which he was to " illumine " the darkness which had hitherto enveloped God's gra- cious plans for man. But at what particular point in his career did the great Apostle first realize such a revelation in overmastering power and impressiveness? For answer we may point to the occasion alluded to with such awe and mystery in 2 Cor. xii. 2-5, and recall the fact that he dates this experience to a period even earlier than that which we have already reached, namely to about 43 A. D. l Nor need we be deterred by his description of what he then heard in ecstasy, as " unspeakable words which it is not allowed to man to utter." For the transcendent nature of the message relates to its form, not to its content. To suppose that Paul would "glory " in the unintelligible is to ignore his own clear words to the contrary effect (e. g., 1 Cor. xiv. 1-22). A great truth broke on him in new and full splendor through these unspeakable experiences, and henceforth be- came part of his special stewardship of God's mys- teries. And so this seemingly isolated allusion falls into the whole plan of his life-work and helps to justify his later language to the Ephesians. The significance of this combination has not, to my knowledge, hitherto been recognized. 2 If, however, *2 Cor. was written about. 55-56 A. D., and he speaks in it of this experience as having come to him " fourteen years before." This by ancient reckoning works out as 42-43. 2 Ramsay's attempt to connect the "revelation" of Gal. ii. 2 with Acts xxii. 17 seems to me rather paradoxical. On the otlier hand it falls in excellently with Weizsacker's remark, that " with all his independence in action, he never lost sight of the hope of joining in the erection of one great Catholic Church of Christ " {The Apostolic Age, i. 178). Its Bate and Nature. 57 it holds, then it casts a flood of light on Gal. ii. 2. For after so glorious a vision of God's mighty coun- sels, new missionary projects would crowd upon his mind ; and he would naturally be eager to lay his more expanded Gospel before the leaders of the mother Ecclesia, upon whose attitude its practica- bility so largely depended, alike as regards consoli- dation of past results and the securing of a larger future. But here another question appears on the horizon. Is a visit so motived fully compatible with even the so-called second visit to Jerusalem, as related in Acts xi. 27-30 ? The harmony would be at best a strained one, owing not only to the very different impressions conveyed by Acts and Gal. ii., but also to chrono- logical reasons. The Second Epistle to the Corin- thians was written not later than autumn 56. The fourteenth year backward from the time of writing would bring us to 43 as the latest date to which we can safely assign the vision or revelation of 2 Cor. xii. It is not certain indeed, that the revelation determining Paul to visit the leaders of the mother Church followed at once on this accession of light. But it is probable that no long interval elapsed, even though we suppose that his visit took place after, rather than before, Peter's imprisonment early in 44 A. D. If we have to place the visit before Herod's outburst against the leaders, it would have no connection with the famine, because falling altogether before 44 A. D. If, on the other hand, it was subsequent to Herod's death (after April, 44) and during the period of quiet expansion which 58 The Apostolic Age. followed (xii. 24) — say 46 (47), as Ramsay suggests— the fitness of the anticipatory reference before the events of 44 A. D. is open to question, especially if one is unable to accept Ramsay's view that a pro- longed personal administration of the relief is im- plied by the narrative in Acts. On the whole then, while it is not possible to deny absolutely the the- ory which sees in Gal. ii. 1-10 only an otherwise un- recorded and more personal side of the relief visit, yet it seems more natural to refer it to another visit altogether, marked by its private rather than repre- sentative nature. This latter feature would explain its omission from Acts. Against such an otherwise unrecorded visit, prior even to the Famine visit, there seems to be no valid objection. If we ask whether it came before or after Peter's imprisonment early in 44, we may reply that it hardly matters. In either case it came before the actual ministry of the Antiochene charity and so yields an excellent meaning for Gal. ii. 10, where Paul records the request to " remember the poor "as a thing about which he himself was even zealous. This would be literally the case if his Antiochene friends, probably at his instigation, were already preparing their relief fund when he left them to go upon his own private mission. Some indeed would set off against the private purpose of the visit (v. 2) the fact that the privacy was to some degree broken into by the intrusive presence of certain " false brethren," who managed somehow to smuggle them- selves into the conference with the recognized lead- ers of the mother Church (v. 4), with the object of Not that of Acts XV. 59 " spying upon " the too large liberty which they sus- pected Paul of practising on the Mission Field. But this did not make the Conference in any sense a public one ; the contrast with Acts xv. still remains. So conceived the course of events was as follows. Paul had been impressed by the growing success of the work in Antioch, read in the light of his grow- ing revelations in the mystery of the universal scope of man's redemption in Christ (Eph. iii. 4 if.). And a moment came when, as he mused on the larger future, he felt constrained to visit Jerusalem in order to make sure of the sympathy of the leading spirits in the Church. He took Barnabas, as his colleague in the work already done, and Titus, as an object lesson in the efficacy of his wider Gospel. The conference as intended by Paul was strictly one of leaders. But his plan for a quiet and amicable concordat was jeopardized by the unwelcome pres- ence of certain legally minded men (probably recent adherents), who somehow wormed themselves into these confidential meetings. But in spite of them, the leaders proved as large-minded as Paul had ex- pected of men pervaded by the prophetic traditions of Israel and moulded by Jesus' own spirit ; and a division of functions was arranged. The only con- cern expressed by the older Apostles was that the members of the New Ecclesia of Israel, admitted by Paul on the less onerous terms of his Gospel, should " be mindful of the poor." This guarantee of essen- tial similarity of piety in the two missions — for such seems the point of the requirement (cf. James i. 27) — can hardly be reconciled with the conditions laid 60 The Apostolic Age. down in Acts xv. 20. The object in each case is the same, namely the keeping the two sections of the New Israel in touch with each other in sentiment ; but the occasions were different. Soon after his return to Antioch, the Famine gave Paul and his Antiochene friends occasion for manifesting the very spirit of loving kindness that the Judseo-Christian leaders valued so highly. What Paul had all along been zealous for in principle, that he now was able to show in practical and striking form on the occa- sion of his second public visit as recorded in Acts xi. 30 ; xii. 25. Thereafter it is most natural to sup- pose Peter came down to see the generous sister Church; 1 and in the guileless gladness of his heart he fell in with the local practice of ignoring the stricter Palestinian rule (sanctioned only by "the tradition of the elders ") of eating only with the cir- cumcised. In this he was soon checked by public opinion in Jerusalem and vacillated. How natural at this stage, before the issue had been formally raised outside Palestine. How unnatural, even in impulsive Peter, after matters of principle had been so debated as in Acts xv. 2 It has been observed by Weizsacker that " the growing excitement with which Paul unmistakably records the event at Antioch " proves " that, in his 1 Contrast with this, as a favorahle moment for his visit, the morrow of the Conference in Acts xv. 'The vacillation, too, of Barnabas, surprising as it seems to us in any case, is far more natural before than after the experiences of the First Missionary Jouruey with Paul. This holds, whether we put the vacillation just before the Council in Acts xv. (so Ramsay, in the face of xv. 2« ) or after it. The Issue already involved. 61 view, it was there that the crisis (of the Juclaistic issue) was reached." The crisis began there indi- rectly, in a practical matter involving only the equality of Jew and Gentile in Christ, the prac- tical decision of which might not at first be thought to mean much. Later on it arose again in the more drastic form seen in Acts xv.,through the interven- tion of the stricter or Pharisaic element in the Jeru- salem Church (a secondary and not an original ele- ment), who felt that half measures would not meet the case of growing Gentile Christianity. Paul, in- deed, saw the Law to be involved from the first, and forced the matter of principle on Peter's notice at Antioch. But the latter felt it wisest to drop the problem altogether as far as he himself was concerned by withdrawing within his old lines, those of the Palestinian Ecclesia. This opportunism was the more possible to his mind that the unquestioned as- sumption of the near return of the glorified Christ enabled him and others to leave over certain prob- lems for the present. Thus a premature crisis was averted, and only so. For James at any rate, the leading person of the Jerusalem Church, would have been unable to go beyond the mere principle of par- allel but separate missions. For him somehow Moses and Christ were both essential to the Messianic Kingdom proper, however the Gentile within its borders might stand to the body politic of the New Israel. Thus Paul has no positive issue to record in Galatians. He had made his protest, successfully as far as Antioch was concerned, and that was enough for the moment. It proved his independent Apos- 62 The Apostolic Age. tolic standing, and that was his whole object in re- lating the circumstance to the Galatians: his inde- pendence before setting out to evangelize them was manifest. Before proceeding to the First Missionary Journey itself, to which the bringing of John Mark from Je- rusalem (xii. 25) already points, it is well to scruti- nize the ideas found in Saul's remonstrance to Cephas, as being those which the great missionary had in reserve to guide him in the unknown future. They are the more noteworthy that he assumes their ac- ceptance by Peter also, though not with equal clear- ness as regards their negative bearing on the value of the Jewish Law. Their sum is this. Faith in Christ means consciousness of being indebted to Christ for justification ; and this in turn means de- spair of justification in any other way, even by what the Law can do for a man (cf. Acts iv. 12, "in none other is the Salvation," etc.). And specifically, the Cross of Christ would have no vital meaning if the Law still provided a way to righteousness. If, on the contrary, a Jew stepped down from the preroga- tive level of the Law in order to be justified in Christ, like any " sinner of the Gentiles," surely he had al- ready given up all hope in the Law. Accordingly, to attach saving virtue to the Law subsequently, was but to reflect on one's own previous attitude in es- teeming the Law impotent to justify. This last idea was probably new to Peter, who had not had occasion to think out the logic of his own trust in Christ. The private concordat with Paul had contemplated only fellowship in spirit and at a distance between The Nature of the Issue. 63 the two Missions as such ; but now Paul's dialectic was bringing to light the ultimate principles of the Gospel. These issues will recur when we come to deal with Acts xv. For the present, however, it is enough to realize that among Judseo-Christians themselves several attitudes were assumed to believ- ing Gentiles and so to the Law ; reaching from Peter, through James, down to the Judaizers who came to say "Except ye be circumcised after the Mosaic usage, ye cannot inherit salvation " at all. But ere this extreme section pressed its views to the front by invading the Antiochene Church with its propaganda, a great forward move had been made from that Church into further fields. CHAPTER III. THE FIRST MISSIONARY JOURNEY. (a) Cyprus and after (Acts xiii. 1-13). HAT period of time elapsed between the return of Barnabas and Saul from their Relief visit (and after the prob- able visit of Peter to Antioch), and 31 the Holy Spirit's prompting of the local Church to initiate a further mission, we cannot ac- curately determine. But we gather that the call came through the medium of one or more of its spe- cially gifted members called "prophets and teach- ers." Among these we learn the names of five; Barnabas and Sy meon Niger (both probably Cypi lots), Lucius of Cyrene, 1 and Manaen foster-brother of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. Whilst, then, they were engaged in solemn service 2 and fasting, the word came, " Separate Me Barnabas and Saul unto the work unto which I have called them." The call came direct from God, being made known through men specially sensitive to His Spirit ; the 1 Cf. xi. 19, for men of Cyprus and Cyrene as leaders in the original evaugelization in Antioch. 8 Hort (Christian Ecclesia, 63) says, " The context suggests that it was ... a special act of worship on the part of a solemn meet- ing of the whole Ecclesia, held expressly with reference to a project for carrying the Gospel to the heathen." 64 Cyprus. 65 Church's recognition of the same was an act of the brotherhood as a whole. 1 This was the fundamental idea of ordination or sacred commission in the Apos- tolic Age, whether it was to a function for life or to a special mission, such as the present. The ecclesia thus identified itself with the Divine will, and the preachers became the missionaries 2 of the Antiochene Church for this piece of work, a fact expressed by the laying on of hands representative of the breth- ren and symbolizing the solidarity of the community with its members whom it consecrated to God's work with prayer and fasting. 3 Yet after all it was " by the Holy Spirit " that the two missionaries felt themselves "sent forth," as they made their way to Seleucia, the port of Anti- och, and as they watched the land recede from view and then turned their faces toward Cyprus, the na- tive land of Barnabas. The date was probably spring, 47 A. D. Their subordinate assistant was Barnabas' relative, probably cousin, John Mark. From the way in which his presence is alluded to, namely after mention of their preaching, we may per- haps surmise something touching his functions. Be- sides looking after the material side of their arrange- ments, he probably helped to baptize converts and 1 Cf. xiv. 26 f., xv. 40. So the second century paraphrase in Codex Bezse inserts "all" in v. 3: this, for the author of Acts, goes without saying. 8 It is totally foreign to what Paul says of himself, to regard the Church's act as constituting him an Apostle: that he was long before, by direct act of God through Jesus Christ (Gal. i. 1). 3 In xiv. 26, they are said to have been "committed to the grace of God for the work which they fulfilled." E 66 The Apostolic Age. to teach them, as a " catechist," certain simple facts about Jesus the Christ and some of His notable sayings. They landed on the Eastern shore of the island, at Salamis, where the Jewish colony was large enough to afford several synagogues wherein to declare the word of God. To the Jew of necessity belonged the first right to a hearing of the Gospel ; l while the most prepared of the Gentiles were to be found at- tending the synagogues. The work seems to have proceeded without marked opposition, as might be expected in the case of Barnabas' fellow Hellenists, among whom moreover some knowledge of the new preaching already existed (xi. 19). And what was true of Salamis, applied also to their tour throughout the whole island, until they reached Paphos in the southwest, where the Roman governor was at the time residing. Here took place an occurrence of mo- mentous import to the mind of our historian, as the manner of his narrative indicates. The missionaries were brought into fresh relations ; and in the crisis one of them in particular was brought into a new prominence, while the final scope of his Gospel must have come home with fresh realization both to himself and his companions. The occasion was an interview with the proconsul Sergius Paulus, a man of good sense, as well as of catholic sympathies. He had about his person at that time a Jew of the type already seen in Simon Magus, one claiming certain superhuman knowledge and powers (for the combination, comp. xix. 14, 19). J xiii. 46, cf. ix. 20. The New Outlook. 67 Such " Magians " were complex Oriental person- ages, like the "Masters" of the modern theosophist, uniting mystic religious ideas, often suggestive in character, with a sort of pseudo-science and a varying element of trickery. Thus they were often able to do things seemingly or really out of the order of nature as then understood. 1 Accordingly Elymas, " the sage," had a certain attraction for even a thoughtful man like this Proconsul ; though we are not given to understand that the enthralling influence usually exerted by this class on human character had gone very far in his case. But at any rate, Elymas could not tamely see himself and his philosophy of life supplanted. So when, at the Pro- consul's request, the Apostles began to expound their philosophy of things divine — as Sergius Paulus would put it to himself — the Magian intervened to turn his patron aside from lending too favorable an ear. And now the hour had come, and the man was ready for it. In the might of a spirit above his ha- bitual self, Saul stood forth and confronted the man with an arresting gaze and with words of intense conviction, taxing him, a Jew, with habitually per- verting " the ways of the Lord, the straight ways," and so sinking ever deeper in deceit and all villainy. But the hand of the forgotten Lord should be seen upon him, if not for his own restoration, at least as a witness to those whose chances of light had been less. 'Such a person, broadly speaking, was Apollonins of Tyana (not far from Tarsus), whose life was almost coextensive with the first century. 68 The Apostolic Age. At this moment and in this attitude the Apostle seems to Luke to speak no lunger as the Jew, Saul, but as the Roman citizen, Paul, 1 through that side of his complex personality which had been prepared as well by birth and training, as by the special grace vouchsafed in his conversion. There follows a brief reference to the effect on the governor's mind of the blindness which for a season overtook Elymas, serv- ing as it did to convince 2 him of the Divine author- ity of "the teaching of the Lord," so impressive on its own merits; and then we are hurried on to mark the sequel of this new departure both as regards Paul's new prominence and the new emphasis on the wider bearings of his gospel. Henceforth the "door of faith " actually opened of God to the Gentiles (xiv. 27) was to be the dominant note of the Mission. And Paul was ere long to appeal with a new direct- ness to the Grseco-Roman world, "as himself a mem- ber of that world" in a degree to which even Barna- bas probably remained a stranger. Certainly it is hard to escape the impression that it was John Mark's feeling that a new horizon had opened out since they had been despatched on their mission — that it was in fact rather a new mission that Paul 1 "Hia two names were the alternative, not the complement, of each other : " so that, according to the r6le he was playing, the one or the other became appropriate. 'There is no mention of baptism as following Sergius Paulas' belief. This is a notable silence in face not only of Acts viii. 12 f., 36 f., x. 47, (analogous cases of new departure in the spread of the Gospel), but also of the fact that the gift of the Holy Spirit usually associated with Baptism was a valued proof of a fresh ex- tension of the Church. Hence Blass asks pointedly, "Num baptizatus est proconsul? " The Advance into Galatia. 69 now contemplated — which really led to his abrupt return home to Jerusalem. Henceforth indeed Paul was to be the leading spirit in a new and marked sense, implied in the phrase "Paul and his com- pany" 1 which occurs in the verse recording the voyage from Paphos to Perga, during which the vision of an enlarged campaign extending far beyond Pamphylia and the adjacent seaboard may have taken shape in his ardent soul. Yet it would be unwise, especially in view of xv. 38, where the emphasis is upon the work from which he turned away, to as- sume that Mark's withdrawal was due to jealousy for his kinsman's leadership. The words "went not with them to the work" suggests rather fainthearted- ness at the difficulties involved in a bold and en- larging enterprise, 2 when it was first broached on arrival at Perga. Be this as it may, Paul and Barnabas seem to have found little to arrest their steps in Perga itself: it was the height of summer, and preaching in the low lying Perga may have been physically impossible to strangers fresh from the more breezy Cyprus. In any case they pushed forward more or less rapidly through the region between it and the Pisidian Antioch, which lay in the adjacent province of Galatia, on the high table-land, some 3,600 feet 1 Tbis rather suggests others besides Barnabas and John Mark. Perhaps Titus was one of the party ; perhaps he was the unseen witness to whom we owe Luke's narrative. 2 Parnphylia was a country "of similar situation to Cilicia and Syria, and in the closest possible relations with them, whereas it was a serious and novel step to go into the country north of Taurus." 70 The Apostolic Age. above the sea. No motive is assigned by Acts for the direction taken; but two plausible suggestions may be noted. The first one is that the state of Paul's health necessitated retreat from the enervating atmosphere of the lowlands about Perga, which stood back from the sea on the river Cestrus, to the bracing uplands beyond the Taurus range. This view has been put most persuasively by Dr. Ramsay, who suspects that Paul's " stake in the flesh " was a heightened nervous susceptibility, to malarial in- fluences for instance. In his epistle to the Galatians (his converts in these regions), Paul himself alludes to his first preaching among them as occasioned by physical infirmity. And Ramsay shows how emi- nently the nervous derangement he has in mind would tend to awaken contemptuous pity in the be- holders, especially if their superstition viewed malarial fever as a penalty sent by some God. Hence, as far as the diagnosis of the malady goes, it serves admirably to bring out the point of the Apostle's grateful testimony that his Galatians did not despise their visitor or turn from him as one under the ban of heaven, but received him as a messenger of God (Gal. iv. 13, 14). But Ramsay's theory, as he himself states it, involves several dif- ficulties, particularly as bearing on Mark and the conditions under which lie deserted " the work." Ac- cordingly McGiffert's modified theory seems prefer- able, namely that Paul had malarial germs in his sys- tem when he left the lowlands of Pamphylia, but that their full effects only appeared as he proceeded. But this still leaves the journey itself without a Pisidian Antioch. Tl goal, as before. Ramsay thinks it most accordant with Luke's methods in writing to suppose that An- tioch was itself the real goal, the one end in view being restoration to health. And so he would ex- plain their neglect of Perga, as contrasted with their action on the route home (xiv. 25). To some, how- ever, another account will seem more probable. Im- pressed with the policy of seizing on the great cen- tres of population and influence, like the Syrian Antioch, Paul may already have cast his eyes on the great cities of provincia Asia, Ephesus in par- ticular ; and he may have been on his way thither when he was laid up at Antioch, which stood on the Royal Road leading westward to Apamsea, where it met the Great Trade Route through the south of Asia to Ephesus. His plan may have been to begin with the cultured cities of the Lycus valley, in which were numerous colonies of Jews, and so work his way to Ephesus, whence the return journey by sea would be easy. This was at least the goal of the Second Mission Journey (xvi. 6). Moreover, the less ambitious route, through Pisidian Antioch, the Lycaonian cities, his own Tarsus, and so back to Antioch (i. «., the regions just beyond his own earlier work in Cilicia),seems definitely excluded by a state- ment in Gal. iv. 13. For there he remarks that his preaching in the Galatian cities was not premedi- tated, but accidental, occasioned by an illness. (b) South Galatia (Acts xiii. 14-xiv.). After a trying journey and a large measure of those " perils of rivers, perils of robbers," to which . Paul later refers incidental. bed. The city bad the 8 Iloman ( and I and military centre of the south- ern half of the : Galatia, which at that time extended from north to south right ac. plateau of Asia Minor. . - lined a considerable Jewish el - they soon found their way to the synagogue for the S bath servic BJ courteo . ted by the rulers or managers nagogue to add. the -e, and with a gesture inviting .t attention, spoke to t tile ad- . lowing purr le. "God's said be. n People had culminated in the theocracy, d in the rule of David, "a man a: But there was a promise touching a yet greater Son of David. That pro: had now been fulfilled in Jesus, sent as Saviour to el according to the witness of runner, John the Bap:! id the menage of Salvation was now sent to such as Le was addressing no less than, nay more than, to those in Judaea. For Jeru- salem and its leaders, in their very blindness, had fulfilled the voices of the Prophets ly read in. their hearing, by judging and unjustly doing to death this Jesus. But from the dead He was rai of God and manifested to the men who had been His ciates. These, then, were now representing H.r- claims to the Jewish people ; while he and Barnabas were the bearers to such as his hearers, sons of Abra- ham and all who were ready to give ear, of the glad < Ramsay, with the growiog oonaen&us of scholars. to the C T-'> the promise to the father* had been ful- filled in the resurrection of Jesus. For thereby Jle r rode Sou and f the full Davidic prei -. Accord* ingly before them that day Jay the offer of I - through JJiiu, of ■* justification impose!' ble by meani of the Moaaic Law. but open I one who placed nil trust in Him, Let them beed Hsbakkuk's Mrarning t unbelief. 'J ■ appeal d the assembly as a body ' that, though unwilling to decide at om validity, they a furtbi ment on the Sabbath following. There many individual*, both /ewe and bad be< mored and who followed Paul and Barnabi ibly had broken up. The ApoetL ed intoconw i tion with them, i a work of pri»i ination irhicfa ere the ireek'e end made their influ* I throughout the whole city. Hence on the bath appointed the mainly through an influx of Gentiles irhicfa : the jealousy of the leading J j this time fully alive to the Ired in the 'aching. that, no .sooner bad Paul opened nil mouth to continue his fo: and probably to em- knem <-. J#wi oftfcfi nrnf— , ■* t* oo with PaleitiM I ttuU \h*j bad bwyelj Jwt with J«d*M aI_i .. ; : - :■- - . - ■ .».- . J '71. IT* I . - is quite iu: offi. _ i or He* . by which the ruler the isle Ls oiled, has inscription*! corroboration. Aud this notice is all of a piece with the g by prayer aud layiug-ou of hands of this official's father, an incident illustrating aud illustrated by the usage alluded to in James v. 14 The worses leaf ribing the journey be rith defi - : which refer to two points only. First one gathers that there w..- _ ip of M brethren " at Put-. who showed the wouted Christian I - and next, that the Roman Christians or some of them could not but go out to meet the author of the B Romans — heartiness which greatly en- couraged the Apostle's much-tried spirit. Paul's confinement at Rome was even less irksome than at Cssarea ; for he was allowed to live in lodg- . - i . vn hiring, though u- - i race of a soldier responsible for his appearing wheu needed. Of course the fact that lie was actv. -:ened to this guardian by a light wrist-chain n have been most trying. But we may imagine how - d Paul would by his bearing win the regard of the men told off to this duty, and perhaps even the hearts of some of them for his Gospel, and so t: &■ figure their lose ass n into one of spiritual brotherhood. In a- B not allowed to go out fre. . BOold enjoy the free access of friends and of any whom he might attract to his side. It was quite natural for him to wish to conciliate the sympathy of the local Jews for his own person 176 The Apostolic Aye. and for Lis Gospel, ere word from Jerusalem or work among Gentiles in Rome should make both impos- sible. And so he invited their leading men to meet him. The account of this interview is not free from difficulties, which some suppose due to the fact that the " we " source, being a diary of travel, was no longer available. Yet our ignorance of the relations of Judaism and Judseo- Christianity in Rome at this date may make us pause before drawing negative conclusions. It is certainly to us surprising that the Jewish leaders should profess themselves both un- aware of the case against Paul (in spite of the con- stant intercourse between Jews in Rome and Jeru- salem) and in the dark as to the nature of the Chris- tian "sect," of whose existence and general bad name among Jews they were perfectly conscious. But if we assume, as is probable, that the Gospel of " Mes- siah Jesus " had spread mainly among the poorer and non-official class of Jews in Rome, where it simply filtered in gradually and did not come with the ad- vent of any marked personality (as we gather from Romans) — then we can understand how Jewish lead- ers might have ignored it, save as a fanatical move- ment or new sect in the lower ranks of their com- patriots. And of such things Judaism was by no means intolerant. They may, then, have simply left it severely alone as unworthy of serious or official notice. But when they were confronted by a man obviously of good breeding and learning in the schools, who openly emphasized his belief in this as the very " Hope of Israel " and the sole cause of his breach with the Palestinian authorities, it was quite PauVs Preaching in Rome. 177 another thing. Curiosity as to the actual nature of the despised movement might well replace superior indifference. 1 Appointing a day, they returned to his lodgings in considerable numbers, and listened from morn to eve as Paul set forth his testimony to "the Kingdom of God," adducing both the Law and the Prophets as proof that Jesus really fulfilled the Messianic promises. Part were inclined to believe, part to disbelieve; and there was some discussion be- tween them on the subject. As they were on the point of departing, Paul quoted as a final warning the prophetic word in which Isaiah's largely inef- fectual mission to their forefathers is announced (Is. vi. 9 f.), as reminder that their rejection might reflect on them rather than upon the message re- jected. Once more, on a highly representative occa- sion, did the Apostle realize afresh the call of the Gentiles in contrast to the deafness of the Chosen People. And the last words of his which our his- torian selects for record embody this, the main moral of the whole narrative of the Apostolic foundation of the New Israel, the Christian Church. The term is reached : the programme of i. 8 is in 1 To this there seems only one real objection, namely the Mes- sianic disturbances, probably marking the arrival of the Gospel of Jesus in the Roman ghetto, which occasioned the edict under which Aquila and Priscilla had left the city some ten years be- fore. Could this have failed to attract the attention of the local Jewish authorities to the new ferment working among the masses? We should have expected that it would lead to a definite notion of its nature in their minds. Yet we cannot insist, in the face of positive evidence to the contrary, that so it must have been. Besides they very possibly professed more ignorance on the point than was needful, in order to draw out Paul's clearer statement. L 178 The Apostolic Aye. principle fulfilled. Accordingly the historian simply adds that the forecast of Gentile receptiveness found actual realization in a two years' ministry, during which Paul preached in his lodgings to all comers, and taught " the things touching the Lord Jesus Christ with all freedom of speech, unhindered." The centre of gravity in the New Ecclesia has been gradually shifting; and we are left with the suggestion that the centre of the heathen world is destined to super- sede the capital of Judsea as the centre of the King- dom of God. But though Acts itself enters into no details touch- ing these two years, with which it thus significantly breaks off, we are able to fill in a good deal from Paul's own letters written during the period. Of these Ephesians, Colossians and Philemon go together in a group ; while Philippians stands apart by itself both as to contents and date. Though the broad fea- tures of Paul's situation, as regards both Roman Christianity and the fortunes of his imprisonment, are fairly clear in any case, a good deal depends upon whether we view Philippians as preceding or as succeeding the group just named. What follows is based on the latter assumption, which may per- haps justify itself by its superior qualities as a work- ing hypothesis. Another literary problem, of greater difficulty and complexity, upon which certain personal details in our picture will depend, is that touching the date and origin of the Pastoral Epistles to Timothy and Titus respectively. Our own tentative solution is The Ephesian Church. 179 discussed at length in the Literary Appendix; and we are not without hope that in the harmony of the picture which it enables us here to present may be found the best justification of the theory itself. But it is to be frankly recognized that the personal rela- tions involved in the following narrative are put for- ward as necessarily provisional. In what has been said touching Paul's doings since leaving Corinth early in 56 (57), it has seejned best to adhere closely to Acts as it hurries the apostle on, from point to point, with his face ever turned to Rome via Jerusalem : for this is true to the inward tend- ency of his own spirit and of the Gospel of which he was the impersonation. But there were plans within plans in the great missionary's activity : he never for- gets old friends or interests, even where dreaming of yet greater enterprises. And so we must return for a little upon his track, to mark two side episodes which have their sequel in his life in Rome. The former of these has its record in 1 Timothy, the lat- ter is involved in the letter to Titus. When Paul left Ephesus for the last time, about Pentecost, i. e., early summer, in the year 55 (56), things were by no means in a settled condition in the Ephesian Church. Hence in setting out for Macedonia, he not only " sent for the disciples and exhorted them " (Acts xx. 1), but also begged Tim- othy to stay on for a time and repress unwholesome tendencies which had their roots in Jewish prejudices of quite another order than those which have already met us in Palestinian circles. Those now in ques- tion did not tend to formal Judaizing, but to a 180 The Apostolic Age. morbidly curious state of mind, busied with legends touching things like the patriarchal genealogies just mentioned in Genesis, 1 topics which fostered fanciful wranglings without at all promoting godliness of life (1 Tim. i. 3 f.). Timothy seems on this occasion to have stayed but a short space before joining Paul in Macedonia, in time to be named in the address of 2 Corinthians ; and then to have accompanied him to Corinth, since he joins in the salutations at the end of Romans. Thence he sailed with the bearers of the Collection to await Paul at Troas. But there is no sign that he accompanied the party past Ephesus, to Jerusalem. Things were by no means looking healthy at Ephesus, as we learn from the apostle's address to its elders, whom he summoned to Miletus by a message of which Timothy was per- haps the bearer. How natural that he should leave Timothy to continue the work committed to him on the former occasion. We may suppose, then, that 1 Timothy was written on board ship at or soon after leaving Miletus, to supplement such hurried instructions as Paul had been able to give his lieutenant before sending him to Ephesus. The report of the elders would supply fresh data. The pressing need of the Ephesian church was a more " wholesome " piety, a matter of "love out of a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned " — concerned with the great central facts of redemption, in contrast with " empty talk " 1 An actual specimen of what is meant is found in the purely Jewish book on Biblical Antiquities falsely attributed to Philo, as also in the Book of Jubilees. The Instructions to Timothy. 181 and fine-spun theorizings about the Mosaic Law 1 (i. 5-7). And to this end it was incumbent on Timothy to hand on solemnly to responsible local leaders the Pauline type of teaching as a safeguard in the new era, when the after results of old tra- ditional ideas were beginning to appear among the converts, and when the Apostle's living presence was being withdrawn to other fields. It was, if we can only realize it, a very critical moment, calling loudly for such definite instructions to a young colleague, and so for the first specimen of a new class of letter, no longer to a church, but to the special apostolic delegate for a season in its midst. Paul is not indeed without hope of being able to take Ephesus on his way to Rome (iii. 14, iv. 13). Yet the solemnity with which he hands on "the deposit" of his authentic Gospel — in opposition to a pretentious " knowledge " of things divine, the ethical emptiness of which betrayed a lack of real 1 As " the myths and interminahle genealogies " of i. 4 point to the legendary amplifications of Old Testament history (Haggada) characteristic of the later Judaism ; so the aspects of the Law here in view are probably the earlier stage of " the distinctive lore of a class of canonists and casuists," developments based on the Law and touching things morally indifferent (Halacha), which appear full blown in the Talmud. This may even account for the phrase "the antitheses of falsely styled knowledge " (gnosis, vi. 20, cf. John vii. 49), referring to the rival dicta of the "Wise. The view has at least the merit of reckoning with known tendencies in Judaism which could hardly but react on Christianity (see Hort, Judaistic Christianity, 130 ff.). Acts xx. 29 seems to refer to Judaizing teachers in speaking of the entering in of "grievous wolves" ; while the emergence from among the local converts of "men speaking perverse things" points to Greek tendencies to dualism, both speculative and practical. 182 The Apostolic Age. reverence — shows the misgivings he could not over- come. That a letter written so soon after parting and dealing so largely with official duties, should be devoid of salutations, need not surprise us. Quite probably, however, a little note, a Postscript or informal enclosure, was sent along with the letter meant for more permanent use and reference. For the words, " Erastus stayed in Corinth, but Trophi- mus I left at Miletus sick," could only have been written from the near neighborhood of the latter place. And its proximity to Ephesus would make such news absurdly stale to Timothy long ere it could reach him from Rome, whence 2 Timothy, in which it is now preserved (iv. 20) among other miscella- neous items at the end, was actually despatched. Accordingly the verse is clearly out of place in its present setting, having been attracted thither by apparent affinity, while it exactly fits the situation just suggested. Erastus, Timothy's late associate on collection business (Acts. xix. 22), had been unable to join the party as an almoner from Corinth ; while at the last moment Trophimus had fallen sick and could not sail with Paul from Miletus, though he was soon able to proceed and join him at Jerusalem (xxi. 29). Very similar are the conditions which best explain the origin of the letter to Titus. On the voyage to Rome Paul's ship was driven by stress of weather to anchor at the Fair Havens in Crete. Hard by was the city of Lasea ; and Paul was thus brought into touch with such Christianity as already existed in Origin of the Letter to Titus. 183 the island, during the "considerable time" of his enforced stay. He found things in a very rudi- mentary state ; and probably at the request of the local Christians left his tried associate Titus to help them towards fuller and purer faith, and such a degree of organization as was now felt needful. But all had been very hasty; and Titus soon found problems cropping up which he was glad to refer to Paul for advice. These, to judge from the reply, were mainly twofold : some were rooted in the unethical tendencies for which the Cretans were proverbial even among the Greeks ; while others arose from Jewish fancies similar to those that troubled the Ephesian church (i. 10-16, iii. 9). The letter of advice is on the same lines as 1 Timothy, only here we have mention of several personal mat- ters. In his inexperience of the delays in the im- perial Court of Appeal, Paul is already anticipating being able to winter at Nicopolis (probably Actium in Epirus); and he wants Titus to meet him there as soon as he receives word through Artemas or Tychicus. Meantime he bids him further " Zenas the lawyer and Apollos," the bearers of the letter, on their journey — possibly to Palestine, to gather evidence in his favor. This is highly suggestive', in relation to the theory that Apollos may have been the author of the epistle to " the Hebrews." It also brings out the value Paul attached to acts of broth- erly love among Christians, since he bids Titus get "our folk" to take in hand fair deeds, such as that for which the needs of journeying brethren gave scope. The letter, then, may be dated roughly to 1S4 The Apostolic Age. early summer 59 (60) : and we may imagine that Apollos had hastened from Corinth to Paul's side soon after his arrival in Rome quite early in that year. But the apostle was to have long trial of his patience, between being handed over by Julius to the head of his department {Princeps peregrinorum, the Stratopedarch of some manuscripts in Acts xxviii. 16), that of soldiers on detached special service, and being actually tried. He had, in fact, arrived at an untimely moment in the history of Nero's principate. The first " five years," during which his policy was mainly guided by his old tutor Seneca in concert with Burr ns, the praetorian prefect, were expiring — had already expired, if it was in 60 rather than 59 when Paul reached Rome. It was early in 59 that Nero put his own mother Agrippina to death and fell ever more and more under the influence of Poppaea, the mistress who finally secured first the divorce and then the murder of his consort Octavia (June 62). Poppaea had strong leanings to Judaism, and on several occasions interfered in the Jewish cause. Accordingly the chance of an early and fair trial for such a case as Paul's was never less. Early in 62 Burrus also died and was succeeded as prefect by Tigellinus, one of Nero's most abandoned asso- ciates — a fact of significance if the case came on as late as 62, since Poppaea and Tigellinus were close allies. In the summer of the first year 1 of Paul's stay in 1 An early date best suits the opening door of Col. iv. 3. The view that this was in 59 rather than 60 is somewhat confirmed by the fact that Tacitus assigns to 60 the ruin of Laodicea by an earthquake, some allusion to which might be expected in letters to the region shortly after that date. Jewish and Pagan Notions Compared. 185 Rome there seems to have arrived news from a quarter and of a kind hitherto beyond our ken. It came from an inland district of the province of Asia, which had been widely influenced during Paul's residence at Ephesus. There in the valley of the Lycus, a tributary of the Mseander which flows westward into the iEgean Sea near Miletus, several churches had sprung up, partly at least under the fostering care of Epaphras. Laodicea and Hierapolis are alluded to in the Colossian Epistle, and meet us again in subsequent Christian literature. But it was the affairs of Colossae, the remotest of the three, that chiefly brought Epaphras to Rome. All these cities had a large trade in dyed wools in particular, and had numerous Jewish settlers. Their presence was the special cause at once of the root so early taken by the Gospel in that region and of the doc- trinal aberrations which reflect themselves in Paul's letter. But there were other traditional influences at work, pagan in character, yet parallel in religious tendency with the local Judaism. Indeed at this time, and in Asia Minor as much as anywhere, there was much mutual assimilation in religions differing in origin but existing side by side. In writing to the " Galatians," in a region not so far from the Lycus Valley in place or feeling, Paul had virtually compared the Jewish and pagan notions of religious observance in what he writes in Gal. iv. 3-11. But they are no less the real causes which explain the apparently sudden emergence of alien or perverted features in other Pauline communities. The re- crudescence of old religious thought and unchal- 186 The Apostolic Age. lenged instincts in the converts, is the secret of the larger part of the phenomena which surprise us in the Pauline Epistles, where the great missionary is engaged, like every foreign missionary to-day, in uprooting the rank undergrowth of new fields al- ready annexed by the Gospel. Here, then, as among the Galatians, we find men who were good Christians at heart, but who, having been freed from a hard ceremonial law, " put them- selves once more into the bonds of another cere- monial law, equally hard." The inducement dif- fered somewhat in the two cases. The Galatians were " bewitched " by Judaizers of a narrow zeal for the Mosaic rites as national laws of divine origin. The Colossians were swayed rather by an ascetic motive, bound up with a conception of Salvation which made it turn on the action of invisible hier- archies of angelic powers, good and bad, of light and darkness, in whose hands by Divine ordinance lay the control of human destiny. This mode of thought was common to Judaism and paganism in these as in many other regions, and has left its record in works of Jewish origin. 1 Thus there can be little question that the Colossian errors were in the main due to ideas already at work in the local Judaism, and were not at all what is usually styled " Gnostic " in origin. 2 1 To the Essenes by the Dead Sea and elsewhere, and the Egyptian Therapeutre, we may now add the type of thought found in the Testament of Solomon. 2 Even the reference to some outsider who was trying to get them to accept his "philosophy," which Paul styles " vain deceit after the tradition of men, after the elements of the world and not after Christ" (ii. 8), does not negative this. For "philoso- Epaphras 1 Report of the Cohssians. 187 It is, indeed, probable that the traditional notion of Gnosticism, as an outgrowth of Greek intellectualisni and pride in "knowing," is in the main a mistake. The interest of Christian gnosis seems ever to have been at bottom practical, the yearning for salvation. But inasmuch as the Greek was apt to minimize the place of moral effort and discipline in human perfec- tion, his methods of " Salvation " were often one- sidedly a matter of knowledge, a knowledge deeper than the ordinary and reached through initiation or the revelation embodied in the tradition of a divinely authorized hierarchy or society. The absence of the idea of a genuinely moral emancipation, flowing from a renewed will, caused the extremes on either side to be resorted to in turn or in combination, namely mere enlightenment, or mere external conduct de- termined by sacred rules of purity. Here, then, are indicated the two tendencies at work among the Colossians as reported by Epaphras (with or without an accompanying letter from the church), and also the line taken by Paul's reply. He shows that they are speculating in the void as re- gards their " wisdom ; ' about "thrones and lord- ships and dominions and authorities " in the invisible world — through none of which had God actually transplanted them "out of the dominion of dark- ness" into the realm of redemption and forgiveness of sins. This had been solely through " the Son of phy " in the first century was often conceived practically, as a higher theory and discipline of life. It is in this sense that Philo styles the largely practical system of the Essenes "philosophy apart from the superfluous element of Greek technicalities." 188 The Apostolic Age, His love," in and through whom, accordingly, all further progress toward perfection or maturity of salvation must also come about. He who had done this great work must be in nature incomparably raised above all the rest of the heavenly hierarchy, nay, be the very ground of its being, as of all things visible, the Firstborn in relation to all creation. So that the adoration of angelic powers, whose im- potence had been tested in the old days, was after His manifestation a gratuitous self-humbling, indicative of a grovelling habit of mind and of an in- adequate appreciation of the all-sufficient Saviour. In His death they had died " away from the material elements of the world " (even as conceived to be con- trolled by angelic beings) into a new sphere of being — to which rules about not touching this, or not tasting that (e. g., wine or meat), have no relevance. Their true sphere was that realm of higher aims and motives (iii. 1 ff.) into which joint resurrection with Christ, their one Head, had ushered them. There let them think, feel, will, live ; and by its own laws and motives alone. It was a shame to think that Christ's energies in them needed eking out by pitiful ceremonial by-laws, like those they had re- nounced all trust in when they trusted Him for re- demption. They had received of God through Christ a " new man " and a renewed will. Let them exercise it in all its distinctive newness, that by ex- ercise it may unfold all its infinite latent potencies of goodness and holiness in love. What strikes one, in addition to the splendid in- nerness and spirituality of this outburst, is its uni- General Nature of Ephesians. 189 versal outlook, befitting one gazing forth from Rome, the centre of the world of men. 1 The Gospel is " fruit-bearing and growing in all the world," and has virtually been already "proclaimed in all crea- turedom under heaven." And this thought gives the dominant note to the so-called Epistle " to the Ephesians," in reality an epistle devoid of special connection with any one church, and so of personal salutations, but sent to the churches of directly or indirectly Pauline foundation in provincial Asia. The copy that has reached us represents the one preserved in the Ephesian church ; yet probably it is the same in contents as that to which reference is made in Colossians, when they are bidden exchange letters with the sister church of Laodicea (iv. 18). The thoughts are in substance almost identical in Colossians and Ephesians^ for their conditions and the mood of the apostle's mind in writing were alike : only the emphasis changes. In the former it falls on the unique divinity of Christ, in contrast to other heavenly beings, as shown by His being Head of the Church. In the latter it is the other aspect that is placed in relief, in keeping with local needs; namely the unity and majesty of the Church of which Christ is the Head, ideally coextensive with humanity, all barriers between men being re- moved by the mode of their reconciliation to the one Father through the one true Son. Similarly "the 1 Those do not seem to err who trace to this fresh psychological situation an influence on the conscious development of the apostle's theological horizon, especially as regards Christ's place in the Universe already hinted in 1 Cor. viii. 6. 190 The Apostolic Aye. fulness of Godhead " is predicated of Christ differ- ently in the two writings. In the former He is, in spite of His bodily form as man, 1 the possessor of this fulness as " the treasures of wisdom and knowl- edge " ; and inasmuch as He has them as Head of the Church, Christians are potentially "fulfilled" therewith in virtue of their oneness with Him (ii. 3, 9 ff.). In the latter the Church is viewed as the sphere within which the latent energies of the Di- vine Head are receiving their realization : so that He may be said to be " fulfilled " by it, as body needed to complement the head, or as bride in union with whom the bridegroom actually attains a fuller, larger, more energetic life (Eph. i. 22 f., v. 25-32). Along with the letter to the Colossian Christians collectively, went also a private letter to one of them, Philemon, whose runaway slave Onesimus had by a strange coincidence met Paul in Rome and been by him converted to Christ. While willing to retain him as a personal attendant on himself, the apostle respects Philemon's prior rights to his service, albeit the relation of master and slave will now be on an- other basis, that of brethren in Christ — as Paul hints in his exquisitely tactful and allusive letter. This has been called the model of a Christian gentle- man's correspondence ; and its inimitable originality has proved a very sheet anchor to the claims of Co- lossians, when the storm as to its genuineness raged most fiercely, owing to our ignorance of the mani- fold conditions of the age to which we can now see 1 So annulling the supposed essential dualism of the spiritual and material worlds, to which all ascetic rules tended to go back. Paul Among His Friends. 191 that it naturally belongs. The two are linked indis- solubly by the personal salutations in each. These salutations give us welcome glimpses of the apostle's environment. They tell us of Aristarchus, a member of the Thessalonian church, and a tried friend both in Ephesus (Acts xix. 29) and on the voyage to Rome (xxvii. 2), who is now honorably mentioned as sharing Paul's confinement, probably as personal attendant (Col. iv. 10), — a pious duty which Epaphras also had begun to share (Philem. 23); of Mark, Barnabas' cousin, the subject of a kindly message to Colossae on some former occasion, 1 and who was perhaps to pass ere long by the Lycus Valley; of Jesus, surnamed Justus, one of those many friends of Paul who, though otherwise un- known to us, prove how large was his capacity for evoking and returning that noblest friendship, the oneness of good men in a holy cause to which they are devoting heart and life. These three are re- ferred to as Jews, and as Paul's sole helpers of his own race at that time in Rome. This is important, as showing how aloof Judseo-Christians were stand- ing from him, a fact of which we shall learn more presently. Of Gentile brethren, besides their at- tached Epaphras, who yet could not make up his mind to leave Paul to return at once with the letter, there were Luke the "beloved physician," who seems never to have left his side since joining him at Phil- 1 After the old confidence had been restored during Paul's stay in Jerusalem or Csesarea. This notice also implies previous com- munication between Paul and Colossal— a fresh hint of the gaps in our knowledge of his full life. 192 The Apostolic Age. ippi more than three years before, and Demas. Of him, remarkably enough, nothing is said by way of definition. 1 Highly suggestive, too, are the refer- ences to "the brethren in Laodicea and Nympha and the ecclesia in her house " ; and to Archippus, apparently Philemon's son (saluted along with Philemon's wife Apphia) and minister in some sense to the saints meeting at his father's house in ColossaB. The question of such " churches in the house " must be considered in connection with the general topic of early Christian fellowship and organ- ization. But the homely and informal impression conveyed at first blush by such references must be duly borne in mind. While Tychicus was obviously the bearer of all three letters, we gather from the address of two of them that Timothy was then at Paul's side. These personal data, taken with those already referred to, are our main clue amid the obscurity surrounding the remainder of Paul's days in Rome. Placing them alongside the closing paragraphs of 2 Timothy, verses full of concrete personal detail, we may perhaps reconstruct a good deal of the life of the Pauline circle and learn more than is other- wise possible about the epistle to the Philippians. "Do thy diligence," writes Paul to Timothy, "to come to me speedily : for Demas hath forsaken me in his love of the present age, and hath departed to Thessalonica ; Crescens to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Luke alone is with me. Get hold of Mark 1 This surely means that he was well known to the Colossians. If so, he was perhaps one of Paul's helpers in Asia. Little can be built on his going to Thessalonica (ii. Tim. iv. 10). Tlie Desertion of Demas. 193 and bring him with thee, for he is useful to rue for ministering ; while Tychicus I have sent to Ephesns. The cloak (or 'book- case,' as in Syriac Versions) which I left in Troas with Carpus bring as thou comest, and the books, particularly the parchments [in contrast to papyri]. Do thy diligence to come before winter. Eubulus saluteth thee, and Pudeus, and Linus, and Claudia, and the brethren (as a whole). The Lord be with thy spirit." The situation is as follows. Of those with Paul when Culossians was written, Demas has found the growing dangers of association with the prisoner too great ; the rest are away on various missions, save Luke only. Mark is in Asia, on the visit hinted in Col. iv. 10; while Titus has been relieved from his work in Crete, and is off again, this time to Dalmatia, the southern part of Illyricum — a hint that the Pauline missions were far more numerous and wide- spread than we are in the habit of thinking. Finally Tychicus is on his way to Ephesus (though by an indirect route, e. g., by Philippi or Crete), a fact which makes it the easier for Timothy to obey the present summons and leave. After finding Mark somewhere, he is to call at Troas and bring certain articles left there by Paul several years ago. 1 He is to come at once if possible, before winter. Finally he is assured of the remembrance of many friends made on a former visit. The general impression gained of Paul's condition is that a sudden need has arisen for Timothy's presence, occasioned immediately by the desertion of Demas, a fact which itself suggests that the prospects of his still delayed trial were becoming 1 In the hope of picking them up on his expected journey from Jerusalem to Rome, an expectation frustrated by his arrest, M 194 The Apostolic Age. darker. The time of year must be summer, and not the early summer, in his second year in Rome. Doubtless Timothy hurried to Rome, possibly in- forming the Philippians on his way of Paul's deso- late condition, and so prompting the generous relief sent through Epaphroditus, of which we learn from Phifyjpians. This epistle, in which Timothy is once more associated with Paul, cannot have been written immediately on receipt of the gift that showed once more the peculiar love of the Philippian church and strangely warmed the apostle's heart. 1 For time had elapsed sufficient at least to let them hear of the sick- ness which the zeal of Epaphroditus, probably the hot haste of his journey, had brought upon him (ii. 26 f. 30). And now Epaphroditus, so far con- valescent and perhaps accompanied by 2 Luke " the beloved physician," is anxious to return to Philippi, in which there seems to have been also some need for his presence, since Paul speaks of sending Timothy shortly, to get news of their affairs and so cheer his mind. There are signs in the epistle itself 1 Zalm thinks be wrote such a letter, and tbat they replied iu a solicitous tone. Paul wrote several letters to Philippi. This is the plain meaning of Polycarp, in saying that Paul " wrote to you letters {ZnuTToXds), into the which if ye look diligently, ye shall be able to build yourselves up unto the faith given to you" (Ad Phil. iii. 2). It is most unlikely that he should have failed to write his thanks for several former gifts (iv. 15 f.) ; while the half-apology for repeating his message of " good cheer in the Lord," found in iii. 1, points to a previous letter of like purport. The present letter was probably evoked by the tone of concern in one from them, to certain phrases of which he seems to revert more than once (e. g., ii. 19, "that I too may ' be cheered ' by learning your affairs "). 2 This best accounts for the omission of Luke's name. PauVs Isolation at Rome. 195 of a slight cloud on the horizon, 1 in a certain lack of harmony among leading Christians, evident not only in the special message to two women, Euodia and Syntyche, but also in the emphasis on the grace of humility in the great passage where Christ is set forth as the example of self-forgetful love (ii. 1 ff., iv. 2). In this connection we learn that a certain Synzygus (on whose name Paul seems to play, call- ing him " truly-named Yoke-fellow," Synzygos) and Clement were prominent workers at Philippi. On the whole then, this letter is in the happiest mood, " the noblest reflection of St. Paul's personal char- acter and spiritual illumination, his large sympathies, his womanly tenderness, his delicate courtesy." He forgets his own troubles and anxieties in grateful joy over the divine fruits visible in his loved con- verts; his one solicitude is to remove their appre- hension touching his lot ; the desire that outweighs even the thought of rest in his Lord's nearer pres- ence, is that of being for a while longer at the service of his children in the gospel. How great the victory involved in such a spirit at such a time, becomes apparent when we observe his actual isolation in the very midst of the large Chris- 1 To what appears in the text may be added the presence of a few persons not crucified to carnal tendencies such as those already seen at work in the Corinthian church (iii. 18 f., cf. i. 10). It is this, perhaps, which determines the ideal of conduct set forth in iv. 8, which is nearer than anything else in the New Testament to the ideal of the Greek or Roman gentleman (xaloxayaOos). But the general gladness of the epistle shows that the danger was but slight, as was that of Judaizing influences from outside (iii. 2 ff. cf. the "Christ-party" at Corinth, a type also warned against in Rom. xvi. 17 f.). 196 The Apostolic Age. tian community in Rome. This fact peeps out between the lines in more than one passage. He is feeling the contrast between the attitude of Roman Chris- tians to him and his, and that of churches which owed their very souls to him. The narrowing in- fluence of the personal element even in Christian interest and sympathy, is echoed in the sad words, "all seek their own interests, not those of Christ Jesus " ; by which he seems to refer to the lack in Rome of any real Christian catholicity of feeling. So that, although his bold witness emboldened many to speak out the word of God, as they understood it, more freely than before his coming ; yet they did not show personal sympathy for him or his work, pre- ferring to take their own line and that at a safe dis- tance. Indeed some of the narrow or Judaizing type were even stirred to preach the Messiah the more zealously out of sheer rivalry, with impure mo- tives, thinking to make the prisoner's constraint the more galling to him, as they used their freedom to propagate what he could but regard as a maimed Gospel. Yet his magnanimity enabled him to rejoice that even so Christ was thereby reaching men's ears. While many, admiring and even revering him as a great champion of the Gospel amid heathenism, were preaching with good-will and love to Paul, though without any tokens of tender affection or personal loyalty. It is clear that the early stage of praying for the door to open to his ministry, as of "an ambassador in a chain," and for the grace of outspokenness (Col. iv. 3 f. ; Eph. vi. 20), is already long past. It is now His Optimism for the Cause. 197 his to cheer the Philippians with the assurance that his hard lot — the long delay in irksome restraint — has even promoted the spread of the Gospel. For his case as a prisoner has brought Christ to the notice of " the whole Prcetorium" or supreme Im- perial Court of Appeals, 1 " and of all the rest." His case was in fact a cause ceTebre, and was setting men, especially the legal profession, asking what lay be- hind it, what the externa super stitio was that set Jews by the ears, and who this " Christ," on whom all turned, might be. The probabilities, indeed, of life and death seemed to him to be humanly speak- ing about equal. It looks as though he were be- ginning to realize all the bearings of his own case in the eye of the State (cf. ii. 17) ; not only, that is, as a matter of tolerating a branch of Judaism, but as an affair of public order — the grave charge already raised by Tertullus at Caesarea (Acts xxiv. 5), when he taxed Paul with being "a pestilent fellow and a mover of seditions among all the Jews throughout the civilized world." Bat as yet it had not nar- rowed itself down to this dangerous issue, as it prob- 1 Mommsen has shown that this is the meaning of the Prse- torium in i. 13, namely the whole hotly of judges associated with the Prefect or Prefects of the Praetorian Guard (as repre- senting the Emperor as the fountain of justice), the Cour de Cassation of the Empire. "The saints of Caesar's household" (iv. 22) represent a different circle, and one in which, as "in most intimate relations with all parts of the Empire," Christianity probably had long had a footing. Kamsay holds Lightfoot right in thinking that the slaves of Aristobulus (son of Herod the Great) and of Narcissus (Claudius' favorite freedman) had passed into the Imperial household, and that members of these familise are saluted as Christians as early as Romans xvi. 10 f. 198 The Apostolic Age. ably did in the sequel. This explains the more hopeful tone of the earliest group of letters, the more dubious tone of Philippians, the settled fore- boding of 2 Timothy as a whole. For now we have to notice that the tenor of 2 Timothy is quite alien to that even of Philippians. His confinement was more rigorous ; he was " far- ing ill, up to the point of bonds, like a criminal " (ii. 9). • He had no hope of acquittal : he recognized that he was " already being poured forth as an offer- ing, and the time of his departure was come." The gloom and hopelessness of the situation damped and dismayed all his friends : at his first hearing " all forsook " him : yet for the time he " was delivered out of the mouth of the lion " (a proverb for extreme peril). In every respect the situation thus indicated is the opposite of the circumstances described on the first trial.' These words are quoted, as giving a due sense of the contrast between 2 Timothy and all other notices of Paul's Roman experiences, a contrast which Ramsay thinks explicable only on the as- sumption of two trials separated by a period of liber- ation. The inference, implied in the words " on the first trial," is more than dubious. But the fact from which it starts, the absence of all hope of final re- lease, is certain, and is to our mind inconsistent with the tenor of so much of ch. iv. 9 ff. as was quoted some pages back and shown to be intermediate between Colossians and Philippians. The moral of 2 Timothy up to iv. 8, is that Timothy should play the man at his post, all the more that Paul him- self is just laying down his weapons (see iv. 1-8 in PauVs Last Days. 199 particular). It is almost inconceivable that hard on this should come the words, " Do thy diligence to come to me speedily, for Demas has deserted me," etc., (even though events had moved rapidly and needed a Postscript). Paul was looking for his de- parture any day, and would not be sending afar for the comfort of congenial ministry, or for his cloak and books. The thought finds its only proper sequel in iv. 16-18, " In my first defence no man stood by my side to support my plea, but all deserted me." 1 Then might follow 19 (cf. i. 16-18), 22 b; and would be Paul's last extant words. The very last days of Paul's life are lost to our view. The great thing is to know the spirit in which he entered " the valley of the shadow of death." To him death was but a shadow. He was departing "to be with Christ," which was " very far better " as concerned himself. And now he was satisfied that even the work of God was no longer to detain him-^the Lord's work was safe in His strong keep- ing. And so he sings his swan-song in triumph : 44 As for me, I am already being poured out as an offer- ing, and the hour of my departure is upon me. The good fight I have fought, the course I have finished, the faith I have kept. Henceforth there is laid up 1 If, as is likely, the ill-will to Paul displayed by Alexander the coppersmith consisted in gainsaying his pleadings as to the origin of the riot at Ephesns (cf. Acts xix. 33), then iv. 14, 15 go along with 16-18. And in this case the desertion by "all those in Asia," such as Phygelus and Hermogenes (men of official po- sition?), refers to their refusal to stir a finger to support Paul's case with evidence in Rome: to whose supineness Onesiphorus supplies a shining contrast, by identifying himself with his old master in his hour of adversity. 200 The Apostolic Age. for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord shall give me in that day, the righteous Judge; and not to me only, but also to all that have loved His appearing." He died, as a Roman citizen, by the sword, gladdened, we may believe, in his last hours by the sympathy of Timothy, whom affection had drawn unbidden to his side. All that has so far been described assumes that Paul was never released from his Roman confine- ment, save by the executioner's sword. The oppo- site is, however, the common belief among English- speaking scholars. Lightfoot argues l for a release about 63, a renewed activity around the iEgean and probably also in Spain, rearrest about 67, and mar- tyrdom in that or the next year. But in spite of the extreme elaborateness of the itinerary which he is forced to imagine, his scheme fails to harmonize all the data, notably of 2 Timothy. Indeed it may be doubted whether any theory that fails to recognize the composite origin of 2 Tim. iv. 9 ff. can even seem to do so. 2 This is the strong point about so- 1 Especially in two of his old Cambridge Lectures, published in the posthumous volume of Biblical Essays. Ramsay seems to adopt the like view, but does not attempt to work out the details. Any theory that puts the letters as late as 65-68 has (1) to encounter the absence of all sentiment toward the government such as the massacre of 64 would leave behind (1 Tim. ii. 2 would seem a sorry sarcasm after 64), as well as of any echoes of the stirring events in Palestine from 66 onward ; and (2) to justify the com- parative youthfulness attributed to Timothy in the second letter (i. 2, ii. 1, 22, " flee the passions of youth "), seeing he must in 67 have been with Paul some eighteen years and have reached the age of thirty-eight or forty at least. 2 How utterly improbable, for instance, that Demas would have sought Paul out on a second imprisonment and then deserted. Theory of a Second Imprisonment. 201 called " Partition Theories," which however begin to be arbitrary and mutually discordant as soon as they venture much further (see Literary Appendix). As regards the supposed release itself, Lightfoot is confronted by the presumption against a release created by Paul's words to the Ephesian elders at Miletus (Acts xx. 25) : " And now, lo, I know that ye all, among whom I went about preaching the Kingdom, shall see my face no more." He replies that this personal presentiment cannot be pressed, the more so that it is balanced by presentiments of an opposite kind, like the passage in Phil. ii. 24, i. 25 ; Philem. 22. But he fails to observe the force of the fact that the author of Acts, writing as an historian after Paul's death, thinks it worth while to record these words, and even gives them emphasis by referring to them in his own person at the end of the speech (xx. 38). So economical a writer would not have troubled to record an unfulfilled presenti- ment, with no hint that it was so unfulfilled. 1 There- fore this passage tells strongly against Lightfoot's view, and can only be overcome by counter evidence of a very cogent nature. This he and others think they find in a positive statement in 1 Clement (A. D. 96), just a generation after the supposed release, to the effect that Paul after reaching the bound of the West (to xipim r-^? Sudsoj?) and bearing witness before the rulers, so departed from this world (v. 7). But though the phrase " the bound of the West," 1 The same idea, that God was preparing the apostle for some- thing in itself tragic, but through Paul's attitude to it glorious, runs through the whole sequel in Acts. 202 The Apostolic Age. taken by itself, would certainly suggest some point further west than Rome (e. g., Spain), yet the con- text, which refers to Paul's preaching in both East and "West, may well modify its sense and make it mean " his limit in the West." 1 Nor can one sepa- rate the participles " having come to the western bound and witnessed before the rulers " — while all allow that the latter refers to Rome. For another reason Clement cannot mean that Paul survived the date 64: since he adds that to Peter and Paul was gathered ((juveOpoiaOrj) the multitude of Neronian martyrs of 64 (vi. 1). And so Clement goes over bodily to the other side. Later Patristic evidence seems for the most part mere inference from Rom. xv. 28; while the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Peter assume Paul's martyrdom on his first trial. 1 Cf. the statement found in one MS. at the end of St. Mark, that "Jesus sent forth from East even to West the sacred and in- corruptible Gospel," by means of the Apostles. CHAPTER VII. LATER PALESTINIAN DAYS. (a) General State of Palestine. A. D. 44-66. BOUT the middle of the century things began to go from bad to worse with the Jews in Palestine. Already under Calig- ula and Claudius there had been much to resent. But with the troubles which led to the deposition of the procurator Cumanus in 52 A. D., and the elevation of his late junior col- league Felix, began a progressive exasperation on both sides which explains even the desperate and fanatical character of the war of defiance ending in the supreme tragedy of 70 A. D. It was not only that the successive procurators, Felix (52-58), Festus (58-61), Albinus (62-65), Florus (65-66), were in various ways almost as unfit for their deli- cate position as men could be. There were also deeper causes, inherent in the temper and social con- dition of the Jews themselves at this epoch, which made some sort of national outburst well-nigh in- evitable. Besides the incompatibility of temper and of tradi- tions as between the ruling and the subject race, there was, first of all, a clash of essential ideals in- 203 204 The Apostolic Age. volved in the coexistence side by side of the Roman State and the Jewish Church. The spirit of each was embodied in its Law; the one cosmopolitan, utilitarian, equally tolerant of all religious beliefs as such; the other intensely exclusive, claiming to speak with the categorical imperative of the Divine behest, and so brooking no rival within its own bor- ders. But to the Jewish mind the Thorah's borders were in fact coextensive with the whole of life, national and personal. It could have no real being save as a polity, an organization of society through and through. Like Islam, Judaism coul^d acquiesce in no dualism between civil and religious society. All must rest immediately on one single basis, and that the revealed divine will. As long as this was not so, the thoroughgoing Jew felt that he had an- other master beside Jehovah. This might be toler- ated indeed in the face of overwhelming force, but only in the hope of the day when the yoke of the uncircumcised Gentile should be forever dashed from his neck and Jehovah become Israel's King once more. Such a people could never, while they held fast their convictions, be other than in a latent state of protest looking toward revolt. Yet the cause of na- tional emancipation was very differently regarded by different types of Jews. And in fact the divergence of ideals was singularly well-marked among them at the period in question. The Sadducees and Hero- dians had in various fashions practically ceased to be Jews in heart ; for they had made terms with the inevitable in their own behalf. They had even ceased The Sadduce.es and Herodians un-Jeivish. 205 to wish things altered, lest they should no longer find themselves in the places of pride and influence. To occupy these in a free Israel was doubtless pref- erable. But a theocracy, with themselves in ob- scurity, would be no Kingdom of heaven to them. And so they feared all change, and especially that form which might spring from the enthusiasm of the masses. At the other extreme were the "quiet in the land," to whom the Kingdom meant something altogether divine and heavenly, not of the world in which those others had their being. To this gen- eral class of," the meek " belonged not only the other- worldly Essenes, who had given up all hope of a na- tional salvation, or Kingdom of holiness, but also the Christians, into whose ranks had passed the flower of the humbly pious, like John's parents and Joseph and Mary. These while doing their duty in the lot in which Jehovah had placed them, had been " wait- ing for Israel's consolation" from on high. As such godly folks mused on the promises of this consolation, whether in Prophets or in that Apocalyptic litera- ture which served as their commentary and supple- ment — and the influence of which we are just learn- ing to realize — they felt that the Divine Kingdom was to come by the kindred method of divine inter- position, and not by that brute force which it was part of its glory to replace by humaner ways. Hence while the non-Essenic branch of them felt their hearts beat high with national aspirations, yet they held aloof from all movements that relied on " the arm of flesh " rather than the Providence of God. Intermediate between these two types were the 206 The Apostolic Aye. common middle-class Pharisees, a large proportion of such Jews as took their religion seriously. They had grave religious defects, even when we consider the rank and file rather than the extremer types which meet us for the most part in the Gospels. But the more thoughtful of them felt that it was no part even of zealous piety to risk all where the pros- pect of success was, to human calculation, at a min- imum. And so their leaders concurred generally with the actual policy of their more worldly rivals, the Sadducean hierarchy; at any rate as to the folly of immediate revolt from Rome, and as^to the dan- ger of being dragged at the tail of any popular up- rising led by ignorant visionaries, such as the bulk of those who presented themselves as national deliv- erers notoriously were. Yet, seeing that this party was not on principle opposed to the use of force, any more than their spiritual ancestors who formed the backbone of the Maccabean rising more than two centuries before, there was always a chance of its more fiery section espousing the claims and pros- pects of a given leader or would-be Messiah, and in the enthusiasm of the hour flocking to his side. Fi- nally there were the unsettled classes in Palestine, those on whom the generally evil state of things, the fruit of oppression and extortion both by native and alien, pressed heaviest. Religion was not as a rule tried very strictly by moral tests. So that among the party known as the 44 Zealots," from their passionate hatred of the rule of the foreigner, were found men of all kinds and of all motives, ranging from the pure religious fanatic Ring leaders of Zealotry. 207 to the mere bankrupt of fortune, whose instinct was all for change at any price. The peasantry leaned largely to Zealotry, and on several occasions shed their blood with perfect abandon in the semi-religious national cause. But the longer the restless and dis- organized state of Palestinian society lasted, the lower became the average level of Zealotry. And soon after gaining a footing in Jerusalem itself, in the early years of the infamous Felix (52-58), its ring- leaders became known as the Assassins (Sicarii), a secret society of the stiletto^ for the promotion of the revolt from Rome and the removal of all who stood in the way of that goal. Henceforth morbid excita- tion of mind was more and more concentrated in the capital, the city of stirring memories and unbounded hopes. The party of order, varied as were their mo- tives and worth, became less and less able to hold the war party in check, as scandal to Jewish feeling followed scandal, and as sign seemed to follow sign — all making for a crisis. Typical of the times was the Egyptian impostor referred to in Acts xxi. 38, who first attracted to himself in the desert of Judaea some thousands of Sicarii and others, and then, hav- ing persuaded them of his prophetic vocation, led them to the Mount of Olives, claiming that they would see the walls of Jerusalem fall flat before him. Reports of portents assailed the highly-wrought mind on every side ; and everything was seen by the pop- ular imagination through the haze of apocalyptic forecasts and omens. All this had, as soil in which to germinate, the undying sense of a divine election of the nation, now intensified for most minds into a 208 The Apostolic Age. definite Messianic programme. For was there not " to go forth at this time, from their midst, one who should be master of the world"? Accordingly, when Festus, Felix's successor in an evil tradition, died in office about the end of 61 or the beginning of 62, the Jewish authorities must have felt the situation very critical and themselves called upon to take every precaution against the Messianic hope leading to a violent outburst. This was probably the meaning of their attitude towards the leaders of the Christian community in Jerusa- lem early in the three months' rule of Ananus the Younger, high-priest during the procuratorial inter- regnum. According to our text of Josephus, he brought James the Lord's brother before the Sanhe- drin, along with certain others ; and got them all condemned to death by stoning, as having violated the Jewish law in jsome way. 1 This sentence, the execution of which shocked the more reasonable cit- izens — " men, too, well versed in the Law " — was probably due to official fear of popular leaders vaguely suspected of fostering Messianic agitation, as the brother of "Jesus the so-called Christ" might plausibly be accused of doing. The later account given by Hegesippus of the martyrdom of James, when stripped of certain transparent Jewish-Chris- tian embellishments, points the same way. He is there represented as having enjoyed the utmost ven- 1 Probably in much the same sense as Jesus himself was con- demned for breaking the Law. So Hegesippus (Euseb. iv. 22) writes, "after James the Just had been martyred in like manner as the Lord, on the same count," i. e., for Messianic reasons. The Martyrdom of James. 209 eration of the Jewish populace, by reason of his strict and devoted piety after the manner of a Naz- irite, a traditional type of saintliness, and in particu- lar through his habit of constant prayer, which won him the title of the Just and of Obliam, or " Rampart of the People." In consequence of this he came to be consulted by certain members of the Jewish sects or parties already described in general terms, as to " the Way (lit. Door) of Jesus." 1 His reply was that He was the Saviour, i. e., the true Deliverer of Israel, the Messiah. Then the Sadducaic rulers, ob- serving the strong drift there was (at a time so crit- ical as the morrow of the death of the procurator Festus) towards faith in Jesus as Messiah, tried to get the popular saint to throw his weight into the opposite scale to what they styled Messianic " delu- sion." But his reply to the test question, as to "the Way of Jesus," was just the one to arouse their bit- terest resentment. " Why ask ye me," said he, "touching Jesus the Son of Man? He, and none other, is seated in heaven at the right hand of the Great Power, and is about to come upon the clouds of heaven." So inflammatory an utterance, espe- cially if, as the account implies, it was spoken when Jerusalem was filling for the Passover, could meet with but one answer from such a tribunal : he was 1 It is tempting to suppose that before the story reached Hege- sippus the impersonal sense of the Semitic word for "Salvation," which as a personal name is rendered by "Jesus" (Matt. i. 21 ; Heb. iv. 8), had been forgotten. If so, the question originally ran, "What is the door of Salvation," or national deliverance (cf. Luke i. 69, 71 ; Acts iv. 12, v. 31.)? This at any rate was the question of the hour. N 210 . The Apostolic Age. stoned to death. It is not certain whether the others who suffered at the same time (as Josephus states) were also Christians. Possibly they were exponents of other forms of the Messianic ideal. James' successor in the headship of the Jerusalem Christians was Symeon, " whom all put forward as being a blood relation of the Lord," in fact a cousin on Joseph's side. This statement is suggestive of the rather carnal way in which this highly Jewish community viewed the Messianic Kingdom : and this impression is deepened when we learn that a similar feeling for the family prerogative still existed a gen- eration later. For the leadership among the Pales- tinian churches enjoyed by the grandsons of Jude, the Lord's brother, was traceable not only to their faithful witness before Domitian but also to the ac- cident of their birth. In fact a special title of re- spect, Desposyni or " the Lord's folk," was reserved for the family as a whole. No general persecution followed the martyr- dom of James. But his death may well have been the signal for increased pressure being brought to bear on the Judeeo-Christians throughout Palestine, to induce them to give up hoping for salvation through the return of Jesus Messiah, and to rely simply on the common means of acceptance with God and national deliverance. So would cease the friction between themselves and their compatriots, now so galling by reason of its continuance for a length of time undreamed of when first they trusted in Jesus. So also would they no more hear the re- proach, to which they were increasingly exposed, of The Epistle to Hebrews. 211 aloofness from the main body of national sentiment at a time of such crisis. If this was the situation about the time of James' death (Passover (?) 62), none seems more likely to have evoked the Epistle to the Hebrews. In this light the epistle, so obscure in its origin and relations, at once becomes alive with meaning. It is an appeal called forth in hot haste from the burning sympathy of one well-known to certain Jewish-Christians, and to whom at a dis- tance had come the startling news of their imminent apostasy. That the crisis was a sudden one is im- plied by the fact that he writes at all, instead of waiting to be joined by Timothy whose early arrival he expects, and then visiting them in person. If it be thought that the Epistle in some respects particularizes the circumstances of its readers more than suits a sort of circular letter to the Palestinian churches (perhaps exclusive of Jerusalem, where the church's conditions were largely special to itself), then a primary destination suggests itself easily in connection with the reference to "our brother Timothy." For it is almost certain that Timothy was with Paul during some part at least of his im- prisonment in Caesarea, and would be personally known to the brethren there. On the same assump- tion, namely that the writer of Hebrews had Caesarea very specially in his mind's eye, we can explain an- other personal reference which at first sight seems foreign to a Palestinian circle of readers : and that is the greeting from " them of Italy." Whether the author be writing from Italy or not, we are forced to ask, Where in Palestine would the bulk of a com- 212 The Apostolic Age. raunity be sufficiently in touch with Italy to account for greetings from a body of Italian brethren ? And the most satisfactory answer is Csesarea, the chief point of contact with Italy. It was the official seat of Roman government in Palestine, where re- sided the procurator and his suite, and where was stationed a considerable body of Roman troops, including "the Italian cohort" of which the first full Gentile convert had been a centurion. Shortly after Ananus had taken the law into his own hands during his high priesthood, which ended with the arrival of Albums the new procurator (spring (?) 62), Jerusalem was startled by a striking apparition, reminding men of one of the ancient prophets. It was the Feast of Tabernacles, and a season of unwonted peace reigned in Jerusalem. Yet suddenly a wailing voice rang through the city, iterating day and night the same ill-omened dirge : " A voice from the East, a voice from the West, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the sanctuary, a voice against bridegroom and bride, a voice against all the People." Men took it the more to heart that* the prophet, a certain Jesus Bar Ananias, was but an unlettered rustic. At last, in vexation, certain of the leading citizens had him seized and scourged. But no syllable fell from him save his wonted cry. Feeling as if there was some- thing superhuman about the thing, the rulers handed him over to the Roman authorities, whose pitiless scourges however could draw from him naught but 44 Ah, Ah, for Jerusalem." Josephus relates all this with bated breath: and indeed it strikingly illus- Inconsecutiveness of Acts. 213 trates the widespread presentiment that critical times were at hand for the Land of Promise. Touching the four years yet to elapse before the storm burst little need be said. The ferment con- tinued to intensify under Albums, who "left no form of rascality untried," and his successor Gessius Florus, who " seemed sent to give the executioner's stroke to men already condemned." The latter had been in office little more than a year when a stray spark, as it were, kindled the inflammable material, first locally, and then throughout the length and breadth of Palestine, involving for a time even the whole of Eastern Judaism. (6) Palestinian Christianity up to 62 A. D. The doings of the Jewish Christians after their scattering from Jerusalem before the vigorous perse- cution occasioned by Stephen's preaching, are in- volved in much obscurity. The thread of strictly consecutive narrative in Acts really breaks off at this point. What we get hereafter, until the arch- inquisitor Saul finally emerges as an enlarger of the Church's message and the figure around whom the rest of the story centres, is a series of typical epi- sodes put together with less regard to historical than to logical sequence. We have already made some use of them ; and the glimpses which they afford of the earliest days of the Palestinian Christians are indeed priceless. Now, however, our object is to see as far as we can into their real sequence, prelim- inary to the attempt to construct from our scattered 214 The Apostolic Age. materials some image of later Judseo-Christianity*, prior to the war in 66, A. D. How long the persecution led by Saul may have lasted we have no certain means of judging. Of its severity we have ample evidence, both in the thoroughness of the scattering to which it led, and in the echoes some thirty years after in the Epistle to the Hebrews. There we read of " the former days," in which certain Palestinian Christians, after being " enlightened," " endured a great conflict of sufferings ; partly, being made a gazing stock both by abuse and afflictions ; and partly, becoming par- takers with them that were so used." For they "had compassion on them that were in bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of their possessions," in the sure hope of " a better possession and an endur- ing." To which one may add Paul's confession that he had in Jerusalem " shut up many of the saints in prisons " and " voted against them when they were put to death " ; also that " in all the synagogues be had by penalties tried to force them to blaspheme " the name of Jesus (Acts xxvi. 10 f.). Among the very earliest results of the wider mission occasioned by this stirring of the Christian nest, was Philip's work among the Samaritans. Indeed this seems to have begun while Saul was yet engaged in pressing his campaign as far as the foreign city of Damascus. Then came his conversion, his withdrawal into Arabia, his mission-work in the synagogues of Da- mascus, his hair-breadth escape, and his brief visit to Peter in Jerusalem. One thing of interest we may safely infer from his Itineraries of the A})Ostles. 215 own account of that visit, namely that James, the Lord's brother, was already a leading personage in the Church, if not its chief ordinary leader, as con- trasted with apostles like Peter and James the son of Zebedee. The Palestinian Church had now en- tered on a period of quiet and steady progress. It seems to have been the habit of the apostles to make regular mission journeys throughout Palestine, probably dividing the field more or less methodically between them and their fellow-evangelists, both for purposes of first evangelization and of subsequent inspection and consolidation (cf. Acts ix. 32). Quite a number of those associated with the Twelve in such work shared also in the honored title of " Apostle," probably as having been among the more special personal disciples of the Master, seeing that an appearance to " the apostles as a body "—in dis- tinction from the Twelve and the Five Hundred brethren— is recorded by St. Paul. To this body belonged not only Andronicus and Junias (Rom. xvi. 7), but also apparently certain men who later claimed to supersede Paul at Corinth in virtue of a personal and bodily intimacy with Jesus which he could not boast, styling themselves preeminently "apostles" of Christ (2 Cor. xii. 11, cf. xi. 13, 18), " False apostles " is what Paul styles them, in allu- sion to their having or claiming certain formal marks of " apostolate " without its essential spirit of self-effacing devotion. Among the prerogatives recognized by Paul as belonging to this order, was a claim upon their converts for support, including, if needs be, that of wives accompanying them on their 216 The Apostolic Age. itinerant labors (1 Cor. ix. 4, 5). Moreover we gather from the same passage that Paul reckoned Barnabas, equally with himself, an " apostle " in the strictest sense of the term (cf. Acts xiv. 4, 14). Whence we may infer that Barnabas had been a personal disciple of Christ, like Joseph Barsabbas and Matthias. Though certain " apostles " in the larger sense no doubt passed beyond the borders of Palestine at quite an early date, it is probable that the Twelve for long confined themselves to the Holy Land, where the Messianic Kingdom was expected to be manifested in glory. Peter's visit to Antioch, which cannot be earlier than 46 A. D., is the first known instance to the contrary : and it, while hardly an ex- ception, may have remained for some time longer an isolated case. It was the Apostolic labors of Paul and Barnabas which created a new and larger ideal of the possibilities that lay in the Diaspora among the Gentiles. And into this field we may imagine Peter, as usual, foremost in leading the way. But long ere this came to pass, possibly before Peter's apostolic visitation had brought him, through Lydda and Joppa, to Cornelius and his fellow half- proselytes at Csesarea — with all the momentous issues of that visit — before all this, certain humbler preach- ers, from among those scattered by Saul's onslaught, had reached Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch. Only gradually perhaps did the Word, in the last of these localities, reach even pure Greeks through the agency of Hellenists of Cyprus and Cyrene. Yet in Antioch such converts became proselytes of The Gospel beyond Israel. 217 the New Israel without even having been prose- lytes of the Old. As soon then as this phenomenon attained considerable dimensions, some three or four years from Saul's conversion, say, about 36-37 A. D., Barnabas was despatched from Jerusalem to observe and supervise. He was satisfied, settled down, and worked; a still larger ingathering followed indue course, and the work threatened to overtax the strength of the local leaders. Then it was that, after doing mission work of his own in the region of his native Tarsus, during which he worked in the main among Jews and probably suffered the thirty- nine stripes of the Synagogal jurisdiction more than once, as well as many other dangers and hardships (2 Cor. xi. 24 ff.), the ex-Pharisee Saul entered upon the work in Antioch and its vicinity. The time which elapsed before the arrival of " prophets from Jerusalem," and again until the season came to carry out the scheme of relief planned to meet the famine foretold by Agabus, all this is uncertain. But some two or three years prior to the latter event (46-47, A. D.), the peace of the Saints at Jerusalem was rudely broken by the action of Herod Agrippa I. ; who, jealous of the growing influence of the Naza- renes and perhaps egged on by some of the high- priestly aristocracy, suddenly struck down James the son of Zebedee, then a prominent leader. Next, finding the act meet with a good deal of approval, on the eve of the Passover he got Peter within his grasp. Whatever may hitherto have been the status of 218 The Apostolic Age. James, the eldest of the four "brethren of the Lord " who stood in a class by themselves on the same level of honor as " apostles " (1 Cor. ix. 5), there is no doubt that after the death of the other James he was regarded as the head of the Jerusalem com- munity. In fact he ranked alongside the chief apostles, Peter and John ; and in the eyes of the stricter sort of Jewish believer perhaps he seemed chiefest of them all. ' It is therefore of great conse- quence for our estimate of Judseo-Christianity dur- ing the rest of his lifetime, namely till 62 A. D., to gain some clear and correct notion of this re- markable man. He was perhaps the most represent- ative Jewish Christian during some eighteen years, the one whom the stricter sort loved to represent as sharing their own views. How far were they justi- fied in such a claim ? Our surest starting point is the testimony of Paul, who, if any one, was likely to have a discriminating judgment in the matter. And the remarkable thing is that he always names him with marked respect and never attributes to him the views of the ex- tremists, even when they claimed to speak as in his name. "Not explicitly," it may be replied, "but surely by implication." The point demands careful examination, and will repay trouble by yielding some distinctions often ignored but of primary im- port for the understanding of Judseo- Christianity prior to 70, A. D. Judaism was, as we saw, a religious unity com- prising a great variety of schools of thought. It 1 Note the order in Gal. ii. 9, " James and Cephas and John." Contrasting Views of the Thorah. 219 embraced not only Pharisaic Legalists, on the one hand, but also the adherents of Jesus of Nazareth, on the other. In between, there were many grada- tions, determined mainly by the light in which the Thorah, the revealed Way of God, was regarded. Those who have most impressed the Christian im- agination hitherto, by reason of the fact that they stand out in the pages of the New Testament in the fierce light of controversy, were really a minority even of Palestinian Jews. This class of Jew re- garded the Thorah in the way natural to professional lawyers, the more scrupulous that the code com- mitted to their jealous care was the code of heaven, not of earth. They were the men whose attitude to the Law is aptly expressed in the words of their spiritual successors, the Rabbis of the Schools of two centuries later, as a " fencing of the Thorah." The great thing was to keep men at a safe distance from forbidden ground, and this by the imposition of additional restrictions, " the tradition of the elders." The Law was not for man, but man for the Law. Thorah was not so much a Way of Life for walking in, as a network of forbidden paths, each guarded from the profane foot by a menacing placard inscribed with the word " Holy " or Invio- lable. It was not so much an ideal to fulfil, as some- thing to avoid transgressing. In a word, the Law in their hands became negative and prohibitive in spirit, not positive and attractive. The last thing it could be called was "a law of liberty." It was made an end in itself; and so obedience to it was the prerequisite of a man's coming at all within 220 The Apostolic Age. the range of God's grace. Their religious idea, therefore, was necessarily exclusive and anti-Gentile in the extreme. Their influence, the moral terror- ism they established, leading to partial conformity outside their ranks, was very great. But it is safe to say that even in Jerusalem the strict sort were a minority of the people ; much more so outside its immediate environs ; while beyond Palestine their ideal was the exception rather than the rule. Very different from the Pharisaic or Legalist view of the Law was that of those who valued it mainly on its moral rather than its ritual side. Their attitude to God's Law, the sum total of His statutes for the guidance of life in the paths of Justice, Mercy, and Fidelity (Matt, xxiii. 23), was that of Psalmists like the authors of Psalm xix. (7-14), cxix., or of the writers of Proverbs and the other Old Testament literature, canonical and uncanonical, in which God is regarded as wooing men by His wisdom to ways of safety and peace. They understood the Divine Law much as the Prophets had done, to whom God's will was summed up in the maxim " Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with thy God." In brief, their use of the Thorah was devotional, not legal. Theirs was the Thorah as expounded, not by "the tradition of the Elders," but by the Prophets and the Preach- ers, men wise in conduct rather than in sacred ju- risprudence. This party of the unsophisticated con- science, as we may style it, to whom moral relations to God and man were far more than purity of ritual precision, was large. Not that it was by any means uniform either in the earnestness of its members or in James 1 Zeal not Pharisaic but Essenic. 221 the things by which they laid most store. Yet in all its sections it had responded in some degree to the appeal of the Baptist for penitence and preparedness of heart against the near Advent of the Messianic Kingdom, as set forth, for instance, in the closing chapters of Malachi. These distinctions latent even in Palestinian Ju- daism were brought clearly to light by the preaching of John the Baptist. In men's attitude to this Jesus himself saw an index of their probable attitude to His own Gospel. Now John was in many ways a most loyal Jew, certainly one who enjoyed a high name for saintliness among the people at large. Yet the man who could protest indignantly that God was able of stones to raise up children to Abraham, made but little of the line between physical Jew and Gen- tile, and presumably of circumcision as the physical condition of God's favor and blessing. Not that he sat lightly to the Mosaic Law as regulating Jewish piety ; but he viewed the Law and all Mosaic insti- tutions through the eyes of his teachers, the Proph- ets. His idea of purity and its opposite was mainly moral through and through. To him the defiling thing was worldliness in its myriad forms; purity lay in renunciation of spirit, to which certain forms of bodily abstinence were valuable aids. If he shared the view that Gentiles were "sinners" and "un- clean," he would think mainly of the moral cor- ruption and impurity so rife among idolaters, whose religion was indifferent to morality and brought no light and strength to the conscience. As we keep these things in mind, fresh light 222 The Apostolic Age. breaks on the parties and controversies reflected in the pages of Acts. For it is hardly open to ques- tion that a large majority of the earliest believers in Jesus as Messiah had shared the Baptist's ways of thinking and feeling, which were quite other than the Pharisaic. And this is eminently true of the Lord's brethren, whose reserve toward their broth- er's claims was probably due to much the same causes as John's. " The meekness and gentleness of Christ" and His unostentatious methods were an offence to their Messianic ideals, until belief in the resurrection, as God's own seal of approval set upon His Beloved, confirmed His ideal of the Kingdom and opened their eyes to the more gracious and pa- tient side of the prophetic image of the Chosen One. And in this same connection it is instructive to ob- serve how much as a matter of course Apollos and other of John's disciples seem to have passed over to some sort of faith in Messiah Jesus. We shall be far nearer the truth, then, if we relate the piety of James, as of the Apostles in general, to that which breathes in the Magnificat and Benedictus, or lives in the pages of Philo and Josephus touching the Essenes, than if we mention it in conjunction with Pharisaic zeal for the Law. Indeed, the Es- senic type of Judaism supplies the real analogy in many respects. They were devoted to the ideal of religious purity as zealously as any Pharisee. But they conceived its nature and conditions in another way, distinct from all that could be called strictly national. To them " worship, pure and undefiled," consisted in deeds of charity and life " unspotted from Concordat Supported by Christian Consciousness. 223 the world." Nor did they regard it as indissolubly bound up with either of the two great institutions of Judaism, the Temple-worship, and the Law, as ex- pounded by the tradition of the elders. Thus they show how men could be loyal Jews and yet understand the meaning of Life under the Law very differently from the Pharisees. They lived, in whole or in part, aloof from either, falling back, in certain of their usages for ensuring purity of body as well as of soul, upon a sort of Law of Nature, on which the Mosaic usages were assumed to depend. Such a Law it was that most Jews, especially in the Dispersion, probably discerned in the so-called Noachic covenant (cf. Gen. ix. 1-17) — or what at this period corresponded thereto — and on the broad lines of which the Jerusa- lem Concordat as a matter of fact proceeded. We may safely assume, then, that James, whose piety was akin to Peter's, in reading the Law through the Prophets — as he does explicitly in his words at the Jerusalem conference — simply desired that Gentiles should give guarantees against their typical sins of Idolatry and Impurity, understood in the large sense ingrained in Jewish sentiment and based in part on pre-Mosaic prescription. The last sacred mystery, Life, seemed to be involved in men's attitude to blood, the life-principle, and to the sexual relation, which lies at the very springs of life. It is true that the Christian consciousness has come to distinguish sharply between human and animal life-blood ; and so would apply the underlying principle somewhat differently. Otherwise it supports the sentiment of James' Concordat ; indeed in so doing it has often 224 The Apostolic Age. been content to lose converts on the mission field. Much more so might there seem, even to Jews lib- eral as regards circumcision (carrying obligation to the whole Law on the same level with born Jews), to be grave need for guarding against an incompati- bility between faith and conduct arising in a moral atmosphere like that of Syria in the first century. And the case becomes yet clearer, if they had already in mind the cases in which Jews and Gentiles were brought together in the intimate social intercourse of sacred meals, right to partake of which depended on Christian baptism, and that alone. Now, we saw reason to believe that Peter's vacilla- tion at Antioch on the point of full Gentile equality in this regard, preceded and did not follow the Jeru- salem Concordat. We are the freer, then, to give full force to the fact that Paul makes Peter's draw- ing back from his own instinctive line of conduct coincide with the arrival of " certain from James " ; and yet to deny that James really belonged to " the party of circumcision," any more than did Peter. As we read his attitude, it was this. He heard what was going on at Antioch. He felt that Peter's action might be right in point of fact, as in the case of Cor- nelius, where the Gentiles were men of what he es- teemed "pure" life. But he knew of no guarantees that this was the case, and therefore he had no satis- factory basis on which to defend the action, as a pre- cedent, to those about him in Jerusalem who might challenge it. He wished, therefore, to remind Peter, whose impulsiveness would be well known to him, of the need of considering the principles in- PauVs Attitude at Antioch. 225 volved in his action. It is more than likely that the envoys included some of Pharisaic antecedents, and that these outran the spirit of their commission. But from the fact that both Peter and Barnabas felt they had gone further than they could as yet jus- tify on principle, one may infer that there was no difference in principle between themselves and James. It was, in a sense, a point of expediency, one deter- mined by the two moral traditions, the two standards of conscience, of men already recognized as standing on one and the same Messianic foundation. And they needed further reflection to see their way out of the difficulty theoretically. To Paul, on the other hand, things would shape themselves quite otherwise. He had, in the first place, a far more vivid sense of the change in prin- ciple involved in laying aside all thought of justifica- tion by the Law, which was the current notion of Judaism. He saw things, that is, as one who had trusted fully to the Law for righteousness and had felt it give way under him : he saw as the ex-Phari- see. And this is the aspect which he enforces in his reproof of Peter. But further, as regards expediency even, he realized the interests of Christianity out- side Palestine no less than those within it. And from this standpoint, a formal dualism in Chris- tianity, wherever Jew and Gentile believers lived side by side (but as if on different levels of religious purity), would simply be intolerable. It would be an object-lesson tacitly declaring to all men that there still existed a " middle-wall of partition " between Jew and Gentile, that is between circumcised and o 226 The Apostolic Age. uncircumcised, even though circumcision and the Thorah as such were no longer held indispensable to union with the Christ. This was in effect so flat a negation of the sole sufficiency of Christ to salva- tion — in which the elder apostles had concurred in conference with him and Barnabas at Jerusalem — that it could not be admitted for a moment on Gen- tile soil. There, at any rate, Palestinian sensibili- ties could not rightly prevail. And so he opposed the policy with all his energy of clear conviction ; and we can hardly question, with success. But we cannot infer that he considered James, any more than Peter (whom he rebuked to his face), a theoretic Judaizer, but only as lacking in consistent perception of all the bearings of what they both alike admitted. 1 And with this agree all his other references to James. He nowhere suggests that James really differed from Peter, though he may have been more cautious than his impulsive colleague. From both of them, at every stage, he distinguishes the semi-Pharisaic party of circumcision, who were wont to use both names equally as it suited their purpose, to give fictitious weight to their own Judaizing policy. With the history of these only semi-Christian Ju- daizers, whether in the earlier Apostolic Age or in the later, when they crystallized into churches sepa- rated from the life of the Church as a whole and be- came known as Ebionites, we need not concern our- 1 It must be remembered that in Gal. ii. Paul is referring to tbis episode only in one special aspect, that of bis own independ- ence. That only was ad rem. We fall into unreality when we for- get, in using Paul's letters for historic purposes, that their author never edited them as materials for writing history. James more Jeioish than Peter. 227 selves further. They had little of the new principle of life in them and soon dwindled into comparative insignificance, contributing nothing permanent to the history of the Christian Church. And when we look closely into the narrative in Acts, we see that they came in only at a second stage of the Church's growth. There is no likelihood that they were part of the original community that gathered round the personal disciples and brethren of the Lord in the early days of strain and stress. They only begin to appear after the persecution under Saul has quite blown over, and after the scare to strict Legalists occasioned by Stephen's bold prophetic preaching has been so far effaced by the dutifully Jewish lives of the Judaean Christians. Indeed the first hint of the presence of such men among the Christians oc- curs about the time when the Gospel was already spreading beyond Palestine (Acts xi. 2, 19 ff.). We have, therefore, found no reason to believe that the Galilean James was more attached to the Law as esteemed by men who regarded the " tra- dition of the elders," than was Peter or even, for that matter, his greater Brother. That James was more Jewish than Peter in the manner of his piety we can believe, especially in view of his subsequent reputation among both Jews and Ebionitic Christians. But this is amply explained by supposing him to have adhered closely to the piety created or deepened in him by the Baptist. In Peter, on the other hand, such an ideal had been modified by close discipleship of the less ascetic, the more broadly human Son of 228 The Apostolic Age. Man, whose image, indelibly traced on his inmost soul, controlled his instincts and practice far be- yond the point to which his intellect reflectively penetrated. Supposing, then, that James lived much as one under a permanent Nazirite vow, we suppose all that our sources demand: and we may picture him as therein highly representative of Palestinian Christians. But we are no nearer making James a legalist or a Judaizer in relation to Gentiles. 1 Nor have we any reason to believe that the latter type, whose principle was "through circumcision to Christ," had any representative within the inner apostolic circle. And so we can well understand the strong language of St. Paul, when he styles their leaders, when we catch our first sure glimpse of them, "interloping pseudo-brethren." In trying to imagine the Christian outlook of a man like James, we naturally ask, What attitude would he, as a believer in Jesus as Messiah, assume to unbelieving Israel? On this there can be little doubt. He and the other Palestinian leaders seem never to have given up all expectation that Israel as a people — not the more worldly types, but the mass of middle-class Israel, and of course the humbler folk — would pass over into the New Covenant-relation with God mediated by Jesus, the Messiah, and so claim their share in the Messianic Kingdom soon to be revealed in glory at the Parousia or Return of the Exalted Saviour and Judge. This is the mean- 1 Kabban Simeon ben Gamaliel, a younger contemporary of James, said : "On tbree things tbe world stands; on Judgment, and on Trutb, and on Peace" {id. i. 19). Sucb sayings should warn us against too rigid notions of Jewish ideals of God's Law. Yet no Judaizer : his Epistle. 229 ing of the way, strange and beside the mark to us, in which Peter addresses his countrymen in the early chapters of Acts. " Take ye refuge from this generation, this crooked generation." "Repent then, and turn again, unto the blotting out of your sins; that so may come seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord and He may send the Christ appointed for you, even Jesus ; whom heaven must needs receive until the times of the restoration of all things whereof God spake by the mouth of His holy prophets since the world began. . . . Ye are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant with Abraham (of world-wide blessing, through his seed). . . . To you in the first instance, God, having raised up His Servant (as Prophet greater than Moses, v. 22) sent Him to bless you (by His first advent) in turn- ing away every one from his sins. . . . Whom ye (address- ing the rulers) did to death, hanging Him on a tree. Him God exalted with His right hand as Prince and Saviour, to give repentance to Israel and remission of sins. And we, here, are witnesses of these things, as also the Holy Spirit given of God (as token of the Messianic era, accoiding to Joel ii. 28 ff.) to those who yield to His rule." Such a series of passages l has this special sig- nificance in the present connection, that the attitude to Israel therein implied, must have been that still common among Jewish Christians when the nar- rative on which Luke here draws was set down in writing and circulated among believers for edification. This being so, we are entitled to use it as evidence for the outlook and attitude of James about 44-50 A. D. And it teaches us that he would naturally view Israel, as a whole, much as an Old Testament prophet viewed his people, in spite of their mixed condition of receptivity. He would think of Israel 1 Acts ii. 40, iii. 19-21, 26, v. 30-32. 230 The Apostolic Age. as such as the proper object of his ministry, hoping against hope that the obdurate majority would finally yield obedience to a message that was the special birthright of all Abraham's seed. Thus we seem to have won a position from which we are entitled to use the encyclical Epistle of James not only as a work of the Lord's brother, but also as a document that fits into a sad gap in our knowledge. Of the existence of a liberal Palestinian Christianity we are aware from other sources, for instance in the person of Peter. But we have, apart from the epistle in question, no literary monument of it. It is most natural that this circle, standing in close re- lation to the Hellenistic or Judseo-Greek Christianity of Syria and the adjacent regions, should have pro- duced something in writing and that it should have been preserved. The alternative theories, which neglect this clue, seem only to confirm it by their mutual opposition. The one, while recognizing its close affinities with a certain side of Judaism, the 4 Wisdom ' type seen in the Wisdom of Solomon and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs for instance, makes it originally a purely Jewish work, afterward readapted. 1 The other regards it as a Christian homily dating from the close of the first century or even later, which became transformed into an Epistle general and assigned to James. On this view the absence of more obvious Christian traits is even harder to explain. In fact the theories tend to Supposing the references to Christ in i. 1, ii. 1, to be later touches to commend it to Christian readers. But would an editor, with this object in view, have stopped short at these? James' Semi-Prophetic Strain. 231 cancel each other ; while the authorship claimed in the opening address combines their positive ad- vantages, when once we get beyond the bald notion of Palestinian Judaism as simply Pharisaism. Accordingly we imagine James, probably not long after the death of his namesake, the son of Zebedee (early in 44 A. D.), taking in hand to address a sort of prophetic pastoral (for the idea of which there are analogies in the Apocrypha) to "the sons of the prophets and of the Covenant " scattered amid aliens outside the Holy Land. Nor would he have to write quite vaguely or in the air. The constant flow of pilgrims to Jerusalem, especially to the great Feasts, would make him familiar with the actual conditions of life and the besetting sins of his brethren of the Dispersion ; and there would be suf- ficient similarity of conditions in Jewish com- munities everywhere to make his own experience in Palestine a fair point of departure. He writes then in semi-prophetic strain, continuing, on a higher level and with clearer light, the appeal of the Bap- tist. John had been forerunner of the Kingdom ere Messiah had appeared. Now Messiah had come, and had made the nature of the Kingdom and the condi- tions of entrance more evident. And so James strives to prepare the way of the returning Lord, first and foremost among His professed disciples, but also in Judaism at large. For was He not, even then, •' standing before the doors " as Judge ? Oh, that it might be not unto " wrath," but unto Salvation for the People of the Promises ! Nor was there any reason why James should despair of getting a measure 232 The Apostolic Age. of attention from even non-Christian Jews. The " sect of the Nazarenes " was not at once viewed as more than an eccentric school of Judaism. Accord- ingly one of its prophets, a man with a high reputa- tion for sanctity of an ascetic order and unmistak- ably full of prophetic passion, might well seem to speak to Israelites in the name of God. It was then, quite worth his while to issue such an appeal, especially where it might be a final appeal to his people, on the eve of what was on all hands felt to be imminent crisis in Israel's history. With the death of Herod Agrippa, in 44, the shadow of a native kingship had disappeared ; and the renewal of govern- ment by Roman procurators became the signal for patriotic risings under Theudas and the sons of Judas of Galilee, just as the first introduction of the system had been marked by the revolt of this Judas about 7 A. D. (cf. Acts v. 37). A severe famine, recognized as one of the " signs " or " throes " to precede the establishment of the Messianic Kingdom, clouded Palestine about 46-47 ; and it may be that we have hints in the Epistle of the experiences of this very season of special trial, in the marked stress on the subject of a distressed peasantry. To James the very parallelism of the social phenomena which he stigmatizes, to those described in Malachi iii. 5, 15, iv. 1-3, (e. g. } the oppression of " the hireling in his wages " and forgetfulness of "the Lord of Sabaoth ") would be enough to indicate " the last days." The days were in every respect dark days, with no pros- pect of betterment but only of aggravation. We have, then, an excellent situation for the Epistle of Jewish Christians Among the Diaspora. 233 James, if we imagine it sent forth with believing Jews as they returned from the Passover any time between 44 and 49 A. D. Later than 49 it can hardly be, if it was in 49 that the question of the Gentile's position in the New Israel was definitely raised and decided (for the churches in which it had so far arisen) by a collective epistle of the Jerusalem authorities. At an earlier date, however, believing Gentiles could still be ignored as simply a hand- ful adhering to the skirts of the true Israel within Israel. Antioch indeed stood out, even by 44 A. D., as a notable exception. But the work there was not at first regarded as the beginning of a rapid and far- reaching change. Any seeming anomalies involved in the largely Gentile character of this offshoot of the Palestinian Ecclesia, would disappear at the coming of the Lord to administer His own Kingdom. And was He not already at the doors ? To men in such an attitude everything would bear quite a provisional aspect. And this explains anything in the policy of the Jerusalem leaders that from our standpoint seems lacking in logical consistency. (c) The Epistle of James (c. 44-49 A. D.) In writing his epistle James did not start de novo. He was entering, as the bulk of his matter shows, into an already existing tradition dating from the "wisdom of Jesus, the son of Sirach," commonly known as Ecclesiasticus. The more one studies the earlier chapters of this work the more one feels its influence, along with that of the book of Wisdom. 234 The Apostolic Aye. Like the son of Sirach, who has saturated himself with the ethical parts of the Old Testament, James gathers up the " wisdom " for life of Israel's true heritage, now perfected in the Sermon on the Mount, and reissues it for the guidance of much tried brethren. The prevalent experience of the Jewish Christians among the Diaspora was one of constant trial. They were under severe pressure arising from the enmity of their neighbors, especially the rich and powerful. Hence the epistle's chief aim is to confirm them in loyalty to the ideal of life prescribed by the " wisdom " which is God's own sovereign gift (Ecclus. i. 10, 26) to steadfast faith, and especially in a patient endurance. By gladly accepting all trials as God's appointed means of training, through patience, unto perfection, they will escape all danger of backsliding or apostasy. 1 But if this were to be so, they must give no heed to any fatalistic suggestion as to the irresistibility of any temptation to evil. If sin result, it is due to one's own unchastened desire. The will and nature of- the "Father of Lights " (a phrase in which the God of Nature and the God of Grace are identified) is revealed in His having brought believers to a new spiritual birth by His " word of truth." Let them brace their moral nature with these reflections and rejoice in their very trials. Persecution is next seen to be due largely to a prime evil of Jewish Society, the cleavage between rich and 1 The line of thought is suggested by Ecclus. ii. 1, ff., and later reappears in Hebrews, esp. xii. 1-13 ; cf. ii. 10, 18, v. 7-9. Messianic Rule Offensive to Rich and "Wise" 235 poor. This had long colored the religious thought and language of Israel, notably in certain Psalms and in the extra-canonical literature. " The poor " and " the rich," by an easy passage of the mind to the temper promoted by either condition — in the one humility and resignation, in the other pride and self-sufficiency — had come to be working synonyms for the godly and the worldly. This view characterized precisely those circles of the " Quiet in the Land " — the pa- tient, much put-upon, simple folk — in which the Gospel found its readiest adherents. Never were the ideals of the best section of the Am-ha-aretz, "the people " of all ages, more finally enshrined in words than in the Magnificat. To most of the Jewish Christians the music of the Gospel was the invitation to them that " labor and are heavy laden" to find rest in a yoke that was easy and a burden that was light; to accept the Lordship of One " meek and lowly in heart," under whom the soul could find the rest of a congenial service. To them His service was indeed "perfect freedom," in con- trast to the yoke imposed hy Legalists, and His "royal Law " a Law of Liberty. For it was a Law that had in it a spirit which they could understand and respond to, the law of Love. But to two types, at the opposite pole from the humble poor, this Messianic Rule brought no relief, but only offence. These were " the wise and prudent," contrasted with the lowly in the passage just cited, and the rich and proud, reference to whom in the Gospels is not lack- ing (e. g., Dives and Lazarus), but who meet us in James' epistle in unparalleled distinctness. In Pal- 236 The Apostolic Age. estine the former had its climax in the Pharisees; the latter in the Sadducaic aristocracy and the lead- ing Pharisees of the capital in particular. Among the Diaspora we cannot picture them so clearly ; but there must have been analogous classes ; the type of Jew argued against in Rom. ii., iii., is clearly of the self-complacently " wise " type. By both these types James' spirit had been deeply stirred, and most of all by their combination in cer- tain cases. Against the heartless and worldly- minded " rich," grinding the face of the poor who reaped their fields and otherwise produced their wealth, battening themselves in the dark and serious days of their nation's destinies, his anger breaks forth in the old prophetic strain. As his message to his compatriots, through the believing among them, draws to a close, he rises into denunciation and warning in the spirit and power of a Malachi, from whom he seems to derive part of his inspiration (iv. 13-v. 6). Here those in view are purse-proud Is- raelites, marked by the overweening spirit of " the men of this world " held in such abomination by the Psalmist, and against whom Jehovah's face was ever most sternly set. They had added to their defiant attitude toward the Almighty— as if their own Prov- idence (cf. Ecclus. v. 1-3, for the type) — the blood of " the righteous," the humble disciple of Jesus, who meekly and unresistingly bent his neck to the stroke (v. 6). Over such men, the wrath of the Lord of Sabaoth was hanging like a black cloud, just about to break in desolating might. But there was another type of mixed worldliness Unworldliness the Essence of James' 1 Idea. 237 and zeal for the Law, standing nearer the borders of the lowly brotherhood, and occupying much of James' attention. He bids such an one glory "in that he is made lowly " in spirit and associations. For the proud flowers of earth are to be blasted by God's "Scorching Wind" that will soon sweep over its plains. To his eye the men of worldly position are in deadly danger, the danger of spiritual adultery, that disloyalty to Heavenly Love on which the an- cient prophets dwelt with such poignant power. To such he cries, J " Know ye not that the world's friendship means God's enmity ? " Here is the es- sence of James' religious idea. To be " unspotted from the world," this and nothing else is true piety. Nothing so smirches with the world's spotting as selfishness, which lies at the root of the love of money — that "root of all the evils." Its conqueror and antidote is also one, Love. Loving God is the secret of " the crown of life " and the Kingdom that are in God's gift; and loving one's neighbor is the manifestation of this same love. Hence the high ritual of religion is to " tend the orphan and widow in their affliction," and so escape all spot of worldly self-love. Even among would-be disciples, men ready to say " Lord, Lord," James knew of men whose bicker- ings and contentions showed the evil root from which their life was really growing, even the love of self-indulgence, of the "pleasures that war in the l Ch. iv. 4 ; cf. Matt. vi. 24; Luke xvi. 9, 13, "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon " ; where the moral is " make to yourselves, friends by means of the mammon of unrighteousness," 238 The Apostolic Age. members." And when desire lacked other outlet, it led to envy of others, and then to actual strife. Such adulterous souls he solemnly reminds of God's jealous yearning after the spirit which He has caused to dwell in man (cf. Num. xvi. 22), and touching God's readiness to give more grace, to meet new-found infirmity. Safety lies in yet deeper submission to God's gracious will. Double-faced souls, with one side turned to God, the other to their pleasures, are simply sinners whose hands need cleansing from the lie that is therein, and whose hearts need a true con- secration. l Short of this, they are heritors not of the Beatitudes but of the Woes that match them in one version of the Divine Sermon. 2 True exalta- tion cometh only from God, and the path lies through self-humbling. Nor is such humility compatible with the censorious spirit, which takes on itself to criti- cise the Law as it lives in a brother's conscience. 3 In so doing a man leaves his proper station as a sim- ple doer of Law, and mounts the Judge's tribunal, an act resented by the sole Lawgiver and Judge. On the other hand, " to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him attaches sin." Ac- cordingly James devotes much of his letter to bring- 1 In James, as in the Sermon (Matt. v. 8, vi. 22, flf.), purity of heart is the same as singleness of eye. a With v. 9, compare Luke vi. 25, " Woe, ye that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep." 3 Such seems the sense in which James takes words like Matt, vii. 1 f. ; Luke vi. 37 f. He feels with Paul that different ideals of God's will are possible among His true servants (Rom. xiv. 3- 6, 10-12, 13, 22). So Hillel {Pirqe Aboih, ii. 5) used to Bay : "Judge not thy friend until thou comest into his place." Spheres of Belief and Conduct Inseparable. 239 ing out the vanity of mere self-complacent acquies- cence in God's Law, mere faith in an objective body of Divine Truth, " the faith." This, stultified by alien conduct, jealousy for instance, is but " lying against the truth." Again and again he returns to this theme from different sides. His tone toward those prone to mere hearing of the Word, without genuine reception of it into the heart as an "inbred word" leading to kin- dred actions — as a germinating seed has its due issue in fruit— corresponds exactly to Christ's con- troversy with Pharisaism. They approved the right theory of life as zealously as any ; but they got no further. The Jews whom James has in view as tainted with the "leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypo- crisy," had accepted the Sermon on the Mount as an authoritative exposition of the real meaning of the Law, and admitted in theory the prophetic view that "justice and mercy and faith" {i.e., humble trust in God) far outweighed all ritual matters. So far, so good. But here a fatal habit of mind came in and spoiled all ; the absence of a living conscience, that necessity of making actions conform to convic tions. There was a missing link in their moral sys- tem ; the two spheres of belief and conduct revolved round their respective axes independently. This was the heartbreaking sight that often shocked the soul of James, even among those who were called by "the fair Name" of Jesus the Christ. 1 And so he •The Master's words, "And why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I say " (Luke vi. 46; cf. Matt. vii. 21), were constantly being verified in the Church's experience. 240 The Apostolic Age. breaks off his high meditation on God's fatherly nature, with the words : " Yes, ye are aware of all this, my brethren beloved." But what does it all come to in our daily lives ? Little patient hearing, much hasty speech, not a little hot passion, to the hindrance of the righteousness loved of God. Let them stay the overflow of a foul and malicious tongue, and quietly obey. Let them be doers, not only hearers. Let, then, every aspirant to the title ''religious" begin by this simple test, quietness of spirit. He need go no further for the present. For he that bridleth not his own proud tongue, "that man's ' religion ' is vain." And another test there is, like to the former, viz, loving-kindness to those in trouble and need, 1 the best antidote to worldliness — that great defiler. In these ways may selfhood be exorcized. But it has many disguises. Thus to profess the faith of the meek Lord of Glory, and yet to pay respect to men's outward estate, is a glaring inconsistency. James had seen or heard of cases like this. The brethren are assembled for worship after Jewish fashion; a grand seigneur enters in all his glory, and at the same moment a poor man in squalid at- tire. What happens ? Just what happened in a synagogue where no Christians were present; namely obsequious courtesy to the distinguished visitor, degrading patronage of the obscure one. l So Ecclua. iv. 10: "Be as a father to the fatherless, and in place of a husband to their mother : so shalt thou be as a son of the Most High, and He shall love thee more than thy mother doth " : also vii. 34, xxxv. 14 f. Faith not to be Divorced from Works. 241 Yet the former was one of the class (in Judaea the Sadducaic aristocracy in particular) that lorded it roughly over the brethren, nay even dragged them into the law-courts and was wont to revile " the fair Name " of their Lord. Whereas it was for the latter, as a class, that the Almighty Himself had marked His preference, as " rich in faith and heirs of the Kingdom which He promised to them that love Him." 1 Partiality, then, was simply sin ; and the men who showed it were convicted as mere transgressors of the very Law for which they professed such zeal. For was it not a maxim of the lawyers themselves, that the breach of a single precept violated the Law in all its parts. Let them take heed, then ; for they too had to pass muster with Messiah's Law; and though it was a Law of Liberty, of the spirit and not of the letter, it was none the less exigent for that. 2 Only to the "merciful" would it prove itself merci- ful. Mercy alone can turn the edge of Judgment. At this point James imagines the man of orthodox belief but disobedient life turning to defend himself, with the plea that there is more than one way of pleasing God. One, he urges, is strong in "faith," another in "works." Let each cultivate his own talent, without insisting that his neighbor should possess it likewise, on the principle of " Live and let live." In reply James first brings the matter to the 1 " They that love Him " is a favorite phrase with Ecclus. e. g., ii. 15 f.; cf. iv. 10. 2 How close is the teaching of James ii. 8-12 to the Sermon as found in Matt. v. 17, 20, vii. 12-14, 24, particularly to the Golden Rule, declared to be the sum of the Law and the Prophets (vi. 12; cf. Luke vi. 31). P 242 The Apostolic Age. test of a homely, practical case, one affecting human well-being. Will the pious wish that a brother "go in peace and get warmed and fed," apart from any effort to fulfil the wish, profit the needy one ? And how will a faith that consists simply in assent to ex- cellent propositions or truths, without passing over into kindred action, profit any one a whit the more? Such faith, in its barren isolation, is a dead thing. It is no matter of alternatives. The question is not whether " faith " or " works " alone can save, but whether an unfruitful or dead faith is worthy the name at all. And the only way in which faith can be proved to be living, that is religious faith, is in manifesting its life by action. 1 No man, in fact, can show his faith save by works. To assent to the creed, "there is one God," carries of itself no assur- ance of salvation. For it is a belief shared by demons, to whom it brings not comfort but shudder- ing horror. Faith divorced from works is barren. Not such was Abraham's faith ; not such even Ra- hab's. In each, belief in the promises of God im- pelled to deeds, and thereby attained its full realiza- tion or perfection. So then, "just as the body de- void of breath is dead, even so faith devoid of deeds is dead also." It is strange that any should see in this line of thought a criticism of the Pauline doctrine of faith in one form or another. Not only is there no hint of anything connected with Christ or His Work in 1 " Even so let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven," Matt. v. 16 ; cf. 13 ff. Essential Agreement between James and Paul. 243 the faith in question: but the final simile alone, if duly heeded, should have made the idea impossible. For here faith is represented not as something inner or emotional, a state of soul, however ephemeral — in a word, as something only too subjective ; but as something rigid and inertly objective, needing above all things a little soul to make it count for anything among forces that live and move. Could Pauline " Solifidianism " be, by any stretch of caricature, mistaken for such unemotional, impersonal ortho- doxy — a dead " body " of divinity, as it were ? Reli- ance upon such, " the faith," stands at the opposite pole of religious experience from Pauline Anti-no- mianism, and is the worst anti-nomianism of all. It is the apotheosis of a theology "once for all commit- ted" to the intellect, the abuse of rigid objectivity, not of free subjectivity. Its true historical signifi- cance lies in the proof it affords of the deep root which the moral side of Pharisaism, as religious externalism devoid of moral content, had struck in the soil of Judaism not only in Palestine but also among the Diaspora outside. It is exactly this phenomenon that Paul has in mind in Romans ii.-iii., 1 when argu- ing against the salvation of Jews more or less as matter of course, all because they had already a higher knowledge of things divine within their 1 "If thou bearest the name of Jew, and restest upon Law, and gloriest in God, and knowest the Will, and approvest thiugs excel- lent, being instructed out of the Law, and art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind . . . a schoolmaster of dullards . . . having in the Law the outline form of knowledge and of the truth; thou, then, that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? 244 The Apostolic Age. reach, in the glorious Thorah. Paul and James agree in insisting, each in his own way, that " not the hearer of a Law but the doer is justified"; that the faith, whether of Judaism or of its Messiah, serves but as an enhanced standard of Judgment, apart from a living faith which unites to God and must work of love's necessity. The same lesson, the need of moral fruitage ac- cordant to profession, is next enforced on those who by undertaking the higher responsibilities, as teach- ers of others, become liable to the severer standard of judgment. The ambition to enjoy the status of a Rabbi was native to the Jew. The sense of self-im- portance which it brought, the deferential " saluta- tions in the market-places," these as well as its more legitimate ambitions made men anxious to be- come Rabbis. The emphasis with which Christ's warnings to shun all titles of distinction are recorded in the Gospels, is ample witness that they were felt to be needed in the later days when the tradition of His Words was taking shape by a process of natural selection. James knew that there was a divine gift (eharism) of special wisdom entrusted to some for the good of all. But he saw that much " teaching " was due, not to this, but to the self-assertive impulse, the desire to rank among the Wise, ' a recognized order in later Judaism. And so he dissuades too 1 Jas. iii. 13, echoes the very phrase of Matt. xi. 25. The bet- ter sense of the term, as represented among Christ's followers, appears in Matt, xxiii. 34, "prophets, and wise men, and scribes." Abtalion, a great Eabbi two generations before James' day, is credited with saying: "Ye Wise, be guarded in your words; per- chance ye may incur the debt of exile (judgment)." James } Emphasis on Private Ministry. 245 ready entrance upon what was a very slippery path. For observation of the native failings of his race and age had convinced him that the tongue was the hardest member of all to tame. He who had here obtained the mastery was not likely to be caught tripping elsewhere (Ecclus. v. 13). He was a per- fected character, a true saint. It was to James shock- ing that the same member should express, now hate to man, and now love to God, the Father of all. It violated a fundamental law of nature and of Grace : like root, like fruit. ' So jealousy and party-spirit robbed a teacher's " wisdom " of all right to be traced to a heavenly origin. It was from below, the sphere of animal passion and demonic self-love, and could breed only what was bad. For " the wisdom that is from above is first pure (single-hearted), then peace- able, gently reasonable, open to persuasion, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for them that make peace." Let, then, the truly " wise and prudent " man show by " the fair flower of a blameless life " that his is the meek-eyed wisdom 2 that is of God. James sees to the full the dangers involved in the office of a public teacher, and discourages the many from attempting it. On the other hand, nowhere else even in the New Testament do we find a wider private or fraternal ministry, and that of the most 'The parallelism of Jas. iii. 11, 12, and Matt. vii. 16, Luke vi. 44, is very marked. * James exactly catches the spirit of Christ's "little child" as type of the Christian temper (Matt, xviii. 1-4). 24G The Apostolic Aye. spiritual order, commended to all believers as such. The brethren are referred to each other's love for the unbosoming of the sins that lie heavy on the con- science : and the sovereign remedy suggested in such cases is the intercessory prayer of brother fur brother. Apparently the sins specially contemplated are those assumed to lie at the root of chastening sickness. For there follows specific provision for the sick, who are entitled to call to their bedside " the elders of the Church," for healing treatment and prayer with a view to healing of body and soul (if the latter be in- volved) at the Lord's hands ; l and the object of the less formal prayer of brethren for each other is also described by the words, " that ye may be healed." We have already seen how James deprecates other abuses of the tongue. But we are startled by the em- phasis with which he forbids swearing as tending to sap the habit of perfect sincerity in speech. " But above all things, my brethren," he pleads, "swear not, neither by heaven, nor by earth, nor by any other oath : but let your Yea be Yea, and your Nay, Nay; lest ye incur judgment." The emphasis not only of the Gospels but also of Essenism is the same ; and in these early days there was a constant tend- ency, whenever discipleship began to fail in freshness, 1 The whole passage is well illustrated by Ecclus. xxxviii. 9-15 : "My son, in thy sickness be not negligent; but pray unto the Lord, and He shall heal thee. Put away wrongdoing, and order thine hands aright, and cleanse thy heart from all manner of sin. . . Then give place to the physician, for verily the Lord hath created him. . . . For they (physicians) also shall be- seech the Lord, that He may prosper them in relief and in heal- ing." James Imbued with the Master's Personality. 217 to relapse into the glib use of sacred asseverations that marked current Judaism, as it marks Syria to- day. In looking back, then, on the tone and tenor of the Epistle as already analyzed, one cannot but be struck by the wonderful fulness with which it echoes "the meekness and gentle reasonableness of the Christ," the chief aspect in which even Paul sets Him before his converts for imitation. This seems to have been the aspect of Jesus the Messiah which left the deepest impress on the imagination of the inner Apostolic circle. And the completeness with which this Jesus of Nazareth possesses James' whole being should only become the more impressive to us, that he says so little about Him in His official aspect as the Messiah. We feel that he has his eye ever on his Holy Brother as he writes, even though he so strangely refrains from clinching the force of any one of his exhortations with a pointed reference — such as we have in Peter and Paul, as also in Hebreivs —to the Perfect Exemplar, from whom he himself has learned the secret how to attain. It is surely a mistake to represent the writer of this Epistle as show- ing "no trace of the influence of the Master's wonder- ful personality." He shows every trace of that per- sonality, as a personality moulding and fashioning his ideals. To put it broadly : Christ is nowhere ex- plicitly, but He is everywhere implicitly. He is the atmosphere of the writer's mind, and determines his idea of the Law. And so he gives us not teaching about Christ, but rather Christ's teaching. His silence as to the source of his own inspiration is 248 The Apostolic Age. largely explained by the circle of readers or rather hearers contemplated, which embraced non-believing Jews. But, whatever its cause, it does not really affect the question of authorship. Our author's piety belongs at once to the Old and to the New Testa- ment; is that of a man who had approached the Gospel from the side of Judaism that lay nearest to it. For that very reason he had (unlike Saul) ex- perienced little or no disillusioning, but only a bright- ening to the perfect day ; and had realized no need to detach himself from Jewish forms of thought and speech. The Gospel was the Law sublimated into a " Law of Liberty." It was conceived as applied Love, whether to a Fatherly God or to all men, as " made after the likeness of God." Hence the Law is at once Jewish and Christian, and could be enforced on both alike, with no attempt to differentiate the two in the appeal made. The writer has the ideal Law in view and it only. And so the search after "dis- tinctive " Christian notes in his epistle is misplaced. The "dutiful life" (ewoftos /?tWc?j of Ecclesiasticus, the life of chastened wisdom, was the ideal alike of the Gospel and of Judaism at its best : and the Law of God's will was the means to that end. 1 Just such a man was James, the Lord's brother, as we have every right to imagine him. Not his the Jesuit spirit of rigid code ; nor even the Domini- can, with its undue reliance on the Credo of ortho- doxy ; but rather that of the Saint of Assisi, with his humane regard for man as brother by nature, a 1 "For the fear of the Lord is wisdom and instruction (natdeca) : and in faith and meekness is His good pleasure," Ecclus. i. 27. Analogies to James* Piety. 249 "nature" that has ever in it the hand of God. In- deed a modern mind could hardly realize to itself James' ideal of the religious man more truly and vividly, than by thinking of the genuine image of the great Poverello, as it disengages itself, under the hands of a Sabatier, from legendary mists, and stands out convincing in its bold realism and winsome in its loving unworldliness. The parallel is not only sug- gestive ; it is also illuminative. For as we feel how little the artificial forms of the mediaeval religious manner could fetter the love of the original Francis- can "religion," we perceive how little it matters to the religion of James, Saint of the Lowly, that it wore the garb of Nazirite purity in the middle of the first century. Yet James was capable also of fulminating against proud sin like a very Savonarola, in the spirit and power of the older prophecy. And as the proph- ets had generally cast their glance to the Day of the Lord, that great unveiling of all now obscure, that final redressing of all the anomalies of earth — a man- ner of thought that came home also to Savonarola in his age of anomalies — so James too, ere he ends, says his word on this solemn subject, never absent from the thoughts of the first Christian generation. His object in introducing it is a practical one. As the patient husbandman is content to wait for his harvest-home until the appointed intervening sea- sons have done their work; so must the Christian exercise long-suffering patience. But let him brace his heart with the thought that his Lord's Coming is now quite nigh. " The Judge is standing before the doors." And let this thought also still all mur- 250 The Apostolic Aye. mur against the happier lot of certain brethren. As models of the spirit of patience under suffering, let them take the Prophets and the much-enduring Job. In these examples, and indeed in his whole handling of the subject, it is striking how James for the first time fails to recall the relevant passages in the Gos- pels, but merely presupposes the general notion of an imminent Parousia, arid this on lines continuous with the Prophets rather than the Evangelists. (d) The Syrian " Two Ways." We have made so close a study of James' epistle because it is the keystone of our interpretation of Jewish Christianity anterior to the fall of the Jewish State. The word keystone is used advisedly. For this epistle is too obscure in its original relations to be a fit basis for historic construction. But if it fits into such a construction, raised in relative independ- ence, it adds strength and symmetry to the whole. And we hope now to be able to exhibit the coher- ence between this epistle and certain other Judseo- Christian writings, in such a way as to justify the view taken of it and of Judseo-Christianity prior to the death of James. The chief writings in question are, the older parts of the so-called Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, recovered and published some fifteen years ago by Bryennios, a learned Greek ecclesi- astic ; certain secondary elements in the Synoptic Gospels — that is, features due to the conditions and ideals of the Christian circles in which the traditions of Christ's earthly ministry took their present shapes ; the Epistle to the Hebrews, on that side of it which Coherence of James 1 Epistle and the Didache. 251 reflects the readers' ideas and usages, rather than what is more personal to the writer ; and, finally, the First Epistle of Peter, written from Rome shortly before the Neronian outbreak of 64 A. D. Nor in using these documents need we be much hampered by the feeling that their exact dates are open to some doubt. For the wonderful fixity of type in Oriental life and society enables us to bring them together with but little hesitation, once we are satisfied that they represent much the same type of Christianity. We begin, then, with the older parts of the " Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," usually called the Didache. 1 It opens thus : "There are two "Ways, one of Life, and one of Death; and there is a great difference between the two ways. The Way of Life is this: Firstly, thou shalt love the God that made thee. Secondly, thy neighbor as thyself: and all things whatsoever thou wouldest not have happen to thyself, neither do thou to another. Now of these sayings the explanatory Teaching {Didache) is as follows." We need go no further to gather one or two things of some importance. It is highly Jewish in phraseology and idea. The image of life as a Way is indeed world-wide, being found in the Chinese Clas- sics as well as in Greek writers. But it was specially dear to both the earlier and later Judaism ; appears in the Gospels ; and was evidently a favorite title for their new life among the early Jewish Chris- tians. 2 Here it has its fullest elaboration, by the 1 The intricate literary problems of the DidachS are discussed in the Literary Appendix. 2 Acts ix. 2, xviii. 25 f., xix. 9, 23, xxii. 4, xxiv. 14, 22. 252 The Apostolic Age. aid of materials scattered in almost every part of Jewish literature. Yet it is very doubtful whether a purely Jewish " Two Ways," in anything like the present Christian form, ever existed. 1 It could hardly have failed to leave some distinct trace in Jewish quarters. And when we bear in mind the way in which the epistle of James is studded with expressions borrowed from Jewish wisdom-literature or current maxims, we see no reason to believe that our "Two Ways" was other than Christian in origin. Jewish precedents in idea it may have had, such as the " Sayings of Ahikar," 2 and Tobit iv : but beyond this we need not go. On the other hand its highly Jewish tone is shown in the reference to God as Creator, 3 rather than Father in the full Christian sense, even when He is set forth as the supreme object of love. This again recalls the epistle of James where the idea of Fatherhood hardly reaches the Christian level of intimate personal relationship, found for in- stance in St. Paul. And the reason is the same in both cases, namely lack of a deeper sense of the Son- ship realized in Jesus Christ. In another respect the Two Ways is yet more Jewish. Unlike James, 1 This is confirmed by the fact that while we have in the (Al- exandrine) Secrets of Enoch (before 50 A. D.) the idea of the Two Ways, of Light and of Darkness (xxx. 15,), also a description of the Blessed and Cursed Life from the mouth of Enoch to his chil- dren (l.-lii.), yet there is no real verbal parallelism. 2 The first modern edition of these has just been published by Dr. Rendel Harris and others. 3 See Ecclus. vii. 30, "With all thy strength love Him that made thee." The Epistle of "Barnabas," which incorporates the bulk of the "Two Ways," feels this lack and adds, "thou shalt glorify Him that redeemed thee from death." The Negative 4 Golden Rule. 1 253 it fails to realize something of the very spirit of Christly piety. For it is content to add, as a para- phrase of the second Great Precept, the Golden rule in its old Jewish and negative form, 1 which falls far short of what is in a heart of love. In substantially the same negative form it occurs in a saying of Hillel, the gentle Rabbi who lived just before the Christian era ; who, in reply to a would-be prose- lyte's demand to be taught the whole Thorah whilst standing on one foot, said : " What is hateful to thyself do not to thy fellow ; 2 this is the whole Thorah, and the rest is commentary : go, study." And this parallel is the more worth quoting, that it illustrates also the remaining Jewish trait, namely the idea of a " Teaching " or commentary unfolding the full content of brief sacred oracles. And so we pass to the " Teaching " proper as to the " Two Ways." In the earliest traceable edition (for it underwent several recensions to keep abreast with the developing ethical ideal of Syrian Chris- 1 In this, as in its general conceptioD, it seems influenced by the address of Tobit to his son Tobias, the bulk of which (iv. 7-19 a) is actually absent from one of our oldest MSS. (Cod. Sin.) — a fact which suggests that it is in origin later than the book as a whole and so more nearly reflects first century Judaism. *It is interesting to note that this Jewish form occurs in two recensions in Greek, marked by " hatest "(fitaeis) and " would- est not " (ou Oi/lets). The former is probably the more literal (so Tobit iv. 15, Hillel) and reappears in several early Christian writings (Apost. Const, i. 1, Apology of Aristides (Syriac form) c. 15, Clem. Horn. bis). The latter, our form, recurs only as an in- terpolation in Codex Bezse of Acts xv. 20 (29), supported by the Latin of Irenaeus, /cai oaa uv fxr t dilioatv aural-; yeviadau iripolt; fii] izoie'iv. In one form or another it seems to have been very popular in Syria. 254 The Apostolic Age. tianity), it proceeds straight to a list of concrete prohibitions involved in walking the Way of Life (ii. 2-iii. 6). These give us a glimpse into the be- setting sins of the age and country (probably North Syria, including Antioch). It is a dark and often shocking picture that we are led to form of the temper and practices of society around. On the other hand the ideal of the Judaso-Christian con- science stands forth on this dark background in a striking way. There is indeed a certain rudimen- tariness about it all, especially as to the motives ad- duced (e. g.j in the frequent reference to some wrong feeling as leading to a worse action), a certain inter- ested notion of morality, and a semi-legal conception of Salvation. Yet the general impression is a pleas- ing one in virtue of the simple, humble, downright type of piety, which is singularly akin to James' in the points selected for emphasis. Here are some typical sentences. "Thou shalt 'do no murder, thou shalt not commit adultery,' thou shalt not commit fornication, 'steal,' deal in magic or sor- cery, procure abortion, or kill the new-born. 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods ' : ' thou shalt not perjure ' thyself,' 'bear false witness,' 'slander,' or 'bear a grudge.' 'Thou shalt not be deceitful or double-tongued ' (Ecclus. v. 9, 14) ; for the double tongue is a snare of death. ' Thy speech shall not be false ' or empty, but filled full with deed. ' Thou shalt not be greedy or rapacious ' or a hypocrite or malicious or 'overbearing.' ' Thou shalt not take evil counsel against thy neighbor ' (Prov. 'Here Lev. xix. 11-18 begins to blend with Ex. xx. 13-17, from which some of the former phrases are taken. Those thatecho kuown biblical or apocryphal sayings are indicated by inverted commas. The Rule of Love. 255 iii. 29). 'Thou sbalt not hate ' any man ; but some ' thou shalt rebuke,' for others thou shalt pray, and others ' thou shalt love ' more than thy life." Here our manual collects the chief Old Testament passages that treat of right conduct toward one's neighbor, adding some fresh applications suggested by pagan habits not contemplated in the Mosaic Law. And the sum of the matter is a rule of Love as con- ditioned by the neighbor's state. It then proceeds to points where Old Testament precedent is less plentiful. " My child, 1 flee from every evil and from all that is like unto it. Be not wrathful, for wrath leadeth to murder: nor jealous nor contentious nor passionate, for from all of these murders are en- gendered." And so on with lust, filthy talk and leering; divina- tion and the black arts (as akin to idolatry) ; lying, avarice, vain- glory — "since these all lead to theft;" grumbling, self-will, evil- mindedness (all fruitful parents of blasphemies). Rather let the convert be meek, "since the meek shall inherit the earth" (Ps. xxxvii. 11); likewise "long-suffering, pitiful, guileless, quiet, kindly, ever trembling at the words which thou hast heard (Is. Ixvi. 2, 5). Thou shalt not exalt thyself, neither shalt thou admit boldness into thy soul. Thy soul shalt not cleave to the lofty, but with the just and humble shalt thou consort. The workings (of Providence) that befall thee thou sbalt accept 2 as good, knowing that apart from God naught occurs." This ideal of meek, uncomplaining, resigned piety, is exactly that seen in James (as also in the Es- senes) ; and is here clearly the persistence of an old Jewish type, practically unchanged, in the Jewish- Christian circle represented. For there is so far no 1 Here we have a hint that the original Two Ways was not put into the mouth of the Twelve Apostles, but came as the counsel of the " Wise man," after the manner of Proverbs. 2 Ecclus. ii. 4, " Accept whatsoever is brought upon thee." 256 The Apostolic Age. trace of dependence upon purely New Testament words. There are perhaps some minds to whom such piety, whether in James or in the Two Ways, may seem meagre and Judaic. It is true that it draws, or at least seems to draw, but little of its in- spiration from the more Evangelic motives so richly set forth in certain parts of the New Testament — the Christ element, to sum it up in a phrase. But it is only slowly that we realize how different from Paulinism — the only form of this more inner and mystical faith traceable at the time in question, i. e., prior to 62 A. D. — was Judseo-Christian faith, and for that matter average Gentile faith likewise. As we shall see later, Paulinism as an experience lived only within the circle of his more immediate friends. And we should be thankful to note that even where the theological consciousness was so disparate, the piety was so alike in tone and quality. Our Manual continues (ch. iv.) : " My child, thou shalt remember day and night him that speak- eth unto thee the word of God, and shalt honor him as the Lord : for where the Lordship is the speaker's theme, there is the Lord. 1 Moreover thou shalt seek out day by day the persons of the Saints (cf. Ecclus. vi. 33-36, viii. 8 f.), that thou mayest rest upon their words (cf. Rom. ii. 17). Thou shalt not make a division, but shalt make peace between such as are at strife : thou shalt judge justly, thou shalt not show respect of persons in rebuking for transgressions (Lev. xix. 15). Thou shalt not be of two minds, whether it shall be or not be.* " Be not found holding forth thy 'Compare the Rabbinic maxim: "Where Thorah is studied, there is the Shekinah." 8 To judge from Ecclus. vii. 10, "Be not faint-hearted in thy prayer ; and neglect not to give alms," this goes closely with what follows, enjoining faith in God as " rewarder of them that dili- gently seek Him " (Heb. xi. 6) : cf. Hermas, Vis. iii. 4. The Way of Death a Catalogue of Vices. 257 bauds to receive, but drawing tbem in as to giving (Ecclus. iv. 31, vii. 32). If tbou bast it in baud, tbou sbalt give ransom for tby sins. 1 Tbou sbaJt not besitate to give, neither sbalt tbou grum- ble when giving (Tobit iv. 7, 16) ; for thou sbalt recognize who is the good Eecompenser of the reward (Ecclus. xii. 1-3, Tobit iv. 14, Psalm Sol. ix. 6 ff.). Tbou sbalt not turn away from him that lacketh (Ecclus. iv. 4), but sbalt make thy brother fellow- sharer in all tilings, and sbalt not say that they are thine own (cf. Acts iv. 32). For if ye are co-sharers in that which is immortal, how much more in things perishable? Thou sbalt not withhold thy baud from tby son or from thy daughter, but from their youth sbalt teach them the fear of God. Thou shalt not command thy bondservant or handmaid (cf. Ecclus. vii. 20) — those that hope in the same God — in thy bitterness ; lest haply they cease to fear the God who is over both of you. For He cometh not to call (men) with respect of persons, but for those prepared by the Spirit. 2 But ye, servants, shall be subject to your masters, aa to a figure of God, in modesty and fear. Thou shalt hate all hy- pocrisy aud everything that is not pleasing to the Lord. Thou shalt not forsake the Lord's Precepts, 3 but shalt keep what thou hast received, neither adding nor taking away. In church thon sbalt confess thy transgressions and shalt not betake thyself to thy prayer with an evil conscience. Such is the Way of Life." Touching the Way of Death, one need only say that it is the exact opposite of the foregoing. It is Sentiments found partly in Prov. iii. 27 f . ; Ecclus. iv. 3; partly in Ecclus. iii. 30, cf. iii. 3 ; Tobit iv. 10 f., xii. 8 f., xiv. 11. 2 Here the tense " cometh " (k'p/erac, changed in Barn. xix. 7 to rjXOzv) shows that the reference is to the Day of the Lord, of Joel ii. 28-32, taken in a more purely future sense than in the first Christian sermon by Peter (Acts ii. 17-21, 39), that is on more purely Old Testament lines. Believers in Messiah are " hoping in God " for a speedy Parousia, at which the divine call, already given in the "pouring out " of the Spirit on believers, shall take full effect in a final call of the " prepared " unto the marriage- supper of His Beloved aud the manifested Kingdom of God (cf. x. 5 aud the idea of the wedding garment, Matt. xxii. 10-12). 3 Tbe phrase here (ivroXd? Kopioo simply) suggests, not the " Two ways," but oral catechism in Christ's sayings. 258 The Apostolic Age. far briefer, a mere catalogue of vices and vicious types of men. Yet one or two points in the writer's ideal come out yet more clearly by repetition. Those are on the way to Death who are " far from meekness and patience," " not pitying the poor," and, while in general keen for gain, blind to the " reward of right- eousness." Hence they are "advocates of the rich, unjust judges of the poor." In a word, they "re- cognize not Him that made them." As we look back at the type of piety 1 that inspires the Two Ways, we cannot but feel its wonderful af- finity to that embodied in the Epistle of James. And this extends, as we have just seen, to the absence in either case of all stress on Redemption as a pres- ent fact. The Creator has given man a nature fit for obedience in love: He has revealed a Law or Way of Life : He has vouchsafed the Spirit (the one clear Messianic or redemptive touch, so far) and the fellowship of " the brethren " or " the saints," sever- ally or "in meeting" (vaywvrj or iux^frca). But the great redemptive moment and act are future, the coming of the Lord to consummate His call. For this they are waiting " in patience " : all between the first and the final call seems but an episode, and the reason for such delay as has already taken place far from clear. This last feature is quite explicit in James ; and if the Two Ways originally contained no 1 la order to complete the picture, much of the second part of the Didache (e. g., the Eucharistic Prayers, and the account of itiner- ant teachers and brethren) should be taken into account. For though its present literary form belongs to the Transition Period (62-70), yet the ideas and usages implied go far back into the first generation. Internal Evidence of an Early Date. 259 more than has been quoted above, we may see in this fact a sign of very early date, namely before hope deferred had made the heart sick with the problem that sooner or later it raised. 1 But not many years passed before this problem was felt, in Syria in par- ticular, to be a burning one. 1 Note how soon the problem forced itself on the notice of the Thessalonian converts, a few months or so after their conversion, 80 necessitating more explicit reminders of the Eschatological in- struction already given (1 Thess. iv. 13-v. 2 ; 2 Thess. ii. 5). BOOK II. The Age of Transition : A. D. 62-70. CHAPTER I. JUDAISM AND THE EMPIRE. EFORE continuing the narrative of the church's life, whether in Syria or beyond, it is needful to realize the stirring events that engrossed the thoughts of men and particularly of Christian men during the latter half of the epoch now in question. It was a time of momentous significance both for Palestine and for the Empire at large. And as all Christian eyes were strained to read the counsels of God in current events, in the full expectation that Providence was reach- ing its climax and the present world its goal, external history has at this epoch a more intimate connection with Christian life and feeling than at any other known to Church history. By the spring of 66 the susceptibility of the Jews had become altogether abnormal, and the patience of the Roman governor was proportionately ex- hausted. In the middle of May a collision occurred in Jerusalem between the populace and the Romans 260 Strife icith Romans in Jerusalem and Csesarea. 861 on a comparatively slight issue. But it was enough to make it culpable in Floras, the procurator, to retire at this time to Ccesarea, leaving the excited city to the care of a small garrison in the fortified quarter known as the Castle of Antonia (c£. Acts xx:. 34 f.). This imprudence was not at once fol- lowed by an open outbreak ; but it weakened the hands of the moderates; and by gradual acts of aggression on the part of the irresponsibles, such as the seizure of the fortress of Masada, overhanging the Dead Sea, the nation simply drifted into a state of revolt. In despair, the official hierarchy and aristocracy invoked the aid of Floras and of Agrippa II., the native ruler of certain parts of Palestine, who had the right of nominating the High Priest and generally supervising Jewish religion. The former did not respond, perhaps thinking things could only be bettered by first becoming worse ; the latter sent a force of Arab cavalry to the support of the authorities. This had the effect of dividing Jerusalem literally into two camps, the party of order occupying the upper city, the revolutionaries the lower city and the temple, Eleazar, a member of the high-priestly family and the Captain of the Temple, being opposed to the policy of his own class and kindred. By the middle of August the war party were in possession of their rivals' quarter like- wise ; the Romans were cooped up in three strong towers; and by about the end of September they were annihilated. Thus in less than five months azar's party were masters of Jerusalem. But not only so. Eastern Judaea (od whose borders lay 262 The Apostolic Age. Arab tribes more or less hostile to Rome), Galilee, and, beyond Jordan, Idumsea and Pereea, were now with the rebels. For the storm had meantime been spreading from another centre, Csesarea itself. Here the Jews and the other inhabitants of Syria met in greatest num- bers and under most dangerous conditions. For being nearly balanced, they were always irritating each other in petty ways : and riots and appeals to the Roman governor were of constant occurrence. For some half-dozen years things had been getting ever worse ; and at the time in question a case touching the profanation of a synagogue had just been decided against the Jewish faction. The mutual irritation of the moment was disastrous. Under the stimulus of the outbreak at Jerusalem the Jews at Csesarea were practically exterminated. This at once led to fearful reprisals wherever the Jews felt themselves strong enough to strike. This they did not only throughout Southern Syria, including Damascus, but also in Alexandria, where the Jews formed a sort of township to themselves. For a month they slew and were slain — the long pent- up suspicion of the Jew, as a distinct social and religious type, thus finding awful vent as well as justification. How far the Christians of Syria were involved in the common reign of terror, being liable as they were to suspicion from both sides, we have no sure means of judging. They must certainly have felt this month of horrors to be the prelude of Messiah's manifest intervention in a world dis- ordered beyond recall : but of their reflections on the Earlier Stages of the War. 263 whole epoch of the Revolt we shall have to treat later. At last Cestius Gallus, the governor of Syria and the master of the legions in those parts, marched from Antioch to reduce the revolt. Galilee pre- sented but little difficulty; but after some slight success before Jerusalem he suddenly retired, ignominiously harrassed by the foe. This was in November, and being taken as an omen of final suc- cess naturally had the result of infusing into the revolution that degree of fanatical confidence which carried the Jewish people through all the war and the crowning horrors of the final siege. The die was cast. It is needless to describe the further details, which may be read in the terribly vivid and realistic pages of Josephus, save in so far as they may help to explain certain passages in Christian writings to which reference must yet be made. It is probable that large numbers of the soberer sort among all classes quietly withdrew from the unparalleled crisis which they felt to be looming in the future. If we ask at what stage the bulk of the Christians left Jerusalem, we ask a hard question, to which we essay in a later connection such answer as is pos- sible. But we must be prepared to allow for divergent ideals and policies as having obtained even among the professed adherents of Jesus, correspond- ing to varying degrees of insight into the spirituality of His Messianic Kingdom, in contrast to popular Messianic ideals. To judge from the vigorous way in which the study of Thorali, the official interpre- tation and application of the Mosaic Law, sprang up 264 The Apostolic Age. on the morrow of the Fall of Jerusalem, we may conclude that many of the Rabbis or professional scholars withdrew about this time, feeling that they and their dicta had no longer any place amid such confusion and lawlessness. But, with such possible exceptions, the great bulk of all classes were kept in the historic city by some feeling of duty, hope, or interest : and at first something like a constitutional government was still attempted, while resistance to the foreigner was vigorously organized in Galilee and beyond Jordan. In so far as they reflected at all on the timeliness of their supreme effort against Rome, the Jews may have derived no little hope, both on divine and human grounds, from the fact that Rome was at this time represented by an emperor so utterly degenerate as Nero. By the irony of facts, news of the repulse of Cestius reached this emperor when on a fantastic trip to Greece, in the furtherance of his infatuation for scenic displays and athletic competitions. But the Roman empire was still served by men of sterner fibre, though in this instance, as in many another, it came not from the old circles of the public service but from the unspoiled manhood of obscurer descent. Vespasian, a tried soldier, was told off to meet the emergency ; and ere he betook himself to his winter- quarters in Cassarea, at the end of the next year, the flames of revolt in Galilee had been quenched in torrents of blood. True he had but driven back upon Jerusalem some of the fiercer spirits, such as John of Gischala. But these were in the end to be more fatal to those within, than to the foe without The Holy City Profaned by the Zealots. 2G5 the city's walls. For their advent turned the balance of power decisively against Ananus and the more moderate party ; and with the violent death of Ananus, the son of the chief author of the death of Jesus, and a man in whom Josephus saw the one possible saviour of his country through some skilful arrangement with the Romans at the eleventh hour —with this final stroke of the Zealot party Jeru- salem's doom was sealed. Long, indeed, before the foe could profane it, the Holy City had lost all claim to that title even in Jewish eyes, by the utter enormities enacted by the Zealots in strange and unholy alliance with Idu- mseans and other aliens, " in ruin reconciled." The Temple itself became their barracks, and every con- sideration of purity, ceremonial and otherwise, was thrown to the winds in their frenzied pursuit of a war that was no longer a means to any high or holy end, but itself the one all-absorbing end and passion. Priest and Rabbi, the organs of Israel's religion in its two aspects, had alike been thrown aside : and as is wont to be the case in " religious wars," religion had been swallowed up of war and the lawless lusts to which war gives rein. Could stultification more complete be imagined of the high prudential politics of those religious rulers, who, scarce a generation since, had decided that it was " expedient that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not"? In this world, where provi- dence often seems to work slowly and indirectly, no parallel for impressive precision can be cited to this " great reversal " of human judgments. The reign 266 The Apostolic Age. of terror had now finally set in, and went on grow- ing in intensity and utter horror during the two years and a half still intervening ere night fell for- ever on the Jewish Church-State. While Vespasian was approaching Jerusalem in the early summer of 68, stamping out the revolt as he proceeded, Nero died on June 9th. The ugly rumors that had called him back from Greece to neg- lected Italy, had not been long in taking definite shape. By the middle of March, 68, Vindex had raised the standard of revolt from a tyrant who was not even a man of force, but a mad buffoon. In three weeks followed the defection of Galba in Spain. Yet, though in helpless fear, he changed none of his habits, laid aside none of his affectations. Indeed it was amid self conscious dramatic posings and appropriate literary sallies, that death overtook him by the hand of his faithful secretary, when he could not himself summon courage to apply the dag- ger that should save him from a more ignominious death. He died, at the age of thirty-one, in the obscurity of the country villa of one of his freed- men ; and his half-secret burial he owed largely to the devotion of three obscure women who still loved him. Thus, few had seen his corpse— an accident which, as we shall have cause to notice later, tended to foster the " Nero legend," according to which he was to reappear from the East and reign like an Oriental despot. This saga, which seems to have originated even in his lifetime, grew after the somewhat mysterious close of his career. It connected itself more and The Situation on the Death of Nero. 2G7 more, not only with the fact that he had had unusu- ally close relations with the Parthians, the traditional enemies of Rome, but also with the widely diffused notion of a coming Golden Age in the world's his- tory. This already meets us in Virgil's famous Ec- logue, based on certain " Sibylline " Oracles, where it is conceived in pagan fashion as the restoration of primal glories while as yet gods mingled with men in familiar intercourse. 1 In Virgil indeed it may be largely a literary mannerism ; but by the common people at least such oracles were taken seriously, especially at certain epochs of time that were felt to be portentous. And Nero's reign had been emphat- ically portentous, both in the moral and the physical order. Nothing seemed to men's strained minds too marvellous to happen — except, perhaps, the normal. Again, while Virgil had dwelt on the era itself and its glories, to the Neronian age, accustomed to seeing the empire and its tendencies incarnate in a person, anything short of a central and creative personality seemed shadowy and unreal. And so its mood re- sponded as never before to the ideas of the East in this regard, where the notion was certainly prevalent that a master of the world should thence arise. Chaldseans and astrologers were so influential at Rome, that we hear more than once of edicts for their expulsion. But, it will be asked, who could have wished for a Nero redivivus, so as to think of his 1 Ultima Cnmsei venit jam carminis £etas; Magnus ab integro sajclorum nascitur ordo. Jam redit et Virgo [Justitia], redeuut Saturuia regna: Jam nova progenies cnelo demittitur alto. 268 The Apostolic Aye. return as other than an object of nameless horror — the light in which it seems to have been anticipated in certain Jewish and Christian circles (see below, p. 338)? Yet Nero had a following, and that a very large one, among the mass of the people, the un- privileged many who felt chilled and depressed by the aloofness of the ruling orders among whom lived the traditions of the old Roman patricians. Nero had been very human in a sense, had shown no caste feeling, had literally come down and mingled among them freely in the theatre and the circus, and had on occasion given them splendid and exciting spec- tacles. There was, then, a Nero tradition and a Nero party ; and in the eighteen months following on his death, during which the succession to the lordship of the world was yet undecided, these told powerfully on the course both of thought and action. The first candidate for the purple, Galba, an hon- est old soldier, and a representative of the senate and the anti-Nero party, refused to fall in with the new fashion of ruling by humoring the soldiery, whom the general upset had made the arbiters of power. He was swept out of the way ; and Otho, once a boon-companion of Nero's and an admirer of his ways, replaced him (Jan. 15, 69). He might be de- scribed as Nero's spiritual successor, and was wel- comed by the populace as such. And when he too fell, after a brief three months, before his rival Vitellius, the nominee of the German legions, it was only a change of persons, not of principles. During all these changes and disorders at the seat of empire, what eager spectators must the Jews Rise of the .New Dynasty. 269 throughout the East and particularly in Palestine have been ! The latter, " accustomed to the ephem- eral kingdoms of the East" (so largely bound up with the reigning dynasty), may well have taken courage at the news that Ceesar's house no longer yielded a ruling Caesar, and looked exultantly for the break-up of the Roman Empire. They may even have construed the revolt in Gaul as one for national independence after their own ideal. In any case we know that in Jerusalem the internecine madness of its defenders mounted higher and higher. To check and over-awe John and his Zealots, a free- booter named Simon, son of Gioras, was admitted in March, 69, and occupied the city outside the tem- ple. In course of time the struggles between these two parties were complicated by the withdrawal of a party among the Zealots under Eleazar, son of Simon, of the priestly stock, who established himself in the inner precincts of the temple, whither, strange to relate, worshippers still came with their offerings. And so, buoyed by delusive hopes in part based on the civil wars of the Romans, the Jews held their ground, and outraged every sanctity, human and di- vine, for something like another year. Meantime Vespasian and his elder son Titus had remained at Csesarea watching the course of events in the larger world. Vespasian had little personal ambition. But Titus had hopes which slowly took shape through a concurrence of favoring conditions. In the first place there was a strong party of reaction against Nero's ways. Next the Syrian legions were getting restive at the spectacle of their western com- 270 The Apostolic Age. rades playing the part of Caesar-makers ; and they longed for their turn. Last and most paradoxical of all, the Jews in place and power also made their will distinctly felt in the selection of the new dynasty of emperors. This was due mainly to the extraordi- nary influence which Berenice, who has already crossed our path some ten years before, when St. Paul pleaded before her brother Agrippa II., came to exercise over Titus. She, like Josephus and the renegade Tiberius Alexander, then prefect of Egypt, seems to have been partly actuated by a sort of transformed Messianic ideal, according to which Vespasian was a Gentile Messiah. And another strange thing is that Vespasian and Titus seem in a way to have shared their point of view. In any case they were supported by all the princelings related to the Herods, and they seem to have remained more appreciative of Syrian ideas than their predecessors had been. On July 1st Tiberius Alexander pro- claimed Vespasian at Alexandria, an example quickly followed by the legions at Csesarea and by those under Mucianus at Antioch. It was decided that Mucianus should march against Vitellius while Titus continued the Jewish war, Vespasian mean- time awaiting the course of events at Alexandria. By the end of December the Flavian dynasty was finally established, and by its sensible and economic conduct of public affairs began to give the Empire a new stability. Far other was it with its would-be rival. By the end of 69 all Judsea had submitted, with the exception of Jerusalem and three strong- holds perched on heights overlooking the Dead Sea. The Defence of Jerusalem. 271 And now, with the spring of 70, Titus, freed from other anxieties, advanced to the grim task of a set siege, the more incensed by reason of efforts its de- fenders had made to bring the Parthians into the arena of the late civil war. His lines surrounded Jerusalem just when it was crowded with pilgrims to the Passover, a fact which made the sequel yet more unspeakably tragic, while it proves the confi- dence in the national cause still felt by numbers of the Diaspora in face of all that had occurred within the city to shock anything like a sensitive piety. Some Jewish advantages gained by surprise served only to aggravate the struggle on both sides. The city was singularly rich in defences, owing to the hilly nature of the site. By May half the city was in the hands of the Romans. At this stage terms were offered, probably owing in part to the good offices of Agrippa, Josephus, and other Jews near to the per- son of the Roman general. Their contemptuous re- jection was followed by enhanced cruelty in the con- duct of the siege. Thus hundreds of prisoners were crucified, with odious tortures, in the sight of the city, to intimidate the foe. But the defenders hav- ing succeeded in burning the siege machines by sorties at the end of May, were little in the mood to be awed. And so circumvallation was resorted to. By the end of June famine began to do its deadly work both directly and indirectly. The armed Zealots cared only for themselves, and by their un- heard-of barbarities in seizing provisions drove the wretched citizens to correspondingly desperate and revolting expedients for self-preservation. Thus 272 The Apostolic Age. famine, disease, desperation, madness, made the city a very Inferno. Yet did they believe the Tem- ple inviolable, and relied on Jehovah's intervention at the last moment for it and for its defenders. At last, weary of delays, Titus prepared to storm the remaining defences. On July the 5th the for- tress Antonia fell, and opened a path for further at- tacks. These were concentrated on the key of the situation, the massive masonry of the Temple -area. On July 17th the perpetual sacrifices ceased, for want of those at leisure to offer. This must, indeed, have sent cold dismay through most hearts. It was, to strict Jewish sentiment, a phenomenon as grave as a cessation of the processes of nature. It seemed like the snapping of the last link between them and Jehovah, in whom was now their sole hope of succor. Again the Jews about Titus seem to have gained for them the offer of terms: and again it was flung back in disdain. Step by step the area was won, and on August 8th, the walls having defied the strongest en- gines, fire was set to the gates of the temple pre- cincts. The horror of the Jews at seeing the in- credible happen, must have been unutterable. But there was no time for reflection; the frenzied instinct of resistance was now too strong upon them. They made a fierce assault on the troops guarding the charred portals, while Titus was deliberating on the fate of the Temple itself and resting for the final assault. They were hurled back, and the Romans pressing closely on their heels poured into the outer temple court. Almost at once fire broke out in the northern porticos. And when Titus came upon the Josephus' Account of the War. $373 scene, it was too late to save the structure as a whole. Nor was he even able, though he probably desired it, to save the splendid sanctuary itself. It too perished by some chance brand. On the fearful carnage that followed then and during the many days that it took to reduce the re- maining strongholds, it is needless to dwell. Nor need one narrate the last and fiercest stand of all, that which ended in the self-immolation of the gar- rison of Masada, the rock-fortress on the further shore of the Dead Sea, on April 15th, 72. Enough to relate that a certain number of captives were kept for death at great fetes and spectacles ; of the rest, those above seventeen were condemned to forced labor in Egypt and elsewhere ; while those below seventeen were simply sold as slaves. The Temple buildings were razed to the very foundations, and the site of the city was rendered utterly deso- late, "a dwelling place of jackals," save where the Tenth Legion was left, encamped under the shelter of part of the western wall, to guard the ruins and prevent all attempts at restoration. And so it lay from September 70 to the year 122, when it began to be rebuilt by Hadrian as a Roman colony under the name of JElia Capitolina. " Judsea was overturned from top to bottom." A special tribute was levied on Jews throughout the empire, amounting to the sum which they had hitherto paid to their temple in Jerusalem. Apart from this, Jews in general did not suffer permanent harm from the revolt in Judgea, a circumstance due in part to the coterie of leading Jews who followed E 274 The Apostolic Age. Titus to Rome and of which Agrippa and Berenice — who bid fair at one time to be a second Cleopatra — were centre. In this pious work of minimizing the anti- Jewish impression which the war could not fail to leave behind, Josephus played an important part by his history of the Jewish War, which he wrote and published towards the end of Vespasian's reign " under royal patronage," as it were. Yet the more intensely national spirit, even in Jews natural- ized outside Palestine, had not been extinguished ; it had but been driven underground for a while. And the proof is, the frightful outburst of fanati- cism against their neighbors, the last on any scale, which marked the final year or two of Trajan's reign, 115 A. D. And so passed away forever the last vestige of any danger of a powerful Palestinian mother-Church, fostered in its Judaistic proclivities by living and having its being amid a national, that is to say, a necessarily intolerant and exclusive Judaism. But in fact this was what really happened at the earlier and greater catastrophe of 70, whose significance for the full emancipation of Christianity may be exag- gerated indeed, since much was already achieved by the Pauline Missions, but must always remain momentous. For the nascent Gentile Church might have been much hampered by the overshadowing prestige of the great mother-Church ; and a wide division in the early days of Christianity, one in which the further East would probably have gone largely with Judaea, must have been a great calamity. Any such danger was averted by the events of A. D. Danger of Exclusive Judaism Averted. 275 70L Though Judaeo-Christians l might be insensible to the logic of the Pauline Gospel, they were not blind to the stern logic of facts. And with the ruin of Jewish national existence, of the Jewish polity as the possible framework of a world-wide theocracy, went their long-cherished prejudice as to the form in which the Messianic Kingdom was to be realized on earth. However it was to be — and as to this the vaguest and most diverse notions prevailed — the Jew, in contrast to the Gentile, was to occupy a far less privileged position in the Kingdom of Heaven than had once been supposed. All walls of partition were felt to be vanishing, and the categories " Jew " and " Gentile " were becoming altogether absorbed in a single higher one, that of elect humanity, the sanc- tified by faith in Jesus the Christ. Judaism seemed, after all its agonies and tears, its sufferings for its divine vocation, to have been brought to naught. Yet it was not so, any more than in the former Exile. Israel after the flesh, in- deed, was rejected and confounded. But the spirit- ual Israel, the true children of Abraham, whose faith said Yea to a living God who was ever leading them past old landmarks, " not knowing whither they went " — this Israel was the rather justified and con- firmed. The true Shekinah had in fact gone forth to reside in the holier sanctuary of the New Israel. The " Woman arrayed with the sun " had already 1 That the lesson was also taken to heart (as a divine judgment on the degenerate state of the national religion) by certain Jews outside Palestine, seems implied in the later parts of some of the Jewish Apocrypha, especially of Baruch and perhaps iv, Ezra, 276 The Apostolic Age. gone through her true travailing, and had given birth to her regal Son ; her divine vocation was ful- filled. Ere the sun of Jerusalem had set in blood, it had already risen elsewhere. The higher spirit of Judaism had migrated. It had taken up its abode, no longer in a race, but in the large heart of humanity. Old Zion's warfare was accomplished ; her prime providential mission was ended. The continued survival of Judaism as a distinct racial re- ligion was an anachronism. True, there have been times when the Church's failure has been Israel's op- portunity. But after all has been recognized, it re- mains true that in Christian faith and life, as set forth in the New Testament, all the permanent message of Judaism and much more is to be found ; and it there lives freed from the old husk of carnal nationalism. While, then, the thoughtful mind must contemplate with the deepest pathos, and with no small search- ings of heart, the catastrophe in which the con- servatism of blunted moral perceptions involved a whole nation, it cannot but feel the enormous nega- tive gain that such a world-judgment on a false ideal at once brought about. The idea of covenanted ex- clusiveness, blind to the rights alike of mankind and of the individual man, was incarnated in the Judaism that, having rejected the Christian idea of Religion, fought itself to death in 70 A. D. Would that the Church, the visible guardian of the opposed re- ligious principle, had never itself been leavened with the old bitter leaven. CHAPTER II. PALESTINE AND THE EPISTLE "TO HEBREWS." HERE can be no doubt that the decade prior to the Fall of Jerusalem brought severe and varied trials to Christian faith. What chiefly made these years so critical was the fact that the leaders, the apostles and other witnesses of the first generation, were rapidly passing off the scene. This is a fact which would under any view have tended to make the situation more critical than heretofore. The re- moval of the " fathers " of any movement always brings a testing time. But it was specially so with the second generation of Christians. For their leaders had lived in the expectation that they them- selves would not "taste of death "in the ordinary sense, but that ere the eyewitnesses of Messiah's first appearing had fallen asleep " the Kingdom of God " should have come " in power." Nay, there were even current, as a saying of Christ's, the words : " Verily I say unto you that this generation shall not pass until these things shall all have come to pass." What things? Hitherto at least, such words had been understood to mean that the Second Coming, the full and final " Presence " (Parousia) of the glorified Messiah, should anticipate the debt of nature; and that they and their fellow-believers should see the manifest vindication of their faith that 277 278 The Apostolic Age. He who had been crucified in weakness had indeed been raised in power. But no such vindication had occurred. On the contrary, the growing weight of exceptions was beginning to bear down the rule, that certain original disciples should live to witness the Lord's Return. This very practical perplexity was felt by all Christian circles in some degree. But it was felt most acutely in those of the Judseo-Christian type. They were saturated with the traditional Jewish Messianic expectation, which disqualified men for taking another and more spiritual view of such sayings of Jesus as seemed to imply a speedy bodily return. They were familiar with Palestine, in many cases with the very spots which His earthly ministry had consecrated, and were naturally more preoccupied with the realistic side of Messiah's history — that " Knowledge after the flesh " in which Paul saw no small danger. Further they knew the original apostles as men, in a way impossible to dis- tant Gentile Christians. And last but not least, they had in many cases failed to grow into that in- nerness of faith, that realization of a personal sal- vation in Christ already present in experience, which was the compensating advantage of Gentile Christianity, imperfectly informed as it was on the actual history of the Messianic Salvation. Thus we mu-%t consider the problem of this transi- tion period, before the year 70 opened many blind eyes to the true nature of the Messianic Kingdom as realized in the New Israel of God, under two largely distinct aspects ; those, namely, which tried the faith and patience of Palestinian and non-Palestinian Problems of James'' Martyrdom. 279 Christians respectively. And first as regards Pales- tinian Christianity. Here the enquiry that springs to mind is that touching its attitude, after James' death in 62, to the patriotic movement that proved the death-pangs of the national existence. The sub- ject is confessedly obscure, owing to the paucity and incidental nature of our data. Yet a fairly self-con- sistent picture may be drawn at least provisionally. We have seen already how little transformed by the belief, " Jesus is the Messiah," was the average religion of Judseo-Christians, especially in Syria itself. This emerged from our study of the first half of Acts, the Epistle of James, and the earlier parts of "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles." Accord- ingly when James, the revered head of the Jeru- salem Church and the leading figure in Judaean Christianity, l was removed by martyrdom at the hands of the priestly hierarchy, not later than A. D. 62, the problem must have arisen in many minds as to the bearing of this event on their earlier hopes. Were the people as a whole after all to remain hostile to Jesus Messiah? And why did He suffer His own blood-kinsman and dynastic representative, as it were, to be butchered, and yet make no sign ? The scandal of His own shameful death had indeed been so far cancelled by His glorious resurrection, and by the earnest it seemed to give of His speedy return in power. But the actual course of events since then had been singularly perplexing, a mixture of spiritual triumphs and earthly disasters. Trials, indeed, they 1 "We shall give reasons for believing that Peter was by this time far less than James to the bulk of Judaean Christians. 280 The Apostolic Age. were more or less prepared for as part of the birth- pangs of the Age to come. But why were not the most faithful of His followers delivered from the final bitter cup of death? All seemed weakness: where was His power to save ? If they looked fur- ther afield, the same enigma faced them. Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, whatever doubts some of them might have had about the legitimacy of his methods, was obviously a man who had enjoyed his Lord's approval. And yet he too had ended his career by a death occasioned by what they knew to be a false charge and for reasons which they could not fathom. All was dark, very dark. For it is more than probable that James' death had encour- aged an increase of persecution in various degrees throughout Palestine. 1 What could it mean? What was the relation of the new and higher form of the Covenant to the old, whose representatives so per- sistently refused to admit its claim ? The stress was more than the Christian faith of many had power to withstand : for it lacked due in- sight. And so a crisis seems to have arisen quite suddenly, to judge from the hint given by the Epis- tle to the Hebrews ; since its writer, while intending to hasten to his readers' side, yet felt it needful to risk a letter forthwith, touching the reception of which he felt some anxiety (xiii. 18 f., 22 f.). Who this writer was is one of the mysteries of New Testa- ment literature. He plainly belonged to the Pauline circle in some sense, though in theological stand- 1 See Heb. xii. 3-13, xiii. 3, though things had not yet reached the severity implied in Mark xiii. 12. The Writer 's Identity Mysterious. 281 point he is even more the successor of Stephen ; he is kept from hurrying off to Judaea by his desire for the company and support of " our brother Timothy," whose release (probably from imprisonment occa- sioned by the closing episodes of Paul's earthly career) he chronicles as a fact just brought to his own ears. He appears to be writing from Italy, most likely from some seaport on the East or West coast. On the other hand he hopes to be "speedily restored " to his readers, an expression suggesting some recent residence among them. He has consid- erable knowledge of their leaders, to whose faithful watch over their brethren he alludes emphatically (xiii. 7, 17, 24). He is also familiar with their mental state beyond what follows from the fact that he has had recent news of their actual condition, leading him to pen this " word of exhortation." Yet he is also keenly alive to the fact that he is not ex- actly one of themselves in his religious standpoint and traditions. He has to protest that what he writes, even where it seems strange or innovating, he writes in a "good conscience," and bespeaks a candid and patient hearing (xiii. 18, 22). Obviously he cannot rely on the sheer weight of his name ; for he does not prefix it. It is only on the cogency of his great argument that he has to rely. This cir- cumstance tells somewhat against the view that Barnabas was the writer ; and it would suit A polios rather better than Silas. 1 1 Well as Silas seems to fit into most of our available data, yet if the same Silas was about 63 the bearer of Peter's letter to certain churches in Asia Minor, his work could hardly have led him so recently to Palestine. 282 The Apostolic Age. On the whole, then, and in view of the broadly " Alexandrine " theology of the Epistle (though on a more historical and realistic basis than can be called strictly Alexandrine), probabilities tend to converge on Apollos. Indeed, if we can suppose that he had lived in Judaea (e. g. % Caesarea) a good deal since Paul's residence at Caesarea (cf. Titus iii. 13) — whither he probably attracted many of his old friends, to see him and take counsel touching his churches — we have a most satisfactory hypothesis. More we can hardly say on the score of authorship. But in any case the readers, while Hebrews, do not seem to be thought of as in Jerusalem, but rather as in the maritime plain, where some knowledge of Italian Christians is more likely to have existed, as well as a less immovable devotion to the Temple serv- ices. Had the letter been addressed to Jerusalem, it is far harder to explain the absence of early tradition to that effect. As it is, a sort of circular letter, sent primarily to the more Hellenized communities of the coast-lands, might easily fail to gain a local habita- tion and a name. For, indeed, " To Hebrews " is next to no name. Such being the general situation, and such the type of readers addressed, we may from the Epistle itself fill in the picture a little further. Their tend- ency to a faithless falling away from God as a " living God," by " drifting away " from the terra firma of the Gospel (iii. 12, ii. 1), was due, not to any mere pressure from the older Judaism — though this probably served to bring things to a crisis — but rather to a growing doubt whether their religious His Purposes in the Epistle. 2So needs were met much more fully by the New than by the Old. Or rather they asked themselves whether the element added to the Old by the New was of sufficient moment to warrant persistence in their somewhat detached attitude toward the national life, in the hope that it would ere long come over to them by piecemeal conversions or by a sweeping revulsion of feeling. They were feeling more than ever the cost of their sectarian position, as the national pulse began to beat feverishly, and as the authorities showed their suspicion by acts like the martyrdom of the revered James. The hard question, whether the new privileges and blessings were worth the growing cost, could no longer be shirked. And on their own premisses we can see that the question was an open one. We have seen how slightly marked off from the better Jewish piety by any matter of principle was the piety inculcated in the Epistle of James. And when we come to deal with the the- ology of the Apostolic Age this fact will again meet us. But in any case it was only in the future, at the Glorious Return of their Messiah, Jesus, that the distinctive benefits of the Messianic Kingdom were expected to come into full force. And so, having but little insight into the Grace of God in Christ already available, little innerness of Christian ex- perience, they felt dispirited at the delay of the Kingdom's real coming : and doubt in varying de- grees sprang up. Was it quite certain after all, that the diviner life, which faith in Jesus had brought them, was so unique and self-evidently Messianic as they had once thought? Men began to absent 284 The Apostolic Age. themselves from the distinctive meetings of the brethren, so evading the reproach of the Cross, in which they had not learned to see any glory (Christ's "despising shame " in relation to the Cross, is a sig- nificant reference), but also passively relapsing into the average national religion. What was needed, then, was something more than reminders of their original grounds of belief ; the Resurrection as a fact that overbore all the diffi- culties of the Cross (itself a burden and no inspira- tion to faith); the divine approval of the gospel message by " signs, wonders, and varied powers and Holy Spirit gifts " ; and not least in practical effect, the contagious faith and courage of the original wit- nesses themselves — an ever-lessening factor. No, more was needed; something of another, an in- trinsically religious kind. And this is exactly what our author's insight into the need and its supply, enabled him to give ; namely, an unfolding of the spiritual contents, the forces of grace and power, latent in the facts already known in an external and carnal way by these Jewish Christians. The great- ness of the salvation already available, and not only guaranteed at a future season, was the true anti- dote to slackness of knee and the absence of the buoyant faith that is strong to endure. This meant, first, an adequate appreciation of the transcendent Person of their Messiah, placing Him in an order by Himself, above both angels, the traditional media of the giving of the Law on the divine side, and Moses, the human recipient of the same for the Lord's Chosen People. And next it meant a priesthood Warnings and Remonstrances. 285 equally superior to the Aaronic, one typified by the mysterious pre-Aaronic priest-king of Salem, that is, " Peace." In such a Messiah there was perfect pro- vision for access into the Holy of Holies of the Di- vine Presence, and that on a permanent and abiding basis. Indeed the access contemplated even by the Levitical institutions was not on the same plane of reality at all. Hence the idea of supplementing the one with the other, let alone falling back on the earlier and shadowy as in any sense sufficient, was not only absurd, it was even blasphemous. It did double despite ; to the Priest who was God's Son, and to the Spirit of Grace given through Him — of whose excellent gifts they themselves in their ear- lier and better days had had some experience. Let them, then, take heed how they treated this higher and final form of the Covenant; since the penalty of apostasy from even the earlier form had been terrible. For a man deliberately to turn back to the old after experience of the new, from the reality to the shadow, would be to declare one's own reproba- tion, that to him light had become as darkness. And such destruction of spiritual faculty was an irrepa- rable thing. Eet them think again. Had the old sacrifices and ablutions been able to cleanse the con- science? Had they been more than symbols and shadows, taking effect primarily on the outer man, and not on the heart? Nay, had they not, by their recurrence, witnessed to their own inefficacy to re- move the evil to which they were as a standing witness? The writer is surprised at the backwardness of 286 The Apostolic Age. their understanding in things divine, after that time enough had gone by to admit of their being masters, not mere learners, in the things of Christ's religion. His direct remonstrance teaches us two things very clearly. First, that the writer belonged to a some- what different circle of culture and Christian thought from his readers, whose sluggish dullness, as it seemed to him, was mainly but the result of a too purely Jew- ish tradition in which they lived and moved. And next, that we must distinguish between what the writer gives them of his own — to them probably quite a new view of the Gospel and of its Author — and what lie alludes to as already recognized among them. There two strands have to be carefully kept apart when we use the epistle for historical purposes. And this task is the easier, that the writer has him- self summed up the conception of the average Ju- dreo-Christians he has in view ; that with which they had begun, and beyond which they had not advanced toward spiritual maturity of insight. It consisted of " Repentance from dead works and faith resting on God," associated with "teaching touching ablutions (of various kinds) and the imposition of hands, re- surrection of the dead and eternal judgment" (vi. 1-3). A rudimentary sort of Christian creed in- deed, and one which would present but a slight barrier to the man whose hope of Messiah's return had already waxed dim. Of course their actual ex- perience had been far richer in Christian elements than this would seem to indicate. Their souls had been strangely uplifted and for a time enlightened by the Holy Spirit at their baptism. In a word, The Final Appeal: its Meaning. 287 they had had foretaste of " powers of an age soon to dawn : " but this had failed to give rise to further spiritual developments, and particularly anything like reflective appreciation of all it implied as to Christ and His relation to the believer. These de- fects the writer sets himself to remedy. He warns them most solemnly of the danger of turning their back on such heavenly experiences as they had once known, and assures them that their Lord will in fact return, and that speedily. For he seems to feel in the signs of the times, especially in Judaea, the mut- terings of that tempest, wherewith He who had spoken from heaven in His Son was about to shake all things capable of shock, with a view to the mani- fest establishment of that, eternal City for whose cit- izenship all the heroes of faith from Abel downward had in spirit yearned. In that " Kingdom not to be shaken " the earlier and the latter saints alike should find the consummation they had welcomed, from afar or from near at hand. Such is the thrilling Sursum Corda wherewith this prophetic soul strives to lift fellow-believers, and in many cases actual acquaintances, out of their dis- couragement and doubt. The crisis was as momen- tous as it was inevitable in the development of the JudaBO-Christian consciousness. It was indeed a poignant necessity, to have to make up the mind to put altogether on one side the venerable ritual observances of ancestral religion, a religion or- dained of God amid the awful sanctions of Sinai. Yet the choice had to be made. The parting of the ways had come both from external and from inter- ■ . ■ - « ■ ' 9 to wl. i ■ ■ - ■ ! ■ ■ i ■;^-< rs. ■ ■ ■ ■ ... . . i. ■ , t ■ .... ■ , '.U<- 1 in «.s •» I 290 The Apostolic Aye. hiding to the death of James, goes on to say that, before the Divine wrath finally burst over the Jewish nation, the rest of the Apostles were the objects of countless plots against their lives and were in fact forced to flee the land of Judsea, betaking themselves to the Gentile world. Quite probably it was at this epoch (62-66) that John left Palestine, the headship of the Jerusalem Church falling to Symeon, " whom all put forward," says Hegesippus in the second cen- tury, " as being a blood relation of the Lord." As to the movements of Judtean Christians we gather, again from Eusebius (probably on the author- ity of Hegesippus), that they were bidden by " a certain divine oracle, given by revelation to 1 the local leaders (lit. ' men of repute ') to remove before the war from the City and inhabit a certain city of Persea, Pella by name." One can hardly help connecting this notice with the form of the warning found in Mark xiii. 14, and so far repeated in Matt. xxiv. 15. "But whene'er ye see ' the abomination of desolation ' [the Roman invader] standing where he ought not — let the (public) reader understand — then let them that are in Judsea flee to the Mountains." Here we seem to have the warning in a form vague as regards the place of refuge, and therefore older than that contem- plated by Eusebius. Now the parenthetical caution to the Reader, common to Mark and Matthew, prob- ably belonged to established tradition ; since Mark, who was writing for Gentiles far from Palestine, 'The most probable rendering of the Greek of Ens. iii. 5. 3, (Ararat rcva ^prjff/jLov to7? abroOi do#i'ioi$ dS anoKakui/'scus \_£%^\ do0(vza TTpb zoo 7:oXiij.ou). The Judseo- Christian Attitude. 291 would have no end to serve in inserting it of his own motion, while he might naturally adopt it from an existing source. And indeed, we may well wonder whether this was not itself the very form in which the warning before the war went the round of Judeea (and not Jerusalem only). For the vaguer "to the Mountains " (». e., those nearest at hand) may well have been the cry upon which the Christians actually went, when they fled before the approach of Titus, not like other Jews to the doomed Jerusalem, but to Israel's oft-tried fastnesses among the hills. 1 The tradition that they were warned to go to Pella may have arisen later, from the fact that the bulk of the Jerusalem Christians at least were believed to have gathered thither, possibly quite gradually and after various wanderings. We have suggested that this critical season, in 66 A. D., saw a sifting, the final sifting among the Christians of Palestine. But there are signs that the whole period between 62 and 66 was one long process of sifting, passing from the milder form of scourging, imprisonment, loss of goods (when the Epistle to the Hebrews was written), to the death penalty implied in Mark xiii. 12 f. and parallels. For the bitterness of feeling involved not only in their being universally hated for the name of Jesus '"The Central range in Judah and Ephraim formed Israel's most constant sanctuary"; and in Judaea (used by Mark in its narrower sense) "the Mountains" were far more distinct from the lower uplands or downs (the Shephelah), than those in Sa- maria from the corresponding country. Hence the greater isola- tion and safety of the former, especially in the wildest parts about Hebron (see G. A. Smith's Historical Geography of the Holy Land). 292 The Apostolic Age. the Christ (in contrast to the favor of the populace in the earlier days of Acts), but also in the betrayal of believers by their own nearest and dearest, can be adequately explained only by the strength of the " patriotic " movement, rising to its climax between 62 and 66 A. D. Nor must it be forgotten that in the earlier part of this period (62-64) the building of the Temple was finally completed, a fact of much religious promise in Jewish eyes. Accordingly not a few Jewish believers may have been reabsorbed by the patriotic excitement of the moment, into or- dinary Judaism of the sincerer order. Some, on the other hand, may have anticipated the decision of their recognized leaders as to the season of with- drawal from fellowship with the national cause and religion. Such may have withdrawn individually, at different moments in the unfolding of the drama, and taken up their abode with the brethren in the safer districts. They would naturally belong to the less national and more liberal side of Judaean Chris- tianity, that largely composed of the Hellenists re- ferred to in Acts vi. 1 ff : and accordingly might be expected to betake themselves, by an instinctive selective affinity, to the mixed communities of Jewish and Gentile believers on the coast-lands and in Samaria, rather than to those of the more purely Jewish inland regions. Such a circumstance would serve to explain how the final exodus, when at last it took place, involved a body of people no larger than was able to find a home in the comparatively small city of Pella, under the jurisdiction of Agrippa II., who sided with the Romans. This semi-foreign Christians in Galilee. 293 place, lying on the northwestern border of Perrea and looking out from sloping ground across the Jordan valley a few miles south of Bethabara, ranked as one of the Greek cities known collectively as Decapolis. And the bare fact that these Jeru- salem refugees chose to live there at all, implies that they were not of the most exclusive wing of Judeeo- Christians. And this is important, seeing that they presumably included the leaders of the Jerusalem church referred to by Eusebius. As to the fact that we hear so little about Chris- tianity in a quarter where we should have expected to hear much of it, namely Galilee, the home of the Gospel and its most congenial soil, the prime reason is also to be sought in the Jewish war. Not only did the brunt of Cestius' brief campaign in autumn 66 fall on Galilee, but it was simply deluged with blood during the bitter war of extermination waged by Vespasian and Titus through the greater part of 67, against the stubborn hardihood of the northern population. Here too the Christians probably took warning betimes; if not before the approach of Cestius, then surely before that of Vespasian. They went to swell the communities which we know later to have existed in large numbers east of the Sea of Galilee, in the rugged, upland regions extending to the Hauran, whence come the bulk of surviving Judoeo-Christian inscriptions. Some, too, would find on the Phoenician coast the easiest places of refuge, reinforcing the mixed Christian communities there in existence. In Coesarea we may even imagine the two streams of refugees, the Judtean and the Galilean, 294 The Apostolic Aye. meeting and blending in the larger and freer life of its composite church. Whatever be thought of these possibilities, it is certain that the local distribution and development of Judyeo-Christianity was enormously modified by the War of 66-70. These changes must for the most part have resulted in a diminution of strict Judueo- Christians, though by isolating them in out- of-the-way places the crisis may have made these stricter than ever. By such the victorious progress of the Churches of the Uncircumcision would be watched, as from the outside, with a resentment that bitterly contrasted the strangely hard lot of them- selves, as of their nation, and brooded over the post- ponement of the true Messianic Kingdom. This cannot, however, have been the case with the main body of Jerusalem Christians gathered at Pella, since the place chosen was one of a semi-Gentile character. The traditions of James and others like- minded probably prevailed among them ; and the logic of facts must, by 70 A. D., have taught them the lesson which the Epistle to the Hebrews had al- ready unfolded. And these presumptions are borne out by the impression of this community which Eusebius had gleaned from older writers, such as Hegesippus and Ariston of Pella. Though the time of its actual return to the ruined Jerusalem is unknown (it was probably only very gradual), yet between that time and the Second Jew- ish War under Barcochba in 133-135, there seems to have been a recognizable succession of leaders — whose names survived in writing to Eusebius' day — touch- Roman Suspicion of the Messianic Hope. 295 ing whose religious position later Christian opinion had no misgivings. This does not mean that they were not still highly Jewish in their theology and per- sonal usages : but it does mean that they were in communion with Gentile Christianity and were not exclusive in their attitude to uncircumcised Chris- tians, as were the stricter sort later known as Ebion- ites. These latter would be the successors of the more sequestered communities already mentioned, who probably fraternized at an early date with the kindred Jewish sect of the Essenes, whose settle- ments about the Dead Sea would be a natural resort for other outcasts from orthodox Judaism. Some fusion of their tendencies probably explains the curious Elkesaite type of Judreo-Christianity which meets us in the second century. No doubt the relations between Jews and Jewish Christians became increasingly strained after A. D. 70. But we have here few historical data to go upon. 1 The most definite piece of information re- lates to the part played by certain Jewish partisans in trying to smite these hated heretics (Minim) with the strong hand of the conqueror. Naturally Ves- pasian was anxious to prevent further trouble arising from the Messianic hope. So he caused inquisition to be made for all of the Davidic stock, a step in which he was later followed by Domitian. In the latter case " certain sectaries," probably members of 1 A probable reference, whicb certainly belongs to 70-100 A. D., i3 fonud in tbe later part of the Apocalypse of Baruch (xli.-xlii.). Those " who have withdrawn from Thy covenant and cast from them the yoke of Thy Law," and " mingled themselves with the seed of mingled peoples," have no hope in the Coming Age. 296 The Apostolic Age. one or more of the seven Jewish sects which Hege- sippus elsewhere counts up, denounced the grandsons of Jude, the Lord's brother, as of Davidic descent. Domitian soon satisfied himself by an interview with these horny-handed peasants that they were not of the kind to disturb his empire, 1 and dismissed them to their homes. On their return they enjoyed yet greater prestige than before among the Palestin- ian churches, as being not only the Lord's kinsmen but now also tried " witnesses." Somewhat later a similar accusation, probably from the same quarter, actually caused the martyrdom of Symeon, also a kinsman of the Lord and James' successor in the re- gard of the Jerusalem Church. He suffered on a charge laid before the Roman governor Atticus, in Trajan's reign, that he was at once of Davidic race and a Christian. Consecutiveness of thought has carried us beyond the age of transition in the narrower sense with which we started (62-70), the age for which the Epistle to the Hebrews is our great witness in the New Testament as regards Palestinian Christianity. We return then to consider the same age as it affected Churches outside Palestine. 'If we may trust Hegesippns' language (Eus. iii. 20), their statement that "Messiah's Kingdom" was "not of this world or earthly, but heavenly and angelic" seems to imply some modifi- cation of the Judseo-Christian hope touching the earthly realiza- tion of the Kingdom of God. CHAPTER III. ASIA MINOR AND FIRST PETER. |F we are right in dating the Epistle to the Hebrews about 62 A. D., rather than on the very eve of the Jewish War in 66, little more than a year can have elapsed before another Epistle of counsel and cheer crossed the seas from the same quarter of the world and began to circulate among an equally im- portant group of readers. This time Rome itself was the place of despatch, and the Christians scattered through the larger part of Asia Minor were the re- cipients. Nor is the letter anonymous. Its author was the Apostle Peter, who thus comes once more upon the scene after being lost to our sight for some fourteen years, dating from the Jerusalem Confer- ence in 49. Of his intervening movements Acts gives no hints. Nor can anything be gathered from St. Paul's letters, save the fact that Peter used to go on missionary journeys of considerable duration ; for he was wont to take his wife along with him — a practice usual with the Apostles and brethren of the Lord (1 Cor. ix. 5). But, as his Epistle itself informs us, he is now in Rome, referred to under the name of " Baby- lon " — probably for safety's sake. His arrival must have been subsequent to Paul's two years' imprison- ment, since neither mentions the other in writing, 297 298 The Apostolic Age. while Mark is named by both as their personal helper (1 Pet. v. 12, 13). Besides, the use of the hated name " Babylon " suggests that Christians had already suf- fered there — a state of things which is less likely prior to Paul's visit, but which would be natural if Paul had already been martyred c. 61-62. Indeed the crisis felt to have been reached in an event so startling to Christians at large, as an index of the State's attitude to their religion, would best explain why Peter, a Galilean Jew, should come to Rome at all. Perhaps he had been sought out and brought thither by Mark, who had recently been in Paul's company. While it is unlikely that Peter and Paul were in Rome at the same time, the fact that Peter names as with him two companions of Paul casts most valuable light on his own position and work in the Church dur- ing years of silence. He was no longer the typical head of the Judsean Church ' (a position to which James had completely succeeded years before), but rather of the wider Judseo-Christian mission, whose basis was the Diaspora (especially of North Syria and Asia Minor) but which also embraced in varying proportions Gentiles as well. Peter's genius was not of the doctrinaire or inflexible type : he was sensitive to the teachings of divine facts ; and the 'This fact probably explains the order in which Clemeut of Alexandria, following some Jndseo-Christian authority, refers to the inner Apostolic circle. "To James the Just and John and Peter did the Lord give the true knowledge (rrjv yvuxjiv). These handed it on to the rest of the apostles; and the rest of the apostles to the Seventy, of whom Barnabas was one " (Eus. ii. 1) — a tradition of uo strict historical worth. Peter's Leanings toward Paul. 299 success of the Pauline mission, so much greater than could have been imagined when the early under- standing 1 as to division of labor in two distinctive missions (Gal. ii. 9) was reached, must have greatly- enlarged and confirmed his own more liberal estimate of the scope of Messiah's Kingdom (cf. Acts x. 34 f.). Nor must we ignore his twofold advantage over even James. He had been a personal disciple of Jesus and had drunk in more of His universalism, His re- gard for man as man in the sight of the heavenly- Father, which contained the seed of all that Paul had taught or could teach about the breaking down of " the middle wall of division " between the Jew and humanity at large. Then again, not being con- fined by his work to Jerusalem, he had more experi- ence of the gospel's ampler bearings. Two readings of its bearing, at any rate until the King's own return should settle all such problems, were possible to men agreeing in essentials during that time of transition when the old order lived on by the side of the new, not as yet abrogated by any distinct Divine intimation. And so Peter, as his experience of the larger reading extended, grew more and more toward Paul's atti- tude and practice, and more away from the traditions of the Jerusalem community'. And this is why tra- dition does not connect his name closely with Pales- tinian Christianity. Hence we may assume an approximation to Paul ■Not made with a view to perpetuity, but provisionally, i. e, until the near Parousia should adjust all things. The postpone- ment of this hope changed the perspective of many things, a fact too often forgotten. 300 The Apostolic Aye. as going on during the years of silence, as Peter watched Paul's successes, and as he himself saw the problems touching the relation of Jew and Gentile in the new Ecclesia solve themselves in the course of his own missionary work. This we may guess to have lain partly in Palestine, outside Judsea and particularly in Galilee ; partly, and at a later time further north, in northern Syria ; and finally along the Eastern side of Asia Minor up to Pontus and Bithynia, 1 Jewish centres being visited in each case. Cappadocian and Pontic Jews are in fact mentioned as present at Peter's Sermon in Acts ii. It would then be natural for Peter to visit them, while Paul's lieutenants, such as Silas, were extending the Paul- ine mission northeast from provincial Asia. Aquila's connection with Pontus is suggestive of a Pauline mission in that quarter, especially through the great port of Sinope". Opinions may vary as to whether the Epistle betrays personal acquaintance with the actual conditions of society in the regions addressed. But it is a plausible view that Peter, having had some personal relations with at least the non-Pauline provinces in question, was sought out in Rome by Silas, in order to throw his weighty influence into the scale at a critical season. The occasion was the outbreak of a persecuting spirit, instigated in large part by the Jews, to whom Paul's conviction and death would be of good omen as to the imperial policy touching Christians. For local governors 'This hypothesis, iu itself rather suggested by his Epistle, has some inherent likelihood, geographical and otherwise Yet he may not have gone beyond Syria. He Counsels Patience. 301 would take their cue from the emperor's conduct, and would look with no friendly eye on men who, when accused before them of specific crime, were found to labor also under the imputation of belong- ing to a seditious kind of religious fraternity. The Epistle, indeed, suggests that the charges came as a rule from their neighbors, masters as well as a man's equals ; nor did they generally take formal shape, rather than that of verbal and social persecution. Yet the other kind of case was arising, and consti- tuted " a fiery trial " for which the converts were asking an explanation. Peter is aware of similar phenomena in other parts of the world and urges this as part of his appeal for steadfastness. But he believes that in most cases the persecuting spirit rests on a misconstruction of the Christian ideal, the aloofness and clannishness of the brethren being held indicative of a morality that shunned the light of day. 1 For the intensity of their new comradeship made them seem the more anti-social to those that were outside. The sum of his counsel, then, is to live down calumny in the power of the faith and inspiring ex- ample of Christ. To this object the structure of the Epistle itself bears witness. It is throughout horta- tory. But the first of the three parts into which it readily falls (marked by the direct appeal, " Beloved,'' at ii. 11 and iv. 12) aims at lifting the readers' thoughts into the highest realm of religious faith. J Cf. Tacitus, Ann. xv. 44," men hated for outrageous deeds and popularly styled ' Christ's faction '" {Christian^ like Pom- peiani, " Pompey's partisans "). 302 The Apostolic Age. Let them stay their hearts on the gracious will of God Himself in calling them as part of His elect People, His peculiar possession, the heirs of all the great traditions of Old Testament promise and prophecy. Then it will be but natural to them to cheerfully renounce all heathen ways of living and transform all social duties in the power of calm but exultant faith. This in turn will speedily re- move much of the prejudice which lies at the root of the trials they are enduring, while meantime they will even glory in their sufferings as the lot of the Christ-life, whether in the Christ or in His Church. The churches, so addressed, were formed of men who had for the most part once been heathen, though some doubtless had been proselytes to Juda- ism before the Gospel reached them. For it is " morally certain that in many places the nucleus of the Christian congregation would be derived from the Jewish congregation, to which it was St. Paul's habit to preach first." But the important point is to notice how " St. Peter applies to the whole body of the Asiatic Churches, Gentiles and Jews alike, the language which in the Old Testament describes the prerogatives of God's ancient people. The truth is that St. Peter, as doubtless every other apostle, regarded the Christian Church as first and foremost the true Israel of God, the one legitimate heir of the promises made to Israel, the one community which by receiving Israel's Messiah had remained true to Israel's covenant " — as understood by the greater prophets — " while the unbelieving Jews in refusing His Debt to the Pauline Ejiistles. 303 their Messiah had in effect apostatized from Israel. 1 This point of view was not in the least weakened by the admission of Gentile Christians in any number or proportion. In St. Paul's words they were but branches grafted in upon the one ancient olive tree of God." The reference to Paul in these words, in which Dr. Hort practically settles the debate touching the readers, leads us to notice one of the most striking features in this striking epistle. I mean its clear in- debtedness to two at least of the Pauline epistles, Romans and Ephesians, epistles which, as having close connection with the Roman Church and as being general rather than personal in character, were most likely to be studied by his brother apostle. Such dependence was not of the nature of servile borrowing. Peter's epistle "is certainly full of Pauline language and ideas : but it also differs from St. Paul's writings both positively and negatively, i. e. y both in the addition of fresh elements and in the omission of Pauline elements." The Petrine speeches in the Acts shine through constantly; and even where he uses an idea that does not happen to oc- cur in these, such as the favorite Pauline term " the flesh," he gives it a slight turn of his own (e. g., iv. 1). But the use in question not only shows that Peter was able to graft deeper Pauline thoughts upon his own fundamental conceptions ; it also war- rants important historical inferences. Peter had a 'Compare the strong words of John's Apocalypse, touching " them who say they are Jews, and they are not, but are a syna- gogue of Satan " (ii. 9, iii. 9). 304: The Apostolic Age. set purpose in utilizing to such an extent Pauline phraseology. He was addressing in the same breath churches both of the Judseo-Christian and of the Pauline mission, 1 and naturally wished to show the latter even by the form of his pastoral address how thoroughly at one with their apostle he was. But we can hardly imagine Peter claiming the ear of the Pauline churches, without a word of explana- tion, during Paul's lifetime. Therefore once more we reach our former conclusion that Paul was al- ready martyred by 62-63 A. D. The mention too of Silas, probably Paul's companion, as the bearer of the epistle 2 strongly suggests a growing homo- geneity between the Pauline churches and those of other type among the Diaspora. For some reason or other Silas seems to have intended to begin his tour through the regions in question from some port in Pontus, probably Sinope", then a Roman colonia with a great trade. As this was not the nearest or most natural point at which to land in Asia Minor, we may suppose that there was an inherent fitness in the order of his ideal progress from Pontus, through northeast Galatia, 3 Cappadocia, and Asia, 1 This is the most probable view, since tbe five provinces named practically cover " Asia witbin the Taurus," to use Strabo's accu- rate phrase for tbe bulk of Asia Minor. 'Perhaps be bad also a band in its literary form, since the style is not Mark's, while its comparative purity is not what one would expect of a Galilseau fisherman (even though we regard the tradition that Mark acted as his interpreter (£p/iy]veuT7]s) as applying to bis ignorance of Latin rather tban Greek). 8 If the South Galatian Churcbes were included, it would be more natural for Galatia to follow rather than precede Cappa- docia. Peter and Paul in Rome. 305 ending up with Bithynia. Unless, then, the order was fixed by the relative severity of persecution in the Pontic region, we cannot but connect it with something in the writer's previous relations with the churches in that quarter, churches possibly more Jewish in origin than those of Asia. 1 In all this it is assumed that Peter did visit Rome in his last days. This is sometimes doubted, but needlessly. For besides the cryptic reference to Rume as "Babylon " in the postscript, we have evi- dence to the same effect in Ignatius {Epistle to the Romans, "not as Peter and Paul do I lay charge on you") and yet more fully in Clement of Rome (96 A. D.). This writer having given ancient instances of the evils wrought by jealousy (C^.o?), appeals to those of quite recent date, even of his own generation. And as cases of " conflict even unto death " owing to "jealousy and envy," he sets before his readers' eyes "the good apostles" (note this affectionate familiarity). First "Peter, who by reason of un- righteous jealousy endured not one nor two but many (nkelova^) labors, and thus, having borne his testimony (fiapTupyjaas), went to his due place of glory." Then follows the case of Paul, due likewise to "jealousy and strife." And that both these suf- fered in the same place, namely Rome, seems implied •A confirmation of this may perhaps be found in the violently anti-Judaic Christianity of Marcion of Sinope about 120-140 A. D. If we suppose that Peter's letter was in response to an appeal for counsel, this again points to a like conclusion, namely the existence of some special link between him and the churches first named in the address. 306 The Apostolic Aye. in what at once follows, i. e., that " unto these men of holy lives was gathered l a vast multitude of elect ones, such as suffered many indignities and tortures by reason of jealousy and set a splendid example among ourselves." Further, Clement, who seems to know more than Acts relates of persecutions that befell Peter, hints that his footsteps were dogged by " unjust jealousy," which in keeping with the con- text (where the "jealousy" is between people with close mutual ties) may best refer to the action of his compatriots, the Jews. If this be a well-grounded suggestion, we gather that Peter could be regarded by strict Jews as " an apostate " from Judaism sub- sequent to the date at which Acts dismisses him. Perhaps even, it was Jewish spite which brought him under Nero's notice befure or at the time of the car- nage in the late summer of 64 A. D. ; for to the like cause Clement assigns the sufferings of the Roman Christians ; and such emphasis on the phrase in question seems warranted by its use in Paul's case. But that Peter was martyred somewhere is clearly implied in John xxi. 19: and no church save Rome claimed to be the scene of martyrdom. Beautiful and characteristic of his loyal and loving nature is the story of his end as given by Clement of Alex- andria. " They say that the blessed Peter, when he 1 This surely fixes the deaths of Paul and Peter as at least not later than the barbarous Neronian outbreak of 64, and thus con- firms the inference (1) that Clement knew of no Pauline release from Rome, (2) that Peter's epistle falls before autumn 64. That Peter's death is named first is probably due to the fact that hav- ing had the last apostolic word, as it were, he had left a deeper impression on the Roman Church, in which we know that Paul had felt himself a good deal isolated. Peter's Faith and Death. 307 beheld his own wife being led forth to death, re- joiced by reason of her 'calling' and her going home, and called to her right encouragingly and comfort- ably, addressing her by name with the words, ' Re- member, O thou, the Lord.' " Good right had such a man to send words of faith and cheer to others hard bestead, saying: "Beloved, take not as strange the fiery ordeal going on among you, sent to try you, as though a strange thing were befalling you. But inasmuch as ye are partakers in the sufferings of the Christ, rejoice; that at the revealing also of His glory ye may rejoice with exul- tation. If ye are being vilified for the name of Christ, blessed are ye ; because the Spirt of Glory and the Spirit of God resteth on you. Let not, then, any of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or an evil- doer, or as a meddler in other men's business : but if as 'a Christian,' let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this name. . . . Wherefore let them also that suffer according to God's will commit to a faithful Creator the safe-keeping of their lives, in well-doing." The situation presup- posed is that of a time when persecution, following on calumny (ii. 12, iii. 16, iv. 4, 14), is beginning to be severely felt by Christians at large, "the brother- hood in the world " (v. 9), as well as in the provinces in question (i. 6, 7, iii. 14-17, iv. 12-19). And this determines the aspect of " the Grace of God " which the writer emphasizes (v. 12 b ) ; viz, the sufferings of Christ as at once an example and something to be shared by His followers (iv. 13, cf. iii. 18), whether in steadfastness in the Christian life of well-doing 308 The Apostolic Aye. (ii. 12, 16), the witness of their profession (iii. 8, 9, iv. 4, cf. ii. 15, 16), or in self-denial as regards the works of the flesh (iv. 1-4, cf. ii. 11, 16). So shall they be qualified to share in the glory that is the due sequel of Messianic suffering (i. 11, ii. 20 £f., iii. 9, iv. 19). In these trying times the beginning of the season of Judgment, ushering in the future age, is to be discerned (iv. 17, 18). The end of all things is at hand. Sobriety and watchfulness is the temper meet for the hour when their great Adversary is abroad, ravening for his prey, ere his term of world- power shall finally expire. Yet in the naive con- fidence that well-doing must as a rule shield the Christians from ill-treatment (iii. 13, yet see iv. 12), and in the command to obey human institutions, whether emperor or his officers as being sent to do justice according to desert, and to "honor the King" (ii. 13, 14, 17), — in all this, as contrasted with the fierce resentment of Rome's injustice in the Apoca- lypse, one may well discern signs of a date prior l to " the bath of blood " in 64, which so horrified the Christian consciousness. And it is probable that it was in this very carnival of cruelty that Peter met his end, the story of his crucifixion head downward sounding quite like a piece of the " mockery " in which Nero indulged. Even the tradition that Peter suffered on the Vatican Hill suits this same occasion. 1 With this well agrees the simplicity of the picture given of the Christian communities. The organization is that of the syn- agogue, "elders " exercising a shepherd's oversight of the younger members of the flock. Ministering to the needy is the common personal duty of all who had the means (iv. 10). As to the "liberty of prophesying," the one rule is, "if any man speak, let him speak as uttering oracles of God " (iv. 11). CHAPTER IV. NORTH SYRIA AND THE DIDACHE. 1BOUT the time when the leaders of the first generation began to pass rapidly off the scene, while the Lord's expected return was from year to year unaccount- ably delayed, a serious practical crisis arose, and abuses in conduct began to become more rife as the love of many began to wax cold. For, indeed, the motive of awful expectancy, directed toward a coming that might happen at any moment, had been a mighty, though rather external, restraint put upon the human passions. And when its ten- sion relaxed somewhat, there was a return of the old man, especially where Faith had had too little vitality to transform current Messianic notions by a vivid impression of Jesus, with His unique personal spell, as the true Messiah. When this crisis began to press upon Syrian Christianity, a fresh edition of the " Two Ways " was felt to be needed, giving among other things instruction on the Parousia question, as truth for the times. Here we are not left to mere conjecture. Com- parison of the various documents in which the M Two Ways " is now seen to survive, itself proves that the work underwent several revisions, fresh 309 310 The Apostolic Age. matter of kindred kind being gradually added. 1 This was indeed a common lot with loosely-knit col- lections of maxims, as we see in Ecelesiasticus for instance, some manuscripts of which have matter not found in others. But there exists also a con- temporary notice of the very conditions which gave birth to the transformation of the " Two Ways " into the "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," that is, substantially our Didache. The form in which this fact reaches us is peculiar, but highly characteristic of the age. It is presented as prophecy, as part of a series of events revealed in vision to the prophet Isaiah, which a Jewish Christian hand added to the Jewish Apocalypse known as the Ascension of Isaiah. This vision we are able to assign to about 64-66 2 A. D., so adding another to the few and precious fixed points in the Apostolic Age. We shall have occa- sion to quote this document at some length. Enough now to state that it refers to a falling away from the " Teaching of the Twelve Apostles " as destined to take place in the degenerate days immediately pre- ceding the Lord's return, there expected to follow on Nero's assumption of the role of Antichrist about autumn 64. Such a reference does not indeed prove 1 Didache i. 3 (from "Bless ye") to ii. 1, was certainly so in- serted, in one or two stages ; and cb. vi. was appended, probably at tbe moment wben tbe manual passed definitely beyond Jewish Christian circles into tbe hands of Gentile Christians who could not be expected to " bear the yoke of the Lord as a whole," and so be "perfect." They were to do what they could as to ab- staining from unclean foods : but by all means they were to be- ware of food offered to idols, "for it is a worship of dead gods." See Literary Appendix for further details. 2 For the evidence, see Literary Appendix. The "Didache" Analyzed. 311 directly the existence of a work styled the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. But it does so indirectly, by indicating just those conditions which explain the origin of our Didache, namely a time when the true Apostolic tradition was beginning to suffer eclipse owing to the death of the first witnesses them- selves. The full strength of this position, however, can only be felt as our exposition of the document and the epoch proceeds step by step. Part II., of our Didache (Chh. vii.-xvi.), then, is a manifesto of the true Apostolic tradition, issued in the earlier days of that period of degeneracy de- scribed in darker colors by the unknown apocalyptic writer about 64-66. These days would coincide roughly with the years 60-65, during which the orig- inal Apostles — a Paul, a James, a Peter — were fast passing off the scene, as also the original local "leaders who spake the Word of God" to the Churches (Heb. xiii. 7). The need of the time was for something that should confirm faith, already a good deal perplexed by the departure of the original witnesses, in the truth of its traditional beliefs and usages. And what better confirmation could there be, than a document having behind it the collective weight of the original Apostolic witnesses ? As the life of the primitive Jerusalem community had rested on " the teaching of the Apostles, and the fellow- ship " which found formal expression in " the Break- ing of Bread and the Prayers" (Acts ii. 42); so now, it was to be confirmed in these Syrian regions by the assurance that the best local teaching in con- duct and in Church-life indeed represented the mind 312 The Apostolic Age. of their Lord as echoed by the voices of His original Apostles. 1 And thus the Didache sprang into be- ing in much its present scope, embracing practical " teaching," the outlines of ecclesiastical institutions, and a fresh call to watchfulness — in spite of oppos- ing tendencies — in the confidence that the Great Crisis could not now long be delayed. We have seen the nature of the practical rule of life embodied in the Two Ways: and the re-pub- lication of its simple ethics bears emphatic witness to the conservatism of the Judseo-Christian ideal. 2 But our present business is with the new elements found in Part II., which the analogy of Part I. should prepare us to regard as new in only a very limited sense. The bulk of them preexisted as us- age more or less definite, and indeed stereotyped in the case of Baptism and the Eucharistic meal, as also of the liturgic formulae associated there- with. As these liturgical elements (vii.-x.) largely reflect past usage, antecedent even to 62 A. D., while the rest of what follows (xi.-xvi.) has regard rather to the new crisis and the expected future, we may treat the whole in two sections broadly styled Liturgical and Ecclesiastical. § 1. Liturgical : DidacJie, vii.-x. The second part of the Didache begins most fit- tingly with a reference to entrance into the Spiritual ' Of course the Didache was only indirectly apostolic, i. e., issued by certain Syrian disciples of apostles as a true account of their general teaching. Indeed it makes no higher claim for itself. 'Even the more Evangelic precepts now found in i. 3-5, were probably added after 70 A. D. The Baptismal Formula. 313 Israel through Baptism. Its subjects are those al- ready instructed in the duties of their new state, as set forth in the " Two Ways." "Now as touching Baptism, thus shall ye baptize. Having first recited all these things (the 'Two Ways'), baptize ye in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit iu living (running) water. (But if thou hast not living water, bap- tize in other water ; and if thou canst not in cold, then in warm. But if thou hast neither [i. e.,in sufficient quantity], pour water on the head thrice in the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit). But before the baptism let him that baptizeth and him that is baptized fast, and any others who can. (And thou shalt bid him that is baptized to fast one or two days beforehand)." Here the noteworthy features of the section, in its original state, 1 are : first the address to the local church as a whole, not to a special ministrant ; and next, the use of the threefold Name. The former point implies that the Ecclesia itself authorized ad- mission to its own membership, the ministrant being 1 The more special provisions, here put in brackets, look like later amplifications meant to keep the manual up to date, possibly also to adjust it to climatic aud other conditions different from those of its original home. (1) Note change from the plural to the singular address (i. e., to the ministrant — as Apost. Const, vii. 22 throughout the section). (2) The threefold act, symbolic of the threefold Name, occurs only incidentally, in connection with one of three special cases, not with the general injunction at the beginning ; i. e., both features are later additions. (3) Iu the second mention of the baptismal Name, the definite articles, fouud before each member in the first instance, disappear. This probably rep- resents the liturgical use of another time and place. Thus the Clementine Homilies (early third century ?) xi. 26, 35, have this form and also the feature next named : cf. also iii. 73, xiii. 9, 11, xiv. 1, and the Acts of Barnabas (early second century?) ch. 13. (4) The very specific charge to the candidate to fast "one or two days " previously, seems like an afterthought. The connection is better without it. 314 The Apostolic Age. ignored as simply instrumental : and the significance of the idea is indicated by the care which the Apos- tolical Constitutions (iv. century) took to change the phraseology. The occurrence of the Triune name is most noteworthy, if this part of the Didache really belongs to about 65 A. D. and may be taken as an index of North Syrian usage in some circles at least. For if so, it is probably our earliest witness to the use of this formula in baptism, not excepting the closing verses of St. Matthew. It is not only that this gospel cannot be assigned to a date much before 70 A. D. ; but, apart from this, none of the cases of baptism alluded to in Acts and in the Epistles show any trace of the use of such a formula. They sug- gest rather some simple form of confessed allegiance to Jesus as Christ or Lord. Nor have we any reason to suppose that this simpler usage was speedily re- placed by the other. In the Epistle of Barnabas, a work written within some ten years of the Didache, we read : " we descend into the water laden with sins and filth, and go up from it bearing fruit in the heart, resting in spirit our fear and hope on Jesus " (xi. 11). And we get a similar impression from Her- nias, writing in the first half of the second century. " For before a man bears the name of the Son of God, he is dead. But whene'er he receives the seal he lays aside deadness and assumes life. Now the seal is the water." 1 In view of all this and also of a phrase further on, " those baptized unto the Lord's name," one might be tempted to suppose that the present formula has 1 Similitude, ix. 16. The Lord's Prayer and Doxology. 315 displaced an older one in our Didache. But this would be needless, since the probable dates of it and our Matthew are close enough together to make it quite likely that a usage witnessed by the latter, say about 68-75, existed already in the circle of the former some few years earlier. First appearance in literature very seldom means first appearance in fact. And this conclusion is strengthened by the occur- rence, in the very next section, of the Lord's Prayer in a form akin to, but not identical with, that found in Matthew. The section in question runs as fol- lows: " But let your fasts not be along with the hypocrites (i e., the unbelieving Jews) ; for they fast on the second (Monday) and fifth day (Thursday) ; but do ye fast on the fourth (Wednesday) and on the Preparation day (Friday). ' Neither pray ye as the hypocrites; but as the Lord bade in Hia Gospel so pray ye: Our Father, etc. . . . Thrice in the day so pray ye." To take the central point first. We have here a version of the Lord's Prayer strongly agreeing with Matthew's form (as compared with Luke's), but yet so differing in minor details as to negative the likeli- hood of direct dependence thereon. For it must be remembered that in a familiar form of prayer even minor differences cannot be dismissed as slips of 1 Fasting as an aid to prayer and a coudition of its greatest efficacy was very common in later Judaism and among many of the early Christians : see Luke ii. 37 (the case of Anna), Acts xiii. 2, 3, xiv. 23; cf. 2 Cor. vi. 5; and later, Polycarp, vii. 2, "being sober unto prayers and persevering in fastings," Hernias, Vis. iii. 10, 6. In this connection the interpolated references to fasting in the Textus Beceptus of Matt. xvii. 21 (Mark ix. 29), Acts x. 30, and 1 Cor. vii. 5, are also instructive. 316 The Apostolic Aye. memory. l We must not build too much on the pres- ence of a Doxology at the end differing from that found in the Authorized Version (but rightly omit- ted in the Revised) in the omission of "the King- dom." For Doxologies are apt to creep in from later usage, as happened in the case of our Matthew. Yet the recurrence of practically the same Dox- ology in the two Eucharistic prayers soon to be cited, suggests that it is original here also. If so, the whole Prayer is given as it was then used in private devotions, three times a day, as well as in public worship. 2 Nor do the words which introduce the prayer point the other way. If by " His Gos- pel" had been meant a written gospel, we should have had, not " as the Lord bade " {kkihuaev), but "bids," His voice being perpetuated in the written word. But this does not settle the question whether a written record of the Lord's sayings was or was not in use at the place and time concerned. To this we must return later. We now come to sections of great interest, those dealing with the current Eucharist usages and the ideas therein implied. "But as touching tbe giving-of-thanks, ('Eucharist'), after this manner give thanks. First, as regards the cup: 'We give 'Note "debt" (ttjv 6s yet there is no sign of letters of introduction or recognized tokens (tcsserie) as in use. 9 It is probable that its author knew the Didache. But its ex- panded form often proves at least a good commentary. 334 The Apostolic Aye. phrase marking it sharply off from the Jewish Sab- bath) assemble and break bread and make Eu- charist, having already confessed your transgressions that your sacrifice may be pure." These words give in authentic fashion the primitive conception of the Christian Sacrifice, namely self-oblation in one's gift to God, an oblation whose value depends upon the moral state of the offerer, particularly in relation to his fellows. Its spirit is set forth in Matt. v. 21-24. There as here the profaning thing is ill-will, the ne- gation of love. "If, then, thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave thy gift before the al- tar and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." The altar has changed, but the conception of the sacrifice or hom- age abides: and it is the transgression against man rather than the sin against God (which calls for pri- vate confession) that is emphasized as defiling the sacrifice of oneself and one's all to the Giver of all. Thus the "Shepherd" bids Hennas fast occasionally in order to help some destitute person with the pro- ceeds of self-denial ; then indeed " shall thy sacrifice l be acceptable with God " (Sim. V. iii. 8). In like spirit our manual repeats: "Let no one harboring his grudge against his fellow assemble with you, un- til they be reconciled, lest your sacrifice be profaned. For this is that which was spoken by the Lord : In every place and time offer to Me a pure sacrifice ; for a great King am /, saith the Lord, and My name is ivon- 1 Ecclus. xxxv. 2. "He that requiteth a good turn offereth fine flour ; and he that giveth alms sacrificeth a thank-offering." The Election of Bishops and Deacons. 335 derful among the Gentiles.'''' This quotation from Malachi i. 11, 14, became a stock proof-text for the Eucharistic sacrifice, the only type which Justin Martyr, in his Dialogue with the Jew Trypho about the middle of the next century, recognizes as pleasing to God {Dial. 41, 117). And the question occurs, Who set the example of this application? Probably our Didache. It is more than likely that it was known to Justin, a Syrian Christian to begin with ; but further Irenseus seems to cite this passage as the fountain-head of his own usage. " Those who have closely studied the second ' injunctions of the apos- tles are aware that the Lord instituted a new obla- tion in the New Covenant, in accordance with the saying of Malachi the prophet." Here the appeal is made, not to the Gospels, but to Apostolic tradi- tion as the source of this Eucharistic doctrine ; and the phraseology is such as to suggest a written source, in fact our Didache. If this be so, it is a fresh proof how representative a writing the Didache was for a century after its origin. In close connection with this idea of the Christians' oblation of themselves as " a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God — a rational act of worship" (Rom. xii. 1), we get the first mention of special ministers in the community. " Elect, therefore, for yourselves bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord, men meek and free from love of money and true and '"Second injunctions" (deuripat Siard^ei^), as coming after those which Irenseus (Fragru. 36, ed. Harvey) sees in Acts xv. 24 ff. ; for he goes on to refer quite separately to Paul's teaching in Rom. xii. 1, (Heb. xiii. 15), and John's in Rev. v. 8. 336 The Apostolic Age. attested. For unto you they minister, these also, the ministry of the prophets and teachers." A primary function, then, of the bishops and deacons of each church was to preside at its Eucharistic service, and to lead in the recitation of the liturgical prayers already given, always supposing no prophet was present within or without their body. Very note- worthy is the fact that both bishops and deacons are defined by the same set of qualifications, as though they were but senior and junior colleagues, differing in the actual parts taken in such ministry but not as yet divided into two distinct orders. In fact they differ much as the "prophets and teachers " with whom they are compared. The functions hinted at by the adjectives " meek" and so on, are those of dis- cipline and administration of funds. Hence we may infer that these were their original duties, while yet they were gradually growing into something like a fixed place in the lead of Eucharistic worship, as prophetic gifts decreased in the churches. It is need- ful, then, to remind the brethren that these more or- dinary men — less marked by gifts of grace than the prophets and teachers, who had hitherto taken the lead in the priesthood of representative prayer and thanksgiving (especially at the Thanksgiving) — are yet entitled to something like the same honor. " Therefore despise them not ; for these are they that are your honored ones (e. g., by the gifts of the peo- ple) along with the prophets and teachers." The main reason for naming these officers at this point, must have been the part taken by them not so much in the Eucharist itself, as in the purification Concern for Purity of Communion. 337 of the brotherhood from all enmity previous to the act of Communion. For the manual continues: "But rebuke one another not in wrath but in peace, as ye have it in the Gospel ; and with any at variance with his neighbor let none speak, or listen to him, until he repent." This means that before the Eu- charist enquiry took place into all causes of discoid, and efforts were made by remonstrance, first private and then public (according to Matt, xviii. 15-17), to reconcile the estranged parties ; in order that the Kiss of Peace, which preceded the Communion meal, might be no profane mockery. In such scrutiny the official heads of the community would naturally play an increasing part, to prevent cases coming before the church as a whole in judicial session, as other- wise happened. This truly Christian work of arbi- tration between brethren is referred to in 1 Cor. v. 5 f., when as yet it was not reduced to any system. But we have in the Syrian Didaskalia, the more elab- orate body of church ordinances which in the third century superseded the then too simple and archaic Didachc, a very vivid picture of a literal church- court, hearing cases between brethren under the presidency of its officers (see below, on Discipline). The closing words of the ecclesiastical portion proper of the Didache are : — " But your vows and alms and all your deeds so do, as ye have in the Gospel of our Lord." What then is meant by " the Gospel," several times referred to as norm or stand- ard of action? Is it a written Gospel? Hardly. Were it so, then we should learn that there was only one "gospel " known in the region in question. But V 338 The Apostolic Age. even this is not so probable, because not so much in the manner of this early time, as that the Gospel as a message is meant throughout; as when Paul, for instance, speaks of Timothy as a minister of God "in the Gospel of the Christ." This will become clearer when we come to the origin of our Gospels. The epilogue to the Didache (ch. xvi.), whether it was originally part of an edition of about 62-65 A. D. or was appended a little later, is occupied with the Last Things; and has strong affinities with the earliest Christian literature of this order, particularly that shortly before and after 70 A. D. It is true that it has several points of contact with what Paul was expecting as early as the winter of 50-51 (2 Thess. i. 6-10, ii. 1-12). But it is with the views set forth in the Christian portion of the Ascension of Isaiah that it has most in common ; and it, again, suggests those of the Epistle of Barnabas and the parts of the Sibylline Oracles that reflect feeling shortly after Nero's death. The great difference be- tween its outlook and that common to these kindred writings, is the absence of all clear reference to Nero as the Man of Sin or Antichrist. Its de- scription of the embodiment of forces antagonistic to the Kingdom of God, here called simply "the World-Deceiver," is on quite vague and traditional lines. And this, to judge from most of the pictures of Antichrist between the death of Nero and the end of the century, would not have been the case were the passage post-Neronian. For the Christians shared to the full the popular belief that Nero, so The Epilogue. 339 superhuman, as it seemed, in the extravagances of every sort that marked his closing years, could not be dead and. gone forever. He must be but in hiding for a season, perhaps among the Parthians ; at any rate he would, soon reappear to wreak vengeance on all his foes. We may take it, then, that our Didache represents the Last Things as they appeared to North Syrian Christians between the death of James and the breaking out of the Jewish War, an event which could hardly fail to color in some degree any setting forth of the signs of the times between 66-68. Nero had already begun his final frantic course, which after the events of 64 must have riveted Christian attention ; and so the moment of greater crisis was felt to be near. 1 At such an hour this manifesto of the received Apostolic tradition utters its closing words of warning. " Watch on behalf of your life. Let not yonr lamps be quenched or yonr loins ungirt, but be ye in readiness ; for ye know not the hour in which our Lord corneth. But assemble together constantly, seeking the things that concern your souls : since the whole time of your faith shall not profit you except in the last season ye be found perfected. For in the last days shall the false- prophets and the corrupters be multiplied, and the sheep shall turn to wolves and love shall turn to hate. For as Lawlessness in- creaseth they shall hate one auother and shall persecute and deliver up; and then shall appear the World-Deceiver as Son of God, and shall do signs and wonders, and the earth shall be delivered into his hands, and he shall do abominations such as have never been in the world's history. Then shall the creature, humanity, come into the fiery ordeal of testing, and many shall be offended and shall perish: but they that endure in their faith shall be saved 1 As in the Christian section of the Ascension of Isaiah. 340 The Apostolic Age. by the very Curse itself. 1 And then shall appear the signs of the Truth : first the sign of an Outspreading in heaven, next the sign of a Trumpet-call, and third, the Resurrection of the dead — yet not of all, but as it is said ' The Lord shall come and all His saints with Him.' Then shall the world see the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven." The whole is drawn on quite different lines from those of our Gospels, though there is a certain par- allelism of phrase in its opening words, due to fa- miliarity with the Evangelic tradition. Its affinities are rather with St. Paul's earlier apocalyptic con- ceptions found in the Thessalonian epistles, and with other apocalyptic writings, Jewish and Chris- tian. Thus the idea of three signs ushering in God's presence for salvation and judgment appears in the Sibylline Oracles. What, however, is the meaning of the first sign here called that of " outspreading in heaven " ? The nearest verbal parallel is in Ecclesi- asticus xliii. 14, where the phenomenon of clouds " flying forth as fowls " is described among tokens of the power of the Most High. Accordingly it is best to take the "flying forth" here in question as expressing either the coming of Messiah " with the clouds of heaven," according to Daniel, or the clouds of angels accompanying Messiah. The latter 1 Tbe alternative renderings of this enigmatic clause are: (1) to take it in the sense of Barn. viii. 6, which teaches that it will be in "evil and foul days " that the saints "shall be saved " : or (2) to take the Curse to refer to the Christ, also after the manner of Barnabas (vii. 7, 9; cf. Gal. iii. 13), who treats the "accursed" goat (Lev. xvi. 8) as type of Jesus (calling attention to the fact that the accursed one was crowned with the scarlet wool), and imagines His Jewish enemies recognizing Him at His Coming by " the scarlet robe about His flesh." The latter is best. The Three Signs. 341 view has the merit of making the three signs corre- spond with those of 1 Thess. iv. 14-16, namely " the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with angels of power " (cf. 2 Thess. i. 7), the archangel's trumpet- call, and the resurrection of " the dead in Christ," who with those alive on earth join the Lord in the sky. This view is supported by the Ascension of Isaiah, which not only refers to "the angel of the Christian Church — which is in the heavens — who shall call in the last days," but says that " the Lord shall come with His angels and with the hosts of the saints from the seventh heaven, with the glory of the seventh heaven, and will commit to Gehenna Berial and his forces (cf. Rev. xix. 20). And He will give rest (cf. 2 Thess. i. 7; Heb. iv. 11) to such as He shall find in the body in this world, to wit the godly, even to all who for faith in Him execrated Berial and his kings." It is added that the saints in the Lord's train come clothed with heavenly vesture ; and that when they join those yet on earth, the Lord stablish- eth the latter in the vesture of saints (cf. Matt. xxii. 11 f.), and Himself ministers to them (Luke xii. 3) that have been watchful in this world. Afterwards they betake themselves upwards in their new vesture and leave their bodies in the world. In all this ac- count, the amplifications prove that this apocalyptist is later than Did. xvi. and is perhaps expanding its hints. 1 1 The view that the " Outspreading in heaven " meant a vision of the Crucified returning with outspread arms — if it be really in the Sibylline Oracles at all, e. g., viii. 302 [age of the Antoniues], 342 The Apostolic Age. From the same source we can illustrate the order of events, whereby the Didache makes the Lord's coming to the world in judgment subsequent, immediately subsequent, to the rapture of the Saints. " Then shall the voice of Beloved chide in anger this heaven and this earth . . . and everything wheresoever Berial manifested himself and wrought openly in this world. And there shall be a resurrection and judgment in their midst in those days ; and Beloved shall cause to arise out of it fire to consume all the ungodly ; l and they shall be as if they had not been created." In expectations such as these, amid dark and threatening clouds on which already faith could catch the glint of the glory and judgment soon to be revealed, did earnest Christians in North Syria live their life of obedience and patience during the Period of Transition between the withdrawal of the heroic figures of the past generation and the birth of a new era through the travail-pangs of the great cri- sis in JudEea in 66-70. The full bearings of the De- struction of the Holy City and its Temple could not, of course, at once be perceived. How much of the essential truth of their previous apocalyptic notions of the Return and Reign of Jesus as the Lord's Christ did this fulfil ? How much, if anything, did it leave over unfulfilled ? It was some time ere the new questions of this sort really began to dawn on the common consciousness. They felt it was a stu- "He shall stretch forth His hands and shall embrace (measure) all the world " (in the description of the Crucifixion) — is cer- tainly a secondary one: cf. Barn. xii. 2-4. 1 Isaiah xi. 4 ; 2 Thess. i. 8, ii. 8. The New Conception. 343 pendous event that had occurred ; that the Old Cove- nant had outwardly passed away. And so far, as well as in practical matters touching the relation of Jews and Gentiles in the Messianic Ecclesia, the air was cleared. But as regards the larger providential bear- ing of this catastrophe on the world-history of the Kingdom, its development and duration on earth, they at best " saw men as trees walking." Nor can it be said that the Christian Church has even yet attained to clear consciousness on the magnitude of the change of ideals involved in that Divine annul- ling of the hitherto prevalent assumption, namely that a bodily return of Messiah in judgment on His rejecters, and particularly the Jewish people, was the true goal of the Christian's Hope. For in this particular form of the hope a principle was involved, a way of conceiving God's Kingdom and the methods of its full realization on earth. And with the gradual falsification of that hope, its principle must itself be recognized to have given place to another more in keeping with the ways of God in history. CHAPTER V. THE EPISTLE OF JUDE AND II PETER. E have already seen that the unsettle- ment among Syrian Christians between 60-70 A. D., unlike that in the churches of Asia Minor addressed in 1 Peter, was due largely to internal dissensions. Of the continuance of this state of things we find evidence in the epistle known as Second Peter and that by Jude. Both present special difficulties on account of their want of obvious points of con- tact with the known history of the Apostolic Age : but our study of the Didache may have done some- thing to supply the true background. The two epistles are more closely related than any other two in the New Testament. For the one clearly borrows from the other. But which is the more original? This literary problem is too complicated to discuss here, but is dealt with in the Literary Appendix. Suffice it to say that the priority of Jude to 2 Peter as it stands may be safely assumed ; yet it is by no means certain that 2 Peter now appears in its original form. In these circumstances we must base our picture in the main upon Jude's statments, and must let it apply to the decade after 70 A. D., even more than to the years just before it. The errorists in question erred mainly in matters of conduct. Even their denial of the Lord was prob- 344 Current View of the Unseen World. 345 ably that involved in participation in idol-feasts. 1 Yet a certain perverted theory underlay their prac- tice. They defended their actions as allowed by that "grace" into which they had been brought by faith. They may even have quoted Pauline phrases to this purpose. Such a possibility had confronted St. Paul' himself as early as 55 A. D., through his experiences at Corinth (Rom. vi. 1). But their peculiar notion of the bondage which they conceived themselves to have renounced for the "freedom " of the Gospel, is hinted at in the statement that their fleshly defilement was associated with a repudiation of " lordship " and a blaspheming of " glories." This is obscure to the modern reader only because he is not aware of the background of traditional and superstitious beliefs that existed from the first even in Christian minds, but were kept in abeyance as long as the power of fresh faith was unimpaired. Time, however, with its slow but potent alchemy gradually destroyed this relation between the old and the new. " The love of many waxed cold." The delay of the Lord's return had an unsettling effect, causing men to fall more and more under the sway of the ordinary forces of human nature and of society, and then by the aid of old beliefs to frame theories to explain and justify their practice. In this case, it is the current view of the unseen world, as containing two hierarchies of angels, the bad and the good, each with its own laws of action 1 " Ye cannot share in the table of the Lord and the table of de- mons" (1 Cor. x. 21). For the conjunction of this with unchas- tity, compare the Nicolaitans of Rev. ii. 14 f., 20, 24. 346 The Apostolic Age. upon human life, that intrudes as a deflecting factor in the Christian consciousness. Already we have seen it at work at Colossse in Paul's last days. Only here the same views work out in the opposite direction. Paul had to check the tendency to seek deliverance in life's moral conflict by reliance on good angelic beings, to checkmate the machinations of their evil doubles. Now certain men have lost the sound Christian instinct which feels fleshly lusts to be themselves the worst bondage. Being satisfied that their salvation was secured by their having been placed, once and for all in baptism, under the pro- tection of Christ as supreme in the unseen world — so that the hierarchy of evil spirits can no longer touch them — they feel free to follow their own im- pulses, and to scoff at the "potentates" of ill whose "lordship" they had finally repudiated at baptism. ' This gives us the key to the contrast which immediately follows, between their attitude to mighty spirits of ill and that of even the arch- angel Michael to the devil, as set forth in the apoc- ryphal Assumption of Moses, a story innocently cited by the simple Galilean Jude, just as the Book of Enoch is cited as genuine four verses later. Thus these men were not Gnostics, in the com- monly understood sense, any more than certain of the Colossians were Gnostics. They did indeed con- 1 We are not warranted in believing that the formal " renuncia- tion of the devil and all his pomp" (i. e., angelic hierarchy) was already a part of the baptismal rite. But this idea of its nature and effect was doubtless held in certain circles. The mode of thought, as an element in contemporary Judaism, is witnessed by the Testament of Solomon. Antinomian Theology. 347 ceive salvation as " spiritual " in a physical rather than an ethical sense, a matter of the " dynasty " a man was under, rather than of the renewed will. What determined the exchange, of realms was a kind of " knowledge," the sort of wisdom that we associ- ate with the wizard. But beyond these general features, which marked 50-100 A. D. as much as 100-150 A. D., there is nothing Gnostic about these antinomians. Their affinities are rather with the Nicolaitans of provincial Asia as described in John's Apocalypse, men who held the moral indifference of actions for those "emancipated" by faith. 1 The general type was already discerned and described by Paul, in writing to Timothy at Ephesus of men " holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof " (i. e., by their moral practice, 2 Tim. iii. 5). Indeed what he says of their moral tone holds also of these men. For Jude calls them "murmurers, grumblers at their lot, walking after their (own) desires — and their mouth uttereth swell- ing words — showing respect of persons for the sake of advantage." Behind such a description, taken along with other hints that imply the claim to play a leading part among the brethren, we may see more than appears on the surface ; namely, a state of things similar to that which prompted the publication of the " Teach- ing of the Twelve Apostles." " These," says Jude, 1 The affinity is enforced by the analogy to Balaam's teaching in either case, " who taught Balak to cast a stuinbliug-block in the way of the children of Israel, even the eating of idol-meats and fornication " (Rev. ii. 14 f.). 348 The Apostolic Age. "are they who are sunken reefs in your Love-feasts as they feast with 3^011, shepherds, as it were, that boldly pasture themselves." Here our thoughts are carried back to the Didache and its warnings against "prophets" who order, in the Spirit, a Love- feast for their own enjoyment. We even get fresh insight into its allusion to the possibility of a " prophet " conveying some lesson in a manner that would be unseemly in others. How liable to abuse, under the cloak of naive Christian Love, the pro- phetic carte blanche at love-feasts must have been, one can well imagine, even without the hint which 2 Peter ii. 14, adds in borrowing Jude's words. And yet further light is thrown on the subject by John's denunciation of the " prophetess " Jezebel (Rev. ii. 20) ; with whom the parallel is the closer that she and her dupes boasted that their insight into " the deep things of Satan " exempted them from all harm from heathen conduct, in the way already explained. It was this awful caricature of the Christian re- demption (not from sin, but in sin) that the would- be "prophets," whom Jude has mainly in view, tried to impose on " the Saints." And it was the firm re- sistance which they met with, in the protests of the duly appointed local ministry, representing continu- ous Apostolic tradition in each church — mainly of a moral kind — which led them to complain bitterly of God as well as of man, touching their " hard fate " in not having their prophetic vocation recognized and deferred to. In these circumstances they pro- ceeded to create separate coteries, in order to pander Jude's Ethical Teaching. 349 to their own egoism, as if in disproof of their claim to the Spirit in a special degree (v. 19). But as it was their utter lack of true love that gave the lie to their spurious spirituality ; so too it was in such love, rooted in the love of God, that Jude saw the safety of sincere Christians. Such, "loved of God the Father and preserved in their calling by Jesus Christ," are referred for the secret of steadfastness to the holy nature of the faith 1 that lived in them as the basis of the new life, and to the Holy Spirit, through whose initial illumination they knew in germ all that was essential (20 f. cf. 5). Let them grow in insight by divinely prompted prayer, and walk humbly as those whose only ground of confi- dence lay in the mercy of their Lord Jesus Christ, on which they were waiting for eternal life. But Jude had himself drunk too deeply of his Lord's love to stop here. His heart yearns for the very men whose actual state he has been denouncing with all the passion that is the obverse of love to God and His ways. And so he urges his "beloved ones " to care for the souls that were on their way to "the blackness of darkness." Yet they must dis- criminate. Some, who are still wavering, are to be rebuked, to bring them to their senses ; some, al- ready in the fire, are to be snatched from it in haste ; some, yet further gone, are to be approached with ■So 2 Peter i. 3 f., where Christians are "dowered with all re- quisite to life and piety, through full knowledge of Him who called them through (His own) glory and excellence ;" wherehy they are enahled to become " sharers in the Divine nature, escaping from the corruption in the world through desire." 350 The Apostolic Age. solicitous pity and yet with due loathing for fleshly sin itself. Whether this gradation of attitude towards differ- ent types of men implies knowledge of the "Two "Ways " {Did. ii. 7) or not, it is certainly true that there is much affinity of tone between Jude's descrip- tion of the false teachers — their self-seeking, their cor- rupting and divisive influence — and what we have in Did. xi. and xvi. In the latter passage, the eschato- logical exhortation, we read that the " last season " or " the last days " will be critical ; for " false proph- ets and corrupters " will abound, and " the sheep will be turned into wolves and love will turn to hate." As a safeguard against these dangers, the faithful are bidden to " assemble together frequently." Simi- larly Jude follows up his summary of Apostolic warn- ing (17 f.) by the remark, " these are they who cause separations" in the Christian society. These resem- blances at least tend to locate Jude's readers in Syria, to the north of Palestine, the home of the Didache and of the Christian part of the Ascension of Isaiah (c. 65-66). Such would naturally be ad- dressed on the subject of " our common salvation " by one revered outside Palestine, as well as within it. For Jude was at once the surviving brother of the Lord and of James the Just, and a representative in that region of the collective Apostolic body. On the whole, then, we may date the Epistle about 70- 80 A. D., to allow for the complete disappearance of the original Apostles from the region in question. So that in a transitional period, beginning about 60 A. D., and extending beyond 70 for some few years, Period of Transition. 351 we may imagine Syrian Christianity harassed with a form of pagan antinomianism which probably tended not a little to hasten the development of church or- ganization in those parts. Many of the facts, how- ever, would fit almost equally into the conditions of provincial Asia, as known to us about the same period. CHAPTER VI. EARLY WRITTEN GOSPELS. EHIND all written Gospels lies the Gospel, the message of Jesus Christ and touching him. It was preached and taught long years before men thought of committing it to the unresponsive medium of dead papyrus. This method of propagation was the one most in keeping with the habits of the land of its birth, where " the traditions of the elders," referred to in our Gospels themselves, were handed on orally for centuries. The more sacred the deposit, the more this was felt to be the proper course. Specially must it have been so with a message so spontaneous, so vital and vitalizing, as the Gospel that was a word of power and life, attested and borne home by the manifest Spirit of God. And if another reason for its continued oral character be needed, it is found in the early Church's expectation of its Lord's return within the lifetime of the original eyewitnesses. The problem, then, is rather this : How and why did the Evangelic tradition begin to pass into writing? We may be sure that none of the Apostles would dream of anything so formal as the reduction to fixed written form of their living memories, save at the suggestion of some great change in the conditions of their ministry. No doubt such a change would come about when one and another of the original disciples 352 Christ's Practical Teaching. 353 began to drop out of the ranks by " falling on sleep," and the dwindling band of survivors awoke with a shock of surprise to the fact that the Kingdom was to come by a longer way than they had suspected. But even then the idea of perpetuating their witness in writing was by no means certain to occur: for it was already being continued in more or less fixed oral tradition. An early tradition, indeed, attributes to the Apostle Matthew the first Gospel writing, somewhere about 60-64 A. D. But it is very doubt- ful whether this really means more than that our first Gospel had come into the hands of men like Papias, c. 75-100, as embodying Matthew's witness. That witness would no doubt rest on a basis common to him with his fellow -Apostles and be fixed in its main features during the early days of their preaching, when they were living in close relations as a body of witnesses. But what is of special importance is the character of the memoirs. They were of Christ's words rather than His deeds: and it is for the sake of the words, the Sayings [Logia) of Jesus, on which he himself was publishing comments, that Papias alludes to Matthew as writing at all. 1 Christ's teach- ing was the most practical thing, as the basis of con- duct : and accordingly it, rather than His life and 1 " Matthew, then, in Hebrew compiled the Sayings : but each man had to interpret them as best he conld." Papias' object was to substitute standard interpretations in place of amateur and often arbitrary exegesis. So in Apost. Const, i. 4, which repre- sents an early state of things, men are bidden to "call to mind and meditate on the oracles {Logia) of the Christ" ; and, just be- low, to "peruse carefully the Gospel," defined as "the comple- ment " of the Old Testament writings. W 354 The Apostolic Age. deeds, first attracted attention. It was, in fact, the new Decalogue, the standard of Christian living and discipline (comp. the " Two Ways," the first part of the Didache). While the stories of the Master's gracious and mighty life were prized as conveying inspiring ideas of His person and spirit, yet there pre- cision was secondary ; the broad, vivid impression sufficed. With the New Law it was otherwise : the very words were of moment, and churches were anx- ious to secure an exact knowledge of them. Can we, however, imagine to ourselves the prob- able form of the primitive apostolic body of Christ's Sayings or Logia? To a certain degree we can. For when we observe that a large part of the Sayings in our Matthew have almost verbal parallels in Luhe % we may conclude that such sayings preserve the form in which they were repeated in the instruction {cate- chesis) of the early Palestinian churches. Many would go farther and urge that these sayings once stood in a written book of Logia by Matthew. 1 Some even hold that the work contained a good deal of historic matter, needful as setting forth the sayings, which gave character to the whole. But the theory is rendered less persuasive by an analogy which has just come to light, and which proves that, in certain churches at least, collections of Jesus' Sayings strung together by the mere recurrence of a formula of quo- tation met a felt need. It shows an interest in the didactic apart from the historical side of the revela- tion in Christ. The collection in question is known 1 The author's reasons for doubting this will appear in the art, Matthew, in Hastings' Diet, of the Bible, Vol. III. The "Sayings of Jesus." 355 to us only through a single leaf, the eleventh, which was dug up in Egypt on the site of Oxyrhynchns, a flourishing city in Roman times.' A probable view of the origin of this collection is that it presents one type of oral teaching or catechesis in local use, possi- bly at Alexandria, in the second Christian genera- tion ; for such of the sayings as echo discipular reflection, rather than the Master's original words, have most affinity with writings of that period. It does not seem to utilize our Gospels, so much as the same tradition (oral or written) as that upon which they are based. The sayings are all put into the mouth of Jesus by the bare use of the formula, "Saith Jesus." This is very primitive : and yet it is unique (apart from dialogue, as sometimes in our Gospels), and has here a striking effect. For the present " saith," not "said," has a mystical force similar to that whereby the Risen Jesus addresses the Seven Churches in the book of Revelation, as the abiding Lord of man- kind. This force has been well illustrated by Cow- per's familiar couplet : "Jesus speaks, and speaks to thee, Say, poor sinner, lov'st thou Me?" The dicta, then, are set forth as what Jesus is ever saying, in a timeless present of ideal verity and obli- gation, to the soul of man since the days of His 1 AOTIA If HOT: Sayings of our Lord, from an early Greek papy- rus; discovered and edited by B. P. Grenfell and A.S. Hunt: 1897. What follows can only claim to be the writer's own opinion, after weighing the various theories on the subject. 356 The Apostolic Age. flesh. 1 This will be seen to have a vital bearing on the sense of certain of the sayings. We cite them just as they begin and end abruptly on the papyrus. ". . . and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote that is in 2 thy brother's eye." Saith Jesus : Except ye fast (to) the world, ye shall in no wise find the kingdom of Jesus; 3 and except ye keep (" sabbatize ") the Sabbath, 4 ye shall not see the Father. Saith Jesus: I stood in the midst of the world, and in flesh did I appear to them ; and I found all men drunken and none found I athirst among them ; and my soul grieveth over the sons of men, because they are blind in their heart and see not [their mis- ery and] 5 poverty. Saith Jesus : Wherever there are [two, they are not without God]; 6 and if there is perchance one alone, [let him know] 7 I am with him. Raise the stone and there shalt thou find Me, cleave the wood and there am I. 1 The phrase turns into the third person the " Verily, I say unto you" of the gospels. The compiler, in dramatic fashion, dis- cards the past tense for the living present of religious relation : and the repetition of the formula gives didactic emphasis, like the reiterated " My Sou " of Proverbs or the "Two Ways." 2 Words in italics agree with Luke against Matthew or Mark. 3 So the MS (IOT, not 0T), though editors have overlooked the fact. The phrase occurs also in Barnabas viii. 5 (xi. 11), but could never have come from Christ's own lips. 4 This, like the fasting just named, is to be taken metaphor- ically. Both probably go back in idea to Isaiah Iviii. 6, 13. 8 Words restored by Dr. Taylor on basis of Rev. iii. 17. 6 This only gives the probable sense. 7 i