RECEIVE OF THEE TESTIMONY CONCERNING ME”. (19) AND I SAID, “LORD, THEY THEMSELVES KNOW THAT I IMPRISONED AND BEAT IN EVERY SYNAGOGUE THEM THAT BELIEVED ON THEE: (20) AND WHEN THE BLOOD OF STEPHEN THY WITNESS WAS SHED, I ALSO WAS
SEC 4. The Return from Jerusalem Antioch.
STANDING BY, AND CONSENTING, AND KEEPING THE: GARMENTS OF THEM THAT SLEW HIM (and therefore they must see that some great thing has happened to convince me)”. (21) AND HE SAID UNTO ME, “DEPART: FOR I WILL SEND THEE FORTH FAR HENCE UNTO THE NATIONS “.
Let us clearly conceive the probable situation at that time. In the famine-stricken city it is not to be supposed that Barnabas and Saul confined their relief to professing Christians, and let all who were not Christians starve. Christian feeling, ordinary humanity, and policy (in the last respect Paul was as little likely to err as in the others), alike forbade an absolute distinction. The Antiochian delegates must have had many opportunities of siding their Jewish brethren, though they addressed their work specially to their Brethren in the Church; and the result must have been that they occupied a position of peculiar advantage for the time, not merely in the Church (where the respect and honour paid them shines through Gal. II 1-10), but also in the city as a whole. Now it was part of Paul’s missionary method not to insist where there was no opening, and not to draw back where the door was open. It might well seem that the remarkable circumstances of his mission to Jerusalem, the revelation by which it was ordered, and the advantage it secured to him in the city, were the opening of a door through which he might powerfully influence his own people. The thought could not fail to occur to Paul; and the remarkable incident described in XXII 17-21 shows that it was in his mind.
This incident is usually assigned to the first visit which Paul paid to Jerusalem after his conversion. But he does
The Church in Antioch. CHAP. III
not say or even imply that it was his first visit; and we must be guided by the suitability of the circumstances mentioned to the facts recorded about the various visits. Now Luke gives a totally different reason for his departure from Jerusalem at the first visit: he attributes it to the prudence of the Brethren, who learned that a conspiracy was made to slay him, and wished both to save him and to avoid the general danger that would arise for all, if persecution broke out against one. The revelation of XXII 18, to which Paul attributes his departure, suits the first visit very badly; but such discrepancy does not count for much with the modern interpreters, orthodox and “critical” alike, who, having achieved the feat of identifying the second visit of Gal. II 1-10 with the third visit of Acts XV (pp. 59, 154 f.), have naturally ceased to expect agreement between Luke and Paul on such matters. Accordingly, Lightfoot actually quotes the discrepancy between XXII 18 f. and IX 29. to illustrate and defend the discrepancy between Gal. II 2 and Acts XV 4.
Again, the reasoning of XXII 20, 21, is not suitable to the first visit. Paul argues that circumstances make him a peculiarly telling witness to the Jews of the power of Jesus: and the reply is that Jesus will send him far hence to the Nations. Now, the first visit was followed, not by an appeal to the Nations, but by many years of quiet uneventful work in Cilicia and Antioch, within the circle of the synagogue and its influence. But this revelation points to the immediate “opening of a door of belief to the Nations”; and that did not take place until Paul went to Paphos and South Galatia (XIV 27, pp. 41, 85).
To place this revelation on the first visit leads to
SEC 4. The Return from Jerusalem Antioch.
hopeless embarrassment, and to one of those discrepancies which the orthodox historians, like Lightfoot, labour to minimise, while the critical historians naturally and fairly argue that such discrepancies prove Acts to be not the work of Paul’s pupil and friend, but a work of later origin. On this point I can only refer to what is said on p. 15; on the principle there laid down, we cannot connect XXII 17 f. with IX 28 f.
On the other hand this revelation suits excellently the state of matters. which we have just described at the conclusion of the second visit. Paul was tempted by the favourable opportunity in Jerusalem; and his personal desire always turned strongly towards his Jewish brethren (Rom. IX 1-5). He prayed in the temple: he saw Jesus: he pleaded with Jesus, representing his fitness for this work: and he was ordered to depart at once, “for I will send thee forth far hence to the Nations”. Thereupon he returned to Antioch; and in a few days or weeks a new revelation to the Antiochian officials sent him on his mission to the West, and opened the door of belief to the Nations.
One objection to this view is likely to be made. Many infer from XXII 18 that the visit was short. But there is no implication as to the duration of the visit. The words merely show that Paul was thinking of a longer stay, when the vision bade him hasten away forthwith. The second visit, according to Lightfoot’s supposition, was even shorter than the first, but on our view it began when the failure of harvest in 46 turned scarcity into famine, and it probably lasted until the beginning of 47.
Our reference of XXII 17 to the second visit is corroborated by the reading of the two great uncial
The Church in Antioch. CHAP. III
MSS. in XII 25, “returned to Jerusalem”: this seems to be an alteration made deliberately by an editor, who, because these passages referred to the same visit, tampered with the text of XII 25 to bring it into verbal conformity with XXII 17.
5. THE MISSION OF BARNABAS AND SAUL.
(XIII 1) NOW THERE WAS AT ANTIOCH, CONNECTED WITH “THE CHURCH,”1 A BODY OF PROPHETS AND TEACHERS, BARNABAS, SYMEON (SURNAMED NIGER), AND LUCIUS (HE OF CYRENE), WITH MANAËN (FOSTER-BROTHER OF HEROD THE TETRARCH) AND SAUL. (2) AS THESE WERE: LEADING A LIFE OF RELIGIOUS DUTIES AND FASTS, THE: HOLY SPIRIT SAID, “SEPARATE ME BARNABAS AND SAUL FOR THE WORK WHEREUNTO I HAVE CALLED THEM”. (3) THEN THEY (i.e., the Church) HELD A SPECIAL FAST, AND PRAYED, AND LAID THEIR HANDS UPON THEM, AND GAVE THEM LEAVE TO DEPART.
A new stage in the development of the Antiochian Church is here marked. It was no longer a mere “congregation”; it was now “the Church” in Antioch; and there was in it a group of prophets and teachers to whom the grace of God was given.
There is indubitably a certain feeling that a new start is made at this point; but it is only through blindness to the style of a great historian that some commentators take this as the beginning of a new document. The subject demanded here a fresh start, for a great step in the development of the early Church was about to be narrated, “the opening of a door to the Gentiles” (XIV 27). The author emphasised this step beyond all others, because he was himself a Gentile; and the develop-
1Prof. Armitage Robinson, quoted in Church in R. E. p. 52
SEC 5. The Mission of Barnabas and Saul.
ment of the Church through the extension of Christian influence was the guiding idea of his historical work.
Probably the variation between the connecting particles (καί and τε) marks a distinction between three prophets, Barnabas, Symeon and Lucius, and two teachers, Manaen and Saul. In Acts VI 5, the list of seven deacons is given without any such variation; and it seems a fair inference that the variation here is intentional.1 The distinction between the qualifications required in prophets and in teachers is emphasised by Paul in I Cor. XII 28. As regards Barnabas and Saul their difference in gifts and qualifications appears clearly in other places. Everywhere Saul is the preacher and teacher, Barnabas is the senior and for a time the leader on that account.
There is a marked distinction between the general rule of life in v. 2, and the single special ceremony in v. 3. An appreciable lapse of time is implied in 2: after the
