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THE LIFE AND EPISTLES ST. PAUL

THE REV. W. J. CONYBEARE MA

LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

AND

THE VERY REV. J. ἃ HOWSON, D.D.

DEAN OF CHESTER

It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty that we should at all times and in all places give thanks unto thee, O Lord, Holy Father, Almighty, Everlasting God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, according to whose most true promise the Holy Ghost came down from heaven, lighting upon the Apostles, to teach them, and to lead them to all truth; giving them boldness with fervent zeal constantly to preach the Gospel to all nations; whereby we have been brought out of darkness and error, into the clear light and true knowledge of thee, and of thy Son Jesus Christ.—Proper Preface to the Trisagium for Whitsunday

᾿Αφέντες τοὺς ἄλλους ἅπαντας, Παῦλον προστησώμεθα μόνον τοῦ λόγου συνίστορα, κἂν τούτῳ θεωρήσωμεν οἷόν ἐστι ψυχῶν ἐπιμέλεια. ‘Os ἂν δὲ ῥᾷστα τοῦτο γνοίημεν, τὶ Παῦλος αὐτὸς περὶ Παύλου φησὶν ἀκούσωμεν. . . Νομοθετεῖ δούλοις καὶ δεσπόταις, ἄρχουσι καὶ ἀρχομένοις, ἀνδράσι καὶ γυναιξὶν, σοφίᾳ καὶ ἀμαθίᾳ" πάντων ὑπερμαχεῖ, πάντων ὑπερεύχεται, . . κῆρυξ ἐθνῶν, ᾿Ιουδαίων προστάτης.---Θππο. Naz. Oratio Apologetica

wer Peaks 5 |

VOL. I. | »|

LONDON

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1881

LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND Οὐ... NEW-STRERT SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET

1 3 i'l a T Stone ee a Thy ¢ ‘dealt ash Lia τς νὰ ΠΩΣ . oy ae ee ame}: i iis i ; Vs + ham ΟΣ ee td ᾿ ke Ὁ Ψ os

CONTENTS

THE FIRST VOLUME.

INTRODUCTION - - - - - - - - nim—xvi

CHAPTER 1.

Great Men of Great Periods. — Period of Christ’s Apostles. — Jews, Greeks, and Romans. — Religious Civilisation of the Jews. — Their History and its Relation to that of the World. — Heathen Preparation for the Gospel. — Character and Lan- guage of the Greeks. — Alexander.— Antioch and Alexandria. — Growth and Government of the Roman Empire. — Misery of Italy and the Provinces. — Pre- paration in the Empire for Christianity. — Dispersion of the Jews, in Asia, Africa, and Europe. — Proselytes. — Provinces of Cilicia and Judea. — Their Geography and History. — Cilicia under the Romans. — Tarsus. — Cicero. — Political Changes in Judea. — Herod and his Family. — The Roman Governors. — Conclusion - |

CHAP. II.

Jewish Origin of the Church. — Sects and Parties of the Jews. — Pharisees and Sad- ducees. — St. Paul a Pharisee. — Hellenists and Aramzans. — St. Paul’s Family Hellenistic but not Hellenising. — His Infancy at Tarsus. — The Tribe of Benjamin.

— His Father’s Citizenship. — Scenery of the Place. — His Childhood. — He is sent to Jerusalem. — State of Judea and Jerusalem. — Rabbinical Schools. — Gamaliel. — Mode of Teaching. — Synagogues. — Student-Life of St. Paul. — His early Manhood. — First Aspect of the Church. — St. Stephen. — The Sanhedrin. — St. Stephen the Forerunner of St. Paul. — His Martyrdom and Prayer - 34

Note on the Libertines and the Citizenship of St. Paul - - - - 82 a2

CONTENTS.

CHAP. III. Page Funeral of St. Stephen. — Saul’s continued Persecution. — Flight of the Christians. — Philip and the Samaritans.— Saul’s Journey to Damascus. — Aretas, King of Petra. — Roads from Jerusalem to Damascus. — Neapolis. — History and Deserip- tion of Damascus. — The Narratives cf the Miracle. —It was a real Vision of Jesus Christ. — Three Days in Damascus, — Ananias. — Baptism and first Preach- ing of Saul. — He retires into Arabia. — Meaning of the Term Arabia. — Petra and the Desert. — Conspiracy at Damascus. — Escape to Jerusalem. — Barnabas. — Fortnight with St. Peter. — Conspiracy. — Vision in the Temple. — Saul with- draws to Syria and Cilicia - - - - - - - 83

CHAP. IV.

Wider Diffusion of Christianity. — Antioch. — Chronology of the Acts. — Reign of Caligula. — Claudius and Herod Agrippa I. — The Year 44, — Conversion of the Gentiles. — St. Peter and Cornelius. — Joppa and Cesarea. — St. Peter’s Vision.

— Baptism of Cornelius. — Intelligence from Antioch. — Mission of Barnabas. — Saul with Barnabas at Antioch.—The Name “ Christian.” — Description and History of Antioch. — Character of its Inhabitants. — Earthquakes. — Famine. — Barnabas and Saul at Jerusalem. — Death of St. James and of Herod Agrippa. — Return with Mark to Antioch. — Providential Preparation of St. Paul. — Results of his Mission to Jerusalem - - - - - - - 118

CHAP. V.

Second Part of the Acts of the Apostles. — Revelation at. Antioch. — Public De- votions, — Departure of Barnabas and Saul. — The Orontes. — History and De- scription of Seleucia. — Voyage to Cyprus. — Salamis. — Roman Provincial System. —Proconsuls and Propretors.— Sergius Paulus. — Oriental Impostors at Rome

and in the Provinces. — Elymas Barjesus. — History of Jewish Names. — Saul and Paul - - - - - - - - - - 142

CHAP. VI.

Old and New Paphos. — Departure from Cyprus. — Coast of Pamphylia. — Perga. — Mark’s Return to Jerusalem. — Mountain-Scenery of Pisidia. — Situation of Antioch. — The Synagogue. — Address to the Jews. — Preaching to the Gentiles. — Persecution by the Jews. — History and Description of Iconium.— Lycaonia. — Derbe and Lystra. — Healing of the Cripple. — Idolatrous Worship offered to Paul and Barnabas. — Address to the Gentiles. — St. Paul stoned. — Timotheus. — The Apostles retrace their Journey. — Perga and Attaleia — Return to Syria ~ 167

CONTENTS.

CHAP. VII.

Page Controversy in thé Church.— Separation of Jews and Gentiles. — Obstacles to Union, both social and religious. — Difficulty in the Narrative. — Scruples connected with the Conversion of Cornelius. — Lingering Discontent. — Feelings excited by the Conduct and Success of St. Paul. — Especially at Jerusalem. — Intrigues of the Judaizers at Antioch. —Consequent Anxiety and Perplexity.— Mission of Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem.— Divine Revelation to St. Paul. — Titus. — Journey through Pheenice and Samaria. —The Pharisees. — Private Conferences. — Public Meet- ing. — Speech of St. Peter. — Narrative of Barnabas and Paul.— Speech of St. James. — The Decree. — Charitable Nature of its Provisions. —It involves the Abolition of Judaism. — Public Recognition of St. Paul’s Mission to the Heathen. — St. John. — Return to Antioch with Judas, Silas, and Mark.— Reading of the Letter. — Weak Conduct of St. Peter at Antioch. — He is rebuked by St. Paul.

— Personal Appearance of the two Apostles. — Their Reconciliation - - 217

Note on the Chronology of Gal.ii. - - - - - - - 244

CHAP. VIII.

Political Divisions of Asia Minor. — Difficulties of the Subject. — Provinces in the Reigns of Claudius and Nero. — I. Asia. —II. Bithynia. — ITI. Pamphylia. — IV. Galatia. — V. Pontus. — VI. Cappadocia. — VII. Cilicia. — Visitation of the Churches proposed. — Quarrel and Separation of Paul and Barnabas. — Paul and Silas in Cilicia. — They cross the Taurus. — Lystra. — Timothy. — His Cireum- cision. — Journey through Phrygia. — Sickness of St. Paul. — His Reception in Galatia. — Journey to the Augean. — Alexandria Troas. — St. Paul’s Vision - 253

CHAP. IX.

Voyage by Samothrace to Neapolis. — Philippi. — Constitution of a Colony. — Lydia. — The Demoniac Slave. — Paul and Silas arrested. — The Prison and the Jailor. — The Magistrates. — Departure from Philippi. — St. Luke. — Macedonia de- scribed. — Its Condition as a Province. — The Via Egnatia. — St. Paul’s Journey through Amphipolis and Apollonia. — Thessalonica. — The Synagogue. — Subjects of St. Paul’s Preaching.— Persecution, Tumult, and Flight. — The Jews at Berea. — St. Paul again persecuted. — Proceeds to Athens - - - - 306

CONTENTS.

CHAP. X. Page

Arrival on the Coast of Attica. — Scenery round Athens. — The Pireus and the “Long Walls.”— The Agora.—The Acropolis. — The “ Painted Porch” and the “Garden.” The Apostle alone in Athens. — Greek Religion. — The Un- known God. — Greek Philosophy. — The Stoics and Epicureans. — Later Period of the Schools. — St. Paul in the Agora. — The eee: — Speech of St. Paul. — Departure from Athens - - “ = - - 369

CHAP. XI.

Letters to Thessalonica written from Corinth. — Expulsion of the Jews from Rome. — Aquila and Priscilla. — St. Paul’s Labours. — First Epistle to the Thessalonians. — St. Paul is opposed by the Jews; and turns to the Gentiles. — His Vision. — Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. — Continued Residence in Corinth - - - All

Note on the Movements of Silas and Timotheus - - - - - 438

CHAP. XII.

The Isthmus. — Early History of Corinth. — Its Trade and Wealth. — Corinth under the Romans. — Province of Achaia. — Gallio the Governor. — Tumult at Corinth. — Cenchrex.— Voyage by Ephesus to Cesarea. — Visit to Jerusalem.— Antioch - 440

CHAP. XIII.

The Spiritual Gifts, Constitution, Ordinances, Divisions, and Heresies of the Primitive | Church in the Lifetime of St. Paul - - - - - - 458

Note on the Origin of the Heresies of the later Apostolic Age - - - - 459

—— -

LIST OF PLATES

THE FIRST VOLUME

TARSUS . 2 ay : ‘ F ; j ‘ MAP OF THE COUNTRIES ADJACENT TO THE MEDITERRANEAN TARSUS, WITH MOUNT TAURUS . ( : » EY ν FALLS OF THE CYDNUS, NEAR TARSUS Σ Ε ; : MAP OF JERUSALEM ; : : 1 : : : MAP OF PALESTINE, ACCORDING TO THE ANCIENT ITINERARIES VALLEY OF NABLOUS . : ‘ : ; ; : DAMASCUS ς ᾿ OT, 5 oe es ; : JERUSALEM. : “ : ; ἔ ᾿ Ἶ ANTIOCH . j . ; Σ αὐτῷ ἢ ; ; . PLAN OF ANCIENT ANTIOCH .. ak we : : MOUNT CASIUS : : , 4 Wet nee ἢ LARNECA (CYPRUS) . ra : Ἔ : ;

MAP OF CYPRUS . ; : : ; ; . 2

MAP OF THE HARBOUR OF FAMAGOUSTA, WITH THE RUINS OF SALAMIS

MAP OF OLD AND NEW PAPHOS, WITH THE ADJACENT COAST

ANTIOCH OF PISIDIA. : 2 : , = : : KONIEH (ICONIUM) . ἡ . ᾿ ὃ ὸ . . MAP OF THE SECOND JOURNEY . ᾿ ‘ ᾽ ‘ , MAP OF N. OF ZGEAN e Ε Ξ ‘ ‘ ‘ ARCHES IN ALEXANDRIA TROAS . Ε ᾿ P . PHILIPPI . 5 : Ν ᾿ " Ξ Ἑ . : ATHENS . ἢ 5 ; % ‘ Σ : : ‘ PIREUS . é ὶ Ξ ᾿ ᾿ ᾿ ‘ : ν᾽ PLAN OF ATHENS . ἃ ‘ F ‘ : : . ISTHMUS OF CORINTH ; Ἔ 5 ‘ : τ 5 CORINTH . Ν : Σ : ; A ᾽ Ἴ ε

VIEW NEAR EPHESUS > : ws

VIGNETTE

To face page 1

52

LIST OF ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD,

IN

THE FIRST VOLUME

Cor or Herop THe Great . : Sr Com or Herop Acrirpa L Fy . 5 ib Denarius oF Trsertus,— MaccaB#an SHEKEL . 8 Com or Axtiocuus ἘΡΙΡΗΛΝΕΒ, WITH Porrrait. 10 Vierxa Cameo.— ΑΡΟΤΗΕΟΒΙΒ or AuGusTus . 16 Com or Tarsus. — Haprian Ρ . 24 Com or Antiocuus EripHanes, WITH Heap oF JUPITER . ° ς ΄ 28 Remarxs or Ancrent ΒΕΙΡΟΒ aT JERUSALEM . 29 Toms with Hesrew, GREEK, AND Roman Inscrip- TIONS A : . 4 - . 83 Com or Tarsus . . . . . 56 Tiserivs wito Toca . δ . . 60 Comx or CYRENE . . . . . 65 View or JERUSALEM FROM THE N.E. - - 79 Brince over THe Jorpan 8. or Lake Tiserias 92 Com or Damascus . . . . 94 Wart or Damascus . . - “λ10 Corx or Anetas, King or Damascus. . 117 Ditto Ditto ° ° e ib, CaticuLa . . . . δ . 120 AiecoricaL Statue or ANTIOCH . 186 Com or CLaupius anD AGrirPa . ‘ . 141 EXcAvaTION aT SELEUCIA . . . . 148 Carz Greco . . . 151 Proconsut or Cyprus (Com) . . 156 Com or Cyprus . . . . . 166 Com or Parnos - . . . 167 Com or ῬΕΈΒΟΑ ᾿ Z . .178 Coms or ΑΝΤΊΙΟΘΗ ΙΝ Pism1a . . 183 Com or Icontum . . . P - 196

Mar or NeiansourHoop or Lystra AND DERBE, ἫΝ

with Roman Roaps δ . : - 200 ANCIENT SACRIFICE . . e . . 206 Watt or Perea .᾿ δ . . . 213 View or ΑἸΤΑΙΕΙΑ. ° δ . . 215 TowrR AT PerGa . . . « . 216 ΤΟΜΒΒ at SELEUCIA . . . . 218 Com or ANTIOCH . . . . . 243 Coins or Biryynia Ν A ᾿ . 259 Kara-Daau, near Lystra. . . . 281 Harsour or Troas . . - . 808 Comss or Maceponta . . . + 805 Com or SAMOTHRACE . . . . 807 Corn or ῬΗΠΙ͂ΡΡΙ . . . . . 812 Corn or Roman Maceponia e . . 337 Corns or ΑΜΡΗΙΡΟΙῚΒ . - . 840 AMPHIPOLIS . . δ . . . 342 'T'HESSALONICA FROM THE SEA é e . 346 Corn or THESSALONICA . δ . . 357 Tue TuLuianum at Rome . . . 808 Com or ATHENS . ° . . . 377 Tue AREOPAGUS . . . . . 381 Corn or ATHENS . 5 a ἡδὺς . 8382

Tue ACROPOLIS RESTORED, AS SEEN FROM THE

AREOPAGUS . δ . . . 408 ATHENIAN TETRADRACHM . . . . 410 Corn or Corinto . . . » . 411 Bust or Craupius . ° . . 415 Com or Corinto Ὁ . i . . 487

Ditto . . Pa 4 « . 444 Ditto . . “ . . 446

THE

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INTRODUCTION,

Tue purpose of this work is to give a living picture of St. Paul himself, and of the circumstances by which he was surrounded.

The biography of the Apostle must be compiled from two sources ; first, his own letters, and secondly, the narrative in the Acts of the Apostles. The latter, after a slight sketch of his early history, supplies us with fuller details of his middle life; and his Epistles afford much subsidiary information concerning his missionary labours during the same perio]. The light concentrated upon this portion of his course, makes darker by contrast the obscurity which rests upon the remainder ; for we are left to gain what knowledge we can of his later years, from scattered hints in a few short letters of his own, and from a single sentence of his disciple Clement.

But in order to present anything like a living picture of St. Paul’s career, much more is necessary than a mere transcript of the Scriptural narrative, even where it is fullest. Every step of his course brings us into contact with some new phase of ancient life, unfamiliar to our modern experience, and upon which we must throw light from other sources, if we wish it to form a distinct image in the mind. For example, to comprehend the influences under which he grew to manhood, we must realise the position of a Jewish family in Tarsus, “ the chief city of Cilicia; we must understand the kind of educa- tion which the son of such a family would receive as a boy in his

a2

iv INTRODUCTION.

Hebrew home, or in the schools of his native city, and in his riper youth “ δὲ the feet of Gamaliel” in Jerusalem ; we must be acquainted with the profession for which he was to be prepared by this training, and appreciate the station and duties of an expounder of the Law. And that we may be fully qualified to do all this, we should have a clear view of the state of the Roman empire at the time, and espe- cially of its system in the provinces ; we should also understand the political position of the Jews of the “dispersion ;” we should be (so to speak) hearers in their synagogues; we should be students of their Rabbinical theology. And in like manner, as we follow the Apostle in the different stages of his varied and adventurous career, we must strive continually to bring out in their true brightness the half effaced forms and colouring of the scene in which he acts; and while he “ becomes all things to all men, that he might by all means save “ some,” we must form to ourselves a living likeness of the things and of the men among which he moved, if we would rightly estimate his work. Thus we must study Christianity rising in the midst of Judaism, we must realise the position of its early churches with their mixed society, to which Jews, Proselytes, and Heathens had each contributed a characteristic element ; we must qualify ourselves to be umpires (if we may so speak) in their violent internal divisions; we must listen to the strife of their schismatic parties, when one said “1 “ am of Paul, and another I am of Apollos ; we must study the true character of those early heresies which even denied the resurrection, and advocated impurity and lawlessness, claiming the right “to sin “ that grace might abound,” “ defiling the mind and conscience ”? of their followers, and making them “ abominable and disobedient, and “ to every good work reprobate ;” * we must trace the extent to which Greek philosophy, Judaizing formalism, and Eastern superstition blended their tainting influence with the pure fermentation of that new leaven which was at last to leaven the whole mass of civilized society.

1 Rom. vi 1. 2 Tit. i. 15, 8 Tit. 1, 16,

INTRODUCTION. Vv

Again, to understand St. Paul’s personal history as a missionary to the heathen, we must know the state of the different populations which he visited; the character of the Greek and Roman civili- zation at the epoch; the points of intersection between the political history of the world and the scriptural narrative; the social organization and gradation of ranks, for which he enjoins respect ; the position of women, to which he specially refers in many of his letters; the relations between parents and children, slaves and masters, which he not vainly sought to imbue with the loving spirit of the Gospel; the quality and influence, under the early empire, of the Greek and Roman religions, whose effete corruptness he denounces with such indignant scorn; the public amusements of the people, whence he draws topics of warning or illustration ; the operation of the Roman law, under which he was so frequently arraigned; the courts in which he was tried, and the magistrates by whose sentence he suffered; the legionary soldiers who acted as his guards; the roads by which he travelled, whether through the mountains of Lycaonia or the marshes of Latium ; the course of commerce by which his journeys were so often regulated; and the character of that imperfect navigation by which his life was so many times’ endangered.

While thus trying to live in the life of a bygone age, and to call up the figure of the past from its tomb, duly robed in all its former raiment, every help is welcome which enables us to fill up the dim outline in any part of its reality. Especially we delight to look upon the only one of the manifold features of that past existence, which still is living. We remember with pleasure that the earth, the sea, and the sky still combine for us in the same land- scapes which passed before the eyes uf the wayfaring Apostle. The plain of Cilicia, the snowy distances of Taurus, the cold and rapid stream of the Cydnus, the broad Orontes under the shadow of its steep banks with their thickets of jasmine and oleander; the ‘hills

12 Cor. xi. 25. “thrice have I suffered shipwreck ;” and this was before he was wrecked upon Melita.

vi INTRODUCTION.

which “ stand about Jerusalem,”’! the “ arched fountains cold” in the ravines below, and those “flowery brooks beneath, that wash their « hallowed feet ;’ the capes and islands of the Grecian Sea, the craggy summit of Areopagus, the land-locked harbour of Syracuse, the towering cone of Etna, the voluptuous loveliness of the Cam- panian shore ; all these remain to us, the imperishable handiwork of nature. We can still look upon the same trees and flowers which he saw clothing the mountains, giving colour to the plains, or reflected in the rivers; we may think of him among the palms of Syria, the cedars of Lebanon, the olives of Attica, the green Isthmian pines of Corinth, whose leaves wove those “ fading garlands,” which he con- trasts® with the “incorruptible crown,” the prize for which he fought. Nay, we can even still look upon some of the works of man which filled him with wonder, or moved him to indignation. The “temples * made with hands”*®.which rose before him—the very apotheosis of idolatry—on the Acropolis, still stand in almost undiminished majesty and beauty. The mole on which he landed at Puteoli still stretches its ruins into the blue waters of the bay. The remains of the Baian Villas whose marble porticoes he then beheld glittering in the sunset—his first specimen of Italian luxury—still are seen along the shore. We may still enter Rome as he did by the same Appian Road, through the same Capenian Gate, and wander among the ruins of “ Czesar’s palace” * on the Palatine, while our eye rests upon the same aqueducts* radiating over the Campagna to the unchanging hills. Those who have visited these spots must often have felt a thrill of recollection as they trod in the footsteps of the | Apostle ; they must have been conscious how much the identity of the outward scene brought them into communion with him, while they tried to image to themselves the feelings with which he must have looked upon the objects before them, They who have expe-

1“ The hills stand about Jerusalem; even so 2 1 Cor. ix. 25, “ standeth the Lord round about his people.” 3 Acts xvii. 24. Ps. exxv. 2. 4 Phil. i. 13.

INTRODUCTION. vii

rienced this will feel how imperfect a biography of St. Paul must be, without faithful representations of the places which he visited. ΤῸ is hoped that the views which are contained in the present work, and which have been drawn for this special object,. will supply this deside- ratum. And it is evident that, for the purposes of such a biography, nothing but true and faithful representations of the real scenes will be valuable; these are what is wanted, and not ideal representations, even though copied from the works of the greatest masters; for, as it has been well said, “nature and reality painted at the time, «and on the spot, a nobler cartoon of St. Paul’s preaching at Athens ἐς than the immortal Rafaelle afterwards has done.” *

For a similar reason Maps have been added, exhibiting with as much accuracy as can at present be attained the physical features of the countries visited, and some of the ancient routes through them, together with plans of the most important cities, and maritime charts of the coasts where they were required.

While thus endeavouring to represent faithfully the natural objects and architectural remains connected with the narrative, it has likewise been attempted to give such illustrations as were needful of the minor productions of human art as they existed in the first century. For this purpose engravings of Coins have been given in all cases where they seemed to throw light on the circumstances mentioned in the history ; and recourse has been had to the stores of Pompeii and Herculaneum, as well as to the collection of the Vatican, and the columns of Trajan and Antoninus.

But after all this is done—after we have endeavoured, with every help we can command, to reproduce the picture of St. Paul’s deeds and times—how small would our knowledge of himself remain, if we had no other record of him left us but the story of his adventures. If his letters had never come down to us, we should have known indeed what he did and suffered, but we should have

! Wordsworth’s “ Athens and Attica,” p. 76.

vii INTRODUCTION.

had very little idea of what he was.' | Even if we could perfectly succeed in restoring the image of the scenes and circumstances in which he moved,—even if we could, as in a magic mirror, behold him speaking in the school of Tyrannus, with his Ephesian hearers in their national costume around him,—we should still see very little of Paul of Tarsus. We must listen to his words, if we would learn to know him. If fancy did her utmost, she could give us only his outward not his inward life. “ His bodily presence” (so his enemies declared) “ was weak and contemptible ;” but “ his letters” (even they allowed) “were weighty and powerful.” ? Moreover an effort of imagination and memory is needed to recal the past, but in his Epistles St. Paul is present with us. “ His “ words are not dead words, they are living creatures with hands * and feet,”* touching in a thousand hearts at this very hour the same chord of feeling which vibrated to their first utterance. We, the Christians of the nineteenth century, can bear witness now, as fully as could a Byzantine audience fourteen hundred years ago, to the saying of Chrysostom, that “ Paul by his letters still lives “ in the mouths of men throughout the whole world; by them not γε only his own converts, but all the faithful even unto this day, yea “ and all the saints who are yet to be born, until Christ’s coming “ again, both have been and shall be blessed.”* His Epistles

1 For his speeches recorded in the Acts, characteristic as they are, would by themselves have been too few and too short to add much to our knowledge of St. Paul; but illustrated as they now are by his Epistles, they become an important part of his personal biography.

22 Cor. x. 10.

8 Luther, as quoted in Archdeacon Hare’s “ Mission of the Comforter,” p. 449.

4 De Sacerdotio, IV. 7. The whole passage is well worth quoting :

Πόθεν ava τὴν οἰκουμένην ἅπασαν πολὺς ἐν τοῖς ἁπάντων ἐτὶ στόμασιν; Πόθεν ob παρ᾽ ἡμῖν μόνον, ἀλλὰ & παρὰ Ἰουδαίοις, καὶ “Ἕλλησι μάλιτα πάντων ϑαυμάζεται ; οὔκ ἀπὸ τῆς τῶν ᾿Επιτολῶν

αρετῆς ; Δι᾿ ἧς ob τοὺς τότε μόνον πιτοὺς, ada τοὺς ἐξ ἐκείνων μέχρι τῆς σήμερον γινομένους, & τοὺς μέλλοντας δὲ ἔσεσθαι μέχρι τῆς ἐσχάτης τοῦ Xpisov παρουσίας ὠφέλησέ τε & ὠφελήσει" K οὐ παύσεται τοῦτο ποιῶν, ἕως ἂν τὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων διαμένῃ γένος. “Ὥσπερ γὰρ τεῖχος ἐξ ἀδάμαντος κατασκευασϑὲν, οὕτω τὰς πανταχοῦ τῆς οἰκουμένης Ἐκκλησίας τὰ τούτου τειχίζει γράμματα. Καὶ καθάπερ τὶς dpisede γενναιότατος ἕφτηκε & νῦν μέσος, αἰχμαλωτίζων πᾶν νόημα εἴς τὴν ὑπακοὴν τοῦ Χριτου, καὶ καθαιρῶν λογισμοὺς καὶ πᾶν ὕψωμα ἐπαιρόμενον κατὰ τῆς γνώσεως τοῦ Θεοῦ. Ταῦτα δὲ πάντα ἐργάζεται, δ ὧν ἡμῖν κατέλιπεν Ἐπιφο- λῶν τῶν ϑαυμασίων ἐκείνων, & τῆς ϑείας πεπληρω» μένων σοφίας.

INTRODUCTION. ix

are to his inward life, what the mountains and rivers of Asia .and Greece and Italy are to his outward life,—the imperishable part which still remains to us, when all that time can ruin has passed away.

It is in these letters then that we must study the true life of St. Paul, from its inmost depths and springs of action, which were “ hidden with Christ in God,” down to its most minute develope- ments, and peculiar individual manifestations. In them we learn (to use the language of Gregory Nazianzene) “what is told of Paul * by Paul himself.”' Their most sacred contents indeed rise above all that is peculiar to the individual writer; for they are the communications of God to man concerning the faith and life of Christians ; which St. Paul declared (as he often asserts) by the immediate revelation of Christ himself. But his manner of teaching these eternal truths is coloured by his human character, and peculiar to himself. And such individual features are naturally impressed much more upon epistles than upon any other kind of composition. For heré we have not treatises, or sermons, which “may dwell in the general and abstract, but real letters, written to meet the actual wants of living men; giving immediate answers to real questions, and warnings against pressing dangers; full of the interests of the passing hour. And this, which must be more or less the case with all epistles addressed to particular Churches, is especially so with those of St. Paul. In his case it is not too much to say that his letters are himself—a portrait painted by his own hand, of which every feature may be “ known and read of all men.”

It is not merely that in them we see the proof of his powerful intellect, his insight into the foundations of natural theology,’ and of moral philosophy ;° for in such points, though the philo- sophical expression might belong to himself, the truths expressed were taught him of God, It is not only that we there find

1 Ti Παῦλος αὐτὸς περὶ Παύλον φησὶ. Greg. 2 Rom. i. 20, Waz. Oratio Apologetica. 3 Rom. ii. 14, 15.

b

x INTRODUCTION.

models of the sublimest eloquence, when he is kindled by the vision of the glories to come, the perfect triumph of good over evil, the manifestation of the sons of God, and their transform- ation into God’s likeness, when they shall see Him no longer? “ ina glass darkly, but face to face,”—for in such strains as these it was not so much he that spake, as the Spirit of God speaking in him;?—but in his letters, besides all’ this which: is divine, we trace every shade, even to the faintest, of his human character also. Here we see that fearless independence with which he “ withstood Peter to the face, because he was ‘to be blamed ;”°— that impetuosity which breaks out in his apostrophe to the “ foolish « Galatians ;”’*— that earnest indignation which bids ‘his' converts “ beware of dogs, beware of the concision,”® and. pours itself forth in the emphatic “God forbid,’® which meets every Anti- nomian suggestion; — that fervid patriotism which makes him « wish that he were himself accursed from Christ for his brethren, “ his kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites ;’’—that generosity: which looked for no other reward than “to preach “ the glad tidings of Christ without charge,’® and made him feel that he would rather “die, than that: any man should make this “ glorying void ;’—that dread of officious interference which led him to shrink from “ building on another man’s foundation ;” °— that delicacy which shows itself-in his appeal' to Philemon, whom he might have commanded,“ yet for love’s sake rather beseeching “ him, being such an one as Paul the aged, ‘and. now also a “ prisoner of Jesus Christ,’’® and which is even more striking in some of his farewell greetings, as (for instance) when he bids the Romans “ salute Rufus, and her who is both his mother and mine ;” ™ — that scrupulous fear of evil appearance which would not

11 Cor. xiii. 12. 2 Mat. x. 20. 7 Rom. ix. 8. $Galii-11. 4Gabiiil. 5 Philiii2, 81 Cor.ix. 18. and 15, 6 Rom. vi. 2. 1 Cor. vi. 15, &c. It is difficult 9 Rom. xv. 20.

to express the force of μὴ γένοιτο by any other 10 Philemon 9.

English phrase. MN Rom. xvi. 18.

INTRODUCTION. xi

“ eat any man’s bread for nought, but wrought with labour and “ travail night and day, that he might not be chargeable to “ any of them;”'— that refined courtesy which cannot bring itself to blame till it has first praised,? and which makes him deem it needful almost to apologise for the freedom of giving advice to those who were not personally known to him ; *—that self-denying love which “will eat no flesh while the world standeth, “ὁ Jest he make his brother to offend;’*—that impatience of exclu- sive formalism with which he overwhelms the Judaizers of Galatia, joined with a forbearance so gentle for the innocent. weakness of scrupulous consciences ;°—that grief for the sins of others, which moved him to tears when he spoke of the enemies of the cross of Christ, “of whom I tell you even weeping ;” °—that noble freedom from jealousy with which, he speaks of those who, out of rivalry to himself, preach Christ even of envy and strife, supposing to add affliction to his bonds, “ What then? notwithstanding every way, “ whether in pretence or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein « do rejoice, yea and will rejoice ;”’—that tender friendship which watches over the health of Timothy, even with a mother’s care ;*— that intense sympathy in the joys and sorrows of his converts, which could say, even to the rebellious Corinthians, “ ye are in our hearts, “ to die and live with you;”’°—that longing desire for the inter- course of affection, and that sense of loneliness when it was with- held, which perhaps is the most touching feature of all, because it approaches most nearly to a weakness, “ When I came to Troas “ to preach Christ’s gospel, and a door was opened to me of the “ Lord, I had no rest in my spirit, because I found not Titus my

11 Thess. ii. 9. “ able also to admonish one another. Never-

2 Compare the laudatory expressions in 1 Cor. i. 5-7. and 2 Cor.i. 6-7. with the heavy and unmingled censure conveyed in the whole sub- sequent part of these Epistles.

8 Rom. xv. 14,15. “ And I myself also am “ persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye also “ are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge,

“ theless, brethren, I have written the more “ boldly unto you in some sort, as putting you “ in mind.”

41 Cor. viii. 13.

5 1 Cor. viii. 12. and Rom. xiv. 21.

6 Phil. iii. 18. 7 Phil. i. 15. 81 Tim. v. 23. 9 2 Cor. vii. 3.

b 2

xii INTRODUCTION.

ἐς brother; but taking my leave of them, I went from thence into * Macedonia.” And “when I was come into Macedonia, my flesh “ had no rest, but I was troubled on every side ; without were “ fightings, within were fears. Nevertheless God, who comforteth “ those that are cast down, comforted me by the coming of « Titus.”’! “Do thy diligence to come shortly unto me ; for Demas « hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed “ unto Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia ; only * Luke is with me.”’?

Nor is it only in the substance, but even in the style of these writings that we recognise the man Paul of Tarsus. In the parenthetical constructions and broken sentences, we see the rapidity with which the thoughts crowded upon him, almost too fast for utterance; we see him animated rather than weighed down by “ that which cometh upon him daily, the care of all the churches,” * as he pours forth bis warnings or his arguments in a stream of eager and impetuous dictation, with which the pen of the faithful Tertius can hardly keep pace. And above all, we trace his presence in the postscript to every letter, which he adds as an authentication in his own characteristic handwriting,’ “ which “ is the token in every epistle; so 1 write.”® Sometimes as he takes up the pen he is moved with indignation when he thinks of the false brethren among those whom he addresses; “ the salu- “ tation of me Paul with my own hand,—if any man love not “ the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema.””’ Sometimes, as he raises his hand to write, he feels it cramped by the fetters which bind him to the soldier who guards him,* “I Paul salute “ you with my own hand,—remember my chains.” Yet he always ends with the same blessing, “ The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ

1 2 Cor. ii. 13. and vii. 5. “ ters (πηλίκοις γράμμασιν) in which I write to 2 2 Tim. iy. 9. 32 Cor. xi. 28. “ you with my own hand.” 4 Rom. xvi. 22. “I Tertius, who wrote this 6 2 Thess. iii. 17.

“ Epistle, salute you in the Lord.” 71 Cor. xvi. 22.

5 Gal. vi. 11. “Ye see the size of the charac- 8 Coloss.iv 18.

INTRODUCTION. ΧΗΣ

“be with you,” to which he sometimes adds still further a few last words of affectionate remembrance, “ My love be with you all “ in Christ Jesus.” ἢ

But although the letters of St. Paul are so essential a part of his personal biography, it is a difficult question to decide upon the form in which they should be given in a work like this. The object to be sought is, that they may really represent in English what they were to their Greek readers when first written. Now this object would not be attained if the authorised version were adhered to, and yet a departure from that whereof so much is interwoven with the memory and deepest feelings of every religious mind should be grounded on strong and sufficient cause. It is hoped that the following reasons may be held such.

lst. The authorised version was meant to be a standard of authority and ultimate appeal in controversy; hence it could not venture to depart, as an ordinary translation would do, from the exact words of the original, even where some amplification was absolutely required to complete the sense. It was to be the version unanimously accepted by all parties, and therefore must simply represent the Greek text word for word. This it does most faith- fully so far as the critical knowledge of the sixteenth? century permitted. But the result of this method is sometimes to produce a translation unintelligible to the English reader.* Also if the text admit of two interpretations, our version endeavours, if possible, to preserve the same ambiguity, and effects this often with admirable skill; but such indecision, although a merit in an authoritative version, would be a fault in a translation which had a different object.

2d. The imperfect knowledge existing at the time when our Bible was translated, made it inevitable that the translators should

11 Cor. xvi. 24. every sect would have had its own Bible; as it is, 2 Being executed at the very beginning of the this one translation has been all but unanimously seventeenth. received for three centuries.

8 Yet had any other course been adopted,

ΧΙ INTRODUCTION. occasionally render the original incorrectly ; and the same cause has’ made their version of many of the argumentative με ὧν οὗ the Epistles perplexed and obscure. 3d. Such passages) as are affected. by the sbovertdamibnied objections might, it is true, have been recast, and the. authorised translation retained in all cases where it is correct and clear; but if, this had been done, a patchwork effect would have been produced like that of new cloth upon old garments; moreover the devotional associations of the reader would have been offended, and it would. have been a rash experiment to provoke such a contrast between the matchless style of the authorised version and that of the modern translator, thus placed side by side.

4th. The style adopted for the present purpose should not. be antiquated ; for St. Paul was writing in the language used by his Hellenistic readers in every day life.

5th. In order to give the true meaning of the original, some- thing of paraphrase is often absolutely required. St. Paul’s style is extremely elliptical, and the gaps must be filled up. And moreover the great difficulty in. understanding his argument is to trace clearly the transitions’ by which he passes from one step to another. For this purpose something must be supplied beyond the mere literal rendering of the words.

For these reasons the translation of the Epistles adopted in this work is to a certain degree paraphrastic. At the same time nothing has been added by way of paraphrase which was not bara expressed in the original. : ᾿

It has not been thought necessary to interrupt the reader by a note, in every instance ie the translation varies from the Authorised

1 In the translation of the Epistles given in the present work it has been the especial aim of the translator to represent these transitions correctly, They very often depend upon a word, which suggests a new thought, and are quite lost by a want of attention to the verbal coincidence. Thus, for instance, in Rom. x.

16, 17. Tic éxisevoe τῇ ἀκοῇ ἡμῶν ; "Apa ἣἧ mesic ἐξ ἀκοῆς. “ Who hath given faith to our telling ? “ So then faith cometh by telling ;” how com- pletely is the connection destroyed by such inattention in the authorized version: “ Who “ hath believed our report? So then faith “ cometh by hearing.”

INTRODUCTION. XV

Version It has been assumed that the readers of the notes will have sufficient knowledge to understand the reason of such variations in the more obvious cases. But it is hoped that no passage of real diffi- culty has been passed over without explanation.

The authorities consulted upon the chronology of St. Paul’s life, the reasons for the views taken of disputed points in it, and for the dates of the Epistles, are stated (so far as seems needful) in the body of the work or in the Appendix, and need not be further referred to here.

In conclusion, the authors would: express their hope that this biography may, in its measure, be useful in strengthening the hearts of some against the peculiar form of unbelief most current at the present day. The more faithfully we can represent to ourselves the life, outward and inward, of St. Paul, in all its fulness, the more un- reasonable must appear the theory that Christianity had a mythical origin ; and the stronger must be our ground for believing his testi- mony to the divine nature and miraculous history of our Redeemer. No reasonable’ man can learn tu know and love the Apostle of the Gentiles without asking himself the question “ What was the principle “ by which through such a Jife he was animated? What was the ** strength in which he laboured with such immense results?” Nor can tiie most sceptical inquirer doubt for one moment the full sincerity of St. Paul’s belief that “ the life which he lived in the flesh he lived “« by the faith of the Son of God, who died and gave Himself for “ him.”* To believe in Christ crucified and risen, to serve Him on “ earth, to be with Him hereafter ; — these. if we may trust the ac- “ count of his own motives by any human writer whatever, were the “ chief if not the only thoughts which sustained Paul of Tarsus through “ all the troubles and sorrows of his twenty years’ conflict. His saga- “ city, his cheerfulness, his forethought, his impartial and clear-judging *“ reason, all the natural elements of his strong character are not in- “ deed to be overlooked: but the more highly we exalt these in our

1 Gal. ii, 20.

xvi INTRODUCTION.

“ estimate of his work, the larger share we attribute to them in the * performance of his mission, the more are we compelled to believe * that he spoke the words of truth and soberness when he told the “ Corinthians that ‘last of all Christ was seen of him also,’ * that * by “ «the grace of God he was what he was,’ that ‘ whilst he laboured ** ὁ more abundantly than all, it was not he, but the grace of God that “ ¢ was in him’””?

P. S.—It may be well to add, that while Mr. Conybeare and Mr. Howson have undertaken the joint revision of the whole work, the transla- tion of the Epistles and Speeches of St. Paul is contributed by the former, and the Historical and Geographical portion of the work principally by the latter; Mr. Howson having written Chapters 1.. I1., ΠΠ|., 1V., V., VL, VIL, VIII, ΙΧ. X., ΧΙ, XIL, XIV., XVI, XX., XXL, KUL, MKT XXIV., with the exception of the Epistles and Speeches therein contained ; and Mr. Conybeare having written the Introduction and Appendix, and Chapters XIIL, XV., XVII., XVIIL, XIX., XXV., XXVI, XXVIL XXVIII.

11Cor. xv 10, 1 Stanley’s Sermons, p. 186. P-

THE

LIFE AND EPISTLES

OF

ST. PAUL.

CHAPTER I.

« And the title was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin.”— Joh. xix. 20.

GREAT MEN OF GREAT PERIODS.—PERIOD OF CHRIST’S APOSTLES.—JEWS, GREEKS, AND ROMANS.—RELIGIOUS CIVILISATION OF THE JEWS,—THEIR HISTORY AND ITS RELATION TO THAT OF THE WORLD. — HEATHEN PREPARATION FOR THE GOSPEL. — CHARACTER AND LANGUAGE OF THE GREEKS.—ALEXANDER.—ANTIOCH AND ALEX-~ ANDRIA.—GROWTH AND GOVERNMENT OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.—MISERY OF ITALY AND THE PROVINCES.—PREPARATION IN THE EMPIRE FOR CHRISTIANITY.—DIS- PERSION OF THE JEWS IN ASIA, AFRICA, AND EUROPE, —PROSELYTES.— PROVINCES OF CILICIA AND JUDHA.— THEIR GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY.—CILICIA UNDER THE ROMANS. —TARSUS. —CICERO. — POLITICAL CHANGES IN JUDHA.— HEROD AND HIS FAMILY.— THE ROMAN GOVERNORS. — CONCLUSION,

Tue life of a great man, in a great period of the world’s history, is a sub- ject to command the attention of every thoughtful mind. Alexander on his Eastern expedition, spreading the civilisation of Greece over the Asiatic and African shores of the Mediterranean Sea, — Julius Cesar contending against the Gauls, and subduing the barbarism of Western Europe to the order and discipline of Roman government, — Charlemagne compressing the separating atoms of the feudal world, and reviving for a time the image of imperial unity, — Columbus sailing westward over the Atlantic to discover a new world which might receive the arts and religion of the old,— Napoleon on his rapid campaigns, shattering the ancient system of European states, and leaving a B

2 HE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

chasm between our present and the past: — these are the colossal figures of history, which stamp with the impress of their personal greatness the centuries in which they lived.

The interest with which we look upon such men is natural and inevitable, even when we are deeply conscious that, in their character and their work, evil was mixed up ia large proportions with the good, and when we find it difficult to discover the providential design which drew the features of their respective epochs. But this natural feeling rises into something higher, if we can be assured that the period we contemplate was designedly prepared for great results, that the work we admire was a work of unmixed good, and the man whose actions we follow was an instrument specially prepared by the hands of Gop. Such a period was that in which the civilised world was united under the first Roman emperors: such a work was the first preaching of the Gospel: and such a man was Paul of Tarsus.

Before we enter upon the particulars of his life and the history of his work, it is desirable to say something, in this introductory chapter, concerning the general features of the age which was prepared for him. We shall not attempt any minute delineation of the institutions and social habits of the period. Many of these will be brought before us in detail in the course of the present work. We shall only notice here those circumstances in the state of the world, which seem to bear the traces of a providential pre-arrangement.

Casting this general view on the age of the first Roman emperors, which was also the age of Jesus Curist and His Apostles, we find our attention arrested by three great varieties of national life. The Jew, the Greek, and the Roman appear to divide the world between them. The outward condition of Jerusalem itself, at this epoch, might be taken as a type of the civilised world. Herod the Great, who rebuilt the Temple, had erected, for Greek and Roman entertainments, a theatre within the same walls, and an amphitheatre in the neighbouring plain.’ His coins, and those of his grandson Agrippa, bore Greek

COIN OF HEROD THE GREAT, COIN OF HEROD AGRIPPA ὦ

1 ΨΦΌΒΕΡΗ. Ant. xv. 8.1. B. J. i. 21. 8.

ὙΠ -

2%

PERIOD OF CHRIST’S APOSTLES. 8.

MACCABZAN SHEKEL,

DENARIUS OF TIBERIUS,

inscriptions’: that piece of money, which was brought to our Saviour (Matt. xxii., Mark xii., Luke xx.), was the silver Denarius, the “image” was that of the emperor, the “superscription” was in Latin: and at the same time when the common currency consisted of such pieces as these,—since coins with the images of men or with heathen symbols would have been a profanation to the “ Treasury,” — there might be found on the tables of the money-changers in the Temple, shekels and half-shekels with Samaritan letters, minted under the Maccabees. Greek and Roman names were borne by multitudes of those Jews who came up to worship at the festivals. Greek and Latin words were current in the popular “ Hebrew” of the day: and while this Syro-Chaldaic dialect was spoken by the mass of the people with the tenacious affection of

old custom, Greek had long been well-known among the upper classes in the

larger towns, and Latin was used in the courts of law, and in the official correspondence of magistrates.? On a critical occasion of St. Paul’s life®, when he was standing on the stair between the Temple and the fortress, he first spoke to the commander of the garrison in Greek, and then turned round and addressed his countrymen in Hebrew; while the letter * of Claudius Lysias was written, and the oration® of Tertullus spoken, in Latin. We are told by the historian Josephus, that on a parapet of stone in the Temple area, where a

1 These two coins of Herod the Great and his grandson Agrippa I., with those which follow, the Denarius of Tiberius and the Maccabean (?) Shekel, are taken, by Mr. Akerman’s kind per- mission, from his excellent little work, “ Nu- mismatic Illustrations of the New Testament.”

2 Val. Max. ii. 2. Magistratus vero prisci quantopere suam populique Romani majestatem retinentes se gesserint, hine cognosci potest, quod inter cetera obtinendx gravitatis indicia, illud quoque magna cum perseverantia custodie- bant, ne Grecis unquam, nisi Latiné responsa darent. Quinetiam ipsa lingue volubilitate, qua plurimum valent, excussi, per interpretem loqui cogebant ; non in urbe tantum nostra, sed etiam in Grecia et Asia: quo scilicet Latina vocis honos per omnes gentes venerabilior dif-

funderetur. Nec illis deerant studia doctrine, sed nulla non in re pallium tog subjici debere arbitrabantur: indignum esse existimantes, ille- cebris et suavitate literarum imperii pondus et auctoritatem domari.

3 Acts xxi. xxii.

4 Acts xxiii. The letter was what was tech- nically called an Zlogium, or certificate, and there is hardly any doubt that it was in Latin. See De Wette and Olshausen, iz loe.

5 Actsxxiv. Mr. Milman (Bampton Lectures, Ρ. 185.) has remarked on the peculiarly Latin character of Tertullus’s address : and the preced- ing quotation from Valerius Maximus seems to imply that its language was Latin.

6 B. J. v. 5.2. Compare vi. 2. 4.

B2

4 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

flight of fourteen steps led up from the outer to the inner court, pillars were placed at equal distances, with notices, some in Greek and some in Latin, that no alien should enter the sacred enclosure of the Hebrews. And we are told by two of the Evangelists‘, that when our blessed Saviour was crucified, “ the superscription of His accusation” was written above His cross “in letters of Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin.”

The condition of the world in general at that period wears a similar appearance to a Christian’s eye. He sees the Greek and Roman elements brought into remarkable union with the older and more sacred element of Judaism. He sees in the Hebrew nation a divinely-laid foundation for the superstructure of the Church, and in the dispersion of the Jews a soil made ready in fitting places for the seed of the Gospel. He sees in the spread of the language and commerce of the Greeks, and in the high perfection of their poetry and philosophy, appropriate means for the rapid communication of Christian ideas, and for bringing them into close connection with the best thoughts of unassisted humanity. And he sees in the union of so many incoherent, provinces under the law and government of Rome, a strong framework which might keep together for a sufficient period those masses of social life which the Gospel was intended to pervade. The City of God is built at the confluence of three civilisations. We recognise with gratitude the hand of God in the history of His world: and we turn with devout feelings to trace the course of these three streams of civilised life, from their early source to the time of their meeting in the Apostolic age.

We need not linger about the fountains of the national life of the Jews. We know that they gushed forth at first, and flowed in their appointed channels, at the command of God. The call of Abraham, when one family was chosen to keep and hand down the deposit of divine truth, —the series of providences which brought the ancestors of the Jews into Egypt, — the long captivity on the banks of the Nile, — the work of Moses, whereby the bondsmen were made into a nation, —all these things are represented in the Old Testament as occurring under the immediate direction of Almighty power. The people of Israel were taken out of the midst of an idolatrous world, to become the depositories of a purer knowledge of the one true God than was given to any other people. At a time when (humanly speaking) the world could hardly have preserved a spiritual religion in its highest purity, they received a divine

1 Luke xxiii. 38., John xix. 20,

RELIGIOUS CIVILISATION OF THE JEWS, 5

revelation enshrined in symbols and ceremonies, whereby it might be safely kept till the time of its development in a purer and more heavenly form.

The peculiarity of the Hebrew civilisation did not consist in the culture of the imagination and intellect, like that of the Greeks, nor in the organisation of government, like that of Rome,—but its distinguishing feature was Religion. To say nothing of the Scriptures, the prophets, the miracles of the Jews, —their frequent festivals, their constant sacrifices, —everything in their collective and private life was connected with a revealed religion: their wars, their heroes, their poetry, had a sacred character,— their national code was full of the details of public worship,—their ordinary employments were touched at every point by divinely-appointed and significant ceremonies. Nor was this religion, as were the religions of the heathen world, a creed which could not be the com- mon property of the instructed and the ignorant. It was neither a recondite philosophy which might not be communicated to the masses of the people, nor a weak superstition, controlling the conduct of the lower classes, and ridiculed by the higher. The religion of Moses was for the use of all and the benefit of all.' The poorest peasant of Galilee had the same part in it as the wisest Rabbi of Jerusalem. The children of all families were taught to claim their share in the privileges of the chosen people.

And how different was the nature of this religion from that of the con-

temporary Gentiles! The pious feelings of the Jew were not dissipated and.

distracted by a fantastic mythology, where a thousand different objects of worship, with contradictory attributes, might claim the attention of the devout mind. ‘ One God,” the Creator and Judge of the world, and the Author of all good, was the only object of adoration. And there was nothing of that wide separation between religion and morality, which among other nations was the road to all impurity. The will and approbation of Jehovah was the motive and support of all holiness: faith in His word was the power which raised men above their natural weakness: while even the divinities of Greece and Rome were often the personifications of human passions, and the example and sanction of vice. And still farther: —the devotional scriptures of the Jews express that heartfelt sense of infirmity and sin, that peculiar spirit of prayer, that real communion with God, with which the Christian, in his best moments, has the

1 ὅπερ ἐκ φιλοσοφίας τῆς δοκιμωτάτης πλάνον ἀπωσαμένοις. Quoted with other passages περιγίνεται τοῖς ὁμιληταῖς ἀυτῆς; τοῦτο διὰ νόμων from Philo by Neander, General Church His- καὶ ἐθῶν ᾿Ιουδαίοις, ἐπιστήμη τοῦ ἀνωτάτου καὶ tory, vol. i. pp. 70, 71. (Torrey's translation, πρεσξυτάτου πάντων, τὸν ἐπὶ τοῖς γενητοῖς ϑεοῖς Edinburgh, 1847.)

--

6 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

truest sympathy.' So that, while the best hymns of Greece? are only mytho- logical pictures, and the literature of heathen Rome hardly produces anything which can be called a prayer, the Hebrew psalms have passed into the devo- tions of the Christian church. There is a light on all the mountains of Judea which never shone on Olympus or Parnassus: and the “ Hill of Zion,” in which “it pleased God to dwell,” is the type of “the joy of the whole earth,”® while the seven hills of Rome are the symbol of tyranny and idolatry. ‘“‘ He showed His word unto Jacob,—His statutes and ordinances unto Israel. He dealt not so with any nation; neither had the heathen knowledge of His laws.” *

But not only was a holy religion the characteristic of the civilisation of the Jews, but their religious feelings were directed to something in the future, and all the circumstances of their national life tended to fix their thoughts on One that wastocome. By types and by promises, their eyes were continually turned towards a Messiah. Their history was a continued prophecy. All the great stages of their national existence were accompanied by effusions of prophetic light. Abraham was called from his father’s house, and it was revealed that in him “all families of the earth should be blessed.” Moses formed Abraham’s descendants into a people, by giving them a law and national institutions; but while so doing he spake before of Him who was hereafter to be raised up “a Prophet like unto himself.” David reigned, and during that reign, which made so deep and lasting an impression on the Jewish mind, psalms were written which spoke of the future King. And with the approach of that captivity, the pathetic recollection of which became perpetual, the prophecies took a bolder range, and embraced within their widening circle the redemption both of Jews and Gentiles. Thus the pious Hebrew was always, as it were, in the attitude of expectation. And it has been well remarked that, while the golden age of the Greeks and Romans was the past, that of the Jews was the future. While other nations were growing weary of their gods,—without anything in their

1 Neander observes that it has been justly remarked that the distinctive peculiarity (die auszeichnende Eigenthumiichkeit) of the Hebrew nation from the very first, was, that conscience was more alive among them than any other people. Pflanzung und Leitung, p. 91., ed. 1847. See also the Eng. Trans. of the former edition, vol, i. p. 61.

? There are some exceptions, as in the hymn of the Stoic Cleanthes, who was born at Assos

850 years before St. Paul was there; yet it breathes the sentiment rather of acquiescence in the determinations of Fate, than of resignation to the goodness of Providence. See Mr. Cotton’s notice of Cleanthes in Smith’s Dictionary of Biography and Mythology.

3 Ps, xlviii. 2. ; lxviii. 16.

4 Ps. exlvii. 19, 20.

5 Davison, Warburtonian Lectures on Pro- phecy, pp. 98. 107. 147, 201., &c.

RELATION OF JEWISH CIVILISATION TO THAT OF THE WORLD. 7

mythology or philosophy to satisfy the deep cravings of their nature,—with religion operating rather as a barrier than a link between the educated and the ignorant,—with morality divorced from theology,—the whole Jewish people were united in a feeling of attachment to their sacred institutions, and found in the facts of their past history a sure pledge of the fulfilment of their national hopes.

It is true that the Jewish nation, again and again, during several centuries, fell into idolatry. It is true that their superiority to other nations consisted in the light which they possessed, and not in the use which they made of it; and that a carnal life continually dragged them down from the spiritual eminence on which they might have stood. But the divine purposes were not frustrated. The chosen people was subjected to the chastisement and discipline of severe sufferings: and they were fitted by a long training for the accomplishment of that work, to the conscious performance of which they did not willingly rise. They were hard pressed in their own country by the incursions of their idola- trous neighbours, and in the end they were carried into a distant captivity. From the time of their return from Babylon they were no longer idolaters. They presented to the world the example of a pure Monotheism. And in the active times which preceded and followed the birth of Christ, those Greeks or Romans who visited the Jews in their own land where they still lingered at the portals of the East, and those vast numbers of proselytes whom the dispersed Jews had gathered round them in various countries, were made familiar with the worship of.one God and Father of all.

The influence of the Jews upon the heathen world was exercised mainly through their dispersion: but this subject must be deferred for a few pages, till we have examined some of the developments of the Greek and Roman

nationalities. A few words, however, may be allowed in passing, upon the

consequences of the geographical position of Judea.

The situation of this little but eventful country is such, that its inhabitants were brought into contact successively with all the civilised nations of antiquity. Not to dwell upon its proximity to Egypt on the one hand, and to Assyria on the other, and the influences which those ancient kingdoms may thereby have exercised or received, Palestine lay in the road of Alexander's Eastern expedition. The Greek conqueror was there before he founded his mercantile

1 Humboldt has remarked, in the chapter on poetry of the Hebrews is a reflex of Mono- Poetic Descriptions of Nature (Kosmos, Sabine’s theism, and pourtrays nature, not as self-sub- Eng. Trans., vol. ii. p. 44.), that the descriptive sisting, but ever in relation to ἃ Higher Power

8 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

metropolis in Egypt, and then went to India, to return and die at Babylon. And again, when his empire was divided, and Greek kingdoms were erected in Europe, Asia, and Africa, Palestine lay between the rival monarchies of the Ptolemies at Alexandria and the Seleucide at Antioch,—too near to both to be safe from the invasion of their arms or the influence of their customs and their language. And finally, when the time came for the Romans to embrace the whole of the Mediterranean within the circle of their power, the coast-line of Judea was the last remote portion which was needed to complete the fated circumference.

The full effect of this geographical position of Judea can only be seen by following the course of Greek and Roman life, till they were brought so remarkably into contact with each other, and with that of the Jews: and we turn to those other two nations of antiquity, the steps of whose progress were successive stages in what is called in the Epistle to the Ephesians (i. 10.) “ the dispensation of the fulness of time.”

If we think of the civilisation of the Greeks, we have no difficulty in fixing on its chief characteristics. High perfection of the intellect and imagination, displaying itself in all the various forms of art, poetry, literature, and philosophy —restless activity of mind and body, finding its exercise in athletic games or in subtle disputations—love of the beautiful—quick perception— indefatigable inquiry—all these enter into the very idea of the Greek race. This is not the place to inquire how far these qualities were due to an innate peculiarity, or how far they grew up, by gradual development, amidst the natural influences of their native country,—the variety of their hills and plains, the clear lights and warm shadows of their climate, the mingled land and water of their coasts. We have only to do with this national character so far as, under divine Providence, it was made subservient to the spread of the Gospel.

We shall see how remarkably it subserved this purpose, if we consider the tendency of the Greeks to trade and colonisation. Their mental activity was accompanied with a great physical restlessness. This clever people always exhibited a disposition to spread themselves. Without aiming at universal conquest, they displayed (if we may use the word) a remarkable catholicity of character, and a singular power of adaptation to those whom they called Barbarians. In this respect they were strongly contrasted with the Egyptians, whose immemorial civilisation was confined to the long valley which extends from the cataracts to the mouths of the Nile. The Hellenic tribes, on the

CHARACTER AND LANGUAGE OF THE GREEKS. 9

other hand, though they despised foreigners, were never unwilling to visit them and to cultivate their acquaintance. At the earliest period at which history enables us to discover them, we see them moving about in their ships on the shores and among the islands of their native seas ; and, three or four centuries before the Christian era, Asia Minor, beyond which the Persians had not been permitted to advance, was bordered by a fringe of Greek colonies ; and Lower Italy, when the Roman republic was just beginning to be conscious of its strength, had received the name of Greece itself. To all these places they carried their arts and literature, their philosophy, their mythology, and their amusements. They carried also their arms and their trade. The heroic age had passed away, and fabulous voyages had given place to real expeditions against Sicily and constant traffic with the Black Sea. They were gradually taking the place of the Phenicians in the empire of the Mediterranean. They were, indeed, less exclusively mercantile than those old discoverers. Their voyages were not so long. But their influence on general civilisation was greater and more permanent. The earliest ideas of scientific navigation and geography are due to the Greeks. The later Greek travellers, Pausanias and Strabo, will be our best sources of information on the topography of St. Paul’s journeys.

With this view of the Hellenic character before us, we are prepared to appreciate the vast results of Alexander’s conquests.'_ He took up the meshes of the net of Greek civilisation, which were lying in disorder on the edges of the Asiatic shore, and spread:them over all the countries which he traversed in his wonderful campaigns. The East and the West were suddenly brought together. Separated tribes were united under a common government. New cities were built, as the centres of political life. New lines of communication were opened, as the channels of commercial activity. The new culture penetrated the mountain ranges of Pisidia and Lycaonia. The Tigris and Euphrates became Greek rivers. The language of Athens was heard among the Jewish colonies of Babylonia ; and a Grecian Babylon was built by the conqueror in Egypt, and called by his name.

The empire of Alexander was divided, but the effects of his campaigns and policy did not cease. The influence of the fresh elements of social life was rather increased by being brought into independent action within the spheres of distinct kingdoms. Our attention is particularly called to two of the mon-

1 Plutarch, paraphrasing Alexander’s saying to Ecpex& τοῖς Ἑλληνικοῖς κεράσαι, καὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα Diogenes, remarks that his mission was—ra βαρ. σπεῖραι: Orat.i., de Alex. Virtute 8. fortuna, § 11 Cc

10 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

archical lines, which descended from

Alexander’s generals, — the Ptole-

mies, or the Greek kings of Egypt,

—and the Seleucid, or the Greek . kings of Syria. Their respective

capitals, Alexandria and Antioch,

became the metropolitan centres of commercial and civilised life in the East. They rose suddenly; and their very appearance marked them as

the cities of a new epoch. Like Berlin and St. Petersburg, they were modern. cities built by great kings at a definite time and for a definite purpose.” Their

histories are no unimportant chapters in the history of the world. Both of them. were connected with St. Paul: one indirectly, as the birthplace of Apollos; the other directly, as the scene of some of the most important passages of the

Apostle’s own life. Both abounded in Jews from their first foundation. Both

became the residences of Roman governors, and both were patriarchates of the, primitive Church. But before they had received either the Roman discipline or, the Christian doctrine, they had served their appointed purpose of spreading the, Greek language and habits, of creating new lines of commercial intercourse by, land and sea, and of centralising in themselves the mercantile life of the Levant.

Even the Acts of the Apostles remind us of the traffic of Antioch with Cyprus. and the neighbouring coasts, and of the sailing of Alexandrian corn-ships to the

more distant harbours of Malta and Puteoli.

Of all the Greek elements which the cities of Antioch and Alexandria were the means of circulating, the spread of the language is the most important. Its connection with the whole system of Christian doctrine—with many of the con-, troversies and divisions of the Church —is very momentous. That language, which is the richest and most delicate that the world has seen, became the lan- guage of theology. The Greek tongue became to the Christian more than it had

COIN OF ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES, WITH PORTRAIT,

1 This coin, with the portrait of Antiochus rum Imperium, sive Historia Regum Syriew ad (IV.) Epiphanes, is from the British Museum fidem Numismatum accommodata :” Paris, 1681. (whence much other assistance has been ob- (2nd Ed. Hag. 1732.) tained for this work, chiefly through the kind- 2 An account of the building of Antioch will ness of Ο, Newton, Esq., student of Ch. Ch.). be given hereafter. For that of Alexandria, see Portraits on coins began with Alexander. For Miiller, ὃ 149. pp. 158, 154. Ammianus calls it their historical importance, see K. O. Miiller’s vertex omnium civitatum. The architect was Handbuch der Archiologie der Alten Kunst, Dinocrates, who renewed the temple at Ephesus § 162., p. 169., Welcker’s edition, 1848. For the (Acts xix.), series of the Seleucide, see Vaillant, ‘“ Seleucida-

ANTIOCH AND ALEXANDRIA. 11

been to the Roman or the Jew. The mother-tongue of Ignatius at Antioch, was that in which Philo composed his treatises at Alexandria, and which Cicero spoke at Athens. It is difficult to state in a few words the important relation which Alexandria more especially was destined to bear to the whole Christian Church. In that city, the representative of the Greeks of the East, where the most remarkable fusion took place of the peculiarities of Greek, Jewish, and Oriental life, and at the time when all these had been brought in contact with the mind of educated Romans, —a theological language was formed, rich in the phrases of various schools, and suited to convey Christian ideas to all the world. It was not an accident that the New Testament was written in Greek, the language which can best express the highest thoughts and worthiest feelings of the intellect and heart, and which is adapted to be the instrument of education for all nations: nor was it an accident that the composition of these books and the promulgation of the Gospel were delayed, till the instruction of our Lord, and the writings of His Apostles, could be expressed in the dialect of Alexandrie. This, also, must be ascribed to the foreknowledge of Him, who “ winked at the times of ignorance,” but who “ made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation.” ἢ :

We do not forget that the social condition of the Greeks had been falling, during this period, into the lowest corruption. The disastrous quarrels of Alexander’s generals had been continued among their successors. Political integrity was lost. The Greeks spent their life in worthless and frivolous amusements. Their religion, though beautiful beyond expression as giving subjects for art and poetry, was utterly powerless, and worse than powerless, in checking their bad propensities. Their philosophers were sophists; their women might be briefly divided into two classes,—those who were highly educated and openly profligate on the one side, and those who lived in domestic and ignorant seclusion on the other. And it cannot be denied that all these causes of degradation spread with the diffusion of the race and the language; like Sybaris and Syracuse, Antioch and Alexandria became almost worse than Athens and Corinth. But the very diffusion and development of this corruption was preparing the way, because it showed the necessity, for the interposition of a Gospel. The disease itself seemed to call for a Healer. And if the prevailing evils of the Greek population presented obstacles, on a large scale, to the progress of Christianity, — yet they showed to all future time the

1 Acts xvii. 30. 26. a2

12 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

weakness of man’s highest powers, if unassisted from above; and there must have been many who groaned under the burden of a corruption which they could not shake off, and who were ready to welcome the voice of Him, who “took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.” The “ Greeks,”! who are mentioned by St. John as coming to see Jesus at the feast, were, we trust, the types of a large class; and we may conceive His answer to Andrew and Philip as expressing the fulfilment of the appointed times in the widest sense — “The hour is come, that the Son of Man should be glorified.”

Such was the civilisation and corruption connected with the spread of the Greek language when the Roman power approached to the eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea. For some centuries this irresistible force had been gathering strength on the western side of the Apennines. Gradually, but surely, and with ever-increasing rapidity, it made to itself a wider space—northward into Etruria, southward into Campania. It passed beyond its Italian boundaries, And six hundred years after the building of the city, the Roman eagle had seized on Africa at the point of Carthage, and Greece at the Isthmus of Corinth, and had turned its eye towards the East. The defenceless prey was made secure, by craft or by war; and before the birth of our Saviour, all those coasts, from Ephesus to Tarsus and Antioch, and round by the Holy Land to Alexan- dria and Cyrene, were tributary to the city of the Tiber. We have to describe in a few words the characteristics of this new dominion, and to point out its providential connection with the spread and consolidation of the Church.

In the first place, this dominion was not a pervading influence exerted by a restless and intellectual people, but it was the grasping power of an external government. The idea of law had grown up with the growth of the Romans; and wherever they went they carried it with them. Wherever their armies were marching or encamping, there always attended them, like a mysterious presence, the spirit of the City of Rome. Universal conquest and permanent occupation were the ends at which they aimed. Strength and organisation were the characteristics of their sway. We have seen how the Greek science and commerce were wafted, by irregular winds, from coast to coast: and now

1 Ἕλληνες, xii. 20. It ought to be observed (“Ἑλλην), and who might, or might not, be a here, that the word “ Grecian” in the English proselyte to Judaism, or a convert to Christi- translation of the New Testament is used fora nity. It is agreed by the modern critics (Gries- Hellenist, or Grecising Jew (Ἑλληνιστὴς) ----ἂ bach, Scholz, Lachmann, De Wette) that in Acts Acts vi. 1.; ix. 29.— while the word “Greek” xi. 20., the true reading is “Ἕλληνας not Ἑλλη- is used for one who was by birth a.Gentile νιστὰς, “ Greeks” not “ Grecians.”

GROWTH AND GOVERNMENT OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 13

we follow the advance of legions, governors, and judges along the Roman Roads, which pursued their undeviating course over plains and mountains, and bound the City to the furthest extremities of the provinces.

There is no better way of obtaining a clear view of the features and a correct idea of the spirit of the Roman age, than by considering the material works which still remain as its imperishable monuments. Whether undertaken by the hands of the government, or for the ostentation of private luxury, they were marked by vast extent and accomplished at an enormous expenditure. The gigantic roads of the empire have been unrivalled till the present century. Solid structures of all kinds, for utility, amusement, and worship, were erected in Italy and the provinces,—amphitheatres of stone, magnificent harbours, bridges, sepulchres, and temples. The decoration of wealthy houses was celebrated by the poets of the day. The pomp of buildings in the cities was rivalled by astonishing villas in the country. The enormous baths, by which travellers are surprised, belong to a period somewhat later than that of St. Paul; but the aqueducts, which still remain in the Campagna, were some of them new when he visited Rome. Of the metropolis itself it may be enough to say, that his life is exactly embraced between its two great times of renovation, that of Augustus on the one hand, who (to use his own expression) having found it a city of brick left it a city of marble, and that of Nero on the other, when the great conflagration afforded an opportunity for a new arrangement of its streets and buildings.

These great works may be safely taken as emblems of the magnitude, strength, grandeur, and solidity of the empire; but they are emblems, no less, of the tyranny and cruelty which had presided over its formation, and of the general suffering which pervaded it. The statues, with which the metropolis and the Roman houses were profusely decorated, had been brought from plundered provinces, and many of them had swelled the triumphs of conquerors on the Capitol.1_ The amphitheatres were built for shows of gladiators, and were the scenes of a bloody cruelty, which had been quite unknown in the licentious exhibitions of the Greek theatre. The roads, baths, harbours,

1 Plena domus tunc omnis, et ingens stabat Sacrilegus Verres referebant navibus altis acervus Occulta spolia et plures de pace triumphos. Numorum, Spartana chlamys, conchylia Ooa, Juv. viii. 100. Et cum Parrhasii tabulis signisque Myronis For a multitude of details, see the 164th and Phidiacum vivebat ebur, nec non Polycleti 165th sections of K. O. Miiller’s Handbuch der

Multus ubique labor: rare sine Mentore mense. Archiiologie. Inde Dolabelle atque hine Antonius, inde

14 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

aqueducts, had been constructed by slave-labour. And the country-villas, which the Italian traveller lingered to admire, were themselves vast establish- ments of slaves.

It is easy to see how much misery followed in the train of Rome's advancing greatness. Cruel suffering was a characteristic feature of the close of the republic. Slave wars, civil wars, wars of conquest, had left their disastrous results behind them. No country recovers rapidly from the effects of a war which has been conducted within its frontier; and there was no district of the empire which had not been the scene of some recent campaign. None had suffered more than Italy itself. Its old stock of freemen, who had cultivated its fair plains and terraced vineyards, was utterly worn out. The general depopulation was badly compensated by the establishment of military colonies. Inordinate wealth and slave factories were the prominent features of the desolate prospect. The words of the great historian may fill up the picture. “ As regards the manners and mode of life of the Romans, their great object at this time was the acquisition and possession of money. Their moral conduct, which had been corrupt enough before the social war, became still more so by their systematic plunder and rapine. Immense riches were accumulated and squandered upon brutal pleasures. The simplicity of the old manners and mode of living had been abandoned for Greek luxuries and frivolities, and the whole household arrangements had become altered. The Roman houses had formerly been quite simple, and were built either of bricks or peperino, but in most cases of the former material ; now, on the other hand, every one would live in a splendid house and be surrounded by luxuries. The condition of Italy after the Social and Civil wars was indescribably wretched. Samnium had become almost a desert; and as late as the time of Strabo (vi. p. 253.), there was scarcely any town in that country which was not in ruins. But worse things were yet to come.” ὦ

This disastrous condition was not confined to Italy. In some respects the provinces had their own peculiar sufferings. To take the case of Asia Minor. It had been plundered and ravaged by successive generals, —by Scipio in the war against Antiochus of Syria,—by Manlius in his Galatian campaign, —by Pompey in the struggle with Mithridates.? The rapacity of governors and their officials followed that of generals and their armies. We know what

! Niebuhr’s Lectures on the History of Rome, conquests with the development of Roman vol. i. pp. 421, 422. luxury : “ Victoria illa Pompeii primum ad mar- 2 Pliny points out the connection of these garitas gemmasque mores inclinavit.”—H. N.

MISERY OF ITALY AND THE PROVINCES. 15

Cilicia suffered under Dolabella and his agent Verres: and Cicero reveals to us the oppression of his predecessor Appius in the same province, contrasted with his own boasted clemency. Some portions of this beautiful and inexhaustible country revived under the emperors.’ But it was only an outward prosperity. Whatever may have been the improvement in the external details of provincial government, we cannot believe that governors were gentle and forbearing, when Caligula was on the throne, and when Nero was seeking statues for his golden house. The contempt in which the Greek provincials themselves were held by the Romans may be learnt from the later correspondence of the Emperor Trajan with Pliny the governor of Bithynia, We need not hesitate to take it for granted, that those who were sent from Rome to dispense justice at Ephesus or Tarsus, were more frequently like Appius and Verres, than Cicero? and Flaccus, — more like Pilate and Felix, than Gallio or Sergius Paulus.

It would be a delusion to imagine that, when the world was reduced under one sceptre, any real principle of unity held its different parts together. The emperor was deified, because men were enslaved. There was no true peace when Augustus closed the Temple of Janus. The empire was only the order of external government, with a chaos both of opinions and morals within. The writings of Tacitus and Juvenal remain to attest the corruption which festered in all ranks, alike in the senate and the family. The old severity of manners, and the old faith in the better part of the Roman religion, were gone. The licentious creeds and practices of Greece and the East had inundated Italy and the West: and the Pantheon was only the monument of a compromise among a multitude of effete superstitions. It is true that a remarkable religious toleration was produced by this state of things: and it is probable that for some short time Christianity itself shared the advantage of it. But still the temper of the times was essentially both cruel and profane; and the Apostles were soon exposed to its bitter persecution. The Roman empire was destitute of that unity which the Gospel gives to mankind, It was a kingdom of this world; and the human race were groaning for the better peace of “a kingdom not of this world.”

Thus, in the very condition of the Roman empire, and the miserable state

xxxvii. 6. See what he says on the spoils of celebrated “ Speeches against Verres,” and his Scipio Asiaticus and Cn. Manlius, xxxiii. 58.; own “ Cilician Correspondence,” to which we

xxxiv. 8.: cf. Liv. xxxix. 6. shall again have occasion to refer. His “Speech 1 See Niebuhr’s Lectures, vol.i. p.406., and in Defence of Flaccus ” throws much light on the the note. condition of the Jews under the Romans. We

2 Much of our best information concerning must not place too much confidence in the the state of the provinces is derived from Cicero’s _ picture there given of this Ephesian governor.

16 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

VIENNA CAMEO, APOTHEOSIS OF AUGustus.!

of its mixed population, we can recognise a negative preparation for the Gospel of Christ. This tyranny and oppression called for a Consoler, as much as the moral sickness of the Greeks called for a Healer; a Messiah was needed by the whole empire as much as by the Jews, though not looked for with the same conscious expectation. But we have no difficulty in going much further than this, and we cannot hesitate to discover in the circumstances of the world at this period, significant traces of a positive preparation for the Gospel.

It should be remembered, in the first place, that the Romans had already become Greek to some considerable extent, before they were the political masters of those eastern countries, where the language, mythology, and literature of Greece had become more or less familiar. How early, how widely, and how permanently this Greek influence prevailed, and how deeply it entered into the

' The best contrast to this ancient repre- ator,” — where the Saviour is seated in the sentation of the deification of Augustus in the midst of those who are miserable, and the eyes

midst of the misery of the world, will be found of all are turned to Him for relief. in Schiiffer’s modern picture — “ Christus Conso-

PREPARATION IN THE EMPIRE FOR CHRISTIANITY. 17

mind of educated Romans, we know from their surviving writings, and from the biography of eminent men. Cicero, who was governor of Cilicia about half a century before the birth of St. Paul, speaks in strong terms of the universal spread of the Greek tongue among the instructed classes'; and about the time of the Apostle’s martyrdom, Agricola, the conqueror of Britain, was receiving a Greek education at Marseilles. Is it too much to say, that the general Latin conquest was providentially delayed till the Romans had becn sufficiently imbued with the language and ideas of their predecessors, and had incorporated many parts of that civilisation with their own ?

And if the mysterious wisdom of the divine pre-arrangements is illustrated by the period of the spread of the Greek language, it is illustrated no less by that of the completion and maturity of the Roman government. When all parts of the civilised world were bound together in one empire, — when one common organisation pervaded the whole—when channels of communication were everywhere opened —when new facilities of travelling were provided, — then was “the fulness of times” (Gal. iv. 4.), then the Messiah came. The Greek language had already been prepared as a medium for preserving and transmitting the doctrine; the Roman government was now prepared to help the progress even of that religion which it persecuted. The manner in which it spread through the provinces is well exemplified in the life of St. Paul; his right of citizenship rescued him in Judsa and in Macedonia; he converted one governor in Cyprus, was protected by another in Achaia, and was sent from Jerusalem to Rome by a third. The time was indeed approaching, when all the complicated weight of the central tyranny, and of the provincial govern- ments, was to fall on the new and irresistible religion. But before this took place, it had begun to grow up in close connection with all departments of the empire. When the supreme government itself became Christian, the ecclesiastical polity was permanently regulated in conformity with the actual constitution of the state. Nor was the empire broken up, till the separate fragments, which have become the nations of modern Europe, were themselves portions of the Catholic Church.

1 Cicero, in his speech for Archias (who was born at Antioch, “ celebri urbe et copiosa, atque eruditissimis hominibus liberalissimisque studiis afiiluente ”), says, in reference to this spread of the Greek literature and language,—“ Erat Italia .»»

tune plena Grecarum artium ac disciplinarum : and again, “ Greca leguntur in omnibus fere

gentibus: Latina suis finibus, exiguis sane, con- tinentur.”

2 Tac. Agr.: “Sedem ac magistram studio- rum Massiliam habuit, locum Greca comitate et provinciali parsimonia mistum ac bene compo- situm.”

18 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

But in all that we have said of the condition of the Roman world, one important and widely diffused element of its population has not been mentioned. We have lost sight for some time of the Jews, and we must return to the subject of their dispersion, which was purposely deferred till we had shown how the intellectual civilisation of the Greeks, and the organising civilisation of the Romans, had, through a long series of remarkable events, been brought in contact with the religious civilisation of the Hebrews ; it remains that we point out that one peculiarity of the Jewish people, which made this contact almost universal in every part of the empire.

Their dispersion began early ; though, early and late, their attachment to Judeea has always been the same. Like the Highlanders of Switzerland and Scotland, they seem to have combined a tendency to foreign settlements with the most passionate love of their native land. The first scattering of the Jews was compulsory, and began with the Assyrian exile, when, about the time of the building of Rome, natives of Galilee and Samaria were carried away by the Eastern monarchs; and this was followed by the Babylonian exile, when the tribes of Judah and Benjamin were removed at different epochs,—when Daniel was brought to Babylon, and Ezekiel to the river Chebar. That this earliest dispersion was not without influential results may be inferred from these facts ;—that, about the time of the battles of Salamis and Marathon, a Jew was the minister, another Jew the cupbearer, and a Jewess the consort, of a Persian monarch. That they enjoyed many privileges in this foreign country, and that their condition was not always oppressive, may be gathered from this,—that when Cyrus gave them permission to return, the majority remained in their new home, in preference to their native land. Thus that great Jewish colony began in Babylonia, the existence of which may be traced in Apostolic times!, and which retained its influence long after in the Talmudical schools. These Hebrew settlements may be followed through various parts of the continental East, to the borders of the Caspian, and even to China.” We however are more concerned with the coasts and islands of Western Asia. Jews had settled in Syria and Pheenicia before the time of Alexander the Great. But in treating of this subject, the great stress is to be laid on the policy of Seleucus, who, in founding Antioch, raised them to the same political position with the other citizens. One of his successors on the throne, Antiochus the Great, established two thousand Jewish families in Lydia

Δ See 1 Pet. v. 18, 2 See “Ritter’s Erdkunde,” ΤῊ]. 4. (Asien.) 598.

DISPERSION OF THE JEWS. 19

and Phrygia. From hence they would spread into Pamphylia and Galatia, and along the western coasts from Ephesus to Troas. And the ordinary channels of communication, in conjunction with that tendency to trade which already began to characterise this wonderful people, would easily bring them to the islands, such as Cyprus? and Rhodes.

Their oldest settlement in Africa was that which took place after the murder of the Babylonian governor of Judea, and which is connected with the name of the prophet Jeremiah.? But, as in the case of Antioch, our chief attention is called to the great metropolis of the period of the Greek kings. The Jewish quar- ter of Alexandria is well known in history ; and the colony of Hellenistic Jews in Lower Egypt is of greater importance than that of their Aramaic brethren in Babylonia. Alexander himself brought Jews and Samaritans to his famous city ; Ptolemy Lagus brought many more; and many betook themselves hither of their free will, that they might escape from the incessant troubles which dis- turbed the peace of their fatherland. Nor was τ' their influence confined to Egypt, but they be- came known on one side in Ethiopia, the country of Queen Candace’, and spread on the other in great numbers to the “parts of Libya about Cyrene.” ®

Under what circumstances the Jews made their first appearance in Europe is unknown; but it is natural to suppose that those islands of the Archipelago which, as Humboldt ὃ has said, were like a bridge for the passage of civilisation, became the means of the advance of Judaism. The journey of the proselyte Lydia from Thyatira to Philippi (A. xvi. 14.), and the voyage of Aquila and Priscilla from Corinth to Ephesus (A. xviii. 18.), are only specimens of mercantile excursions which must have begun at a far earlier period. Philo mentions Jews in Thessaly, Beotia, Macedonia, A‘tolia, and Attica, in Argos and Corinth, in the other parts of Peloponnesus, and in the islands of Eubea

GREEK COIN OF CYRENE.‘

1 The farming of the copper mines in Cyprus by Herod (Jos. A. xvi. 4. 5.) may have attracted many Jews. M. Salvador, in his last work (Histoire de la Domination Romaine en Judée, &c., 1847), says it actually did; but this is not proved. There is a Cyprian inscription in “Bockh” (No. 2628), which seems to refer to one of the Herods.

2 See 2 Kings xxv. 22—26., Jer. xliii. xliv.

3 Acts viii. 27.

4 From the British Museum. See pp. 65 and

82. For the union of Cyrene with Crete in one Roman province, see p. 254. note.

5 Acts ii. 10. The second book of Maccabees is the abridgment of a work written by a Hel- lenistic Jew of Cyrene, A Jew or proselyte of Cyrene bore our Saviour’s eross.. And the men- tion of this city occurs more than once in the Acts of the Apostles.

6 Kosmos, Sabine’s English Translation, vol. ii. p. 120

Ρ 2

20 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

and Crete: and St. Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, speaks of them in Philippi, Thessalonica, and Bercea, in Athens, in Corinth, and in Rome. The first Jews came to Rome to decorate a triumph; but they were soon set free from captivity, and gave the name to the “ Synagogue of the Libertines”! in Jerusalem. They owed to Julius Cesar those privileges in the Western Capital which they had obtained from Alexander in the Eastern. They became influential, and made proselytes. They spread into other towns of Italy ; and in the time of St. Paul’s boyhood we find them in large numbers in the island of Sardinia, just as we have previously seen them established in that of Cyprus.2. With regard to Gaul, we know at least that two sons of Herod were banished, about this same period, to the banks of the Rhone; and if St. Paul ever accomplished that journey to Spain, of which he speaks in his letters, it is probable that he found there some of the scattered children of his own people. We do not seek to pursue them further; but, after a few words on the proselytes, we must return to the earliest scenes of the Apostle’s career.’

The subject of the proselytes is sufficiently important to demand a separate notice. Under this term we include at present all those who were attracted in various degrees of intensity towards Judaism, — from those who by circumcision had obtained full access to all the privileges of the temple- worship, to those who only professed a general respect for the Mosaic religion, and attended as hearers in the synagogues. Many proselytes were attached to the Jewish communities wherever they were dispersed.* Even in their own country and its vicinity, the number, both in early and later times, was not inconsiderable. The Queen of Sheba, in the Old Testament ; Candace, Queen of Ethiopia, in the New; and King Izates, with his mother Helena, mentioned by Josephus, are only royal representatives of a large class. During the time

1 This body doubtless consisted of manu- mitted Jewish slaves. See Wolf and the later commentators on Acts vi. 9.

2 In this case, however, they were forcibly sent to the island, to die of the bad climate. See Tac. Ann. ii. 85.; Suet. Tib. 36.; Jos. An. xviii. 3. 5.

3 The history of the Jewish dispersions will be found in an excellent little essay devoted to the subject, Joh. Remond’s “ Versuch einer Ge- schichte der Ausbreitung des Judenthums von Cyrus bis auf den giinzlichen Untergang des Jiidischen Staats:” Leipzig, 1789; in the in- troductory chapter of “ Wiltsch’s Handbuch der Kirchlichen Geographie,” Gotha, 1843, which has

been principally used here; andin a chapter in the second volume of Jost’s larger work, —the “ Geschichte der Israeliten,” 1820-28.

4 The following are the testimonies of pre-

judiced Heathens. —

Ἡ χώρα "lovdala καὶ αὐτοὶ Ἰουδαῖοι dvouddarar... 7 δὲ ἐπίκλησις αὕτη... φέρει. .. καὶ ἐπὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ἀνθρώ- πους, ὅσοι τὰ νόμιμα ἀντὼν, καίπερ ἀλλοεθνεῖς ὄντες, ζηλοῦσι, —Dio Cas, xxxvii. 16, 17.

Transgressi in morem eorum (Judgworum) idem usur- pant. Nec quicquam prius imbuuntur quam contemnere Deos, exuere patriam, parentes, liberos, fratres vilia ha- bere.— Tuc. H. V. 5.

Romanas autem soliti contemnere leges,

Judaicum ediscunt et servant ac metuunt jus,

Tradidit arcano quodeunque volumine Moses,

Juv, xiv, 100.

PROVINCES OF CILICIA AND JUDMA. 21

of the Maccabees, some alien tribes were forcibly incorporated with the Jews. This was the case with the Iturwans, and probably with the Moabites, and, above all, with the Edomites, with whose name that of the Herodian family is historically connected. How far Judaism extended among the vague collection of tribes called Arabians, we can only conjecture from the curious history of the Homerites”, and from the actions of such chieftains as Aretas (2 Cor. xi. 32.). But as we travel towards the West and North, into countries better known, we find no lack of evidence of the moral effect of the synagogues, with their worship of Jexovan, and their prophecies of the Messiah. ‘“ Nicolas of Antioch” (Acts vi. 5.) is only one of that “ vast multitude of Greeks” who were attracted in that city to the Jewish doctrine and ritual. In Damascus, we are even told by the same authority that the great majority of the women were proselytes ; a fact which receives a remarkable illustration from what happened to Paul at Iconium (Acts xiii. 50.). But all further details may be postponed till we follow him into the synagogues, where he so often addressed a mingled audience of “ Jews of the dispersion” and “ devout ” strangers.

This chapter may be suitably concluded by some notice of thé provinces of Cilicia and Judea. This will serve as an illustration of what has been said above, concerning the state of the Roman provinces generally ; it will exemplify the mixture of Jews, Greeks, and Romans in the east of the Mediterranean, and it will be a fit introduction to what must immediately succeed. For these are the two provinces which require our attention in the early life of the Apostle Paul.

Both these provinces were once under the sceptre of the line of the Seleucid, or Greek kings of Syria; and both of them, though originally inhabited by a “barbarous” population, received more or less of the influence of Greek civilisation. If the map is consulted, it will be seen that Antioch, the capital of the Greco-Syrian kings, is situated nearly in the angle where the coast-line of Cilicia, running eastwards, and that of Judea, extended northwards, are brought to an abrupt meeting. It will be seen also, that, more or less parallel to each of these coasts, there is a line of mountains, not far from the sea, which are brought into contact with each other in heavy and confused forms, near the same angle ; the principal break in the continuity of either of them being the valley of the Orontes, which passes by Antioch. One

! See Wiltsch as above, and the passages quoted from Josephus. 2 See it in Basnage, Histoire des Juifs, book vi. ch. 20, 3 Joseph. B. J. vii. 3. 3.

22 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

of these mountain lines is the range of Mount Taurus, which is so often mentioned as a great geographical boundary by the writers of Greece and Rome; and Cilicia extends partly over the Taurus itself, and partly between it and the sea. The other range is that of Lebanon—a name made sacred by the scriptures and poetry of the Jews; and where its towering eminences subside towards the south into a land of hills and vallies and level plains, there is Judea, once the country of promise and possession to the chosen people, but a Roman province in the time of the Apostles.

Cilicia, in the sense in which the word was used under the early Roman emperors, comprehended two districts, of nearly equal extent’, but of very different character. The Western portion, or Rough Cilicia, as it was called, was a collection of the branches of Mount Taurus, which come down in large masses to the sea, and form that projection of the coast which divides the Bay of Issus from that of Pamphylia. The inhabitants of the whole of this district were notorious for their robberies?: the northern portion, under the name of Isauria, providing innumerable strongholds for marauders by land; and the southern, with its excellent timber, its cliffs, and small harbours, being a natural home for pirates. The Isaurians maintained their independence with such determined obstinacy, that in a later period of the Empire, the Romans were willing to resign all appearance of subduing them, and were content. to surround them with a cordon of forts. The natives of the coast of Rough Cilicia began to extend their piracies as the strength of the kings of Syria and Egypt declined. They found in the progress of the Roman power, for some time, an encouragement rather than a hindrance; for they were actively engaged in an extensive and abominable slave trade, of which the island of Delos was the great market; and the opulent families of Rome were in need of slaves, and were not more scrupulous than some Christian nations of modern times about the means of obtaining them. But the expeditions of these buccaneers of the Mediterranean became at last quite intolerable ; their fleets seemed innumerable ; their connections were extended far beyond their own coasts; all commerce was paralysed ; and they. began to arouse that attention at Rome which the more distant pirates of the Eastern Archipelago are beginning to excite in England. A vast expedition was fitted out under the command of Pompey the Great;

1 Mannert says (Geographie der Griechen 2 See a very descriptive passage in Ammian. und Romer, “ Kleinasien,” 1801.) that the east- Mare. xiv. 2. ern division is about 15 German geographical

miles in breadth by 20 in length, the western 10 by 30. Cilicia, p. 33.

PROVINCE OF CILICIA. 28

thousands of piratic vessels were burnt on the coast of Cilicia, and the inhabitants dispersed. A perpetual service was thus done to the cause of civilisation, and the Mediterranean was made safe for the voyages of merchants and Apostles. The town of Soli, on the borders of the two divisions of Cilicia, received the name of Pompeiopolis', in honour of the great conqueror, and the splendid remains of a colonnade which led from the harbour to the city may be considered a monument of this signal destruction of the enemies of order and peace.

The Eastern, or Flat Cilicia, was a rich and extensive plain. Its prolific vegetation is praised both by the earlier and later classical writers’, and, even under the neglectful government of the Turks, is still noticed by modern travellers.? From this circumstance, and still more from its peculiar physical configuration, it was a possession of great political importance. Walled off from the neighbouring countries by a high barrier of mountains‘, which sweep irregularly round it from Pompeiopolis and Rough Cilicia to the Syrian coast on the North of Antioch,—with one pass leading up into the interior of Asia Minor, and another giving access to the valley of the Orontes, —it was naturally the high road both of trading caravans and of military expeditions. Through this country Cyrus marched, to depose his brother from the Persian throne. It was here that the decisive victory was obtained by Alexander over Darius. This plain has since seen the hosts of Western Crusaders; and, in our own day, has been the field of operations of hostile Mahommedan armies, Turkish and Egyptian. The Greek kings of Egypt endeavoured, long ago, to tear it from the Greek kings of Syria. The Romans left it at first

1 A similar case, on a small scule, is that of Philippeville in Algeria; and the progress of the French power, since the accession of Louis Philippe, in Northern Africa, is perhaps the nearest parallel in modern times to the history of a Roman province. As far as regards the pirates, Lord Exmouth, in 1816, really did the work of Pompey the Great. It may be doubted whether Marshal Bugeaud was more lenient to the Arabs, than Cicero to the Eleuthero-Cilicians.

Chrysippus the Stoic, whose father was a native of Tarsus, and Aratus, whom St. Paul quotes, lived at Soli. Cf. Mannert, p. 69.

2 For instance, Xen. Anab. i. 2.; Ammian. Mare. xiv. 7.

3 Laborde’s illustrated work on Syria and

Asia Minor contains some luxuriant specimens of the modern vegetation of Tarsus; but the banana and the prickly pear were introduced into the Mediterranean long after St. Paul’s day. 4 This mountain-wall is described by no one more accurately and vividly than by Quintus Cur- tius: —“ Perpetuo jugo montis asperi et prerupti Cilicia includitur: quod quam a mari surgat, velut sinu quodam flexuque curvatum, rursus altero cornu in diversum litus excurrit. Per hoe dorsum, qui maximé introrsum mari cedit, asperi tres aditus, et perangusti sunt, quorum uno Cilicia intranda est, Campestris eadem, qua vergit ad mare, planitiem ejus crebris distin- guentibus rivis. Pyramus et Cydnus inelyti amnes fluunt.” De Rebus Gestis Alex. iii. 4.

24 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

in the possession of Antiochus: but the line of Mount Taurus could not per- manently arrest them: and the letters of Cicero are among the earliest and most interesting monuments of Roman Cilicia.

Situated near the western border of the Cilician plain, where the river Cyd- nus flows in a cold and rapid stream! from the snows of Taurus to the sea, was the city of Tarsus, the capital of the whole province, and “no mean city” (A. xxi. 39.) in the history of the an- cient world. Its coins reveal to us its greatness through a long series of years :—alike in the period which intervened between Xerxes and Alexander,—and under the Roman sway, when it exulted in the name of Metropolis, —and long after Hadrian had rebuilt it, and issued his new coinage with the old mythological types.?_ In the intermediate period, which is that of St. Paul, we have the testimony of a native of this part of Asia Minor, from which we may infer that Tarsus was in the Eastern basin of the Mediterranean, almost what Marseilles was in the Western. Strabo says! that, in all that relates to philosophy and general education, it was even more illustrious than Athens and Alexandria. From his description it is evident that its main character was that of a Greek city, where the Greek language was spoken, and Greek literature studiously cultivated; But we should be wrong in supposing that the general population of the province was of Greek origin, or spoke the Greek tongue. When Cyrus came with his army from the Western Coast, and still later, when Alexander penetrated into Cilicia, they found the inhabi- tants “ Barbarians.” Nor is it likely that the old race would be destroyed, or the old language obliterated, especially in the mountain districts, during the reign of the Seleucid kings. We must rather conceive of Tarsus as like Brest, in Brittany, or like Toulon, in Provence,—a city where the language

COIN OF TARSUS.

HADRIAN.

nihil addidit; nam quod ad juris contentionem attinebat, id omne ad ‘Tarsum veram Cilicim

1 Διαῤῥεῖ ἀυτὴν μέσην ὁ Kidvoc.....+ ψυχρόν τε καὶ ταχὺ τὸ ῥεῦμά ἐστιν. Strabo. xiv. 5.

2 This coin was struck under Hadrian, and is preserved in the British Museum. Anazarbus on the Pyramus was a rival city, and from the time of Caracalla is found assuming the title of Metropolis; but it was only an empty honour. Eckhel says of it (p. 42.): “ Hoc titulo constanter deinceps gloriabatur, etsi is preter honorem illi

metropolim pertinuit, ut existimat Belleyus.” The same figures of the Lion and the Bull appear in a fine series of silver coins assigned by the Duc de Luynes (Numismatique des Satrapies) to the period between Xerxes and Alexander.

3 Bk. xiv. ch.5. The passage will be quoted at length hereafter.

“TARSUS. 25

of refinement is spoken and written, in the midst of a ruder population, who use a different language, and possess no literature of their own.

If we turn now to consider the position of this province and city under the Romans, we are led to notice two different systems of policy which they adopted in their subject dominions. The purpose of Rome was to make the world subservient to herself: but this might be accomplished directly or in- directly. A governor might be sent from Rome to take the absolute command of a province: or some native chief might have a kingdom, an ethnarchy, or a tetrarchy assigned to him, in which he was nominally independent, but really subservient, and often tributary. Some provinces were rich and productive, or essentially important in the military sense, and these were committed to Romans under the Senate or the Emperor. Others might be worthless or troublesome, and fit only to reward the services of an useful instrument, or to occupy the energies of a dangerous ally. Both these systems were adopted in the East and in the West. We have examples of both—in Spain and in Gaul—in Cilicia and in Judea. In Asia Minor they were so irregularly combined, and the territories of the independent sovereigns were so capriciously granted or removed, ex- tended or curtailed, that it is often difficult to ascertain what the actual boundaries of the provinces were at a given epoch. Not to enter into any minute history in the case of Cilicia, it will be enough to say, that its rich and level plain in the East was made a Roman province by Pompey, and so remained, while certain districts in the Western portion were assigned, at different periods, to various native chieftains.‘ Thus the territories of Amyntas, King of Galatia, were extended in this direction by Antony, when he was pre- paring for his great struggle with Augustus”: — just as a modern Rajah may be strengthened on the banks of the Indus, in connection with our wars against Scinde and the Sikhs. For some time the whole of Cilicia was a con- . solidated province under the first emperors: but again, in the reign of Claudius, we find a portion of the same Western district assigned to a king called

! To Ariobarzanes of Cappadocia by the in- fluence of Pompey; to Tarkondimotus, whose sons espoused the cause of Antony ; and finally to Archelaus by Augustus. Some part of the coast also was at one time assigned to Cleopatra, for the sake of the timber for shipbuilding. See Mannert’s Geographie, “ Kleinasien,” pp. 45, 46.

3 The territories of Amyntas were brought down to the coast of Pamphylia, so as to include the important harbour of Side. There is no

better way of studying the history of Asia Minor than by means of coins, with the assistance of Eckhel, Mionnet, Sestini, &c. The writer of this is desirous to acknowledge his obligations to many conversations with the gentlemen who are occupied in. the Medal Room of the British Museum, Mr. Burgon, Mr. Newton, &c.

3 This has been the case with the Rajah of Bahawalpoor. See the articles on Indian news in the newspapers of 1848,

26 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

Polemo II. It is needless to pursue the history further. In St, Paul’s early life the political state of the inhabitants of Cilicia would be that of subjects of a Roman governor: and Roman officials, if not Roman soldiers, would be a familiar sight to the Jews who were settled in Tarsus.’

We shall have many opportunities of describing the condition of provinces under the dominion of Rome; but it may be interesting here to allude to the information which may be gathered from the writings of that distinguished man, who was governor of Cilicia a few years after its first reduction by Pompey. He was entrusted with the civil and military superintendence of a large district in this corner of the Mediterranean, comprehending not only. Cilicia, but Pamphylia, Pisidia, Lycaonia, and the island of Cyprus; and he has left a record of all the details of his policy in a long series of letters, which are a curious monument of the Roman procedure in the management of conquered provinces, and which possess a double interest to us, from their frequent allusions to the same places which St. Paul refers to in his Epistles. . This correspondence represents to us the governor as surrounded by the adulation of obsequious Asiatic Greeks. He travels with an interpreter, for Latin is the official language ; he puts down banditti, and is saluted by the title of Imperator; letters are written, on various subjects, to the governors of neighbouring provinces, —for instance, Syria, Asia, and Bithynia; ceremonious communi- cations take place with the independent chieftains. The friendly relations of Cicero with Deiotarus, King of Galatia, and his son, remind us of the inter- view of Pilate and Herod in the Gospel, or of Festus and Agrippa in the Acts. Cicero’s letters are rather too full of a boastful commendation of his own integrity; but from what he says that he did, we may infer by con- trast what was done by others who were less scrupulous in the discharge of the same responsibilities. He allowed free access to his person; he refused expensive monuments in his honour; he declined the proffered present of the pauper King of Cappadocia?; he abstained from exacting the customary expenses from the states which he traversed on his march; he remitted to the treasury the monies which were not expended on his province; he would not place in official situations those who were engaged in trade; he treated the local Greek magistrates with due consideration, and contrived at the same time to give satisfaction to the Publicans. From all this it may be easily inferred with how much corruption, cruelty, and pride, the Romans usually governed;

1 Tarsus, as an Urbs Libera, would have the 2 See Hor. 1. Ep. vi. 9. : — privilege of being garrisoned by its own soldiers. | Mancipiis locuples eget zris Cappadocum Rex. See next Chapter.

PROVINCE OF JUDMA. 27

and how miserable must have been the condition of a province under a Verres or an Appius, a Pilate or a Felix. So far as we remember, the Jews are not mentioned in any of Cicero’s Cilician letters; but if we may draw conclusions from a speech which he made at Rome in defence of a contemporary governor of Asia’, he regarded them with much contempt, and would be likely to treat them with harshness and injustice.?

That Polemo II., who has lately been mentioned as a king in Cilicia, was one of those curious links which the history of those times exhibits between Heathenism, Judaism, and Christianity. He became a Jew to marry Berenice, who afterwards forsook him, and whose name, after once appearing in Sacred History (Acts xxv. xxvi.), is lastly associated with that of Titus, the destroyer of Jerusalem. The name of Berenice will at once suggest the family of the Herods, and transport our thoughts to Judea.

The same general features may be traced in this province as in that which we have been attempting to describe. In some respects, indeed, the details of its history are different. When Cilicia was a province, it formed a separate jurisdiction, with a governor of its own, immediately responsible to Rome: but Judea, in its provincial period, was only an appendage to Syria. It has been said * that the position of the ruler resident at Cwsarea in connection with the supreme authority at Antioch may be best understood by comparing it with that of the governor of Madras or Bombay under the governor-general who resides at Calcutta. The comparison is very just: and British India might supply a further parallel. We might. say that when Judea was not strictly a province, but a monarchy under the protectorate of Rome, it bore the same relation to the contiguous province of Syria which the territories of the king of Oude® bear to the presidency of Bengal. Judea was twice a monarchy: and thus its history furnishes illustrations of the two systems pursued by the Romans, of direct and indirect government.

! This was L. Valerius Flaccus, who had served in Cilicia, and was afterwards made Governor of Asia,—that district with which, and its capital Ephesus, we are so familiar in the Acts of the Apostles.

2 See especially Cic. Flac. 28., and for the opinion which educated Romans had of the Jews, see Hor. 1 Sat. iv. 148. v. 100. ix. 69.

8. “Ut erat vir stolidi ingenii, &c.” says Eckhel. He was the last King of Pontus. By Caligula he was made King of Bosphorus; but Claudius

gave him part of Cilicia instead of it. See Joseph. A. xx. 7. 3.; Dio Cass. lx. 8.5 Suet. Nero. 18.

4 See the introduction to Dr. Traill’s Josephus, a work which has been unfortunately interrupted by the death of the translator during the Irish famine.

5 Another coincidence is, that we made the Nabob of Oude a king. He had previously been hereditary Vizier of the Mogul.

E 2

28 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

Another important contrast must be noticed in the histories of these two provinces. In the Greek period of Judwa, there was a time of noble and vigorous independence. Antiochus Epiphanes, the eighth of the line of the Seleucide, in pursuance of a general system of policy, by which he sought to unite all his different territories through the Greek religion, endeavoured to introduce the worship of Jupiter into Jerusalem. Such an attempt might have been very successful in Syria or Cilicia: but in Judeea it kindled a flame of religious indig- nation, which did not cease to burn till the yoke of the Seleucide was entirely thrown off: the name of Antiochus Epiphanes was ever afterwards held in ab- horrence by the Jews, and a special fast was kept up in memory of the time when the “ abomination of desolation” stood in the holy place. The champions of the independence of the Jewish nation and the purity of the Jewish religion were the family of the Maccabees or Asmonzans: and a hundred years before the birth of Christ the first Hyrcanus was reigning over a prosperous and inde- pendent kingdom. But in the time of the second Hyrcanus and his brother, the family of the Maccabees was not what it had been, and Juda was ripening for the dominion of Rome. Pompey the Great, the same conqueror who had already subjected Cilicia, appeared in Damascus, and there judged the cause of the two brothers. All the country was full of his fame.t In the spring of the year 63 he came down by the valley of the Jordan, his Roman soldiers occupied the ford where Joshua had crossed over, and from the Mount of Olives he

COIN OF ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES, WITH HEAD OF JUPITER.”

' See Jost’s “ Allgemeine Geschichte des Israelitischen Volks,” vol. ii. pp. 18—21., where a good and rapid sketch of the events is given.

? This beautiful coin, preserved in the British Museum, is given here, in consequence of the head of Jupiter which appears on the obverse, in place of the portrait usual in the Alexandrian, Seleucid, and Macedonian series. Since such emblems on ancient coins have always sacred

meanings, it is very probable that this arose from the religious movement alluded to in the text. For the religious symbolism of Greek and Roman coins, see Mr. Burgon’s “ Inquiry into the Motive which influenced the Ancients in the Choice of theVarious Representations which we find stamped on their Money,” in the Numismatic Journal for Sept. 1836.

————

( )

POLITICAL CHANGES IN JUDMA. 29

looked down upon Jerusalem.’ From that day Judea was virtually under the government of Rome. It is true that, after a brief support given to the reigning family, a new native dynasty was raised to the throne. Antipater, a man of Idumean birth, had been minister of the Maccabean kings: but they were the Rois Fainéants of Palestine, and he was the Maire du Palais. In the midst of the confusion of the great civil wars, the Herodian family succeeded to the Asmonzan, as the Carlovingian line in France succeeded that of Clovis. As Pepin was followed by Charlemagne, so Antipater prepared a crown for his son Herod.

At first Herod the Great espoused the cause of Antony; but he contrived to remedy his mistake by paying a prompt visit, after the battle of Actium, to Augustus in the island of Rhodes. This singular interview of the Jewish prince with the Roman conqueror in a Greek island was the beginning of an important period for the Hebrew nation. An exotic civilisation was syste- matically introduced and extended. Those Greek influences, which had been begun under the Seleucide, and not discontinued under the Asmonzans, were now more widely diffused: and the Roman customs’, which had hitherto been

ΕΝ orem ἐΞῸ Ty) is we RE τὰν casi NR NStoN.sc. στ

REMAINS OF THE ANCIENT BRIDGE AT JERUSALEM,

1 Pompey heard of the death of Mithridates manes from his mad conduct) is said to have at Jericho. His army crossed at Scythopolis, made himself ridiculous by adopting Roman by the ford immediately below the lake of fashions, and walking about the streots of Tiberias. (See Herod. i. 105.) Antioch in a toga.

2 Antiochus Epiphanes (who was called Epi-

80 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

comparatively unknown, were now made familiar. Herod was indeed too wise, and knew the Jews too well, to attempt, like Antiochus, to introduce foreign institutions, without any regard to their religious feelings. He endeavoured to ingratiate himself with them by rebuilding and decorating their national temple; and a part of that magnificent bridge which was connected with the great southern colonnade is still believed to exist, remaining, in its vast proportions and Roman form, an appropriate monument of the Herodian period of Judza.! The period when Herod was reigning at Jerusalem under the protectorate of Augustus was chiefly remarkable for great architectural works, for the promotion of commerce, the influx of strangers, and the increased diffusion of the two great languages of the heathen world. The names of places are themselves a monument of the spirit of the times. As Tarsus was called Juliopolis from Julius Cesar, and Soli Pompeiopolis from his great rival, so Samaria was called Sebaste after the Greek name of Augustus, and the new metropolis, which was built by Herod on the sea-shore, was called Ceesarea in honour of the same Latin emperor: while Antipatris, on the road (A. xxiii. 31.) between the old capital and the new, still commemorated the name of the king’s Idumean father. We must not suppose that the internal change in the minds of the people was proportional to the magnitude of these outward improvements. They suffered much, and their hatred grew towards Rome and towards the Herods. A parallel might be drawn between the state of Judea under Herod the Great, and that of Egypt under Mahomet Ali’, where great works have been successfully accomplished, where the spread of ideas has been promoted, traffic made busy and prosperous, and communication with the civilised world wonderfully increased, — but where the mass of the people has continued to be miserable and degraded.

After Herod’s death, the same influences still continued to operate in Judea. Archelaus persevered in his father’s policy, though destitute of his

1 See the woodcut. It is right to say that there is much controversy about the real origin of these remains. Dr. Robinson believes that they were part of a bridge connected with the Temple, but strangely refers them to the time of Solomon: Mr. Williams holds them to be a fragment of the great Christian works con- structed in this southern part of the Temple- area in the age of Justinian: Mr. Fergusson conceives them to be part of the bridge which

joined Mount Zion to the Temple, but assigns them to Herod.

2 There are many points of resemblance be- tween the character and fortunes of Herod and those of Mahomet Ali: the chief differences are those of the times. Herod secured his position by the influence of Augustus; Mahomet Ali secured his by the agreement of the European powers.

HEROD AND HIS FAMILY. 81

father’s energy. The same may be said of the other sons, Antipas and Philip, in their contiguous principalities. All the Herods were great builders, and eager partizans of the Roman emperors: and we are familiar in the Gospels with that Caesarea (Cxsarea Philippi), which one of them built in the upper part of the valley of the Jordan, and named in honour of Augustus, — and with that Tiberias on the banks of the lake of Gennesareth, which bore the name of his wicked successor. But while Antipas and Philip still retained their dominions under the protectorate of the emperor, Archelaus had been banished, and the weight of the Roman power had descended still more heavily on Judea. It was placed under the direct jurisdiction of a governor, residing at Caesarea by the Sea, and depending, as we have seen above, on the governor of Syria at Antioch. And now we are made familiar with those features which might be adduced as characterising any other province at the same epoch, — the pretorium (Joh. xviii. 28.),—the publicans (Luke iii. 12., xix. 2.),—the tribute-money (Mat. xxii. 19.),— soldiers and centurions recruited in Italy (Acts x. 1.)!, — Cesar the only king (Joh. xix. 15.)—and the ultimate appeal against the injustice of the governor (Acts xxv. 11.). In this period the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Curisr took place, the first preaching of his Apostles, and the conversion of St. Paul. But once more a change came over the political fortunes of Judea. Herod Agrippa was the friend of Caligula, as Herod the Great had been the friend of Augustus; and when Tiberius died, he received the grant of an independent principality in the north of Palestine.? He was able to ingratiate himself with Claudius, the succeeding emperor. Judea was added to his dominion, which now embraced the whole circle of the territory ruled by his grandfather. By this time St. Paul was actively pursuing his apostolic career. We need not, therefore, advance beyond this point, in a chapter which is only intended to be a general introduction to. the Apostle’s history.

Our desire has been to give a picture of the condition of the world at this particular epoch ; and we have thought that no grouping would be so successful

1 There is little doubt that this is the meaning © * He obtained under Caligula, first, the te- of the Italian Band.” Most of the soldiers trarchy of his uncle Philip, who died; and then quartered in Syria were recruited in the province. that of his uncle Antipas, who followed his See a full discussion of this subject in Biscoe’s brother Archelaus into banishment.

“ History of the Acts confirmed,” chap. ix. The “ Augustan Band” (xxvii. 1.) seems to have a different meaning. See Vol. II. p. 286, n. 2.

382 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

as that which should consist of Jews, Greeks, and Romans. Nor is this an artificial or unnatural arrangement: for these three nations were the divisions of the civilised world. And in the view of a religious mind they were more than this. They were “the three peoples of God’s election; two for things temporal, and one for things eternal. Yet even in the things eternal they were allowed to minister. Greek cultivation and Roman polity prepared men for Christianity.” These three peoples stand in the closest relation to the whole human race. The Christian, when he imagines himself among those spectators who stood round the cross, and gazes in spirit upon that “ superscription,” which the Jewish scribe, the Greek proselyte, and the Roman soldier could read, each in his own tongue, feels that he is among those who are the repre- sentatives of all humanity.” In the ages which precede the crucifixion, these three languages were like threads which guided us through the labyrinth of history. And they are still among the best guides of our thought, as we travel through the ages which succeed it. How great has been the honour of the Greek and Latin tongues! They followed the fortunes of a triumphant church. Instead of heathen languages, they gradually became Christian. As before they had been employed to express the best thoughts of unassisted humanity, so afterwards they became the exponents of Christian doctrine and the channels of Christian devotion. The words of Plato and Cicero fell from the lips and pen of Chrysostom and Augustine. And still those two languages are associated together in the work of Christian education, and made the instruments for training the minds of the young in the greatest nations of the earth. And how deep and pathetic is the interest which attaches to the Hebrew! Here the thread seems to be broken. ‘“ Jesus, King of the Jews,” in Hebrew characters. It is like the last word of the Jewish Scriptures,—the last warning of the chosen people. A cloud henceforth is upon the people and the language of Israel. “Blindness in part is happened unto Israel, till the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.” Once again Jesus, after His ascension, spake openly

! Dr. Arnold, in the journal of his Tour in higher, sense. The Roman, powerful but not 1840 (Life, ii. 418., 2d edit.) The passage happy—the Greek, distracted with the enquiries continues thus : —“ As Mahometanism can bear of an unsatisfying philosophy — the Jew, bound witness ; for the East, when it abandoned Greece hand and foot with the chain of a ceremonial and Rome, could only reproduce Judaism. law, all are together round the cross, CHRIST Mahometanism, six hundred years after Christ, is crucified in the midst of them — crucified for proving that the Eastern man could bear nothing all. ‘The “ superscription of His accusation ” perfect, justifies the wisdom of God in Judaism.” speaks to all the same language of peace, pardon,

3 This is true in another, and perhaps a and love.

CONCLUSION, 33

from Heaven “in the Hebrew tongue” (Acts xxvi. 14.): but the words were addressed to that Apostle who was called to preach the Gospel to the philoso- phers of Greece, and in the emperor’s palace at Rome.

ENOAAE KEL TAI ®AYCTINA

Q Sou

Here lies Faustina. In peace.!

ΤΑ Christian tomb with the three languages, p.77. The name is Latin, the inscription Greek, from Maitiands “ Church in the Catacombs,’ and the word Shalom or “ Peace” is in Hebrew.

84 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL,

CHAPTER II.

“Die Juden waren daselbst fiir die Heiden dasselbe, was Johannes der Tiufer fiir die Juden in ihrem Lande war.”—(Wiltsch, Handbuch der Kirchlichen Geographie.)

JEWISH ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH. — SECTS AND PARTIES OF THE JEWS. — PHARISEES AND SADDUCEES.— 8T. PAUL A PHARISEE —HELLENISTS AND ARAMANS.—ST. PAUL’S FAMILY HELLENISTIC BUT NOT HELLENISING.—HIS INFANCY AT TARSUS.—THE TRIBE OF BENJAMIN.—HIS FATHER’S CITIZENSHIP.—SCENERY OF THE PLACE.— HIS CHILDHOOD. —HE IS SENT TO JERUSALEM.— STATE OF JUDHA AND JERUSALEM.— RABBINICAL SCHOOLS.— GAMALIEL.— MODE OF TEACHING.— SYNAGOGUES. — STUDENT- LIFE OF ST. PAUL.—HIS EARLY MANHOOD.—FIRST ASPECT OF THE CHURCH. --- ΒΥ. STEPHEN. —THE SANHEDRIN.— ST. STEPHEN THE FORERUNNER OF 851. PAUL. — HIS MARTYRDOM AND PRAYER.

Curistianity has been represented by some of the modern Jews as a mere school of Judaism. Instead of opposing it as a system antagonistic and subversive of the Mosaic religion, they speak of it as a phase or development of that religion itself, as simply one of the rich outgrowths from the fertile Jewish soil. They point out the causes which combined in the first century to produce this Christian development of Judaism. It has even been hinted that Chris- tianity has done a good work in preparing the world for receiving the pure Mosaic principles which will, at length, be universal. We are not unwilling to accept some of these phrases as expressing a great and important truth. Christianity is a school of Judaism: but it is the school which absorbs and interprets the teaching of all others. It is a development; but it is that development which was divinely foreknown and predetermined. It is the grain of which mere Judaism is now the worthless husk. It is the image of Truth in its full proportions ; and the Jewish remnants are now as the shape-

1 Some of these works have furnished us with tian can read without deep pain; but the pain useful suggestions, and in some cases the very is not so deep as when the same things are words have been adopted. There is much in suggested, or borrowed, by those who call them- such Jewish writings which no ordinary Chris- selves Christians.

SECTS AND PARTIES OF THE JEWS. 35

less fragments which remain of the block of marble when the statue is com- pleted. When we look back at the Apostolic age, we see that growth proceeding which separated the husk from the grain. We see the image of Truth coming out in clear expressiveness, and the useless fragments falling off like scales, under the careful work of divinely-guided hands. If we are to realise the earliest appearance of the Church, such as it was when Paul first saw it, we must view it as arising in the midst of Judaism: and if we are to comprehend all the feelings and principles of this Apostle, we must consider first the Jewish preparation of his own younger days. To these two subjects the present chapter will be devoted.

We are very familiar with one division which ran through the Jewish nation in the first century. The Sadducees and Pharisees are frequently mentioned in the New Testament, and we are there informed of the tenets of these two prevailing parties. The belief in a future state may be said to have been an open question among the Jews, when our Lord appeared and “ brought life and immortality to light.” We find the Sadducees established in the highest office of the priesthood, and possessed of the greatest powers in the Sanhedrin: and yet they did not believe in any future state, nor in any spiritual existence independent of the body. The Sadducees said that there was “no resurrection, neither “Angel nor Spirit.” They do not appear to have held doctrines, which are commonly called licentious or immoral. On the contrary, they adhered strictly to the moral tenets of the Law, as opposed to its mere formal technicalities. They did not overload the Sacred Books with traditions, or encumber the duties of life with a multitude of minute observances. They were the disciples of reason without enthusiasm, — they made few proselytes,—their numbers were not great, and they were con- fined principally to the richer members of the nation.? The Pharisees, on the other hand, were the enthusiasts of the later Judaism. They “ compassed sea and land to make one proselyte.” Their power and influence with the mass of the people was immense. The loss of the national independence of the

1 Acts xxiii. 8. See Matt. xxii. 23—34. Itis

remarkable that the Sadducees are mentioned in no other books of the New Testament, except St. Matthew and the Acts. See Vol. II. p. 270. n. 2.

* Josephus says of the Sadducees: Εἰς ὀλέγους τε ἄνδρας οὗτος ὃ λόγος ἀφίκετο, τοὺς μέντοι πρώτους τοῖς ἀξιώμασι. Πράσσεταί τε ἀπ᾽ αὐτῶν ὀυδὲν ὡς ἐιπεῖν " ὅποτε γὰρ ἐπ᾽ ἀρχὰς παρέλθοιεν, ἀκουσίως

Ε

μὲν καὶ κατ᾽ ἀνάγκας, προσχωροῦσι δ᾽ οὖν οἷς ὁ Φα- ~ , δὺς ἂν .» > ᾿ Ζ. ρισαῖος λέγει, διὰ τὸ μὴ ἄλλως ἀνεκτοὺς γένεσθαι τοῖς πλήθεσιν. Ant. xviii. 1.4. And again: Τῶν μὲν Σαδδουκαίων τοὺς εὐπόρους μόνον πειθόντων, τὸ δὲ δημοτικὸν οὐχ ἑπόμενον αὑτοῖς ἐχόντων, τῶν δὲ Φαρισαίων τὸ πλῆθος σύμμαχον ἐχόντων, xiii.

10.6. See the question asked, John vii. 45,

2

36 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

Jews,—the gradual extinction of their political life, directly by the Romans, and indirectly by the family of Herod,— caused their feelings to rally round their Law and their Religion, as the only centre of unity which now remained to them. ‘Those, therefore, who gave their energies to the interpretation and exposition of the Law, not curtailing any of the doctrines which were virtually . contained in it, and which had been revealed with more or less clearness, but rather accumulating articles of faith, and multiplying the requirements of devotion ;—who themselves practised a severe and ostentatious religion, being liberal in almsgiving, fasting frequently, making long prayers, and carrying casuistical distinctions into the smallest details of conduct ;— who consecrated, moreover, their best zeal and exertions to the spread of the fame of Judaism, and to the increase of the nation’s power in the only way which now was practicable, —could not fail to command the reverence of great numbers of the people. It was no longer possible to fortify Jerusalem against the Heathen: but the Law could be fortified like an impregnable city. The place of the brave is on the walls and in the front of the battle: and the hopes of the nation rested on those who defended the sacred outworks, and made successful inroads on the territories of the Gentiles.

Such were the Pharisees. And now, before proceeding to other features of Judaism and their relation to the Church, we can hardly help glancing at St. Paul. He was “a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee,”! and he was educated by Gamaliel?, “ a Pharisee.”® Both his father and his teacher belonged to this sect. And on three distinct occasions he tells us that he himself was a member of it. Once when at his trial, before a mixed assembly of Pharisees and Saddu- cees, the words just quoted were spoken, and his connection with the Pharisees asserted with such effect, that the feelings of this popular party were imme- diately enlisted on his side. ‘ And when he had so said, there arose a dissension between the Pharisees and the Sadducees; and the multitude was divided. . . . And there arose a great cry; and the Scribes that were of the Pharisees’ part arose, and strove, saying, We find no evil in this man.”*4 The second time was, when, on a calmer occasion, he was pleading before Agrippa, and said to the king, in the presence of Festus: “ The Jews knew me from the beginning, if they would testify, that after the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee.”® And once more, when writing from Rome to the Philippians, he gives force to his argument against the Judaizers, by

1 Acts xxiii. 6. 2 Acts xxii 3. 3 Acts v. 84. 4 Acts xxiii. 5 Acts Xxvi

ST. PAUL A PHARISEE. 51

telling them that if any other man thought he had whereof he might trust in the flesh, he had more: —“ circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe οἵ. Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the Law, a Pharisee.”* And not only was he himself a Pharisee, but his father also. He was “‘ a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee.” This short sentence sums up nearly all we know of St. Paul’s parents. If we think of his earliest life, we are to conceive of him as born in a Pharisaic family, and as brought up from

- his infancy in the “ straitest sect of the Jews’ religion.” His childhood was

nurtured in the strictest belief. The stories of the Old Testament, —the angelic appearances, — the prophetic visions, — to him were literally true. They needed no Sadducean explanation. The world of spirits was a reality to him.

-The resurrection of the dead was an article of his faith. And to exhort him

to the practices of religion, he had before him the example of his father, praying und walking with broad phylacteries, scrupulous and exact in his legal observ- ances. And he had, moreover, as it seems, the memory and tradition of ancestral piety; for he tells us in one of his latest letters’, that he served God * from his forefathers.” All influences combined to make him “ more exceed- ingly zealous of the traditions of his fathers,”* and “ touching the righteousness which is in the Law, blameless.”* Everything tended to prepare him to be an eminent member of that theological party, to which so many of the Jews were looking for the preservation of their national life, and the extension of their national creed.

But in this mention of the Pharisees and Sadducees, we are far from exhausting the subject of Jewish divisions, and far from enumerating all those phases of opinion which must have had some connection with the growth of rising Christianity, and those elements which may have contributed to form the character of the Apostle of the Heathens. There was a sect in Judea which is not mentioned in the Scriptures, but which must have acquired considerable influence in the time of the Apostles, as may be inferred from the space devoted to it by Josephus and Philo.’ These were the Zssenes, who retired from the

! Philip. iii. 4, 5.

2 2 Tim. i. 3.

3 Gal. i. 14.

4 Phil. iii. 6.

5 See the long details given by the former writer in book ii. ch. 8. of the “Jewish Wars ;” and by the latter in the treatise “Quod omnis probus liber ;” and in the fragment from Eusebius

in Mangey’s Philo. ii. p.632. The Essenes lived chiefly in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea. Pliny says of them: “ Ab occidente litora Esseni fugiunt, usque qua nocent: gens sola, et in toto orbe preter czteras mira, sine ulla feemina, sine pecunia, socia palmarum. In diem ex wquo con- venarum turba renascitur, large frequentantibus, quos vita fessos ad mores eorum fortune fluctus

88 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

theological and political distractions of Jerusalem and the larger towns, and founded peaceful communities in the desert or in villages, where their life was spent in contemplation, and in the practices of ascetic piety. It has been suggested that John the Baptist was one of them. There is no proof that this was the case: but we need not doubt that they did represent religious cravings which Christianity satisfied. Another party was that of the Zealots *, who were as politically fanatical as the Essenes were religiously contemplative, and whose zeal was kindled with the burning desire to throw off the Roman yoke from the neck of Israel. Very different from them were the Herodians, twice mentioned in the Gospels ἢ, who held that the hopes of Judaism rested on the Herods, and who almost looked to that family for the fulfilment of the prophecies of the Messiah. And if we were simply enumerating the divisions, and describing the sects of the Jews, it would be necessary to mention the Therapeute ὃ, a widely- spread community in Egypt, who lived even in greater seclusion than the Essenes in Judea. The Samaritans also would require our attention. But we must turn from these sects and parties to a wider division, which arose from that dispersion of the Hebrew people, to which some space has been devoted in the preceding chapter.

We have seen that early colonies of the Jews were settled in Babylonia and Mesopotamia. Their connection with their brethren in Judea was continually maintained: and they were bound to them by the link of a common language. The Jews of Palestine and Syria, with those who lived on the Tigris and Euphrates, interpreted the Scriptures through the Targums‘ or Chaldee paraphrases, and spoke kindred dialects of the language of Aram®: and hence

agitat. Ita per seculorum millia (incredibile dictu) gens wterna est, in qua nemo nascitur. Tam feecunda illis aliorum vite peenitentia est.” N. H. v. 15.

1 See Basnage’s Histoire des Juifs. ch. 17.

2 Mark iii. 6.; Matt. xxii. 16.: see Mark xii. 13.

3 Described in great detail by Philo in his treatise De Vita Contemplativa.

4 It is uncertain when the written Targums came into use, but the practice of paraphrasing orally in Chaldee must have begun soon after the Captivity.

5 Aram —the “Highlands” of the Semitic tribes — comprehended the tract of country

Liv. i.

which extended from Taurus and Lebanon to Mesopotamia and Arabia: for references, see Winer’s Realwoérterbuch. There were two main dialects of the Aramezan stock, the eastern or Babylonian, commonly called Chaldee (the “Sy- rian tongue” of 2 Kings xviii. 26. ; Isai. xxxvi. 11.; Ezr. iv. 7.; Dan. ii. 4.) ; and the western, which is the parent of the Syriac, now, like the former, almost a dead language. The first of these dialects began to supplant the older Hebrew of Judea from the time of the captivity, and was the “Hebrew ” of the New Testament, Luke xxiii. 88.; John xix. 20.; Acts. xxi 40., xxii. 2., xxvi. 14, Arabic, the most perfect of the Semitic languages, has now generally overspread those regions.

HELLENISTS AND ARAMZANS. 39

they were called Aramewan Jews. We have also had occasion to notice that other dispersion of the nation through those countries where Greek was spoken. Their settlements began with Alexander’s conquests, and were continued under the successors of those who partitioned his empire. Alexandria was their capital. They used the Septuagint translation of the Bible; and they were commonly called Hellenists, or Jews ofthe Grecian speech.

The mere difference of language would account in some degree for the mutual dislike with which we know that these two sections of the Jewish race regarded one another. We are all aware how closely the use of a hereditary dialect is bound up with the warmest feelings of the heart. And in this case the Aramzan language was the sacred tongue of Palestine. It is true that the tradition of the language of the Jews had been broken, as the continuity of their political life had been rudely interrupted. The Hebrew of the time of Christ was not the oldest Hebrew of the Israelites; but it was a kindred dialect; and old enough to command a reverent affection. Though not the language of Moses and David, it was that of Ezra and Nehemiah. And it is not unnatural that the Arameans should have revolted from the speech of the Greek idolaters and the tyrant Antiochus, —a speech which they associated moreover with innovating doctrines and dangerous speculations.

For the division went deeper than a mere superficial diversity of speech. It was not only a division, like the modern one of German and Spanish Jews, where those who hold substantially the same doctrines have accidentally been led to speak different languages. But there was a diversity of religious views and opinions. ‘This is not the place for examining that system of mystic interpreta- tion called the Cabbala4, and for determining how far its origin might be due to Alexandria or to Babylon. It is enough to say, generally, that in the Aramzan theology, Oriental elements prevailed rather than Greek, and that the subject of Babylonian influences has more connection with the life of St. Peter than that of St. Paul. The Hellenists, on the other hand, or Jews who spoke Greek, who lived in Greek countries, and were influenced by Greek civilisation, are associated in the closest manner with the Apostle of the Gentiles. They are more than once mentioned in the Acts, where our English translation names them “ Grecians,” to distinguish them from the Heathen or Proselyte ‘‘Greeks.”? Alexandria was the metropolis of their theology. Philo was their great representative. He was an old man when St. Paul was in his maturity: his

1 Basnage devotes many chapters to this subject: see his third book. 2 See Chap. I. p. 12. note.

40 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

writings were probably known to the Apostle; and they have descended with the inspired Epistles to our own day. The work of the learned Hellenists may be briefly described as this,—to accommodate Jewish doctrines to the mind of the Greeks, and to make the Greek language express the mind of the Jews. The Hebrew principles were “ disengaged as much as possible from local and national conditions, and presented in a form adapted to the Hellenic world.”+ All this was hateful to the zealous Arameans. The men of the East rose up against those of the West. The Greek learning was not more repugnant to the Roman Cato, than it was to the strict Hebrews. They had a saying, “ Cursed be he who teacheth his son the learning of the Greeks.”* We could imagine them using the words of the prophet Joel (iii. 6.), “ The children of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians, that ye might remove them from their border:” and we cannot be surprised that, even in the deep peace and charity of the Church’s earliest days, this inveterate division re- appeared, and that, “ when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews.” ὃ

It would be an interesting subject of enquiry to ascertain in what propor- tions these two parties were distributed in the different countries where the Jews were dispersed, in what places they came into the strongest collision, and how far they were fused and united together. In the city of Alexandria, the emporium of Greek commerce from the time of its foundation, where, since

1 “L’objet principal des Juifs hellénistes ou Alexandrins, consistait 4 initier les hommes in- struits des populations étrangéres ἃ la sagesse des livres sacrés. Ils se dirigaient d’aprés la conviction antique manifestée en ces termes par Moise: ‘Ma doctrine se répandra comme la -rosée ; ma parole découlera comme une fine pluie sur l’herbe tendre, comme la grosse pluie sur la plante avancée.’ (Deut. xxxii. 1,2.) De 1a vient que les écrivains de cette école s’appliquaient & dégager les principes hébraiques de la plupart des conditions nationales et locales; ἃ les pré- senter dans la langue et sous les formes appro- priées au monde grec: ils établissaient des rapprochements plus ou moins spécieux avec les doctrines des autres peuples, et ils mettaient en opposition la moralité profonde de leurs lois con- stitutives avec les tendances vraiment immorales qui régnaient alors en tous licux.” Salvador, J.C. &e., vol. i. pp. 131, 182.

2 This repugnance is illustrated by many pas-

sages in the Talmudic writings. Rabbi Levi Ben Chajathah, going down to Cesarea, heard them reciting their phylacteries in Greek, and would have forbidden them; which when Rabbi Jose heard, he was very angry, and said, “If a man doth not know how to recite in the holy tongue, must he not recite them at all? Let him perform his duty in what language he can.” The fol- lowing saying is attributed to Rabban Simeon, the son of Gamaliel: “There were a thousand boys in my father’s school, of whom five hundred learned the law, and five hundred the wisdom of the Greeks; and there is not one of the latter now alive, excepting myself here, and my uncle’s son in Asia.” See Lightfoot, Heb. & Talm. Ex. on Acts (vi. 1.). Biscoe quotes from Lightfoot in his History of the Acts confirmed, ch. iv. § 2 Josephus implies in the passage quoted below (p. 63. note 2.), that a knowledge of Greek was lightly regarded by the Jews of Palestine. 3 Acts vi. 1.

HELLENISTS AND ARAMZANS. 41

the earliest Ptolemies, literature, philosophy, and criticism had never ceased to excite the utmost intellectual activity, where the Septuagint translation of the Scripture had been made, and where a Jewish temple and ceremonial worship had been established in rivalry to that in Jerusalem!,—there is no doubt that the Hellenistic element largely prevailed. But although (strictly speaking) the Alexandrian Jews were nearly all Hellenists, it does not follow that they were all Hellenizers. In other words, although their speech and their Serip- tures were Greek, the theological views of many among them undoubtedly remained Hebrew. There must have been many who were attached to the traditions of Palestine, and who looked suspiciously on their more speculative brethren: and we have no difficulty in recognising the picture presented in a pleasing German fiction?, which describes the debates and struggles of the two tendencies in this city, to be very correct. In Palestine itself, we have every reason to believe that the native population was entirely Aramean, though there was no lack of Hellenistic synagogues* at Jerusalem, which at the seasons of the festivals would be crowded with foreign pilgrims, and become the scene of animated discussions. Syria was connected by the link of language with Palestine and Babylonia: but Antioch, its metropolis, commercially and politically resembled Alexandria: and it 18, probable that, when Barnabas and Saul were establishing the great Christian community in that city *, the majority of the Jews were “ Grecians” rather than “ Hebrews.” In Asia Minor we should at first sight be tempted to imagine that the Grecian tendency would predominate: but when we find that Antiochus brought Babylonian Jews into Lydia and Phrygia, we must not make too confident a conclusion in this direction; and we have grounds for imagining that many Israelitish families in the remote districts (possibly that of Timotheus at Lystra) ® may have cherished the forms of the traditionary faith of the Eastern Jews, and lived uninfluenced by Hellenistic novelties. The residents in maritime and commercial towns would not be strangers to the Western developments of religious doctrines: and when Apollos came from Alexandria to Ephesus °, he 1 This temple was not in the city of Alex- 2 « Helon’s Pilgrimage to Jerusalem,” pub- andria, but at Leontopolis. It was built (or lished in German in 1820, translated into English rather it was an old heathen temple repaired) by in 1824. Onias, from whose family the high-priesthood 3 See Acts vi. 9. had been transferred to the family of the Mac- 4 Acts xi. 25., &e. cabees, and who had fled into Egypt in the time 5 Acts xvi. 1.; 2 Tim. i. &, of Ptolemy Philopator. It remained in exist- © Acts xviii. 24.

ence till destroyed by Vespasian. See Josephus, B.J.i. 1, 1., vii. 10. 3.; Ant, xiii. 3.

42 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

would find himself in a theological atmosphere not very different from that of his native city. Tarsus in Cilicia will naturally be included under the same class of cities of the West, by those who remember Strabo’s assertion that, in literature and philosophy, its fame exceeded that of Athens and Alexandria. At the same time, we cannot be sure that the very celebrity of its heathen schools might not induce the families of Jewish residents to retire all the more strictly into a religious Hebrew seclusion.

That such a seclusion of their family from Gentile influences was main- tained by the parents of St. Paul, is highly probable. We have no means of knowing how long they themselves, or their ancestors, had been Jews of the dispersion. A tradition is mentioned by Jerome! that they came originally from Giscala, a town in Galilee, when it was stormed by the Romans. The story in- volves an anachronism, and contradicts the Acts of the Apostles. Yet it need not be entirely disregarded; especially when we find St. Paul speaking of himself as “a Hebrew of the Hebrews,” and when we remember that the word “ Hebrew” is used for an Aramaic Jew, as opposed to a “Grecian” or Hellenist.2 Nor is it unlikely in itself that before they settled in Tarsus, the family had belonged

1 He begins his notice of Paul in the Cata- logue of Ecclesiastical Writers thus: ‘ Paulus Apostolus, qui ante Saulus, extra numerum duo- decim Apostolorum, de tribu Benjamin et op- pido Jude Gischalis fuit, quo a Romanis capto cum parentibus suis Tarsum Cilicie commigra- vit; a quibus ob studia legis missus Hieroso- lyman, a Gamaliele viro doctissimo, cujus Lucas meminit, eruditus est.” And again he alludes to it with more doubt in the Commentary on the Epistle to Philemon, in reference to the passage where Epaphras is called his “ fellow-prisoner.” ‘Quis sit Epaphras concaptivus Pauli, talem fabulam accepimus. Aiunt parentes Apostoli Pauli de Gischalis regione fuisse Jude: et eos, cum tota provincia Romana vastaretur manu, et dispergerentur in orbe Judai, in Tarsum urbem Cilicie# fuisse translatos: parentum conditionem adolescentulum Paulum secutum: et sic posse stare illud quod de se ipse testatur: Hebrai sunt ? et ego: Israelite sunt? et ego: Semen Abrahe sunt? et ego (2 Cor. xi.) : et rursus alibi: He- breus ex Hebrwis (Phil. iii.): et catera que illum Judeum magis indicunt quam Tarsensem. Quod si ita est, possumus et Epaphram illo tem- pore captum suspicari, quo captus est Paulus: et

cum parentibus suis in Colossis urbe Asie collo- catum, Christi postea recepisse sermonem.” It is unnecessary to dwell on the anachronism, or on the absolute contradiction to Acts xxii. 3.

2 Phil. iii. 5. Cave sees nothing more in this phrase than that “his parents were Jews, and that of the ancient stock, not entering in by the gate of proselytism, but originally descended from the nation.”—Life of St. Paul, i. 2. Benson, on the other hand, argues, from this passage and from 2 Cor. xi. 22., that there was a difference between ἃ “ Hebrew” and an “ Israelite.” —“ A person might be descended from Israel, and yet not be a Hebrew but a Hellenist.... St. Paul appeareth to me to have plainly intimated, that a man might be of the stock of Israel and of the tribe of Benjamin, and yet not be a Hebrew of the Hebrews ; but that, as to himself, he was, both by father and mother, a Hebrew; or of the race of that sort of Jews which were generally most esteemed by their nation.”— History of the First Planting of the Christian Religion, vol. i. p. 117.

3 Acts vi. 1. For the absurd Ebionite story that St. Paul was by birth not a Jew at all, but a Greek, see the next Chapter.

——

LANGUAGE OF ST. PAUL’S INFANCY. 43

to the Eastern dispersion, or to the Jews of Palestine. But, however this may be, St. Paul himself must be called a Hellenist ; because the language of his infancy was that idiom of the Grecian Jews in which all his letters were written. Though, in conformity with the strong feeling of the Jews of all times, he might learn his earliest sentences from the Scripture in Hebrew, yet he was familiar with the Septuagint translation at an early age. For it is observed that, when he quotes from the Old Testament, his quotations are from that version ; and that, not only when he cites its very words, but when (as is often the case) he quotes it from memory.’ Considering the accurate knowledge of the original Hebrew which he must have acquired under Gamaliel at Jerusalem, it has been inferred that this can only arise from his having been

thoroughly imbued at an earlier period with the Hellenistic Scriptures. The

readiness, too, with which he expressed himself in Greek, even before such an audience as that upon the Areopagus at Athens, shows a command of the language which a Jew would not, in all probability, have attained, had not Greek been the language of his childhood.

But still the vernacular Hebrew of Palestine would not have been a foreign tongue to the infant Saul; on the contrary, he may have heard it spoken almost as often as the Greek. For no doubt his parents, proud of their Jewish origin, and living comparatively near to Palestine, would retain the power of conversing with their friends from thence in the ancient speech. Mercantile connections from the Syrian coast would be frequently arriving, whose conversation would be in Aramaic; in all probability there were kinsfolk still settled in Judea, as we afterwards find the nephew of St. Paul in Jerusalem.?, We may compare the situation of such a family (so far as concerns their language) to that of the French Huguenots who settled in London after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. These French families, though they soon learned to use the English as the medium of their common intercourse and the language of their household, yet, for several generations, spoke French with equal familiarity and greater affection.’

1 See Tholuck’s Essay (mentioned below, p. 55. note), Eng. Trans. p.9. Out of eighty-eight quotations from the Old Testament, Koppe gives grounds for thinking that forty-nine were cited from memory. And Bleek thinks that every one of his citations without exception is from memory. He adds, however, that the Apostle’s memory reverts occasionally to the Hebrew text, as well

as to that of the Septuagint. See an article in the Christian Remembrancer for April, 1848, on Grinfield’s Hellenistic Ed. of the N. T.

2? Acts xxiii. 16.

3 St. Paul’s ready use of the spoken Aramaic appears in his speech upon the stairs of the Castle of Antonia at Jerusalem, “in the Hebrew tongue.” This familiarity, however, he would

44 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

Moreover, it may be considered as certain that the family of St. Paul though Hellenistic in speech, were no Hellenizers in theology; they were not at all inclined to adopt Greek habits or Greek opinions. The manner in which St. Paul speaks of himself, his father, and his ancestors, implies the most uncontaminated hereditary Judaism. “ Are they Hebrews? so am I. Are they Israelites? so am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? so am 1." "--- A Pharisee” and “the son of a Pharisee.”?—‘ Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews.”®

There is therefore little doubt that, though the native of a city filled with a Greek population and incorporated with the Roman Empire, yet Saul was born and spent his earliest days in the shelter of a home which was Hebrew, not in name only but in spirit. The Roman power did not press upon his infancy: the Greek ideas did not haunt his childhood: but he grew up an Israelitish boy, nurtured in those histories of the chosen people which he was destined \so often to repeat in the synagogues‘, with the new and wonderful commentary supplied by the life and resurrection of a crucified Messiah. ‘ From a child he knew the Scriptures,” which ultimately made him “wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus,” as he says of Timothy in the second Epistle (iii. 15.). And the groups around his childhood were such as that which he beautifully describes in another part of the same letter to that disciple, where he speaks of “his grandmother Lois, and his mother Eunice.” (i. 5.)

We should be glad to know something of the mother of St. Paul. But though he alludes to his father, he does not mention her. He speaks of himself as set apart by God “ from his mother’s womb,” that the Son of God should in due time be revealed in him, and by him preached to the Heathen.> But this is all. We find notices of his sister and his sister’s son®, and of some more distant relatives’: but we know nothing of her who was nearer to him than all of them. He tells us of his instructor Gamaliel; but of her, who, if she lived, was his earliest and best teacher, he tells us nothing. Did she die like Rachel, the mother of Benjamin, the great ancestor of his tribe; leaving his father to mourn and set a monument on her grave, like Jacob, by the way of Bethlehem?* Or did she live to grieve over her son’s apostasy from the necessarily have acquired during his student-life 4 Acts xiii. 16—41.; see xvii. 2, 3. 10, 11.

at Jerusalem, if he had not possessed it before. xxviii. 23. The difficult question of the “ Gift of Tongues” 5 Gal. i. 15.

will be discussed hereafter. 6 Acts xxiii. 16. 1 2 Cor. xi. 22. 7 Rom. xvi. 7. 11. 21. 2 Acts xxiii. 6, 8. Gen. xxxv. 16—20., xviii, 7.

8 Phil. 111, δ,

HIS INFANCY AT TARSUS. 45

faith of the Pharisees, and die herself unreconciled to the obedience of Christ ? Or did she believe and obey the Saviour of her son? These are questions which we cannot answer. If we wish to realise the earliest infancy of the Apostle, we must be content with a simple picture of a Jewish mother and her child. Such a picture is presented to us in the short history of Elizabeth and John the Baptist, and what is wanting in one of the inspired Books of St. Luke may be supplied, in some degree, by the other.

The same feelings which welcomed the birth and celebrated the naming of a son in the “ hill country ” of Judea’, prevailed also among the Jews of the dispersion. As the “neighbours and cousins” of Elizabeth “ heard how the Lord had showed great mercy upon her, and rejoiced with her,’ —so it would be in the household at Tarsus, when Saul was born. In a nation to which the birth of a Messiah was promised, and at a period when the aspirations after the fulfilment of the promise were continually becoming more conscious and more urgent, the birth of a son was the fulfilment of a mother’s highest happiness: and to the father also (if we may thus invert the words of Jeremiah) blessed was the man who brought tidings, saying, A man child is born unto thee; making him glad.”* On the eighth day the child was circumcised and named. In the case of John the Baptist, “ they sought to call. him Zacharias, after the name of his father. But his mother answered, and said, Not so; but he shall be called John.” And when the appeal was made to his father, he signified his assent, in obedience to the vision. It was not unusual, on the one hand, to call a Jewish child after the name of his father; and, on the other hand, it was a common practice, in all ages of Jewish history, even without a prophetic intimation, to adopt a name expressive of religious feelings. When the infant at Tarsus received the name of Saul, it might be “ after the name of his father ;” and it was a name of traditional celebrity in the tribe of Benjamin, for it was that of the first king anointed by Samuel.? Or, when his father said “his name is Saul,” it may have been intended to denote (in conformity with the Hebrew derivation of the word) that he was a son who had long been desired, the first born of his parents, the child of prayer, who was thenceforth, like Samuel, to be consecrated to God.4 ‘ For this child I

1 Luke i. 89. tribe ; in memory whereof they were wont to give 2 Jer. xx. 15. their children this name at their circumcision.” 3 “ A name frequent and common in the tribe Cave, i.3.; but he gives no proof, of Benjamin ever since the first King of Israel, 4 This is suggested by Neander, Pfl. und Leit. who was of that name, was chosen out of that 138. .

Η

46 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

prayed,” said the wife of Elkanah; “ and the Lord hath given me my petition which I asked of Him: therefore also I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he liveth he shall be lent unto the Lord.”?

Admitted into covenant with God by circumcision, the Jewish child had thenceforward a full claim to all the privileges of the chosen people. His was the benediction of the 128th Psalm:—“ The Lord shall bless thee out of Zion: thou shalt see the good of Jerusalem all the days of thy life.” From that time, whoever it might be who watched over Saul’s infancy, whether, like king Lemuel’, he learnt “ the prophecy that his mother taught him,” or whether he was under the care of others, like those who were with the sons of king David and king Ahab*,— we are at no loss to learn what the first ideas were, with which his early thought was made familiar. The rules respecting the diligent education of children, which were laid down by Moses in the 6th and 11th chapters of Deuteronomy, were doubtless carefully observed: and he was trained in that peculiarly historical instruction, spoken of in the 78th Psalm, which implies the continuance of a chosen people, with glorious recollections of the past, and great anticipations for the future: ‘‘ The Lord made a covenant with Jacob, and gave Israel a law, which He commanded our forefathers to teach their children; that their posterity might know it, and the children which were yet unborn; to the intent that when they came up, they might shew their children the same: that they might put their trust in God, and not to forget the works of the Lord, but to keep His commandments.” (ver. 5—7.) The histories of Abraham and Isaac, of Jacob and his twelve sons, of Moses among the bulrushes, of Joshua and Samuel, Elijah, Daniel, and the Maccabees, were the stories of his childhood. The destruction of Pharaoh in the Red Sea, the thunders of Mount Sinai, the dreary journeys in the wilderness, the land that flowed with milk and honey,—this was the earliest imagery presented to his opening mind. The triumphant songs of Zion, the lamentations by the waters of Babylon, the prophetic praises of the Messiah, were the songs around his cradle. 4

Above all, he would be familiar with the destinies of his own illustrious tribe.* The life of the timid Patriarch, the father of the twelve; the sad

1 1 Sam. i. 27, 28. 4 It may be thought that here, and below, p. 58., Σ Proy. xxxi. 1. Cf. Susanna, 3.; 2 Tim, 111, too much prominence has been given to the 15., with 1 Tim. i. 5. attachment of a Jew in the Apostolic age to his

® 1 Chron. xxvii. 32.; 2 Kings x. 1.5. Cf. own particular tribe. It is difficult to ascertain Joseph. vit. 76.; Ant. xvi. 8. 3. how far the tribe-feeling of early times lingered

il | tina el Cte!

THE TRIBE OF BENJAMIN. 47

death of Rachel near the city where the Messiah was to be born; the loneliness of Jacob, who sought to comfort himself in Benoni “ the son of her sorrow,” by calling him Benjamin’ “ the son of his right hand;” and then the youthful days of this youngest of the twelve brethren, the famine, and the journeys into Egypt, the severity of Joseph, and the wonderful story of the silver cup in the mouth of the sack ;—these are the narratives to which he listened with intense and eager interest. How little was it imagined that, as Benjamin was the youngest and most honoured of the Patriarchs, so this listening child of Benjamin should be associated with the twelve servants of the Messiah of God, the last and most illustrious of the Apostles! But many years of ignorance were yet to pass away, before that mysterious Providence, which brought Benjamin to Joseph in Egypt, should bring his descendant to the knowledge and love of Jxsus, the Son of Mary. Some of the early Christian writers see in the dying benediction of Jacob, when he said that “ Benjamin should ravin as a wolf, in the morning devour the prey, and at night divide the spoil,”? a prophetic intimation of him who, in the morning of his life, should tear the sheep of God, and in its evening feed them, as the teacher of the nations.2 When St. Paul was a child and learnt the words of this saying, no Christian thoughts were associated with it, or with that other more peaceful prophecy of Moses, when he said of Benjamin, “ The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by Him: and the Lord shall cover him all the day long, and he shall dwell between His shoulders.”* But he was familiar with the prophetical words, and could follow in imagination the fortunes'of the sons of Benjamin, and knew how they went through the wilderness ‘with Rachel’s other children, the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, forming with

on in combination with the national feeling, which 3 Nam mihi Paulum etiam Genesis olim re-

grew up after the Captivity. But when we con- sider the care with which the genealogies were kept, and when we find the tribe of Barnabas specified (Acts iv. 36.), and of Anna the pro- phetess (Luke ii. 86.), and when we find St. Paul alluding in a pointed manner to his tribe (see Rom. xi. 1., Phil. iii. 5., and compare Acts xiii. 21.), it does not seem unnatural to believe that pious families of so famous a stock as that of Benjamin should retain the hereditary enthu- siasm of their sacred clanship. See, moreover, Matt. xix. 24., Rev. v. 5. vii. 4—8.

1 Gen. ΧΧΧΥ. 18.

2 Gen. xlix. 27.

H 2

promisit. Inter illas enim figuras et propheticas super filios suos benedictiones Jacob; cum ad Ben- jamin dixisset : Benjamin, inquit, lupus rapax ad matutinum comedet adhue, et ad vesperam dabit escam. Ex tribu enim~ Benjamin oriturum Paulum providebat, lupum rapacem ad matuti- num comedentem, id est, prima «tate vastaturum pecora Domini ut persecutorem ecclesiarum, de- hine ad vesperam escam daturum, id est, dever- gente jam xtate oves Christi educaturum ut doctorem nationum.—Tertull. adv. Marcionem v. 1, 4 Deut. xxxiii. 12.

48 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

them the third of the four companies on the march, and reposing with them at night on the west of the encampment.’ He heard how their lands were assigned to them in the promised country along the borders of Judah?: and how Saul, whose name he bore, was chosen from the tribe which was the smallest®, when “ little Benjamin”* became the “ ruler” of Israel. He knew that when the ten tribes revolted, Benjamin was faithful®: and he learnt to follow its honourable history even into the dismal years of the Babylonian Captivity, when Mordecai, “a Benjamite who had been carried away,”® saved the nation: and when, instead of destruction, “ The Jews,” through him, “ had light, and gladness, and joy, and honour: and in every province, and in every city, whithersoever the king’s commandment and his decree came, the Jews had joy and gladness, a feast and a good day. And many of the people of the land became Jews; for the fear of the Jews fell upon them.”? Such were the influences which cradled the infancy of St. Paul; and such, was the early teaching under which his mind gradually rose to the realisation of his position as a Hebrew child in a city of Gentiles. Of the exact period of his birth we possess no authentic information, From a passage in a sermon attributed to St. Chrysostom, it has been inferred*® that he was born in the year 2 of our era. The date is not improbable; but the genuineness of the sermon is suspected; and if it was the undoubted work of the eloquent Father, we have no reason to believe that he possessed any certain means of ascer- taining the fact. Nor need we be anxious to possess the information. We have a better chronology than that which reckons by years and months. We know that he was a young man at the time of St. Stephen’s martyrdom , and therefore we know what were the features of the period, and what the circumstances of the world, at the beginning of his eventful life. He must have been born in the later years of Herod, or the earlier of his son Archelaus. It was the strongest and most flourishing time of the reign οὗ Augustus. The world was at peace; the pirates of the Levant were dispersed ; ' and Cilicia was lying at rest, or in stupor, with other provinces, under the wide —

' Numb. ii. 18—24.; x. 22—24, 66, at the age of 68. The sermon is one on 2 Joshua xviii. 11. SS. Peter and Paul, printed by Savile at the end 3 1 Sam. ix. 21. of the fifth volume of his edition, but considered 4 Ps. lxviii. 27, by him not genuine. See Tillemont. Schrader 5 2 Chron. xi.: see 1 Kings xii. endeavours to prove that he was born about 14 6 Esther ii. 5, 6. Ab. See his arguments in vol. i. sect. 2, of his ” Esther viii. 16, 17. work, “ Der Apostel Paulus,” 1830,

* This is on the supposition that he died a.p. 9 Acts vii. 58.

HIS FATHER’S CITIZENSHIP, 49

shadow of the Roman power. Many governors had ruled there since the days of Cicero. Athenodorus, the emperor’s tutor, had been one of them. It was about the time when Horace and Mecenas died, with others whose names will never be forgotten; and it was about the time when Caligula was born, with others who were destined to make the world miserable. Thus is the epoch fixed in the manner in which the imagination most easily apprehends it. During this pause in the world’s history St. Paul was born.

It was a pause, too, in the history of the sufferings of the Jews. That lenient treatment which had been begun by Julius Caesar was continued by Augustus’; and the days of severity were not yet come, when Tiberius and Claudius drove them into banishment, and Caligula oppressed them with every mark of contumely and scorn. We have good reason to believe that at the period of the Apostle’s birth the Jews were unmolested at Tarsus, where his father lived and enjoyed the rights of a Roman citizen. It is a mistake to suppose that this citizenship was a privilege which belonged to the members of the family, as being natives of this city.2 Tarsus was not a municipium, nor was it a colonia, like Philippi in Macedonia‘, or Antioch in Pisidia; but it was a “free city”® (urbs libera), like the Syrian Antioch and its neighbour-city, Seleucia on the sea. Such a city had the privilege of being governed by its own magistrates, and was exempted from the occupation of a Roman garrison, but its citizens did not necessarily possess the civitas of Rome. Tarsus had received great benefits both from Julius Cesar and Augustus, but the father of St. Paul was not on that account a Roman citizen. This privilege had been granted to him, or had descended to him, as an individual right; he might have purchased it fora “ large sum” of money®; but it is more probable that

1 Cesar, like Alexander, treated the Jews with much consideration, Suetonius speaks in strong terms of thei grief at his death, Ces. 84. Augustus permitted the largess, when it fell on a Sabbath, to be put off till the next day. Man- gey’s Philo. ii. 568, 569. : compare Hor. Sat. i. 9. 69.

2 For some notices of the condition of the Jews under the Romans at this time, see Ganz. Vermischte Schriften, i. 13. ‘“ Die Gesetzgebung tiber die Juden in Rom, und die kirchliche Wiirde derselben im Rémischen Reich.” Berlin, 1834.

8 Some of the older biographers of St. Paul assume this without any hesitation. Thus Tille- mont says that Augustus gave to Tarsus, among

other privileges, “le droit de colonie libre et de bourgeoisie Romaine”: and Cave says that this city was a municipium, aud that therefore Paul was a Roman citizen. The Tribune (Acts xxi. 89., xxii. 24.), as Dr. Bloomfield remarks (on xvi. 37.), knew that St. Paul was a Tarsian, without being aware that he was a citizen.

4 Acts xvi. 12.

5 See Plin. N. H. v. 22.; Appian, B. C. v. 7. Compare iv. 64, From Appian it appears that Antony gave Tarsus the privileges of an Urbs libera, though it had previously taken the side of Augustus, and been named Juliopolis. See Dio Chrys. Tarsic. post. ii. 36. ed. Reiske.

6 See Acts xxii. 28.

50 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

it came to him as the reward of services rendered, during the civil wars, to some influential Roman. That Jews were not unfrequently Roman citizens, we learn from Josephus, who mentions in the “ Antiquities” some even of the equestrian order who were illegally scourged and crucified by Florus at Jerusalem ; and (what is more to our present point) enumerates certain of his countrymen who possessed the Roman franchise at Ephesus, in that important series of decrees relating to the Jews, which were issued in the time of Julius Cesar, and are preserved in the second book of the “ Jewish War.”? The family of St. Paul were in the same position at Tarsus as those who were Jews of Asia Minor and yet citizens of Rome at Ephesus; and thus it came to pass, that, while many of his contemporaries were willing to expend “a large sum” in the purchase of “ this freedom,” the Apostle himself was “ free-born.”

The question of the double name of “ Saul” and “ Paul” will require our attention hereafter, when we come in the course of our narrative to that interview with Sergius Paulus in Cyprus, coincidently with which, the appellation in the Acts of the Apostles is suddenly changed. Many opinions have been held on this subject, both by ancient and modern theologians.* At present it will be enough to say, that, though we cannot overlook the coincidence, or believe it accidental, yet it is most probable that both names were borne by him in his childhood, that “ Saul” was the name of his Hebrew home, and “ Paul” that by which he was known among the Gentiles. It will be observed that “ Paulus,” the name by which he is always mentioned after his departure from Cyprus, and by which he always designates himself in his Epistles, is a Roman, not a Greek, word. And it will be remembered, that, among those whom he calls his “ kinsmen” in the Epistle to the Romans, two of the number, Junia and Lucius, have Roman names, while the others are Greek.* All this may point to a strong Roman connection. These names may have something to do with that honourable citizenship which was an heirloom in the household; and the appellation “ Paulus” may be due to some such feelings as those which induced the historian Josephus to call himself “Flavius,” in honour of Vespasian and the Flavian family.

1 xiv. 10. 3.

2.149.

3 Some of the opinions of the ancient writers may be seen in Tillemont. Origen says that he had both names from the first; that he used one among the Jews, and the other afterwards. Au- gustine, that he took the name when he began to

preach. Chrysostom, that he received a new title, like Peter, at his ordination in Antioch. Bede, that he did not receive it till the Pro- consul was converted; and Jerome, that it was, meant to commemorate that victory ‘Tillemont, note 8. on St. Paul.

4 Rom. xvi 7.11. 21.

HIS STATION IN LIFE. δ

If we turn now to consider the social position of the Apostle’s father and family, we cannot on the one hand confidently argue, from the possession of the citizenship, that they were in the enjoyment of affluence and outward distinction. The civitas of Rome, though at that time it could not be purchased without heavy expense, did not depend upon any conditions of wealth, where it was bestowed by authority. On the other hand, it is certain that the manual trade, which we know that St. Paul exercised, cannot be adduced as an argument to prove that his circumstances were narrow and mean; still less, as some have imagined, that he lived in absolute poverty. It was a custom among the Jews that all boys should learn a trade. ‘ What is commanded of a father towards his son?” asks a Talmudic writer. “ To circumcise him, to teach him the law, to teach him a trade.” Rabbi Judah saith, “ He that teacheth not his son a trade, doth the same as if he taught him to be a thief;” and Rabban Gamaliel saith, ‘“‘ He that hath a trade in his hand, to what is he like? he is like a vineyard that is fenced.” And if, in compliance with this good and useful custom of the Jews, the father of the young Cilician sought to make choice of a trade, which might fortify his son against idleness or against adversity, none would occur to him more naturally than the profitable occupation of the making of tents, the material of which was hair-cloth, supplied by the goats of his native province, and sold in the markets of the Levant by the well-known name of cilicium.!. The most reasonable conjecture is that his father’s business was concerned with these markets, and that, like many of his dispersed countrymen, he was actively occupied in the traffic of the Mediterranean coasts: and the remote dispersion of those relations, whom he mentions in his letter from Corinth to Rome, is favourable to this opinion. But whatever might be the station and employment of his father or his kinsmen, whether they were elevated by wealth above, or depressed by poverty below, the average of the Jews of Asia Minor and Italy, we are disposed to

1 Tondentur capre quod magnis villis sunt in magna parte Phrygix ; unde cilicia et cetera ejus generis ferri solent. Sed quod primum ea ton- sura in Cilicia sit instituta, nomen id Cilicas ad- jecisse dicunt. Varro, de Re Rustica, lib. ii. ch. xi.: compare Virg. Georg. iii. 311—818. See the extract in Ducange: Κιλέκια " τράγοι ἀπὸ Κιλικίας οἱ δασεῖς" πάνυ γὰρ ἐκεῖσε ὑπερέχουσι οἱ τοιοῦτοι τράγοι, ὅθεν καὶ τὰ ἐκ τριχῶν συντιθέμενα Κιλέκια λέγονται. It is still manufactured in Asia Minor.

Hair-cloth of this kind is often,

mentioned as used for penitential discipline, in the Lives of the Saints, The word is still re- tained in French, Spanish, and Italian (“ Di vil cilicio mi parean coperti.” Dante, Purg. xiii. 58.). See the Dictionnaire de Académie, the Diccionario de la Academia, and the Vocabulario degli Academici della Crusca; and further re- ferences under the word “ Cilicium” in Smith’s Dictionary of Antiquities, and Rich’s Illustrated Companion to the Dictionary.

52 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

believe that this family were possessed of that highest respectability which is worthy of deliberate esteem. The words of Scripture seem to claim for them the tradition of a good and religious reputation. The strict piety of St. Paul’s ancestors has already been.remarked ; some of his kinsmen embraced Christianity before the Apostle himself', and the excellent discretion of his nephew will be the subject of our admiration, when we come to consider the dangerous circum- stances which led to the nocturnal journey from Jerusalem to Caesarea.”

But, though a cloud rests on the actual year of St. Paul’s birth, and the circumstances of his father’s household must be left to imagination, we have the great.satisfaction of knowing the exact features of the scenery in the midst of which his childhood was spent. The plain, the mountains, the river, and the sea still remain to us. The rich harvests of corn still grow luxu- riantly after the rains in spring. The same tents of goat’s hair are still seen covering the plains in the busy harvest. There is the same solitude and silence in the intolerable heat and dust of the summer. Then, as now, the mothers and children of Tarsus went out inthe cool evenings, and looked from the gardens round the city, or from their terraced roofs upon the heights of Taurus. The same sunset lingered on the pointed summits. The same shadows gathered in the deep ravines.. The river Cydnus has suffered some changes in the course of 1800 years. Instead of rushing, as in the time of Xenophon, like the Rhone at Geneva, in a stream of two hundred feet broad through the city, it now flows idly past it on the east. The Channel, which floated the ships of Antony and Cleopatra, is now filled up; and wide unhealthy lagoons occupy. the place of the ancient docks.* But its upper

1 “ Salute Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen, and my fellow-prisoners, who are of note among the Apostles, who also were in Christ before me.” Rom. xvi. 7. Τῷ 18 proper to remark that the word συγγενεῖς in this chapter (verses 7. 11. 21.) has been thought by some to mean only _ that the persons alluded to were of Jewish ex- traction. See Lardner’s Works, vol. v. p. 473., and the Appendix to the English translation of Tholuck’s tract on the early life of St. Paul. Origen thinks the Apostle speaks spiritually of the baptized; Estius supposes he means that they were members of the tribe of Benjamin. See Tillemont, note 2.

2 Acts xxiii.

3 “The plain presented the appearance of an immense sheet of corn-stubble, dotted with small

camps of tents: these tents are made of hair- cloth, and the peasantry reside in them at this season, while the harvest is reaping and the corn treading out.”—Beaufort’s Karamania, p. 273.

4 This is the Ῥῆγμα, or “bar,” at the mouth of the river (ai τοῦ Κύδνου ἐκξολαὶ κατὰ τὸ Ῥῆγμα καλούμενον), of which Strabo speaks thus: “Eore δὲ λιμνάζων τόπος, ἔχων καὶ παλαιὰ νεώρια, εἰς Ov ἐμπίπτει ὁ Κύδνος, ὁ διαῤῥέων τὴν Ταρσὸν, τὰς ἀρχὰς ἔχων ἀπὸ τοῦ ὑπερκειμένου τῆς πόλεως Ταύρου " καὶ ἔστιν ἐπίνειον ἡ λίμνη τῆς Ταρσοῦ. xiv. 5. The land at the mouth of the Cydnus (as in the case of the Pyramus and other rivers on that coast) has since that time encroached on the sea. The unhealthiness of the sea-coast near the Gulf of Scanderoon is notorious, as can be tes- tified by two of those who have contributed

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SCENERY OF TARSUS. 53

waters still flow, as formerly, cold and clear from the snows of Taurus : and its waterfalls still break over the same rocks, when the snows are melting, like the Rhine at Schaffhausen. We find a pleasure in thinking that the footsteps of the young Apostle often wandered by the side of this stream, and that his eyes often looked on these falls. We can hardly believe that he who spoke to the Lystrians of the “ rain from heaven,” and the “ fruitful seasons,” and of the “living God-who made heayen and earth and the sea,”? could have looked with indifference on beautiful and impressive scenery. Gamaliel was celebrated for his love of nature: and the young Jew, who was destined to be his most famous pupil, spent his early days in the close neighbourhood of much that was well adapted to foster such a taste. Or if it be thought that in attributing such feelings to him we are writing in the spirit of modern times; and if it be contended that he would be more influenced by the realities of human life than by the impressions of nature, —then let the youthful Saul be imagined on the banks of the Cydnus, where it flowed through the city in a stream less clear and fresh, where the wharves were covered with merchandize, in the midst of groups of men in various costumes, speaking various dialects. St. Basil says, that in his day Tarsus was a point of union for Syrians, Cilicians, Isaurians, and Cappadocians.? To these we must add the Greek merchant, and the agent of Roman luxury. And one more must be added — the Jew, — even then the pilgrim of Commerce, trading with every nation, and blending with none. In this mixed company Saul, at an early age, might become familiar with the activities of life and the diversities of human character, and even in his childhood make some acquaintance with those various races, which in his manhood he was destined to influence. .

We have seen what his infancy was: we must now glance at his boyhood. It is usually the case that the features of a strong character display them- selves early. His impetuous fiery disposition would sometimes need control. Flashes of indignation would reveal his impatience and his honesty.’ The affectionate tenderness of his nature would not be without an object of attach- ment, if that sister, who was afterwards married’, was his playmate at Tarsus.

drawings to this book. To one of them, the ρους καὶ Κίλικας; Καπποδόκας re καὶ Σύρους δὲ Rey. C. P. Wilbraham, Vicar of Audley, Staf- ἑαυτῆς συνάπτειν. --- Ἐρ. v., Eusebio Samosatorum fordshire, the editors and publishers take this Episcopo. opportunity of expressing their thanks. 3 See Acts ix. 1, 2., xxiii. 1—5.; and compare 1 Acts xiv. 17. 15. Acts xiii, 13., xv. 38., with 2 Tim. iy. 11. 2 Πόλιν τοσαύτην ἔχουσαν εὐκληρίας, ὥστε ᾿Ἰσαύ- 4 Acts xxiii. 16. I

54 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

The work of tent-making, rather an amusement than a trade, might sometimes occupy those young hands, which were marked with the toil of years when he held them to the view of the Elders at Miletus. His education was conducted at home rather than at school: for, though Tarsus was celebrated for its learn- ing, the Hebrew boy would not lightly be exposed to the influence of Gentile teaching. Or, if he went to a school, it was not a Greek school, but rather to some room connected with the synagogue, where a noisy class of Jewish children received the rudiments of instruction, seated on the ground with their teacher, after the manner of Mahomedan children in the East, who may be seen or heard at their lessons near the mosque.” At such a school, it may be, he learnt to read and to write, going and returning under the care of some attendant, according to that custom, which he afterwards used as an illustration in the Epistle to the Galatians? (and perhaps he remembered his own early days while he wrote the passage) when he spoke of the Law as the Slave who conducts us to the School of Christ. His religious knowledge, as his years advanced, was obtained from hearing the law read in the synagogue, from listening to the arguments and discussions of learned doctors, and from that habit of questioning and answering, which was permitted even to the children among the Jews. Familiar with the pathetic history of the Jewish sufferings, he would feel his heart filled with that love to his own people which breaks out in the Epistle to the Romans (ix. 4. 6.)—to that people “ whose were the adoption and the glory and the covenants, and of whom, as concerning the flesh,

1 Acts xx. 84. “Ye yourselves know that these hands have ministered to my necessities, and to them that were with me.” Compare xviii. 3.; 1 Cor. iv. 12.; 1 Thess. ii. 9.; 2 Thess. iii. 8.

Gal. iii. 24. incorrectly rendered in the English translation, As a Jewish illustration of a cus- tom well known among the Greeks and Romans, see the quotation in Buxtorf’s Synagoga Judaica, ch. vii. “Quando quis filium suum studio

2 This is written from the recollection of a Mahomedan school at Blidah in Algeria, where the mosques can now be entered with impunity. The children, with the teacher, were on a kind of upper story like a shelf, within the mosque. All were seated on this floor, in the way described by Maimonides below. The children wrote on boards, and recited what they wrote; the master addressed them in rapid succession ; and the con- fused sound of voices was unceasing. For pic- tures of an Egyptian and a Turkish school, see the Bible Cyclopedia, 1841; and the Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature, 1847.

3 Ὁ νόμος παιδαγωγὸς ἡμῶν γέγονεν εἰς Χριστόν.

Legis consecrat, pingebant ipsi super perga- meno vel tabella aliqua elementa literarum, quibus etiam mel illinebant, deinde eum bene lotum, mundis vestibus indutum, placentis ex melle et lacte confectis, ut et fructibus ac trage- matis instructum, tradebant alicui Rabbino, qui eum deducat in scholam: hic eum ora pallii sui opertum ad Preceptorem ducebat, a quo literas cognoscere discebat, illectus suavitate deliciarum illarum, et sic reducebatur ad matrem suam.” The Rabbi’s cloak was spread over the child to teach him modesty. The honey and honey cakes symbolized such passages as Deut. xxxii, 18., Cant. iv. 11. Ps. xix. 10.

oe. ἡ

ST. PAUL’S BOYHOOD. 55

Christ was to come,” —a love not then, as it was afterwards, blended ‘with love towards all mankind, “ to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile,” — but rather united with a bitter hatred to the Gentile children whom he saw around him. His idea of the Messiah, so far as it was distinct, would be the carnal notion of a temporal prince —a “ Christ known after the flesh,”*—and he looked for- ward with the hope of a Hebrew to the restoration of “ the kingdom to Israel.”* He would be known at Tarsus as a child of promise, and as one likely to uphold the honour of the law against the half-infidel teaching of the day. But the time was drawing near, when his training was to become more exact and systematic. He was destined for the school of Jerusalem. The educa- tional maxim of the Jews, at a later period, was as follows: —“ At five years of age, let children begin the Scripture; at ten, the Mischna; at thirteen, let them be subjects of the law.”* There is no reason to suppose that the general practice was very different before the floating maxims of the great doctors were brought together in the Mischna. It may therefore be con- cluded, with a strong degree of probability, that Saul was sent to the Holy City* between the ages of ten and thirteen. Had it been later than the age of thirteen, he could hardly have said that he had been “ brought up”® in Jerusalem.

The first time any one leaves the land of his birth to visit a foreign and distant country, is an important epoch in his life. In the case of one who has

1 2 Cor. v. 16.

2 Acts i, 6.

3 Quoted by Tholuck from the Mischna, Pirke Avoth, ch. v. ὃ 21. We learn from Buxtorf that at 13 there was a ceremony some- thing like Christian confirmation. The boy was then called myn Δ ---- “ Filius Precepti ;” and the father declared in the presence of the Jews that his son fully understood the Law, and was fully responsible for his sins. Syn. Jud. ibid.

4 See Tholuck’s excellent remarks on the early life of the Apostle, in the Studien und Kritiken, vol. viii. pp. 364—393., or in the English trans- lation in Clark’s Biblical Cabinet, No. 28.; and separately in his series of Tracts, No. 38. As Olshausen remarks, Acts xxvi. 4.—“ My manner of life from my youth, which was at the first (ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς) among mine own nation at Jerusa- lem, know all the Jews, which knew me from the

beginning (aywev),”—implies that he came from Tarsus at an early age.

5 ᾿Ανατεθραμμένος. Acts.xxii. 3, Cave assumes that “in his youth he was brought up in the schools of Tarsus, fully instructed in all the liberal arts and sciences, whereby he became ad- mirably acquainted with foreign and external authors” (i. 4.); and that it was after having “run through the whole circle of the sciences, and laid the sure foundations of human learning at Tarsus” (i. 5.), that he was sent to study the Law under Gamaliel. So Lardner seems to think. Hist. of the Ap. and Ey. ch, xi. Hem- sen is of opinion that, though as a Jew and a Pharisee he would not be educated in the heathen schools of Tarsus, he did not go to Jerusalem to be trained under Gamaliel till about the age of thirty, and after the ascension of Christ. Der Apostel Paulus, p. 4—8.

12

56 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL

taken this first journey at an early age, and whose character is enthusiastic and susceptible of lively impressions from without, this epoch is usually remembered with peculiar distinctness. But when the country which is thus visited has furnished the imagery for the dreams of childhood, and is felt to be more truly the young traveller’s home than the land he is leaving, then the journey assumes the sacred character of a pilgrimage. The nearest parallel which can be found to the visits of the scattered Jews to Jerusalem, is in the periodical expedition of the Mahomedan pilgrims to the sanctuary at Mecca. Nor is there anything which ought to shock the mind in such a comparison; for that localising spirit was the same thing to the Jews under the highest sanction, which it is to the Mahomedans through the memory of a prophet who was the enemy and not the forerunner of Christ. As the disciples of Islam may be seen, at stated seasons, flocking towards Cairo or Damascus, the meeting-places of the African and Asiatic caravans,—so Saul had often seen the Hebrew pilgrims from the interior of Asia Minor come down through the passes of the mountains, and join others at Tarsus who were bound for Jerusalem. They returned when the festivals were over; and he heard them talk of the Holy City, of Herod and the New Temple, and of the great teachers and doctors of the law. And at length Saul himself was to go,—to see the land of promise and the City of David, and grow up a learned Rabbi “ at the feet of Gamaliel.”

With his father, or under thecare of some otherfriend older than himself, he left Tarsus and went to Jerusa- lem. It is not probable that they travelled by the long and laborious land-journey which leads from the Cili-

cian plain through the de-

corn or Tarsus!

files of Mount Amanus to Antioch, and thence along the rugged Phenician shore ~

through Tyre and Sidon to Judea. The Jews, when they went to the festivals, or to carry contributions, like the Mahomedans of modern days, would follow

1 From the British Museum. It may be in Mr. Smith’s important work on the “ Voyage observed that this coin illustrates the mode of and Shipwreck of St. Paul. 1848.” p. 163. strengthening sails by rope-bands, mentioned

ay

HE IS SENT TO JERUSALEM. 57

the lines of natural traffic’: and now that the Eastern Sea had been cleared of its pirates, the obvious course would be to travel by water. The Jews, though merchants, were not seamen. We may imagine Saul, therefore, setting sail from the Cydnus on his first voyage, in some Pheenician trader, under the patronage of the gods of Tyre; or in company with Greek mariners in a vessel adorned with some mythological emblem, like that Alexandrian corn-ship which subse- quently brought him to Italy, ‘‘ whose sign was Castor and Pollux.”? Gradually they lost sight of Taurus, and the heights of Lebanon came into view. The one had sheltered his early home, but the other had been a familiar form to his Jewish forefathers. How histories would crowd into his mind as the vessel moved on over the waves, and he gazed upon the furrowed flanks of the great Hebrew mountain! Had the voyage been taken fifty years earlier, the vessel would probably have been bound for Ptolemais, which still bore the name of the Greek kings of Egypt*®; but in the reign of Augustus or Tiberius, it is more likely that she sailed round the headland of Carmel, and came to anchor in the new harbour of Czsarea,—the handsome city which Herod had rebuilt, and named in honour of the Emperor.

To imagine incidents when none are recorded, and confidently to lay down a route without any authority, would be inexcusable in writing on this subject. But to imagine the feelings of a Hebrew boy on his first visit to the Holy Land, is neither difficult nor blamable. During this journey Saul had around him a different scenery and different cultivation from what he had been accustomed to, —not a river and a wide plain covered with harvests of corn, but a succession of hills and vallies, with terraced vineyards watered by artificial irrigation. If it was the time of a festival, many pilgrims were moving in the same direction, with music and the songs of Zion. The ordinary road would probably be that mentioned in the Acts, which led from Cesarea through the town of Antipatris (xxiii. 31.). But neither of these places would possess much interest for a “ Hebrew of the Hebrews.” The one was associated with the thoughts of the Romans and of modern times; the other had been built by Herod in memory of Antipater, his Idumean father. But objects were not wanting of the deepest interest to a child of Benjamin. Those far hill-tops on the left were close upon Mount Gilboa, even if the very place could not be seen where “ the Philistines

1 In 1820, Abd-el-Kader went with his father 2 Acts xxviii. 11. on board a French brig to Alexandria, on their 3 See, for instance, 1 Mae. v. 15. % lL, way to Mecca. See M. Bareste’s Memoir of the ex-Emir: Paris, 1848,

58 THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

fought against Israel. . . and the battle went sore against Saul. . . and he fell on his sword. . .and died, and his three sons, and his armour-kearer, and all his men, that same day together.”+ After passing through the lots of the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim, the traveller from Cesarea came to the borders of Benjamin. The children of Rachel were together in Canaan as they had been in the desert. The lot of Benjamin was entered near Bethel, memorable for the piety of Jacob, the songs of Deborah, the sin of Jeroboam, and the zeal of Josiah. Onward a short distance was Gibeah, the home of Saul when he was anointed King*, and the scene of the crime and desolation of the tribe, which made it the smallest of the tribes of Israel. Might it not be too truly said concerning the Israelites even of that period: “ They have deeply corrupted themselves, as in the days of Gibeah: therefore the Lord will remember their iniquity, He will visit their sins” ?° At a later stage of his life, such thoughts of the unbelief and iniquity of Israel accompanied St. Paul wherever he went. At the early age of twelve years, all his enthusiasm could find an adequate object in the earthly Jerusalem; the first view of which would be descried about this part of the journey. From the time when the line of the city wall was seen, all else was forgotten. The further border of Benjamin was almost reached. The Rabbis said that the boundary line of Benjamin and Judah, the two faithful tribes, passed through the Temple.’ And this City and Temple was the common sanctuary of all Israelites. “ Thither the tribes go up, even the tribes of the Lord: to testify unto Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the Lord. There is little Benjamin their ruler, and the princes of Judah their council, the princes of Zebulon and the princes of Nephthali: for there is the seat of judgment, even the seat of the house of David.” And now the Temple’s glittering roof was seen, with the buildings of Zion crowning the eminence above it, and the ridge of the Mount of Olives rising high over all. And now the city gate was passed, with that thrill of the heart which none but a Jew could know. “Our feet stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem. O pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls: and plenteousness within thy palaces. O God, wonderful art thou in thy holy places: even the

11 Sam. xxxi. 1—6. parte seu portione Jude, et divina presentia 2 Gen. xxviii. ; Judg. iv. 5.; 1 Kings xii. 29.; (seu occidentalis templi pars) in portione Ben-

2 Kings xxiii. 15. jamin.” ——Gemara Babylonia ad tit. Zebachim, 3 1 Sam. x. 26., xv. 84. cap. 5. fol. 54. b. See Selden de Synedriis He- 4 Judges xx. 43., &e. breorum, 1. xv. 4. (Seldeni Opera, 1726, vol. i. 5 Hosea ix. 9. f, 1545.)

§ “Sanedrin (ad plagam templi australem) in

STATE OF JUDHA AND JEKUSALEM. 59

God of Israel. He will give strength and power unto His people. Blessed be God.” }

And now that this young enthusiastic Jew is come into the land of his forefathers, and is about to receive his education in the schools of the Holy City, we may pause to give some description of the state of Judea and Jerusalem. We have seen that it is impossible to fix the exact date of his arrival, but we know the general features of the period; and we can easily form to ourselves some idea of the political and religious condition of Palestine.

Herod was now dead. The tyrant had been called to his last account ; and that eventful reign, which had destroyed the nationality of the Jews, while it maintained their apparent independence, was over. It is most likely that Archelaus also had ceased to govern, and was already in exile. His accession to power had been attended with dreadful fighting in the streets, with bloodshed at sacred festivals, and with wholesale crucifixions; his reign of ten years was one continued season of disorder and discontent ; and, at last, he was banished to- Vienna on the Rhone, that Judea might be formally constituted into a Roman province.? We suppose Saul to have come from Tarsus to Jerusalem when one of the four governors, who preceded Pontius Pilate, was in power, — either Coponius, or Marcus Ambivius, or Annius Rufus, or Valerius Gratus. The governor resided in the town of Cxsarea. Soldiers were quartered there and at Jerusalem, and throughout Judea, wherever the turbulence of the people made garrisons necessary. Centurions were in the country towns; soldiers on the banks of the Jordan. There was no longer the semblance of independence. The revolution, of which Herod had sown the seeds, now came to maturity. The only change since his death in the appearance of the country was that everything became more Roman than before. Roman money was current in the markets. Roman words were incorporated in the popular language. Roman buildings were conspicuous in all the towns. Even those two independent principalities which two sons of Herod governed, between the provinces of Judea and Syria, exhibited all the general character of the epoch. Philip, the tetrarch of Gaulonitis, called Bethsaida, on the north of the lake of

1 See Ps. Ixviii. and cxxii.

2 While the question of succession was pend- ing, the Roman soldiers under Sabinus had a desperate conflict with the Jews; fighting and sacrificing went on together. Varus, the go- vernor of Syria, marched from Antioch to Jeru- salem, and 2000 Jews were crucified. The

Herodian family, after their father’s death, had gone to Rome, where Augustus received them in the Temple of Apollo. Archelaus had never the title of king, though his father had desired it.

3 Luke vii. 1—10,

4 Luke iii- 14.

60

THE LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

Gennesareth, by the name of Julias, in honour of the family who reigned at Rome. Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee, built Tiberias on the south of the same lake, in honour of the emperor who about this time (A.D. 14) succeeded his

illustrious step-father.

TIBERIUS WITH TOGA.?

These political changes had been attended with a gradual alteration in the national feelings of the Jews with regard to their religion. That the sentiment of political nationality was not extin- guished was proved too well by all the horrors of Vespasian’s and Hadrian’s reigns; but there was a growing tendency to cling rather to their law and religion as the centre of their unity. The

_ great conquests of the heathen powers may have

been intended by Divine Providence to prepare this change in the Jewish mind. Even under the Maccabees, the idea of the state began to give place, in some degree, to the idea of religious life! Under Herod, the old unity was utterly broken to pieces. The high priests were set up and put down at his caprice; and the jurisdiction of the Sanhedrin was invaded by the most arbitrary interference. Under the governors, the power of the Sanhedrin was still more abridged ; and high

priests were raised and deposed, as the Christian patriarchs of Constantinople have for some ages been raised and deposed by the Sultan: so that it is often a matter of great difficulty to ascertain who was high priest at Jerusalem in any given year at this period. Thus the hearts of the Jews turned more and

1 The Jewish writer, Jost, seems to speak too strongly of this change. See the early part of the second volume of his Allg. Gesch. des Isr. Volks.

2 Statue of Tiberius, from the “Musée des Antiques,” vol. ii. (Bouillon. Paris), The statue is in the Louvre. We cannot look upon the portrait of Tiberius without deep interest, when we remember how it must have been engraven on the mind of St. Paul, who would see it before him wherever he went, till it was replaced by those of Caligula and Claudius. The image of

the emperor was at that time the object of religious reverence: the emperor was a deity on earth (Dis equa potestas. Juv. iv. 71.) ; and the worship paid to him was a real worship (see Merivale’s Life of Augustus, p. 159.) It is a striking thought, that in those times (setting aside effete forms of religion), the only two genuine worships in the civilised world were the worship of a Tiberius or a Claudius on the one hand, and the worship of Christ on the other. 3 See Acts xxiii. 5.

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GAMALIEL. 61

more towards the fulfilment of Prophecy,—to the practice of Religion,—to the interpretation of the Law. All else was now hopeless. The Pharisees, the Scribes, and the Lawyers were growing into a