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Ἰάκωβον τὸν ἀδελφὸν τοῦ Κυρίου. 3 ἃ δε γράφω ὑμῖν, ἰδοὺ ἐνώπιον τοῦ Θεοῦ ὅτι οὐ ψεύδομαι. “ ἔπειτα ἦλθον εἰς τὰ κλίματα τῆς Συρίας καὶ τῆς Κιλικίας.

el un, from which it cannot be separated without harshness, and erepov carries Tv ȧnoσTÓλwv with it. It seems then that St James is here called an Apostle, though it does not therefore follow that he was one of the Twelve (see the detached note, p. 95). The plural in the corresponding account Acts ix. 27, 'He brought (Paul) to the Apostles,' is also in favour of this sense, but this argument must not be pressed.

20. ἰδοὺ ἐνώπιον τοῦ Θεοῦ] A form of asseveration equivalent to 'I call you to witness,' and so followed by OTI. See 2 Tim. ii. 14, iv. I diaμаρтúρεσθαι ἐνώπιον τοῦ Θεοῦ. For ἰδοὺ elsewhere in the New Testament is an interjection or adverb, never a verb, so that there is an objection to making it govern or here. Perhaps however the occurrence of "de or in the LXX, Ps. cxix. 159, Lam. i. 20, may justify such a construction here. The strength of St Paul's language is to be explained by the unscrupulous calumnies cast upon him by his enemies. See the note I Thess. v. 27.

21. In the corresponding narrative of St Luke it is related that the brethren at Jerusalem, discovering the plot against St Paul's life, 'took him down to Cæsarea and despatched him to Tarsus' (Acts ix. 30); and later on, that Barnabas went to Tarsus and sought out Saul, and having found him brought him to Antioch, where they taught for a whole year before returning to Jerusalem (xi. 25-30). The Cæsarea mentioned there is doubtless Stratonis, and not Philippi, as some maintain. Not only was this the more probable route for him to take, but St Luke's language requires it; for (1) The words κατήγαγον, ἐξαπ

22

33 ἤμην δὲ

éσTedav, imply a seaport and an embarkation: and (2) Cæsarea, without any addition to distinguish it, is always the principal city of the name. It appears therefore that St Luke represents St Paul as sailing from Cæsarea on his way to Tarsus; and comparing this account with the notice here, we must suppose either (1) That St Paul did not go direct to Tarsus but visited Syria on the way; or (2) That he visited Syria from Tarsus, and after preaching there returned again to Tarsus where he was found by Barnabas; St Luke having, on either of these hypotheses, omitted to record this visit to Syria; or (3) That St Paul's words here 'Syria and Cilicia' are not intended to describe the order in which he visited the two countries. This last is the most probable supposition. Cilicia has geographically a greater affinity with Syria than with Asia Minor. See Conybeare and Howson, I. p. 130. The less important country is here named after the more important. 'Cilicia,' says Ewald, ‘was constantly little better than an appendage of Syria,' Gesch. des V. Isr. vI. p. 406. At this time however it was under a separate administration. The words rà κλíμara seem to show that 'Syria and Cilicia' are here mentioned under one general expression, and not as two distinct districts.

Tà κλíμara] Rom. xv. 23, 2 Cor. xi. 10. A comparatively late word, see Lobeck Paral. p. 418. It is found in Pseudo-Aristot. de Mundo c. x, and several times in Polybius.

22. ἤμην ἀγνοούμενος κ.τ.λ.] Ι remained personally unknown? A strong form of the imperfect, as ȧkoúOVTES σav 'they kept hearing' (ver. 23): see Winer, § xlv. 5, p. 437 sq.

ἀγνοούμενος τῷ προσώπῳ ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις τῆς Ἰουδαίας ταῖς ἐν Χριστῷ, 3 μόνον δὲ ἀκούοντες ἦσαν ὅτι Ὁ διώκων ἡμᾶς ποτὲ νῦν εὐαγγελίζεται τὴν πίστιν ἥν ποτε ἐπόρθει, 4 καὶ ἐδόξαζον ἐν ἐμοὶ τὸν Θεόν.

ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις κ.τ.λ.] ' unknown to the Churches of Judæa' generally, as distinguished from that of Jerusalem; comp. John iii. 22. To the latter he could not have failed to be known, as might be inferred from the account here, even without the narrative of his energetic preaching in the Acts. From Jerusalem he was hurried off to Cæsarea, and there embarking he left the shores of Palestine. The other churches of Judæa therefore had no opportunity of knowing him. Judæa is here distinguished from Jerusalem, as Italy is frequently distinguished from Rome, e.g. probably Hebr. xiii. 24. The addition ταῖς ἐν Χριστῷ was necessary when speaking of the Christian brotherhoods of Judæa; for the unconverted Jewish communities might still be called 'the Churches of Judæa.' See the note on I Thess. ii. 14, τῶν ἐκκλησιῶν τοῦ Θεοῦ τῶν οὐσῶν ἐν τῇ Ἰουδαίᾳ ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ.

23. ὅτι] introduces an abrupt change from the oblique to the direct mode of speaking, e.g. Acts xiv. 22, xxiii. 22.

So it is used frequently in introducing a quotation, e.g. Gal. iii. 1o.

Ὁ διώκων ἡμᾶς ποτέ] ‘Our persecutor of former times; ὁ διώκων being used as a substantive, i.e. without reference to time, as Matt. xxvii. 40 ὁ καταλύων τὸν ναόν: see Winer, § xlv. 7, p. 444. On the position of ποτέ, see the note on ver. 13.

τὴν πίστιν] It is a striking proof of the large space occupied by 'faith' in the mind of the infant Church, that it should so soon have passed into a synonym for the Gospel. See Acts vi. 7. Here its meaning seems to hover between the Gospel and the Church. For the various seuses of πίστις, see the notes on iii. 23, vi. 10, and the detached note on the term 'faith.'

24. ἐν ἐμοί] See the note ver. 16, and comp. Is. xlix. 3 δοῦλός μου εἶ σὺ Ἰσραὴλ καὶ ἐν σοὶ ἐνδοξασθήσομαι. 'He does not say,' adds Chrysostom, ‘they marvelled at me, they praised me, they were struck with admiration of me, but he attributes all to grace. They glorified God, he says, in me.'

St Paul's sojourn in Arabia.

cident.

A veil of thick darkness hangs over St Paul's visit to Arabia. Of Obscurity the scenes among which he moved, of the thoughts and occupations which of the inengaged him while there, of all the circumstances of a crisis which must have shaped the whole tenour of his after life, absolutely nothing is known. 'Immediately,' says St Paul, 'I went away into Arabia.' The historian passes over the incident without a mention. It is a mysterious pause, a moment of suspense in the Apostle's history, a breathless calm which ushers in the tumultuous storm of his active missionary life.

Yet it may be useful to review the speculations to which this incident has given rise, even though we cannot hope to arrive at any definite result; for, if such a review bears no other fruit, it will at least bring out more clearly the significance of the incident itself.

Of the place of the Apostle's sojourn various opinions have been held. ConjecArabia is a vague term, and affords scope for much conjecture.

tures as to the place.

1. The Arabic translator1, whose language gives him a fictitious claim (1) El Belto a hearing on such a point, renders the passage 'Immediately I went ka. to El Belka.' In like manner in Gal. iv. 25 he trauslates, 'This Hagar is Mount Sinai in El Belka, and is contiguous to Jerusalem.' Now the only district, so far as I can discover, which bears or has borne the name of El Belka, is the region lying to the cast and north-east of the Dead Sea?. If So, how are we to account for this translation of 'Apaßia by El Belka? That the same rendering of the word in both passages arose from the translator's connecting them together in some way, can scarcely be doubted. Was his starting-point then a misapprehension of the meaning of ovvσTOIXEÎ in the second passage, which he renders 'is contiguous to3,' and arguing from this, did he suppose that part of Arabia to be meant in both passages, which was nearest to Jerusalem? Or on the other hand, did he start from some tradition of St Paul's preaching in 'El Belka,' and having thus defined from the first passage the meaning of 'Arabia,' did he apply it to the second passage also? But in any case how could he talk of Mount Sinai in 'El Belka'? Was this ignorance of geography? or must we resort to the improbable supposition that some wandering Arab tribe, which gave its name to the country in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea, at one time occupied the region about Sinai? At all events the tradition here preserved about St Paul, if it be a tradition, is of little worth, as the translator seems to have lived at a comparatively late date1.

1 The Arabic version of the Polyglotts, which was made directly from the Greek. The translator not unfrequently gives geographical comments. See Hug Einleit. § cix, 1. p. 431. The other Arabic version, the Erpenian, translated from the Syriac, retains 'Arabia.'

2 See Burckhardt Trav. in Syria App. ш, Ritter Erdkunde XII. p. 426

sq, Stanley's Sinai and Palestine pp.
95, 319.

* For this rendering however he
might plead the authority of several
ancient commentators. See the notes
on iv. 25.

Hug 1. c. states that the translator has unexpectedly revealed his country by his rendering of Acts ii. 10,

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2. Arabia, in the widest use of the term, might extend to the gates of Damascus, and even include that city itself. You cannot any of you deny,' says Justin, arguing against his Jew as to the interpretation of a passage in one of the prophets, 'that Damascus belongs and did belong to Arabia, though now it has been assigned to Syrophoenicia1.' Thus no very distant journey would be necessary to reach Arabia. A retirement in the immediate neighbourhood of Damascus would suffice, and such a visit, especially if it were brief, might well be passed over by the historian as a merely temporary interruption of the Apostle's long residence in that city, which was unknown to him, or which knowing, he did not care to record. Into these wild regions then, beyond the sway of Roman dominion, beyond the reach of civilization, far away from all his old haunts and associations, it is thought that the Apostle plunged himself in the first tumult of his newly-acquired experiences".

This explanation however is open to objection. It gives to 'Arabia' an extension, which at all events seems not to have been common, and which even the passage of Justin shows to have required some sort of justification. It separates the Arabia of the first chapter from the Arabia of the fourth. And lastly, it deprives this visit of a significance which, on a more probable hypothesis, it possesses in relation to this crisis of St Paul's life.

3. For if we suppose that the Apostle at this critical moment betook himself to the Sinaitic peninsula, the scene of the giving of the law, then his visit to Arabia becomes full of meaning. He was attracted thither by a spirit akin to that which formerly had driven Elijah to the same region. Standing on the threshold of the new covenant, he was anxious to look upon the birthplace of the old: that dwelling for a while in seclusion in the presence of 'the mount that burned with fire,' he might ponder over the transient glories of the 'ministration of death,' and apprehend its real purpose in relation to the more glorious covenant which

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country' is a corrupt reading of
'Cyrene,' the change involving only a
slight alteration in one letter. See
Lagarde de N. T. ad vers. Orient. fidem
edendo, Berl. 1857, p. 3, referred to in
Bleek's Einl. p. 737. Such geographi-
cal notices as that of El Belka point to
a more eastern origin.

1 Dial. c. Tryph. p. 305 A. See also
other authorities in Conybeare and
Howson, 1. p. 117, 118. Tertullian (adv.
Jud. c. 9 and adv. Marc. iii. 13) ob-
viously copies Justin and must not be
considered an independent authority.
The words of Justin εἰ καὶ νῦν προσνενέ-

μηται τῇ Συροφοινίκῃ λεγομένῃ seem to refer to the arrangement of these provinces by Hadrian. See Becker and Marquardt Röm. Alterth. III. 1, p. 195 sqq and comp. [Bardesanes] de Fato, in Cureton's Spicil. Syr. p. 30. On the limits of Arabia see also Ephr. Syr. Op. Syr. I. p. 464 sq.

2 See the instructive passage in Ewald, Gesch. des Volkes Isr. VI. p. 398. Ewald however, though he takes St Paul into this region, guards against the objections which I have alleged in the text, by supposing him to travel as far as Sinai also (p. 400).

81 Kings xix. 8-18. It is worth noticing that this region is connected with Damascus in the history of Elijah as well as of St Paul; 'Go return on thy way to the wilderness of Damascus.'

was now to supplant it. Here, surrounded by the children of the desert, the descendants of Hagar the bondwoman, he read the true meaning and power of the law1. In the rugged and barren region, whence it issued, Signifihe saw a fit type of that bleak desolation which it created and was in- cance of this sotended to create in the soul of man. In the midst of such scenes and journ. associations, his spirit was attuned to harmony with his divine mission, and fitted to receive fresh 'visions and revelations of the Lord.' Thus in the wilderness of Sinai, as on the Mount of the transfiguration, the three dispensations met in one. Here Moses had received the tables of the law amid fire and tempest and thick darkness. Here again Elijah, the typical prophet, listened to the voice of God, and sped forth refreshed on his mission of righteousness. And here lastly, in the fulness of time, St Paul, the greatest preacher of Him of whom both the law and the prophets spoke, was strengthened and sanctified for his great work, was taught the breadth as well as the depth of the riches of God's wisdom, and transformed from the champion of a bigoted and narrow tradition into the large-hearted Apostle of the Gentiles?.

What was the length of this sojourn we can only conjecture. The Its durainterval between his conversion and his first visit to Jerusalem, St Paul tion. here states to have been three years. The notices of time in St Luke are vague, but not contradictory to this statements. From Damascus St Paul tells us he went away into Arabia, whence he returned to Damascus. St Luke represents him as preaching actively in this city after his conversion, not mentioning and apparently not aware of any interruption, though his narrative is not inconsistent with such. It seems probable then that St Paul's visit to Arabia took place early in this period before he

1 A stronger argument for St Paul's visit to Sinai might be drawn from his reference to Hagar, the supposed Arabic name of Sinai (Gal. iv. 25), which he was not likely to have heard anywhere but on the spot: comp. Stanley Sinai and Palestine p. 50. But the reading and the interpretation alike are highly doubtful. See the notes there.

The significance of Sinai, as the holy place of inspiration, will be felt by readers of Tancred.

The notices of time in the narrative of the Acts are these: He remained with the disciples in Damascus some days (nuépas Tivàs) and straightway (evθέως) he began to preach (ἐκήρυσσεν)... and Saul was the more strengthened... and when many days (ἡμέραι ἱκαναὶ) were accomplishing (èπλŋpoûvтo) the Jews took counsel to slay him, in consequence of which he left and went to Jerusalem (ix. 20-26). Ημέραι ἱκαναὶ is an indefinite period in St Luke, which may vary according to circumstances;

Acts ix. 43, xviii. 18, xxvii. 7. Cer-
tainly the idea connected with ikavòs
in his language is that of largeness ra-
ther than smallness; comp. Luke vii.
12, Acts xx. 37 (ikavòs kλav@μós). In
the LXX it is frequently employed to
translate 'mighty,' e.g. Ruth i. 20,
21. Again the wide use of the Hebrew
D'D', which St Luke is copying, allows
of almost any extension of time. Hence
πολλαὶ ἡμέραι in the Lxx denotes any
indefinite period however long; Gen.
xxxvii. 34, 2 Sam. xiv. 2, 1 Kings iii.
II ('a long life'). Even Demosthenes,
de Cor. p. 258, can speak of the in-
terval between the battles of Haliartus
and Corinth as οὐ πολλαὶ ἡμέραι, though
they were fought in different years and
many important occurrences happened
in the mean time. The difference be-
tween the vague 'many days' of the
Acts and the definite 'three years' of
the Epistle is such as might be expect-
ed from the circumstances of the two
writers.

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