Perhaps Peter saw at first no difficulty[11.29]in this; but on his return to Jerusalem he was severely reproached for it. He had openly violated the law, he had gone in among the uncircumcised and had eaten with them. The question was an important one; it was no other than whether the law were abolished, whether it was permissible to violate it in proselytism, whether Gentiles could be received on an equal footing into the Church. Peter, to defend himself, related the vision he had at Joppa. Subsequently the fact of the centurion served as an argument in the great question of the baptism of the uncircumcised. To give it more force it was supposed that each phase of this important business had been marked by a revelation from Heaven. It was related that after long prayers Cornelius had seen anangel who ordered him to go and inquire for Peter at Joppa; that the symbolical vision of Peter took place at the very hour of the arrival of the messengers from Cornelius; that, moreover, God had taken it upon Himself to legitimize all that had been done, seeing that the Holy Ghost had descended upon Cornelius and upon his household, the latter having spoken strange tongues and sung psalms after the fashion of the other believers. Was it natural to refuse baptism to persons who had received the Holy Ghost?
The Church of Jerusalem was still exclusively composed of Jews and of proselytes. The Holy Ghost being shed upon the uncircumcised before baptism, appeared an extraordinary fact. It is probable that there existed thenceforth a party opposed in principle to the admission of Gentiles, and that every one did not accept the explanations of Peter. The author of theActs[11.30]would have it that the approbation was unanimous. But in a few years we shall see the question revived with much greater intensity.[11.31]The fact of the good centurion was, perhaps, like that of the Ethiopian eunuch, accepted as an exceptional one, justified by a revelation and an express order from God. The matter was far from being settled. This was the first controversy in the bosom of the Church; the paradise of interior peace had lasted six or seven years.
About the year 40, the great question on which hung all the future of Christianity appears thus to have been propounded. Peter and Philip took a very just view of the true solution, and baptized pagans. It is difficult, no doubt, in the two accounts given us by the author of theActson this subject, and which arepartly sketched one from the other, not to recognise a system. The author of theActsbelongs to a party of conciliation, favorable to the introduction of pagans into the Church, and who is not willing to confess the violence of the divisions to which the affair gave rise. One feels strongly that in writing the episodes of the eunuch, of the centurion, and even of the conversion of the Samaritans, this author means not only to narrate facts, but seeks especially precedents for an opinion. On the other hand, we cannot admit that he invents the facts which he narrates. The conversions of the eunuch of Candace, and of the centurion Cornelius, are probably real facts, presented and transformed according to the needs of the thesis in view of which the book of the Acts was composed.
Paul, who was destined, some ten or eleven years later, to give to this discussion so decisive a bearing, had not yet meddled with it. He was in the Hauran, or at Damascus, preaching, refuting the Jews, placing at the service of the new faith as much ardor as he had shown in fighting against it. The fanaticism, of which he had been the instrument, was not long in pursuing him in his turn. The Jews resolved to destroy him. They obtained from the ethnarch, who governed Damascus in the name of Hârath, an order to arrest him. Paul hid himself. It was known that he had to leave the city; the ethnarch, who wanted to please the Jews, placed detachments at the gates to seize his person; but the brethren enabled him to escape by night, letting him down in a basket from the window of a house which overhung the ramparts.[11.32]
Having escaped this danger, Paul turned his eyes towards Jerusalem. He had been a Christian for three years,[11.33]and had not yet seen the apostles. His rigid, unyielding character, prone to isolation, had made him at first turn his back as it were upon the great family into which he had just entered in spite of himself, and prefer for his first apostolate a new country, in which he would find no colleague. There was awakened in him, however, a desire to see Peter.[11.34]He recognised his authority, and designated him, as every one did, by the name ofCephas, “the stone.” He repaired then to Jerusalem, taking the same road, but in an opposite direction to that he had traversed three years before in a state of mind so different.
His position at Jerusalem was extremely false and embarrassing. It had been understood there, no doubt, that the persecutor had become the most zealous of evangelists, and the first defender of the faith which he had formerly sought to destroy.[11.35]But there remained great prejudices against him. Many feared some horrible plot on his part. They had seen him so enraged, so cruel, so zealous in entering houses and rending open family secrets in order to find victims, that he was believed capable of playing an odious farce in order to destroy those whom he hated.[11.36]He stayed, as it seems, in the house of Peter.[11.37]Many disciples remained deaf to his advances, and shrank from him.[11.38]A man of courage and will, Barnabas, played at this moment a decisive part. As a Cyprian and a new convert, he understood better than the Galilean disciples the position of Paul. He came to meet him, took him in a manner by the hand, introduced him to the most suspicious,and became his surety.[11.39]By this act of wisdom and penetration, Barnabas won at the hands of the Christian world the highest degree of merit. It was he who appreciated Paul; it was to him that the Church owes the most extraordinary of her founders. The fruitful friendship of these two apostolic men, a friendship that no cloud ever tarnished, notwithstanding many differences in opinion, afterwards led to their association in the work of missions to the Gentiles. This grand association dates, in one sense, from Paul’s first sojourn at Jerusalem. Among the causes of the faith of the world we must count the generous movement of Barnabas, stretching out his hand to the suspected and forsaken Paul; the profound intuition which led him to discover the soul of an apostle under that humiliated air; the frankness with which he broke the ice and levelled the obstacles raised between the convert and his new brethren by the unfortunate antecedents of the former, and perhaps, also, by certain traits of his character.
Paul, meantime, systematically as it were, avoided seeing the apostles. It is he himself says so, and he takes the trouble to affirm it with an oath; he saw only Peter, and James the brother of the Lord.[11.40]His sojourn lasted only two weeks.[11.41]Assuredly it is possible that at the epoch in which he wrote the Epistle to the Galatians (towards 56), Paul may have found himself led, by the needs of the moment, to give some little coloring to his relations with the apostles; to represent them as more harsh, more imperious, than they were in reality. Towards 56 the essential point for him to prove was that he had received nothing from Jerusalem—that he was in no wise the mandatory of the Council ofTwelve established in this city. His attitude at Jerusalem would have been the proud and lofty bearing of a master who avoids relations with other masters in order not to have the air of subordinating himself to them, and not the humble and repentant mien of a sinner ashamed of the past, as the author of theActsrepresents. We cannot believe that from the year 44 Paul was animated by this jealous care to preserve his own originality, which he showed at a later day. The rarity of his interviews with the apostles, and the brevity of his sojourn at Jerusalem, arose probably from his embarrassment in the presence of people of quite another nature than his own, and full of prejudices against him, rather than from a refined polity, which would have revealed to him fifteen years in advance the disadvantages there might be in his frequenting their society.
In reality, that which must have erected a sort of wall between the apostles and Paul, was chiefly the difference of their character and of their education. The apostles were all Galileans; they had not been at the great Jewish schools; they had seen Jesus; they remembered his words; they were good and pious folk, at times a little solemn and simple-hearted. Paul was a man of action, full of fire, only moderately mystical, enrolled, as by a superior force, in a sect which was not that of his first adoption. Revolt, protestation, were his habitual sentiments.[11.42]His Jewish education was much superior to that of all his new brethren. But not having heard Jesus, not having been appointed by him, he had, according to Christian ideas, a great inferiority. Now Paul was not made to accept anysecondary place. His haughty individuality demanded a position for himself. It is probably towards this time that there sprang up in his mind the proud idea that after all he had nothing to envy those who had known Jesus and had been chosen by him, since he also had seen Jesus and had received from Jesus a direct revelation and the commission of his apostleship. Even those who had been honored by the personal appearance to them of the risen Christ, had no more than he had. Although the last, his vision had been no less remarkable. It had taken place under circumstances which gave it a peculiar mark of importance and of distinction.[11.43]Signal error! The echo of the voice of Jesus was found in the discourses of the humblest of His disciples. With all his Jewish science, Paul could not make up for the immense disadvantage under which he was placed by his tardy initiation. The Christ whom he had seen on the road to Damascus was not, whatever he might say, the Christ of Galilee; it was the Christ of his imagination, of his own senses. Although he may have been most attentive to gather the words of the Master,[11.44]it is clear that he was only a disciple at second-hand. If Paul had met Jesus during his life, it may be doubtful whether he would have attached himself to Him. His doctrine will be his own, not that of Jesus; the revelations of which he is so proud are the fruit of his own brain.
These ideas, which he dared not as yet communicate, rendered his stay at Jerusalem very disagreeable. At the end of a fortnight he took leave of Peter and went away. He had seen so few people that he ventured to say that no one in the churches of Judea knew him bysight, or knew aught of him, save by hearsay.[11.45]At a subsequent period he attributed this sudden departure to a revelation. He related that being one day in the temple praying, he was in an extasy, and saw Jesus in person, and received from Him the order to quit Jerusalem immediately, “because they were not inclined to receive his testimony.” In exchange for these hard hearts, Jesus had promised him the apostolate of distant nations, and an auditory more docile to his voice.[11.46]Those who would fain hide the traces of the many ruptures caused by the coming of this insubordinate disciple into the Church, pretended that Paul passed quite a long time at Jerusalem, living with the brethren on a footing of the most complete liberty; but that, having undertaken to preach to the Hellenist Jews, he was very nearly killed by them, so that the brethren had to watch over him and protect him, and finally took him to Cesarea.[11.47]
It is probable, in fact, that from Jerusalem he did repair to Cesarea. But he stayed there only a short time, and then set out to traverse Syria, and afterwards Cilicia.[11.48]He was, no doubt, already preaching, but on his own account, and without any understanding with anybody. Tarsus, his native place, was his habitual sojourn during this period of his apostolical life, which we may reckon as having lasted about two years.[11.49]It is possible that the churches of Cilicia owed their origin to him.[11.50]Still, the life of Paul was not at this epoch that which we see it to have been subsequently. He did not assume the title of an apostle, which was then strictly reserved to the Twelve.[11.51]It was only from the time of his association with Barnabas (year 45) that heentered upon that career of sacred peregrinations and preachings which made of him the type of the travelling missionary.
The new faith was propagated from one neighborhood to another with astonishing rapidity. The members of the Church of Jerusalem who had been dispersed immediately after the death of Stephen, pushing their conquests along the coast of Phœnicia, reached Cyprus and Antioch. They were as yet guided by an unvarying principle of refusing to preach the gospel to the Jews.[12.1]Antioch, “the metropolis of the East,” the third city of the world,[12.2]was the centre of this Christendom of northern Syria. It was a city with a population of more than 500,000 souls, almost as large as Paris before its recent extensions,[12.3]and the residence of the Imperial Legate of Syria. Suddenly advanced to a high degree of splendor by the Seleucidæ, it had only to profit by the Roman occupation of it. In general, the Seleucidæ had surpassed the Romans in the taste for theatrical decorations as applied to great cities. Temples, aqueducts, baths, basilicas, nothing was wanting at Antioch in what constituted a grand Syrian city of that period. The streets flanked by colonnades, with their cross-roads decorated with statues, had there more of symmetry and regularity than anywhere else.[12.4]ACorso, ornamented with four ranges of columns, forming two covered galleries with a wide avenue in the midst, crossed the city from oneside to the other,[12.5]the length of which was thirty-six stadia (more than a league).[12.6]But Antioch not only possessed immense edifices of public utility,[12.7]she had that also which few of the Syrian cities possessed—the noblest specimens of Grecian art, wonderfully beautiful statues,[12.8]classical works of a delicacy of detail which the age was no longer capable of imitating. Antioch, from its foundation, had been altogether a Grecian city. The Macedonians of Antigone and Seleucus had imported into that country of the lower Orontes their most lively recollections, their worship, and the names of their country.[12.9]The Grecian mythology was there adopted as it were in a second home; they pretended to exhibit in the country a crowd of “holy places” forming part of this mythology. The city was full of the worship of Apollo and of the nymphs. Daphne, an enchanting place two short hours distant from the city, reminded the conquerors of the pleasantest fictions. It was a sort of plagiarism, a counterfeit of the myths of the mother country, analogous to these adventurous transportations which the primitive tribes carried with them in their travels; their mythical geography, their Berecyntha, their Arnanda, their Ida, and their Olympus. These Greek fables constituted for them a very old religion, and one scarcely more serious than the metamorphoses of Ovid. The ancient religions of the country, particularly that of Mount Cassius,[12.10]contributed some little gravity to it. But Syrian levity, Babylonian charlatanism, and all the impostures of Asia, mingled at this limit of the two worlds, had made Antioch the capital of lies and the sink of every description of infamy.
Besides the Greek population, indeed, which in no part of the East (with the exception of Alexandria) was as numerous as here, Antioch numbered amongst its population a considerable number of native Syrians, speaking Syriac.[12.11]These natives composed a low class, inhabiting the suburbs of the great city and the populous villages which formed a vast suburb[12.12]all around it, Charandama, Ghisira, Gaudigura, and Apate (chiefly Syrian names).[12.13]Marriages between the Syrians and the Greeks were common. Seleucus having formerly made naturalization a legal obligation binding on every stranger establishing himself in the city, Antioch, at the end of three centuries and a half of its existence, became one of the places in the world where race was most intermingled with race. The degradation of the people there was terrible. The peculiarity of these focuses of moral putrefaction is, to reduce all the races of mankind to the same level. The degradation of certain Levantine cities, dominated by the spirit of intrigue, delivered up entirely to low cunning, can scarce give us a conception of the degree of corruption reached by the human race at Antioch. It was an inconceivable medley of merry-andrews, quacks, buffoons,[12.14]magicians, miracle-mongers, sorcerers,{12.15}priests, impostors; a city of races, games, dances, processions, fêtes, debauches, of unbridled luxury, of all the follies of the East, of the most unhealthy superstitions, and of the fanaticism of the orgy.[12.16]By turns servile and ungrateful, cowardly and insolent, the people of Antioch were the perfect model of those crowds devoted to Cæsarism, without country, without nationality, without family honor, without a name to keep. The greatCorsowhich traversed the city was like a theatre, where rolled, day after day, the waves of a trifling, light-headed, changeable, insurrection-loving[12.17]populace—a populace sometimesspirituel,[12.18]occupied with songs, parodies, squibs, impertinence of all sorts.[12.19]The city was very literary,[12.20]but literary only in the literature of rhetoricians.{12.21}The sights were strange; there were some games in which bands of naked young girls took part in all the exercises, with a mere fillet around them;[12.22]at the celebrated festival of Näiouma, troupes of courtezans swarmed in public in basins[12.23]filled with limpid water.[12.24]This fête was like an intoxication, like a dream of Sardanapalus, where all the pleasures, all the debaucheries, not excluding some of a more delicate kind, were unrolled pell-mell. This river of dirt, which, making its exit by the mouth of the Orontes, was about to invade Rome,[12.25]had here its principal sources. Two hundred decurions were employed in regulating the religious ceremonies and celebrations.[12.26]The municipality possessed great public domains, the rents of which the decemvirs divided between the poor citizens.[12.27]Like all cities of pleasure, Antioch had a lowest section of the people, living on the public or on sordid gains. The beauty of works of art and the infinite charm of nature[12.28]prevented this moral degradation from degenerating entirely into ugliness and vulgarity. The site of Antioch is one of the most picturesque in the world. The city occupied the interval between the Orontes and the slopes of Mount Silpius, one of the spurs of Mount Casius. Nothing could equal the abundance and beauty of thewaters.[12.29]The fortified space, climbing up perpendicular rocks, by a real master-work of military architecture,[12.30]inclosed the summit of the mountains, and formed with the rocks at a tremendous height an indented crown of marvellous effect. This disposition of their ramparts, uniting the advantage of the ancient acropoles with those of the great walled cities, was in general preferred by the Generals of Alexander, as one sees in the Pierian Seleucia, in Ephesus, in Smyrna, in Thessalonica. The result was various astonishing perspectives. Antioch had within its walls mountains seven hundred feet in height, perpendicular rocks, torrents, precipices, deep ravines, cascades, inaccessible caves; in the midst of all these, delicious gardens.[12.31]A thick wood of myrtles, of flowering box, of laurels, of plants always green—and of the most tender green—rocks carpeted with pinks, with hyacinth, and cyclamens, give to these wild heights the aspect of gardens hung in the air. The variety of the flowers, the freshness of the turf, composed of an incredible number of minute grasses, the beauty of the plane trees which border the Orontes, inspire the gaiety, the tinge of sweet scent with which the beautiful genius of Chrysostom, Libanus, and Julian is, as it were, intoxicated. On the right bank of the river stretches a vast plain bordered on one side by the Amanus, and the oddly truncated mountains of Pieria; on the other side by the plateaus of Chyrrestica,[12.32]behind which is hidden the dangerous neighborhood of the Arab and the desert. The valley of the Orontes, which opens to the west, brings this interior basin into communication with the sea, or rather with the vast worldin the bosom of which the Mediterranean has constituted from all time a sort of neutral highway and federal bond.
Amongst the different colonies which the liberal ordinances of the Seleucidæ had attracted to the capital of Syria, that of the Jews was one of the most numerous;[12.33]it dated from the time of Seleucus Nicator, and was governed by the same laws as the Greeks.[12.34]Although the Jews had an ethnarch of their own, their relations with the pagans were very frequent. Here, as at Alexandria, these relations often degenerated into quarrels and aggressions.[12.35]On the other hand, they afforded a field for an active religious propagandism. The polytheism of the officials becoming more and more insufficient to meet the wants of serious persons, the Grecian and Jewish philosophies attracted all those whom the vain pomps of paganism could not satisfy. The number of proselytes was considerable. From the first days of Christianity, Antioch had furnished to the Church of Jerusalem one of its most influential members, viz. Nicolas, one of the deacons.[12.36]There existed there promising germs, which only waited for a ray of grace to burst forth into bloom and bear the most excellent fruits which had hitherto been produced.
The church of Antioch owed its foundation to some original believers from Cyprus and Cyrene, who had already been zealous in preaching.[12.37]Up to this time they had only addressed themselves to the Jews. But in a city where pure Jews—Jews who were proselytes, “people fearing God”—or half-Jews, half-pagans and pure pagans, lived together,[12.38]confined preachings, restricted to a group of houses, became impossible. That feeling ofreligious aristocracy on which the Jews of Jerusalem so much prided themselves, had no existence in these large cities, where civilization was altogether of the profane sort, where the atmosphere was more expanded, and where prejudices were less firmly rooted. The Cypriot and Cyrenian missionaries were then constrained to depart from their rule. They preached to the Jews and to the Greeks indifferently.{12.39}
The reciprocal dispositions of the Jewish and of the pagan population appeared at this time to have been very unsatisfactory.[12.40]But circumstances of another kind probably subserved the new ideas. The earthquake, which had done serious damage to the city on 23d March, of the year 37, still occupied their minds. The whole city was talking about an impostor named Debborius, who pretended to prevent the recurrence of such accidents by ridiculous talismans.[12.41]This sufficed to direct preoccupied minds towards supernatural matters. However that may have been, great was the success of the Christian preaching. A young, innovating, and ardent Church, full of the future, because it was composed of the most diverse elements, was quickly founded. All the gifts of the Holy Spirit were there poured out, and it was then easy to perceive that this new Church, emancipated from the strict Mosaism which traced an irrefragable circle around Jerusalem, would become the second cradle of Christianity. Assuredly, Jerusalem will remain for ever the capital of the Christian world; nevertheless, the point of departure of the church of the Gentiles, the primal focus of Christian missions, was, in truth, Antioch. It is there, for the first time, that a Christian church was established, divorcedfrom the bonds of Judaism; it is there that the great propaganda of the Apostolic age was established; it was there that St. Paul assumed a definite character. Antioch marks the second halting-place of the progress of Christianity, and in respect of Christian nobility, neither Rome, nor Alexandria, nor Constantinople can be at all compared with it.
The topography of ancient Antioch is so effaced that we should search in vain over its site, nearly destitute as it is of any vestiges of the antique, for the point to which to attach such grand recollections. Here, as everywhere, Christianity was, doubtless, established in the poor quarters of the city and among the petty tradesfolk. The basilica, which is called “the old” and “apostolic”{12.42}to the fourteenth century, was situated in the street called Singon, near the Pantheon.[12.43]But no one knows where this Pantheon was. Tradition and certain vague analogies induced us to search the primitive Christian quarter alongside the gate, which even to-day is still called Paul’s gate,Bâb-bolos,[12.44]and at the foot of the mountain, named by ProcopiusStavrin, which overlooks the south-west coast from the ramparts of Antioch.[12.45]It was one of the quarters of the town which least abounded in pagan monuments. There we saw the remains of ancient sanctuaries dedicated to St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John. There appeared to have been the quarter where Christianity was longest maintained after the Mohammedan conquest. There too, as it appeared, was the quarter of “the saints,” in opposition to the general profanity of Antioch. The rock is honeycombed like a beehive, with grottoes formerly used by the Anchorites. Whenone walks on these steeply cut declivities, where, about the fourth century, the good Stylites, disciples at once of India and of Galilee, of Jesus and of Cakya-Mouni, disdainfully contemplated the voluptuous city from the summit of their pillar or from their flower-adorned cavern,[12.46]it is probable that one is not far from the very spots where Peter and Paul dwelt. The Church of Antioch is the one whose history is most authentic and least encumbered with fables. Christian tradition, in a city where Christianity was perpetuated with so much vigor, ought to possess some value. The prevailing language of the Church of Antioch was the Greek. It is, however, quite probable that the suburbs where Syriac was spoken furnished a number of converts to the sect. In consequence, Antioch already contained the germ of two rival and, at a later period, hostile Churches, the one speaking Greek, and now represented by the Syrian Greeks, whether orthodox or Catholics; the other, whose actual representatives are the Maronites, having previously spoken Syriac and guarding it still as if it were a sacred tongue. The Maronites, who under their entirely modern Catholicism conceal a high antiquity, are probably the last descendants of those Syrians anterior to Seleucus, of those suburbans orpaganiof Ghisra, Charandama, etc.,[12.47]who from the first ages became a separate Church, were persecuted by the orthodox emperors as heretics, and escaped into the Libanus,[12.48]or, from hatred of the Grecian Church and in consequence of deeper sympathies, allied themselves with the Latins.
As to the converted Jews at Antioch, they were also very numerous.[12.49]But we must believe that they accepted from the very first a fraternal alliance with the Gentiles.[12.50]It was then on the shores of the Orontes that the religious fusion of races, dreamed of by Jesus, or to speak more fully, by six centuries of prophets, became a reality.
Great was the excitement at Jerusalem[13.1]on hearing what had passed at Antioch. Notwithstanding the kindly wishes of a few of the principal members of the Church of Jerusalem, Peter in particular, the Apostolic College continued to be influenced by mean and unworthy ideas. On every occasion when they heard that the good news had been announced to the heathen, these veteran Christians manifested signs of disappointment. The man who this time triumphed over this miserable jealousy, and who prevented the narrow exclusiveness of the “Hebrews” from ruining the future of Christianity, was Barnabas. He was the most enlightened member of the Church at Jerusalem. He was the chief of the liberal and progressive party, and wished the Church to be open to all. Already he had powerfully contributed to remove the mistrust with which Paul was regarded; and this time, also, he excited a marked influence. Sent as a delegate of the apostolical body to Antioch, he examined and approved of all that had been done, and declared that the new Church had only to continue in the course upon which it had entered. Conversions were effected in great numbers. The vital and creative force of Christianity appeared to be concentrated at Antioch. Barnabas,whose zeal always inclined to action, resided there. Antioch thenceforth is his Church, and it is thence that he exercised his most influential and important ministry. Christianity has always done injustice to this man in not placing him in the first rank of her founders. Barnabas was the patron of all good and liberal ideas. His intelligent boldness often served to neutralize the obstinacy of the narrow-minded Jews who formed the conservative party of Jerusalem.
A magnificent idea germinated in this noble heart at Antioch. Paul was at Tarsus in a forced repose, which to an active man like him, was a perfect torture. His false position, his haughtiness, and his exaggerated pretensions, had neutralized many of his other and better qualities. He was uselessly wearing his life away; Barnabas knew how to apply to its true work that force which was corroding Paul in his unhealthy and dangerous solitude. For the second time, Barnabas took the hand of Paul, and led this savage character into the society of those brethren whom he avoided. He went himself to Tarsus, sought him out, and brought him to Antioch.[13.2]He did that which those obstinate old brethren of Jerusalem were never able to do. To win over this great, reticent, and susceptible soul; to accommodate oneself to the caprices and whims of a man full of fiery excitement, but very personal; to take a secondary part under him, and forgetful of oneself, to prepare the field of operations for the most favorable display of his abilities—all this is certainly the very climax of virtue; and this is what Barnabas did for Paul. Most of the glory which has accrued to the latter is really due to the modest manwho led him forward, brought his merits to light, prevented more than once his faults from resulting deplorably to himself and his cause, and the illiberal views of others from exciting him to revolt; and also prevented his insignificant and unworthy personalities from interfering with the work of God.
During an entire year Barnabas and Paul co-operated actively.[13.3]This was without doubt a most brilliant and happy year in the life of Paul. The prolific originality of these two great men raised the Church of Antioch to a degree of grandeur to which no Christian Church had previously attained. Few places in the world had experienced more intellectual activity than the capital of Syria. During the Roman epoch, as in our time, social and religious questions were brought to the surface principally at the centres of population. A sort of reaction against the general immorality which later made Antioch the special abode of stylites and hermits[13.4]was already felt; and the true doctrine thus found in this city more favorable conditions for success than it had yet met.
An important circumstance proves besides, that it was at Antioch that the sect for the first time had full consciousness of its existence; for it was in this city that it received a distinct name. Hitherto its adherents had called themselves “believers,” “the faithful,” “saints,” “brothers,” or disciples; but the sect had no public and official name. It was at Antioch that the title ofChristianuswas devised.[13.5]The termination of the word is Latin, not Greek, which would indicate that it was selected by the Roman authority as an appellation of the police[13.6]likeHerodiani,Pompeiani,Cæsariani.[13.7]In any event it is certain that such a name was formed by the heathen population. It included a misapprehension, for it implied thatChristus, a translation of the HebrewMaschiah(the Messiah), was a proper name.[13.8]Not a few of those who were unfamiliar with Jewish or Christian ideas, by this name were led to believe thatChristusorChrestuswas a sectarian leader yet living.[13.9]The vulgar pronunciation of the name indeed wasChrestiani.[13.10]
The Jews did not adopt in a regular manner, at least,[13.11]the name given by the Romans to their schismatic co-religionists. They continued to call the new converts “Nazarenes” or “Nazorenes,”[13.12]undoubtedly because they were accustomed to call Jesus Han-nasri or Han-nosri, “the Nazarene;” and even unto the present day this name is still applied to them throughout the entire East.[13.13]
This was a most important moment. Solemn indeed was the hour when the new creation received its name, for that name is the direct symbol of its existence. It is by its name that an individual or a community really becomes itself as distinct from others. The formation of the word “Christian” also marks the precise date of the separation from Judaism of the Church of Jesus. For a long time to come the two religions will be confounded; but this confusion will only take place in those countries where the spread of Christianity is slow and backward. The sect quickly accepted the appellation which was applied to it, and viewed it as a title of honor.[13.14]It is really astonishing to reflect that ten years after the death of Jesus His religion had already in the capital of Syria, a name in the Greekand Latin tongues. Christianity is now completely weaned from its mother’s breast; the true sentiments of Jesus have triumphed over the indecision of its first disciples; the Church of Jerusalem is left behind; the Aramaic language, in which Jesus spoke, is unknown to a portion of His followers; Christianity speaks Greek; and the new sect is finally launched into that great vortex of the Greek and Roman world, whence it will never issue.
The feverish activity of ideas manifested by this young Church was truly extraordinary. Great spiritual manifestations were frequent.[13.15]All believed themselves to be inspired in different ways. Some were “prophets,” others “teachers.”[13.16]Barnabas, as his name indicates,[13.17]was undoubtedly among the prophets. Paul had no special title. Among the leaders of the church at Antioch may also be mentioned Simeon, surnamedNiger, Lucius of Cirene, and Menahem, who had been the foster-brother of Herod Antipas, and was naturally quite old.[13.18]All these personages were Jews. Among the converted heathen was, perhaps, already that Evhode, who, at a certain period, seems to have occupied a leading place in the Church of Antioch.[13.19]Undoubtedly the heathen who heard the first preaching were slightly inferior, and did not shine in the public exercises of using unknown tongues, of preaching, and prophecy. In the midst of the congenial society of Antioch, Paul quickly adapted himself to the order of things. Later, he manifested opposition to the use of tongues,{13.20}and it is probable that he never practised it; but he had many visions and immediate revelations.[13.21]It was apparently at Antioch{13.22}that occurred that ecstatic trance which he describesin these terms: “I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago (whether in the body I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell—God knoweth). Such an one was caught up to the third heaven.[13.23]And I knew such a man (whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell—God knoweth), how that he was caught up into paradise[13.24]and heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter.”[13.25]Paul, though in general sober and practical, shared the prevalent ideas of the day in regard to the supernatural. Like so many others, he believed that he possessed the power of working miracles;[13.26]it was impossible that the gift of the Holy Spirit, which was acknowledged to be the common right of the Church,[13.27]should be denied to him.
But men permeated with so lively a faith cannot content themselves with merely exuberant piety, but pant for action. The idea of great missions, destined to convert the heathen, and beginning in Asia Minor, seized hold of the public mind. Had such an idea been formed at Jerusalem, it could not have been realized, because the Church there was without pecuniary resources. An extensive establishment of propagandism requires a solid capital to work on. Now, the common treasury at Jerusalem was devoted to the support of the poor, and was frequently insufficient for that purpose; and to save these noble mendicants from dying with hunger, it was necessary to obtain help from all quarters.[13.28]Communism had created at Jerusalem an irremediable poverty and a thorough incapacity for great enterprises. The Church at Antioch was exempt from such a calamity. The Jews in the profane cities had attained to affluence, and in some cases had accumulated vast fortunes.[13.29]Thefaithful were wealthy when they entered the Church. Antioch furnished the pecuniary capital for the founding of Christianity, and it is easy to imagine the total difference in manner and spirit which this circumstance alone would create between the two churches. Jerusalem remained the city of the poor of God, of theebionimof those simple Galilean dreamers, intoxicated, as it were, with the expectation of the kingdom of Heaven.[13.30]Antioch, almost a stranger to the words of Jesus, which it had never heard, was the church of action and of progress. Antioch was the city of Paul; Jerusalem, the seat of the old apostolic college, wrapped up in its dreamy fantasies, and unequal to the new problems which were opening, but dazzled by its incomparable privileges, and rich in its unsurpassed recollections.
A certain circumstance soon brought all these traits into bold relief. So great was the lack of forethought in this half-starved Church of Jerusalem, that the least accident threw the community into distress. Now in a country, destitute of economic organization, where commerce is almost without development, and where the sources of welfare are limited, famines are inevitable. A terrible one occurred in the reign of Claudius, in the year 44.[13.31]When its threatening symptoms appeared, the veterans at Jerusalem decided to seek succor from the members of the richer churches of Syria. An embassy of prophets was sent from Jerusalem to Antioch.[13.32]One of them, named Agab, who was in high reputation for his prophetic powers, was suddenly inspired, and announced that the famine was now at hand. The faithful were deeply moved at the evils which menaced the mother Church, to which they stilldeemed themselves tributary. A collection was made, at which every one gave according to his means, and Barnabas was selected to carry the funds obtained to the brethren in Judea.[13.33]Jerusalem for a long time remained the capital of Christianity. There were centred the objects peculiar to the faith, and there only were the apostles.[13.34]But a great forward step had been taken. For several years there had been only one completely organized Church, that of Jerusalem—the absolute centre of the faith, the heart from which all life proceeded and through which it circulated; but it no longer maintained this monopoly. The church at Antioch was now a perfect church. It possessed all the hierarchy of the gifts of the Holy Ghost. It was the starting-point of the missions,[13.35]and their head-quarters.[13.36]It was a second capital, or rather a second heart, which had its own proper action, exercising its force and influence in every direction.
It is easy to foresee that the second capital must soon eclipse the first. The decay of the church at Jerusalem was, indeed, rapid. It is natural that institutions founded on communism should enjoy at the beginning a period of brilliancy, for communism involves high mental exaltation; and it is equally natural that such institutions should very quickly degenerate, because communism is contrary to the instincts of human nature. During a moment of great religious excitement, a man readily believes that he can entirely sacrifice his selfish individuality and his peculiar interests; but egotism has its revenge, in proving that absolute disinterestedness engenders evils more serious than by the suppression of individual rights in property it had hoped to avoid.
Barnabas found the Church of Jerusalem in great trouble. The year 44 was perilous to it. Besides the famine, the fires of persecution which had been smothered since the death of Stephen were rekindled.
Herod Agrippa, grandson of Herod the Great, had succeeded, since the year 41, in reconstituting the kingdom of his grandfather. Thanks to the favor of Caligula, he had reunited under his domination Batania, Trachonites, a part of the Hauran, Cibilene, Galilee, and the Persea.[14.1]The ignoble part which he played in the tragi-comedy which raised Claudius to the empire,[14.2]completed his fortune. This vile Oriental, in return for the lessons of baseness and perfidy he had given to Rome, obtained for himself Samaria and Judea, and for his brother Herod the kingdom of Chalcis.[14.3]He had left at Rome the worst memories, and the cruelties of Caligula were attributed in part to his counsels.[14.4]The army and the pagan cities of Sebaste and Cesarea, which he sacrificed to Jerusalem, were averse to him.[14.5]But the Jews found him to be generous, munificent, and sympathetic. He sought to render himself popular with them, and affected a polity quite different from that of Herod the Great. The latter was much more regardful of the Greek and Roman world than of the Jewish. Herod Agrippa, on the contrary, loved Jerusalem,rigorously observed the Jewish religion, affected scrupulousness, and never let a day pass without attending to his devotions.[14.6]He went so far as to receive with mildness the advice of the rigorists, and took the trouble to justify himself from their reproaches.[14.7]He returned to the Hierosolymites the tribute which each house owed to him.[14.8]The orthodox, in a word, had in him a king according to their own heart.
It was inevitable that a prince of this character should persecute the Christians. Sincere or not, Herod Agrippa was, in the most thorough sense of the word, a Jewish Sovereign.[14.9]The house of Herod, as it became weaker, took to devotion. It was no longer that broad profane idea of the founder of the dynasty, seeking to make the most diverse religions live together under the common empire of civilization. When Herod Agrippa, for the first time after he had become king, set foot in Alexandria, it was as a King of the Jews that he was received; it was this title which irritated the population and gave rise to endless buffooneries.[14.10]Now what could a King of the Jews be, if not the guardian of the laws and the traditions, a sovereign theocrat and persecutor? From the time of Herod the Great, under whom fanaticism was entirely repressed, until the breaking out of the war which led to the ruin of Jerusalem, there was thus a constantly augmenting progress of religious ardor. The death of Caligula (24th Jan., 41) had produced a reaction favorable to the Jews. Claudius was generally benevolent towards them,[14.11]as a result of the favorable ear he lent to Herod Agrippa and Herod King of Chalcis. Not only did he decide in favor of the Jews of Alexandria in their quarrels with the inhabitantsand allow them the right of choosing an ethnarch, but he published, it is said, an edict by which he granted to the Jews throughout the whole empire that which he had granted to those of Alexandria; that is to say, the freedom to live according to their own laws, on the sole condition of not outraging other worships. Some attempts at vexations analogous to those which were inflicted under Caligula were repressed.[14.12]Jerusalem was greatly enlarged; the quarter of Bezetha was added to the city.[14.13]The Roman authority scarcely made itself felt, although Vibius Marsus, a prudent man, of wide public experience, and of a very cultivated mind,[14.14]who had succeeded Publius Petronius in the function of imperial legate of Syria, drew the attention of the authorities at Rome from time to time to the danger of these semi-independent Eastern Kingdoms.[14.15]
The species of feudality which, since the death of Tiberius, tended to establish itself in Syria and the neighboring countries,[14.16]was in fact an interruption in the imperial polity, and had almost uniformly injurious results. The “Kings” coming to Rome were personages, and exercised there a detestable influence. The corruption and abasement of the people, especially under Caligula, proceeded in great part from the spectacle furnished by these wretches, who were seen successively dragging their purple at the theatre, at the palace of the Cæsar, and in the prisons.[14.17]So far as concerns the Jews, we have seen{14.18}that autonomy meant intolerance. The Sovereign Pontificate quitted for a moment the family of Hanan, only to enter that of Boethus, no less haughty and cruel. A Sovereign anxious to please the Jews could not fail to grant themwhat they loved best; that is to say, severities against everything which diverged from rigorous orthodoxy.[14.19]
Herod Agrippa, in fact, became towards the end of his reign a violent persecutor.[14.20]Some time before Easter of the year 44, he cut off the head of one of the principal members of the apostolical college, James son of Zebedee, brother of John. The matter was not presented as a religious one; there was no inquisitorial process before the Sanhedrim; the sentence, as in the case of John the Baptist,[14.21]was pronounced by virtue of the arbitrary power of the sovereign. Encouraged by the good effect which this execution produced upon the Jews,[14.22]Herod Agrippa was not willing to stop upon so easy a road to popularity. It was the first days of the feast of Passover, ordinarily marked by a redoubled fanaticism. Agrippa ordered the imprisonment of Peter in the tower of Antonia, and sought to have him judged and put to death with great pomp before the mass of people then assembled.
A circumstance with which we are unacquainted, and which was regarded as miraculous, opened Peter’s prison. One evening, as many of the disciples were assembled in the house of Mary, mother of John-Mark, where Peter habitually dwelt, there was suddenly heard a knock at the door. The servant, named Rhoda, went to listen. She recognised Peter’s voice. Transported with joy, instead of opening the door she ran back to announce that Peter was there. They regarded her as mad. She swore she spoke the truth. “It is his angel,” said some of them. The knocking was heard repeatedly; it was indeed himself. Their delight was infinite. Peter immediately announcedhis deliverance to James, brother of the Lord, and to the other disciples. It was believed that the angel of God had entered into the prison of the apostle and made the chains fall from his hands and the bolts fly open. Peter related, in fact, all that had passed while he was in a sort of ecstasy; that after having passed the first and second guard, and overleaped the iron gate which led into the city, the angel accompanied him still the distance of a street, then quitted him; that then he came to himself again and recognised the hand of God, who had sent a celestial messenger to deliver him.[14.23]
Agrippa survived these violences but a short time.[14.24]In the course of the year 44, he went to Cesarea to celebrate games in honor of Claudius. The concourse of people was extraordinary; and many from Tyre and Sidon, who had difficulties with him, came thither to ask pardon. These festivals were very displeasing to the Jews, both because they took place in the impure city of Cesarea, and because they were held in the theatre. Already, on one occasion, the king having quitted Jerusalem under similar circumstances, a certain Rabbi Simeon had proposed to declare him an alien to Judaism, and to exclude him from the temple. Herod Agrippa had carried his condescension so far as to place the Rabbi beside him in the theatre, in order to prove to him that nothing passed there contrary to the law,[14.25]and thinking he had thus satisfied the most austere, he allowed himself to indulge his taste for profane pomps. The second day of the festival he entered the theatre very early in the morning, clothed in a tunic of silver fabric, with a marvellousbrilliancy. The effect of this tunic, glittering in the rays of the rising sun, was extraordinary. The Phœnicians who surrounded the king lavished upon him adulations borrowed from paganism. “It is a god,” they cried, “and not a man.” The king did not testify his indignation, and did not blame this expression. He died five days afterwards; and Jews and Christians believed that he was struck dead for not having repelled with horror a blasphemous flattery. Christian tradition represents that he died of a vermicular malady,[14.26]the punishment reserved for the enemies of God. The symptoms related by Josephus would lead rather to the belief that he was poisoned; and what is said in the Acts of the equivocal conduct of the Phœnicians, and of the care they took to gain over Blastus, valet of the king, would strengthen this hypothesis.
The death of Herod Agrippa I. led to the end of all independence for Jerusalem. The administration by Procurators was resumed, and this régime lasted until the great revolt. This was fortunate for Christianity; for it is very remarkable that this religion, which was destined to sustain subsequently so terrible a struggle against the Roman empire, grew up in the shadow of the Roman principality, under its protection. It was Rome, as we have already several times remarked, which hindered Judaism from giving itself up fully to its intolerant instincts, and stifling the free instincts which were stirred within its bosom. Every diminution of Jewish authority was a benefit for the nascent sect. Cuspius Fadus, the first of this new series of Procurators, was another Pilate, full of firmness, or at least of good-will. But Claudius continued to show himself favorable to Jewish pretensions, chiefly at the instigation of the young Herod Agrippa, son of Herod Agrippa I., whom he kept near to his person, and whom he greatly loved.[14.27]After the short administration of Cuspius Fadus, we find the functions of Procurator confided to a Jew, to that Tiberius Alexander, nephew of Philo, and son of thealabarqueof the Alexandrian Jews who attained to high functions and played a great part in the political affairs of the century. It is true that the Jews did not like him; and regarded him, and with reason, as an apostate.[14.28]
To cut short these incessantly renewed disputes, recourse was had to an expedient in conformity with sound principles. A sort of separation was made between the spiritual and temporal. The political power remained with the procurators; but Herod, king of Chalcis, brother of Agrippa I., was named prefect of the temple, guardian of the pontifical habits, treasurer of the sacred fund, and invested with the right of nominating the high-priests.[14.29]At his death (year 48), Herod Agrippa II., son of Herod Agrippa I., succeeded his uncle in his offices, which he retained until the great war. Claudius, in all this, manifested the greatest kindness. The high Roman functionaries in Syria, although not so strongly disposed as the emperor to concessions, acted with great moderation. The procurator, Ventidius Cumanus, carried condescension so far as to have a soldier beheaded in the midst of the Jews, drawn up in line, for having torn a copy of the Pentateuch.[14.30]It was all useless, however; Josephus, with good reason, dates from the administration of Cumanus the disorders which ended only with the destruction of Jerusalem.
Christianity played no part in these troubles.[14.31]But these troubles, like Christianity itself, were one of the symptoms of the extraordinary fever which devoured the Jewish people, and the Divine travail which was accomplishing in its midst. Never had the Jewish faith made such progress.[14.32]The temple of Jerusalem was one of the sanctuaries of the world, the reputation of which was most widely extended, and where the offerings were most liberal.[14.33]Judaism had become the dominant religion of various portions of Syria. The Asmonean princes had violently converted entire populations to it (Idumeans, Itureans, etc.).[14.34]There were many examples of circumcision having been imposed by force;[14.35]the ardor for making proselytes was very great.[14.36]The house of Herod itself powerfully served the Jewish propaganda. In order to marry princesses of this family, whose wealth was immense, the princes of the little dynasties of Emese, of Pontus, and of Cilicia, vassals of the Romans, became Jews.[14.37]Arabia and Ethiopia counted also a great number of converts. The royal families of Mesene and of Adiabene, tributaries of the Parthians, were gained over, especially by their women.[14.38]It was generally granted that happiness was found in the knowledge and practice of the law.[14.39]Even when circumcision was not practised, religion was more or less modified in the Jewish direction; a sort of monotheism became the general spirit of religion in Syria. At Damascus, a city which was in nowise of Israelitish origin, nearly all the women had adopted the Jewishreligion.[14.40]Behind the Pharisaical Judaism there was thus formed a sort of free Judaism, of inferior quality, not knowing all the secrets of the sect;[14.41]bringing only its good-will and its good heart, but having a greater future. The situation was, in all respects, that of the Catholicism of our days, in which we see, on one hand, narrow and proud theologians, who alone would gain no more souls for Catholicism than the Pharisees gained for Judaism; on the other, pious laymen, very often heretics without knowing it, but full of a touching zeal, rich in good works and in poetical sentiments, altogether occupied in dissimulating or repairing by complaisant explanations the faults of their doctors.