ὃ wi . ‘ ῃ : tet PA Polee Th 5 . ttt ’ ἘΝ sale Lets Male. : ἡ : malas a patatatsRoacRpantnaheacnets SPS Ohara ery Ae detat crys 5 bakit ΕΝ Pes Bee ere ἱ ἐν δον Naveed, Nee j puta nade : ἔξ ΡΝ J λ ᾿ a atetaenea dee sera taes Talents ΤΉ tang ΣΧ ΟΣ es ry ὃ SUN ate τ τὰ κα τ ἣν ret biag Omens an ΟΡ ΟῚ ΟΜ ΚΉΝ Ta atv ΡΝ πο τῶ tery on τω τέκν eRe Se ΜΉ τα τι Peter δά των δε siete ty τοῖν PMS τῳ ἢ τι ταν, ἐν τα τ τα ρει WOME UTE ET σεν Library of The Theological Seminary PRINCETON - NEW JERSEY DIKE PRESENTED BY Green Fund He 2625.4 .2515 v.2 Zeller, Eduard, 1814-1908. The contents and origin of the Acts of the apostles Dye 4 ay Ay i ᾿ we fo ἦν Ϊ ‘1 ὗ ( i ᾿ F j Ve iit Ἦ i AR Ge ; Py 1 Bay, ᾿ 5 | Ave! 4 Sey: sie Ὗ Ἢ ᾿ τὴν . \ corn tes) dy Ψ" “ἤν ἐὼν Prospectus of the THEOLOGICAL TRANSLATION FUND. 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THE CONTENTS AND ORIGIN OF THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES, CRITICALLY INVESTIGATED. BY ν΄ Dn. ΡΥ ΖΈΟΝ TO WHICH IS PREFIXED, DR. F. OVERBECK’S INTRODUCTION TO THE ACTS, FROM DE WETTE’S HANDBOOK. TRANSLATED BY JOSEPH DARE, B.A., FORMERLY HIBBERT SCHOLAR. VG TE WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, 14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON; Anp 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. 1876. ἐὰν A ἄτι ἮΝ ΣΝ τ 79 series Graacate ΡΤ Ἵ ἀπ τ ες: ΩΝ ὁ ὁ CONTENTS OF VOL, IL Parr II. THE HISTORICAL SUBJECT-MATTER OF THE ACTS. C.—Paut. : : : : : : 1 2. The Community at Antioch; Paul’s First Missionary Journey : : : 1 3. The Apostolic Coun : 4. Paul’s Second Missionary Journey : : 42 5. Paul’s last Journey to Jerusalem ; his Imprisonment in Palestine : i : 60 6. Paul on the Way to Rome ia at cone : 84 7. The Doctrine and Public Character of Paul according to the Representation of the Acts : : 91 Part III. _THE ORIGIN OF THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. A.—On THE OxpsEcT oF THE AcTS : ? : 111 1. The Acts a Tendency-Writing : 111 2. The Relation of the Acts to the Parties in τὰς Primi- tive Church . : 139 3. The Reference of the Acts to the Teas Church : 161 4, The Composition of the Acts explained by the Object for which it was designed : : 1.15 iv B.—THE "ὦ Ο.-- Ἢ CONTENTS. AvuTHOR OF THE AcTS; THE TIME AND PLACE OF 15 ORIGIN . The Acts is the Work of a Single Author . The Acts and the Third or are the Work τὰ a Single Author . By whom, when, and where was the ἄξω ἐπήνθει a Sources OF THE AcTS . 184 184 218" 254 291 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. Second Part. THE HISTORICAL SUBJECT-MATTER OF THE ACTS. THIRD DIVISION. PAT Te 2. THE ComMUNITY AT ANTIOCH. PAUL’sS FIRST MISSIONARY JOURNEY. Wirz ch. ix. 30, Paul disappears for some time from the nar- rative of the Acts, but in xi. 25 he is introduced by Barnabas to the first scene of his independent apostolic ministry. To judge by the preceding accounts, this must have occurred very soon after his return from Jerusalem to his native city, and not very long after the execution of Stephen. For our author relates, in connection with this occurrence, that some of those who fled from Jerusalem on that occasion preached the gospel at Antioch with effect, not to the Jews only, but also to the Gentiles; on the arrival of which tidings Barnabas was despatched from Jeru- salem to that city, and brought Paul from Tarsus to Antioch. As the foundation of the community at Antioch followed imme- diately, according to this account, on the persecution of Stephen, and that important result could not possibly have long remained unknown to the Jerusalemites, if only on account of the sensa- VOL. II. B 2 AOTS OF THE APOSTLES. tion which the reception of uncircumcised persons would have caused among the Jewish Christians,—and as, for the same reason, the mission of Barnabas, as verse 22 also indicates, could not have been long delayed,—we are justified in supposing that our author did not intend to place it later than, at the most, about one year after the death of Stephen. And as in ix. 27, Barnabas is still at Jerusalem, and there introduces Paul to the Apostles, while between this period and his departure to Antioch Paul's sojourn in Jerusalem seems to be interposed, no space remains for the three years of the Epistle to the Galatians, 1. 18, which is another confirmation of what we have already said respecting the relation between our account and the Apostle’s. The question here obtrudes itself, whether the establishment of the first Gentile Christian. communities actually took place in the manner related by our book. This indeed contains nothing improbable; it would rather correspond perfectly with historical analogy, that the first conversions of the Gentiles should have resulted less from distinct purpose and preconceived principles than from undesigned arrangement of circumstances ; and it is equally credible that they should have been connected with the persecution of Stephen, as by it men inclined to a more liberal view of Christianity were for the first time driven into countries in which heathen populations predominated. So far, nothing stands in the way of the assertion in the 19th and 20th verses. But it is another question whether Paul pur- sued the course with respect to preaching to the heathen which is attributed to him by our book. Although it does not ex- plicitly say that prior to his ministry at Antioch he preached to no Gentiles, no other impression is left upon us; and we can scarcely consider this to be unintentional. It is silent as to the Apostle’s journey to Arabia; the three years intervening between his conversion and his first visit to Jerusalem it con- tracts into a far shorter period, and within this period it makes him appear only before Jews, in the synagogues of Damascus THE COMMUNITY AT ANTIOCH. 3 and at Jerusalem ; and at the close of it, he retires to his native eity till he is introduced into his own field of labour by Bar- nabas. So much the more opportunely does it make it perceptible how, previously, by the baptism of the Ethiopian, by the conver- sion of Cornelius, by the establishment of the community at Antioch, the mission to the heathen was promoted in increasing urgency; and acknowledged as authorized and necessary by the primitive community itself, as well as by its chiefs, nay, even by explicit and repeated divine revelations. Here, therefore, Paul does not enter upon this sphere of labour until by precedents and declarations of all kinds, by the utterances of all divine and human authorities, every stumbling-block that could be offered by the call of the heathen had been removed. How entirely ditferent in the Epistle to the Galatians! There Paul, imme- diately after his conversion, feels himself called to be the Apostle of the Gentiles; there he does not wait for the ratification of his calling by the party in Palestine, and does not confine himself in his ministry, to Jerusalem and the synagogues of Damascus ; but even before he has seen any of the original Apostles he goes to Arabia—by the context, it seems for the promulgation of the gospel,—and after a short visit to Jerusalem, again to heathen countries, to Syria and Cilicia, while to the communities of Judza he remains personally unknown. If these two accounts are compared, it is scarcely possible to think otherwise than that, according to the one, he avoids the domain of the mission to the Gentiles just as intentionally as, according to the other, he seeks it: that, according to one, he makes his appearance among the Gentiles dependent on the example and authority of the original Apostles ; according to the other, purposely avoids every appear- ance of any such dependence. To the mention of the community at Antioch, the Acts, xi. 26, appends the notice that the name of Christians first originated there. Baur’s doubts of this statement (pp. 90 f.) do not admit 1 This can certainly not be confidently stated, and, accordingly, the opinions of the learned differ widely. B 2 4 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. of being raised to certainty, and their author propounded them only conditionally ; but by the whole character of our book, as we have learnt to know it, we are not justified in maintaining that the question respecting the origin of the name of Christian is set at rest by its mere statement. From Antioch, Paul, in company with Barnabas—to pass over the journey to Jerusalem, xi. 27 ff, which will be discussed later—made his first great missionary journey to Cyprus, Pam- phylia, Pisidia and Lycaonia. This journey opens in a signi- ficant manner with the conflict with a Jewish magician, which is decided in favour of Paul by the blinding of the former (xiii. 4—12). Of this miracle every one will believe what he believes of miracles in general; but the partizans of a natural interpreta- tion here occupy a favourable position in attributing to natural causes the blindness which took place at once at the word of the Apostle. If, on the other side, the reality of the miracle cannot be admitted from a historical standpoint, it naturally follows that our narrative, as it exists, is unhistorical ; and the only question is, whether it is founded on a rou fact, or whether it originated purely from dogmatical motives without any historical basis. Although in this case, as in most others of the same nature, nothing can be decided with complete cer- tainty, the latter hypothesis is recommended by the circum- stance! that in parts the conduct of Peter towards Simon Magus, in parts the judicial punishment inflicted by the same Apostle upon Ananias and Sapphira, seem to contain a prefiguration of the penal miracle wrought by Paul on Bar-Jesus the sorcerer. Paul’s speech to Elymas, verse 10, bears great resemblance to that of Peter to Simon, viii. 20. The blindness of Elymas re- calls the blindness of Paul, ix. 8;? and thus what we have said above concerning the symbolical nature of this blindness has here a parallel application. The bodily blindness of the sorcerer 1 Schneckenburger, p. 53.- Baur, p. 91. 3 Comp. with xiii. 11, περιάγων ἐζήτει χειραγωγούς, ix. 8, χειραγωγοῦντες δὲ αὐτὸν ἤγαγον εἰς Δαμασκόν. PAUL’S FIRST MISSIONARY JOURNEY. 5 is the immediate punishment and image of his spiritual dark- ness. With the encounter against Elymas, the Acts connects the change of the name of Saul for Paul. From the moment at which the Apostle utters his wonder-working verdict against the sorcerer, the author calls him Paul, whereas he has hitherto, evidently on purpose, avoided the name. As the name Saul never occurs hereafter, while the other, on the contrary, had never occurred before, it is undoubtedly intended to signify by this __ that the Apostle received his later name on this occasion; and as mention was made immediately before of the proconsul Sergius Paulus, there is much to recommend the hypothesis of Jerome, that, according to the representation of our book, this name was conferred upon him by this firstling of his ministry. That it was really so is indeed scarcely credible, for the conversion of a Roman proconsul, especially if it was so rapidly and outwardly accomplished, does not seem to constitute such an epoch as to induce Paul to make an alteration in his name. It is incompa- rably more likely that for his intercourse with the Gentiles he transmuted it, after the manner of that age, into a form more general among the Grecians, or that, as the son of a Roman citizen, he had from the first borne the Latin name of Paul, in addition to the specially Jewish appellation, Saul. We must here pass by the remainder of the 13th chapter, with the account of the incidents at Antioch in Pisidia, as we shall be obliged hereafter to enter more minutely upon the speech attri- buted to Paul on this occasion; the events at Lystra, however, xiv. 8—20, still require our attention. By the healing of a cripple, Paul makes such a sensation here that the inhabitants regard him and Barnabas as Mercury and Jupiter, and can with diffi- culty be restrained from offering them sacrifices. Subsequently, however, Jewish emissaries from Antioch and Iconium succeed in instigating the people against them; Paul is stoned, and his life preserved only as by miracle. Of these incidents, the former, the healing of the cripple, is suspicious in more ways 6 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. than one. In the first place, because such a thing as the sudden healing of a cripple lame from his birth, resulting from a mere word, mocks every natural interpretation and every historical view ; secondly, because the source of this narrative so obviously appears in the earlier record of a perfectly similar. miracle of Peter, that it is almost impossible to mistake it. The first requires no further discussion; and for the second Schneckenburger (p. 52) and Baur (95) have collected all the proofs. The affinity of the two narratives is really startling; not only is the main result alike in both cases, but the adjuncts har- monize completely, and even the expressions are mostly identi- cal This harmony would rouse suspicion even if it related to an incident credible in itself; but as we have here an incre- dible one, it proves that in all probability our narrative was not derived from any definite thing, but merely from an imita- tion of the early miraculous story of Peter.?, With the miracle, the cause of the attempted adoration of the two is also with- drawn, and that also cannot pass as historical, the less so, indeed, as it is exposed to the suspicion of being derived from an exaggerated repetition of an episode in the history of Peter. If the older Apostles, according to v. 11, are venerated by the people as a species of superior beings, if Cornelius falls down at the feet of Peter, the Lystrians wish to proceed even to the actual worship of Paul and Barnabas; and as Peter bids the Roman centurion rise, ἀνάστηθι, κἀγὼ αὐτὸς ἄνθρωπός εἶμι, So the 1 xiv. 8: Kal τις ἀνὴρ ἐν Λύστροις ἀδύνατος τοῖς ποσὶν ἐκάθητο, χωλὸς ἐκ κοιλίας μητρὸς αὑτοῦ... (9): Οὗτος ἤκουε τοῦ Παύλου λα- λοῦντος" ὃς ἀτενίσας αὐτῷ... (10): εἶπε μεγάλῃ τῇ φωνῇ" ἀνάστηθι ἐπὶ τοὺς πόδας σου ὀρθός" καὶ ἥλατο καὶ περιε- πάτει. 11, 2: Καὶ τις ἀνὴρ χωλὸς ἐκ κοιλίας μητρὸς αὑτοῦ ὑπάρχων tBaordlero.. . (3): Ὃς ἰδὼν Πέτρον καὶ ᾿Ιωάννην ον ἠρώτα ἐλεημοσύνην. (4): ᾿Ατενί- σας δὲ Πέτρος εἰς αὐτὸν... εἶπε, and so on. (8): Kai ἐξαλλόμενος ἔστη καὶ περιε- πάτει" καὶ εἰσῆλθε σὺν αὐτοῖς εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν περιπατῶν καὶ ἁλλόμενος καὶ αἰνῶν τὸν θεόν. ? We cannot argue with critics like Baumgarten, who accounts, by means of a special providential dispensation, for the entire similarity of the Pauline and Petrine miracles in the Acts, as indicative of the similarity of their apostolic vocation. PAULS FIRST MISSIONARY JOURNEY. 74 two Apostles say to the Gentiles at Lystra, ἄνδρες, τί ταῦτα ποιεῖτε; καὶ ἡμεῖς ὁμοιοπαθεῖς ἐσμεν ὑμῖν ἄνθρωποι. Taken histori- cally, this veneration, even on the assumption of the miracle, has been justly deemed surprising. If it had actually occurred, the workers of miracles, as Baur acutely remarks (pp. 99 f.) would at that time have been far more readily considered as sorcerers, or at the most demons, than as deities of the lighest rank; the Homeric belief in the appearance of the gods was long extinct. This representation, on the other hand, must have been naturally suggested to our author, as Lycaonia was also in legend held to be the scene of a divine apparition (Theophany), and as the very deities who were to be worshipped in the per- sons of Paul and Barnabas had already degenerated into Phile- mon and Baucis. He may have had another special reason for his story if our conjecture should be correct respecting the original reference of the legend of Simon to Paul (see above). The calumny that Paul gave himself out to be the manifesta- tion of the Supreme God, would then be opposed by. the zeal © with which he rejects the worship of those who regarded him as a deity. How little this narrative stands on an historical basis is likewise exhibited in several small features. Granting that the miraculous cure had actually given rise to the belief that the two Apostles were superior beings, they must at once have resisted such a dangerous misunderstanding. Our author is, however, evidently anxious to allow the destined homage to . proceed as far as possible towards execution; although they cannot of course accept the worship, it must be demonstrated beyond doubt how seriously it was intended. Hence the cha- racteristic trait, that the people express their opinion respecting Paul and Barnabas in the Lycaonian language, which was incom- prehensible to the latter (verse 11); hence also the observation in verse 13, that the temple of Jupiter, the priest of which was about to sacrifice to him, was situated outside the city; the preparations for their worship must be made unknown to them, 1 Baw’, Paul, 100, after Schneckenburger. 8 ' ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. but yet, at the same time, must be quite completed. The less we are able to consider as historical! the first of these features especially, even according to the further account of our book itself, the more prominent does the drift of the whole narrative appear. Better authenticated is the statement respecting the stoning of Paul. That the Apostle was really stoned once, which probably means that he was once felled to the ground by the blows of stones in a popular tumult, he says himself, 1 Cor. xi. 25. But whether this occurred exactly at Lystra, we cannot trust ourselves to decide; for after the supposed occasion of this ill usage has shown itself to be improbable, we have not the slightest guarantee for the correctness of the statement respect- ing the scene of it; it is, on the contrary, quite as possible that nothing more was known to the author concerning it, and that he merely inserted here the incident known to him from 2 Cor. for the sake of the contrast, or perhaps because he knew of no other place where it could be more suitably introduced. 3. THE APOSTOLIC COUNCIL. While Paul and Barnabas were staying at Antioch after their first missionary journey, there arose, as is related in verse 15, in consequence of Jewish Christian claims, a dispute respecting the obligation of the Gentile Christians to accept circumcision and the Law of Moses. To settle this affair, Paul and Barnabas, with a few others, were despatched to Jerusalem. Here, again, indignant Pharisees repeated the claims of the Judaists; but, on 2 As Paul and Barnabas, in verses 15 ff., are perfectly able to come to an under- standing with the people without knowing Lystrian, and as, according to verses 7 and 9, they have also for some time preached the gospel, although perhaps in the Greek language, it must be assumed that the knowledge of Greek was tolerably common at Lystra ; and even if the old dialect was also in use, the two must have been spoken together, somewhat as German and French are in Alsace. Even then it is, however, very unlikely that the admiration of the multitude (verses 11 ff.) should have vented itself only in the language of Lystra, which was incomprehensible to the subjects of the admiration. _ THE APOSTOLIC COUNCIL. 9 the suggestion of Peter and James, the assembled church decided that Jewish Christians alone were bound by the Law; Gentile Christians, on the contrary, with the exception of a few points given in detail, were to be released from it. This decision was forthwith communicated to the Gentile Christian communities, and was also delivered to them by Paul, on his next missionary journey. A previous journey of Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem is re- corded in xi. 27—30, xu. 25; a later one in xviii. 18—23, in which mention is made of Paul only. Besides this, we hear from Paul himself, Gal. 11. 1 ff, of a journey to Jerusalem, which he undertook in company with Barnabas and Titus, fourteen, or more probably seventeen, years after his conversion, in conse- quence of a revelation made to him; and during this visit he came to an understanding with the Jerusalemites, and especially with their leaders, respecting his doctrine and ministry. The first question is, how this journey in the Epistle to the Galatians is related to those in the Acts? The ancients mostly identified it with the first of these, that of the 11th chapter; recently it has, on the contrary, been almost unanimously agreed that it must be looked for only in the narrative of our 15th chapter, while no one thought of the later journey in ch. xviii. until Wieseler,! pressed by the differences between the Epistle to the Galatians and our 15th chapter, took refuge here. We must commence by testing these three possible combinations. Concerning the journey in our 11th chapter, its identity with that in the Epistle to the Galatians is now justly abandoned by all. Even the object and occasion of the two journeys are quite different. In ch. xi., Paul and Barnabas are sent to convey ἃ small subsidy to Jerusalem; in Gal. ii, Paul goes of his own accord to confer with the Christians of the place. Of such a conference our 11th chapter knows not a word; and it can scarcely be ima- gined that it could have taken place at that time, as Peter was just then either in prison or flying. Moreover, at the time of 1 Chronology of Acts, pp. 179 ff. 10 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. our 11th chapter, before his first missionary journey, how could Paul, as is said in the account of the Epistle to the Galatians, be acknowledged as the promulgator of the gospel to the Gentiles in a sense which places him on a level with Peter, the chief of the Apostles of the Jews, and in comparison with which, Bar- nabas, palpably at first the most esteemed of the two, retires completely into the background? In the transactions of the apostolic council, how is it possible that not the slightest refer- ence is made to the earlier conferences, Gal. ii.2 How could the whole question in dispute, concerning which so much had been said and done, and a formal compact effected between the leaders of the two parties,—how could this be treated as an entirely new and untouched subject? Many more questions of this sort might be asked, but it is not requisite, for the chronology alone is decisive. The journey of the Epistle to the Galatians was probably seventeen, at all events fourteen, years later than the conversion of the Apostle (for in Gal. ii. 1, to omit the δέκα, con- trary to the evidence of every manuscript,! will occur to none again); while that of our 11th chapter coincides in time with the death of Herod Agrippa, which took place? in 44 A.D., therefore at the most eight to ten years after that event. As, according to this, the journey of the Epistle to the Gala- tians cannot be earlier than the so-called apostolic council, Acts xv., it cannot be later, and identical with the journey of our 18th chapter.* If the account in Acts xv. excludes an antecedent negociation, such as that in the Epistle to the Galatians, in like manner the account of the latter no less dis- tinctly excludes a negociation antecedent to itself, such as that 1 Neander, p. 183, questions this, because the words κατ᾽ ἐκεῖνον τὸν καιρὸν, xii. 1, contain no accurate definition of time. But that the author intends to put the presence of Paul and Barnabas in Jerusalem at the same time with the events of the 12th chapter, he shows unequivocally enough when he makes mention of their journey to Jerusalem before, of their return journey after, the capture of Peter. 2 Compare, against the assumption above announced, which is still defended by Fritzsche, Opusc. 224 ff., De Wette, on Gal. ii. 3 As has been exhaustively proved against Wieseler by Baur, Tiibingen Theol. Journal, 1849, pp. 458—480. THE APOSTOLIC COUNCIL. 11 of the Acts. However the object of the discussion in Gal. i. 15 ff. may be regarded, it necessarily demands a mention of every visit which the Apostle had made to Jerusalem in the interval between his conversion and the writing of the Epistle to the Galatians, or at least of all that he made between that event and the journey of the 2nd chapter. If Paul wished by this discussion to prove (according to i. 11, 19) that his doctrine was independent of every human authority, and especially of the authority of the twelve primitive Apostles, the enumeration of his journeys to Jerusalem can have no other object than to refute the supposition that he was in any way dependent on them, by the history of the intercourse which he had had with them. But for this purpose the enumeration naturally required to be complete; and a transaction of such importance as that of our 15th chapter could in no case be omitted. Even if he only desired to offer striking testimonies of the self-reliance and independence of his apostolic ministry and authority’ among these, one would think, the transactions at the apostolic council ought not to be lacking, as it was precisely on that occasion that his ministrations obtained the formal recognition of the primitive Church and its representatives. But that it was actu- ally his intention to cite all his journeys to Jerusalem up to the one in Gal. ii., is clearly shown by i. 22 ff, 11. 1. For if he here says that he had remained unknown to the Christian commu- nities of Palestine even after his first journey, and then fourteen years later went again to Jerusalem, it can hardly be understood otherwise than that this non-acquaintance continued to exist for fourteen years. Ifhe wished to convey any other impression, the date, διὰ δεκατεσσάρων ἐτῶν, is not merely superfluous, but misleading. But the manner in which it is to be understood is also made apparent by the similar designation, i 18. As here the words ἔπειτα μετὰ ἔτη τρία should be rendered only after three years, so the parallel words, 11. 1, ἔπειτα διὰ δεκατεσσάρων 1 So Baur, Paulus, p. 113. Similarly Wieseler, pp. 180 f. 12 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. ἐτῶν, can be rendered only after the lapse of fourteen years. To this must be added that, in Gal. ii. 1, Paul goes to Jerusalem with Barnabas, as in Acts xv. 2; whereas in Acts xviii. he goes with Aquila and Priscilla, after having parted from Barnabas, xv. 39. But what is still more important, the whole transaction here described by Paul renders an earlier one like that of the Acts impossible. ᾿Ανέβην κατὰ ἀποκάλυψιν, καὶ ἀνεθέμην αὐτοῖς τὸ εὐαγγέλιον, ὃ κηρύσσω ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσι, κατ᾽ ἰδίαν δὲ τοῖς δοκοῦσι, μήπως εἰς κενὸν τρέχω ἢ ἔδραμον. Why was it necessary for Paul now for the first time to report to the δοκοῦντες privately con- cerning his doctrine, if he had done the very same some years before in the public assembly of the church? How could he fear that the objections of the Jerusalemites might deprive him of the results of his labour (μήπως εἰς κενὸν, and so on), if they had long ago made terms with him and borne testimony to him, as in xv. 26, if he had himself heard his own principles respect- ing the.admissibility of Gentile conversion and the impossibility of justification by Law, with the admission of freedom from the Law for the Gentiles, enunciated by the mouths of the leaders, a Peter and a James? Moreover, how could the circumcision of the Gentile Christian, Titus, be required at Jerusalem? how could it cost Paul such a violent struggle to repel this demand, if for years past a formal resolution of the church had existed, sanctioned by apostolic authority, prohibiting such exactions; and if, as according to the Acts we must suppose, this resolution tallied with the practice of the community at Jerusalem? How can Paul say (Gal. ii. 7) that James, Peter and John, were con- vinced, during his stay at Jerusalem on that occasion, that the mission to the Gentiles was entrusted to him, and that in conse- quence they united with him and Barnabas in reciprocal recog- 1 Only a complete misapprehension of this context could betray Lange (Apost. Age, i, 99 f.) into the interpretation in Gal. ii. 1, that waXiv referred to the adjunct μετὰ Βαρνάβα, as if Paul on his first visit had travelled to Jerusalem with Barnabas ! The Epistle to the Galatians, moreover, had not yet mentioned Barnabas at all, and therefore could not have referred to him with πάλιν. THE APOSTOLIC COUNCIL. 13 nition, if they had long possessed this conviction, and years before had pronounced this acknowledgment in due form? As Paul represents the affair, an earlier settlement, such as is re- corded in Acts, cannot possibly have taken place. Finally, if the journey in the Epistle to the Galatians is transferred to a later period, because the impossibility of reconciling its account with that of our 15th chapter endangers the credibility of the Acts, it is very doubtful whether much can be gained by that. For what light does it cast on the historic art or faith of the author if he is completely silent upon such a supremely impor- tant transaction, and if of the whole journey during which it took place he can only report, κατελθὼν εἰς Καισάρειαν, ἀναβὰς καὶ ἀσπασάμενος τὴν ἐκκλησίαν κατέβη εἰς ᾿Αντιόχειαν (xviii. 22)? Is not such an omission of the most important thing just as bad as a false report; and does it not lead directly to a perfectly incorrect idea of the affair? If the understanding in the Epistle to the Galatians was later than that in Acts xv., the latter was altered by the former in several essential points; the qualified recognition of Gentile Christianity was changed to an unquali- fied one (οὐδὲν προσανέθεντο); the demand of refraining from meat offered to idols, &c., was (as Wieseler also supposes, pp. 201 f.) repealed. But the reader of the Acts, on whom the prescriptions of the apostolic council are impressed, while their subsequent alteration is not mentioned, cannot but believe them to have preserved their validity. And, indeed, this is just what our book expressly assumes. How could James, xxi. 20 ff, appeal to the resolutions of the 15th chapter and assume their con- tinued maintenance by Paul, if he himself had in the interval repealed those resolutions by a new compact with Paul ? _ What, after the above disquisition, cannot any longer be sub- ject to doubt, viz. that the author of the Acts had nothing in view in his 15th chapter but the incidents recorded in Gal. ii., will be directly confirmed by the,relative position of the two accounts. For, important as we shall find their variations in detail, they are, nevertheless, much too nearly related to be 14. ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. referred to different events. In both cases a journey by Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem to confer with the Jerusalemites concerning the position of the Gentile Christians and their rela- tion to Judaism ; in both, a lengthy discussion, in which Peter and James (in the Epistle to the Galatians, John also) are espe- cially prominent; in both, a final understanding ; in both, the transaction related so that it is readily seen no earlier one can have taken place on the same subject between the same people; can it then still be doubted whether it is really one and the same event which is recorded in both; and can minor deviations, important as they may otherwise be, prove anything against this coincidence in the main ? It certainly follows from this, that the journey in the 11th chapter can never have taken place at all, so far at least as our observations are correct as to the object of the account in the Epistle to the Galatians. What is related of this journey is of such a nature that it could be told without historical founda- tion. The possibility that such an unhistorical statement should occur in the book can scarcely be disputed, after all that has been educed hitherto respecting its unhistorical character. Even the deviations from the authentic account of the Apostle him- self, which we found in ix. 19 ff, would suffice to prove this. That our author, moreover, had an interest in making Paul visit Jerusalem in the interval between his conversion and the so- called apostolic council, we shall show later on; the more offen- sive his many years’ absence from the centre of theocracy must have been to the Jewish Christians, the more natural was it for a writer anxious to justify him from the Jewish Christian stand- point to meet this stumbling-block with stories like the one before us. Finally, if we examine the details of the journey in question, it must strike us that they scarcely occur anywhere else in the historically accredited journeys of the Apostle. We know from the Epistle to the Galatians, and from ch. xv., of a journey made to Jerusalem by Barnabas and Paul; the object of 1 As Baur also assumes, Paul, 114. Tubingen Theol. Journal, 1849, 479. THE APOSTOLIC COUNCIL. 15 the journey, the conveyance of a contribution to the Jerusa- lemites, belongs to the Apostle’s last visit to Jerusalem, but is also very remarkably passed over in silence by our book. On the same occasion we make acquaintance, in xxi. 10, with the prophet Agabus, acting a similar part as in xi. 28; the further contents of our narrative are the two obvious features that the contribution for the Jerusalemites was in consequence of the noted famine under the Emperor Claudius, and that it proceeded from Antioch, the only community of Gentile Christians by which at that time Paul could have been sent. When a record is thus related to other accounts, it justifies the suspicion that it arose by doubling the same event; and if this same record, by its inconsistency with a better accredited one (that of the Epistle to the Galatians), bears the negative mark of inaccuracy on its front, the suspicion is raised by such coincidence to a high degree of probability. Even Neander, in the last edition of his work (p. 188), after Bleek’s example,’ considers the silence of the Epistle to the Galatians concerning the journey of our 11th chapter (which in the third he had declared trivial) of such weight, that he’ admits that, holding to the words of Paul, we can only think that he was never in Jerusalem between the two journeys mentioned in the Epistle to the Galatians; and as it would be more permissible to suppose an oversight on the part of Luke than to do violence to the statement of Paul, we must assume that Barnabas alone, and not Paul, went to Jerusalem in the year 44. Only if it must once be acknowledged that Paul, notwithstanding the distinct statement of our author, was not at Jerusalem, who guarantees that Barnabas went there, and that the narrative in question has any historical foundation at all? and if, taking our record by itself, we do not think this hypothesis utterly in- credible, it nevertheless loses all probability if we take into con- sideration, on the one hand, the historical character of the Acts, on the other, the relation of our narrative to the other, of which 1 Beitr. Ζ, Evangelienkritik, p. 55. 16 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. it appears to be a copy. For the main point, the delineation of Paul, the result would have been the same whether Barnabas was at Jerusalem or not; and even in the former case we could deem the unhistorical statement respecting the journey of Paul as a mere traditional error. This, however, cannot be shown till later. Hereby a refutation is given to Schleiermacher’s’ hypothesis, that the journey of the 11th chapter is identical with that of the 15th, and that it was only mentioned in anticipation of a future one, xi. 30; that the compiler of the Acts, however, in an incomprehensible manner, took it for a separate journey; and in xii. 25 represented it as such. For the credibility of our narrative and of our whole book, nothing would be gained by this assumption; but how hasty it is, is shown above all by the fact, that to assign the famine under Claudius (44 A.D.), known through Josephus (Ant. xx. 2, 6) as the cause of the journey, would not at all suit that of the 15th chapter; and that the journey, according to our book as well as the Epistle to the Galatians, had a very different object and character. After these preliminary investigations, we may apply our- selves to the import of the 15th chapter, in testing which we may now unreservedly make use of the Epistle to the Galatians as our safest mainstay. If we compare its representation with that of the Acts, such irreconcilable contradictions appear be- tween the two, that we cannot consider the latter to be histori- cally true in its essential features. Even the formal character of the transactions at Jerusalem are represented in the two accounts as unmistakably different. The Epistle to the Galatians makes it appear a private negocia- tion of Paul with the most esteemed of the primitive Apostles ; the Acts gives it an entirely official stamp. Similarly, the resolve to make the journey is of different origin; according to the Acts, it is undertaken by Paul, Barnabas and their com- panions, as a commission from the church at Antioch; according © 1 [Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 369 f. THE APOSTOLIC COUNCIL. 17 to Gal. ii, by Paul who takes Barnabas and Titus with him, κατὰ ἀποκάλυψιν, hence spontaneously ; there Paul and his com- panions have to act in the name of the community which des- patched them; here he acts in his own name. “I went there,” he says, “ and communicated unto them the gospel that I had preached, lest haply I should have run in vain.” It is not the pacification of a dispute which had arisen in the community, but the establishment of personal relations between Paul and the Jerusalemites with respect to his apostolic ministry, which is the object ; it is not the commission of the community, but the spontaneous resolution of the Apostle, which is the cause of the journey. I should be reluctant either, with Schneckenburger,’ to declare this difference “ utterly irrelevant,” as it is closely con- nected with the whole character of the respective accounts ; or, with Neander (p. 205), to harmonize it by the hypothesis that, although Paul and Barnabas were sent by the community, Paul would even without this public embassy have made the journey in consequence of the ἀποκάλυψις ; for the Epistle to the Gala- - tians does not say that he would have made it on that account, though he should have had none other cause for it, but quite simply that he did make it. It would be preferable to assume, with the same scholar, that the suggestion of the embassy proceeded from Paul himself, on the ground of the ἀποκάλυψις. Even thus, however, the difference would remain that, according to his own account, Paul negociates only in his own name; according to that of the Acts, in the name of the community: that, according to the former, the resolution to make the journey was taken originally by him, and only subsequently assented to by the community; according to the latter, the same resolution was taken by the community and carried into execution by Paul and Barnabas at their desire: that in the Acts, the negociation principally concerns the community, and Paul only as a conse- quence ; in the Epistle to the Galatians, it chiefly concerns Paul, 1 Zweck der Apg. p. 73. VOL. II. σ 18 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. and only secondarily the community. Moreover, it would be striking, even on this assumption, that in the Epistle to the Galatians the Apostle makes mention neither of the Jewish Christians (who, according to Acts xv. 1, occasioned the appeal to Jerusalem) nor the commission of the community ; for both these circumstances were by no means unimportant in judging of the step he took, and put in a proper light could only serve as a confirmation of the account given in his first chapter, namely, the assertion that he had not originally received his gospel from the older Apostles, and that his few visits to them had not the object of seeking dogmatic instruction from them (Gal. 1. 11, 16 f., 18 f.); whereas the very official character of his mission might, on the other hand, easily give rise to the misinterpretation that by undertaking it Paul had acknowledged a position of dependence on the Apostles of Palestine, and, if only as a precaution against such misapprehension, it ought not to have been passed over in silence. The same contrast appears even more unmistakably in the respective accounts of the trans- actions at Jerusalem. “According to the Acts, a formal public transaction took place, of such a kind that this deliberation and decision has been considered, since the earliest times, not un- justly as the first Christian council” (Baur, 115). According to verse 13, a formal assembly of the community is held, under the presidency of James, the head of the church; a regular debate is opened, a legal resolution is taken, and promulgated to the Gentiles by special delegates, in the name of the community, as the decision of the church and of the Holy Ghost. According to the account in the Epistle to the Galatians, on the contrary, Paul privately expounds his principles, first, only to the heads of the community at Jerusalem ; James, Peter and John come to an understanding with him; but of an assembly and a deci- sion of the whole community not a syllable is said. If the two records do not exactly contradict one another, they must treat of different occurrences; we must suppose, with Neander THE APOSTOLIC COUNCIL. 19 (pp. 206 ff) and. others, that the general assembly was pre- ceded by conferences between Paul and the chiefs of the com- munity at Jerusalem, and to these, as well as to what was decided therein, the Epistle to the Galatians refers. But even in this case, how is it that Paul never alludes to the general assembly ?? How can he represent the whole affair as if it had been settled by the consent of the three chief Apostles, if, after all, the actual negociation and decision did not take place till later? Why does he not bestow a word on the synodical decision, in the promulga- tion of which, according to the Acts, he was nevertheless zealously busied? He dwells, Neander (p. 207, note) considers, on what was to him the chief point, the thing which, above all, he was obliged to insist upon in opposition to his adversaries, who wanted to make the authority of James and the Apostles of Palestine to be alone valid. Similarly Lechler; if the opponents appealed not to majorities, but to the importance of predominant indi- viduals, it would not have been at all appropriate if Paul had appealed against them to the great majority in favour of the decision at Jerusalem, or in any way to the public transaction ; he had much more hope of producing an effect if he had the Apostles themselves, and especially the most venerated Apostle, on his side, and was able to prove their acquiescence in his principles. But this very proof was given him more completely by the public negociation, than by a private conference of which no authentic record was to be had. For in the transac- tions of our 15th chapter, those very heads of the Jewish Chris- 1 Lechler, the Apost. and Post-Apost. Age, 246 £. Hbrard, Crit. of Gospel History, 2, A. 698 f. Baumgarten, ii. 165 ἢ, Thiersch, The Church in the Apost. Age, 128. 2 He says indeed, ἀνεθέμην αὐτοῖς τὸ εὐαγγέλιον... κατ᾽ ἰδίαν δὲ τοῖς δοκοῦσι, but no one who does not read these words with the determination of finding them in accordance with the Acts will be able in the αὐτοῖς to discover any trace of a transaction such as that described in our 15th chapter. Verbally, the words might mean either, “1 set it forth to them (the Jerusalemites), but particularly to the most considerable,” or, ‘I set it forth to them, but only to the most considerable in particular.” Even if we accept the former explanation, there still remains nothing in the vague statement of a conference with the Jerusalemites that could most remotely lead the reader to suppose that this conference took place in a general assembly of the community, or ' that they occasioned a formal deliberation and decision respecting the disputed points. o 2 20 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. tian party, a Peter and a James, come forward with detailed speeches. Why does not Paul point to these, their well-known public declarations ; why does he not hold up to his opponents the formal charter of freedom which the primitive community had set forth in favour of the Gentile Christians at the sugges- tion of the Apostles above named, instead of relying on verbal assurances, the authenticity of which might at any moment be disputed by the opposite party? Perchance because “ he might assume those public transactions and their results as known” (Neander). As if this very circumstance would not have been a recommendation to the argument; for the more public was the recognition of his principles in Jerusalem, so much the more complete was the refutation of his adversaries. Or must we assume, with Schneckenburger (p. 73), that didactic con- siderations induced the Apostle to renounce the advantage offered him by the decree of Jerusalem, that he did not mention it, because he desired to appear before the Galatians, not with authority, but merely with the development of the truth? Paul does not in reality by any means follow this point of view; he appeals to the recognition of the δοκοῦντες, even while disclaiming any faith in their authority, and he had every reason for so doing to his Galatian readers. How strange that he did not add to this recognition that of the primitive community; that, instead of their public and authentic statement, he encounters his oppo- nents only with private utterances of a far more equivocal character! If those authentic declarations were actually extant, it will be difficult to find a plausible reason for such a course. What the most recent apologists of the Acts have contributed to the explanation of the matter is far from sufficient. The two transactions, Thiersch maintains, are so different, that they could scarcely be more so; in the Acts, it is an affair singly and solely of the rights and duties of the Gentile Christians ; in the Epistle to the Galatians, of the apostolic dignity of Paul; the obligations of the Gentile Christians are here no more discussed than is the question of the recognition of the Apostle there. To the THE APOSTOLIC COUNCIL. 21 same view Baumgarten! appends the observation that Paul had every reason to appeal, not to the decisions of the community, but to his private conference with the Apostles, as those deci- sions do not contain nearly such an explicit recognition of his apostolic labours as the private declarations of the Apostles ; and, moreover, the prescriptions of the apostolic decree would have conduced more to disturb than to benefit the misguided Galatians. The whole of this version of the affair is incorrect. In the conferences reported in the Epistle to the Galatians, the chief subject debated is not the apostolic dignity of Paul, but the εὐαγγέλιον τῆς ἀκροβυστίας, the fundamental principle of the Gentile mission, i.e. the same as in the general assembly of the community at Jerusalem. To submit his gospel to his brother Apostles, Paul goes to Jerusalem: on the uncircumcision of Titus, on the admissibilty of Gentile Christianity, the conflict arises ; their recognition is: the fruit of the negociation; only a sequence of this result is the personal recognition of the Apostle of the Gentiles; only one of the causes which produce it, the recognition of his apostolic services. Besides, the whole discus- sion in the Epistle to the Galatians does not centre in the per- sonal question of the apostolic dignity of Paul, but in the impor- tant one of the Christian’s relation to the Law, as is clearly shown in the further exposition in 11. 10 ff. Therefore, why should Paul ᾿ have passed over in complete silence the conclusive decisions of the primitive Church and of the Holy Ghost (Acts xv. 28) upon this subject, if these decisions really took place, as is stated in the Acts? Or were they, as Baumgarten mysteriously hints, too little decisive and too Judaistic for his purpose? Did he fear, as Ebrard? insists, that the adoption of the apostolic letter might injure his apostolic authority? For this he had every reason, only we must not conclude thence that he diplomatically 1 16 f., 168. The scurrilities with which Ebrard (p. 699) raises himself above the scientific examination of this affair, as of so many others, would be too much honoured by the briefest quotation. 2 Krit. d. ev. Gesch. 713. 22 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. left the apostolic decisions untouched, but that they did aa take place as they appear in the Acts. If we look, moreover, how the relation between Paul and the original Apostles to each other and to the subject in dispute is represented in our book, here again its incompatibility with the authentic statements of Paul is not to be mistaken. According to the narrative of the Acts, Paul and Barnabas are despatched to Jerusalem to procure the decision of the community of that place and of the Twelve upon the disputed question which dis- turbed the community of Antioch. To secure such a supreme judicial decision, the community is assembled (xv. 6, συνήχθησαν ἰδεῖν περὶ τοῦ λόγου τούτου); and, after having listened to the speakers for and against, it decides as the instrument of the Holy Ghost (ἔδοξε τῷ ἁγίῳ πνεύματι καὶ ἡμῖν, ν. 28), and this decision is transmitted for observance by Paul himself to the churches con- verted by him (xvi. 4, παρεδίδουν αὐτοῖς φυλάσσειν τὰ δόγματα τὰ κεκριμένα ὑπὸ τῶν ἀποστόλων καὶ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων τῶν ἐν Ἱερουσαλήμ). In a word, the community of Jerusalem, with the original Apostles, here appears as the chief ecclesiastical court, before whose judgment-seat important disputes are brought by the Gentile Christian communities, whose decisions are recognized even by Paul as universal ecclesiastical laws. This position, judging from the Epistle to the Galatians, Paul did not allow the primitive community and its chiefs; and according to his principles he could not possibly have allowed it. In his opinion, the right of the Gentiles to the Messianic salvation, the repeal of the Mosaic Law and circumcision, this fundamental axiom of his whole system, was much too firmly established to admit of his still treating it as a disputed point, and consenting to submit it to the decision of others. “If an angel from heaven,” he exclaims in Gal. i. 8, “ preach any other gospel than that which we have preached, let him be accursed.” How could he then admit even the possibility that any other preaching should be required of him? “If ye be circumcised,” he declares in Gal. v. 2, “Christ profiteth you nothing ;” and we may believe THE APOSTOLIC COUNCIL. 93 that he did not first arrive at this conviction fourteen or fifteen years after his conversion. How could he then accept the com- mission to inquire at Jerusalem whether circumcision was, or was not, necessary to salvation (Acts xv. 1)? In reality, his position in this affair, if we listen to himself, was quite a dif- ferent one. Not to procure a decision in Jerusalem did he go there, but to expound his principles to his colleagues ; and with regard to these principles, he is so far from depending on their verdict, that he distinctly declares ὁποῖοί ποτε ἦσαν, οὐδέν μοι διαφέρει; and the unqualified acknowledgment of his procedure, not the supreme decision on their side, is all that he has to report as the result of his negociation with them. And as to the pre- sumption of reverencing the decisions of the Jerusalemites as the decrees of the Holy Ghost, Paul, if it had encountered him, would probably have rejected it even more vehemently than he does similar claims, 2 Cor. x. 7, xi. 5, &c. In the account of the Acts, Paul indeed appears, respecting his whole view of Chris- tianity, so subordinate to a Peter and a James, that he has almost changed sides with them. If the speeches of our 15th chapter were authentic, a Peter and even a James would on this occasion have enunciated the principles of Pauline universalism with more distinctness than the great Apostle of the Gentiles. Here it is Peter who declares the Mosaic Law a yoke which neither they who were present, nor yet their fathers, were able to bear; Peter who pronounces that Jews and Gentiles may equally be saved by the grace of Christ; Peter who is able in his own person to adduce the first example of a Gentile conver- sion. Less decidedly, but still in the same direction, does James express himself. By him also the principle of Gentile con- version is acknowledged and confirmed by passages from the prophets ; he too is willing that the Law, although not repealed, should be limited to the Jews;! and if Peter has opened the door 1 This is implied in the words, v. 21, Μωῦσῆς γὰρ ἐκ γενεῶν ἀρχαίων κατὰ πόλιν τοὺς κηρύσσοντας αὐτὸν ἔχει, ἐν ταῖς συναγωγαῖς κατὰ πᾶν σάββατον ἀναγινωσ- κόμενος. Some commentators, such as Meyer and De Wette, interpret these words as accounting for the restrictions imposed on the Gentile Christians: “We must require so much from them, as the Law is too well known, in consequence of the sab- 24 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. to Gentile conversion by his example, it is he who proposes the expedient, the acceptance of which renders it possible to receive Gentiles with Jews into one Messianic church. Of Paul and Barnabas, on the contrary, it is merely recorded that they related ὅσα ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς σημεῖα καὶ τέρατα ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσι δ αὐτῶν. That these stories of miracles should haye constituted the sole or even the chief import of the Pauline addresses is not likely ; even if Paul were convinced of having: performed miracles, and if, in 2 Cor. xii. 12, he also appeals to his miracles, he does this only by the way, as if compelled to it; otherwise he wishes to distinguish himself from the Jews by this very thing, that he produces faith, not by miracles, but by his doctrine.’ At the conference at Jerusalem also, it was, according to Gal. 11. 2, 7 ff, the exposition of his doctrine and the result gained by it in the heathen world by which he won over the older Apostles; of miracles he says not a word. But if it is unlikely that Paul should have spoken as is reported in our record, it is much more unlikely with respect to Peter and James. Ifa James really entertained the principles which he here enunciates ; if he was batical readings, to release them completely from it without scandal.” But (comp. Neander, p. 217) on these grounds the observation of the whole law, and especially of circumcision, ought to have been required of the Gentile Christians ; our account, however, according to verse 28, regards the demands of verse 20 as so indispensable that they require no special grounds, and the limitation to these demands appears simply as a μὴ παρενοχλεῖν, verse 19. Neander himself paraphrases, ‘‘ As to the Jews, we need say nothing new to them, for they may hear every sabbath-day in the synagogue what Moses requires of them.” But of the Jews there was nothing pre- viously said to which the γὰρ could be referred. Gieseler, whom Baur (p. 119) also supports, sees in our speech the expression of the idea, ‘‘ the Mosaic Law has been preached so long, and yet there are few who adapt themselves to its reception.” Now that the service of the true God is preached without the shackles of the Law, so many turn to Him, and it is undeniable that the ceremonial Law is the only impediment to the general spread of true religion. Thus the leading idea, that the Law stands in the way of the spread of monotheism, would nevertheless remain unexpressed. It there- fore seems to me the simplest, with Schneckenburger (p. 23) and Baumgarten (p. 150), to take the words in question thus: ‘“ We will not trouble the Gentile Christians with the requirements of the Law; the claims which Moses or the Mosaic Law may make will be satisfied by their recognition on the part of the Jews. Schneckenburger refers justly for this to xxi. 24 f. . 11 Cor. 1. 22: ᾿Ιουδαῖοι σημεῖα αἰτοῦσι... ἡμεῖς δὲ κηρύσσομεν Χριστὸν ἐσταυρωμένον. THE APOSTOLIC COUNCIL. 95 not merely yielding to the force of an accomplished fact (ἰδόντες ὅτι πεπίστευμαι τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τῆς ἀκροβυστίας, Gal. 11. 7), when granting Paul the peaceful possession of his field of labour, but was also himself convinced that the Mosaic Law was not bind- ing on the Gentiles, and openly and decidedly acted on this con- viction ; if, as Neander believes (p. 211), he even acquiesced in the principle of justification by faith alone,—it is quite incon- ceivable how this particular man, so accordant with Paul, so tolerant respecting the freedom of the Gentile Christians, could have been the highest authority of a party which everywhere most zealously opposed this freedom, and assailed the Apostle of the Gentiles more malignantly and vehemently, for no other reason than because he had admitted the uncircumcised into the Messianic kingdom,—inconceivable how even a Peter, who must after all have known the real state of the case, should have allowed himself to be so terrified by the disciples of James (Gal. ii. 12) that he became faithless to the principles which he had already acknowledged by his actions. These party-men might indeed have exaggerated the tendency of a James; but that, on the very point on which the whole party-struggle of that period hinged, they should have been in direct opposition to their highly revered chief, that they could make the circum- cision of the Gentiles their watchword, while James from per- sonal conviction pronounces the word of their freedom, and the whole community of Jerusalem acquiesces in this principle,— that even Peter, even Barnabas, to whom next to Paul the deci- sions of the apostolic council were most beneficial, instead of referring them to the authority of their own James, and the solemn declarations of the primitive community, yield to their demands without resistance,—this is utterly incredible. If James really entertained and asserted the opinion ascribed to him in our book, for that very reason he must likewise have been spurned, rejected, or at least set aside, by those Judaistic zealots; 1 Ἐξ ἔργων δικαιοῦται ἄνθρωπος καὶ οὔκ ἐκ πίστεως μόνον, Jas. iii. 24. Neander, it ig known, considers the Epistle of James to be genuine. 26 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. for what else could have induced them to acknowledge him as ~ their chief but the essential similarity of his principles with theirs? And if these people were really as much feared as, according to Gal. ii. 12, they must have been, they cannot have been merely individual fanatics who had against them, besides the mass of Pauline Christians, the whole primitive community, with its chief (Acts xv. 22); but they must have had extensive support among this community, and could not have appealed entirely without reason toa James.! But Peter too cannot have stood so far from them as is generally supposed. He may have opposed the freedom of the Gentile Christians with less harsh- ness than James; but that he declared himself so decidedly in its favour as he does here is incredible, even on account of the incident at Antioch.? Here all the observations ὃ occasioned by 1 Comp. on this, the appropriate remarks of Schwegler, Nachap. Zeitalter, 118 f. 2 For that we must not, with Schneckenburger (Object of the Acts, 108 ff.), place this occurrence prior to the apostolic council is obvious. How can it be supposed that Paul, after recounting his meetings with the original Apostles, beginning at i. 15, in chronological order, should now suddenly spring aside from the order of time in a manner which his readers could possibly perceive ; and how could he speak of the transaction at Jerusalem as he speaks of it in ii. 1, if it had been preceded by such a sharp dispute with Peter? His whole account obviously assumes that the ques- tion concerning the Gentile mission was discussed between him and the party of Pales- tine at Jerusalem. Compare especially verses 2, 7. 3 Wieseler, p. 197, maintains that a contradiction between the behaviour of Peter and the decisions of the apostolic council could not exist, because these decisions do not refer to the position of the Jewish Christians with regard to the Law, but only to that of the Gentile Christians. Peter’s first freedom of intercourse with the Gentiles at Antioch was in excess of the decisions of Jerusalem; and if Paul afterwards re- proaches him with πῶς τὰ ἔϑνη ἀναγκάζεις iovdaiZew, this only means that Peter, although perceiving their merely provisional purport, had attempted to reinforce them. But the account in the Epistle to the Galatians makes any evasion of this kind im- possible. If, according to this, the Gentile Christians were received by the Jerusalem- ites without further conditions as fellow-Christians (verses 6, 9), the limits between the two divisions were herewith removed, the Gentile Christians were declared re- cipients of the Messianic kingdom as well as the Jewish Christians, and the latter could no longer scruple to eat with them. In no other way does the Acts regard this relation; see xi. 3 and our previous remarks on this passage. Therefore, if Peter at Antioch withdrew from fellowship at table with the baptized Gentiles from fear of the Jewish Christians, this implies that he refused to acknowledge them as fellow- religionists ; but he would scarcely have done this if his personal convictions and the apostolic decisions had been what they must be believed to be from our book. THE APOSTOLIC COUNCIL. a, the story of the conversion of Cornelius are again applicable. | Not to mention that the appeal to this particular fact, xv. 7 f,, is of course as doubtful as the fact itself. Nay, even in Paul it is striking that he does not say a word to remind either Peter or the disciples of James of the solemn compact at Jerusalem, the fundamental ecclesiastical law there established, the “ Bill of Rights” of the Gentile Christians. “If the τινὲς ἀπὸ ᾿Ιακώβου were despotic zealots,’ Schwegler justly remarks (the work already quoted), “why does not Peter emphatically refute them by appealing to all that had previously taken place? Why does he not make use of his apostolic authority, the decisions of the apostolic college and the primitive church, the acquiescence of James, that series of acknowledged facts? And Paul himself— in the reprimand which he gives to his brother Apostle in con- sequence of that occurrence—has he no word with which to remind him of the transactions of the apostolic council, the decisions then so unanimously, so peaceably taken, the speech made by Peter on that occasion? No. Peter has forgotten that council, the emissaries of James have forgotten it, Paul has for- gotten it. This is hard to believe. If others were not forth- coming, the contradictions quoted would alone suffice to make us look upon the apostolic council of the Acts as a fiction trace- able to the pragmatism of the work, a fiction which indeed har- monized with the pacific objects of our author, but which can have no place in history.”? Further reasons are found in sufficient*number in the con- tents of the decrees at Jerusalem, as Baur and Schwegler have demonstrated. These decrees are intended to establish the con- ditions to which the admission of the Gentiles into the Messianic salvation, and the fellowship of the Jewish and Gentile Chris- 1 A characteristic proof of the decisions of the apostolic council is to be found in Wieseler, p. 190. The authenticity of the apostolic decree is guaranteed, according to him, by xxi. 25, as this passage belongs to a paragraph written by an eye-witness and companion of Paul, xx. 5—xxviii. 31. It is obvious that he who disputes the authenticity of the Acts on other grounds does not admit the absolute authenticity of _ xx. ff. More details on this later. 298 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. tians in the Messianic kingdom, are attached. These conditions are three ; the continued validity of circumcision and of the Law as respects the Jewish Christians and their successors is ad- mitted; the Gentile Christians, on the contrary, are released from it, yet they too must submit to the restrictions named in verses 20 and 29. In a word, the compact between the conflict- ing parties consists in this—that each with its own claims is limited to itself, and an observance of the Jewish custom is imposed upon the Gentile Christians only in some subordinate points. Such a compact, even disregarding its official form, cannot then have been made. In Gal. ii. 6 ff. Paul explicitly declares: ἐμοὶ yap of δοκοῦντες οὐδὲν προσανέθεντο, ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον ... δεξιὰς ἔδωκαν ἐμοὶ καὶ Βαρνάβᾳ κοινωνίας, ἵνα ἡμεῖς μὲν εἰς τὰ ἔθνη, αὐτοὶ δὲ εἰς τὴν περιτομήν᾽ μόνον τῶν πτωχῶν ἵνα μνημονεύωμεν. From this explanation three things follow. In the first place, no demands were made upon Paul at Jerusalem which conflicted with the principles which he there laid down.! Secondly, the agreement between Paul and the leaders at Jerusalem is confined to their reciprocal toleration of each other in their own spheres of labour. Paul was not to interfere with them in their treat- ment of the common cause within the sphere of Jewish Chris- tianity ; and as little were they to meddle with his ministry to the Gentiles ; no union in principle took place between the two parties. Thirdly, no further conditions were attached to that compact except that Paul should remember the poor of Jeru- salem. On all these points the Pauline account is not to be reconciled with that of the Acts. Or with respect to the first, would it have been no unbearable addition to his doctrine, no 1 The disputed προσανέθεντο means either, they imposed nothing further upon me, or they proposed nothing further to me. The latter interpretation, sanctioned by Wieseler (Chronol. of Apost. Age, p. 195), De Wette and Hilgenfeld on the pas- sage, also by Baur (Tubingen Journal, 1849, 463), is scarcely established by the ἀνεθέμην, verse 2, and the προσανεθέμην, i. 16, for it is by no means rare with Paul that in the same context the meaning of an expression alters. With reference to the fact, it is not very important which way we translate ; for even in Wieseler’s inter- pretation the meaning can only be that no further demand was made on Paul by the party of Palestine. THE APOSTOLIC COUNCIL. 99 προσανατίθεσθαι, if he were required to acknowledge the lasting obligation on Jewish Christians of law and circumcision, the unqualified abolition of which he enforced in every part of his Epistles, and if he were even obliged to allow restrictions to be imposed on the Gentiles from which he had pronounced them free? For that both were the case, according to our account, will forthwith be shown in greater detail. Further, as concerns the third of the decisions quoted, how could Paul declare the small subsidies to be the sole condition laid upon him, if, in addition to this,—which is, strange to say, not mentioned in the Acts,— all the conditions enumerated in the apostolic decree were like- wise established? Perchance because nothing else, save some attention to the poor, was imposed on himself as a duty, because the statutes quoted in the Acts did not concern the Apostle himself, but only the Gentile Christian communities (Lechler, p. 258). The duty of upholding these statutes in his missionary work was, however, imposed upon the Apostle; and, according to xvi. 4, he fulfilled this duty; but that he could pass them by unnoticed in the passage in the Epistle to the Galatians is incom- prehensible ; and Lechler’s assertion that “ Paul is here proving that it was just the older Apostles who recognized his apostolic ministry, exactly as it was, and that with this object he mentions only what concerns his personal rights and duties,” this assertion, applied as it is here, is entirely beyond the mark. Precisely if the acknowledgment of Paul’s apostolic ministry was in question, was it least of all possible to omit the guiding principles of this ministry which had been preconcerted withthe party at Jerusalem, Le. the decisions of the apostolic decrees! Finally, if we examine 1 For similar reasons, Lange’s expedient (Apost. Age, i. 104) is also untenable : the decisions of the apostolic council are not intended to establish any conditions of salvation ; in Galatia, on the contrary, it was exactly these which were in question ; Paul was hence unable to quote the apostolic decisions without rousing the misconcep- tion that salvation was connected with their observance. Granting that this was the real position of the apostolic decisions, he must all the more have explained them in order to prevent their misinterpretation ; in no case could he positively pronounce his οὐδὲν προσανέθεντο; but how little the apostolic decree is unmeaning in a dogmatic - point of view has already been demonstrated. 30 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. the principles involved in the negociations between Paul and the originalsApostles—the second of the points which we have noticed—we can only agree with the remark of Baur (pp. 125 ff.) and Schwegler (pp. 120 f.), that, according to the representation of the Epistle to the Galatians, a merely external concordat was effected between Paul and the original Apostles; that they, in- deed, consented not to disturb him in his work, in fact to ignore it; but that an avowal of Pauline principles, such as the Acts puts in the mouth of Peter and even of James, could not have taken place. As Paul in the passage employs himself in ex- plaining the concessions made to him by the party at Jerusalem, he could not tacitly omit the most important of them, the ap- propriation of his whole principle, if anything of the kind had really been enunciated by that party. If he is silent as to this, aud in its place mentions only the mutual promise of leaving each other in peace, he cannot have gained any more important concession. These obvious conclusions can scarcely be evaded by the hypothesis that the private conference spoken of in the Epistle to the Galatians produced the results stated in that writing, but that this could not be used as an argument with regard to the public transaction; for such a difference between that which the chief Apostles conceded in private and that which they conceded in presence of the church would be in every way incredible, even if the whole distinction between a public } and a private negociation had not already proved to be untenable. Quite as distinctly as the narrative in the Epistle to the Gala- tians, all other historical traces testify against the statements of the Acts respecting the decisions which were supposed to have been made at the so-called apostolic council. The chief question in dispute regarding law and circumcision is here solved by emancipating the Gentiles from both, while the Jewish Christians remain lastingly bound to them. The latter point is, indeed, not explicitly mentioned in the document of the Jerusalemite community, verses 29 ff, just because this document is addressed to the Gentile Christians only. Although THE APOSTOLIC COUNCIL. 21 this last circumstance proves that the emancipation from the Law applied to them alone, it is still more apparent from the speech of James; and, finally, a perfectly authentic testimony is given in xxi. 20 ff, if Paul is here advised by the Jerusalemites to take part in the performance of a vow in order. to show by this act that he too adheres to the Law, and to refute the accu- sation that he ἀποστασίαν διδάσκει ἀπὸ Μωυσέως τοὺς κατὰ τὰ ἔθνη πάντας ᾿Ιουδαίους, λέγων, μὴ περιτέμνειν αὐτοὺς τὰ τέκνα, μηδὲ τοῖς ἔθεσι περιπατεῖν ; and to leave no doubt that this speech refers to our account, it continues, περὶ δὲ τῶν πεπιστευκότων ἐθνῶν ἡμεῖς ἐπεστείλαμεν, κρίναντες μηδὲν τοιοῦτον τηρεῖν αὐτούς, &c. After an explanation so definite, it is beyond question that our book does not wish it to be supposed that the decisions of its 15th chapter were made in any other sense. But could Paul have acquiesced in decisions which had this meaning,—could he have acknow- ledged them as a rule for his apostolic work, and have delivered them to be observed by the communities which he had founded, —he who is never weary of urging the absolute discord between Judaism and Christianity, between the Law and the Gospel, between circumcision and faith in Christ?! This is utterly im- possible : a compact such as the Acts describes can never have been concluded between Paul and Jewish Christendom. According to our account, Paul did not even rest here. When, in his second missionary journey, he took Timothy to Lystvra, according to xvi. 1 ff, he caused him to be circumcised pre- viously, because he was known to the Jews in his home as the son of a Gentile. Even from the standpoint of the decisions of the council of Jerusalem, this step is extremely remarkable ; for as only the mother of Timothy was a Jewess, while his father was a Gentile, he belonged of right,? if the extreme claims re- 1 On this, compare what is said below respecting xxi. 14 ff. 2 As Thiersch, 137, who, with Lange’s assent (Apost. Age, i. 102), appeals to this, that according to Talmudical principles the son of a Jewess was to be circumcised, according to Catholic claims the son of a Catholic woman is to be educated a Catholic, — which, however, he ought not to call the “ claim of Mosaic Law.” 32 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. specting mixed marriages are not applied to him, to the Gentile Christians whom these decisions emancipated from circumcision. © That Paul circumcised him, nevertheless, is attributable to the maternal parentage of Timothy and consideration for the Jews. Timothy, observes Meyer on this passage, was by maternal descent and education a Jewish Christian ; he was to be one in ritual also, in order to win over Jews by his means, and to obviate the scandal that might be caused them by an uncircum- cised preacher of the Messiah. Similarly Neander (p. 290): By the circumcision of Timothy, Paul resigned none of the privi- leges of the Gentile Christians, for the Jews had good right to appropriate him as the son of a Jewess educated in Judaism. But Schneckenburger justly rejoins (pp. 69 f.) that, according to the account in the Acts, Timothy is not circumcised for the sake of those among whom he was to labour as a preacher of the gospel, but, when already destined as a fellow-traveller, out of consideration for the Jews remaining behind; and not because his mother was known as a Jewess, but because his father was a Greek ; consequently it was only to avoid giving offence to the Jews that Paul took a circumcised person for a fellow-traveller. In reality he must have been already circumcised, that he might pass as a Jew or Jewish Christian; that he was not so, was the best proof of his Gentile descent and education. But how can it be supposed that Paul should here have quite needlessly disowned the principles he had just defended so vigorously in the dispute about Titus ; how could this have been supposed even if Timothy could really have been considered a Jewish Christian, which, how- ever, he was not? “Behold,” says Paul, in Gal. v. 2, “I say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace ;” and this very Paul is supposed to have induced Timothy to take upon himself the whole yoke of the Law by circumcision, and to have lost his participation of Christ and THE APOSTOLIC COUNCIL. 33 his grace. In a case like this, in which the entire principle of the Apostle, the complete salvation of his disciple, was at stake, is it possible to satisfy oneself with the hypothesis of a “ con- descension ” which may have been recommended to Paul by his experience with Titus?! Paul was not such a reed at other times, and certainly not one shaken by such a slight puff of wind. 1 Cor. ix. 20, to which Neander appeals, obviously refers only to an accommodation which does not involve the denial of essential principles. Or if we say, with Neander,? “that as in the case of Timothy the motive of his circumcision was his parentage, so this accommodation can be no foundation for dogmatical deductions as to the circumcision of a Gentile ;” that the as is incorrect has been shown already ; how it fares with the so will appear from the passage of the Epistle to the Galatians, which makes no distinction between Jewish and Gentile birth, but pronounces judgment on παντὶ ἀνθρώπῳ περι- teuvopevo. But to attempt to elude this judgment by the eva- sion? “that the Apostle does not here speak of outward circum- cision in and by itself, but of it in connection with the religious: conviction of which it was the expression,” of a conviction to attain to justification by circumcision and the fulfilment of the Law. What other significance had circumcision in general 1 Schneckenburger. Also Neander, p. 291. 2 Pp. 290; against Baur, p. 129. 3 Neander, p. 372. In the 4th edition, indeed, the circumcision of Timothy is no more mentioned; but that Neander’s observation refers to this very thing is shown by its express quotation, 3rd edition, p. 308. Lechler (p. 263) likewise helps himself by saying that the circumcision of Timothy was not a question of its necessity for salva- tion, but of convenience and human considerations. As if for human considerations Paul could have deemed useful the very thing which he pronounces a positive hindrance to salvation!. Wieseler (p. 194) also endeavours to prove from Gal. ii. 3 ff. that Paul, without injury to his principles, might have consented not only to the circumcision of Timothy, but of Titus also. With others, he supplements the words, διὰ δὲ τοὺς παρεισάκτους ψευδαδέλφους, with, ‘‘ but because of the Pevd. I would not yield ;”” and then argues, ‘‘If Paul did not allow the circumcision on account of the Wevd., he would have done it otherwise.” But the natural completion of the fragmentary sentence is much rather, ‘‘he was not compelled, but on account of the ψευδ. it came to a dispute.” Only thus arises a suitable contrast with the οὐκ ἠναγκάσϑη. For the rest, compare against Wieseler, Baur, Tubingen Journal, 1849, 465 ff. VOL. II. P D ᾿ ᾿ ᾿ it~ 4 Δ 34 . ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. except this, that it was a pledge of obedience to the Mosaic Law ?' and how was it possible to give this pledge-if salvation was not expected by obedience to the Law? or at least how was it possible, without committing an act of the most culpable hypocrisy ? Sooner than credit the Apostle with enticing his disciples to the commission of this act, we must credit our book with having misinformed us in this as in so many other cases. Among the restrictions imposed on the Gentile Christians by the apostolic decree, there is one which is likewise alluded to in the Pauline Epistles, i.e. abstinence from meat offered to idols, which is copiously discussed in 1 Cor. viii—x. But how different here is the Apostle’s declaration from that of the assembly at Jerusalem, according to our book! In the latter, this abstinence is unconditionally required of the Gentiles; Paul indeed requires it also if the individual is either not convinced in his own mind of the lawfulness of eating meat offered to idols, or if he might thereby offend the weaker brethren; but otherwise he pronounces it permissible, and the contrary view a prejudice, above which the Christian ought to be raised by the γνῶσις or true perception of the essence of Christianity. This is obviously quite a different standpoint from that announced in the decision at Jerusalem; and the Apostle’s concession to the weaker in faith cannot be employed as a vindication of ‘his assent to those decisions, for this concession says merely that the Chris- tian is to refrain from the questionable food for the sake of others; whereas he explicitly rejects the demand to proclaim it unlawful 1 As Paul says, in Gal. v. 2 f., as distinctly as possible. That the same Paul says again, in 1 Cor. x. 23, πάντα ἔξεστιν, and 1 Cor. ix. 20, ἐγενόμην τοῖς Ἰουδαίοις we ᾿Ιουδαῖος, is true; but if these sayings cannot by any means be construed to signify that everything was permitted Christians—idolatry, fornification, for instance—or that Paul had become a Jew in all respects—in justification by works, for example—it can only be deduced from the other sayings of the Apostle what he considered admissible or inadmissible from the Christian standpoint. Among the latter, judging by his un- equivocal declaration, must be reckoned circumcision, and, with Bawmgarten (ii. a, 187 f.), to encounter these, his plain words, with a home-made tlieory of Christian freedom, would be an unpermissible perversity, even if the theory were not so con- fused as it is in the present case. It is not here a question of how we should regard the claims of circumcision, but of how Paul did regard them. THE APOSTOLIC OOUNCIL. 35 in and by itself, thereby to burden his own conscience ; and he requires his readers, wherever consideration for others did not press itself upon them, to act according to their more unprejudiced view! Here, on the contrary, abstinence from εἰδωλόθυτα 15 absolutely commanded (comp. also xxi. 25); it is designated as an ἐπάναγκες, one of the indispensable ordinances, on the observ- ance of which depended the salvation of the Gentile Christians, their εὖ rpdrrav.2 It is but an empty evasion to pretend this obligation to be only qualified,—qualified, namely, by the condi- tions of the period, with the cessation of which its validity would naturally expire (Meyer, on verse 20). Of such a quali- fication there is not a word in the text of the Acts; the re- strictions in question are designated positively as τὰ ἐπάναγκες, which thus, without further comment, can but mean uncondi- tionally necessary. And what change of circumstances had taken place in the later years of the apostolic age to make the ordinance respecting meat offered to idols appear superfluous at the time of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, if it was needful at the time of the apostolic council? Was Judaism, perchance, so far supplanted in the Church during those seven or eight years that the Jewish Christians were only a sect over against the Catholic Church of the Gentile Christians 15 Every line of primitive Christian history testifies to the con- 11 Oor. x. 25 ff.: Tay τὸ ἐν μακέλλῳ πωλούμενον ἐσθίετε μηδὲν ἀνακρίνοντες διὰ τὴν συνείδησιν... . Ei δὲ τις ὑμᾶς καλεῖ τῶν ἀπίστων" καὶ θέλετε πορεύεσθαι, πᾶν τὸ παρατιθέμενον ὑμῖν ἐσθίετε μηδὲν ἀνακρίνοντες διὰ τὴν συνείδησιν. ᾿ἙΕὰν δέ τις ὑμῖν εἴπῃ" τοῦτο εἰδωλόθυτόν ἐστι, μὴ ἐσθίετε Oi ἐκεῖνον τὸν μηνύσαντα καὶ τὴν συνείδησιν. Συνείδησιν δὲ λέγω οὐχὶ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ἀλλὰ τὴν τοῦ ἑτέρου" ἱνατί γὰρ ἡ ἐμὴ ἐλευθερία κρίνεται ὑπὸ ἄλλης συνειδήσεως. Just the chief point in this Pauline: discussion, its notice of principles, is disregarded by Ritschl, when he asserts (Rise of the Old Catholic Church, 114 ff.) that Paul agreed in effect with the apostolic decree ; for this requires abstinence from meat offered to idols unconditionally, Paul only in case it offended others; in other circumstances, he expressly pronounced it permissible. 2 De Wette, Meyer and many others, explain the εὖ πράξετε contrary to the language, “you will do well, viz., for the preservation of unity and peace in the Chris- tian Church.” In that case there must necessarily have been εὖ ποιεῖν, as the very passages to which De Wette appeals show, Acts x. 33 ; 3 John vi. 3 Baumgarten, 153. Ded 36 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. trary. Or had the Jewish Christians meanwhile become accus- tomed to the consumption of the sacrificial flesh? Do we not learn from Paul himself how offensive to them was the liberty which in this respect followed from the Pauline principles ? Does not the Apocalypse, 11. 3, regard the φαγεῖν εἰδωλόθυτα as one of the characteristic tokens of the most abominable heresy ? Was not, far into the second, nay, even to the third century, the prevailing opinion of the Church, or at least of a very large party, so decidedly against that freedom, that Justin, for example, to name one among many, plainly calls the Pauline doctrine, though without naming the Apostle, a doctrine of devils. Does not our book itself, a still longer time after the composition of the Epistles to the Corinthians, expressly declare by the mouth of James, xxi. 25, the enduring validity of the apostolic arrangements ? But if this is the meaning of our ordinance re- specting the εἰδωλόθυτα, Paul could not possibly accede to it without denying his most positive principles. He could neither tolerate nor promulgate a decree which prohibited exactly what he permitted; he could do this the less, as, according to what has been already said, it was not by any means a merely sub- ordinate concession which was concerned, but what was at that time an important question of principle; for though the con- sumption of sacrificial flesh was considered by Paul a matter of indifference, and compliant as he shows himself for this reason’ when it is merely an affair of refraining from this meat in an individual case, he was unable to allow this point to serve as an opportunity for rejecting the principle of Christian liberty which he had enunciated, and an abstinence which he had 1 Tr. 25: Kai ὁ Τρύφων. Kai μὴν πολλοὺς τῶν τὸν ᾿Ιησοῦν λεγόντων ὁμολογεῖν καὶ λεγομένων Χριστιανῶν πυνθάνομαι ἐσθίειν τὰ εἰδωλόθυτα καὶ μηδὲν ἐκ τούτου βλάπτεσθαι λέγειν. (Exactly what Paul says, 1 Cor. x.) Kayw ἀπεκρινάμην" καὶ ἐκ τοῦ τοιούτους εἶναι ἄνδρας, ὁμολογοῦντας ἑαυτοὺς εἶναι Χριστιανοὺς Kai τὸν σταυρωθέντα ᾿Ιησοῦν ὁμολογεῖν καὶ κύριον καὶ Χριστὸν καὶ μὴ τὰ ἐκείνου διδάγματα διδάσκοντας, ἀλλὰ τὰ ἀπὸ τῶν τῆς πλάνης πνευμάτων, ἕο. That Justin has the Gnostics in particular in his eye makes no difference in the question before us, as the principles here disputed do not differ from those of Paul in the point under 4is- cussion. THE APOSTOLIC COUNCIL. 37 required out of consideration for others, to be unconditionally and absolutely prescribed. Had he once allowed it, it must be supposed that he would not then have acted in opposition to the solemn compact concluded at Jerusalem, and have even led his Corinthians to disobey the same decisions which but few years previously he had promulgated for observance among the com- munities of Syria, Cilicia and Lycaonia. Neander endeavours to justify his conduct by the observation that, “as these decisions rested on mutual concession, if the Jewish Christians did not fulfil the conditions and refused to acknowledge the uncircum- cised as. their brethren, the obligation on the part of the Gentile Christians would lapse also” (p. 423). But who were they who did not fulfil the compact? The Apostles with whom Paul had concluded it? Neander not only secures himself against this on every side, but he also admits, on account of xxi. 25, that respect for the apostolic decree was always maintained by the Apostles in Palestine. In that case, however, Paul was not justified in annul- ling the compact one-sidedly ; and if we nevertheless see him be- having in a manner antagonistic to this assumed compact, we can only conclude, not that he broke it, but that he never made it. If in the ordinance of the apostolic council respecting eating the sacrificial flesh, its incompatibility with the conduct ap- proved by Paul was suspicious, so is there apparently too great harmony with regard to another of the apostolic edicts; absti- nence from πορνεία is so completely a matter of course for all Christians, that it is surprising to see it imposed on the Gentile Christians in an edict which does not otherwise refer to general moral duties, but to external demeanour and customs indifferent in themselves. For the explanation of this phenomenon, Nean- der’s observation (p. 219) can scarcely suffice, that impurity was here prohibited only on account of the close connection with idolatry in which it was wont to be placed by the Old Testa- ment. To this Baur justly objects, p. 141, that if impurity in general was considered to be disallowed, much more would this _ be understood of impurity combined with idolatry, and a special 38 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. prohibition on this subject was not at all requisite. In our passage, πὸρνεία is evidently considered, not as a general moral transgres- sion, but as a disregard of positive divine injunctions involved in the complete renunciation of Judaism, as an abandonment of that observance of the Law which it seemed might at least be required from the Gentile Christians; in this sense it is put on the same level with eating sacrificial meat, blood, and things strangled. Now if the Jerusalemites were of opinion that im- purity was as much a natural consequence of the Gentile Chris- tian freedom from the Law as the unscrupulous use of sacrificial meat, they would have done flagrant injustice to the standpoint of the opposite party, and it would have been the duty of Paul to enlighten them on the subject, and to prevent the acceptance of a definition resting on an assumption so insulting to his view of Christianity. But this hypothesis is all the more improbable, as the Apocalypse likewise puts πορνεύειν in the closest combina- tion with the φαγεῖν εἰδωλόθυτα with reference to the Nicolaitanes,. who in all probability were Pauline Christians! The fact that in these two books, partly the accusation, partly the suspicion of πορνεία, 18 expressed against the more liberal Gentile Christians, seems to prove that there was something in the mode of life of the latter which to the opposite party appeared like πορνεία. This can scarcely have consisted in actual licentious impurity ; for, in the first place, one can hardly believe that the Gentile Christians as a whole would have become so utterly untrue to the claims of Christianity ; and also this juxtaposition of πορνεία with the eating of sacrificial meat seems to indicate that it re- ferred to some deviation from Jewish custom of that time, no doubt equally inoffensive to morality ; whether it may be looked for, as by Schwegler,? in deuterogamy, or more likely, by Baur (pp. 142 ff), Ritschl,? in the contraction of marriages which 1 See my remarks in Tiibingen Journal, i. 713 ff., which are modified by the details given in the text on the subject of πορνεία. 2 Post.-Apost. Age, i. 127. 3 Rise of the Old Catholic Church, 119 f. THE APOSTOLIC COUNCIL. 39 appeared unlawful from a Jewish Christian standpoint. We cannot be surprised that for such a special point the general word of πορνεία should be used; generalizations like this le in the spirit of party polemics; but it is another question whether Paul would have sanctioned this view and representation of ἃ custom to all appearance. inoffensive in itself and offensive only from the Jewish standpoint. Besides the contents of the apostolic decree, we must also briefly touch upon the representation given in the document in verses 23 ff. It is usual to praise this writing for its sim- plicity and primitive character, and to consider these qualities ἃ guarantee of its authenticity.2. This conclusion is, however, very uncertain ; why could not a later person have imitated the tone of an apostolic writing? Meanwhile, independently of its main contents, there are some things which cast suspicion on its verbal authenticity. In a perfectly simple document, entirely void of design or calculation, such as we have here professedly, verse 26 could scarcely have found a place. What object was to be gained by the recommendation of Paul and Barnabas, which so strikingly contrasts with the meagre tenor of the remaining portion? Those to whom it was addressed did not require such recommendation, because the authors of their Christianity stood much nearer than did the Jerusalemites, and because nothing is previously said of any personal attacks upon them. Even in one case in which this had occurred (2 Cor. ii. 1), Paul ex- plicitly says that he should have scorned such letters of com-™ mendation. Our author must have thought otherwise, for his whole work, as we shall see in course of time, is nothing but an ἐπιστολὴ συστατικὴ in favour of the Apostle ; and he must have intended it for readers to whom a recommendation proceeding from the original Apostles might be neither superfluous nor 1 Thus, for instance, in the medieval transactions respecting celibacy, fornicatio, without further comment, is the standing designation of the marriage of priests among the opposite party. 2 So Neander, p. 223, Remark 1. Meyer on xv. 23. 40 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. ineffectual. When we further look at the verbal peculiarities of the document,’ Bleek imagines that he has discovered a small sign of its authenticity in the fact that, in verse 25, Barnabas is named before Paul, while in other parts of this paragraph, and almost from the commencement of the 13th chapter, the reverse order prevails ; and another of its composition by James in the greeting with χαίρειν, which, among the New Testament Epistles, is to be found only in James i. 1. But the precedence of Bar- nabas, in addition to other passages, occurs also in xiv. 14, xv. 12, and is doubtless entirely accidental ;? the good Greek χαίρειν can here, as little as in the Epistle of James, serve to render probable the authenticity of documents the authors of which are supposed to be natives of Palestine, and all other signs bear witness against the genuineness of the Epistle of James; that it is not foreign to our author is shown by xxiii. 26. Similar good Greek expressions are to be found in verses 25 and 28, ἔδοξε; verse 28, τὰ ἐπάναγκες; Verse 29, εὖ πράττειν and ἔῤῥωσθε; a word peculiar to the author of the Acts is, verse 25, ὁμοθυμαδόν. Finally, Schwegler® justly draws attention to the resemblance in construction between our epistle and the prologue of the third Gospel.* If these indi- cations stood alone, we should attribute no great weight to them ; combined with all the other proofs, they aid in making the want of authenticity in our record palpable. It results from the above discussions that the story of the apostolic council can by no means pass for pure history. It is 1 Studien und Krit. 1836, 4, 1037. Similarly also earlier, Riehm, De Font. Act. Ap. 146 ff., and others mentioned by Riehm. 2 What Bawngarten remarks against this, 174 f., seems to me too far-fetched to require discussion. 3 Post.-Apost. Age, i. 127. Comp. : Luke i. Acts xv. 1. ἐπειδήπερ πολλοὶ ἐπεχείρησαν. 24. ἐπειδήπερ ἠκούσαμεν ὕτι. 2. ἔδοξε κἀμοὶ παρηκολουϑηκότι πᾶσιν 25. ἔδοξεν ἡμῖν γενομένοις ὁμοϑυμα- ἀκριβῶς Ody πέμψαι πρὸς ὑμᾶς. καϑεξῆς σοι γράψαι. * Schwanbeck, on the Die Quellen ἃ. Apg. p. 262, thinks indeed that βῳ prologue originated in imitation of the apostolic missive. THE APOSTOLIC COUNCIL. 41 certainly based on some foundation in fact, but those facts are merely the occurrences narrated in the Epistle to the Galatians ; what goes beyond this is incompatible either with the authentic statements of Paul, or with other events of accredited history. The official mission of Paul by the community of Antioch; the position which he assumes in the Acts with regard to the original Apostles; the discussion of his affairs in the formal assembly of the church; the speeches which are attributed on this occasion to Peter and to James, to Paul and to Barnabas; the resolutions of the assembly and their promulgation by an apostolic missive; the course which Paul is said to have pursued in consequence concerning Timothy,—all these features can only be pronounced unhistorical. Not even is Ritschl’st hypothesis admissible, that although the transactions of the 15th chapter, and especially the speeches of Peter and James, are unhistorical, the apostolic decree, on the contrary, or at least its nucleus, verses 28 ἢ, is genuine. Ritschl rests this hypothesis on the remark that the author founds this decree on Pauline principles (verses 7 ff and 14 ff); which would in reality have led far beyond its limits, and to the complete emancipation of the Gentile Christians even from the laws for proselytes enunciated in the apostolic decree. Hence, if he composed the speeches of Peter and James, he must have found the decree already in existence. But our author makes the concessions to Judaism which are certainly contained in the apostolic decree, only as a means of warding off the more extensive demand of the circum- cision of Gentile Christians; for him the nucleus of the apostolic decree does not consist in the rules for proselytes in the 29th verse, but in the μηδὲν πλέον of the 28th. If from the principle which he puts in the mouth of Peter he does not draw all the deductions which are, strictly speaking, involved in it, this cannot prove more than that he was either considerate or illogical in their application, not that the conclusions which he draws from them proceed from another. Moreover, any one 1 Ensteh. ἃ, altkath, Kirche, 120 f. 42 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. who, like Ritschl (p. 132), supposes that Paul himself was com- pletely in accord with the apostolic decree, deprives the above argument of every appearance of justice! But that this asser- tion is incorrect, that the historical character of the apostolic decree, as well as of that of the other narratives, is refuted by Paul’s account of the incidents at Jerusalem, by his principles and his conduct, we have already seen. Criticism must altogether renounce the attempt to select single portions of the well-rounded description of our 15th chapter; one stands or falls with the other ; and if the whole is not an authentic record, we may regard it as a free composition carried out by the author on the basis of the Pauline narrative in the Epistle to the Galatians. 4. PAuL’s SEcoND MISSIONARY JOURNEY. Some time (τινὲς ἡμέραι) after the transactions of the so-called apostolic council, Paul entered on the journey which brought him to his chief field of labour in Asia Minor and Greece. Having separated himself from Barnabas on account of Mark, he passed with Silas through Syria and Cilicia, Lycaonia, Phrygia and Galatia, and went by Mysia to Troas. The whole of this extensive journey is most briefly treated in our book. Only from Lycaonia comes the record of what we have discussed above, the circumcision of Timothy and the promulgation of the decisions of Jerusalem; the journey through Phrygia and Galatia is registered with a mere διελθόντες τὴν Φρυγίαν καὶ τὴν Γαλατικὴν χώραν (xvi. 6); and concerning anterior Asia Minor it is observed 1 Besides the reasons discussed, Ritschl supports his hypothesis by the fact that the demands of the apostolic decree coincide with those of the Clementine writings, and also that the four points required of the Gentiles are enumerated in the same order as in Ley. xvii. ἔν, while they are inverted in the speech of James. But the)first cireum- stance, so far as it is true, proves nothing ; for why should a later person not have known and considered the demands of the Jewish Christians of his own time ? and the second is not correct: of the things strangled of the apostolic decree there is no question in Lev. xvii., but only of the ϑνησιμαῖον and ϑηριάλωτον, verse 15, the con- sumption of which is, however, not entirely forbidden ; but sacrificial meat is not men- tioned there. And if it were otherwise, what would it prove? PAUL IN PHILIPPI. 43 that the Holy Spirit prevented Paul and Silas from preaching the gospel in those parts There is nothing incredible in the last statement; bent on reaching the centre of heathenism in Europe, Paul might be reluctant to linger in Asia Minor, and what his inward judgment told him on this subject he may have felt as the voice of the Spirit. More we cannot say, for the Apostle’s own Epistles afford us no data for comparison. On the other hand, from these same Epistles and from Acts xviii. 23, it seems quite probable that it was on this journey, here so cur- sorily mentioned, that Paul founded the churches of Galatia, inasmuch as neither there nor here do we meet any trace of any other journey on which that could have occurred, nor on which we could find time for it.2 But then it is very striking that this certainly not unimportant institution of churches should be so entirely ignored, when, from xviii. 23, it cannot possibly have been unknown to the author. We shall be obliged later to inquire into the cause of this phenomenon ; here we have only to state it. From Troas, Paul passed over to Macedonia. We are not entitled positively to declare the vision which induced him to do so (xvi. 9) to be unhistorical, but neither can the possibility be denied that it may be so, and that in the man of Macedonia the 1 xvi. 6: Διελϑόντες δὲ τὴν Φρυγίαν καὶ τὴν Γαλατικὴν χώραν, κωλυϑέντες ὑπὸ τοῦ ἁγίου πνεήματος λαλῆσαι τὸν λόγον ἐν τῇ ᾿Ασίᾷ ἐλθόντες κατὰ τὴν Μυσίαν ἐπείραζον κατὰ τὴν Βιϑυνίαν πορεύεσϑαι. Meyer here construes: ‘‘ After they had passed through Phrygia and Galatia, being prevented by the Holy Ghost, . .. they endeavoured,” &c. ; so that Phrygia and Galatia are reckoned with Asia, and the pro- hibition to preach would have applied to them. But the Acts (according to Wreseler’s demonstration, Chronology of the Acts, 31 ff.) by Asia understands only the regions of Mysia, Lydia and Caria ; and, moreover, the construction adopted by Meyer seems less simple than that which refers the κωλυϑέντες, &c., to the followiug ἐπείραζον. 2 For the hypothesis of Mynster, Paulus and others, which Thiersch has also repeated (On the Church in the Apostolic Age, 124), that the communities of Galatia were no other than the churches founded by Paul at Iconium, Lystra and Derbe, in his first missionary journey, is incompatible with Acts xvi. 1, 6, xiv. 6. Although these towns may have belonged to the province of Galatia after the death of Amyntas of Galatia, the Acts in the passages referred to does not follow the political but the usual ethnographic division. See Wiéeseler’s Chronol. of the Apost. Age, 281 f. _ Milgenfeld on Gal, xx. ν 44 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. author of the Acts symbolized the craving for salvation with which the population of Macedonia and European humanity in general called for the Apostle to come over to them (Baur, Paul. 146). In Macedonia, the first place in which Paul and Silas appeared was Philippi? (xvi. 13). This first appearance is at once signalized by an occurrence which by its entire character must awaken sundry suspicions, namely, the arrest and libera- tion of the two Apostles. Even the cause of this arrest, the incident with the soothsaying slave, xvi. 16—18, contains much that is remarkable. Baur has justly shown (pp. 146 ff.) that the author wishes this girl to be regarded as one actually possessed by an evil spirit, and her cure as a miracle; and that supra- naturalistic theologians, strictly scriptural theologians, have no right to hint at any other view, and from “their standpoint to distinguish between the objective and subjective elements of the record ;”? in other words, to explain the miracle by natural means.* This would not, however, entirely exclude an explana- tion of the kind: any one who does not share these supra-. naturalistic preconceptions might still assume that the slave-girl was of diseased mind, and her condition turned to profit by her master or masters (the plural in verse 19 is certainly remark- able); that her utterances recorded in the 17th verse were occa- 1 Where, be it observed in passing, the river in verse 13 cannot be the Strymon, as the commentators generally, and even Baumgarten, suppose, for the Strymon was more than a day’s journey distant from Philippi. Comp. Rélliet, Comment sur lépitre aux Philippiens, p. 12. Probably the small river Gangas or Gangites was intended, which flowed past Philippi. Comp. Forbiger, Handbook of Ancient Geo- graphy, iii. 1069 f. 2 Neander, p. 299, ed. 1. 3 It is so far praiseworthy that Bawmgarten renounces any diminution or evasion of the miracle, and when he (p. 208) further supposes that the soothsaying spirit was really connected with the Pythian Apollo, i.e. with the demon who was worshipped as Apollo (1 Cor. x. 20), and for this reason he spoke the truth about Paul and his com- panions, for the Pythian Apollo was the most moral of the Olympian gods. When Baumgarten amplifies our record in this manner, at any rate all respect is due to the courage with which he endures everything for the sake of his faith in Scripture, even to the appearance of absurdity. In the present case he goes beyond what the text requires, for that the πνεῦμα πύθωνος designates Apollo, or ademon of Apollo, cannot be proved ; neither does the well-known passage in Plutarch, Def. Orac, 414 E, say so even remotely. : PAUL IN PHILIPPI. 45 sioned by what she had heard respecting the strangers; that Paul, believing in her possession, commanded the evil spirit to come out of her; and that the impression produced by his word and appearance worked a momentary or more lasting abatement of her malady by natural psychological means—according to the notions of the period, by the exit of a demon. That similar effects occurred in connection with Paul’s ministry, we must believe on account of 2 Cor. xii. 12. This view of the affair cannot, however, be regarded as established ; for if the narrative is once for all incredible in its present miraculous form, it is just as possible that it is founded on no fact at all as on one capable of natural explanation ; and the general character of our author as a writer is not adapted to add weight to the balance in favour of the latter hypothesis. We shall, however, be obliged much more decidedly to ques- tion the historical truth of the further account.. The masters of the slave, it is here related, enraged at the diminution of their profits, brought Paul and Silas before the preetors (the duumvirs) ; and as the people also rose up against them, they commanded them to be beaten and cast into prison; but at midnight the loud prayer of the two captives was followed by an earthquake, all the doors of the prison flew open, and all the prisoners were loosed. This event, combined with the demeanour and words of the Apostles, made such an impression on the jailer, that he not - only took them to his house and entertained them, but was bap- tized, with all his household; on the following morning the preetors also wished to let them go, but Paul, relying on his privileges as a Roman citizen, refused to accept this until they had themselves fetched them out of the prison, and had thereby made them a solemn apology. For an event such as this to appear incredible, it is not requisite to stand upon a platform from which there can be no mention not only of a miracle effected through prayer, but of prayer itself.1 Every one who has not sold his thinking to the most crass faith in miracles, 1 Neander’s insinuation against Baur, Hist. of the Planting and Training, &c., 303, 46 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. must stumble at the miracle of our narrative. Even if it be attempted to re-arrange it in one way or another, to say that the earthquake followed immediately on the prayer of Paul and Silas—although this result, regarded as miraculous, is as in- credible as are miracles in general—to contemplete a natural coincidence of the prayer and the result is altogether impossible, especially on account of verse 25, where the words ἐπηκροῶντο δὲ αὐτῶν of δέσμιοι are obviously intended to establish the cause and connection of the earthquake: if an endeavour be made to overcome this stumbling-block, there would still remain the yet more offensive statement of the 16th verse, that the fetters fell from all the prisoners in consequence of the earthquake. That chains hanging loose could not be unfastened in any natural way by means of an earthquake,—that, on the other hand, irons or pegs (ξύλον, verse 24) fastened into the wall could not have been thrust out in this way without breaking the limbs of those who were confined in them,—every one who has an idea of mechanics must perforce admit, with Gforer; and that, moreover, according to Gforer’s further remark, the whole miracle is entirely superfluous, as the liberation of the two prisoners was effected, not by the miracle, but by the command of the duum- virs, is equally indisputable. But if this must be granted, neither can the earthquake and the springing open of the doors be allowed to stand as historical: the more evident it is that the earthquake is merely a means of liberating the captives from everything that can impede their flight, hence of their fetters above all, the more certainly must we, with the falling off of the fetters, abandon the whole event, which would be objectless without this result. Not less puzzling are the remaining incidents in our narra- tive. At the very commencement, the procedure against Paul and Silas is highly striking. The magistrates allow them, it seems, without a hearing, to be beaten and cast into prison. Even if such a brutal proceeding might occasionally occur — 1 Die heilige Sage, i. 446 f. PAUL IN PHILIPPI. 47 against aliens, it would scarcely be possible for any authority to indulge in it against Roman citizens such as Paul and Silas ; and, at any rate, the duumvirs of Philippi, according to verse 30, would not have ventured to do so had they known the accused to be Romans. And why did they not know them to be so ? Would they have neglected to appeal to their Roman citizenship? This would either have been a helplessness such as cannot be imputed to Paul and Silas, or an intentional seeking of suffering, which belongs as little to the character of the Apostle. Or was the proceeding against them, according to the usual supposition, so tumultuous that even the simple “Popaids εἰμι was not heard by the authorities? As, according to verse 20, a formal judicial procedure was opened, and as nothing is said of a popular judg- ment against the accused, this can scarcely be assumed. And when Neander appeals, p. 305, to the τρὶς ἐῤῥαβδίσθην, 2 Cor. xi. 25, it may be rejoined that we do not know the details of this three-fold scourging. In connection with our narrative, the corporal chastisement remains inexplicable, even without dis- puting the Roman citizenship of Paul and Silas, a possibility to which we must indeed return later on. Moreover, under the given circumstances, of what use was the order (verse 23) to guard Paul and Silas with peculiar strictness? For the object of our narrative, this order certainly has its favourable signifi- cance: the more strict the vigilance, the greater is the miracle of deliverance. If Peter, according to xii. 6 ff, was led away by the angel from between two soldiers to whom he was chained, and past two warders, the flight of Paul must be rendered possible from bonds equally difficult to unloose (verse 24), and from an ἐσωτέρα φυλακὴ ; but the motive of the duumvirs cannot be surmised. As specially dangerous criminals, they cannot have regarded the two Jews, who were accused of no other transgression than proselytizing, otherwise they would not have released them of their own free will on the following morning ; 1 Baumgarten, it is true, contrives (p. 225) to recommend such conduct with great unction. 48 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. for that this took place on the report of the jailer (Neander, p. 303), is (1) not stated in our text, and (2) is in itself im- probable, as such a report would have sounded much too in- credible in Roman ears not to have produced a fresh inquiry instead of a dismissal. There is no more to recommend the hypothesis (in the same) that the duumvirs were more favour- ably disposed by what they had heard of the prisoners in the interval ; for after the brutal treatment they inflicted upon them on the previous evening, they can scarcely have been the people to have made further inquiries concerning them, or to have been ἢ won over by the tidings of their preaching. The release of the prisoners, like their maltreatment, therefore, seems, according to Baumgarten’s correct view (p. 225), to be an affair of caprice, such as a brutal official perhaps allows himself against vaga- bonds ; while the assumption that they were here dealing with dangerous individuals requiring care and vigilance, cannot be attributed to the duumvirs. As, on this side, the causeless severity of the pretors’ conduct appears strange, so, on the other, does the humiliation to which they submit on hearing of the Roman citizenship of the prisoners (verses 38 f.); for as it was unknown to them on the previous day, the disregard of it could not bring on them a responsibility sufficient to induce them to stake their whole official honour on a com- pensation, the demand for which might indeed here, after the miracle of our narrative, be natural in Paul, but does not quite harmonize in other respects with the character of the Apostle as he describes it himself, 1 Cor. iv. 11 f. Certainly, if the accused had invoked their civic privileges, and had been scourged not- withstanding, the judges might subsequently have been terrified at the consequences of their conduct; but if such an appeal had been omitted, it is utterly inconceivable how they could be charged with the violation of the laws respecting the procedure against Roman citizens. It is indeed a question how matters stood with respect to the Roman citizenship of Paul and Silva- nus. With regard to Paul, the statement of our book, it is true, — PAUL IN PHILIPPI. 49 receives an important corroboration in the circumstance that after his arrest at Jerusalem he was sentenced in Judea but was taken to Rome, as we cannot imagine any sufficient cause for it, except the appeal conceded to Roman citizens alone ; and if the binding of the Apostle, even after he made himself known as a Roman citizen (Acts xxii. 30, xxvi. 29), as well as the statement in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians respecting a three-fold corporal chastisement inflicted apparently by the Roman authorities, seems to stand inthe way, we must in the end, as long as the reason adduced is not removed, remain satisfied with the assumption, as to the first of an inaccuracy in the representation of the Acts; as to the second, of our ignorance of the details of this three-fold violation of the rights of Roman citizenship. But now, according to verse 37, not only Paul, but Silvanus also, is supposed to be a Roman citizen. This is very remarkable. “Josephus and Philo,” observes Schneckenburger,? “who carefully enumerate all the favours be- stowed on their nation and on individuals of their nation, cite no other instances of Jews enjoying Roman citizenship save Antipater, the progenitor of the family of Herodias (Jos. Ant. xiv. 15), Josephus himself (vita, p. 1031), and the Jews resident at Rome descended from prisoners of war (Philo, Leg. ad Caj. ed. Francf. 1014). If Josephus obviously represents his reception as a remarkable token of honour, it conveys an indirect indication of the rarity of the case that a Jew should attain this honour, which was, moreover, likely enough, con- sidering the known prejudice against the Jews.” Now there is certainly to be found in Josephus, Ant. xiv. 13—19, a decree of the Consul L. Lentulus, whereby the Jews who are Roman citizens are released from military service out of consideration for their religion; and a second of L. Antonius, by which per- mission is given to Roman citizens of Jewish nationality to erect a synagogue; and in B. J. ii. 14, 9, we even find Jews 1 See the Commentaries on 2 Cor. xi. 25. 2 Zweck d. Apg. 243. VOL. II. E - 50 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 4 who are Roman knights.’ But although this seems to prove that (probably in consequence of the above-mentioned release of several thousand prisoners of war) there were not so very few Jews in possession of Roman civic rights, it is certainly re- markable that the Apostles of the Gentiles should both have been Roman citizens; and although such a coincidence could not be doubted if the evidence were more reliable, the case is otherwise after we have seen in what an uncertain context the statement respecting the civic rights of Silvanus occurs here. If we take the scene about the jailer into consideration, we shall not be able to avoid sharing the scruples which Baur, p. 151 ἢ, has raised. When the jailer sees the doors open he wants to destroy himself, thinking that the prisoners are fled ; that in spite of his own innocence, and even before he has exa- mined, he should contemplate this desperate step, is very strange, even if the blindness of excitement might perhaps explain it. Paul consoles him by announcing that all the prisoners are there ; but how can Paul know this in the darkness (verse 29) and in the ἐσωτέρα φυλακὴ in which he is? and how unlikely it is in itself that of all the prisoners not one has made use of the opportunity of flying! For the supposition? that the example of Paul and Silas miraculously restrained the others, gives them a tenderness of feeling for which, at least, one might look in vain in our prisons; and it also overlooks the fact that the fellow- prisoners could have been no more aware, in the darkness of the night, that Paul and Silas remained, than could Paul and Silas that they did so. Finally, how does the keeper of the prison know that the earthquake was a vindication of the two Apostles especially, and how could he venture, of his own independent authority, suddenly to liberate these his prisoners, when he had just been on the point of destroying himself on account of the release effected by a higher power? Even if it be possible to discover an answer to one or other of these questions, the » in-_ 1 See Wieseler’s Chronol. of the Apost. Age, 62. 2 Meyer and Baumgarten on the passage, PAUL IN PHILIPPI. 51 credibility of which cannot be strictly proved, it is nevertheless very suspicious that the veracity of an account can only be rescued by the assumption of the most extraordinary events being accumulated here. As a whole, our narrative contains a chain of improbabilities, out of which it seems scarcely possible, even by conjecture, to extract an historical foundation. That Paul was exposed to ill usage at Philippi is also said in the First Epistle to the Thessa- lonians, ii. 2. Herein, however, we learn no details respecting the history of this ill usage, and it becomes a question whence the author of our narrative derived his statements,—whether he did not, after all, spin-his account from the passage in the Epistle to the Thessalonians, by analogy with other histories of persecution, especially from the history of Peter above men- tioned (Acts xii)! Further data for the discovery of the his- torical foundation of fact might be sought in our narrative itself ; since in it, as in the case of Pet. v. 17 ff, two reasons for the liberation are commingled,—a supernatural one, which is, however, not essential to his actual liberation (the earthquake), and a natural one (the command of the duumvirs),—it might be conjectured that the latter alone is historical, the former being merely interpolated in order not to leave Paul without miraculous divine assistance on the occasion. But, as in ch. v., _we are obliged to regard not only the supernatural assistance of the angel as suspicious, but also the human aid of Gamaliel ; so in the case before us the conduct of the duumvirs is not much more explicable than the previous miracle; and if-we re- move the latter, the former only becomes the more inexplicable. This means of evolving a foundation of fact is therefore cut off from us; and, as in many other cases, we must leave it unde- cided whether there be any foundation for our narrative, or how much. 1 Baur thinks the reverse (Paulus, p. 483), that 1 Thess. ii. 2 is taken from the Acts. Other reasons, however, induce me to think it probable that the Epistles to the Thessalonians are older than the Acts. ᾿ E 2 52 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. After the events at Philippi, our attention is next drawn to the appearance of the Apostle at Athens ; what is related of his previous experiences in Thessalonica and Berea affords no definite marks by which to estimate its historical character, and we can only admit, with Baur (p. 482), that the accusation of the Thes- salonian Jews, xvii. 6, of τὴν οἰκουμένην ἀναστατώσαντες οὗτοι καὶ ἐνθάδε πάρεισιν, bears the colouring of a later period; for at that time, on their first appearance in Europe, such a reproach could hardly be made against the preachers of the gospel, which till then had scarcely spread beyond the confines of Syria; and although we may remember, with Neander (p. 311), that passion is wont to speak the language of exaggeration, we shall not be able to conceal from ourselves how much more natural this representation would be at a later period which really saw the οἰκουμένη agitated by Christianity, than at an earlier one in which the world-wide commotion was only just beginning. Formerly, no offence was taken at the remarkable narrative about Athens. Baur has only recently pointed out that this account is also full of design and premeditation ; that everything is arranged to make the contrast of Christianity with Paganism and pagan civilization appear as strongly marked as possible; that one scarcely sees how Paul comes before the Areopagus ; that the Apostle’s speech (verse 31) falls too rapidly and abruptly on the resurrection, the mention of which must have made the worst impression on his hearers ; that the assertion in verse 23, respecting an altar to an unknown God, contains a confusion of which Paul would scarcely have been guilty on the spot. Something might be objected to the last point; for although Baur has, p. 175, exhaustively proved that in all pro- bability there was no altar in Athens with the inscription of ἀγνώστῳ Oey, but only with the inscription dyvécros θεοῖς ; and even if the former referred, not to the unknown God, but to an unknown God, it might nevertheless be possible that Paul misread and misinterpreted the inscription. On the other hand, we must admit the correctness of his remaining obser- PAUL IN ATHENS. 53 vations. It is indeed usually supposed that the Apostle was not brought before the assembly of the Areopagus, but that it was only the site of this court, which was held in the open air, which was used by the inquisitive multitude for listening to Paul. But the circumstance that among his few converts an Areopagite is to be found, indicates, according to Baur’s accurate remark, an actual assembly of the Areopagus ; and every one will, in the first instance, be led to understand this by the words in verse 19, ἐπιλαβόμενοι αὐτοῦ ἐπὶ τὸν “Apetov πάγον ἤγαγον, in combination with verse 22, σταθεὶς δὲ 6 Παῦλος ἐν μέσῳ τοῦ ᾿Αρείου πάγου. Paul is seized as ξένων δαιμονίων καταγ- γελεὺς, verse 18, led to the Areopagus, and, in the midst of the Areopagus, he holds forth—how can this be understood by the reader otherwise than that he was obliged to defend himself before the Areopagus as the authority which guarded the ex- isting laws, and especially the laws of religion, against innova- tions? Does not the καταγγελεὺς ξένων δαιμονίων recall the accu- sation against Socrates, even in expression: ἀδικεῖ... . ἕτερα καινὰ δαιμόνια εἰσφέρων (Xen. Mem. i. 1); and the bringing of Paul be- fore the Areopacus, of Stephen being brought before the Sanhe- drim?? The only difference is, that everything proceeds more harmlessly, that Paul is not accused but merely examined. This particular cannot have been historical according to the whole character of the transaction here related, for a judicial sitting cannot proceed as does the one before us, verse 32; whether it be assumed, with Baur, that the legend of the conversion of an Areopagite, Dionysius, induced our author to transfer the scene to the Areopagus, or whether this occurred merely to procure for Paul the most solemn opportunity possible for the exposition of his doctrine, and also to parallel the discourse before the Jewish Sanhedrim by one before the most venerable judicial 1 Hermann, Greek Antiquities, i. 232 f. 2 Comp. with verse 18 f., τινὲς δὲ τῶν ᾿Επικουρείων, ὅτο., συνέβαλλον αὐτῶ... ἐπιλαβόμενοί τε αὐτοῦ ἐπὶ τὸν [Αρειον πάγον ἤγαγον ; vi. 9, 12, ἀνέστησαν dé τινες ᾿ τῶν te τῆς συναγωγῆς τῆς λεγομένης Λιβερτίνων, &e., καὶ ἐπιστάντες συνήρπασαν αὐτὸν καὶ ἤγαγον εἰς τὸ συνέδριον. 54. ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. court of Greece; or, finally, whether yet another motive comes into play here, which may perhaps reveal itself to us later. As to the speech of the Apostle, the first question is, what guarantee have we of its authenticity? Now if the only answer that can be made to this query is, that on other occasions our author not unfrequently puts words into the mouths of his heroes which they certainly never spoke,—such as Peter’s speeches in the first and eleventh chapters, Gamaliel’s speech and the discourses at the apostolic council, the two accounts by Paul of his conversion and of what occurred after it,—the overwhelming probability is that he does so in the present case ; that in the recognized fashion of the ancients he treats freely composed speeches as if they had been actually made. And if historical probability is not seldom violated by this pro- ceeding, we are fully entitled to conjecture that it is only our author who, in verse 31, makes the Apostle, entirely without provocation, come forward with doctrines which must have been most offensive to his auditors, and which, when put before such an unprepared assembly, could only have the result recorded in the 32nd verse The didactic wisdom of a Paul does not appear to correspond with such conduct; so much” the better does it harmonize with the manner in which in our book a sudden and highly offensive turn produces a concluding scene and a general stormy rising of the auditors against the speaker. (Comp. vii. 51 ff, xxviii. 25.) This is not the only point on which we may rest the hypothesis that the speech at Athens is derived from the narrator himself. Paul does not merely stand before the highest religious tribunal in a position analo- gous to that of Stephen before the highest Jewish authority, but his address is as nearly related to that of his predecessor as it could be under the altered circumstances. As Stephen is brought before the Sanhedrim by the members of some Jewish schools 1 For Neander’s hypothesis, p. 325, that verse 31 only intends to give an extract of the Apostle’s words, is contradicted by the exegetical evidence ; the author gives this verse, just as much as the earlier ones, as the Apostle’s own words. “<> —s —- E. PAUL IN ATHENS. 55 in consequence of a dispute; so the adherents of the widest spread school of Greece at that period bring Paul before the Areopagus ; as Stephen is accused of upsetting the religion of his fathers and endeavouring to introduce a new one, so is Paul questioned whether it is true that he preaches new deities—the same, in fact, only translated into Greek; as Stephen explains to the Jews that the service of the Temple must certainly cease, for God does not dwell in temples built by hands, so does Paul say the same to the Athenians, naturally adding the further application to idolatry ; as, from Old Testament history, Stephen describes to his Jewish auditors the benefits which God has con- ferred on the people of Israel, so Paul, referring to the ideas and maxims of Grecian philosophers, depicts the benefits which He bestows and has bestowed on all nations, while at the same time he palliates the previous misapprehension of these benefits, as he does in the speech at Lystra, xiv. 16, and as Peter does in another case, iii. 17, by the ignorance permitted by God; finally, as Stephen, by the unexpected vehemence of his concluding words, calls forth an uproar against himself, so does Paul’s dis- course, verse 31, suddenly take a turn which at once occasions its interruption.? Such being the mutual relation of the two accounts, it is impossible to avoid the conjecture that the two speeches and the events within which they are framed issued from one and the same mind—that of our author ; that the scene at Athens is merely a counterpart to the scene of Stephen at Jeru- salem ; and that the differences between the two, which certainly obtrude themselves on every one, are merely owing to the scene at Athens being enacted on Grecian instead of Jewish soil, and being adapted to a harmless result instead of a tragic conclusion. On these grounds we are certainly not justified in declaring the 1 vii, 48, 50: ἀλλ᾽ οὐχ ὁ ὕψιστος ἐν χειροποιήτοις κατοικεῖ... οὐχὶ ἡ χείρ μου ἐποίησε ταῦτα πάντα; xvii. 24: 6 Sede ὁ ποιήσας τὸν κόσμον καὶ πάντα τὰ ἐν αὐτῷ... οὐκ ἑν χειροποιήτοις ναοῖς κατοικεῖ, 2 In verse 31, the words recall in expression those put into the mouth of Ῥρίθτ, x. 42, also a slight symptom of the Lukan origin of the speech. See, further, in the _ last section of our third Part. sn “ἣν “ee ᾿ 56 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. whole statement of the Apostle’s appearance at Athens to be unhistorical ; but we are entitled to question it by the general character of our book, which is of a nature that does not allow criticism to rest satisfied with having no distinct proofs of incor: rectness in individual cases, but compels it also to require posi- tive pledges of the veracity of its statements, at least in all cases in which are mingled elements of a doubtfully historical cha- racter.! We shall return afterwards to the report of our book respecting Paul’s ministry at Corinth (xviii. 1—18), so far as it gives occa- sion to critical remarks, and we therefore pass it by at present. For the same reason we shall not enter minutely on the Apostle’s journey to Palestine, xviii. 18—23, but will turn at once to what is related of his sojourn at Ephesus. The first thing which here strikes us is the problematical appearance of John’s disciples, xix. 1—7. This appearance is problematical because the details of the description do not blend into any connected view. On one side, these disciples of John ‘are μαθηταὶ, 1. 8., according to the unvarying idiom of our book, Christians ; they have accepted the faith in Christ (πιστεύσαντες, verse 24); on the other, they are still so far removed from Chris- tianity that they have neither been baptized in the name of Jesus, nor have they heard anything of a Holy Ghost. If this by itself appears contradictory, the difficulty increases when we hear in xviii. 24 f. of another disciple of John, Apollos, who is instructed in Christianity (κατηχημένος τὴν ὁδὸν τοῦ κυρίου), and appears with distinction as a teacher (ἐδίδασκεν ἀκριβῶς τὰ περὶ 1 I write this, apprehending that apologists such as Lechler (on the Apost. and Post.-Apost. Period) may again see in it one of the strangest evidences of the boundless caprice of our criticism. For my part, I can only regard such opinions as a further proof of how little the majority of our theologians comprehend the nature and task of historical evidence. Instead of first inquiring whether a statement is sufficiently corroborated, and judging that to which the requisite evidence is wanting by other grounds of historical probability, the trustworthiness of the witnesses is assumed on the most superficial evidence, and hence the correctness of their statements is taken for granted, so far as they do not contain anything absolutely incredible. But what * canbe incredible to theologians whose first postulate is miracle ? PAUL IN EPHESUS. 57 τοῦ κυρίου), yet nevertheless knows nothing of the baptism of Christ, but only of the baptism of John. How, we musk ask with Baur (p. 183), can these two be thought of together, and combined into a clear idea? Neander is of opinion, like Olshausen before him, that these disciples of John had not advanced beyond a very deficient knowledge of the person and doctrine of Christ (p. 362); and he applies the same view to Apollos (p. 378), regardless of the κατηχημένος τὴν ὁδὸν τοῦ κυρίου and the ἐδίδασκεν ἀκριβῶς τὰ περὶ τοῦ κυρίου. Similarly, Baum- garten (ii. a, 336) thinks that Apollos considered Jesus, like John, merely a forerunner of the Messiah, as if any one still unacquainted with the fundamental article of the Messiahship of Jesus could be called a proficient in the doctrine of Jesus ! But should we still entertain any doubt, Neander removes it by the assertion (p. 361) “that by an intrinsically hazy and indefinite phenomenon no image can be produced in clear and distinct outlines.” This observation, only partially true in itself, cannot in any case justify the combination of such incompatible fea- tures as the accurate knowledge of the Christian doctrine and the non-acquaintance with Christian baptism which neverthe- less formed one of the first elements of Christianity; comp. Heb. vi. 2. These features are in truth absolutely irreconcilable ; . hence they can only form a part of our author's delineation, and not of objective fact; and the question cannot be, how we are to explain the historical phenomenon which they record, but merely, how we are to explain the record itself. The further narrative of John’s disciples must be judged by the standard of our earlier discussions with regard to the γλώσσαις λαλεῖν, which cannot here of course be understood in any other way than as the Acts, according to its unequivocal declarations, ii. comp. with x. 47, xi. 15, wishes it to be understood. It is, moreover, remarkable that the disciples of John, in xix., are baptized afresh ; while nothing is said of such a ceremony with regard to Apollos. 1 More of this below. 58 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. The account of the disciples of John is followed, in xix. 11 f, by a description of the Apostle’s miraculous ministry at Ephesus, which, from its marvellous character, is among the most in- eredible things of the sort transmitted in the New Testament. So many and such great miracles are supposed to have occurred by means of Paul, that even the handkerchiefs and aprons which he had worn healed the sick and the possessed on whom they were laid. It is impossible to think of any natural explanation of this result; for the faith of those who were healed, to which even De Wette refers us, must in truth have been able to remove mountains, not in a figurative sense merely, if it produced such an effect not only in one or two cases under specially favourable circumstances, but methodically, as was the case according to the representation of our book. But even from the standpoint of the miraculous faith presented in our book, such an utterly crass and magical representation of the healing power of the Apostle has too much that is offensive; and it requires something to assert, with Meyer, on this point, in the name of historical criti- cism, that “the healing power of Paul, being analogous to the miraculous power of Jesus, was capable at his desire of being conducted to the suffering subjects by means of the clothes which were begged from him.” We at least should be at a loss to know what relic-legends “ historical criticism” would be ashamed of, if it could accept such hypotheses. Paul’s apos- tolic power of miracles appears in a light all the more brilliant, the more completely it throws into the shade both Jewish and heathen magic. It is probably in this sense that we must regard the circumstance that our author immediately appends to the description of Paul’s miracles the two episodes of the Jewish exorcists, xix. 13—17, and the burning of the books of magic at 1 Whoever may wish for another confirmation of this opinion, can now find it in Baumgarten’s vindication of the narrative (Comm. ii. b. 15 ff.), which, with com- paratively small alteration, might be transferred to the holy coat of Treves or any other relic of the kind. It actually seems that if the genuineness of the holy coat were to be proved, Baumgarten would consider the miracle quite in order. PAUL IN EPHESUS. 59 Ephesus, xix. 18 f. Both incidents are credible in themselves ; it is quite possible that a band of exorcists, giving themselves out for sons or disciples of a Jewish high-priest,t may have made an experience of the futility of their arts in the person of a lunatic who had heard something of Paul and of Christ. There is nothing intrinsically improbable in the fact that at Ephesus, that abode of Greco-Oriental magic, some were found among the newly-converted who had formerly plied forbidden arts, and who now burnt their books of magic; even if the value of these books, 50,000 drachmae, appears somewhat high, according to the price of books at that period. But the context in which these things are recorded casts suspicion on them also; for the narrative of the Jewish exorcists partly presupposes the miracles of Paul, and partly serves them as a foil, and so far it seems to be designed to strengthen the impression of the preceding obviously unhistorical statements; but with this incident our record, verse 18, also connects the burning of the books of magic by representing it as an effect of the fear to which it had given rise. We have no right to substract from this context; and although we cannot assert that the narratives in question owe their origin to the context alone, and must therefore be unhis- torical, we are nevertheless equally incapable of deciding how much is historical. From the same point of view, Baur (Paul. 191) also regards the narrative of the insurrection of Demetrius, xix. 23 ff. He considers it as an ideal representation of the fertile ministry of the Apostle, which threatened to depopulate even the temple of the Ephesian Artemis, of world-wide celebrity. And we cannot deny the possibility of this view when we take into consideration the general character of our book. In this case, however, besides the circumstance that the narrative does not suffer from any internal improbability, several small features, for the fabrication of which no inducement can be found (such 1 As the word is interpreted by Baur, in Paulus, 189. ~ 60 _ ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. as verses 29—31, 33), speak in its favour;! and although the vivid colouring of the scene may partially belong to the author, the fact nevertheless appears correct that, shortly before Paul’s departure from Ephesus, disturbances broke out against him. 5. PAUL’s LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM; HIS , IMPRISONMENT > IN PALESTINE. Before the insurrection of Demetrius, Paul had already in- tended to go to Jerusalem, but previously to visit Macedonia and Achaia (xix. 21). After this occurrence he carried out his purpose (xx. 1). He passed by Macedonia into Greece, remained there three months, and then, being prevented by an ambush on the part of the Jews from taking the shorter sea passage, he returned through Macedonia to Asia Minor, took ship at Assos, and passing by Miletus Tyre and Ptolemais to-Cesarea, went thence to Jerusalem. Our author imparts no details respecting the motive and occa- sion of this journey. In xix. 21 he only states: ὡς δὲ ἐπληρώθη ταῦτα, ἔθετο 6 ἸΤαῦλος ἐν τῷ πνεύματι, διελθὼν τὴν Μακεδονίαν Kat ᾿Αχαιΐαν πορεύεσθαι εἰς “Ἱερουσαλὴμ, εἰπών᾽ ὅτι μετὰ τὸ γενέσθαι με ἐκεῖ δεῖ με καὶ Ρώμην ἰδεῖν. It must be owned that Schnecken- burger? is right in saying that this wish to go to Jerusalem, for which no further reason is given, proceeding out of the affairs and results of the ministry at Ephesus, can only be understood by the rule of xviii. 21, where the Apostle, equally without in- ducement, travels there merely because he is absolutely deter- mined on passing the next feast at Jerusalem, especially as it is one of the national festivals of the Jews to which he is so 1 The statement, 2 Cor. i. 8, which Wieseler, Chronol. of the Post.-Apost. Age, 54 £., refers to our narrative, can as little be cited in its favour as the ϑηριομαχεῖν, 1 Cor. xv. 32, since, according to the Acts, Paul incurred no personal danger; and if, as is certainly not impossible, we endeavour to find in the events here indi- cated the historical occasion of our record, we must not only, like Wieseler, abandon accuracy and completeness in the latter, but historical truth as well. 2 Zweck der Apg. p. 67. PAUL'S LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM. 61 urgently hastening that he even passes by Ephesus in order not to miss it: ἔσπευδε γὰρ,