In the narrative of the lives of the twelve, the author has been
driven entirely to the labor of new research and composition,
because the task of composing complete biographies of these
personages had never before been undertaken on so large a scale.
Cave’s Lives of the Apostles, the only work that has ever gone
over that ground, is much more limited in object and extent
than the task here undertaken, and afforded no aid whatever
to the author of this work, in those biographies. Both the
text and the notes of that part of the work are entirely new;
nothing whatever, except a few acknowledged quotations, of
those biographies, having ever appeared before on this subject.
A list of the works which were resorted to in the prosecution
of this new work, would fill many pages, and would answer no
useful purpose, after the numerous references made to each
source in connection with the passage which was thence derived.
It is sufficient in justice to himself to say that all those
references were made by the author himself; nor in one instance
that can now be recollected, did he quote second-hand without
acknowledging the intermediate source. In the second part of
the work, the labor was in a field less completely occupied by
previous labor. But throughout that part of the work also, the
whole text of the narrative is original; and all the fruits of
others’ research are, with hardly one exception, credited in
the notes, both to the original, and to the medium through which
they were derived. In this portion of the work, much labor has
been saved, by making use of the very full illustrations given
in the works of those who had preceded the author on the life of
Paul, whose biography has frequently received the attention and
labor of the learned.
The following have been most useful in this part of the work.
“Hermanni Witsii Meletemata Leidensia, Part 1. Vita Pauli
Apostoli.” 4to. Leidiae, 1703.――“Der Apostel Paulus. Von J. T.
Hemsen.” 8vo. Goettingen, 1830.――“Pearson’s Annals of Paul,
translated, with notes, by Jackson Muspratt Williams.” 12mo.
Cambridge, 1827.――Much valuable matter contained in the two
first, however, was excluded by want of room.