the meaning of Luke’s silence, we conclude that Paul was still not fully conscious of the full meaning of his mission; he was still bound in the fetters of Judaic consistency, and acted as if the door of the synagogue was the portal through which the Nations must find their way into the Church. He had not yet learned, or at least he had not yet so fully shaken himself free from the prejudices of education and tradition as to act on the knowledge, that God “had opened a door of faith unto the nations” (XIV 27, p. 85).
A point in Luke’s style here deserves note. He has mentioned in IX 30 that Saul was sent away to Tarsus; and he now takes up the thread from that point, saying that Barnabas went to Tarsus to seek for Saul. He implies that the reader must understand Tarsus to have been Saul’s headquarters during the intervening period. Not merely. does XI 25 require one to look back, but also IX 30
SEC 2. The Coming of Barnabas.
requires one to look forward; each is the complement of the other, and the two together hit off a long period during which no critical event had to be recorded. The same period, together with the following year in Antioch, is described by Paul himself, Gal. I 21, 22: “Then I came into the climes of Syria and Cilicia: and I continued to be unknown by face to the churches of Judea, but they only heard say, ‘He that once persecuted us now preacheth the faith’”. Paul and Luke complete each other, and make up a picture of over ten years of quiet work within the range of the synagogue and its influence.
The words of v. 25 seem harsh until one takes them as a direct backward reference to IX 30, and as implying a statement about the intervening period. The Bezan Commentator, not catching the style of Luke, inserts an explanatory clause, “hearing that Saul is in Tarsus,” which rounds off the sense here by cutting away the necessity of finding in XI 25 the completion of a period of history whose beginning is recorded in IX 30.
The term “Christians” attests that the congregation became a familiar subject of talk, and probably of gossip and scandal, in the city; for obviously the name originated Outside the brotherhood. The Brethren, then, were talked of in popular society as “they that are connected with Christos”: such a title could not originate with the Jews, to whom “the Christ” was sacred. The name Christos therefore must have been the most prominent in the expressions by which the Greek Brethren described or defined their faith to their pagan neighbours. The latter, doubtless, got no clear idea of what this Christos was: some took Christos as one of the strange gods whom they worshipped (XVII 18); others took him as
The Church in Antioch. CHAP. III
their leader (p. 254). In any case the name belongs to popular slang.
In accordance with the tendency of popular language to find some meaning for strange words, the strange term Christos was vulgarly modified to Chrêstos, the Greek adjective meaning “good, useful,” which seemed to popular fancy a more suitable and natural name for a leader or a deity. “Chrêstians” was the form in which the name was often used; and it occurs in inscriptions.
3. THE ANTIOCHIAN COLLECTION FOR THE POOR OF JERUSALEM.
(XI 27 A) AND AT THIS PERIOD THERE CAME DOWN FROM JERUSALEM PROPHETS TO ANTIOCH. (28A) AND THERE STOOD UP ONE OF THEM, AGABUS BY NAME, AND SIGNIFIED BY THE SPIRIT THAT THERE SHOULD BE GREAT FAMINE OVER ALL THE WORLD; WHICH CAME TO PASS IN THE DAYS OF CLAUDIUS. (29A) AND THE DISCIPLES ACCORDING TO THE MEANS OF THE INDIVIDUAL ARRANGED TO SEND CONTRIBUTIONS FOR RELIEF TO THE BRETHREN SETTLED IN JUDEA. (30A) AND THIS TOO THEY DID, AND DESPATCHED the relief TO THE ELDERS BY THE HAND OF BARNABAS AND SAUL. (XII 25A) AND BARNABAS AND SAUL FULFILLED THE MINISTRATION OF RELIEF, AND RETURNED FROM JERUSALEM BRINGING AS COMPANION JOHN SURNAMED MARK.
Luke’s brief statement about the famine is declared by Dr. Schürer to be unhistorical, improbable, and uncorroborated by other evidence.1 Opinions differ widely; for the famine seems to me to be singularly well attested, considering the scantiness of evidence for this period. Suetonius alludes to assiduæ sterilitates causing famine- 1 Eine ungeschichtliche Generalisirung, and again, ist, wie an sich unwahrscheinlich, so auch nirgends bezeugt (Jüd. Volk I p. 474.
SEC 3. The Antiochian Collection for the Poor.
prices under Claudius, while Dion Cassius and Tacitus speak of two famines in Rome, and famine in Rome implied dearth in the great corn-growing countries of the Mediterranean; Eusebius mentions famine in Greece, and an inscription perhaps refers to famine in Asia Minor.1 Thus widespread dearth over the Roman world is fully attested independently; beyond the Roman world our evidence does not extend. Dr. Schürer seems to require a distinct statement that a famine took place in the same year all over Europe, Asia, and Africa. But that is too hard on Luke, for he merely says that famine occurred over the whole (civilised) world in the time of Claudius: of course the year varied in different lands.
The great famine in Palestine occurred probably in A.D. 46. The commentators as a rule endeavour, by straining Josephus, or by quoting the authority of Orosius, to make out that the famine took place in 44, and even that it occasioned the persecution by Herod.
The eagerness to date the famine in 44 arises from a mistake as to the meaning and order of the narrative of Acts. Between XI 30 and XII 25 there is interposed an account of Herod’s persecution and his miserable death, events which belong to the year 44; and it has been supposed that Luke conceives these events as happening while Barnabas and Saul were in Jerusalem. But that is not the case. Luke describes the prophecy of Agabus, and the assessment imposed by common arrangement on the whole congregation in proportion to their individual resources. Then he adds that this arrangement was carried out and the whole sum sent to Jerusalem. The
1 Le Bas-Waddington no. 1192, Studia Biblica IV p. 52 f. 31
The Church in Antioch. CHAP. III
process thus described was not an instantaneous subscription. The money was probably collected by weekly contributions, for the congregation was not rich, and coin was not plentiful in Syrian cities. This collection would take a considerable time, as we gather both from the analogy of the later Pauline contribution (p. 288), and from the fact that the famine was still in the future, and no necessity for urgent haste existed. The arrangements were made beforehand in full reliance on the prophecy; but there is no reason to think that the money was used until the famine actually began, and relief was urgently needed. The manner of relief must, of course, have been by purchasing and distributing corn, for it would have shown criminal incapacity to send gold to a starving city; and the corn would not be given by any rational person, until the famine was at its height. When Sir Richard Wallace relieved the distress in Paris after the siege, he did not content himself with telegraphing money from London, nor yet with distributing gold to the starving people in Paris. He brought food and gave it. As he did, so we may be sure did the Antiochian delegates do; and no rational person will suppose that the corn was brought to Jerusalem until the famine was actually raging. But in a land where transport was difficult, preparations took time; and Luke states at the outset the general course of the preparations which the Divine revelation aroused.
Thereafter, before describing the actual distribution of relief in Jerusalem, the author’s method requires him to bring down the general narrative of events in Jerusalem and Judæa to the point when the famine began; and then at last he mentions the actual administering of the relief. He, therefore, tells about the persecution of Herod
SEC 3. The Antiochian Collection for the Poor.
(which took place near the time when Agabus prophesied), and about Herod’s death; and then at last he mentions the execution of the Antiochian design and the return of the delegates to their own city.
As thus interpreted, Luke’s chronology harmonises
