_ST. PAUL'S ORDINATION AND FIRST MISSIONARY TOUR._
"As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said,
Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have
called them. Then, when they had fasted and prayed and laid their
hands on them, they sent them away. So they, being sent forth by
the Holy Ghost, went down to Seleucia; and from thence they
sailed to Cyprus.... But they, passing through from Perga, came
to Antioch of Pisidia; and they went into the synagogue on the
sabbath day, and sat down."--ACTS xiii. 2-4, 14.
"And it came to pass in Iconium, that they entered together into
the synagogue of the Jews, and so spake, that a great multitude
both of Jews and of Greeks believed.... They sailed to Antioch,
from whence they had been committed to the grace of God for the
work which they had fulfilled."--ACTS xiv. 1, 26.
We have now arrived at what we might call the watershed of the Acts of
the Apostles. Hitherto we have had very various scenes, characters,
personages to consider. Henceforth St. Paul, his labours, his
disputes, his speeches, occupy the entire field, and every other name
that is introduced into the narrative plays a very subordinate part.
This is only natural. St. Luke knew of the earlier history by
information gained from various persons, but he knew of the later
history, and specially of St. Paul's journeys, by personal experience.
He could say that he had formed a portion and played no small part in
the work of which he was telling, and therefore St. Paul's activity
naturally supplies the chief subject of his narrative. St. Luke in
this respect was exactly like ourselves. What we take an active part
in, where our own powers are specially called into operation, there
our interest is specially aroused. St. Luke personally knew of St.
Paul's missionary journeys and labours, and therefore when telling
Theophilus of the history of the Church down to the year 60 or
thereabouts, he deals with that part of it which he specially knows.
This limitation of St. Luke's vision limits also our range of
exposition. The earlier portion of the Acts is much richer from an
expositor's point of view, comprises more typical narratives, scenes,
events than the latter portion, though this latter portion may be
richer in points of contact, historical and geographical, with the
world of life and action.
It is with an expositor or preacher exactly the opposite as with the
Church historian or biographer of St. Paul. A writer gifted with the
exuberant imagination, the minute knowledge of a Rénan or a Farrar
naturally finds in the details of travel with which the latter portion
of the Acts is crowded matter for abundant discussion. He can pour
forth the treasures of information which modern archæological research
has furnished shedding light upon the movements of the Apostle. But
with the preacher or expositor it is otherwise. There are numerous
incidents which lend themselves to his purpose in the journeys
recorded in this latter portion of the book; but while a preacher
might find endless subjects for spiritual exposition in the conversion
of St. Paul or the martyrdom of St. Stephen, he finds himself confined
to historical and geographical discussions in large portions of the
story dealing with St. Paul's journeys. We shall, however, strive to
unite both functions, and while endeavouring to treat the history from
an expositor's point of view, we shall not overlook details of another
type which will impart colour and interest to the exposition.
I. The thirteenth chapter of the Acts records the opening of St.
Paul's official missionary labours, and its earliest verses tell us of
the formal separation or consecration for that work which St. Paul
received. Now the question may here be raised, Why did St. Paul
receive such a solemn ordination as that we here read of? Had he not
been called by Christ immediately? Had he not been designated to the
work in Gentile lands by the voice of the same Jesus Christ speaking
to Ananias at Damascus and afterwards to Paul himself in the Temple at
Jerusalem? What was the necessity for such a solemn external
imposition of hands as that here recorded? John Calvin, in his
commentary on this passage, offers a very good suggestion, and shows
that he was able to throw himself back into the feelings and ideas of
the times far better than many a modern writer. Calvin thinks that
this revelation of the Holy Ghost and this ordination by the hands of
the Antiochene prophets were absolutely necessary to complete the work
begun by St. Peter at Cæsarea, and for this reason. The prejudices of
the Jewish Christians against their Gentile brethren were so strong,
that they would regard the vision at Joppa as applying, not as a
general rule, but as a mere personal matter, authorising the reception
of Cornelius and his party alone. They would not see nor understand
that it authorised the active evangelisation of the Gentile world and
the prosecution of aggressive Christian efforts among the heathen. The
Holy Ghost therefore, as the abiding and guiding power in the Church,
and expressing His will through the agency of the prophets then
present, said, "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I
have called them"; and that work to which they were expressly sent
forth by the Holy Ghost was the work of aggressive effort beginning
with the Jews--but not terminating with them--and including the
Gentiles. This seems to me thoroughly true, and shows how Calvin
realised the intellectual weakness, the spiritual hardness of heart
and slowness of judgment which prevailed among the apostles. The
battle of Christian freedom and of catholic truth was not won in a
moment. Old prejudices did not depart in an hour. New principles were
not assimilated and applied in a few days. Those who hold nobler views
and higher principles than the crowd must not be surprised or dismayed
if they find that year after year they have to fight the same battles
and to proclaim the same fundamental truths and to maintain what may
seem at times even a losing conflict with the forces of unreasoning
prejudices. If this was the case in the primitive Church with all its
unity and love and spiritual gifts, we may well expect the same state
of affairs in the Church of our time.[105]
[105] One great lesson which the true expositor will derive from
this typical history is this, the long, doubtful, painful strife
which the battle of truth and justice ever involves. The struggle
for Gentile freedom waged by St. Paul is typical of the battle for
freedom of conscience, for freedom of knowledge, for human rights
against slavery, and of every other battle against tyranny and
wrong which the world has ever seen. The combat has ever been long
and wearisome, and the chiefest of God's champions have always
been compelled to suffer much for their support of the truth,
which must, however, triumph in the long run.
An illustration borrowed from Church history will explain this.
Nothing can well be more completely contrary to the spirit of
Christianity than religious persecution. Nothing can be imagined more
completely consonant with the spirit of the Christian religion than
freedom of conscience. Yet how hard has been the struggle for it! The
early Christians suffered in defence of religious freedom, but they
had no sooner gained the battle than they adopted the very principle
against which they had fought. They became religiously intolerant,
because religious intolerance was part and parcel of the Roman state
under which they had been reared. The Reformation again was a battle
for religious freedom. If it were not, the Reformers who suffered in
it would have no more claim to our compassion and sympathy on account
of the deaths they suffered than soldiers who die in battle. A soldier
merely suffers what he is prepared to inflict, and so it was with the
martyrs of the Reformation unless theirs was a struggle for religious
freedom. Yet no sooner had the battle of the Reformation been won than
all the Reformed Churches adopted the very principle which had striven
to crush themselves. It is terribly difficult to emancipate ourselves
from the influence and ideas of bygone ages, and so it was with the
Jewish Christians. They could not bring themselves to adopt missionary
work among the Gentiles. They believed indeed intellectually that God
had granted unto the Gentiles repentance unto life, but that belief
was not accompanied with any of the enthusiasm which alone lends life
and power to mental conceptions. The Holy Ghost therefore, as the
Paraclete, the loving Comforter, Exhorter, and Guide of the Church,
interposes afresh, and by a new revelation ordains apostles whose
great work shall consist in preaching to the Gentile world.
This seems to me one great reason for the prominent place this
incident at Antioch holds. The work of Gentile conversion proceeded
from Antioch, which may therefore well be regarded as the mother
Church of Gentile Christendom; and the apostles of the Gentiles were
there solemnly set apart and constituted. Barnabas and Saul were not
previously called apostles. Henceforth this title is expressly applied
to them,[106] and independent apostolic action is taken by them. But
there seems to me another reason why Barnabas and Saul were thus
solemnly set apart, notwithstanding all their previous gifts and
callings and history. The Holy Ghost wished to lay down at the very
beginning of the Gentile Church the law of orderly development, the
rule of external ordination, and the necessity for its perpetual
observance. And therefore He issued His mandate for their visible
separation to the work of evangelisation. All the circumstances too
are typical. The Church was engaged in a season of special devotion
when the Holy Ghost spoke. A special blessing was vouchsafed, as
before at Pentecost, when the people of God were specially waiting
upon Him. The Church at Antioch as represented by its leading teachers
were fasting and praying and ministering to the Lord when the Divine
mandate was issued, and then they fasted and prayed again. The
ordination of the first apostles to the Gentiles was accompanied by
special prayer and by fasting, and the Church took good care
afterwards to follow closely this primitive example. The institution
of the four Ember seasons as times for solemn ordinations is derived
from this incident. The Ember seasons are periods for solemn prayer
and fasting, not only for those about to be ordained, but also for the
whole Church, because she recognises that the whole body of Christ's
people are interested most deeply and vitally in the nature and
character of the Christian ministry. If the members of that ministry
are devoted, earnest, inspired with Divine love, then indeed the work
of Christ flourishes in the Church, while if the ministry of God be
careless and unspiritual, the people of God suffer terrible injury.
And we observe, further, that not only the Church subsequent to the
apostolic age followed this example at Antioch, but St. Paul himself
followed it and prescribed it to his disciples. He ordained elders in
every Church, and that from the beginning. He acted thus on his very
first missionary journey, ordaining by the imposition of hands
accompanied with prayer and fasting, as we learn from the fourteenth
chapter and twenty-third verse. He reminded Timothy of the gift
imparted to that youthful evangelist by the imposition of St. Paul's
own hands, as well as by those of the presbytery; and yet he does not
hesitate to designate the elders of Ephesus and Miletus who were thus
ordained by St. Paul as bishops set over God's flock by the Holy Ghost
Himself. St. Paul and the Apostolic Church, in fact, looked behind
this visible scene. They realised vividly the truth of Christ's
promise about the presence of the Holy Ghost in the Church. They took
no miserably low and Erastian views of the sacred ministry, as if it
were an office of mere human order and appointment. They viewed it as
a supernatural and Divine office, which no mere human power, no matter
how exalted, could confer. They realised the human instruments indeed
in their true position as nothing but instruments, powerless in
themselves, and mighty only through God, and therefore St. Paul
regarded his own ordination of the elders whom he appointed at Derbe,
Iconium, Lystra, or Ephesus as a separation by the Holy Ghost to their
Divine offices. The Church was, in fact, then instinct with life and
spiritual vigour, because it thankfully recognised the present power,
the living force and vigour of the third person of the Holy Trinity.
[106] See, for instance, ch. xiv. 4: "Part held with the Jews and
part with the apostles"; and again, verse 14: "But when the
apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it." It must be remembered
that the term apostle was one used very freely among the Jews to
signify the official delegates of the high priest, the Sanhedrin,
or even the smallest synagogue. It has, however, gained a sanctity
and special application in the Christian Church which causes a
certain amount of mental confusion. At the same time, we must
remember that the title apostle was continued in the primitive
Church after the age of the Twelve. It was applied to their
successors, as we learn from the _Didache_, xi.; _Hermas_, Sim.
ix.; 15, 16, 25. Cf. Origen on John iv., and Euseb., _H. E._, i.
12.
II. The apostles having been thus commissioned lost no time. They at
once departed upon their great work. And now let us briefly indicate
the scope of the first great missionary tour undertaken by St. Paul,
and sketch its outline, filling in the details afterwards. According
to early tradition the headquarters of the Antiochene Church were in
Singon Street, in the southern quarter of Antioch.[107] After earnest
and prolonged religious services they left their Christian brethren.
St. Paul's own practice recorded at Ephesus, Miletus, and at Tyre
shows us that prayer marked such separation from the Christian
brethren, and we know that the same practice was perpetuated in the
early Church; Tertullian, for instance, telling us that a brother
should not leave a Christian house until he had been commended to
God's keeping. They then crossed the bridge, and proceeded along the
northern bank of the Orontes to Seleucia, the port of Antioch, where
the ruins still testify to the vastness of the architectural
conceptions cherished by the Syrian kings. From Seleucia the apostles
sailed to the island of Cyprus, whose peaks they could see eighty
miles distant shining bright and clear through the pellucid air.
Various circumstances would lead them thither. Barnabas was of Cyprus,
and he doubtless had many friends there. Cyprus had then an immense
Jewish population, as we have already pointed out; and though the
apostles were specially designated for work among the Gentiles, they
ever made the Jews the starting-point whence to influence the outside
world, always used them as the lever whereby to move the stolid mass
of paganism. The apostles showed a wholesome example to all
missionaries and to all teachers by this method of action. They
addressed the Jews first because they had most in common with them.
And St. Paul deliberately and of set purpose worked on this principle,
whether with Jews or Gentiles. He sought out the ideas or the ground
common to himself and his hearers, and then, having found the points
on which they agreed, he worked out from them. It is the true method
of controversy. I have seen the opposite course adopted, and with very
disastrous effects. I have seen a method of controversial argument
pursued, consisting simply in attacks upon errors without any attempt
to follow the apostolic example and discover the truths which both
parties held in common, and the result has been the very natural one,
that ill-will and bad feeling have been aroused without effecting any
changes in conviction. We can easily understand the reason of this, if
we consider how the matter would stand with ourselves. If a man comes
up to us, and without any attempt to discover our ideas or enter into
sympathetic relations with us, makes a very aggressive assault upon
all our particular notions and practices, our backs are at once put
up, we are thrown into a defensive mood, our pride is stirred, we
resent the tone, the air of the aggressor, and unconsciously determine
not to be convinced by him. Controversial preaching of that class,
hard, unloving, censorious, never does any permanent good, but rather
strengthens and confirms the person against whose belief it is
directed. Nothing of this kind will ever be found in the wise,
courteous teaching of the apostle Paul, whose few recorded speeches to
Jews and Gentiles may be commended to the careful study of all
teachers at home or abroad as models of mission preaching, being at
once prudent and loving, faithful and courageous.
[107] An elaborate plan of ancient Antioch, accompanied with a
description of its various parts and references to the authorities
for the same, will be found in Lewin's _St. Paul_, vol. i., p. 92.
From Seleucia the apostles itinerated through the whole island unto
Paphos, celebrated in classical antiquity as the favourite seat of the
goddess Venus, where they came for the first time into contact with a
great Roman official, Sergius Paulus, the proconsul of the island.
From Paphos they sailed across to the mainland of Asia Minor, landed
at Perga, where John Mark abandoned the work to which he had put his
hand. They do not seem to have stayed for long at Perga. They
doubtless declared their message at the local synagogue to the Jews
and proselytes who assembled there, for we are not to conclude,
because a synagogue is not expressly mentioned as belonging to any
special town, that therefore it did not exist. Modern discoveries have
shown that Jewish synagogues were found in every considerable town or
city of Asia Minor, preparing the way by their pure morality and
monotheistic teaching for the fuller and richer truths of
Christianity.[108] But St. Paul had fixed his eagle gaze upon Antioch
of Pisidia, a town which had been made by Augustus Cæsar the great
centre of this part of Asia Minor, whence military roads radiated in
every direction, lending thereby the assistance of imperial
organisation to the progress of the gospel. Its situation was, in
fact, the circumstance which determined the original foundation of
Antioch by the Syrian princes.[109]
[108] Hypæpa, for instance, was a celebrated sanctuary of Diana,
between Sardis and Ephesus. Jewish inscriptions have been found
there proving that a Jewish synagogue and community existed even
in that pagan stronghold: see _Revue Archéologique_ for 1885, vol.
ii., p. 111.
[109] There is a series of plates in Lewin's _Life of St. Paul_,
vol. i., pp. 130-36, depicting the site and ruins of Antioch, and
showing the roads which connected it with all the leading towns of
the neighbourhood, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe. Professor Ramsay, in
his _Historical Geography of Asia Minor_, bestows a good deal of
attention on Antioch of Pisidia and its position: see pp. 47, 57,
85, 391, 453.
Facility of access, commercial convenience were points at which they
chiefly aimed in selecting the sites of the cities they built, and the
wisdom of their choice in the case of Antioch in Pisidia was confirmed
when Augustus and Tiberius, some few years previous to St. Paul's
visit, made Antioch the centre from which diverged the whole system of
military roads throughout this portion of Asia Minor. It was a very
large city, and its ruins and aqueducts testify to this day concerning
the important position it held as the great centre of all the Roman
colonies and fortresses which Augustus planted in the year B.C. 6
along the skirts of the Taurus Range to restrain the incursions of the
rude mountaineers of Isauria and Pisidia. When persecution compelled
the apostles to retire from Antioch they took their way therefore to
Iconium, which was some sixty miles south-east of Antioch along one of
these military roads of which we have spoken, constructed for the
purpose of putting down the brigands which then, as in modern times,
constituted one of the great plagues of Asia Minor.[110] But why did
the apostles retire to Iconium? Surely one might say, if the Jews had
influence enough at Antioch to stir up the chief men of the city
against the missionaries, they would have had influence enough to
secure a warrant for their arrest in a neighbouring city. At first
sight it seems somewhat difficult to account for the line of travel or
flight adopted by the apostles. But a reference to ancient geography
throws some light upon the problem. Strabo, a geographer of St. Paul's
own day, tells us that Iconium was an independent principality or
tetrarchy, surrounded indeed on all sides by Roman territory, but
still enjoying a certain amount of independence. The apostles fled to
Iconium when persecution waxed hot because they had a good road
thither, and also because at Iconium they were secure from any legal
molestation being under a new jurisdiction.[111]
[110] St. Paul, writing in 2nd Corinthians, speaks of himself as
at times in perils of robbers. This danger may well have happened
to him in the central districts of Asia Minor. There is an
interesting story of St. John and the bandits in Eusebius, _H.
E._, iii., 23. The incidents there told took place in Asia Minor.
[111] Iconium was in St. Paul's day the centre of an independent
tetrarchy ruled by native princes. See Pliny's _Nat. Hist._, v.
27. The site of Iconium has never been uncertain. It was made the
capital of their dominions by the Sultans of the Seldjuk Turks,
and continued to occupy that position till the conquest of
Constantinople. It is still called Konia, a modification of its
original name, and still continues to attract a large population
on account of the beauty and convenience of its situation, which
gives it the title of the Damascus of Asia Minor. According to
tradition Sosipatros, one of the seventy disciples, was the bishop
of Iconium, and was succeeded by Terentius, another member of the
same sacred company; _Acta Sanctorum_, June 20th, p. 67; Ramsay,
_Historical Geography of Asia Minor_, p. 332. The latest account
of Iconium as it is at present will be found in Sterrett's
_Epigraphical Journey in Asia Minor_, printed among the Papers of
the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Boston, 1884.
vol. ii., p. 188-225.
After a time, however, the Jews from Antioch made their way to Iconium
and began the same process which had proved so successful at Antioch.
They first excited the members of the Jewish synagogue against the
apostles, and through them influenced the towns-people at large, so
that, though successful in winning converts, St. Paul and his
companion were in danger of being stoned by a joint mob of Jews and
Gentiles. They had therefore to fly a second time, and when doing so
they acted on the same principle as before. They again removed
themselves out of the local jurisdiction of their enemies, and passed
to Derbe and Lystra, cities of Lycaonia, a Roman province which had
just been formed by the Emperor Claudius.[112]
[112] The apostles seem to have acted as in former times persons
harassed by legal processes could do in this country. A writ
directed to a sheriff only ran within his own county. A man could
not be arrested under it if he passed one step beyond the county
bounds, till countersigned by the sheriff of the county into which
the delinquent had passed. Under the Roman empire the local
liberties and jurisdictions were simply infinite, a fact which of
course lent much assistance to persons persecuted as the apostles
were. Derbe, for instance, was a native city of Lycaonia, and
belonged to the Koinon or local assembly of that province. Lystra
was situated indeed in Lycaonia, but being a Roman colony had
therefore exceptional privileges, and scorned to belong to the
local Assembly of native cities. See Ramsay, _Hist. Geog._, pp.
332, 375, 376.
Then after a time, when the disturbances which the Jews persistently
raised wherever they came had subsided, the apostles returned back
over the same ground, no longer indeed publicly preaching, but
organising quietly and secretly the Churches which they had founded
in the different towns through which they had passed, till they
arrived back at Perga, where perhaps, finding no ship sailing to
Antioch, they travelled to the port of Attalia, where they succeeded
in finding a passage to that city of Antioch whence they had been sent
forth.[113] This brief sketch will give a general view of the first
missionary tour made in the realms of paganism, and will show that it
dealt with little more than two provinces of Asia Minor, Pisidia and
Lycaonia, and was followed by what men would count but scanty results,
the foundation and organisation of a few scattered Christian
communities in some of the leading towns of these districts.
[113] It is well perhaps to note that the ι in this name
is long, representing the diphthong ει, the Greek name of
the town being Ἀττάλεια.
III. Let us now more particularly notice some of the details recorded
concerning this journey. The apostles began their work at Cyprus,
where they proclaimed the gospel in the Jewish synagogues. They were
attracted as we have said to this island, first, because it was the
native land of Barnabas, and then because its population was in large
degree Jewish, owing to the possession of the famous copper mines of
the island by Herod the Great.[114] Synagogues were scattered all over
the island and proselytes appertained to each synagogue, and thus a
basis of operations was ready whence the gospel message might operate.
It was just the same even at Paphos, where St. Paul came in contact
with the proconsul Sergius Paulus. The Jewish element here again
appears, though in more active opposition than seems to have been
elsewhere offered. Sergius Paulus was a Roman citizen like Cornelius
of Cæsarea. He had become dissatisfied with the belief of his
forefathers. He had now come into contact with the mystic East, and
had yielded himself to the guidance of a man who professed the Jewish
religion, which seems to have charmed by its pure morality and simple
monotheism many of the noblest minds of that age. But, like all
outsiders, Sergius Paulus did not make accurate and just distinctions
between man and man. He yielded himself to the guidance of a man who
traded on the name of a Jew, but who really practised those rites of
weird sorcery which real Judaism utterly repudiated and denounced.
This alone accounts for the stern language of St. Paul: "O full of all
guile and all villany, thou son of the devil, thou enemy of all
righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the
Lord?" St. Paul never addressed a lawful opponent in this manner. He
did not believe in the efficacy of strong language in itself, nor did
he abuse those who withstood him in honest argument. But he did not
hesitate, on the other hand, to brand a deceiver as he deserved, or to
denounce in scathing terms those who were guilty of conscious fraud.
St. Paul might well be taken as a model controversialist in this
respect. He knew how to distinguish between the genuine opponent who
might be mistaken but was certainly conscientious, and the fraudulent
hypocrite devoid of all convictions save the conviction of the value
of money. With the former St. Paul was full of courtesy, patience,
consideration, because he had in himself experience of the power of
blind unthinking prejudice. For the latter class St. Paul had no
consideration, and with them he wasted no time. His honest soul took
their measure at once. He denounced them as he did Elymas on this
occasion, and then passed on to deal with nobler and purer souls,
where honest and good hearts offered more promising soil for the
reception of the Word of the Kingdom. Controversy of every kind is
very trying to tongue and temper, but religious controversy such as
that in which St. Paul spent his life is specially trying to the
character. The subject is so important that it seems to excuse an over
zeal and earnestness which terminates in bad temper and unwise
language. And yet we sometimes cannot shrink from controversy, because
conscience demands it on our part. When that happens to be the case,
it will be well for us to exercise the most rigorous control over our
feelings and our words; from time to time to realise by a momentary
effort of introspection Christ hanging upon the cross and bearing for
us the unworthy and unjust reproaches of mankind; for thus and thus
only will pride be kept down and hot temper restrained and that great
advantage for the truth secured which self-control always bestows upon
its possessor.
[114] See vol. i., p. 216.
There is an interesting illustration of the historic accuracy of St.
Luke connected with the apostolic visit to Paphos and to Sergius
Paulus the proconsul. Thrice over in the narrative of St. Luke,
Sergius Paulus is called proconsul--first in the seventh verse of the
thirteenth chapter, where Elymas the sorcerer is described thus, "who
was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, a man of understanding," while
again the same title of proconsul is applied to Sergius in the eighth
and twelfth verses. This has been the cause of much misunderstanding
and of no small reproach hurled against the sacred writer. Let us
inquire into its justice and the facts of the case. The Roman
provinces were divided into two classes, senatorial and imperial. The
senatorial provinces were ruled by proconsuls appointed by the
Senate; the imperial by proprætors appointed by the emperors. This
arrangement was made by Augustus Cæsar, and is reported to us by
Strabo who lived and wrote during St. Paul's early manhood. But now a
difficulty arises. Strabo gives us the list of the provinces
senatorial and imperial alike, and expressly classes Cyprus amongst
the imperial provinces, which were ruled by proprætors and not by
proconsuls. In the opinion of the older critics, St. Luke was thus
plainly convicted of a mistake and of a flagrant contradiction of that
great authority the geographer Strabo. But it is never safe to jump to
conclusions of that kind with respect to a contemporaneous writer who
has proved himself accurate on other occasions. It is far better and
far safer to say, Let us wait awhile, and see what further
investigations will reveal. And so it has proved in this special case.
Strabo tells us of the original arrangement made about thirty years
B.C. between the Emperor Augustus and the Senate, when Cyprus was most
certainly numbered amongst the imperial provinces; but he omits to
tell us what another historian of the same century, Dion Cassius, does
relate, that the same Emperor modified this arrangement five years
later, handing Cyprus and Gallia Narbonensis over to the rule of the
Senate, so that from that date and henceforth throughout the first
century of our era Cyprus was governed by proconsuls alone, as St.
Luke most accurately, though only incidentally, reports.[115] Here,
too, the results of modern investigation among inscriptions and coins
have come in to supplement and support the testimony of historians.
The Greek inscriptions discovered prior to and during the earlier half
of this century have been collected together in Boeckh's _Corpus of
Greek Inscriptions_, which is, indeed, a vast repertory of original
documents concerning the life, Pagan and Christian, of the Greek
world. In the inscriptions numbered 2631 and 2632 in that valuable
work we have the names of Q. Julius Cordus and L. Annius Bassus
expressly mentioned as proconsuls of Cyprus in A.D. 51, 52; while on
coins of Cyprus have been found the names of Cominius Proclus and
Quadratus, who held the same office. But the very latest
investigations have borne striking testimony to the same fact. The
name of the very proconsul whom St. Paul addressed appears on an
inscription discovered in our own time. Cyprus has been thoroughly
investigated since it passed into British hands, specially by General
Cesnola, who has written a work on the subject which is well worth
reading by those who take an interest in Scripture lands and the
scenes where the apostles laboured. In that work, p. 425, Cesnola
tells us of a mutilated inscription which he recovered dealing with
some subject of no special importance, but bearing the following
precious notice giving its date as "Under Paulus the Proconsul";
proving to us by contemporary evidence that Sergius Paulus ruled the
island, and ruled it with the special title of proconsul. Surely an
instance like this--and we shall have several such to notice--is quite
enough to make fair minds suspend their judgment when charges of
inaccuracy are alleged against St. Luke dependent upon our own
ignorance alone of the entire facts of the case. A wider knowledge, a
larger investigation we may well be sure will suffice to clear the
difficulty and vindicate the fair fame of the sacred historian.
[115] The words of Dion are: "Eo tempore Cyprum ac Galliam
Narbonensem, quia nihil armis suis indigerent, populo reddidit;
atque ita proconsules etiam in istas provincias mitti
cœperunt." See the works of Dion, edited by H. Valerius, vol.
i., p. 733 (Hamburg, 1750). Valerius, in his note on this passage,
notes the inaccuracies into which the older critics--Grotius,
Hammond, Baronius--had fallen about Acts xiii. 7.
From Cyprus the apostles passed over to the continent, and opened
their missionary work at Antioch of Pisidia, where the first recorded
address of St. Paul was delivered. This sermon, delivered in the
Pisidian synagogue, is deserving of our special notice because it is
the only missionary address delivered by St. Paul to the Jews of the
Dispersion which has been handed down to us, unless we include the few
words delivered to the Roman Jews reported in the twenty-eighth
chapter from the seventeenth to the twenty-eighth verses. Let us
briefly analyse it, premising that it should be carefully compared
with the addresses of St. Peter to the Jews upon the Day of Pentecost
and with the speech delivered by St. Stephen before the Sanhedrin,
when all three will be found to run upon the same lines. The apostles
having reached Antioch waited until the Sabbath came round, and then
sought the local meeting-place of the Jews. The apostles felt indeed
that they were entrusted with a great mission important for the human
race, but yet they knew right well that feverish impetuosity or
restless activity was not the true way to advance the cause they had
in hand. They did not believe in wild irregular actions which only
stir up opposition. They were calm and dignified in their methods,
because they were consciously guided by the Divine Spirit of Him
concerning whom it was said in the days of His flesh, "He did not
strive nor cry, neither did any man hear His voice in the streets." On
the Sabbath day they entered the synagogue, and took their place on a
bench set apart for the reception of those who were regarded as
teachers. At the conclusion of the public worship and the reading of
the lessons out of the law and the prophets, such as still are read in
the synagogue worship, the Rulers of the Synagogue sent to them the
minister or apostle of the synagogue intimating their permission to
address the assembled congregation, whereupon St. Paul arose and
delivered an address, of which the following is an analysis. St. Paul
opened his sermon by a reference to the lessons which had just been
read in the service, which--as all the writers of the Apostle's life,
Lewin, Conybeare and Howson, and Archdeacon Farrar, agree--were taken
from the first chapter of Deuteronomy and the first of Isaiah. He
points out, as St. Stephen had done, the providential dealings of God
with their forefathers from the time of the original choice of Abraham
down to David. The Jews had been divinely guided throughout their
history down to David's days, and that Divine guidance had not then
ceased, but continued down to the present, as the Apostle then
proceeds to show. In David's seed there had been left a hope for
Israel which every true Jew still cherished. He then announces that
the long-cherished hope had now at last been fulfilled. This fact
depended not on his testimony alone. The Messiah whom they had long
expected had been preceded by a prophet whose reputation had spread
into these distant regions, and had gained disciples, as we shall
afterwards find, at Ephesus. John the Baptist had announced the
Messiah's appearance, and proclaimed his own inferiority to Him. But
then an objection occurs to the Apostle which might naturally be
raised. If John's reputation and doctrine had penetrated to Antioch,
the story of the crucifixion of Jesus may also have been reported
there, and the local Jews may therefore have concluded that such an
ignominious death was conclusive against the claims of Jesus? The
Apostle then proceeds to show how that the providential rule of God
had been exercised even in that matter. The wrath of man had been
compelled to praise God, and even while the rulers at Jerusalem were
striving to crush Jesus Christ they were in reality fulfilling the
voices of the prophets which went beforehand and proclaimed the
sufferings of the Messiah exactly as they had happened. And further
still, God had set His seal to the truth of the story by raising Jesus
Christ from the dead according to the predictions of the Old
Testament, which he expounds after the manner of the Jewish schools,
finding a hint of the Resurrection of Christ in Isaiah lv. 3: "I will
give you the holy and sure blessings of David"; and a still clearer
one in Psalm xvi. 10: "Thou wilt not give Thine Holy One to see
corruption." The Apostle, after quoting this text, which from its use
by St. Peter on the Day of Pentecost seems to have been a passage
commonly quoted in the Jewish controversy, terminates his discourse
with a proclamation of the exalted blessings which the Messiah has
brought, indicating briefly but clearly the universal character of the
gospel promises, and finishing with a warning against stupid obstinate
resistance drawn from Habakkuk i. 5, which primarily referred to the
disbelief in impending Chaldæan invasion exhibited by the Jews, but
which the Apostle applies to the Jews of Antioch and their spiritual
dangers arising from similar wilful obstinacy.
We have of course not much more than the heads of the apostolic
sermon. Five or seven minutes of a not very rapid speaker would amply
suffice to exhaust the exact words attributed to St. Paul. He must
have enlarged on the various topics. He could not have introduced
John the Baptist in the abrupt manner in which he is noticed in the
text of our New Testament. It seems quite natural enough to us that he
should be thus named, because John occupies a very high and exalted
position in our mental horizon from our earliest childhood. But who
was John the Baptist for these Jewish settlers in the Pisidian
Antioch? He was simply a prophet of whom they may have heard a vague
report, who appeared before Israel for a year or two, and then
suffered death at the hands of Herod the Tetrarch: and so it must have
been with many other topics introduced into this discourse. They must
have been much more copiously treated, elaborated, discussed, or else
the audience in the Pisidian synagogue must have loved concentrated
discourse more keenly than any other assembly that ever met together.
And yet, though the real discourse must have been much longer--and did
we only possess the sermon in its fulness many a difficulty which now
puzzles us would disappear at once--we can still see the line of the
apostolic argument and grasp its force. The Apostle argues, in fact,
that God had chosen the original fathers of the Jewish race. He had
gone on conferring ever fresh and larger blessings in the wilderness,
in Canaan, under the Judges, and then under the Kings, till the time
of David, from whose seed God had raised up the greatest gift of all
in the person of Jesus Christ, through whom blessings unknown before
and unsurpassed were offered to mankind. St. Paul contends exactly as
St. Stephen had done, that true religion has been a perpetual advance
and development; that Christianity is not something distinct from
Judaism, but is essentially one with it, being the flower of a plant
which God Himself had planted, the crown and glory of the work which
He had Himself begun. This address, as we have already noticed in the
preface to the first volume of this work, will repay careful study;
for it shows the methods adopted by the early Christian when dealing
with the Jews.[116] They did not attack any of their peculiar views or
practices, but confining themselves to what they held in common strove
to convince them that Christianity was the logical outcome of their
own principles.
[116] Cf. vol. i., pp. xi, 300.
The results of this address were very indicative of the future. The
Jews of the synagogue seem to have been for a time impressed by St.
Paul's words. Several of them, together with a number of the
proselytes, attached themselves to him as his disciples, and were
further instructed in the faith. The proselytes especially must have
been attracted by the Apostle's words. They were, like Cornelius,
Proselytes of the Gate, who observed merely the seven precepts of Noah
and renounced idolatry, but were not circumcised or subject to the
restrictions and duties of the Jewish ritual. They must have welcomed
tidings of a religion embodying all that which they venerated in the
Jewish Law and yet devoid of its narrowness and disadvantages.
Next Sabbath the whole city was stirred with excitement, and then
Jewish jealousy burst into a flame. They saw that their national
distinctions and glory were in danger. They refused to listen or
permit any further proclamation of what must have seemed to them a
revolutionary teaching disloyal to the traditions and existence of
their religion and their nation. They used their influence therefore
with the chief men of the city, exercising it through their wives, who
were in many cases attracted by the Jewish worship, or who may have
been themselves of Jewish birth, and the result was that the apostles
were driven forth to preach in other cities of the same central region
of Asia Minor. This was the first attack made by the Jews upon St.
Paul in his mission journeys. He had already had experience of their
hostility at Damascus and at Jerusalem, but this hostility was
doubtless provoked by reason of their resentment at the apostasy to
the Nazarene sect of their chosen champion. But here at Antioch we
perceive the first symptom of that bitter hostility to St. Paul
because of his catholic principles, his proclamation of salvation as
open to all alike, Jew or Gentile, free from any burdensome or
restrictive conditions, a hostility which we shall find persistently
pursuing him, both within the Church, and still more without the
Church, at Iconium, at Lystra, at Thessalonica, at Corinth, and at
Jerusalem. It would seem indeed as if the invention of the term
"Christian" at Antioch marked a crisis in the history of the early
Church. Henceforth St. Paul and his friends became the objects of
keenest hatred, because the Jews had recognised that they taught a
form of belief absolutely inconsistent with the Jewish faith as
hitherto known; a hatred which seems, however, to have been limited to
St. Paul and his Antiochene friends, for the temporising measures and
the personal prejudices, the whole atmosphere, in fact, of the
Jerusalem Church led the unbelieving Jews to make a broad distinction
between the disciples at Jerusalem and the followers of St. Paul.
IV. So far we have dealt with St. Paul's address at Antioch as typical
of his methods in dealing with the Jews, and their treatment of the
Apostle as typical of that hostility which the Jews ever displayed to
the earliest teachers of Christian truth, as witnessed not only by
the New Testament, but also by the writings and histories of Justin
Martyr, and of Polycarp of Smyrna, and of all the early apologists.
But we are not left in this typical Church history without a specimen
of St. Paul's earlier methods when dealing with the heathen. St. Paul,
after his rejection at Antioch, escaped to Iconium, sixty miles
distant, and thence, when Jewish persecution again waxed hot, betook
himself to Lystra, some forty miles to the south. There the Apostle
found himself in a new atmosphere and amid new surroundings. Antioch
and Iconium had large Jewish populations, and were permeated with
Jewish ideas. Lystra was a thoroughly Gentile town with only a very
few Jewish inhabitants. The whole air of the place--its manners,
customs, popular legends--was thoroughly pagan. This offered St. Paul
a new field for his activity, of which he availed himself right
diligently, finishing up his work with healing a lifelong cripple, a
miracle which so impressed the mob of Lystra that they immediately
cried out in the native speech of Lycaonia, "The gods are coming down
to us in the likeness of men," calling Barnabas Jupiter, on account of
his lofty stature and more commanding appearance, and Paul Mercurius
or Hermes, because of his more insignificant size and more copious
eloquence. Here again we have, in our writer's words, an incidental
and even unconscious witness to the truth of our narrative. The cry of
the men of Lystra, these rude barbarian people of the original
inhabitants of the land, who, though they could understand Greek,
naturally fell back on their native Lycaonian language to express
their deeper feelings,--this cry, I say, refers to an ancient legend
connected with their history, of which we find a lengthened account
in the works of the poet Ovid. Jupiter attended by Mercury once
descended to visit the earth and see how man was faring. Some scoffed
at the deities, and were punished. Others received them, and were
blessed accordingly.[117] The wondrous work performed on the cripple
naturally led the men of Lystra to think that the Divine Epiphany had
been repeated. The colony of Lystra--for Lystra was a Roman
colony[118]--was devoted to the worship of Jupiter, in memory
doubtless of this celebrated visit. A temple to Jupiter stood before
and outside the gate of the city, as the temple of Diana stood outside
the gate of Ephesus, lending sanctity and protection to the
neighbouring town. The priest and the people act upon the spur of the
moment. They bring victims and garlands prepared to offer sacrifice to
the deities who, as they thought, had revisited their ancient haunts.
They were approaching the house where the apostles were
dwelling--perhaps that of Lois and Eunice and Timothy--when Paul
sprang forward and delivered a short impassioned address deprecating
the threatened adoration. Let us quote the address in order that we
may see its full force: "Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men
of like passions with you, and bring you good tidings, that ye should
turn from these vain things unto the living God, who made the heaven
and the earth and the sea, and all that in them is: who in the
generations gone by suffered all the nations to walk in their own
ways. And yet He left not Himself without witness, in that He did
good, and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons, filling
your hearts with food and gladness." How very different St. Paul's
words to the pagans are from those he addressed to the Jews and
proselytes, believers in the true God and in the facts of revelation!
He proves himself a born orator, able to adapt himself to different
classes of hearers, and, grasping their special ideas and feelings, to
suit his arguments to their various conditions. St. Paul's short
address on this occasion may be compared with his speech to the men of
Athens, and the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and the
various apologies composed by the earliest advocates of Christianity
during the second century. Take, for instance, the Apology of
Aristides, of which we gave an account in the preface to the first
volume of this commentary on the Acts. We shall find, when we examine
it and compare it with the various passages of Scripture to which we
have just referred, that all run upon exactly the same lines. They all
appeal to the evidence of nature and of natural religion. They say not
one word about Scripture concerning which their hearers know nothing.
They are not like unwise Christian advocates among ourselves who think
they can overthrow an infidel with a text out of Scripture, begging
the question at issue, the very point to be decided being this,
whether there is such a thing at all as Scripture. St. Paul does with
the men of Lystra and the men of Athens what Aristides did when
writing for the Emperor Hadrian, and what every wise missionary will
still do with the heathen or the unbeliever whose salvation he is
seeking. The Apostle takes up the ground that is common to himself and
his hearers. He shows them the unworthiness of the conception they
have formed of the Godhead. He appeals to the testimony of God's works
and to the interior witness of conscience prophesying perpetually in
the secret tabernacle of man's heart, and thus appealing in God's
behalf to the eternal verities and evidences of nature exterior and
interior to man, he vindicates the Divine authority, glorifies the
Divine character, and restrains the capricious and ignorant folly of
the men of Lystra.
[117] See the story of Philemon and Baucis as told in Smith's
_Dictionary of Classical Biography and Mythology_.
[118] The site of Lystra and the fact that it was a Roman colony
were unknown till 1884, when Sterrett discovered an inscription
which ascertained both facts: see Ramsay's _Historical Geography
of Asia Minor_, p. 332, and Sterrett's _Epigraph. Journey_,
already quoted, from "Papers of American School at Athens," vol.
iii., p. 142 (Boston, 1888). Artemas, one of the seventy
disciples, is said to have been bishop of Lystra: see _Acta
Sanct._, June 20th, p. 67.
Lastly, we find in this narrative two typical suggestions for the
missionary activity of the Church in every age. The men of Lystra with
marvellous facility soon changed their opinion concerning St. Paul. M.
Rénan has well pointed out that to the pagans of those times a miracle
was no necessary proof of a Divine mission. It was just as easily a
proof to them of a diabolical or magical power. The Jews, therefore,
who followed St. Paul, had no difficulty in persuading the men of
Lystra that this assailant of their hereditary deities was a mere
charlatan, a clever trickster moved by wicked powers to lead them
astray. Their character and reputation as Jews, worshippers of one God
alone, would lend weight to this charge, and enable them the more
easily to effect their purpose of killing St. Paul, in which they had
failed at Antioch and Iconium. The fickle mob easily lent themselves
to the purposes of the Jews, and having stoned St. Paul dragged his
body outside the city walls, thinking him dead. A few faithful
disciples followed the crowd, however. Perhaps, too, the eirenarch or
local police authority with his subordinates had interfered, and the
rioters, apprehensive of punishment for their disturbance of the
peace, had retired.[119] As the disciples stood around weeping for
the loss they had sustained, the Apostle awoke from the swoon into
which he had fallen, and was carried into the city by the faithful
few, among whom doubtless were Timothy and his parents. Lystra,
however, was no longer safe for St. Paul. He retired, therefore, some
twenty miles to Derbe, where he continued for some time labouring with
success, till the storm and the excitement had subsided at Lystra.
Then he returned back over the same ground which he had already
traversed. He might have pushed on along the great Eastern Road, nigh
as Derbe was to the passes through the Taurus Range which led directly
to Cilicia and Tarsus. He wished to go back indeed to Antioch. He had
been a year or so absent on this first excursion into the vast fields
of Gentile paganism. Wider and more extensive missions had now to be
planned. The wisdom gained by personal experience had now to be
utilised in consultation with the brethren. But still a work had to be
done in Lycaonia and Pisidia if the results of his labours were not to
be lost. He had quitted in great haste each town he had visited,
forced out by persecution, and leaving the organisation of the Church
incomplete. St. Paul came, like his Master, not merely to proclaim a
doctrine: he came still more to found and organise a Divine society.
He returns therefore back again along the route he had first taken. He
does not preach in public, nor run any risks of raising riots anew.
His work is now entirely of a character interior to the Church. He
strengthens the disciples by his teaching, he points out that earthly
trials and persecutions are marks of God's love and favour rather than
tokens of His wrath, he notes for them that it is needful "through
many tribulations to enter into the kingdom of God," and above all he
secures the permanence of his work by ordaining presbyters after the
fashion of the Church at Antioch, with prayer and fasting and
imposition of hands. This is one great typical lesson taught us here
by St. Paul's return journey through Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch of
Pisidia. Preaching and evangelistic work are important; but pastoral
work and Church consolidation and Church order are equally important,
if any permanent fruits are to be garnered and preserved. And the
other typical lesson is implied in the few words wherein the
termination of his first great missionary journey is narrated. "When
they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia; and
thence they sailed to Antioch, from whence they had been committed to
the grace of God for the work which they had fulfilled."
[119] The Romans had a local police in Asia Minor, organised after
the manner of our own local police. The chief of the police in
each town was called the eirenarch, and was annually appointed by
the proconsul. The Romans never made the mistake of placing the
police in the hands of discontented subjects. See, on this curious
topic, Le Bas and Waddington's _Voyage Archéologique_, t. iii.,
pp. 27 and 255.
Antioch was the centre whence Paul and Barnabas had issued forth to
preach among the Gentiles, and to Antioch the apostles returned to
cheer the Church with the narrative of their labours and successes,
and to restore themselves and their exhausted powers with the
sweetness of Christian fellowship, of brotherly love and kindness such
as then flourished, as never before or since, amongst the children of
men. Mission work such as St. Paul did on this great tour is very
exhausting, and it can always be best performed from a great centre.
Mission work, evangelistic work of any kind, if it is to be
successful, makes terrible demands on man's whole nature, physical,
mental, spiritual, and bodily. The best restorative for that nature
when so exhausted is conversation and intercourse with men of like
minds, such as St. Paul found when, returning to Antioch, he cheered
the hearts and encouraged the hopes of the Church by narrating the
wonders he had seen done and the triumphs he had seen won through the
power of the Holy Ghost.[120]
[120] It has often been argued that the gift of tongues conferred
by the Holy Ghost at Pentecost was not necessary, as Greek was
universally spoken in Asia Minor. The use of the Lycaonian tongue
at Lystra, even though a Roman colony, is an important fact on the
other side. Mr. Ramsay, in his _Hist. Geog. of Asia Minor_, says;
"Greek was not the popular language of the plateau, even in the
third century after Christ; the mass of the people spoke Lycaonian
and Galatian and Phrygian, though those who wrote books wrote
Greek and those who governed spoke Latin." Cf. pp. 98, 99 of Mr.
Ramsay's work, and p. 103 of the previous volume of this
commentary. This subject of the original languages of Asia Minor
and their survival to Christian times is an interesting and novel
subject of study, for which materials are gradually accumulating.
Thus the ancient Cappadocian language is discussed and a lexicon
of it compiled in a monograph which appeared in the _Museum_ of
the Evangelical school at Smyrna (1880-84), pp. 47-265. A large
number of inscriptions in the Phrygian language have also been
recovered. St. Paul, addressing the natives of the central plateau
of Asia Minor in Greek, would have been like an Englishman
preaching to the inhabitants of Wales or of Connemara in English.
I never heard of any powerful results thus following, save in the
case of Giraldus Cambrensis who tells us in his _Itinerary in
Wales_ of the melting character of his own Latin sermons upon the
Welsh people, though they did not understand a word of them. But
then Giraldus was, to say the least, an imaginative historian.