Εξαιρουμενος σε εκ τοῦ λαοῦ και τῶν ἐθνῶν, εις οὑς νῦν σε ΑΠΟΣΤΕΛΛΩ.All this took place while the whole company of travelers were lying prostrate on the ground, stunned and almost senseless. Of all those present, however, Saul only heard these solemn words of warning, command, and prophecy, thus sent from heaven in thunder; for he himself afterwards, in narrating these awful events before the Jewish multitude, expressly declares “the men that were with me, saw the light, indeed, and were afraid; but theyheardNOTthe voiceof him who spoke to me.” And though in the previous statement given by Luke, in the regular course of the narrative, it is said that “the men who journeyed with Saul were speechless,——hearing avoice, but seeing no man;” yet thetwo statements are clearly reconciled by the consideration of the different meanings of the word translated “voice” in both passages, but which the accompanying expressions sufficiently limit in the latter case only to the articulate sounds of a human voice, while in the former it is left in such terms as to mean merely a “sound,” as of thunder, or any thing else which can be supposed to agree best with the other circumstances. To them, therefore, it seemed only surprising, not miraculous; for they are not mentioned as being impressed, otherwise than by fear and amazement, while Saul, who alone heard the words, was moved thereby to a complete conversion. The whole circumstances, therefore, allow and require, in accordance with other similar passages, that the material phenomena which were made the instruments of this miraculous conversion, were, as they are described,firsta flash of lightning, which struck the company to the earth, giving all a severe shock, but affecting Saul most of all, and,second, a peal of thunder, heard by all as such, except Saul, who distinguished in those awful, repeated sounds, the words of a heavenly voice, with which he held distinct converse, while his wondering companions thought him only muttering incoherently to himself, between the peals of thunder;——just as in the passage related by John, when Jesus called to God, “Father! glorify thy name;” and then there came a voice from heaven, saying, “I both have glorified it and will glorify it;” yet the people who then stood by, said, “Itthundered,”——having no idea of the expressive utterance which was so distinctly heard by Jesus and his disciples. There is no account, indeed, in either case, of any thunder storm accompanying the events; but there is nothing in the incidents to forbid it; and the nature of the effects upon the company who heard and saw, can be reconciled only with the supposition of a burst of actual thunder and lightning, which God made the organ of his awful voice, speaking to Saul in words that called him from a course of sin and cruelty, to be a minister of grace, mercy and peace, to all whose destroying persecutor he had before been. The sequel of the effects, too, are such as would naturally follow these material agencies. The men who were least stunned, rose to their feet soon after the first shock; and when the awful scene was over, they bestirred themselves to lift up Saul, who was now found, not only speechless, but blind,——the eyes being so dazzled by such excess of light, that the nerve loses all its power, generally, forever. Saul being now raised from the ground, was led, helpless andthunder-struck, by his distressed attendants, into the city, which he had hoped to make the scene of his cruel persecutions, but which he now entered, more surely bound, than could have been the most wretched of his destined captives.Kuinoel and Bloomfield will furnish the inquiring reader with the amusing details of the hypotheses, by which some of the moderns have attempted to explain away the whole of Saul’s conversion, into a mere remarkable succession of natural occurrences, without any miracle at all.HIS STAY IN DAMASCUS.Thus did the commissioned persecutor enter the ancient capital of Aram. But as they led him along the flowery ways into this Syrian paradise, how vain were its splendors, its beauties and its historic glories, to the eyes which had so long strained over the far horizon, to catch the first gleam of its white towers and rosy gardens, beyond the mountain-walls. In vain did Damascus invite the admiring gaze of the passing traveler, to thosedamaskroses embowering and hedging his path, which take their name in modern times, from the gardens where they first bloomed under the hand of man. In vain did their fragrance woo his nobler sense to perceive their beauty of form and hue; in vain did the long line of palaces and towers and temples, still bright in the venerable splendor of the ancient Aramaic kings, rise in majesty before him. The eyes that had so often dwelt on these historical monuments, in the distant and brilliant fancies of studious youth, were now closed to the not less brilliant splendors of the reality; and through the ancient arches of those mighty gates, and along the crowded streets, amid the noise of bustling thousands, the commissioned minister of wrath now moved distressed, darkened, speechless and horror-struck,——marked, like the first murderer, (of whose crime that spot was the fabled scene,) by the hand of God. The hand of God was indeed on him, not in wrath, but in mercy, sealing his abused bodily vision for a short space, until his mental eyes, purified from the scales of prejudice and unholy zeal, should have become fitted for the perception of objects, whose beauty and glory should be the theme of his thoughts and words, through all his later days, and of his discourse to millions for whom his heart now felt no love, but for whose salvation he was destined to freely spend and offer up his life. Passing along the crowded ways of the great city, under the guidance of his attendants, he was at last led into the street, which for its regularity was called the “Straight Way,” and there was lodged in the house of a person named Judas,——remainingfor three days in utter darkness, without the presence of a single friend, and without the glimmer of a hope that he should ever again see the light of day. Disconsolate and desolate, he passed the whole of this period in fasting, without one earthly object or call, to distract his attention from the solemn themes of his heavenly vision. He had all this long interval for reflection on the strange reversion of destiny pointed out by this indisputable decree, which summoned him from works of cruelty and destruction, to deeds of charity, kindness and devotion to those whose ruin he had lately sought with his whole heart. At the close of this season of lonely but blessed meditation, a new revelation of the commanding presence of the Deity was made to a humble and devout Christian of Damascus, named Ananias, known even among the Jews as a man of blameless character. To him, in a vision, the Lord appeared, and calling him by name, directed him most minutely to the house where Saul was lodging, and gave him the miraculous commission of restoring to sight that same Saul, now deprived of this sense by the visitation of God, but expecting its restoration by the hands of Ananias himself, who though yet unknown to him in the body, had been distinctly seen in a vision by the blind sufferer, as his healer, in the name of that Jesus who had met him in the way and smote him with this blindness, dazzling him with the excess of his unveiled heavenly glories. Ananias, yet appalled by the startling view of the bright messenger, and doubting the nature of the vision which summoned him to a duty so strangely inconsistent with the dreadful fame and character of the person named as the subject of his miraculous ministrations, hesitated to promise obedience, and parleyed with his summoner. “Lord! I have heard by many, of this man, how much evil he has done to thy saints at Jerusalem; and here, he has commission from the chief priests to bind all that call on thy name.” The merciful Lord, not resenting the rational doubts of his devout but alarmed servant, replied in words of considerate explanation, renewing his charge, with assurances of the safe and hopeful accomplishment of his appointed task. “Go thy way: for he is a chosen instrument of mercy for me, to bear my name before nations and kings, and the children of Israel: for I will show him how great things he must suffer for the sake of my name.” Ananias, no longer doubting, now went his way as directed, and finding Saul, clearly addressed him in terms of confidence and even of affection, recognizing him, on the testimonyof the vision, as already a friend of those companions of Jesus, whom he had lately persecuted. He put his hands on him, in the usual form of invoking a blessing on any one, and said, “Brother Saul! the Lord Jesus, who appeared to thee in the way, as thou camest, has sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with a holy spirit.” And immediately there fell from the eyes of the blinded persecutor, something like scales, and he saw now, in bodily, real presence, him who had already been in form revealed to his spirit, in a vision. At the same moment, fell from his inward sense, the obscuring film of prejudice and bigotry. Renewed in mental vision, he saw with the clear eye of confiding faith and eternal hope, that Jesus, who in the full revelation of his vindictive majesty having dazzled and blinded him in his murderous career, now appeared to his purified sense, in the tempered rays and mild effulgence of redeeming grace. Changed too, in the whole frame of his mind, he felt no more the promptings of that dark spirit of cruelty, but, filled with a holy spirit, before unknown to him, he began a new existence, replete with the energies of a divine influence. No longer fasting in token of distress, he now ate, by way of thanksgiving for his joyful restoration, and was strengthened thereby for the great task which he had undertaken. He was now admitted to the fellowship of the disciples of Jesus, and remained many days among them as a brother, mingling in the most friendly intercourse with those very persons, against whom he came to wage exterminating ruin. Nor did he confine his actions in his new character to the privacies of Christian intercourse. Going immediately into the synagogues, he there publicly proclaimed his belief in Jesus Christ, and boldly maintained him to be the Son of God. Great was the amazement of all who heard him. The fame of Saul of Tarsus, as a ferocious and determined persecutor of all who professed the faith of Jesus, had already pervaded Palestine, and spread into Syria; and what did this strange display now mean? They saw him, whom they had thus known by his dreadful reputation as a hater and exterminator of the Nazarene doctrine, now preaching it in the schools of the Jewish law and the houses of worship for the adherents of Mosaic forms, and with great power persuading others to a similar renunciation of all opposition to the name of Jesus; and they said, “Is not this he who destroyed them that called on this name in Jerusalem, and came hither, with the very purpose of taking them bound, to the Sanhedrim, forpunishment?” But Saul, each day advancing in the knowledge and faith of the Christian doctrine, soon grew too strong in argument for the most skilful of the defenders of the Jewish faith; and utterly confounded them with his proofs that Jesus was the very Messiah. This triumphant course he followed for a long time; until, at last, the stubborn Jews, provoked to the highest degree by the defeats which they had suffered from this powerful disputant, lately their most zealous defender, took counsel to put him to death, as a renegade from the faith, of which he had been the trusted professor, as well as the commissioned minister of its vengeance on the heretics whose cause he had now espoused, and was defending, to the great injury and discredit of the Judaical order. In contriving the means of executing this scheme, they received the support and assistance of the government of the city,——Damascus being then held, not by the Romans, but by Aretas, a petty king of northern Arabia. The governor appointed by Aretas did not scruple to aid the Jews in their murderous project; but even himself, with a detachment of the city garrison, kept watch at the gates, to kill Saul at his first outgoing. But all their wicked plots were set at nought by a very simple contrivance. The Christian friends of Saul, hearing of the danger, determined to remove him from it at once; and accordingly, one night, put the destined apostle of the Gentiles in a basket; and through the window of some one of their houses, which adjoined the barriers of the city, they let him down outside of the wall, while the spiteful Jews, with the complaisant governor and his detachment of the city guard, were to no purpose watching the gates with unceasing resolution, to wreak their vengeance on this dangerous convert.Michaelis alludes to the difficulties which have arisen about the possession of Damascus by Aretas, and concludes as follows:“The force of these objections has been considerably weakened, in a dissertation published in 1755, ‘De ethnarcha Aretae Arabum regis Paulo insidiante,’ by J. G. Heyne, who has shown it to be highly probable, first, that Aretas, against whom the Romans, not long before the death of Tiberius, made a declaration of war, which they neglected to put in execution, took the opportunity of seizing Damascus, which had once belonged to his ancestors; an event omitted in Josephus, as forming no part of the Jewish history, and by the Roman historians as being a matter not flattering in itself, and belonging only to a distant province. Secondly, that Aretas was by religion a Jew,——a circumstance the more credible, when we reflect that Judaism had been widely propagated in that country, and that even kings in Arabia Felix had recognized the law of Moses. * * * And hence we may explain the reason why the Jews were permitted to exercise, in Damascus, persecutions still severer than those in Jerusalem, where the violence of their zeal was awed by the moderation of the Roman policy. Of this we find an example in the ninth chapter of the Acts, where Paul is sent by the high priest to Damascus, to exercise against the Christians, cruelties which the return of the Roman governor had checkedin Judea. These accounts agree likewise with what is related in Josephus, that the number of Jews in Damascus amounted to ten thousand, and that almost all the women, even those whose husbands were heathens, were of the Jewish religion.” (Michaelis, Introduction,Vol. IV.PartI.c. ii.§12.)HIS RESIDENCE IN ARABIA.On his escape from this murderous plot, Saul, having now received from God, who called him by his grace, the revelation of his Son, that he might preach him among the heathen, immediately resolved not to confer with any mortal, on the subject of his task, and therefore refrained from going up to Jerusalem, to visit those who were apostles before him. Turning his course southeastward, he found refuge from the rage of the Damascan Jews, in the solitudes of the eastern deserts, where, free alike from the persecutions and the corruptions of the city, he sought in meditation and lonely study, that diligent preparation which was necessary for the high ministry to which God had so remarkably called him. A long time was spent by him in this wise and profitable seclusion; but the exact period cannot be ascertained. It is only probable that more than a year was thus occupied; during which he was not a mere hermit, indeed, but at any rate, was a resident in a region destitute of most objects which would be apt to draw off his attention from study. That part of Arabia in which he took refuge, was not a mere desert, nor a wilderness, yet had very few towns, and those only of a small size, with hardly any inhabitants of such a character as to be attractive companions to Saul. After some time, changes having taken place in the government of Damascus, he was enabled to return thither with safety, the Jews being now checked in their persecuting cruelty by the re-establishment of the Roman dominion over that part of Syria. He did not remain there long; but having again displayed himself as a bold assertor of the faith of Jesus, he next set his face towards Jerusalem, on his return, to make known in the halls of those who had sent him forth to deeds of blood, that their commission had been reversed by the Father of all spirits, who had now not only summoned, but fully equipped, their destined minister of wrath, to be “a chosen instrument of mercy” to nations who had never yet heard of Israel’s God.The different accounts given of these events, in Actsix.19–25, and in Galatiansi.15–24, as well as 2 Corinthiansxi.32–33, have been united in very opposite ways by different commentators, and form the most perplexing passages in the life of Saul. The journey into Arabia, of which he speaks in Galatiansi.17, is supposed by most writers, to have been made during the time when Luke mentions him as occupied in and about Damascus; and it is said that he went thence into Arabiaimmediatelyafter his conversion, before he had preached anywhere; and such writers maintainthat the word “straightway,” or “immediately,” in Actsix.20, (ευθεως,) really means, that it was not until a long time after his conversion that he preached in the synagogues!! Into this remarkable opinion they have been led by the fact, that Saul himself says, (Galatiansi.16,) that when he was called by God to the apostleship, “immediately he conferred not with flesh and blood, nor went up to Jerusalem, but went into Arabia.” All this however, is evidently specified by him only in reference to the point that he did not derive his title to the apostleship from “those that were apostles before him,” nor from any human authority; and full justice is therefore done to his words, by applying them only to the fact, that he went to Arabia before he went to Jerusalem, without supposing them to mean that he left Damascusimmediatelyafter his baptism by Ananias. All the historical writers however, seem to take this latter view. Witsius, Cappel, Pearson, Lardner, Murdock, Hemsen,&c.place his journey to Arabia between his baptism and the time of his escape, and suppose that when he fled from Damascus, he went directly to Jerusalem. In the different arrangement which I make of these events, however, I find myself supported by most of the great exegetical writers, as Wolf, Kuinoel, and Bloomfield; and I can not better support this view than in the words of the latter.Actsix.19. “ἐγένετο δὲ ὁ Σαῦλος. Paul (Galatians♦i.17,) relates that he, after his conversion, did not proceed to Jerusalem, but repaired to Arabia, and from thence returned to Damascus. Hence, according to the opinion of Pearson, in his Annales Paulini,p.2. the wordsἐγένετο δὲ ὁ Σαῦλοςare to be separated from the preceding passage, and constitute a new story, in which is related what happened at Damascus after Saul’s return from Arabia. But the wordsἱκαναὶ ἡμέραιmay and ought to be referred to the whole time of Paul’s abode at Damascus, before he went into Arabia; and thus with theἱκαναὶ ἡμέραιbe numbered theἡμέραι τινὲςmentioned at verse 19: for the sense of the words is this: ‘Saul, when he spent some days with the Damascene Christians, immediately taught in the synagogues. Now Luke entirely passes by Paul’s journey into Arabia. (Kuinoel.) Doddridge imagines that his going into Arabia, (to which, as he observes, Damascus now belonged,) was only making excursions from that city into the neighboring parts of the country, and perhaps taking a large circuit about it, which might be his employment between the time in which he began to preach in Damascus, and his quitting it after having been conquered by the Romans under Pompey.’ But in view of this subject I cannot agree with him. The country in theneighborhood of Damascusis not properlyArabia.”♦“1, 17” replaced with “i. 17”22–24. “ὡς δὲ ἐπληροῦντο——ἀνελεῖν αὐτόν. In 2 Corinthiansxi.32, we read that the Ethnarch of Aretas, king of Arabia, had placed a guard at the gates of Damascus, to seize Paul. Now it appears that Syria Damascene was, at the end of the Mithridatic war, reduced by Pompey to the Roman yoke. It has therefore been inquired how it could happen that Aretas should then have the government, and appoint an Ethnarch. That Aretas had, on account of the repudiation of his daughter by Herod Antipas, commenced hostilities against that monarch, and in the last year of Tiberius (A. D. 37,) had completely defeated his army, we learn from Josephus Antiquities,18,5,1.seqq.Herod had, we find, signified this by letter to Tiberius, who, indignant at this audacity, (Josephus L. c.) gave orders to Vitellius, prefect of Syria, to declare war against Aretas, and take him alive, or send him his head. Vitellius made preparations for the war, but on receiving a message acquainting him with the death of Tiberius, he dismissed his troops into winter quarters. And thus Aretas was delivered from the danger. At the time, however, that Vitellius drew off his forces, Aretas invaded Syria, seized Damascus, and continued to occupy it, in spite of Tiberius’s stupid successor, Caligula. This is the opinion of most commentators, and among others, Wolf, Michaelis, and Eichhorn. But I have already shewn in the Prolegomena § de chronologialib.2, 3, that Aretas did not finally subdue Damascus until Vitellius had already departed from the province.” (Kuinoel.) (Bloomfield’s Annotations,Vol. IV.pp.322–324.)HIS RETURN TO JERUSALEM.Arriving in the city, whence only three years before he had set out, in a frame of mind so different from that in which he returned, and with a purpose so opposite to his present views and plans,——he immediately, with all the confidence of Christian faith, and ardentlove for those to whom his religious sympathies now so closely fastened him, assayed to mingle in a familiar and friendly manner with the apostolic company, and offered himself to their Christian fellowship as a devout believer in Jesus. But they, already having too well known him in his previous character as the persecutor of their brethren, the aider and abettor in the murder of the heroic and innocent Stephen, and the greatest enemy of the faithful,——very decidedly repulsed his advances, as only a new trick to involve them in difficulties, that would make them liable to punishment which their prudence had before enabled them to escape. They therefore altogether refused to receive Saul; for “they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple.” In this disagreeable condition,——cast out as a hypocrite, by the apostles of that faith, for which he had sacrificed all earthly prospects,——he was fortunately found by Barnabas, who being, like Saul, a Hellenist Jew, naturally felt some especial sympathy with one whose country was within a few miles of his own; and by this circumstance, being induced to notice the professed convert, soon recognized in him, the indubitable signs of a regenerated and sanctified spirit, and therefore brought him to the chief apostles, Peter, and James, the Lord’s brother; for with these alone did Saul commune, at this visit, as he himself distinctly testifies. Still avoiding the company of the great mass of the apostles and disciples, he confined himself almost wholly to the acquaintance of Peter, with whom he abode in close familiarity for fifteen days. In order to reconcile the narrative of Luke in the Acts, with the account given by Saul himself, in the first chapter of the epistle to the Galatians, it must be understood that the “apostles” spoken of by the former are only the two above-mentioned, and it was with these only that he “went in and out at Jerusalem,”——the other apostles being probably absent on some missionary duties among the new churches throughout Judea and Palestine. Imitating the spirit of the proto-martyr, whose death he had himself been instrumental in effecting, “he spoke boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus, and disputed against the Hellenists,” doubtless the very same persons among whom he himself had formerly been enrolled as an unshrinking opposer of that faith which he was now advocating. By them he was received with all that vindictive hate which might have been expected; and he was at once denounced as a vile renegade from the cause which in his best days he had maintained as the only right one. Toshow most satisfactorily that, though he might change, they had not done so, they directly resolved to punish the bold disowner of the faith of his fathers, and would soon have crowned him with the fate of Stephen, had not the disciples heard of the danger which threatened the life of their new brother, and provided for his escape by means not less efficient than those before used in his behalf, at Damascus. Before the plans for his destruction could be completed, they privately withdrew him from Jerusalem, and had him safely conducted down to Caesarea, on the coast, whence, with little delay, he was shipped for some of the northern parts of Syria, from which he found his way to Tarsus,——whether by land or sea, is unknown.HIS VISIT TO TARSUS.This return to his native city was probably the first visit which he had made to it, since the day when he departed from his father’s house, to go to Jerusalem as a student of Jewish theology. It must therefore have been the occasion of many interesting reflections and reminiscences. What changes had the events of that interval wrought in him,——in his faith, his hopes, his views, his purposes for life and for death! The objects which were then to him as idols,——the aims and ends of his being,——had now no place in his reverence or his affection; but in their stead was now placed a name and a theme, of which he could hardly have heard before he first left Tarsus,——and a cause whose triumph would be the overthrow of all those traditions of the Fathers, of which he had been taught to be so exceeding zealous. To this new cause he now devoted himself, and probably at this time labored “in the regions of Cilicia,” until a new apostolic summons called him to a distant field. He was yet “personally unknown to the churches of Judea, which were in Christ; and they had only heard, that he who persecuted them in times past, now preached the faith which once he destroyed; they therefore glorified God on his account.” The very beginnings of his apostolic duties were therefore in a foreign field, and not within the original premises of the lost sheep of the house of Israel, where indeed he was not even known but by fame, except to a few in Jerusalem. In this he showed the great scope and direction of his future labors,——among the Gentiles, not among the Jews; leaving the latter to the sole care of the original apostles, while he turned to a vast field for which they were in no way fitted, by nature, or by apostolic education, nor were destined in the great scheme of salvation.HIS APOSTOLIC LABORS IN ANTIOCH.During this retirement of Saul to his native home, the first great call of the Gentiles had been made through the summons of Simon Peter to Cornelius. There was manifest wisdom in this arrangement of events. Though the original apostles were plainly never intended, by providence, to labor to any great extent in the Gentile field, yet it was most manifestly proper that the first opening of this new field should be made by those directly and personally commissioned by Jesus himself, and who, from having enjoyed his bodily presence for so long a time, would be considered best qualified to judge of the propriety of a movement so novel and unprecedented in its character. The great apostolic chief was therefore made the first minister of grace to the Gentiles; and the violent opposition with which this innovation on Judaical sanctity was received by the more bigoted, could of course be much more efficiently met, and disarmed, by the apostle specially commissioned as the keeper of the keys of the heavenly kingdom, than by one who had been but lately a persecutor of the faithful, and who, by his birth and partial education in a Grecian city, had acquired such a familiarity with Gentile usages, as to be reasonably liable to suspicion, in regard to an innovation which so remarkably favored them. This great movement having been thus made by the highest Christian authority on earth,——and the controversy immediately resulting having been thus decided,——the way was now fully open for the complete extension of the gospel to the heathen, and Saul was therefore immediately called, in providence, from his retirement, to take up the work of evangelizing Syria, which had already been partially begun at Antioch, by some of the Hellenistic refugees from the persecution at the time of Stephen’s martyrdom. The apostles at Jerusalem, hearing of the success which attended these incidental efforts, dispatched their trusty brother Barnabas, to confirm the good work, under the direct commission of apostolic authority. He, having come to Antioch, rejoiced his heart with the sight of the success which had crowned the work of those who, in the midst of the personal distress of a malignant persecution, that had driven them from Jerusalem, had there sown a seed that was already bringing forth glorious fruits. Perceiving the immense importance of the field there opened, he immediately felt the want of some person of different qualifications from the original apostles, and one whose education and habits would fit him not only tolabor among the professors of the Jewish faith, but also to communicate the doctrines of Christ to the Grecians. In this crisis he bethought himself of the wonderful young convert with whom he had become acquainted, under such remarkable circumstances, a few years before, in Jerusalem,——whose daring zeal and masterly learning had been so signally manifested among the Hellenists, with whom he had formerly been associated as an equally active persecutor. Inspired both by considerations of personal regard, and by wise convictions of the peculiar fitness of this zealous disciple for the field now opened in Syria, Barnabas immediately left his apostolic charge at Antioch, and went over to Tarsus, to invite Saul to this great labor. The journey was but a short one, the distance by water being not more than one hundred miles, and by land, around through the “Syrian gates,” about one hundred and fifty. He therefore soon arrived at Saul’s home, and found him ready and willing to undertake the proposed apostolic duty. They immediately returned together to Antioch, and earnestly devoted themselves to their interesting labors.“Antioch, the metropolis of Syria, was built, according to some authors, by Antiochus Epiphanes; others affirm, by Seleucus Nicanor, the first king of Syria after Alexander the Great, in memory of his father Antiochus, and was the ‘royal seat of the kings of Syria.’ For power and dignity, Strabo, (lib. xvi.p.517,) says it was not much inferior to Seleucia, or Alexandria. Josephus, (lib. iii.cap. 3,) says, it was the third great city of all that belonged to the Roman provinces. It was frequently called Antiochia Epidaphne, from its neighborhood to Daphne, a village where the temple of Daphne stood, to distinguish it from other fourteen of the same name mentioned by Stephanus de Urbibus, and by Eustathius in Dionysiusp.170; or as Appianus (in Syriacis,) and others, sixteen cities in Syria, and elsewhere, which bore that name. It was celebrated among the Jews for ‘Jus civitatis,’ which Seleucus Nicanor had given them in that city with the Grecians and Macedonians, and which, says Josephus, they still retain, Antiquities,lib. xii.cap. 13; and for the wars of the Maccabeans with those kings. Among Christians, for being the place where they first received that name, and where Saul and Barnabas began their apostolic labors together. In the flourishing times of the Roman empire, it was the ordinary residence of the prefect or governor of the eastern provinces, and also honored with the residence of many of the Roman emperors, especially of Verus and Valens, who spent here the greatest part of their time. It lay on both sides of the river Orontes, about twelve miles from the Mediterranean sea.” (Wells’s Geography New Testament——Whitby’s Table.) (J. M. Williams’s Notes on Pearson’sAnnales Paulinae.)Having arrived at Antioch, Saul gave himself, with Barnabas, zealously to the work for which he had been summoned, and labored among the people to good purpose, assembling the church and imparting to all that would hear, the knowledge of the Christian doctrine. Under these active exertions the professors of the faith of Jesus became so numerous and so generally known in Antioch, that the heathen inhabitants found it convenient to designate them by a distinct appellation, which they derived fromthe great founder and object of their religion,——calling themChristians, because the heathen inhabitants of Syria were not acquainted with the terms, “Nazarene” and “Galilean,” which had been applied to the followers of Christ by the Jews, partly from the places where they first appeared, and partly in opprobium for their low provincial origin.The name now first created by the Syrians to distinguish the sect, is remarkable, because being derived from a Greek word,Christos, it has a Latin adjective termination, Christianus, and is therefore incontestably shown to have been applied by the Roman inhabitants of Antioch; for no Grecian would ever have been guilty of such a barbarism, in the derivation of one word from another in his own language. The proper Greek form of the derivation would have beenChristicos, orChristenos, and the substantive would have been, not Christianity, butChristicism, orChristenism,——a word so awkward in sound, however, that it is very well for all Christendom, that the Roman barbarism took the place of the pure Greek termination. And since the Latin form of the first derivative has prevailed, and Christianthus been made the name of “a believer in Christ,” it is evident to any classical scholar, that Christianityis the only proper form of the substantive secondarily derived. For though the appending of a Latin termination upon a Greek word, as in the case of Christianus, was unquestionably a blunder and a barbarism in the first place, it yet can not compare, for absurdity, with the notion of deriving from this Latin form, the substantive Christianismus, with a Greek termination foolishly pinned to a Latin one,——a folly of which the French are nevertheless guilty. The error, of course, can not now be corrected in that language; but those who stupidly copy the barbarism from them, and try to introduce the monstrous word, ChristianISM, into English, deserve the reprobation of every man of taste.“Before this they were called ‘disciples,’ as in this place——‘believers,’ Actsv.14——‘men of the church,’ Actsxii.1——‘men of the way,’ Actsix.2——‘the saints,’ Actsix.13——‘those that called on the name of Christ,’ verse 14——and by their enemies, Nazarenes and Galileans, and ‘men of the sect;’——but now, by the conversion of so many heathens, both in Caesarea and Antioch, the believing Jews and Gentiles being made all one church, this new name was given them, as more expressive of their common relation to their Master, Christ. Whitby slightly alludes to the prophecy, Isaiahlxv.” (J. M. Williams’s Notes on Pearson.)While Saul was thus effectually laboring in Antioch, there came down to that city, from Jerusalem, certain persons, indued with the spirit of prophecy, among whom was one, named Agabus, who, under the influence of inspiration, made known that there would be a great famine throughout the world;——a prediction which was verified by the actual occurrence of this calamity in the days of Claudius Caesar, during whose reign,——as appears on the impartial testimony of the historians of those times, both Roman and Jewish,——the Roman empire suffered at different periods in all its parts, from the capital to Jerusalem,——and at this latter city, more especially, in the sixth year of Claudius, (A. D. 46,) as is testified by Josephus, who narrates very particularly some circumstances connected with the prevalence of this famine in Jerusalem. The disciples at Antioch, availing themselves of this information, determined to send relief to their brethren in Judea, before the famine should come on; and having contributed,each one according to his ability, they made Barnabas and Saul the messengers of their charity, who were accordingly dispatched to Jerusalem, on this noble errand. They remained in Jerusalem through the period of Agrippa’s attack upon the apostles by murdering James, and imprisoning Peter; but they do not seem to have been any way immediately concerned in these events; and when Peter had escaped, they returned to Antioch. How long they remained here, is not recorded; but the date of subsequent events seems to imply that it was a space of some years, during which they labored at Antioch in company with several other eminent prophets and teachers, of whom are mentioned Simeon, who had the Roman surname of Niger, Lucius, the Cyrenian, and Manaen, a foster-brother of Herod the tetrarch. During their common ministrations, at a season of fasting, they received a direction from the spirit of truth which guided them, to set apart Saul and Barnabas for the special work to which the Lord had called them. This work was of course understood to be that for which Saul in particular, had, at his conversion, been so remarkably commissioned,——“to open the eyes of theGentiles,——to turn them from darkness to light, and from the dominion of Satan to God.” His brethren in the ministry therefore, understanding at once the nature and object of the summons, now specially consecrated both him and Barnabas for their missionary work; and after fasting and praying, they invoked on them the blessing of God, in the usual oriental form of laying their hands on them, and then bade them farewell.“That this famine was felt chiefly in Judea may be conjectured with great reason from the nature of the context, for we find that the disciples are resolving to send relief to the elders in Judea; consequently they must have understood that those in Judea would suffer more than themselves. Josephus declared that this famine raged so much there,πολλῶν ὑπό ἐνδείας ἀναλωμάτων φθειρομένων, ‘so that many perished for want of victuals.’”“‘Throughout the whole world,’πᾶσαν τὴν οἰκουμένην, is first to be understood,orbis terrarum habitabilis: Demosthenes in Corona, Æschines contra Ctesiphon Scapula. Then the Roman and other empires were styledοικουμένη, ‘the world.’ Thus Isaiahxiv.17, 26, the counsel of God against the empire of Babylon, is called his counsel,ἐπὶ τὴν ὅλην οἰκουμένην, ‘against all the earth.’——(Elsley, Whitby.) Accordingly Eusebius says of this famine, that it oppressed almost the wholeempire. And as for the truth of the prophecy, this dearth is recorded by historians most averse to our religion,viz., by Suetonius in the life of Claudius, chapter 18, who informs us that it happened ‘ob assiduas sterilitates;’ and Dion Cassius Historylib. lx.p.146, that it wasλιμὸς ἰσχυρὸς, ‘a very great famine.’ Whitby’s Annotations, Doddridge enumerates nine famines in various years, and parts of the empire, in the reign of Claudius; but the first was the most severe, and affected particularly Judea, and is that here meant.” (J. M. Williams’s notes on Pearson.)HIS FIRST APOSTOLIC MISSION.Going from Antioch directly eastward to the sea, they came toSeleucia, the nearest port, only twelve miles from Antioch, and there embarked for the island of Cyprus, the eastern end of which is not more than eighty miles from the coast of Syria. The circumstance that more particularly directed them first to this island, was probably that it was the native home of Barnabas, and with this region therefore he would feel so much acquainted as to know its peculiar wants, and the facilities which it afforded for the advancement of the Christian cause; and he would also know where he might look for the most favorable reception. Landing at Salamis, on the south-eastern part of the island, they first preached in the synagogues of the Jews, who were very numerous in Cyprus, and constituted so large a part of the population of the island, that some years afterwards they attempted to get complete possession of it, and were put down only by the massacre of many thousands. Directing their efforts first to these wandering sheep of the house of Israel, the apostles everywhere preached the gospel in the synagogues, never forsaking the Jews for the Gentiles, until they had been driven away by insult and injury, that thus the ruin of their nation might lie, not upon the apostles, but upon them only, for their rejection of the repeated offers of salvation. Here, it would seem, they were joined by John Mark, the nephew of Barnabas, who was probably staying upon the island at that time, and who now accompanied them as an assistant in their apostolic ministry. Traversing the whole island from east to west, they came to Paphos, a splendid city near the western end, famed for the magnificent temple and lascivious worship of the Paphian Venus, a deity to whom all Cyprus was consecrated; and from it she derived one of her numerous appellatives,Cyprisbeing a name under which she was frequently worshipped; and the females of the island generally, were so completely devoted to her service, not merely in temple-worship, but in life and manners, that throughout the world, the nameCyprian woman, even to this day, is but a polite expression for one abandoned to wantonness and pleasure. The worship of this lascivious goddess, the apostles now came to exterminate, and to plant in its stead the dominion of a faith, whose essence is purity of heart and action. At this place, preaching the gospel with openness, they soon attracted such general notice, that the report of their remarkable character soon reached the ears of the proconsul of Cyprus, then resident in Paphos. This great Roman governor, by name Sergius Paulus, was a man of intelligence andprobity, and hearing of the apostles, soon summoned them to his presence, that he might have the satisfaction of hearing from them, in his own hall, a full exposition of the doctrine which they called the word of God. This they did with such energy and efficiency, that they won his attention and regard; and he was about to profess his faith in Jesus, when a new obstacle to the success of the gospel was presented in the conduct of one of those present at the discourse. This was an impostor, called Elymas,——a name which seems to be a Greek form of the Oriental “Alim” meaning “a magician,”——who had, by his tricks, gained a great renown throughout that region, and was received into high favor by the proconsul himself, with whom he was then staying. The rogue, apprehending the nature of the doctrines taught by the apostles to be no way agreeable to the schemes of self-advancement which he was so successfully pursuing, was not a little alarmed when he saw that they were taking hold of the mind of the proconsul, and therefore undertook to resist the preaching of the apostles; and attempted to argue the noble convert into a contempt of these new teachers. At this, Saul, (now first called Paul,) fixing his eyes on the miserable impostor, in a burst of inspired indignation, denounced on him an awful punishment for his resistance of the truth. “O, full of all guile and all tricks! son of the devil! enemy of all honesty! wilt thou not stop perverting the ways of the Lord? And now, lo! the hand of the Lord is on thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a time.” And immediately there fell on him a mist and a darkness; and turning around, he sought some persons to lead him by the hand. At the sight of this manifest and appalling miracle, thus following the denunciation of the apostle, the proconsul was so struck, that he no longer delayed for a moment his profession of faith in the religion whose power was thus attested, but believed in the doctrine of Jesus, as communicated by his apostles.“Seleuciawas a little north-west of Antioch, upon the Mediterranean sea, named from its founder, Seleucus.——Cyprus, so called from the flower of the Cypress-trees growing there.——Pliny,lib. xii.cap.24.——Eustathius. In Dionysiusp.110. It was an island, having on the east the Syrian, on the west the Pamphylian, on the south the Phoenician, on the north the Cilician sea. It was celebrated among the heathens for its fertility as being sufficiently provided with all things within itself. Strabo,lib. xiv.468, 469. It was very infamous for the worship of Venus, who had thence her nameΚύπρις. It was memorable among the Jews as being an island in which they so much abounded; and among Christians for being the place where Joses, called Barnabas, had the land he sold, Actsiv.36; and where Mnason, an old disciple, lived; Actsxxi.16.——(Whitby’s Table.) Salamis was once a famous city of Cyprus, opposite to Seleucia, on the Syrian coast.——(Wells.) It was in the easternpart of Cyprus. It was famous among the Greek writers for the story of the Dragon killed by Chycreas, their king; and for the death of Anaxarchus, whom Nicocreon, the tyrant of that island, pounded to death with iron pestles.”——(Bochart, Canaan,lib. i.c.2——Laert,lib. ix.p.579.) Williams’s Pearson.Proconsul.——The Greek titleΑνθυπατος, was applied only to those governors of provinces who were invested withproconsulardignity. ‘And on the supposition that Cyprus was not a province of this description, it has been inferred that the title given to Sergius Paulus in this place, was a title that did not properly belong to him. A passage has indeed been quoted from Dion Cassius, (History of Rome,lib. liv.p.523, edited by Hanoviae, 1690,) who, speaking of the governors of Cyprus and some other Roman provinces, applies to them the same title which is applied to Sergius Paulus. But, as Dion Cassius is speaking of several Roman provinces at the same time, one of which was certainly governed by a proconsul, it has been supposed, that for the sake of brevity, he used one term for all of them, whether it applied to all of them or not. That Cyprus, however, ought to be excluded, and that the title which he employed, as well asSt.Luke, reallydidbelong to the Roman governors of Cyprus, appears from the inscription on a coin belonging to Cyprus itself. It belonged to the people of that island as appears from the wordΚΥΠΡΙΩΝon the reverse: and, though not struck while Sergius Paulus himself was governor, it was struck, as appears from the inscription on the reverse, in the time of Proclus, who was next to Sergius Paulus in the government of Cyprus. And, on this coin the same titleΑΝΘΥΠΑΤΟΣ, is given to Proclus, whichSt.Luke gives Sergius Paulus.’ (Bishop Marsh’s Lecture partv.pp.85, 86.) That Cyprus was a proconsulate, is also evident♦from an ancient inscription of Caligula’s reign, in which Aquius Scaura is called the proconsul of Cyprus. (Gruteri Corpus Inscriptionem,tom. i.partii.p, cccix.No.3, edited by Graevii Amsterdam, 1707.) Horne’s Introd.
Εξαιρουμενος σε εκ τοῦ λαοῦ και τῶν ἐθνῶν, εις οὑς νῦν σε ΑΠΟΣΤΕΛΛΩ.
Εξαιρουμενος σε εκ τοῦ λαοῦ και τῶν ἐθνῶν, εις οὑς νῦν σε ΑΠΟΣΤΕΛΛΩ.
Εξαιρουμενος σε εκ τοῦ λαοῦ και τῶν ἐθνῶν, εις οὑς νῦν σε ΑΠΟΣΤΕΛΛΩ.
All this took place while the whole company of travelers were lying prostrate on the ground, stunned and almost senseless. Of all those present, however, Saul only heard these solemn words of warning, command, and prophecy, thus sent from heaven in thunder; for he himself afterwards, in narrating these awful events before the Jewish multitude, expressly declares “the men that were with me, saw the light, indeed, and were afraid; but theyheardNOTthe voiceof him who spoke to me.” And though in the previous statement given by Luke, in the regular course of the narrative, it is said that “the men who journeyed with Saul were speechless,——hearing avoice, but seeing no man;” yet thetwo statements are clearly reconciled by the consideration of the different meanings of the word translated “voice” in both passages, but which the accompanying expressions sufficiently limit in the latter case only to the articulate sounds of a human voice, while in the former it is left in such terms as to mean merely a “sound,” as of thunder, or any thing else which can be supposed to agree best with the other circumstances. To them, therefore, it seemed only surprising, not miraculous; for they are not mentioned as being impressed, otherwise than by fear and amazement, while Saul, who alone heard the words, was moved thereby to a complete conversion. The whole circumstances, therefore, allow and require, in accordance with other similar passages, that the material phenomena which were made the instruments of this miraculous conversion, were, as they are described,firsta flash of lightning, which struck the company to the earth, giving all a severe shock, but affecting Saul most of all, and,second, a peal of thunder, heard by all as such, except Saul, who distinguished in those awful, repeated sounds, the words of a heavenly voice, with which he held distinct converse, while his wondering companions thought him only muttering incoherently to himself, between the peals of thunder;——just as in the passage related by John, when Jesus called to God, “Father! glorify thy name;” and then there came a voice from heaven, saying, “I both have glorified it and will glorify it;” yet the people who then stood by, said, “Itthundered,”——having no idea of the expressive utterance which was so distinctly heard by Jesus and his disciples. There is no account, indeed, in either case, of any thunder storm accompanying the events; but there is nothing in the incidents to forbid it; and the nature of the effects upon the company who heard and saw, can be reconciled only with the supposition of a burst of actual thunder and lightning, which God made the organ of his awful voice, speaking to Saul in words that called him from a course of sin and cruelty, to be a minister of grace, mercy and peace, to all whose destroying persecutor he had before been. The sequel of the effects, too, are such as would naturally follow these material agencies. The men who were least stunned, rose to their feet soon after the first shock; and when the awful scene was over, they bestirred themselves to lift up Saul, who was now found, not only speechless, but blind,——the eyes being so dazzled by such excess of light, that the nerve loses all its power, generally, forever. Saul being now raised from the ground, was led, helpless andthunder-struck, by his distressed attendants, into the city, which he had hoped to make the scene of his cruel persecutions, but which he now entered, more surely bound, than could have been the most wretched of his destined captives.
All this took place while the whole company of travelers were lying prostrate on the ground, stunned and almost senseless. Of all those present, however, Saul only heard these solemn words of warning, command, and prophecy, thus sent from heaven in thunder; for he himself afterwards, in narrating these awful events before the Jewish multitude, expressly declares “the men that were with me, saw the light, indeed, and were afraid; but theyheardNOTthe voiceof him who spoke to me.” And though in the previous statement given by Luke, in the regular course of the narrative, it is said that “the men who journeyed with Saul were speechless,——hearing avoice, but seeing no man;” yet thetwo statements are clearly reconciled by the consideration of the different meanings of the word translated “voice” in both passages, but which the accompanying expressions sufficiently limit in the latter case only to the articulate sounds of a human voice, while in the former it is left in such terms as to mean merely a “sound,” as of thunder, or any thing else which can be supposed to agree best with the other circumstances. To them, therefore, it seemed only surprising, not miraculous; for they are not mentioned as being impressed, otherwise than by fear and amazement, while Saul, who alone heard the words, was moved thereby to a complete conversion. The whole circumstances, therefore, allow and require, in accordance with other similar passages, that the material phenomena which were made the instruments of this miraculous conversion, were, as they are described,firsta flash of lightning, which struck the company to the earth, giving all a severe shock, but affecting Saul most of all, and,second, a peal of thunder, heard by all as such, except Saul, who distinguished in those awful, repeated sounds, the words of a heavenly voice, with which he held distinct converse, while his wondering companions thought him only muttering incoherently to himself, between the peals of thunder;——just as in the passage related by John, when Jesus called to God, “Father! glorify thy name;” and then there came a voice from heaven, saying, “I both have glorified it and will glorify it;” yet the people who then stood by, said, “Itthundered,”——having no idea of the expressive utterance which was so distinctly heard by Jesus and his disciples. There is no account, indeed, in either case, of any thunder storm accompanying the events; but there is nothing in the incidents to forbid it; and the nature of the effects upon the company who heard and saw, can be reconciled only with the supposition of a burst of actual thunder and lightning, which God made the organ of his awful voice, speaking to Saul in words that called him from a course of sin and cruelty, to be a minister of grace, mercy and peace, to all whose destroying persecutor he had before been. The sequel of the effects, too, are such as would naturally follow these material agencies. The men who were least stunned, rose to their feet soon after the first shock; and when the awful scene was over, they bestirred themselves to lift up Saul, who was now found, not only speechless, but blind,——the eyes being so dazzled by such excess of light, that the nerve loses all its power, generally, forever. Saul being now raised from the ground, was led, helpless andthunder-struck, by his distressed attendants, into the city, which he had hoped to make the scene of his cruel persecutions, but which he now entered, more surely bound, than could have been the most wretched of his destined captives.
Kuinoel and Bloomfield will furnish the inquiring reader with the amusing details of the hypotheses, by which some of the moderns have attempted to explain away the whole of Saul’s conversion, into a mere remarkable succession of natural occurrences, without any miracle at all.
HIS STAY IN DAMASCUS.Thus did the commissioned persecutor enter the ancient capital of Aram. But as they led him along the flowery ways into this Syrian paradise, how vain were its splendors, its beauties and its historic glories, to the eyes which had so long strained over the far horizon, to catch the first gleam of its white towers and rosy gardens, beyond the mountain-walls. In vain did Damascus invite the admiring gaze of the passing traveler, to thosedamaskroses embowering and hedging his path, which take their name in modern times, from the gardens where they first bloomed under the hand of man. In vain did their fragrance woo his nobler sense to perceive their beauty of form and hue; in vain did the long line of palaces and towers and temples, still bright in the venerable splendor of the ancient Aramaic kings, rise in majesty before him. The eyes that had so often dwelt on these historical monuments, in the distant and brilliant fancies of studious youth, were now closed to the not less brilliant splendors of the reality; and through the ancient arches of those mighty gates, and along the crowded streets, amid the noise of bustling thousands, the commissioned minister of wrath now moved distressed, darkened, speechless and horror-struck,——marked, like the first murderer, (of whose crime that spot was the fabled scene,) by the hand of God. The hand of God was indeed on him, not in wrath, but in mercy, sealing his abused bodily vision for a short space, until his mental eyes, purified from the scales of prejudice and unholy zeal, should have become fitted for the perception of objects, whose beauty and glory should be the theme of his thoughts and words, through all his later days, and of his discourse to millions for whom his heart now felt no love, but for whose salvation he was destined to freely spend and offer up his life. Passing along the crowded ways of the great city, under the guidance of his attendants, he was at last led into the street, which for its regularity was called the “Straight Way,” and there was lodged in the house of a person named Judas,——remainingfor three days in utter darkness, without the presence of a single friend, and without the glimmer of a hope that he should ever again see the light of day. Disconsolate and desolate, he passed the whole of this period in fasting, without one earthly object or call, to distract his attention from the solemn themes of his heavenly vision. He had all this long interval for reflection on the strange reversion of destiny pointed out by this indisputable decree, which summoned him from works of cruelty and destruction, to deeds of charity, kindness and devotion to those whose ruin he had lately sought with his whole heart. At the close of this season of lonely but blessed meditation, a new revelation of the commanding presence of the Deity was made to a humble and devout Christian of Damascus, named Ananias, known even among the Jews as a man of blameless character. To him, in a vision, the Lord appeared, and calling him by name, directed him most minutely to the house where Saul was lodging, and gave him the miraculous commission of restoring to sight that same Saul, now deprived of this sense by the visitation of God, but expecting its restoration by the hands of Ananias himself, who though yet unknown to him in the body, had been distinctly seen in a vision by the blind sufferer, as his healer, in the name of that Jesus who had met him in the way and smote him with this blindness, dazzling him with the excess of his unveiled heavenly glories. Ananias, yet appalled by the startling view of the bright messenger, and doubting the nature of the vision which summoned him to a duty so strangely inconsistent with the dreadful fame and character of the person named as the subject of his miraculous ministrations, hesitated to promise obedience, and parleyed with his summoner. “Lord! I have heard by many, of this man, how much evil he has done to thy saints at Jerusalem; and here, he has commission from the chief priests to bind all that call on thy name.” The merciful Lord, not resenting the rational doubts of his devout but alarmed servant, replied in words of considerate explanation, renewing his charge, with assurances of the safe and hopeful accomplishment of his appointed task. “Go thy way: for he is a chosen instrument of mercy for me, to bear my name before nations and kings, and the children of Israel: for I will show him how great things he must suffer for the sake of my name.” Ananias, no longer doubting, now went his way as directed, and finding Saul, clearly addressed him in terms of confidence and even of affection, recognizing him, on the testimonyof the vision, as already a friend of those companions of Jesus, whom he had lately persecuted. He put his hands on him, in the usual form of invoking a blessing on any one, and said, “Brother Saul! the Lord Jesus, who appeared to thee in the way, as thou camest, has sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with a holy spirit.” And immediately there fell from the eyes of the blinded persecutor, something like scales, and he saw now, in bodily, real presence, him who had already been in form revealed to his spirit, in a vision. At the same moment, fell from his inward sense, the obscuring film of prejudice and bigotry. Renewed in mental vision, he saw with the clear eye of confiding faith and eternal hope, that Jesus, who in the full revelation of his vindictive majesty having dazzled and blinded him in his murderous career, now appeared to his purified sense, in the tempered rays and mild effulgence of redeeming grace. Changed too, in the whole frame of his mind, he felt no more the promptings of that dark spirit of cruelty, but, filled with a holy spirit, before unknown to him, he began a new existence, replete with the energies of a divine influence. No longer fasting in token of distress, he now ate, by way of thanksgiving for his joyful restoration, and was strengthened thereby for the great task which he had undertaken. He was now admitted to the fellowship of the disciples of Jesus, and remained many days among them as a brother, mingling in the most friendly intercourse with those very persons, against whom he came to wage exterminating ruin. Nor did he confine his actions in his new character to the privacies of Christian intercourse. Going immediately into the synagogues, he there publicly proclaimed his belief in Jesus Christ, and boldly maintained him to be the Son of God. Great was the amazement of all who heard him. The fame of Saul of Tarsus, as a ferocious and determined persecutor of all who professed the faith of Jesus, had already pervaded Palestine, and spread into Syria; and what did this strange display now mean? They saw him, whom they had thus known by his dreadful reputation as a hater and exterminator of the Nazarene doctrine, now preaching it in the schools of the Jewish law and the houses of worship for the adherents of Mosaic forms, and with great power persuading others to a similar renunciation of all opposition to the name of Jesus; and they said, “Is not this he who destroyed them that called on this name in Jerusalem, and came hither, with the very purpose of taking them bound, to the Sanhedrim, forpunishment?” But Saul, each day advancing in the knowledge and faith of the Christian doctrine, soon grew too strong in argument for the most skilful of the defenders of the Jewish faith; and utterly confounded them with his proofs that Jesus was the very Messiah. This triumphant course he followed for a long time; until, at last, the stubborn Jews, provoked to the highest degree by the defeats which they had suffered from this powerful disputant, lately their most zealous defender, took counsel to put him to death, as a renegade from the faith, of which he had been the trusted professor, as well as the commissioned minister of its vengeance on the heretics whose cause he had now espoused, and was defending, to the great injury and discredit of the Judaical order. In contriving the means of executing this scheme, they received the support and assistance of the government of the city,——Damascus being then held, not by the Romans, but by Aretas, a petty king of northern Arabia. The governor appointed by Aretas did not scruple to aid the Jews in their murderous project; but even himself, with a detachment of the city garrison, kept watch at the gates, to kill Saul at his first outgoing. But all their wicked plots were set at nought by a very simple contrivance. The Christian friends of Saul, hearing of the danger, determined to remove him from it at once; and accordingly, one night, put the destined apostle of the Gentiles in a basket; and through the window of some one of their houses, which adjoined the barriers of the city, they let him down outside of the wall, while the spiteful Jews, with the complaisant governor and his detachment of the city guard, were to no purpose watching the gates with unceasing resolution, to wreak their vengeance on this dangerous convert.
HIS STAY IN DAMASCUS.
Thus did the commissioned persecutor enter the ancient capital of Aram. But as they led him along the flowery ways into this Syrian paradise, how vain were its splendors, its beauties and its historic glories, to the eyes which had so long strained over the far horizon, to catch the first gleam of its white towers and rosy gardens, beyond the mountain-walls. In vain did Damascus invite the admiring gaze of the passing traveler, to thosedamaskroses embowering and hedging his path, which take their name in modern times, from the gardens where they first bloomed under the hand of man. In vain did their fragrance woo his nobler sense to perceive their beauty of form and hue; in vain did the long line of palaces and towers and temples, still bright in the venerable splendor of the ancient Aramaic kings, rise in majesty before him. The eyes that had so often dwelt on these historical monuments, in the distant and brilliant fancies of studious youth, were now closed to the not less brilliant splendors of the reality; and through the ancient arches of those mighty gates, and along the crowded streets, amid the noise of bustling thousands, the commissioned minister of wrath now moved distressed, darkened, speechless and horror-struck,——marked, like the first murderer, (of whose crime that spot was the fabled scene,) by the hand of God. The hand of God was indeed on him, not in wrath, but in mercy, sealing his abused bodily vision for a short space, until his mental eyes, purified from the scales of prejudice and unholy zeal, should have become fitted for the perception of objects, whose beauty and glory should be the theme of his thoughts and words, through all his later days, and of his discourse to millions for whom his heart now felt no love, but for whose salvation he was destined to freely spend and offer up his life. Passing along the crowded ways of the great city, under the guidance of his attendants, he was at last led into the street, which for its regularity was called the “Straight Way,” and there was lodged in the house of a person named Judas,——remainingfor three days in utter darkness, without the presence of a single friend, and without the glimmer of a hope that he should ever again see the light of day. Disconsolate and desolate, he passed the whole of this period in fasting, without one earthly object or call, to distract his attention from the solemn themes of his heavenly vision. He had all this long interval for reflection on the strange reversion of destiny pointed out by this indisputable decree, which summoned him from works of cruelty and destruction, to deeds of charity, kindness and devotion to those whose ruin he had lately sought with his whole heart. At the close of this season of lonely but blessed meditation, a new revelation of the commanding presence of the Deity was made to a humble and devout Christian of Damascus, named Ananias, known even among the Jews as a man of blameless character. To him, in a vision, the Lord appeared, and calling him by name, directed him most minutely to the house where Saul was lodging, and gave him the miraculous commission of restoring to sight that same Saul, now deprived of this sense by the visitation of God, but expecting its restoration by the hands of Ananias himself, who though yet unknown to him in the body, had been distinctly seen in a vision by the blind sufferer, as his healer, in the name of that Jesus who had met him in the way and smote him with this blindness, dazzling him with the excess of his unveiled heavenly glories. Ananias, yet appalled by the startling view of the bright messenger, and doubting the nature of the vision which summoned him to a duty so strangely inconsistent with the dreadful fame and character of the person named as the subject of his miraculous ministrations, hesitated to promise obedience, and parleyed with his summoner. “Lord! I have heard by many, of this man, how much evil he has done to thy saints at Jerusalem; and here, he has commission from the chief priests to bind all that call on thy name.” The merciful Lord, not resenting the rational doubts of his devout but alarmed servant, replied in words of considerate explanation, renewing his charge, with assurances of the safe and hopeful accomplishment of his appointed task. “Go thy way: for he is a chosen instrument of mercy for me, to bear my name before nations and kings, and the children of Israel: for I will show him how great things he must suffer for the sake of my name.” Ananias, no longer doubting, now went his way as directed, and finding Saul, clearly addressed him in terms of confidence and even of affection, recognizing him, on the testimonyof the vision, as already a friend of those companions of Jesus, whom he had lately persecuted. He put his hands on him, in the usual form of invoking a blessing on any one, and said, “Brother Saul! the Lord Jesus, who appeared to thee in the way, as thou camest, has sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with a holy spirit.” And immediately there fell from the eyes of the blinded persecutor, something like scales, and he saw now, in bodily, real presence, him who had already been in form revealed to his spirit, in a vision. At the same moment, fell from his inward sense, the obscuring film of prejudice and bigotry. Renewed in mental vision, he saw with the clear eye of confiding faith and eternal hope, that Jesus, who in the full revelation of his vindictive majesty having dazzled and blinded him in his murderous career, now appeared to his purified sense, in the tempered rays and mild effulgence of redeeming grace. Changed too, in the whole frame of his mind, he felt no more the promptings of that dark spirit of cruelty, but, filled with a holy spirit, before unknown to him, he began a new existence, replete with the energies of a divine influence. No longer fasting in token of distress, he now ate, by way of thanksgiving for his joyful restoration, and was strengthened thereby for the great task which he had undertaken. He was now admitted to the fellowship of the disciples of Jesus, and remained many days among them as a brother, mingling in the most friendly intercourse with those very persons, against whom he came to wage exterminating ruin. Nor did he confine his actions in his new character to the privacies of Christian intercourse. Going immediately into the synagogues, he there publicly proclaimed his belief in Jesus Christ, and boldly maintained him to be the Son of God. Great was the amazement of all who heard him. The fame of Saul of Tarsus, as a ferocious and determined persecutor of all who professed the faith of Jesus, had already pervaded Palestine, and spread into Syria; and what did this strange display now mean? They saw him, whom they had thus known by his dreadful reputation as a hater and exterminator of the Nazarene doctrine, now preaching it in the schools of the Jewish law and the houses of worship for the adherents of Mosaic forms, and with great power persuading others to a similar renunciation of all opposition to the name of Jesus; and they said, “Is not this he who destroyed them that called on this name in Jerusalem, and came hither, with the very purpose of taking them bound, to the Sanhedrim, forpunishment?” But Saul, each day advancing in the knowledge and faith of the Christian doctrine, soon grew too strong in argument for the most skilful of the defenders of the Jewish faith; and utterly confounded them with his proofs that Jesus was the very Messiah. This triumphant course he followed for a long time; until, at last, the stubborn Jews, provoked to the highest degree by the defeats which they had suffered from this powerful disputant, lately their most zealous defender, took counsel to put him to death, as a renegade from the faith, of which he had been the trusted professor, as well as the commissioned minister of its vengeance on the heretics whose cause he had now espoused, and was defending, to the great injury and discredit of the Judaical order. In contriving the means of executing this scheme, they received the support and assistance of the government of the city,——Damascus being then held, not by the Romans, but by Aretas, a petty king of northern Arabia. The governor appointed by Aretas did not scruple to aid the Jews in their murderous project; but even himself, with a detachment of the city garrison, kept watch at the gates, to kill Saul at his first outgoing. But all their wicked plots were set at nought by a very simple contrivance. The Christian friends of Saul, hearing of the danger, determined to remove him from it at once; and accordingly, one night, put the destined apostle of the Gentiles in a basket; and through the window of some one of their houses, which adjoined the barriers of the city, they let him down outside of the wall, while the spiteful Jews, with the complaisant governor and his detachment of the city guard, were to no purpose watching the gates with unceasing resolution, to wreak their vengeance on this dangerous convert.
Michaelis alludes to the difficulties which have arisen about the possession of Damascus by Aretas, and concludes as follows:
“The force of these objections has been considerably weakened, in a dissertation published in 1755, ‘De ethnarcha Aretae Arabum regis Paulo insidiante,’ by J. G. Heyne, who has shown it to be highly probable, first, that Aretas, against whom the Romans, not long before the death of Tiberius, made a declaration of war, which they neglected to put in execution, took the opportunity of seizing Damascus, which had once belonged to his ancestors; an event omitted in Josephus, as forming no part of the Jewish history, and by the Roman historians as being a matter not flattering in itself, and belonging only to a distant province. Secondly, that Aretas was by religion a Jew,——a circumstance the more credible, when we reflect that Judaism had been widely propagated in that country, and that even kings in Arabia Felix had recognized the law of Moses. * * * And hence we may explain the reason why the Jews were permitted to exercise, in Damascus, persecutions still severer than those in Jerusalem, where the violence of their zeal was awed by the moderation of the Roman policy. Of this we find an example in the ninth chapter of the Acts, where Paul is sent by the high priest to Damascus, to exercise against the Christians, cruelties which the return of the Roman governor had checkedin Judea. These accounts agree likewise with what is related in Josephus, that the number of Jews in Damascus amounted to ten thousand, and that almost all the women, even those whose husbands were heathens, were of the Jewish religion.” (Michaelis, Introduction,Vol. IV.PartI.c. ii.§12.)
HIS RESIDENCE IN ARABIA.On his escape from this murderous plot, Saul, having now received from God, who called him by his grace, the revelation of his Son, that he might preach him among the heathen, immediately resolved not to confer with any mortal, on the subject of his task, and therefore refrained from going up to Jerusalem, to visit those who were apostles before him. Turning his course southeastward, he found refuge from the rage of the Damascan Jews, in the solitudes of the eastern deserts, where, free alike from the persecutions and the corruptions of the city, he sought in meditation and lonely study, that diligent preparation which was necessary for the high ministry to which God had so remarkably called him. A long time was spent by him in this wise and profitable seclusion; but the exact period cannot be ascertained. It is only probable that more than a year was thus occupied; during which he was not a mere hermit, indeed, but at any rate, was a resident in a region destitute of most objects which would be apt to draw off his attention from study. That part of Arabia in which he took refuge, was not a mere desert, nor a wilderness, yet had very few towns, and those only of a small size, with hardly any inhabitants of such a character as to be attractive companions to Saul. After some time, changes having taken place in the government of Damascus, he was enabled to return thither with safety, the Jews being now checked in their persecuting cruelty by the re-establishment of the Roman dominion over that part of Syria. He did not remain there long; but having again displayed himself as a bold assertor of the faith of Jesus, he next set his face towards Jerusalem, on his return, to make known in the halls of those who had sent him forth to deeds of blood, that their commission had been reversed by the Father of all spirits, who had now not only summoned, but fully equipped, their destined minister of wrath, to be “a chosen instrument of mercy” to nations who had never yet heard of Israel’s God.
HIS RESIDENCE IN ARABIA.
On his escape from this murderous plot, Saul, having now received from God, who called him by his grace, the revelation of his Son, that he might preach him among the heathen, immediately resolved not to confer with any mortal, on the subject of his task, and therefore refrained from going up to Jerusalem, to visit those who were apostles before him. Turning his course southeastward, he found refuge from the rage of the Damascan Jews, in the solitudes of the eastern deserts, where, free alike from the persecutions and the corruptions of the city, he sought in meditation and lonely study, that diligent preparation which was necessary for the high ministry to which God had so remarkably called him. A long time was spent by him in this wise and profitable seclusion; but the exact period cannot be ascertained. It is only probable that more than a year was thus occupied; during which he was not a mere hermit, indeed, but at any rate, was a resident in a region destitute of most objects which would be apt to draw off his attention from study. That part of Arabia in which he took refuge, was not a mere desert, nor a wilderness, yet had very few towns, and those only of a small size, with hardly any inhabitants of such a character as to be attractive companions to Saul. After some time, changes having taken place in the government of Damascus, he was enabled to return thither with safety, the Jews being now checked in their persecuting cruelty by the re-establishment of the Roman dominion over that part of Syria. He did not remain there long; but having again displayed himself as a bold assertor of the faith of Jesus, he next set his face towards Jerusalem, on his return, to make known in the halls of those who had sent him forth to deeds of blood, that their commission had been reversed by the Father of all spirits, who had now not only summoned, but fully equipped, their destined minister of wrath, to be “a chosen instrument of mercy” to nations who had never yet heard of Israel’s God.
The different accounts given of these events, in Actsix.19–25, and in Galatiansi.15–24, as well as 2 Corinthiansxi.32–33, have been united in very opposite ways by different commentators, and form the most perplexing passages in the life of Saul. The journey into Arabia, of which he speaks in Galatiansi.17, is supposed by most writers, to have been made during the time when Luke mentions him as occupied in and about Damascus; and it is said that he went thence into Arabiaimmediatelyafter his conversion, before he had preached anywhere; and such writers maintainthat the word “straightway,” or “immediately,” in Actsix.20, (ευθεως,) really means, that it was not until a long time after his conversion that he preached in the synagogues!! Into this remarkable opinion they have been led by the fact, that Saul himself says, (Galatiansi.16,) that when he was called by God to the apostleship, “immediately he conferred not with flesh and blood, nor went up to Jerusalem, but went into Arabia.” All this however, is evidently specified by him only in reference to the point that he did not derive his title to the apostleship from “those that were apostles before him,” nor from any human authority; and full justice is therefore done to his words, by applying them only to the fact, that he went to Arabia before he went to Jerusalem, without supposing them to mean that he left Damascusimmediatelyafter his baptism by Ananias. All the historical writers however, seem to take this latter view. Witsius, Cappel, Pearson, Lardner, Murdock, Hemsen,&c.place his journey to Arabia between his baptism and the time of his escape, and suppose that when he fled from Damascus, he went directly to Jerusalem. In the different arrangement which I make of these events, however, I find myself supported by most of the great exegetical writers, as Wolf, Kuinoel, and Bloomfield; and I can not better support this view than in the words of the latter.
Actsix.19. “ἐγένετο δὲ ὁ Σαῦλος. Paul (Galatians♦i.17,) relates that he, after his conversion, did not proceed to Jerusalem, but repaired to Arabia, and from thence returned to Damascus. Hence, according to the opinion of Pearson, in his Annales Paulini,p.2. the wordsἐγένετο δὲ ὁ Σαῦλοςare to be separated from the preceding passage, and constitute a new story, in which is related what happened at Damascus after Saul’s return from Arabia. But the wordsἱκαναὶ ἡμέραιmay and ought to be referred to the whole time of Paul’s abode at Damascus, before he went into Arabia; and thus with theἱκαναὶ ἡμέραιbe numbered theἡμέραι τινὲςmentioned at verse 19: for the sense of the words is this: ‘Saul, when he spent some days with the Damascene Christians, immediately taught in the synagogues. Now Luke entirely passes by Paul’s journey into Arabia. (Kuinoel.) Doddridge imagines that his going into Arabia, (to which, as he observes, Damascus now belonged,) was only making excursions from that city into the neighboring parts of the country, and perhaps taking a large circuit about it, which might be his employment between the time in which he began to preach in Damascus, and his quitting it after having been conquered by the Romans under Pompey.’ But in view of this subject I cannot agree with him. The country in theneighborhood of Damascusis not properlyArabia.”
♦“1, 17” replaced with “i. 17”
♦“1, 17” replaced with “i. 17”
♦“1, 17” replaced with “i. 17”
22–24. “ὡς δὲ ἐπληροῦντο——ἀνελεῖν αὐτόν. In 2 Corinthiansxi.32, we read that the Ethnarch of Aretas, king of Arabia, had placed a guard at the gates of Damascus, to seize Paul. Now it appears that Syria Damascene was, at the end of the Mithridatic war, reduced by Pompey to the Roman yoke. It has therefore been inquired how it could happen that Aretas should then have the government, and appoint an Ethnarch. That Aretas had, on account of the repudiation of his daughter by Herod Antipas, commenced hostilities against that monarch, and in the last year of Tiberius (A. D. 37,) had completely defeated his army, we learn from Josephus Antiquities,18,5,1.seqq.Herod had, we find, signified this by letter to Tiberius, who, indignant at this audacity, (Josephus L. c.) gave orders to Vitellius, prefect of Syria, to declare war against Aretas, and take him alive, or send him his head. Vitellius made preparations for the war, but on receiving a message acquainting him with the death of Tiberius, he dismissed his troops into winter quarters. And thus Aretas was delivered from the danger. At the time, however, that Vitellius drew off his forces, Aretas invaded Syria, seized Damascus, and continued to occupy it, in spite of Tiberius’s stupid successor, Caligula. This is the opinion of most commentators, and among others, Wolf, Michaelis, and Eichhorn. But I have already shewn in the Prolegomena § de chronologialib.2, 3, that Aretas did not finally subdue Damascus until Vitellius had already departed from the province.” (Kuinoel.) (Bloomfield’s Annotations,Vol. IV.pp.322–324.)
HIS RETURN TO JERUSALEM.Arriving in the city, whence only three years before he had set out, in a frame of mind so different from that in which he returned, and with a purpose so opposite to his present views and plans,——he immediately, with all the confidence of Christian faith, and ardentlove for those to whom his religious sympathies now so closely fastened him, assayed to mingle in a familiar and friendly manner with the apostolic company, and offered himself to their Christian fellowship as a devout believer in Jesus. But they, already having too well known him in his previous character as the persecutor of their brethren, the aider and abettor in the murder of the heroic and innocent Stephen, and the greatest enemy of the faithful,——very decidedly repulsed his advances, as only a new trick to involve them in difficulties, that would make them liable to punishment which their prudence had before enabled them to escape. They therefore altogether refused to receive Saul; for “they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple.” In this disagreeable condition,——cast out as a hypocrite, by the apostles of that faith, for which he had sacrificed all earthly prospects,——he was fortunately found by Barnabas, who being, like Saul, a Hellenist Jew, naturally felt some especial sympathy with one whose country was within a few miles of his own; and by this circumstance, being induced to notice the professed convert, soon recognized in him, the indubitable signs of a regenerated and sanctified spirit, and therefore brought him to the chief apostles, Peter, and James, the Lord’s brother; for with these alone did Saul commune, at this visit, as he himself distinctly testifies. Still avoiding the company of the great mass of the apostles and disciples, he confined himself almost wholly to the acquaintance of Peter, with whom he abode in close familiarity for fifteen days. In order to reconcile the narrative of Luke in the Acts, with the account given by Saul himself, in the first chapter of the epistle to the Galatians, it must be understood that the “apostles” spoken of by the former are only the two above-mentioned, and it was with these only that he “went in and out at Jerusalem,”——the other apostles being probably absent on some missionary duties among the new churches throughout Judea and Palestine. Imitating the spirit of the proto-martyr, whose death he had himself been instrumental in effecting, “he spoke boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus, and disputed against the Hellenists,” doubtless the very same persons among whom he himself had formerly been enrolled as an unshrinking opposer of that faith which he was now advocating. By them he was received with all that vindictive hate which might have been expected; and he was at once denounced as a vile renegade from the cause which in his best days he had maintained as the only right one. Toshow most satisfactorily that, though he might change, they had not done so, they directly resolved to punish the bold disowner of the faith of his fathers, and would soon have crowned him with the fate of Stephen, had not the disciples heard of the danger which threatened the life of their new brother, and provided for his escape by means not less efficient than those before used in his behalf, at Damascus. Before the plans for his destruction could be completed, they privately withdrew him from Jerusalem, and had him safely conducted down to Caesarea, on the coast, whence, with little delay, he was shipped for some of the northern parts of Syria, from which he found his way to Tarsus,——whether by land or sea, is unknown.HIS VISIT TO TARSUS.This return to his native city was probably the first visit which he had made to it, since the day when he departed from his father’s house, to go to Jerusalem as a student of Jewish theology. It must therefore have been the occasion of many interesting reflections and reminiscences. What changes had the events of that interval wrought in him,——in his faith, his hopes, his views, his purposes for life and for death! The objects which were then to him as idols,——the aims and ends of his being,——had now no place in his reverence or his affection; but in their stead was now placed a name and a theme, of which he could hardly have heard before he first left Tarsus,——and a cause whose triumph would be the overthrow of all those traditions of the Fathers, of which he had been taught to be so exceeding zealous. To this new cause he now devoted himself, and probably at this time labored “in the regions of Cilicia,” until a new apostolic summons called him to a distant field. He was yet “personally unknown to the churches of Judea, which were in Christ; and they had only heard, that he who persecuted them in times past, now preached the faith which once he destroyed; they therefore glorified God on his account.” The very beginnings of his apostolic duties were therefore in a foreign field, and not within the original premises of the lost sheep of the house of Israel, where indeed he was not even known but by fame, except to a few in Jerusalem. In this he showed the great scope and direction of his future labors,——among the Gentiles, not among the Jews; leaving the latter to the sole care of the original apostles, while he turned to a vast field for which they were in no way fitted, by nature, or by apostolic education, nor were destined in the great scheme of salvation.HIS APOSTOLIC LABORS IN ANTIOCH.During this retirement of Saul to his native home, the first great call of the Gentiles had been made through the summons of Simon Peter to Cornelius. There was manifest wisdom in this arrangement of events. Though the original apostles were plainly never intended, by providence, to labor to any great extent in the Gentile field, yet it was most manifestly proper that the first opening of this new field should be made by those directly and personally commissioned by Jesus himself, and who, from having enjoyed his bodily presence for so long a time, would be considered best qualified to judge of the propriety of a movement so novel and unprecedented in its character. The great apostolic chief was therefore made the first minister of grace to the Gentiles; and the violent opposition with which this innovation on Judaical sanctity was received by the more bigoted, could of course be much more efficiently met, and disarmed, by the apostle specially commissioned as the keeper of the keys of the heavenly kingdom, than by one who had been but lately a persecutor of the faithful, and who, by his birth and partial education in a Grecian city, had acquired such a familiarity with Gentile usages, as to be reasonably liable to suspicion, in regard to an innovation which so remarkably favored them. This great movement having been thus made by the highest Christian authority on earth,——and the controversy immediately resulting having been thus decided,——the way was now fully open for the complete extension of the gospel to the heathen, and Saul was therefore immediately called, in providence, from his retirement, to take up the work of evangelizing Syria, which had already been partially begun at Antioch, by some of the Hellenistic refugees from the persecution at the time of Stephen’s martyrdom. The apostles at Jerusalem, hearing of the success which attended these incidental efforts, dispatched their trusty brother Barnabas, to confirm the good work, under the direct commission of apostolic authority. He, having come to Antioch, rejoiced his heart with the sight of the success which had crowned the work of those who, in the midst of the personal distress of a malignant persecution, that had driven them from Jerusalem, had there sown a seed that was already bringing forth glorious fruits. Perceiving the immense importance of the field there opened, he immediately felt the want of some person of different qualifications from the original apostles, and one whose education and habits would fit him not only tolabor among the professors of the Jewish faith, but also to communicate the doctrines of Christ to the Grecians. In this crisis he bethought himself of the wonderful young convert with whom he had become acquainted, under such remarkable circumstances, a few years before, in Jerusalem,——whose daring zeal and masterly learning had been so signally manifested among the Hellenists, with whom he had formerly been associated as an equally active persecutor. Inspired both by considerations of personal regard, and by wise convictions of the peculiar fitness of this zealous disciple for the field now opened in Syria, Barnabas immediately left his apostolic charge at Antioch, and went over to Tarsus, to invite Saul to this great labor. The journey was but a short one, the distance by water being not more than one hundred miles, and by land, around through the “Syrian gates,” about one hundred and fifty. He therefore soon arrived at Saul’s home, and found him ready and willing to undertake the proposed apostolic duty. They immediately returned together to Antioch, and earnestly devoted themselves to their interesting labors.
HIS RETURN TO JERUSALEM.
Arriving in the city, whence only three years before he had set out, in a frame of mind so different from that in which he returned, and with a purpose so opposite to his present views and plans,——he immediately, with all the confidence of Christian faith, and ardentlove for those to whom his religious sympathies now so closely fastened him, assayed to mingle in a familiar and friendly manner with the apostolic company, and offered himself to their Christian fellowship as a devout believer in Jesus. But they, already having too well known him in his previous character as the persecutor of their brethren, the aider and abettor in the murder of the heroic and innocent Stephen, and the greatest enemy of the faithful,——very decidedly repulsed his advances, as only a new trick to involve them in difficulties, that would make them liable to punishment which their prudence had before enabled them to escape. They therefore altogether refused to receive Saul; for “they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple.” In this disagreeable condition,——cast out as a hypocrite, by the apostles of that faith, for which he had sacrificed all earthly prospects,——he was fortunately found by Barnabas, who being, like Saul, a Hellenist Jew, naturally felt some especial sympathy with one whose country was within a few miles of his own; and by this circumstance, being induced to notice the professed convert, soon recognized in him, the indubitable signs of a regenerated and sanctified spirit, and therefore brought him to the chief apostles, Peter, and James, the Lord’s brother; for with these alone did Saul commune, at this visit, as he himself distinctly testifies. Still avoiding the company of the great mass of the apostles and disciples, he confined himself almost wholly to the acquaintance of Peter, with whom he abode in close familiarity for fifteen days. In order to reconcile the narrative of Luke in the Acts, with the account given by Saul himself, in the first chapter of the epistle to the Galatians, it must be understood that the “apostles” spoken of by the former are only the two above-mentioned, and it was with these only that he “went in and out at Jerusalem,”——the other apostles being probably absent on some missionary duties among the new churches throughout Judea and Palestine. Imitating the spirit of the proto-martyr, whose death he had himself been instrumental in effecting, “he spoke boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus, and disputed against the Hellenists,” doubtless the very same persons among whom he himself had formerly been enrolled as an unshrinking opposer of that faith which he was now advocating. By them he was received with all that vindictive hate which might have been expected; and he was at once denounced as a vile renegade from the cause which in his best days he had maintained as the only right one. Toshow most satisfactorily that, though he might change, they had not done so, they directly resolved to punish the bold disowner of the faith of his fathers, and would soon have crowned him with the fate of Stephen, had not the disciples heard of the danger which threatened the life of their new brother, and provided for his escape by means not less efficient than those before used in his behalf, at Damascus. Before the plans for his destruction could be completed, they privately withdrew him from Jerusalem, and had him safely conducted down to Caesarea, on the coast, whence, with little delay, he was shipped for some of the northern parts of Syria, from which he found his way to Tarsus,——whether by land or sea, is unknown.
HIS VISIT TO TARSUS.
This return to his native city was probably the first visit which he had made to it, since the day when he departed from his father’s house, to go to Jerusalem as a student of Jewish theology. It must therefore have been the occasion of many interesting reflections and reminiscences. What changes had the events of that interval wrought in him,——in his faith, his hopes, his views, his purposes for life and for death! The objects which were then to him as idols,——the aims and ends of his being,——had now no place in his reverence or his affection; but in their stead was now placed a name and a theme, of which he could hardly have heard before he first left Tarsus,——and a cause whose triumph would be the overthrow of all those traditions of the Fathers, of which he had been taught to be so exceeding zealous. To this new cause he now devoted himself, and probably at this time labored “in the regions of Cilicia,” until a new apostolic summons called him to a distant field. He was yet “personally unknown to the churches of Judea, which were in Christ; and they had only heard, that he who persecuted them in times past, now preached the faith which once he destroyed; they therefore glorified God on his account.” The very beginnings of his apostolic duties were therefore in a foreign field, and not within the original premises of the lost sheep of the house of Israel, where indeed he was not even known but by fame, except to a few in Jerusalem. In this he showed the great scope and direction of his future labors,——among the Gentiles, not among the Jews; leaving the latter to the sole care of the original apostles, while he turned to a vast field for which they were in no way fitted, by nature, or by apostolic education, nor were destined in the great scheme of salvation.
HIS APOSTOLIC LABORS IN ANTIOCH.
During this retirement of Saul to his native home, the first great call of the Gentiles had been made through the summons of Simon Peter to Cornelius. There was manifest wisdom in this arrangement of events. Though the original apostles were plainly never intended, by providence, to labor to any great extent in the Gentile field, yet it was most manifestly proper that the first opening of this new field should be made by those directly and personally commissioned by Jesus himself, and who, from having enjoyed his bodily presence for so long a time, would be considered best qualified to judge of the propriety of a movement so novel and unprecedented in its character. The great apostolic chief was therefore made the first minister of grace to the Gentiles; and the violent opposition with which this innovation on Judaical sanctity was received by the more bigoted, could of course be much more efficiently met, and disarmed, by the apostle specially commissioned as the keeper of the keys of the heavenly kingdom, than by one who had been but lately a persecutor of the faithful, and who, by his birth and partial education in a Grecian city, had acquired such a familiarity with Gentile usages, as to be reasonably liable to suspicion, in regard to an innovation which so remarkably favored them. This great movement having been thus made by the highest Christian authority on earth,——and the controversy immediately resulting having been thus decided,——the way was now fully open for the complete extension of the gospel to the heathen, and Saul was therefore immediately called, in providence, from his retirement, to take up the work of evangelizing Syria, which had already been partially begun at Antioch, by some of the Hellenistic refugees from the persecution at the time of Stephen’s martyrdom. The apostles at Jerusalem, hearing of the success which attended these incidental efforts, dispatched their trusty brother Barnabas, to confirm the good work, under the direct commission of apostolic authority. He, having come to Antioch, rejoiced his heart with the sight of the success which had crowned the work of those who, in the midst of the personal distress of a malignant persecution, that had driven them from Jerusalem, had there sown a seed that was already bringing forth glorious fruits. Perceiving the immense importance of the field there opened, he immediately felt the want of some person of different qualifications from the original apostles, and one whose education and habits would fit him not only tolabor among the professors of the Jewish faith, but also to communicate the doctrines of Christ to the Grecians. In this crisis he bethought himself of the wonderful young convert with whom he had become acquainted, under such remarkable circumstances, a few years before, in Jerusalem,——whose daring zeal and masterly learning had been so signally manifested among the Hellenists, with whom he had formerly been associated as an equally active persecutor. Inspired both by considerations of personal regard, and by wise convictions of the peculiar fitness of this zealous disciple for the field now opened in Syria, Barnabas immediately left his apostolic charge at Antioch, and went over to Tarsus, to invite Saul to this great labor. The journey was but a short one, the distance by water being not more than one hundred miles, and by land, around through the “Syrian gates,” about one hundred and fifty. He therefore soon arrived at Saul’s home, and found him ready and willing to undertake the proposed apostolic duty. They immediately returned together to Antioch, and earnestly devoted themselves to their interesting labors.
“Antioch, the metropolis of Syria, was built, according to some authors, by Antiochus Epiphanes; others affirm, by Seleucus Nicanor, the first king of Syria after Alexander the Great, in memory of his father Antiochus, and was the ‘royal seat of the kings of Syria.’ For power and dignity, Strabo, (lib. xvi.p.517,) says it was not much inferior to Seleucia, or Alexandria. Josephus, (lib. iii.cap. 3,) says, it was the third great city of all that belonged to the Roman provinces. It was frequently called Antiochia Epidaphne, from its neighborhood to Daphne, a village where the temple of Daphne stood, to distinguish it from other fourteen of the same name mentioned by Stephanus de Urbibus, and by Eustathius in Dionysiusp.170; or as Appianus (in Syriacis,) and others, sixteen cities in Syria, and elsewhere, which bore that name. It was celebrated among the Jews for ‘Jus civitatis,’ which Seleucus Nicanor had given them in that city with the Grecians and Macedonians, and which, says Josephus, they still retain, Antiquities,lib. xii.cap. 13; and for the wars of the Maccabeans with those kings. Among Christians, for being the place where they first received that name, and where Saul and Barnabas began their apostolic labors together. In the flourishing times of the Roman empire, it was the ordinary residence of the prefect or governor of the eastern provinces, and also honored with the residence of many of the Roman emperors, especially of Verus and Valens, who spent here the greatest part of their time. It lay on both sides of the river Orontes, about twelve miles from the Mediterranean sea.” (Wells’s Geography New Testament——Whitby’s Table.) (J. M. Williams’s Notes on Pearson’sAnnales Paulinae.)
Having arrived at Antioch, Saul gave himself, with Barnabas, zealously to the work for which he had been summoned, and labored among the people to good purpose, assembling the church and imparting to all that would hear, the knowledge of the Christian doctrine. Under these active exertions the professors of the faith of Jesus became so numerous and so generally known in Antioch, that the heathen inhabitants found it convenient to designate them by a distinct appellation, which they derived fromthe great founder and object of their religion,——calling themChristians, because the heathen inhabitants of Syria were not acquainted with the terms, “Nazarene” and “Galilean,” which had been applied to the followers of Christ by the Jews, partly from the places where they first appeared, and partly in opprobium for their low provincial origin.
Having arrived at Antioch, Saul gave himself, with Barnabas, zealously to the work for which he had been summoned, and labored among the people to good purpose, assembling the church and imparting to all that would hear, the knowledge of the Christian doctrine. Under these active exertions the professors of the faith of Jesus became so numerous and so generally known in Antioch, that the heathen inhabitants found it convenient to designate them by a distinct appellation, which they derived fromthe great founder and object of their religion,——calling themChristians, because the heathen inhabitants of Syria were not acquainted with the terms, “Nazarene” and “Galilean,” which had been applied to the followers of Christ by the Jews, partly from the places where they first appeared, and partly in opprobium for their low provincial origin.
The name now first created by the Syrians to distinguish the sect, is remarkable, because being derived from a Greek word,Christos, it has a Latin adjective termination, Christianus, and is therefore incontestably shown to have been applied by the Roman inhabitants of Antioch; for no Grecian would ever have been guilty of such a barbarism, in the derivation of one word from another in his own language. The proper Greek form of the derivation would have beenChristicos, orChristenos, and the substantive would have been, not Christianity, butChristicism, orChristenism,——a word so awkward in sound, however, that it is very well for all Christendom, that the Roman barbarism took the place of the pure Greek termination. And since the Latin form of the first derivative has prevailed, and Christianthus been made the name of “a believer in Christ,” it is evident to any classical scholar, that Christianityis the only proper form of the substantive secondarily derived. For though the appending of a Latin termination upon a Greek word, as in the case of Christianus, was unquestionably a blunder and a barbarism in the first place, it yet can not compare, for absurdity, with the notion of deriving from this Latin form, the substantive Christianismus, with a Greek termination foolishly pinned to a Latin one,——a folly of which the French are nevertheless guilty. The error, of course, can not now be corrected in that language; but those who stupidly copy the barbarism from them, and try to introduce the monstrous word, ChristianISM, into English, deserve the reprobation of every man of taste.
“Before this they were called ‘disciples,’ as in this place——‘believers,’ Actsv.14——‘men of the church,’ Actsxii.1——‘men of the way,’ Actsix.2——‘the saints,’ Actsix.13——‘those that called on the name of Christ,’ verse 14——and by their enemies, Nazarenes and Galileans, and ‘men of the sect;’——but now, by the conversion of so many heathens, both in Caesarea and Antioch, the believing Jews and Gentiles being made all one church, this new name was given them, as more expressive of their common relation to their Master, Christ. Whitby slightly alludes to the prophecy, Isaiahlxv.” (J. M. Williams’s Notes on Pearson.)
While Saul was thus effectually laboring in Antioch, there came down to that city, from Jerusalem, certain persons, indued with the spirit of prophecy, among whom was one, named Agabus, who, under the influence of inspiration, made known that there would be a great famine throughout the world;——a prediction which was verified by the actual occurrence of this calamity in the days of Claudius Caesar, during whose reign,——as appears on the impartial testimony of the historians of those times, both Roman and Jewish,——the Roman empire suffered at different periods in all its parts, from the capital to Jerusalem,——and at this latter city, more especially, in the sixth year of Claudius, (A. D. 46,) as is testified by Josephus, who narrates very particularly some circumstances connected with the prevalence of this famine in Jerusalem. The disciples at Antioch, availing themselves of this information, determined to send relief to their brethren in Judea, before the famine should come on; and having contributed,each one according to his ability, they made Barnabas and Saul the messengers of their charity, who were accordingly dispatched to Jerusalem, on this noble errand. They remained in Jerusalem through the period of Agrippa’s attack upon the apostles by murdering James, and imprisoning Peter; but they do not seem to have been any way immediately concerned in these events; and when Peter had escaped, they returned to Antioch. How long they remained here, is not recorded; but the date of subsequent events seems to imply that it was a space of some years, during which they labored at Antioch in company with several other eminent prophets and teachers, of whom are mentioned Simeon, who had the Roman surname of Niger, Lucius, the Cyrenian, and Manaen, a foster-brother of Herod the tetrarch. During their common ministrations, at a season of fasting, they received a direction from the spirit of truth which guided them, to set apart Saul and Barnabas for the special work to which the Lord had called them. This work was of course understood to be that for which Saul in particular, had, at his conversion, been so remarkably commissioned,——“to open the eyes of theGentiles,——to turn them from darkness to light, and from the dominion of Satan to God.” His brethren in the ministry therefore, understanding at once the nature and object of the summons, now specially consecrated both him and Barnabas for their missionary work; and after fasting and praying, they invoked on them the blessing of God, in the usual oriental form of laying their hands on them, and then bade them farewell.
While Saul was thus effectually laboring in Antioch, there came down to that city, from Jerusalem, certain persons, indued with the spirit of prophecy, among whom was one, named Agabus, who, under the influence of inspiration, made known that there would be a great famine throughout the world;——a prediction which was verified by the actual occurrence of this calamity in the days of Claudius Caesar, during whose reign,——as appears on the impartial testimony of the historians of those times, both Roman and Jewish,——the Roman empire suffered at different periods in all its parts, from the capital to Jerusalem,——and at this latter city, more especially, in the sixth year of Claudius, (A. D. 46,) as is testified by Josephus, who narrates very particularly some circumstances connected with the prevalence of this famine in Jerusalem. The disciples at Antioch, availing themselves of this information, determined to send relief to their brethren in Judea, before the famine should come on; and having contributed,each one according to his ability, they made Barnabas and Saul the messengers of their charity, who were accordingly dispatched to Jerusalem, on this noble errand. They remained in Jerusalem through the period of Agrippa’s attack upon the apostles by murdering James, and imprisoning Peter; but they do not seem to have been any way immediately concerned in these events; and when Peter had escaped, they returned to Antioch. How long they remained here, is not recorded; but the date of subsequent events seems to imply that it was a space of some years, during which they labored at Antioch in company with several other eminent prophets and teachers, of whom are mentioned Simeon, who had the Roman surname of Niger, Lucius, the Cyrenian, and Manaen, a foster-brother of Herod the tetrarch. During their common ministrations, at a season of fasting, they received a direction from the spirit of truth which guided them, to set apart Saul and Barnabas for the special work to which the Lord had called them. This work was of course understood to be that for which Saul in particular, had, at his conversion, been so remarkably commissioned,——“to open the eyes of theGentiles,——to turn them from darkness to light, and from the dominion of Satan to God.” His brethren in the ministry therefore, understanding at once the nature and object of the summons, now specially consecrated both him and Barnabas for their missionary work; and after fasting and praying, they invoked on them the blessing of God, in the usual oriental form of laying their hands on them, and then bade them farewell.
“That this famine was felt chiefly in Judea may be conjectured with great reason from the nature of the context, for we find that the disciples are resolving to send relief to the elders in Judea; consequently they must have understood that those in Judea would suffer more than themselves. Josephus declared that this famine raged so much there,πολλῶν ὑπό ἐνδείας ἀναλωμάτων φθειρομένων, ‘so that many perished for want of victuals.’”
“‘Throughout the whole world,’πᾶσαν τὴν οἰκουμένην, is first to be understood,orbis terrarum habitabilis: Demosthenes in Corona, Æschines contra Ctesiphon Scapula. Then the Roman and other empires were styledοικουμένη, ‘the world.’ Thus Isaiahxiv.17, 26, the counsel of God against the empire of Babylon, is called his counsel,ἐπὶ τὴν ὅλην οἰκουμένην, ‘against all the earth.’——(Elsley, Whitby.) Accordingly Eusebius says of this famine, that it oppressed almost the wholeempire. And as for the truth of the prophecy, this dearth is recorded by historians most averse to our religion,viz., by Suetonius in the life of Claudius, chapter 18, who informs us that it happened ‘ob assiduas sterilitates;’ and Dion Cassius Historylib. lx.p.146, that it wasλιμὸς ἰσχυρὸς, ‘a very great famine.’ Whitby’s Annotations, Doddridge enumerates nine famines in various years, and parts of the empire, in the reign of Claudius; but the first was the most severe, and affected particularly Judea, and is that here meant.” (J. M. Williams’s notes on Pearson.)
HIS FIRST APOSTOLIC MISSION.Going from Antioch directly eastward to the sea, they came toSeleucia, the nearest port, only twelve miles from Antioch, and there embarked for the island of Cyprus, the eastern end of which is not more than eighty miles from the coast of Syria. The circumstance that more particularly directed them first to this island, was probably that it was the native home of Barnabas, and with this region therefore he would feel so much acquainted as to know its peculiar wants, and the facilities which it afforded for the advancement of the Christian cause; and he would also know where he might look for the most favorable reception. Landing at Salamis, on the south-eastern part of the island, they first preached in the synagogues of the Jews, who were very numerous in Cyprus, and constituted so large a part of the population of the island, that some years afterwards they attempted to get complete possession of it, and were put down only by the massacre of many thousands. Directing their efforts first to these wandering sheep of the house of Israel, the apostles everywhere preached the gospel in the synagogues, never forsaking the Jews for the Gentiles, until they had been driven away by insult and injury, that thus the ruin of their nation might lie, not upon the apostles, but upon them only, for their rejection of the repeated offers of salvation. Here, it would seem, they were joined by John Mark, the nephew of Barnabas, who was probably staying upon the island at that time, and who now accompanied them as an assistant in their apostolic ministry. Traversing the whole island from east to west, they came to Paphos, a splendid city near the western end, famed for the magnificent temple and lascivious worship of the Paphian Venus, a deity to whom all Cyprus was consecrated; and from it she derived one of her numerous appellatives,Cyprisbeing a name under which she was frequently worshipped; and the females of the island generally, were so completely devoted to her service, not merely in temple-worship, but in life and manners, that throughout the world, the nameCyprian woman, even to this day, is but a polite expression for one abandoned to wantonness and pleasure. The worship of this lascivious goddess, the apostles now came to exterminate, and to plant in its stead the dominion of a faith, whose essence is purity of heart and action. At this place, preaching the gospel with openness, they soon attracted such general notice, that the report of their remarkable character soon reached the ears of the proconsul of Cyprus, then resident in Paphos. This great Roman governor, by name Sergius Paulus, was a man of intelligence andprobity, and hearing of the apostles, soon summoned them to his presence, that he might have the satisfaction of hearing from them, in his own hall, a full exposition of the doctrine which they called the word of God. This they did with such energy and efficiency, that they won his attention and regard; and he was about to profess his faith in Jesus, when a new obstacle to the success of the gospel was presented in the conduct of one of those present at the discourse. This was an impostor, called Elymas,——a name which seems to be a Greek form of the Oriental “Alim” meaning “a magician,”——who had, by his tricks, gained a great renown throughout that region, and was received into high favor by the proconsul himself, with whom he was then staying. The rogue, apprehending the nature of the doctrines taught by the apostles to be no way agreeable to the schemes of self-advancement which he was so successfully pursuing, was not a little alarmed when he saw that they were taking hold of the mind of the proconsul, and therefore undertook to resist the preaching of the apostles; and attempted to argue the noble convert into a contempt of these new teachers. At this, Saul, (now first called Paul,) fixing his eyes on the miserable impostor, in a burst of inspired indignation, denounced on him an awful punishment for his resistance of the truth. “O, full of all guile and all tricks! son of the devil! enemy of all honesty! wilt thou not stop perverting the ways of the Lord? And now, lo! the hand of the Lord is on thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a time.” And immediately there fell on him a mist and a darkness; and turning around, he sought some persons to lead him by the hand. At the sight of this manifest and appalling miracle, thus following the denunciation of the apostle, the proconsul was so struck, that he no longer delayed for a moment his profession of faith in the religion whose power was thus attested, but believed in the doctrine of Jesus, as communicated by his apostles.
HIS FIRST APOSTOLIC MISSION.
Going from Antioch directly eastward to the sea, they came toSeleucia, the nearest port, only twelve miles from Antioch, and there embarked for the island of Cyprus, the eastern end of which is not more than eighty miles from the coast of Syria. The circumstance that more particularly directed them first to this island, was probably that it was the native home of Barnabas, and with this region therefore he would feel so much acquainted as to know its peculiar wants, and the facilities which it afforded for the advancement of the Christian cause; and he would also know where he might look for the most favorable reception. Landing at Salamis, on the south-eastern part of the island, they first preached in the synagogues of the Jews, who were very numerous in Cyprus, and constituted so large a part of the population of the island, that some years afterwards they attempted to get complete possession of it, and were put down only by the massacre of many thousands. Directing their efforts first to these wandering sheep of the house of Israel, the apostles everywhere preached the gospel in the synagogues, never forsaking the Jews for the Gentiles, until they had been driven away by insult and injury, that thus the ruin of their nation might lie, not upon the apostles, but upon them only, for their rejection of the repeated offers of salvation. Here, it would seem, they were joined by John Mark, the nephew of Barnabas, who was probably staying upon the island at that time, and who now accompanied them as an assistant in their apostolic ministry. Traversing the whole island from east to west, they came to Paphos, a splendid city near the western end, famed for the magnificent temple and lascivious worship of the Paphian Venus, a deity to whom all Cyprus was consecrated; and from it she derived one of her numerous appellatives,Cyprisbeing a name under which she was frequently worshipped; and the females of the island generally, were so completely devoted to her service, not merely in temple-worship, but in life and manners, that throughout the world, the nameCyprian woman, even to this day, is but a polite expression for one abandoned to wantonness and pleasure. The worship of this lascivious goddess, the apostles now came to exterminate, and to plant in its stead the dominion of a faith, whose essence is purity of heart and action. At this place, preaching the gospel with openness, they soon attracted such general notice, that the report of their remarkable character soon reached the ears of the proconsul of Cyprus, then resident in Paphos. This great Roman governor, by name Sergius Paulus, was a man of intelligence andprobity, and hearing of the apostles, soon summoned them to his presence, that he might have the satisfaction of hearing from them, in his own hall, a full exposition of the doctrine which they called the word of God. This they did with such energy and efficiency, that they won his attention and regard; and he was about to profess his faith in Jesus, when a new obstacle to the success of the gospel was presented in the conduct of one of those present at the discourse. This was an impostor, called Elymas,——a name which seems to be a Greek form of the Oriental “Alim” meaning “a magician,”——who had, by his tricks, gained a great renown throughout that region, and was received into high favor by the proconsul himself, with whom he was then staying. The rogue, apprehending the nature of the doctrines taught by the apostles to be no way agreeable to the schemes of self-advancement which he was so successfully pursuing, was not a little alarmed when he saw that they were taking hold of the mind of the proconsul, and therefore undertook to resist the preaching of the apostles; and attempted to argue the noble convert into a contempt of these new teachers. At this, Saul, (now first called Paul,) fixing his eyes on the miserable impostor, in a burst of inspired indignation, denounced on him an awful punishment for his resistance of the truth. “O, full of all guile and all tricks! son of the devil! enemy of all honesty! wilt thou not stop perverting the ways of the Lord? And now, lo! the hand of the Lord is on thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a time.” And immediately there fell on him a mist and a darkness; and turning around, he sought some persons to lead him by the hand. At the sight of this manifest and appalling miracle, thus following the denunciation of the apostle, the proconsul was so struck, that he no longer delayed for a moment his profession of faith in the religion whose power was thus attested, but believed in the doctrine of Jesus, as communicated by his apostles.
“Seleuciawas a little north-west of Antioch, upon the Mediterranean sea, named from its founder, Seleucus.——Cyprus, so called from the flower of the Cypress-trees growing there.——Pliny,lib. xii.cap.24.——Eustathius. In Dionysiusp.110. It was an island, having on the east the Syrian, on the west the Pamphylian, on the south the Phoenician, on the north the Cilician sea. It was celebrated among the heathens for its fertility as being sufficiently provided with all things within itself. Strabo,lib. xiv.468, 469. It was very infamous for the worship of Venus, who had thence her nameΚύπρις. It was memorable among the Jews as being an island in which they so much abounded; and among Christians for being the place where Joses, called Barnabas, had the land he sold, Actsiv.36; and where Mnason, an old disciple, lived; Actsxxi.16.——(Whitby’s Table.) Salamis was once a famous city of Cyprus, opposite to Seleucia, on the Syrian coast.——(Wells.) It was in the easternpart of Cyprus. It was famous among the Greek writers for the story of the Dragon killed by Chycreas, their king; and for the death of Anaxarchus, whom Nicocreon, the tyrant of that island, pounded to death with iron pestles.”——(Bochart, Canaan,lib. i.c.2——Laert,lib. ix.p.579.) Williams’s Pearson.
Proconsul.——The Greek titleΑνθυπατος, was applied only to those governors of provinces who were invested withproconsulardignity. ‘And on the supposition that Cyprus was not a province of this description, it has been inferred that the title given to Sergius Paulus in this place, was a title that did not properly belong to him. A passage has indeed been quoted from Dion Cassius, (History of Rome,lib. liv.p.523, edited by Hanoviae, 1690,) who, speaking of the governors of Cyprus and some other Roman provinces, applies to them the same title which is applied to Sergius Paulus. But, as Dion Cassius is speaking of several Roman provinces at the same time, one of which was certainly governed by a proconsul, it has been supposed, that for the sake of brevity, he used one term for all of them, whether it applied to all of them or not. That Cyprus, however, ought to be excluded, and that the title which he employed, as well asSt.Luke, reallydidbelong to the Roman governors of Cyprus, appears from the inscription on a coin belonging to Cyprus itself. It belonged to the people of that island as appears from the wordΚΥΠΡΙΩΝon the reverse: and, though not struck while Sergius Paulus himself was governor, it was struck, as appears from the inscription on the reverse, in the time of Proclus, who was next to Sergius Paulus in the government of Cyprus. And, on this coin the same titleΑΝΘΥΠΑΤΟΣ, is given to Proclus, whichSt.Luke gives Sergius Paulus.’ (Bishop Marsh’s Lecture partv.pp.85, 86.) That Cyprus was a proconsulate, is also evident♦from an ancient inscription of Caligula’s reign, in which Aquius Scaura is called the proconsul of Cyprus. (Gruteri Corpus Inscriptionem,tom. i.partii.p, cccix.No.3, edited by Graevii Amsterdam, 1707.) Horne’s Introd.