and lasting impression on a sensitive mind than a scene where a respected and beloved parent makes a demand beyond what love or duty permits, and tries to enforce that demand by authority and threats. If Paul had to face such a scene, we can appreciate the reason why he lays so much stress on the duty of parents to respect their children’s just feelings: “ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath; but bring them up in the education and admonition of the Lord” (VI 4): “fathers, provoke not your children, lest they lose heart” (Col. III 21). Not every person would think this one of the most important pieces of advice to give his young societies in Asia Minor. But, according to our conjecture, Paul had good cause to know the harm that parents may do by
SEC 2. Paul's Family
not reasonably considering their children’s desires and beliefs. At the same time he strongly emphasises in the same passages the duty of children to obey their parents, and sets this before the duty of parents to their children. That also is characteristic of one who had been blameless as touching all the commandments (Phil. III 6), and who therefore must have gone to the fullest extreme in compliance with his father’s orders before he announced that he could comply no further.
3. PERSONALITY. While Luke is very sparing of personal details, he gives us some few hints about Paul’s physical characteristics as bearing on his moral influence. As an orator, he evidently used a good deal of gesture with his hands; for example, he enforced a point to the Ephesian Elders by showing them “these hands” (XX 34). When he addressed the audience at Pisidian Antioch, or the excited throng of Jews in Jerusalem, he beckoned with the hand; when he addressed Agrippa and the distinguished audience in the Roman governor’s hail, he “stretched forth his hand”. This was evidently a characteristic and hardly conscious feature of his more impassioned oratory; but, when more quiet and simple address was suitable (as in the opening of his speech to the Ephesian Elders, before the emotion was wrought up), or when a purely argumentative and restrained style was more likely to be effective (as in addressing the critical and cold Athenian audience, or the Roman procurator’s court), no gesture is mentioned. On the other hand, in the extreme excitement at Lystra he “rent his garments”; and in the jailor’s critical situation, XVI 28, Paul called
The Origin of St. Paul CHAP. II
out with a loud voice. Wherever any little fact is mentioned by Luke, we can always observe some special force in it, and such details must have had real importance, when an author so brief and so impersonal as Luke mentions them; and they are very rare in him. Alexander tried to obtain a hearing from the Ephesian mob by such a gesture; and the din, as they howled like a lot of dervishes, is set before us strongly by the fact that speaking was impossible and gesture alone could be perceived. Peter, when he appeared to his astonished friends in Mary’s house after his escape, beckoned to them to make no noise that might attract attention and betray his presence. Otherwise such gestures are mentioned only where the hand is stretched out to aid or to heal or to receive help.
Two of the most remarkable instances of Paul’s power over others are prefaced by the statement that Paul “fixed his eyes on” the man (XIII 9, XIV 9, cp. XXIII 1); and this suggests that his fixed, steady gaze was a marked feature in his personality, and one source of his influence over them that were brought into relations with him. Luke frequently notes this trait. Peter tells that he fixed his gaze on the heavenly vision, XI 6; and he fixed his eyes on the lame man, III 4. Stephen turned his fixed gaze towards heaven, and saw it open to disclose the vision of glory to him. In these cases the power of the eye is strongly brought out. The same trait is alluded to where intense astonishment or admiration is involved, as when the bystanders gazed at Peter and John after they had healed the lame man, or Stephen’s auditors stared on him as they saw his face suffused with glory, or the disciples gazed
SEC 3. His Personality
upwards as Jesus was taken away from them, or Cornelius stared at the Angel. In the third Gospel, IV 20, the stare of the congregation in Nazareth at Jesus, when He first spoke in the synagogue after His baptism, suggests that a new glory and a new consciousness of power in Him were perceived by them. The power which looks from the eyes of an inspired person attracts and compels a corresponding fixed gaze on the part of them that are brought under his influence; and this adds much probability to the Bezan reading in III 3, where the fixed gaze of the lame man on Peter seems to rouse the power that was latent in him. The Greek word is almost peculiar to Luke, and occurs chiefly in Acts. Elsewhere in N.T. it is used only by Paul in II Cor. III 7, 13; and it has often seemed to me as if there were more of Lukan feeling and character in II Cor. than in any other of Paul’s letters. A consideration of these passages must convince every one that the action implied by the word (ἀτενίζειν) is inconsistent with weakness of vision: in fact, Paul says that the Jews could not gaze fixedly on the glory of Moses’ face, implying that their eyes were not strong enough. The theory which makes Paul a permanent sufferer in his eyes, unable to see distinctly persons quite near him, and repulsive to strangers on account of their hideous state (Gal. IV 13 f.), is hopelessly at variance with the evidence of Luke. In that word, as he uses it, the soul looks through the eyes.
The word twice occurs in the Third Gospel, once in a passage peculiar to Luke, and once when the servant maid stared at Peter and recognised him, where her fixed gaze is not mentioned by Matthew or Mark.
CHAPTER III.
THE CHURCH IN ANTIOCH
1. THE GENTILES IN THE CHURCH.
(XI 19) THEY THEN THAT WERE SCATTERED THROUGH THE TRIBULATION THAT AROSE ON ACCOUNT OF STEPHEN TRAVELLED (i.e., made missionary journeys) AS FAR AS PHŒNICE AND CYPRUS AND ANTIOCH, SPEAKING THE WORD TO JEWS AND NONE SAVE JEWS. (20) BUT THERE WERE SOME OF THEM, MEN OF CYPRUS AND CYRENE, WHO WHEN THEY ARE COME TO ANTIOCH, USED TO SPEAK TO GREEKS ALSO, GIVING THE GOOD NEWS OF THE LORD JESUS. (21) AND THE HAND OF THE LORD WAS WITH THEM, AND A GREAT NUMBER THAT BELIEVED TURNED UNTO THE LORD.
When Acts was written, the Church of Antioch was only about fifty years old, but already its beginning seems to have been lost in obscurity. It had not been founded, it had grown by unrecorded and almost unobserved steps. In the dispersion of the primitive Church at Jerusalem, during the troubles ensuing on the bold action of Stephen, certain Cypriote and Cyrenaic Jews, who had been brought up in Greek lands and had wider outlook on the world than the Palestinian Jews, came to Antioch. There they made the innovation of addressing not merely Jews but also Greeks. We may understand here (1) that the words used
SEC 1. The Gentiles in the Church.
imply successful preaching and the admission of Greeks to the Christian congregation, and (2) that such an innovation took place by slow degrees, and began in the synagogue, where Greek proselytes heard the word. The Cypriote and Cyrenaic Jews began pointedly to include these Greeks of the synagogue in their invitations, and thus a mixed body of Jews and Greeks constituted the primitive congregation of Antioch; but the Greeks had entered through the door of the synagogue (see pp. 62, 85, 156).
In verses 19-21 the narrative for the moment goes back to a time earlier than X and XI 1-18, and starts a new thread of history from the death of Stephen (VII 60). That event was a critical one in the history of the Church. The primitive Church had clung to Jerusalem, and lived there in a state of simplicity and almost community of goods, which was an interesting phase of society, but was quite opposed to the spirit in which Jesus had said, “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation”. For the time it seemed that the religion of Christ was stagnating into a sociological experiment. Stephen’s vigour provoked a persecution, which dispersed itinerant missionaries over Judea and Samaria (VIII 1-4), first among whom was Philip the colleague of Stephen. New congregations of Christians were formed in many towns (VIII 14, 25, 40, IX 31, 32, 35, 42, X 44); and it became necessary that, if these were to be kept
